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Bangor MetroMetro Guide

As told to Mark Ricketts by Earl Hornswaggle

You young-uns don’t remember what it was like when the salmon were bountiful. It was like a gosh-darn epidemic. They were whoppin’ big too. Way back when Bangor was the lumber capital, a 20-pound salmon was thought a mite scrid, too puny to mess with. A 90 pounda, that was a fair catch. Some even grew big as a child raised on fried dough and whoopie pies.

“Those days, salmon wunt just big, they were ornery—mean as schoolyard bullies. Sometimes they’d gang up, turn over your boat, and for no good reason, slap you silly with their tails. Other times, they’d poke their heads up from the water and spit right in your eye.

“They were a cranky bunch all right, but they went flat-out crazy come spawnin’ season. River darn-near boiled over from their wild canoodlin’.
“The churchgoers, Bible thumpers, and such, they were already fed up with the cathouses downtown. They for damned sure wunt gonna allow such carryin’ on, such as ‘spawnin’,’ in the pure waters of the Penobscot. So, in an effort to lead them fish down the path to righteousness, they held revival meets down at river’s edge.

“When their joyful noise got too loud, saloonkeepers met the challenge by havin’ their fiddlers and piano bangers play even louder. Upriver, on that island of theirs, the Penobscot Indians took to dancin’ and chantin’. And, just for the heck of it, local hunters shot off a few dozen rounds over the old bridge.

“All the singin’, chantin’, prayin’, gunfire, and general hoo-ha got the salmon so riled up, they turned ‘round and started in swimmin’ back t’home.

“And that there, chummy, is why the Maine salmon moved their procreatin’ party upstream. Might also explain why so many old-timers ‘round these parts are hard o’ hearin’.

“Gotta say though, truth be told, come spring, I do kinda miss all the ruckus.