This is the second installment in a limited series on Maine’s “quaint holdover,” the annual town meeting. This week we turn on the Wayback Machine and visit a Maine village about the time of the Model T.

Small Maine towns have always been responsible for clearing their own roads in winter. In Madrid, Maine, the town had voted at its March of 1920 annual town meeting to appropriate funds for a mechanized snowplow to replace the ineffective horse drawn one. At that time, the larger Maine towns had already retired the horse drawn plow in favor of a Ford Model T truck with a plow affixed to the front.

Confident of a major improvement in winter travel after even the harshest of storms, the towns people spent the summer almost in anticipation of distant, but inevitable winter.

But when the first big snowstorm finally, the townspeople waited and waited at their front windows to see the iron monster push the snow out of the way. And they waited. And the waited. But no mechanized plow.

It didn’t take long, but word quickly spread that, contrary to expectations, no plow had ever been bought. Furious, they stormed into the selectmen’s office and demanded to know why. After considerable hemming and hawing, the selectmen finally admitted: “Well … the town voted to appropriate the funds … but never actually voted to spend them.”

This set off a legendary Madrid Town Meeting of 1921, where:

• Half the town demanded the selectmen be thrown out for incompetence.

• The other half defended them for their “Yankee thrift.”

• One old farmer stood up and suggested the townsfolk could “just shut up and take turns shoveling.”

That March, the town voted again—this time explicitly stating that the money should be spent to actually buy the plow.

In the ultimate touch of irony, you won’t find Madrid, Maine on the map. Oh, it’s real, alright, located between Kingfield and Rangeley. But the town disincorporated in 2000. When asked the reason, the retiring selectmen cited the apathy of the citizenry.