A Tombstone Every Mile Remembered

The Maine Woods.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, TN, recently hosted an exhibit honoring the late Dick Curless, a world-famous singer and songwriter who hailed from Fort Fairfield, Maine.

Dick Curless.

Curless almost graduated from high school in Massachusetts, where his family later moved, before he began working as a radio singer. He also performed in Las Vegas, but periodically traveled back to Maine to recover from illness and fatique.

Fame evaded Curless until the mid-1960s when he turned to his northern Maine roots and recorded his trucker’s song, “A Tombstone Every Mile,” that boosted his popularity. By the late 1960s, 11 songs recorded by him were in the country’s top-40.

Mt. Hope.

Curless continued to perform and sing throughout the world and, sadly, died in 1995 in Togus, Maine. He was buried in Bangor’s famed Mount Hope Cemetery.

But Curless’ Tombstone song continues, a tribute of history and lore and the hard and sometime dangerous work of early long-distance truckers who carried countless loads of potatoes from Aroostook County farmers to markets in Boston, Mass.—up to 400 miles one way.

Before the completion of the modern Interstate 95 highway connecting Kittery, Maine, in the south to Houlton in Aroostook County in the north, potatoes were hauled in the winter months from farm storage facilities to Route 2A, which runs south of Houlton and parallel to today’s I-95. In the middle of Rt. 2A is a large curve through Haynesville. The town, with a population of about 100, is better known for its dense woods.

The twisty two-lane road through Haynesville Woods became part of the Curless song, warning truckers of its icy conditions in winter and the high rate of deaths from trucking accidents. If all the truckers who were lost in Haynesville Woods were buried there, there’d be a tombstone every mile, according to Curless.

Ghost stories have also been passed around regarding that stretch of lonely highway. A couple crashed their vehicle in the woods, one story goes. With the husband dead, the wife escaped the vehicle but was unable to walk. She supposedly froze to death. Rumor has it that she was seen after that, looking for help. Another story involved a young female pedestrian who was supposedly killed in a truck accident. Some drivers later reportedly said they picked up a young girl along the side of the road who then “disappeared.”

But regular travelers along that route say the only things they have encountered are deer and moose.

Curless was no stranger to the trucking life and to growing potatoes. He drove trucks in the early part of his service in the military during the Korean War in the 1950s. His dad, Philip, worked in the trucking industry while living in Maine and drove a bulldozer after the family moved to Massachusetts when Dick was a young boy.

Dick Curless in later years.

Curless’ paternal grandfather, William, was born in New Brunswick, Canada, but farmed in Fort Fairfield. He most likely grew potatoes as Fort was later known as the largest potato-producing town in the world. William’s wife, Eara Irene White, born in Fort Fairfield, was the daughter of George G. White, also a farmer, and Annie Barnes.

So with trucking and potatoes in his blood, Dick Curless wrote and sang a song that struck a cord with a lot of people. A song of reality and guts, and a warning to drive carefully through those Maine woods…especially in winter.