On Monday, May 30, 1943, in the midst of World War II, the small town of Ashland (population 2,457 according to the 1940 Census), on the western frontier of Aroostook County, Maine’s potato and lumbering county, celebrated Memorial Day. Unlike other cities and towns, Ashland’s celebration, however, had the distinction of being recorded in a series of some 40 photographs taken by John Collier Jr., a photographer for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, to document the Great Depression’s and the War’s effect on rural America.
Ashland is my hometown, and I was pleasantly surprised a couple of years ago to find Collier’s 1943 photographs of Ashland available online from the Library of Congress. I was more than surprised — flabbergasted might be a better word — to see, in the first image I looked at, my aunt MaryAnn, my father’s younger sister, in her early teens dressed in her Girl Scout uniform, and to see her best friend similarly outfitted in the next photo, still smiling over 80 years of time.
I eagerly scoured the rest of the collection looking for familiar people and places. As Collier indicated in his notes, the town was mostly populated in wartime by women, children and older men. Fittingly for a patriotic holiday memorializing the past wars, there were shots of a local marching band in uniform and pictures of a color guard of World War I veterans in vintage military uniform representing the American Legion Post No. 109.
There were images of a memorial ceremony at the local cemetery and long shots of the crowd around the town bandstand with, one assumes, the typical speakers at the podium. I was too young, barely three years old, to remember the bandstand from that day or probably even to have been there. But I distinctly remember that same bandstand two years later in August 1945 when the victory over Japan (VJ Day) was celebrated with an impromptu, euphoric celebration, with speeches and band music.
I remember my mother and I and two sisters piling into a huge pre-war Buick, seldom used because of gas rationing, and being driven into town from the farm at breakneck speed by my grandmother. The bandstand, the last time I checked, was still standing.
Among the photos were columns of Girl Scouts (Troop 1)and Boy Scouts (Troop 179) marching in parade.
And, most exciting and amazing of all, images of my father, Wesley, who was one of the leaders of the Boy Scout troop. He had two younger brothers who served, but with three dependent children he was deferred from the draft until early 1945 and was demobilized late in 1945.
His experience as a Scoutmaster led him to a satisfying postwar career as an executive in the Boy Scouts of America’s professional staff, finishing up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as director of their national museum. He never liked potato farming, which was governed by the demands of the land and seasons, the variables of insects and weather, and the needs of the valuable animals, particularly milk cows and draft horses, and he was glad to escape to a more self-determined life.
Significantly, four of his brothers — the two who had been in the service and two younger — also migrated south after the war.
Ashland’s population as recorded in the 2020 census was 1,202. The Wright family farm on Frenchville Road has been taken over by the forest — no trace left of the foundations or the wood line advancing into the fields. My father and his brothers and sisters, including MaryAnn, are all gone, as is my mother, her sisters, and both sets of grandparents.
But the bandstand still remains, as do my childhood memories of a time and place somewhere between the 19th and the 20th centuries, with no electricity, only kerosene lanterns for lighting, no telephone, no indoor plumbing, no refrigeration, no central heating, only a wood-fired, cast-iron kitchen range.
It might have been a good place to be from, but I am glad that my parents moved south for opportunity, including my opportunity for a university education and all that followed.
Paul M. Wright, a writer, historian and retired University of Massachusetts Press editor, has lived in Boston’s South End for more than 50 years.
