The Mootel- pt. 2 Growing Poles for CMP

***This is a continuation of pt. 1. Originally published by W. Alan Henderson***

"The first inkling that Elliott Barlow was up to something new on Highway 27 was when the motorists began to see a huge tract of swampy ground taking shape under their eyes. Day after day. Elliott and his bulldozer were grading and draining. The place was a tangle of alders and birch which were cut into firewood, and the brush was burned. The land was drained using the new technique of permanent grass waterways that permit gentle sheet drainage without erosion. Elliott claims that sod ditches do not stand up. The cattle break down the edges. To accomplish this contouring drainage, he had to move tons of earth, leveling here and filling there. Then he sowed it down to red clover and timothy. It took him a solid year to do this, and for his outstanding performance, he won the Soil Conservation Citation for that year from the Knox-Lincoln Extension Association. Incidentally, he is an executive member in that association, and he and his wife are hard workers for the benefit of the Association.

So that was the picture at the close of the first year of Operation Mootel: A dismal piece of land had been reclaimed from the swamp and now everyone wondered what the next step would be. Seemingly overnight-Poles. Poles-poles, poles began to spring up everywhere. HUNDREDS of them, running this way and that in some sort of geometrical design. That had all the motorists half crazy asking themselves,"What on earth is he doing now?" A corny joke went the rounds that Elliott was raising poles for the Central Maine Power Co.,but gradually the skeleton pole work was clothed in "flesh" and became an open shed 160 feet long, with a large feed lot all fenced in, and a barbed wire fence stretching over hill and dale. Definitely, the place was taking on a Western flavor, and when the first shipment of 100 Herefords arrived, even the city folks could tell that Elliott had become a Cattle Baron.

Being a "wag" at heart, Elliott coined the name "Mootel" which he placed in big block letters on the roadside end of his pole shed, and then sat back and waited for the action. It still tickles him to see the tourists jump out of their cars and snap pictures of that provocative word-"Mootel".............