The fur buyers was Merrit Kimball. He was a big fur buyer at one time. He bought and sold a lot of cattle over the years. Bought deer hides and fur. Back then you could take a deer hide to him and trade for a nice pair of deer skin chopper mitts or deer skin gloves. His business was based out of Waterford Maine. I went with Merrit on his line one day. The line was primarily foxes back then. He used relatively short chains, four or five feet and a fox drag in lieu of staking. Pretty old school in some ways but did all his setting bare handed. claimed he had very dry hands so did not really need gloves. I remember I had fun and heard a ton of stories. Merrit was good friends with Cronk and I took it he had known Walter Arnold a bit. He was quite a wealthy business man but you would not really know it to see him on the line or in the fur shed. Shrewd, would be a pretty good description.
The last year I tried to sell him some, fur this is how it went. He was quite used to being the only game in town. Good Deal Neal Olson had started buying fur and that changed the game around here. One winter I sold some pretty nice beaver. The next fall I heard that Neil Olson in Bethel was buying fur and paying pretty darn good money. I called up and asked Merrit what some items were going for. He told me "I buy fur, I don't price fur" or something very close to that. That was I think in the fall of 1974. I thanked him for his time. Then sold my fur to Olson. I ran into Merrit a few times over the years and he would say that he would like to have a chance to buy my fur. I always told him that I was a small timer and never did much. He always said, bring it over. I never forgot that first phone conversation on how he bought fur not priced fur. Olson going into business made for a nice competitive market in our small corner of the world.
Mac
Last edited by Mac; 09/21/19 09:09 AM.
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