To the Editor:
“Childhood Memories of the Maine Central RR Station,” by Calvin and Marjorie Dodge drew me back to the 1940s as I too grew up in Damariscotta. (LCN, 11/14/11, Page 13)
As a boy, I knew all the businessmen mentioned; Wally Waltz, Eddy Collins, John Puckey, Tom Gay, Howard Cushman, Harry Melville; they were all buddies of my Dad, Jimmy Alexander.
Howard Spencer, a few years older than me, happened to have a key to that “little building heated by a coal stove” up at the station. On cold winter nights, we would sneak in, light a fire and get an education in poker. After every hand, we all would swap seats (barrels?) so as to alternately cool off/ heat up our backsides. That coal stove really put out the heat!
In a long ago Portland Press Herald column, Damariscotta writer Bill Caldwell recalled the reminiscences of my grandmother Mabelle Cotter Alexander Sherman: “My father, George Cotter, began handling Sunday papers on this spot in 1898… As a young girl, I rode on father’s horse and wagon to the depot in Newcastle to pick up the Sunday papers. They came in on the 10:30 train. The Boston Post, Boston Herald, Boston Globe and Boston American. Price was six cents.”
David R. Alexander, Gorham
