Edited interview with Carlene Cook (CC), daughter of George Goodeill and niece of Clarence Goodeill. Conducted by Joe Manning (JM), on April 2, 2007. Transcribed by Seunghee Cha and edited by Manning.

JM: I had a nice long talk with Peggy. She told me your father George was really her uncle.

CC: He was a wonderful father to her. She's my cousin, but she's just like my sister.

JM: When were you born?

CC: On June 1, 1934, in Eastport.

JM: At the time, where were you living in Eastport?

CC: Actually, we lived in Robbinston. My dad had a store up there. First he drove a truck. And then he and my mom got married, and he bought a store up in Robbinston. We lived over the store. And I was there until I was eighteen. The store was about all they had in the town. Then he started showing movies. He'd rent these movies from a guy over in Millbridge, and he would put a curtain up in the store, and all of the people in Robbinston would come and sit on boxes and counters, whatever. He'd put the cameras out and we'd shut the lights off and show the movies. And a lot of the old movies I see now on TV, I've seen them because Dad showed them. We had a grand time doing that. And then after a while he bought a very big waterproof movie screen and showed outdoor movies. Mom and I would go around with a hat and they would put some change in to help pay for the rent on the movies. I think Dad was the first one to have outdoor movies in this area of Maine.

JM: And this was in Robbinston?

CC: The outdoor movies were in Pembroke. They had the Pembroke Fairgrounds. They had horseracing on Sundays. In the summer, Dad had a hotdog stand there, and Mom and I worked in it. But it didn't seem like work. It was fun. Dad was way ahead of his time. He was very smart. He had a convenience store. It was called Goodeill's Cash Store. He sold Gulf gas. He opened that up like four o'clock in the morning, and he didn't close the door until about ten or eleven, every day. Up on the hill, he had a beautiful piece of land. It would be worth money today. He had five or six camp cabins on it. So they rented the cabins in the summer, and people in the cities would come in from Massachusetts and spend the summer. Mom worked at the store, too, and helped out with everything.

JM: How far is Robbinston from Eastport?

CC: Fourteen miles.

JM: So when you went to the big city, so to speak, did you go to Eastport?

CC: Most of the time, we went to Calais. We went to the movies up there on Saturday nights, and they had band concerts Sunday nights in the park. And when they had the Fourth of July in Eastport, that was a big thing there the whole week. We'd have the hotdog stand there. And then we'd take the hotdog stand to Woodland for Labor Day weekend. And we'd go fishing. We had a boat. In those days, nobody had any money. But we had a store, so we were lucky. Dad had a new car, and we had a telephone in the store.

JM: When you were growing up, did you know that your dad had worked in the cannery?

CC: He never talked much about himself. Peggy and I thought about that the other day. He never discussed his family much to me. I think I knew that he had worked in the cannery, but I didn't know that he was a little kid then. But he was very smart.

JM: Without having gone to school much.

CC: He didn't have to go. I guess it was just a natural thing for him. He had a store in Eastport, too, with my husband and the family, and he did all of our sales taxes and bookkeeping. The state came down one time and looked at his books. Dad had all of the receipts stuffed in boxes, and I said, ‘Oh my goodness, we'll probably get in trouble.' But this guy sat at the desk with his glasses on and went through every one of them boxes, and Dad had it right down to the penny. Dad was really something else, I'm telling you. He was a great person, and somebody should write about him. I've often thought about it.

JM: Did your father have any other children?

CC: No, I have no brothers and sisters.

JM: Did you know your father's father?

CC: I knew Grampy Goodeill. He used to come out to the store. And he was always dressed really nice. He always had a hat, a jacket and a tie.

JM: Do you know what he did for a living?

CC: He also had a store, a little grocery store in his house.

JM: What about your uncle Clarence, your father's brother?

CC: My uncle was a great guy, too. He could play the piano. He was awful nice to us, and he was smart, too. He owned some dump trucks. Sometimes Dad would drive one of them. They'd get a load of chum and bring it back and fertilize the plants.

JM: What is chum?

CC: When they pack the fish, they cut the heads and tails off, and that's chum. Clarence's wife, Hilda, worked down in the factory. She was a good packer.

JM: He looked very much like your father, didn't he?

CC: Yeah, he was bigger though. He was really big. He was a boxer in his younger days. Mom told me they called him Tiger Goodeill. I forgot to tell you that Dad invented a lot of things too. He invented a potato peeler. And he had a ferry boat that went from Calais to St. Andrews (New Brunswick). He had a big sign on the boat, with a picture of Uncle Sam shaking hands with the premier of New Brunswick, with the water between them.

JM: How did he have time to do all that stuff?

CC: Well, you know, he didn't require much sleep. He'd go to bed at eleven or twelve, and he'd be up early with that flashlight. Dad would nap sometimes. He could sit in a chair and have a nice nap, and then wake up refreshed. He had a lot of energy. And he had a great helper in the store. His name was Bert Tuttle, and he was always at the store when my father was doing other things.

JM: When did he marry your mother?

CC: Oh, I don't know, exactly. She was from Perry, just a little ways from Eastport. Her name was Edna Faye Cox. She was a beauty, my mother. She was like one of them movie stars with blonde hair. She always wore high heels, even when she'd be out there pumping gas.

JM: Did you have a career? Did you have a regular job most of your life?

CC: Mostly store business. We had a store here in Eastport, and it was called Cook and Goodeill. I was a Goodeill, and I married a Cook. So Mom and Dad and my husband and I all went in it together. It was a convenience store.

JM: Boy, stores sure run in your family.

CC: You better believe it, but I loved the store. I'd still be in one now if I wasn't so old.

JM: It's certainly a good way to meet people.

CC: Yeah, that's what I liked about it.

JM: So I guess your father must have been pretty popular in town.

CC: Everybody liked Dad. Everywhere I go now, people still speak about him. Did Peggy tell you about the signs he made? Sometimes he'd take white shoe polish, ‘cause we had plate-glass windows up there, and he'd write signs on the store. There was a picture of one of them in the Bangor paper.

JM: When your father wasn't working - if that's possible - is there anything he loved to do for recreation?

CC: He loved to go visit people. I can remember going to different places, different stores, going in and talking to people. We used to go fishing on a lake. Or sometimes we'd go stream fishing. He liked doing that. He was interested in everything. He always read the newspaper, and he always watched the news on TV. And he liked those game shows. He loved ‘The Price Is Right.'

JM: Are there still some canneries up there?

CC: No, not anymore.

JM: Were there canneries when you were a kid?

CC: Yes. Down behind the store in Robbinston, there was a Seacoast Packing Company.

JM: That's the company your father worked for in Eastport. When you saw that picture of your father with a big butcher knife in his hands, what did you think? He was only seven years old.

CC: I couldn't believe it. I was shocked when I seen that knife in his hand and knew what he had to do, but he never said anything about it.

JM: Do you think most people there who are your age are aware that small children worked back then in the canneries?

CC: I don't know, probably not until recently.

JM: Some of the other pictures I've seen were of kids with bandages on their fingers. One kid had cut his finger really badly.

CC: That's amazing that it ever happened.

JM: I think that most people looking at those pictures now will say, ‘Well, that kid didn't have a chance.'

CC: Obviously, but they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

JM: You look at the outcome of your father, and he survived and turned out to be very accomplished.

CC: I know. It didn't seem to hurt him any, as far as morals go. He didn't drink, and he didn't smoke. I don't think Clarence did either. Dad had such a good heart. At the store, he let people have all that stuff on credit; and when he left there, there were bills and bills that people never paid him. And he didn't even try to collect, because they didn't have any money, and they worked in the factory only in the summer. It was hard times for people, and he just let ‘em have it. He never said a word. You know, during the World War II, he closed the store up, believe it or not, and we moved out to Portland (Maine). His sister lived there. And they had an apartment right near them. Mom and I and Dad went out there, and Dad worked on the Liberty Ships in the Portland shipyard.

JM: So how long did he do that?

CC: I would say maybe two, three years. Mom was homesick. She used to cry. She wanted to come home to Robbinston and open the store again.