I made more than 35 videos of Boothbay region people in the late 1980s. Carroll Gray (1912-1990), born and brought up on the west side of Mill Cove, was one of the men I visited multiple times to film. Many may remember his fine columns in the 1970s Registers that captured the workaday life of the region in an earlier time. On Sept. 19, 1987 Carroll talked to me about a Mill Cove character who also lived on the west side of Mill Cove, Bill Farmer.

Bill (1881-1962) went to sea at the age of nine, traveling the Atlantic to southern waters coastwise, as they’d say, and to Europe occasionally. When he "came ashore" Bill worked at the Boothbay Harbor railway (later Sample’s) as well as various other jobs. For instance Carroll said he lobstered—"He had a little boat, tiny thing; the Pride of Mill Cove was her name." It was still a time when men did anything they could turn a hand to support their families. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Bill decided to capitalize on his own property, starting a feldspar quarry, which Alden Stickney wrote about in this column in 1992.

Bill also capitalized on the leisure activities of local people and visitors, building a skating rink, miniature golf course, and saltwater swimming pool, the last which I wrote about. In addition to that, Bill created paintings and sold them; we have one donated by his family member, Jean Chenoweth. He enjoyed telling tall tales; Jane Spofford told me he joked with the summer people, telling them countless nonsense stories, such as how he used to pick up the crowbars that floated in from Squirrel Island. He also told them how he swam out to Squirrel and then back under water, and so on.

Suckering the Drummer

Now one of Carroll Gray’s anecdote about Bill: "I lived right close to Bill Farmer, and Bill, some would credit him with stretching his imagination, either that or down outright lying. Some would credit him with being close to the top of being a liar. I never knew him to ever tell anything that couldn't be verified. I lived across from the store [Keene Barter's] and for Bill it was a five-minute walk. Traveling salesmen used to come around at night; they called them drummers. Keene Barter would be there and of course there were always a bunch of loafers there.

"There used to be a long glass candy case right full of penny candy and five-cent candy too, and a cheese box full of sawdust for the tobacco juice. One night among many nights Bill told this story, that when he was a boy he had run away from home. He followed the sea for thirty years and for twenty years he had been a farmer, and he'd be 49 years old tomorrow. Nobody paid any attention to it, 'cause he was always flapping his lips so much anyway. But this drummer took it all in. He came over and said, 'Pardon me, sir. What is that you just said?' Bill looked at him and repeated everything from what he said before. The drummer says, 'That can't be right.'

"Well, Bill was a short man and he bristled right up just like a bantam rooster. He'd be so and so and he ought to know. The drummer said, 'No, you can't be right.' Bill allowed that he could. The man says, 'I'll bet $10 that it's impossible to be right.' Well, Bill scratched around in his pocket and he got the $10 and they laid them down on the counter, right on the glass showcase. Bill went all through it again to prove it.

"There was so and so there, and he'd get a different man to verify that he had run away from home when he was such and such an age, and this and that, and the other. They all knew what Bill was doing. He'd said, 'For twenty years I've been a farmer', but the years at sea added up to be considerable more if he would be forty-nine years old tomorrow—it went beyond that. This was the point that this man was making. Bill says, 'I've been a farmer for twenty years, and matter of fact I've been a farmer all my life. My name is William H. Farmer, thank you.' Then he picked up the money. The man shook his head, and he says, 'When will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut?' I thought that was pretty clever."