Recently I was going through some old yellowed copies of a Belfast, Maine newspaper, The Republican Journal, from the 1950’s to 1968,  looking for births, marriages, obituaries, etc. to add to my research collection. It led me to remembering life as it was, through the front-page headlines, the advertisements, and clippings of where my classmates had gone and who they had married.

Walk down memory lane with me as we look back forty-plus years at Belfast, Waldo County, Maine and the neighboring vicinity.

We had our choice of where to shop for groceries. The A & P [Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.] Store was on Lower Main Street. The First National Food store was once downtown, but lastly in what is now Reny’s Plaza. Then came Cottles with Sampson’s across the street from each other nearly downtown. The stores offered S & H Green stamps, Plaid and Top Value stamps. The shopper felt as though they were gaining something as they pasted them into a booklet to gain a coveted item. Ours were used for Christmas and birthday gifts. My first non-electric hand beater came from S & H Stamps.

The stores offered other promotions, plus weekly coupon or coupons. Cottles had white bread for ten cents a loaf when they came to town. Sampson’s had two heads of lettuce for thirty-nine cents. It was rumored that lettuce was $1 a head in Alaska. Perish the though! You could buy potatoes for $1.50 a bushel, tuna for 19 cents a can; ten pounds of onions for sixty-eight cents, or how about Top Choice steer beef steak at 38 cents a lb., and strawberries for 39 cents a pint.

Bi Right Market on lower Main Street offered bread for 18 cents a loaf. Their ad read “Fresh’n Seafood arriving daily.” There were ‘Mom and Pop’ stores in each hamlet. Apples were $!.50 a bushel at Payson’s in Hope.

 

 

If your choice was to eat out, there was a Clam Fry one night a week at Light’s Restaurant in Searsport for $1.29, with coleslaw and biscuits. Slamin’s Bakery offered Saturday night baked beans for 65 cents a quart, with fresh yeast rolls for 30 cents a dozen.

"Look at what’s cooking!” at Johnson’s Lunch, with newly remodeled Bill’s Taxi next door, which had seven Radio cars, twenty-four hour service “at your service, seven days a week!” Jed’s had it’s opening in 1968, “where dining is a pleasure”.
(For full size please click on photo.  Thank you.)

 

 

 

You had to earn a living, at about a minimum wage of $1.40 an hour. There was Maplewood and Penobscot Poultry companies, and two shoe factories. The ‘Sardine Factory’ was advertising for “Ladies to pack sardines in warm, sanitary working conditions”. Mathew Brothers was turning out doors and windows. Belfast Manufacturing, also known as ‘The Pants Factory’ was hiring experienced stitchers.

A. L. Stewart Company was hiring laborers twelve to sixteen years old to rake blueberries in the summer. They wrote, “Youngsters older than this and adults simply will not hire out to rake. The labor shortage in the harvest period is sometimes critical.”**

Belfast Shoe Company closed its doors in March 1968, leaving one hundred twenty-five people out of work. It reopened under new management as Waldo Shoe Company in Aug. 1968, stating that they had twenty employees, and would be needing two hundred.

If you were looking for a place to live, there was one, possibly two, photos of Real Estate for sale each week. You could buy a ‘nice’ home for up to $6000, a ‘fine’ Belfast home for $12,500, a large home in East Belfast with a view of the Bay for $18,000, or a two-apartment house in Belfast on a large lot for $10,500. By 1968, Clark Agency had a half page of Real Estate photos.

You could install a complete warm air oil heating system for five rooms at $335.50. Consumers Fuel Company sold bulk gas tanks and other fuel.

Your building and remodeling supplies could be purchased at Mollison’s on Route 3, where you got “Prompt and Courteous Service.” There was also Hall Hardware on Lower Main St. where you could find anything. Arnold’s Hardware rented tools, and also had a car drive through their storefront.

There was Home Supply on Main Street. Who could forget the mystical, magical upstairs Toy Land at Christmas Time?

There was a variety of places to buy your clothing, among which was the ever-popular Five and Dime stores, F. W. Woolworth’s on upper Main Street, and McLellan’s on Lower Main Street. Woolworth’s had a sale on summer blouses for 82 cents with an additional 10% off with coupon. You could buy a Ladies coat for $8.88 and a dress for $2.22 at Puritan’s Clothing Store on “Easy Credit Terms”. Kilroy’s was on Lower Main Street. If you wanted to travel, Epsteins in Searsport was “never undersold”. It was a bargain-hunter’s paradise for clothing, boots, shoes and household goods. They advertised a warm winter jacket for girls for $2. 97. Colburn Shoe Store had competition from Dinsmore Shoe in Post Office Square.

Need your prescription filled or looking for bargains? LaVerdiers came to Belfast, There was Kirk Drug and Gould’s Drug Store, and Hills Rexall Drug Store with the popular annual “Buy one, get one for one cent” sale.

Stover’s Jewelry store advertised “Cameras, film, projectors and supplies, as well as jewelry, TV’s and stereos. Their ad read, “Action…. Cameras….. Vacation Memories!”

For full size please click on photo.  Thank you.

A 1959 'Caddy' with new motor and tires advertised for $300. “Come in - Let’s Talk Tires” was Wade and Hurd’s ad.

For entertainment there was a “Special Kids Matinee with free popcorn, candy and door prizes” at Colonial Theatre for fifty cents.

Boxing returned to Belfast “in a big way” with a weekly Amateur bout, “taking the town by complete surprise.”

Belfast’s “newest Pool Parlor” was at Macleods on Church Street with eight tables, no waiting, or you could “Come where the action is”, Red Barn dances every Saturday night, dancing to Country Music, I believe in Monroe. There was Grange News from all over Waldo County with news of their meetings, suppers and community events.

Home Furnishing store had furniture, household goods, and an ad “Guns, bought, sold, and traded.” The Journal had a Headline “County Sportsmen Protest Gun Control Legislation“, with two petitions to the Legislature by Major Clair H. Thurston of Knox which read: “Whereas Article II of the ten original amendments to the Constitution of the United States adopted Dec. 15, 1791 provides the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, we hereby pledge ourselves to work politically, regardless of party affiliation against those who support disarming the American Sportsmen.” During the first six hours, they had two hundred signatures.

You could send your Mom flowers on her day at Lougee and Holmes greenhouses. The ladies could get a Permanent for $10.75 at the Pink Poodle Beauty Shop, “open evenings for the working girl”. Charlie Brier was selling Homelite Chain saws.

In the summertime, the Broiler Festival with its queen, parade and visit from the Governor was held each year at City Park.

In the 1960’s there were 2100 Post-Korean veterans enrolled in Maine education and training under the G. I. Bill.

There were rumblings of strikes in the poultry companies, threats to walk off the job in wage dispute settlements with the two Unions preventing the walk-outs. Also, at the Searsport docks, members of the Longshoremen of Local 1319 of International Longshoreman’s Association returned to work after an 80-day Taft-Hartley injunction by President Johnson.

It was all there, printed in the pages of the Republican Journals in the 1960’s, an occasional Letter to the Editor, photos of local youngsters in a column called “Welcome Babies”, with the births of all of the local babies, long before there was a threat that someone might “steal their identity’ if their birth data was published. The crystal-clear 4 x 5 ½-inch photos of the beautiful brides, with articles describing the wedding, photos of anniversary couples, generation photos, sporting events and accident photos, probably taken by photographer, Walter Dickey, and the obituaries [minus photos] of some who were World War I veterans.

There was the article about the fairly-new Mt. View School, built for 425 students, becoming crowded with 54 more students than the planned capacity.

It has been said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same!” Is it me, in my old age, thinking that it was a more leisurely time? For me, it was a time when I was so busy raising small children that it seemed that I missed some of it. Time passes by….