Good Morning! Happy July 1st!

We've had more "spam" posted to the "Comments Page" on home page of the web site. Sorry about that, and we're looking into some way to prevent it from happening, but the best we can do for now is that it is scrambled so of no threat to anyone, and Fred gets it off as soon as we know about it. So far it's not been anything damaging, but it certainly is a nuisance.

I had this notice in my e-mail this morning. We are apparently down to one lister in the Town of Cabot. Chris Kaldor served with Doug Harvey and Carlton Domey, then after Chris died, Doug became interim town clerk and still served; but Doug has now moved away and apparently nobody has been found to fill the two vacant positions. I guess it isn't a position most people would want, but it is an important one and every effort should be made to fill it. Any registered voter interested in the position should contact the Cabot Town Clerk or Board of Selectmen. Also, if you are unhappy with your assessment, you can go to the meeting and protest to Carlton. (Click to make larger.)

Fred and I have been hard at work to produce a DVD of the photos I've scanned and put together for the Cabot Historical Society. Last night we finished what we consider our first attempt, good enough to use during CHS's first open house of the year on July 4th, but we will fine-tune the DVD later - there are quite a number of things I want to change, but for now we're happy to have it ready, and hope we can get the equipment at the historical society building to play it.

I'm reminded to let you know I just took a few of the Cabot Oral History books to Garey Larrabee at the store, if anyone is looking for it. I have copies here, too.

Last week I was contacted by a man in Maine who is connected to the Goodrich family in E. Cabot. He is looking for information about another relative named George Read. I have very little information on Mr. Read, but apparently he was involved with the wife of one of the men who had a whiskey still miles back in the woods (actually on my grandfather's property for a short time) and perhaps in an effort to eliminate the husband, Mr. Read snitched to the feds in 1925. He was never heard of again. There may be someone still living who knows what happened to him, but most of those folks are gone now.

Those were pretty wild years. Prohibition was in full swing and most folks didn't want to get in the way of moonshiners. Mr. Read may have had to leave the area after his disclosure, or he may have been dealt with in some more gruesome manner. There were a number of prominent men in the area involved in the production and distraittion of moonshine in those days, and they certainly didn't want to be found out, but after the raid by the feds, some went to jail. My grandfather shooed them off of his property as soon as he found the still, but I think they only moved it a few yards away, over the fence line, and that's where the feds found them. When you look at this picture, taken in the 1920's, you realize it was no small operation if they could actually fill all those barrels. They took all sorts of precautions, using back roads and I've been told it was moved by boat down Molly's Pond to a pickup point at the south end of the pond to avoid using what is now Rt. 2. There was at least one driver from W. Danville who had a fast car and made regular "whiskey runs." I'm sure there were many more people involved in one way or another, and many more who knew or suspected what was going on, but unlike Mr. Read, kept silent. My dad told me he ran onto the still one rainy day and there were old horse blankets thrown over some vats of fermenting whiskey. He said the water was pooled in the horse blankets, horse hair and other debris floating in it. He comment was, "That must have been mighty well flavored stuff."

Years later when my cousins and I were kids getting cows out of that same pasture where the still had been, we searched for its location, but never found anything. It's a big swampy area with lots of thick vegetation. Even the cows didn't go there. Rumor had it that the moonshiners buried a few barrels of whiskey when they knew the feds were coming and as far as anyone knew, it was never retrieved.