...about my dear grandfather.

Got some very endearing news on this emotionally filled day.  By a classmate (Mark Peabody),  a beautiful, touching history has been unveiled  from days long since passed.  While my classmate's son-in-law (Paul Morin) was working on a camp at Sebec Lake (near Dover-Foxcroft, ME) several bits of history were uncovered.  My grandfather used to be the caretaker for that camp many years ago, and now in the remodeling process, these artifacts have been uncovered and shared through photos.  Not only that.  The same family, albeit grand children of the original owner, have shared thoughts of just how much my grandfather was loved and respected by them.  I feel the need to put this all together just so it is here to read whenever I wish to feel thankful that my grandfather was so important in my life and his memory still is.

Here is a letter written by one of the original owner's grandchildren:

A board removed from the camp with his signature.

from ~Biri Fay

"This is wonderful. Mr. Martell Pray was one of the finest men I have ever met and all of us loved him. He taught me a great deal about the woods and the animals and plants that lived there. He showed me how to build a squirrel trap. I caught one and let it out in the bathroom of the New House and it climbed up the shower and perched on the shower rod. Mr. Martell also showed me the peanut plant growing underground at the beach. My Mother was Jean Davidson Fay, the eldest of Sidney W. Davidson's children. Yes, we are still the same family. Mr. Martell was one of the few people with whom my Grandfather was on a first name basis".

"Liz, I hope you will come out to the Camp next summer and you will find your Grandfather`s name all over, and I can show you how many beautiful things he did there."

" I sometimes think that Mr. Martell's spirit was passed down to Paul Morin."


I am so thankful to Mark, Paul, and Biri Fay for making some brand new dear memories about my grandfather.

As if that isn't enough to feel joy about, another long ago friend (Kevin Stitham) wrote a wonderful piece about my grandfather's store on Lincoln Street in D-F.  This piece is also very endearing and adds yet another past memory for me to embrace with joy.  Here it is:

***************************************

12/4/1992

When I was eight years old, a twenty-five cent piece would find its way each week into my Christmas Club at the Piscataquis Savings Bank – located right across East Main Street from the Piscataquis Observer building. By the miracle of compound interest (but mainly by the bank kicking in the last twenty-five cents), I wound up with a $12.00 bank check the first part of December for all my Christmas shopping needs.

My grandfather, grandmother, and father (1930s)

In pre-mall 1960 there was only one place for your one-stop shopping, Lincoln Street’s own M.F. Pray’s right across from the Hayes Law Office.

One could quickly pass through the first floor, past the paints, sandpaper, artist supplies (whatever those were), wallpaper, and varnishes. You would be tempted to pause just before the stairs and place a penny in the slot of the mechanical marvel for a jawbreaker. But it was the stairs that took forever to climb. Spaced haphazardly along the stairway walls were posters with plastic bags stapled beneath garish ads proclaiming that you too could be the life of the party if only you purchased the fake fly trapped in the fake plastic ice cube. For 30 cents you could shock all of your friends with the electric joy buzzer handshake ring. It would take many a shuffle up and down those stairs to read all those ads, and to paw through all those exotic wares of magic snake pellets, x-ray glasses, metal wire puzzles, and nails in the bloody thumb bandage. With a fortune of $12.00 to spend, the wares of the stairs easily took care of those choices for those lucky enough to have the same high standards in gifts as you did.

Once one finally arrived at the second floor, one found the China gift shop and genuine, high-priced, authentic knickknacks. The curator of this treasure trove was a rather wizened, chain–smoking lady who alternated between having the widest smile or the severest frown depending upon the level of the traffic that stumbled up into her domain. The balance of shopping for those older sisters and of course all the adults in one’s life could be had here. She even had some surprises tucked away up here, like fake cigarette pens and even fake cigarette penknives. (I still have that fake cigarette penknife that I purchased some 32 years ago.)

A full hour of shopping found the wares of M. F. Pray fully up to the task of providing gifts for two brothers, two sisters, Mom, Dad, Gram, and Gramp. Sometimes there was even some coins left over from my Xmas Club bonanza for a treat for myself like those Chinese handcuffs… or maybe even that finger guillotine.

By November 27, 1992 on the busiest shopping day of the year, the Pray building had stood empty for many years. The hesitating steps of a boy’s feet encased in wool socks in rubber pacs upon its well-worn wooden stairs were heard now only in my memory. It is not surprising that at the start of this season of holiday shopping the Pray building drew in upon itself, heaved a giant sigh, and utterly collapsed. It left another hole in the downtown, but it is a hole that memories long since made have already filled.

--Kevin L. Stitham

***************************

       

So in the space of a few weeks, I have been reminded over and over of the gentle, loving, wonderful man my grandfather was and how he influenced the lives of so many around him.  I know he brought up two little "throw away" girls that no one else cared enough to nurture and gave us the support we needed to know that anything is possible.  He was a responsible, joy filled, dear man and I feel humbled by how he stepped up to the plate and lived his life with strength, respectability, honesty, and a deep sense of responsibility.  

I can sum up his courage with one short story.  I remember asking him one time when, still fairly a young man, he was so crippled up with rheumatoid arthritis, "How can you keep going with so much pain and creaking joints?"  His reply was very pragmatic.  "I know that if I don't get up even one day, I will never have the mobility to get up the next.  So I get up."  It was a very short reply but stated who he was.  He was a man who always "got up", took a step forward, and faced the world head on with humor, kindness, and bravery.  Bless you, dear Gramps!