Roadside history book cruises the past> Will Anderson’s `You Auto See Maine’ celebrates highway Americana

YOU AUTO SEE MAINE, by Will Anderson, Anderson & Sons’ Publishing Co., Bath, 1999, 167 pages, $19.95.

If you know about riding over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house in a Studebaker, a Packard or a Flying Cloud Reo, perhaps you’ve been lying about your age. Or maybe you’ve just read Will Anderson’s latest book on highway Americana subtitled, “When Old Cars Were Young and For Sale in Maine.”

The Bath author’s seventh volume of New England roadside history is a testament to his love of vintage automobiles and the people who bought and sold them. Anderson drove from Kittery to Caribou tracking down photos of car dealerships that hark back to an era when Saturn was only a planet and SUV might have sounded like a social disease.

Anderson’s time line of Maine automobile lore, dating from 1900 to 1959, is punctuated with newspaper and magazine ads, romantic picture postcards and hard facts about long-forgotten automobiles such as the Winton, which last rolled off the assembly line in 1924. Roland Partridge sold them at his dealership in Lewiston.

Other cars are still in production, but bear no resemblance to the heavier, pre-unibody vehicles shown in Anderson’s book. Pictured are Chevrolets at Kathadin Motors in Millinocket (one of the few existing businesses included); Mercurys sold by E.A. Grant & Son of Houlton; and Fords outside Cornelius J. Sullivan’s franchise at 499 Hammond St. in Bangor. Other Bangor dealerships mentioned are the Darling Automobile Co., Utterback-Gleason Co., Murray Motors and Louis and Jack Rapaport’s business.

The genius of such pioneers as Henry Ford and his son Edsel is duly mentioned, but they were aided immeasurably by the salesmanship of such regional dealers as Herschel Collins (Sen. Susan Collins’ great-grandfather), who transformed his father’s Caribou lumbering business into a pioneering auto franchise. In 1912 Collins advertised in The Aroostook Republican that the Model T was the “lightest, rightest — most economical” car on the road.

Anderson also includes Alfonso F. Marsh, whose Nash Motors dealership in Sangerville is less known today than the ice cream he served at his soda fountain. Then there was Dodge dealer R. Everett Starrett of Bridgton. On Oct. 14, 1916, while celebrating his second wedding anniversary in Portland, Starrett left his wife, hopped on a trolley and, according to Anderson, was never heard from again.

Other tidbits include Bangor’s first automobile (“… all the horses are switching their tails in envy,” reported the Bangor Daily News in May 1900); a 1920 rum-running party of three cars intercepted by police in Baring; Studebaker’s flirtation in 1902 with an electric auto developed by Thomas A. Edison; and a 1903 Brewer City Council meeting where there were no good roads to discuss so the topic was switched to bad roads.

Feminists may recoil at too many mother-in-law jokes, but some are hilarious, such as this one from an August 1953 Maine Sunday Telegram: “We are told that a man with mixed emotions is one who is watching his mother-in-law back over a cliff in his new car.”

A book about things, as animated as automobiles can be at times, really boils down to the people who drove and sold them; Anderson’s book is brimming with colorful characters. One of the most memorable is Carol C. Banks, shown on the book’s cover in a circa 1946 picture of his Hudson sales and service company in Liberty. Banks is the man in the white shirt and necktie, every inch the gentleman. His daughter-in-law, Pearl Banks, says, “… he was fussy about who he sold to. He liked to feel the person was going to take care of it [the car].”

Will Anderson’s next book will introduce readers to classic old diners and roadside cafes of New England and New York. Like all of his other titles, it should be a meal worth waiting for.