Several times a week, I have driven through that neighborhood of Auburn once known as Perryville, and not once has a chimney fallen on me.

That may seem to be an unlikely concern, but in 1919 it was reason enough for a group of respected citizens to meet regularly for evenings of spirited debate. The organization was known as the Perryville Chimney Straighteners, and they went to great lengths to maintain the appearance of conducting superlative scientific investigations into the phenomenon of local chimneys tipping to the north.

An unnamed reporter covered the group’s meeting on Dec. 5, 1919, and the account in the Lewiston Evening Journal went into extreme detail about their theories of meteorites landing on Auburn’s early cavemen, or cracks in the earth releasing magnetism right through this section of Auburn.

If it sounds like pure nonsense, that’s exactly what it was. The meetings of the Perryville Chimney Straighteners was simply an excuse for some good-natured fun. Their purpose was to explain the tipping chimneys, whether real or imagined, and they reveled in the use or invention of the most complicated scientific jargon they could muster.

At the winter meeting of 1919, President Noyes called upon John Wilson, chairman of the scientific section for a report. Wilson said his committee was looking into some new findings that pointed to a meteorite landing ages ago in “the big gulley,” which is probably where North River Road meets Center Street and was once known as “the logan.” Perryville encompassed the area where Turner Street intersected with Summer Street. Perryville Pharmacy was at that location for many years, and there was a Perryville Cash Market near it.

One after another, speakers arose to pontificate on the situation. Some speculated that residue of the meteorite had a “chemical affinity with the mortar of the chimneys and thus drew them from the perpendicular.”

A new theory was presented, and the reporter said the meeting was thrown into a frenzy of speculation. They were now debating whether the earth was hollow and whether a previously undiscovered “rift or funnel” was sending a force into the Perryville neighborhood that might cause the chimneys to lean.

As if the satiric scientific discussions were not enough, the members of the organization also took great delight in delivering long-winded speeches aimed at citizens of other parts of the Twin Cities who might try to infiltrate their ranks. A few honorary members had been allowed membership, but they were particularly vilified, according to the news story.

The reporter’s flowery account filled nearly a page, and his style never wavered from the tongue-in-cheek nature of the meeting. It seems that an underlying purpose of the occasional gathering was a test of the participants to come up with the most impressive vocabulary. There were references to “calculations in alectryomancy” until the subject had become “more or less adnubilated.” Alectryomancy was an ancient form of divination in which a rooster selected grains of food placed on letters of the alphabet. Adnubilated meant clouded or obscured … a good word to describe this group’s attempts at scientific discovery.

The Perryville Society of Chimney Straighteners was a good example of a tradition of wry Down East humor which is popular through the present.

The Lewiston Sun Journal has talented writers who have given us some amusing takes on things like the Devil Dog of Turner, the Lady in White on Route 26, and other things labeled Weird.

There are still a few local citizens who share their whimsical senses of humor with us. In recent months, motorists’ heads turned as they passed a manikin seated at a computer in front of a barn on the West Auburn Road. The scene had been set up by Dan Bilodeau, just for the fun of it.

Let’s hope there is always a place in our lives for doing things “just for the fun of it.”

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending e-mail to [email protected].