Carleton retired from the post office in Skowhegan with more than 34 years of service. He could remember when the trains used to bring the mail into the railroad station from where it was taken by horse and buggy down to the post office. One day the mail didn't get in til 6 hours late. Reason was that so cold the locaomotive couldn't get its steam up. He walked to the Skowhegan House where the thermometer read 50 degrees below zero. They said at the Skowhegan Creamery it was 55 below. He said "It was the coldest damn morning I ever saw." "When I was a kid, mail came into Skowgan from downriver at night. They delivered it around town that same evening. A mailman would come around about 9 or 9:30. He Had a lantern on one arm which helped him read the addresses on the letters. And he whistled all the time. I told my mother I wanted to be a mailman when I grew up because if he whistled while he was working, it must be a good job. She smiled, but I'll be darned if I didn't become a mailman later on. I never regretted it." "When I started my career, I used to walk around at night collecting mail at different homes. Then I would take it down and put it in a box outside the post office. Early in the morning the men would take it in. We always saw every parcel was cleaned off the floor the night before Christmas so nobody would be disappointed on Christmas day."
He was always busy doing something. In his 50's and up he liked making things with wood and his basement was filled with electric saws. He made furniture for the backyard and puzzles and other wood crafts. He liked to spend time at the camp he built, starting with a one room little cabin in 1950 and having 2 rooms that he added on later. It overlooks Pleasant Pond and use to have fish that he enjoyed catching in the summer and he enjoyed ice fishing in the winter. The snow was so deep that he had to go up in the winter and shovel off the roof.
He always went to bed at 9 PM and always got up at 5 AM. He always had to have his big dinner at 11 AM. He liked day old doughnuts from the bakery in Waterville. He was retired for more years than he worked but always found things to do. He loved to grow dahlias at camp and people boating in the lake could see them and would stop to enjoy them. He enjoyed chopping firewood for camp and smelled of pitch and fresh cut wood.
She was her father's favorite child. When she was a teenager she went to Skowhegan to live with her mother's sister and family. She was in High School and Newagen school didn't go high enough to graduate. She fell in love with Carleton and they got married. She enjoyed her children but suffered with Migrane Headaches all through life until she ate a spoonful of honey a day when she was in her 80's. She was a loving grandmother and loved to knit. She made sweaters and mittens for all grandchildren every year for Christmas. She made beautiful afgans. She loved to hike and never learned to drive. She lived in the same home for 70 years and had a beautiful garden in her backyard. She also loved african violets and would have between 100 and 200 of them at times. In her later years she collected orchids and loved the beauty of them. She never liked TV.