We both find that as the years pass by we find ourselves remembering past events that took place in our childhood days here in the Damariscotta and Newcastle area. So many of the local farms had their own vegetable and fruit stands by the roadside in front of their farms.
We both recall that our parents often drove up to Ralph Keene’s farm stand to buy fresh vegetables and cut flowers. This was long before the so-called farmers’ market came into being around this area.
Ralph’s wife, Doris Keene, loved to work in her vegetable gardens and her so-called cut-flower garden. These items she raised and sold provided extra income for the dairy farm. Doris would always have strawberries, peas, and fresh greens at her stand, with homemade jams and jellies. Her farm was always clean, and everything was arranged so neatly. Doris sold all kinds of cut flowers to local churches, weddings, and social events in the area. She did a good business from local people and did very well with people passing by on the Route 1 highway in the summertime and fall months.
Her father ran the farm before her and it was called the Glidden Farm, and he sold milk and cream. Marjorie and I still have some of her father’s milk bottles, which read “Glidden Farms.” David Chapman often told me he would see Mr. Glidden driving down by the Chapman Farm on Route 1 in his milk wagon on his way to the village of Damariscotta.
Ralph carried on the milk business. He was our first milkman when I lived in Newcastle with my parents, and I still remember him coming to our home three times a week. Back in those days, we kept our bottled milk in our icebox refrigerator. I also recall that every quart of milk would have at least 1½ to 2 inches of cream on top of the milk. I also recall that his milk truck always had ice packed around each milk crate, and water would be dripping on our driveway under his truck during the summer months.
My wife just reminded me that Doris Keene provided all the cut flowers for our wedding at the Damariscotta Baptist Church back on Sept. 3, 1961. The Keenes were just wonderful people who would do anything to help the local people in the neighborhood.
The Keene barn sat across the road from their farmhouse and farm market. One day, the barn caught fire and burned to the ground.
Ralph and Doris were close friends of my wife’s parents, Winfield and Kathleen Cooper. They both went to the World’s Fair in New York City in 1939. They also went on trips to Canada a number of times. Ralph and Doris and Winfield and Kathleen belonged to the Nobleboro Grange and also traveled to other granges in the area.
Ralph and Winfield Cooper also belonged to the Alna Masonic Lodge here in Damariscotta and were both officers and past masters of the lodge. They also enjoyed going to other lodge meetings throughout the area.
Doris was like a second mother to my wife, Marjorie, when she was in grammar school. Ralph and Doris had no children. My wife often says that Doris Keene was a good seamstress and taught many of the young girls in the Nobleboro Grange how to sew and make different types of clothing, skirts, and nightgowns. Doris was truly an all-around person. She helped her husband bottle the milk and cream. She planted and took care of her vegetable gardens and flower gardens, as well as ran her fruit and produce stand. She was also a good housewife and cook. My father-in-law Winfield Cooper often said that Mrs. Doris Keene worked from sunrise to sunset seven days a week.
Ralph Keene was also a selectman in the town of Damariscotta. When the first parking meters came into use on Main Street, Ralph had the job of emptying each parking meter, and he put all the loose change in a seven-quart pail.
Ralph would bring the seven-quart pail full of change home and Doris would always find time to roll the money and Ralph would take it to the bank for the town of Damariscotta.
Even after Marjorie and I were married, we would go up to Ralph and Doris’ home and spend a joyful evening, and she would always have some special kind of cake or pie to serve up before we went home. I recall she would make some kind of sponge cake and served it with a special topping.
Doris Keene also loved raw honey in the cone, and when I had beehives I would take her up a whole frame of honey when my bees were working on wild raspberries or white clover; this was sweet, light, pure amber honey, almost crystal clear. I, myself, like raw honey in the cone.
I also remember Ralph and Doris collected postage stamps and he gave Marjorie and me a world map with foreign stamps from each country on it. We still have it today, many years later. We both have so many fond memories of these fine people.
I also recall when I was taking Ralph and Winfield to a lodge meeting in Wiscasset how they often discussed their childhood days when their parents would take the W.W. narrow-gauge railroad from Whitefield down to Wiscasset and back. Ralph would often laugh and say what a big deal that was for him as a young boy.
Winfield often told how he took the narrow-gauge railroad from his home in Whitefield down to the Whitefield Center where there was a two-year high school for freshmen and sophomores. Ralph would often tell about how the early-morning milk train would pass down by the back of his home on the way to Turner Centre Creamery in Wiscasset. Then Winfield would reply that his father shipped milk on that narrow-gauge railway to Turner Centre Creamery in Wiscasset.
Marjorie and I also recall that Ralph had a certain sound of laughter when he enjoyed a certain story or joke. Ralph could always see the humorous side of a story or even an everyday event.
Ralph always loved to tell the story of when he and Doris took Kathleen and Winfield Cooper to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. How he would laugh when he told how many times Winfield drove across the George Washington Bridge before they found the right turn-off which went to Maine.
There are just great and wonderful memories we all have of Doris and Ralph Keene over the many years that we both shared daily events here in the small village of Damariscotta. All the small dairy farms along Route 1 here in Damariscotta area are all gone, but our memories will never forget.
