Read Online Otherworldly Maine by Noreen Doyle - Free Book Online Page B

which he was born. He worked fifteen to twenty hours a day in what turned out to be a lifelong attempt to find a means by which he could experience firsthand the technological promises of ages to come. Late in his career, he apparently made a discovery that enabled him to realize his childhood dream.
    In the years to come, as the world gradually pieces together more of Masterson’s remarkable adventure, all human beings may find their lives altered for the better. In the meantime, we must content ourselves with having at least begun to study and, hopefully, learn from this one solitary life.
    Wanda Pierce
    Editor
    EQMM ’s reporter began her investigation by visiting the local elementary school, on the road between Machias and Marshville, in the township of Harrington, Maine. Requesting access to school records, she was turned down summarily by school officials. But the reporter followed the school secretary home, explained her mission, and, finally, managed to elicit her aid. Griswold Masterson’s grades turned out to be rather poor, and the only noteworthy entry in school records was that he had been expelled on May 17, 1946, at the age of eleven. Mrs. Martha Tuttle, the principal, wrote the following comments in her report of this incident:
    â€œThe student is totally uncooperative. He never raises his hand, never erases the blackboard, never recites in class, never does his homework . . . . His teacher, Maryanne Wilson, reports that all he does is read formulas on desk top . . . . Elsie and Josiah Masterson were called up to school, and they indicated he was the same way at home . . . . ‘Doesn’t seem to hear a thing we say,’ according to Mrs. Masterson . . . . ‘That boy’s head is in the clouds,’ said Mr. Masterson.”
    Our reporter visited Washington County High School outside Marshville. There she found one instructor—physics teacher Groden Catlege—who was willing to discuss Griswold. Nearly eighty years old and weighing about the same, Catlege was feisty, fearless, but forgetful:
    â€œWasn’t he the kid who tried to burn down the post office ’cause he didn’t receive a package of books? Or was he the one who quit school at sixteen to study astrophysics on his own? One of those rascals in my class trapped stray cats for experiments. Could that have been Masterson?” ( Editor’s Note: Masterson may have been all three .) “Well, sir, whichever of those things he did, he was no weirdo the way people tried to make out. Hell, it was the town that drove him to shut himself away. . . . Yes, sir, he had a grasp of the physical and theoretical sciences that defied normal capacities for knowledge. Uncanny it was, the way he could join opposing elements in his mind. And his curiosity was insatiable—climbed a tree in a storm to study lightning and sure enough got struck to the ground! . . . Yes, sir, I laughed it off at the time, but now, who knows, maybe the feller was right when he said to me, one day after school: ‘Einstein is interesting, but he misses the point.’”
    If young “Grist,” as the town called him, was advanced mentally beyond most of us, physically he was a poor specimen. The only photograph of him known to exist, snapped by a local, now-deceased shutterbug, shows Masterson passing the general store, attempting to cover his face with his hands. He was probably in his early twenties and, obviously, had not yet entirely shut himself away. The photo, judging from its faded sepia, was taken with an old box camera—and under far from cooperative conditions. But it did provide a glimpse of his stubby teeth and drastically receding hair, along with the bony slabs that served for shoulders. Accounts of Masterson’s a height differ greatly—some say over six feet, others say under five feet. (Judging from the size of his shoes, the latter seems more likely.) Whatever the truth, that disagreement