The Passamaquoddy Historical Society is pleased to announce “Progress of a Carousel” An exhibit showcasing the on going efforts to restore Sand Dollar Ella’s carousel.

The carousel was Passamaquoddy’s first attraction and provided children a pleasant diversion while their mothers shopped and dined inside. That is, until Ella’s brother Bart fell off the attraction and skinned his knee. Due to Bart’s propensity to slip and fall, the carousel was removed from the storefront and placed into storage.

The children in town were not too kind to Bart following that incident. Often they taunted him with names such as Slippin Barty. Ironically in later years Bart would win a lawsuit after slipping on a wet floor at the annual fish guttin’ contest. Since the slippin’ made Barty rich, he moved out to the west coast and opened his own restaurant Slippin’ Barty’s.

Local travel agent and fish cleaner Captain Slippy “Slip” Wampoo has taken a special interest in this project. We asked him to share his childhood memories of the carousel.

“Oh I recalls it well, the color of them ponies, the music that seemed to come from nowhere. Ma would trade her pennies with me so I could have enough dimes to ride it again and again. It may sound a bit silly today, but to a boy of four that was a lot of excitement and I’m not the only one which felt that ways bout it. Then Bart had to go and ruin all our fun, and to make matters worse, folks round town began calling him Slippin Barty. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I got in trouble with Miss Taylor because another classmate said something was Slippy’s fault.”

“I was there the day the carousel was rediscovered. It was in a storage container that was found when the giant fishing rod was removed from Chum Shop Earth. My memories came flooding back and that very day I went down to our Historical Society to inquire about restoring it.”

Members of the Historical Society were treated to a special preview last night. One society member, visiting from New Jersey, a Mr. Louis Mongello took a showed great deal of interest in a vintage photograph of Sand Dollar Ella’s. Oddly it was not the carousel that caught his eye. It was the trash can next to the front entryway. “Did you know this trash can was manufactured by Safco Products Company, a division of Liberty Diversified Industries, and was founded over 40 years ago with a small offering of corrugated storage products designed primarily for office use?” 

The exhibit opens to the general public next Wednesday and is free of charge, although a goodwill donation is suggested.

For those of you that noticed, all the computers used to run the town of Passamaquoddy and its website were down and all had to be rebuilt.  They are all almost back to normal.  Fortunately, some friends such as Fred Appleton and Jeff W from Iowa did their best to keep things flowing in the interim…  Thanks guys.