By Emily Patrick
Rodney P. Bailey was born in 1938 in New Sharon, Maine. He joined the Service straight out of high school in 1955. By 1959, he was out of the service and looking for work back in Maine. Not seeing any long-term career opportunities in his local gas stations or grocery stores, he went to the employment office in downtown Skowhegan. That’s how he got hired on as the Fire Warden on top of Squaw Mountain (now Big Moose Mountain) in Greenville.
He didn’t have any experience, but “thought going up into the mountains… Would be an interesting job.” Because it was a seasonal position, it would also give him plenty of time before winter to find a more long-term job opportunity.
Rodney was also doing a bit of soul-searching after his relationship with a woman from England ended. They met while he was in the service and he brought her back to the U.S., but she, “Didn’t get along with the country very well and went back home.” He was “broken down [by the experience]” and didn’t know what he was going to do. Sitting alone on top of a fire tower all day for the better part of 6 months, Rodney reasoned, would be an, “Opportunity to be by myself and think things out.”
Rodney was right, and tells me it was the “best experience” of his life. He doubts his life would have gone the way it did without his experience on top of Big Moose Mountain, and at 86 years old, he’s pretty happy with the way it all turned out. Rodney says he’s had a pretty good life and he’s, “Traveled the world. [It’s] amazing for a high school graduate from Skowhegan, Maine.”
Rodney’s home away from home on the mountain consisted of a small cabin with no running water or electricity, just an old stove and a stream running outside the cabin, his only source of fresh water. Rodney spent most of his waking hours not in the cabin, but on top of the mountain in a small fire tower. He had to be in the tower by 8 am, he recalls, 9 am at the latest, and didn’t leave until around 6 pm. This didn’t leave him too much time for “camp” chores, let alone recreational activities.
When he was up in the tower, his main job was to look for plumes of smoke that might signal a forest fire. During his 6 months on top of our backyard mountain, he only saw one plume of smoke in the distance near the Kennebec River. He recalls it was a thick white plume rising to the West. He quickly contacted the next tower over, and when they could see it as well they were able to triangulate the fire’s location. After the fire had been put out by the Maine Forestry Service, he learned lighting had struck a dam on the Kennebec and caught it on fire.
When he wasn’t preventing forest fires from spreading, his main work in the tower was to relay radio messages from Northern to Southern Maine, mainly having to do with weather forecasts. Though he doesn’t remember any of the messages to be too exciting, Rodney recalls the voice on the other end of the radio was at least “somebody to talk to.” He also enjoyed talking to all the hikers on the mountain.
Back at camp, Rodney would eat a lot of canned and dry goods. And biscuits. He fondly recalls his mother taught him to make biscuits from scratch, and they were his main sustenance during his time on the mountain. Every once in a while, he would travel down to Greenville and buy either some hot dogs or bacon. When he got back to camp, he’d put them in a pot in the stream, covered and weighed down with rocks, to keep them cool.
On a couple of occasions, the bears got to them before he did, but Rodney doesn’t seem to harbor any hard feelings. He says for the most part he and the wildlife, “All seemed to get along good. We didn’t mess with each other.”
On one occasion, but just one, Rodney admits he hiked down the mountain, checked into a hotel, had a hot bath and a good hot meal. It was the single extravagance he allowed himself during his April to October stay in the North Maine Woods.
Rodney’s favorite thing about working on the fire tower was the ever-changing scenery. One day it might be sunny and bright and the next rainy and cloudy. Some days he could look out and see Greenville and Moosehead Lake, and other days there were “endless clouds all around.” Rodney says one day there was a blanket of clouds below him as far as the eye could see and, if he were “brave” enough, he might have thought he could walk out onto them and keep on going.
Today, Rodney lives in Virginia, where he retired after a long career in the auto parts industry, namely with Mazda Motor Corporation. For 18 years, he was the Inventory Control Manager for the Eastern United States, and his career with Mazda also resulted in several overseas trips to Japan. Though he recalls his time with Mazda just as fondly as his time on top of the mountain, he says he, “Finally decided [he] wasn’t going to work anymore in 2003.”
Since the late 50’s, Rodney has made a few visits to Maine, but not many. A recent trip with his two children, however, brought him all the way to Greenville. To his amazement, as they crested the hill by Greenville’s Visitor’s Center, there sat a fire tower that looked very much like the one he called home all those years ago, although the legs were decidedly shorter. He went inside the visitor’s center and asked anyway, and sure enough, that was Rodney’s tower. He says seeing it and being able to share the experience with his children was the, “Highlight of the trip for all of us.”