MACHIAS – The oldest man in the United States reportedly turned 112 this weekend.

But he’s got some competition right here in Maine.

Madeline Flood was born on June 9, 1905, and she is celebrating her 103rd birthday today at the Merrill Health and Rehabilitation Center where she has lived since she suffered a fall in January.

During a brief interview on Saturday, she said she was “103 and still going strong.”

Her voice is firm and there’s a twinkle in her eye that reflects some feistiness on her part, to which she admits.

Although she said she appreciates the good care she’s received at the center, she’s itching to get out. Patting the arms of her wheelchair, she said with a smile, “If I could get out of this, I’d take off.”

Before her fall, Flood was living on her own in her trailer in Machias and cooking, which is her favorite thing to do.

“I cooked everything,” she said.

Pies, cakes, yeast bread, and she does an awful lot of canning.

“Until she fell, she was cooking every day for the folks down at Archibald’s One-Stop,” her son, Clinton Gardner said.

Flood is a Washington County native, born in East Machias, and has lived her whole life in towns around the county. She and her husband had a herd of 40 milking cows out in Alexander for a while, and Flood recalled that being a lot of hard work.

“There were just times that you had to be there,” she said.

With little prompting, she recalls the day when they put up 500 bales of hay.

“Those were 50-pound bales,” she said. “And that was besides cooking and getting meals. But it had to be done.”

Flood graduated from the local elementary school, but never went on to college. She married young at age 20.

“Oct. 1, 1925,” she said.

She survived her first husband, Eugene Gardner, with whom she had six children, and was married again in the 1950s to Nelson Flood. Three of the children – Clinton, who lives with his wife, Mary, in East Machias, Mary Romellio of Torrington, Conn., and Norma Cammaratta of Ocala, Fla., all in their 70s – are still living, as is a daughter-in-law, Nancy Gardner, who has helped her a lot around home. They were all expected to be at the center today to celebrate Flood’s birthday.

The spunky centenarian has lived through some major changes in history and has seen the transition from horse and buggy to automobile to jet travel and space travel.

“It’s gone by now; it’s another world,” she said. “There’s been so many changes. The whole world has changed.”

The war years were difficult, she recalled.

“It was pretty hard with a family,” she said. “There were no handouts then. No electricity. No television, which was a good thing. We just had to work hard, pay the bills and get by.”

Even so, Flood said those days were better in some ways.

“People were happier then,” she said. “The world is too fast for anyone today.”

She has lived through 18 U.S. presidents and counting, and though she has a poster of all of the presidents on the wall of her trailer, she declined to pick a favorite.

Flood said she has no real secret to her long life.

“Just hard work and good living,” she said .

And looking back, she said she has no regrets.

“I’ve lived my life, worked hard and got by,” she said. “I have a good family. I don’t know how much more I could want.”

rhewitt@bangordailynews.net

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