Robert E. Saltmarsh

About these Mysts: They emerged as silent invisible vapors from the gentle currents of our neighborly river. We hardly knew they were there until cool weathers would demand appearance from them. As mists, they would rise, roll, or disappear on their own terms, but we would still barely notice them.

Native Miltonians paid attention to our river only when she acted up with accidents, floodings or ice floes. At such times our mists would become our Mysts. We were a small town. Our dramas were meager or kept hidden from view until new Mysts would become our legends.

Such Mysts would encase the Great Depression, the Fears we were not to fear, Days of Infamy, and the Second World War.

Not only we children of the 1930s, but all good citizens along the Stillwater River were bathed by her mists, swept by her currents, and etched by the legendary Mysts formed as we concluded the first half of the twentieth century.

As the fifty two members of the graduating class of 1949 were sweeping into the second half of our century, we had created some Mysts of our own.

As a member of that class, with help from others, I have recorded my views of our passage into adulthood and the rest of our lifetimes.