To talk with Kenneth Dodge (who goes by Ken), is to travel around Lincoln County – which is only natural because his own Newcastle-and-Boothbay families go back even further than the one he married into. So, have patience, good reader. You will land sometimes in Waldoboro and sometimes in other parts of our county, which simply reminds us that our history is often intertwined with our neighbors’ histories. To begin at the beginning…
I had a brother about 2 years older than me, and when my father was drafted into WWII, my mother couldn’t take care of him in Newcastle on her own, so they moved back to Ocean Point in Boothbay to be with her parents. My father was home on leave before being shipped over to England, and I was conceived, in the summer of 1944.
And then my father left. From there, he went to Belgium. My father fought for two and a half months in the Battle of the Bulge, in the thick of the battle, stuck in that snow. Part of his survival was that he was a Maine boy, used to snow. But his best friend was killed there. A sniper got him.
Shortly after, he was wounded in another battle, and for a long time they didn’t know where he was. And then my mother got word that he’d been wounded in the head. They named me Kenneth M. Dodge, Jr. after him because they didn’t know if he would survive. I was a wartime baby.
In his letters, he’d write, “When I get home, we’ll build a house by the lake, and we’ll have gardens.”
When he came back, he got both. He built a small home on Sherman Lake, close to where his parents had lived before they’d passed away, around when he was a teenager. And my father had gardens, lots of gardens. He worked very hard to get everything done that he’d wanted to do.
It was where I grew up. My brother and I went to a one-room schoolhouse with eight grades, with no bathrooms, no running water. But it did have a wood furnace in the basement, and they had a janitor who would carry the water to the classroom in a big stone mason jar with a spigot.
I went through fourth grade there, until they discontinued it. But I found it very beneficial, and here’s why: if you were playing with clay or something like that but interested in whatever they were learning in an older grade, you could listen in on the history lesson being given to the sixth, seventh and eighth graders. I think that helped advance our education.
When I become a teenager, I started doing various things. I’d go to Ocean Point, stay with my grandparents and pick strawberries. For the 3 weeks around the 4th of July, I picked. After the strawberry season went by, I would go to Whitefield and rake blueberries. I made really good money there. I remember one time LOOK Magazine came, and they photographed us raking blueberries. We got an unbelievable amount of blueberries from that field. I don’t know why, but sometime in the 1980s, they just dug it up and made a gravel pit out of this whole, great big field.
I went to work for a local farmer who was on the other side of the lake. It’s still a farm, but at that time they raised chickens for eggs. I’d collect the eggs and feed the chickens. We also cut pulp wood, with axes and handsaws, and the farmer would sell that, too.
In my junior year, I got a job unloading and loading milk trucks at Roundtop Dairy, and I could have all the ice cream I wanted to eat. It was cool that summer. That was also the year I got involved with Waldoboro.
A friend of mine was going with a girlfriend in Waldoboro, but he didn’t have a car. And I had my license. Also, I had seen this girl at a Waldoboro Baptist Church Youth Fellowship meeting. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and I thought she was really cute. I happened to find out her name, and my friend mentioned that he could get me a double date her. She was Norma Hoffses.
So, my friend set it up, and we came over to Waldoboro. First, we picked up his girlfriend, then we picked up Norma who lived with her parents, at the house that’s still standing, next to Sylvania. Then we went the to the bowling alley and after, we just rode around in the car.
Well, it was wintertime. We hit a stonewall. With my father’s car. With everybody in the car. Nobody got hurt, but we slid off the road and “crunch.” So, I was late getting Norma home, driving her in a crippled car which we left in the driveway. I had to call my father to come and get it.
But her father was mad. He didn’t like that she was late, and he didn’t like the accident. He told her, “You’re not going to go out with that boy again. You are never going to go out with him.”
But Norma stood up for me. She said, “It wasn’t his fault.” And that’s how we managed to get together.
She was in the class of 1965, and her friends made me feel right at home. There was Ronnie Spear, Richard Chapman who they call Sam, and David Benner. I grew more attached to her class than my own because I was always around her friends, and we were tight. You wouldn’t think they would welcome an outsider, but they did. I felt like they’d always known me.
Sam Chapman – he could always make you feel good. Joke, laugh. He was the life of the party. Ronnie Spear – I played basketball against him and things like that. David welcomed into the class with open arms.
Waldoboro became part of my home. When I went to trade school but before Norma had graduated, I’d come straight over to Waldoboro and even stay overnight lots of times on the mattress up in the open chamber at the top. And then the next day, we’d go off for the day…usually to Boothbay. Or, if it was Sunday morning, I would go to church with her and her family.
This coming December we’ll be married sixty years. We got married after Norma graduated from high school. It was almost an open wedding because all the members of Norma’s church were there, the First Baptist in Waldoboro — where the Congregational Church is now.
Jasper Stahl, who was a church member, was there, too. He used to smile and talk to me whenever I was in church with Norma. I think he liked the idea of us together.
From there, we left for Portland, stayed in a fancy Holiday Inn for the night, and honeymooned in Quebec. In the snow. With one flat tire on the way. We made it back for Christmas, and we celebrated with both sides of our families.
I had originally gone to the University of Maine. Back then, the guidance counselors were always pushing the boys to go into engineering and the girls into teaching. But I had a mechanical thing about me, so I wasn’t sure about it. Still, I enrolled. I left after a few months, settling all my bills because I’d saved for college. I went home to try to learn what it was that I really wanted to do.
I returned first to the chicken farm; then I worked for Bob Reny and after, for Louis Doe. He taught me soldering, plumbing and oil bin heating. When he offered me a job, I said, “I don’t think so. I’m going to go to Maine Technical Institute and I’m going to become a machinist.” And that’s what I did for 52 years, machine work.
We came back to live in Waldoboro in 2001. I got a really good job at Marine Hydraulic Engineering in Rockland. They make lobster trap haulers and boat steering. We purchased her grandfather’s property, too, and built a house. Being closer to our parents was good because they were getting older.
If you count back to the time I met Norma, I’ve been in Waldoboro since 1961. I guess you could say that I’m established here.
We are staying here. We purchased a lot at Sweetland Cemetery, and a stone, too, that says ‘Kenneth Dodge, Jr. and Norma Evelyn Hoffses Dodge.’
But we also have an identical one for the cemetery on Dodge Road in Edgecomb, where, when you enter it, you’ll see ‘Dodge, Dodge, Dodge.’ My grandfather, my great grandfather, my uncles, my cousins and all the Dodges are there. We put our own stone right between Grandmother and Grandfather Dodge.
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