Eastport's oldest resident, who lives in one of the oldest homes in the island city, will be turning 100 on March 14. An open house to honor Ruth McInnis will be held at the Eastport Port Authority's Welcome Center at the breakwater on Saturday, March 15, from 1 to 3 p.m.
      Looking back over the past century, McInnis has many stories to tell. She was born in St. Stephen, the daughter of Karl and Rena Jewers, and grew up in Eastport on Shackford Street. After graduating from the Washington State Normal School in Machias, she taught school in Calais, then Westbrook and Eastport, ending her career with the migrant education program at Shead High School. She was married for many years to Earl McInnis, until he passed away, and they had two children, Pam and Bruce, who also have both passed.
      In the 1980s she purchased the Todd House on Todd's Head and, for over 30 years, has run a bed and breakfast in the center-chimney cape, which was built before the Revolutionary War. Beginning in 1801 the Masonic lodge met there, and during the War of 1812 British soldiers were stationed in the house.
      Life was very different in the early 1900s from how it is today. McInnis relates that her mother, when she was in high school, worked before she went to school for the day at Minnie Byram's store on High Street. One day she dropped the chocolate syrup that was used to make sundaes, and it went down all over the front of her dress. Her mother, though, still went to school in that dress, as it was the only one she had. "You had nothing really -- just one outfit," McInnis remembers.
      Of growing up during the Depression, she says, "There was no money. It was dry fish and potatoes." Her mother planted carrots in her grandmother's lot on Willow Street, and they kept them in sand through the winter. By March they would be old, wilted "and pretty bad," McInnis remembers.
      During the winter she and her parents would live at her grandmother's house, all of them staying in the kitchen and living room, as those were the only rooms with heat. "You'd race to get to the bathroom or to get to bed," she relates, because those rooms were so cold.
      And she remembers once, when she was quite young, the family went swimming at Pennamaquan and came back from the lake to find a flat tire on their car. Her father stuffed the tire full of hay so they could make it back to Eastport. "You had to make do," she notes.
      Church and school were both important parts of her life growing up. She and her family attended the Episcopal church, and she remembers that on Christmas Eve children and their parents were always invited to a get-together. Each child would be called up and given a small box with a piece of candy and an orange. She remembers that, when she was about 4 years old and her name was called, she came up and told Santa, "You've got a little finger just like my daddy's!" She remembers, "Everybody roared, and I didn't know why they were laughing."
      On her first day of school, the children went out for recess, but she thought it was time to go to lunch so she went home. Her mother had to quickly escort her back to school.
      Back in the 1930s the winters were very long and cold. She recalls when all of the water pipes froze on Shackford Street and the homes were without water for two weeks. When their house finally got water, the next morning they found the kitchen had flooded after the pipes burst. And she remembers when the church bells rang one evening after they learned that President Roosevelt had signed the bill for funding the Quoddy dam project, which brought with it hopes for some prosperity for the city.
      The city's population was much larger in those days, at about 3,500 in the 1930s. Many worked in the sardine factories, and she would hear the whistles calling the flakers, the packers, the sealers. She remembers that in the fourth grade the girls were picked to skip the fifth grade and go into the sixth because the classrooms were too crowded. "There were a lot of kids then." They would play outside a lot, skipping rope, playing tag and hide and seek. During the winter they would go sliding and skating on the lily pond behind the Battery Field.
      Her uncle, Ernest Quigley, would sell war savings stamps during World War II, and she would go with him to the school classrooms, where students would buy one or two for a dime each. "Money was very tight," she notes.
      But there were some who were better off. McInnis remembers that at the church fairs there would be a section of the room partitioned off for tea, and some of the "upper-crust" women would go there like it was "the throne room in England," while everyone else was outside their fenced-in area. When she was in high school she and her friends would go to Shackford's Head on Saturdays for a picnic -- making a sandwich spread of mayonnaise and pickles. Once she got in a burdock fight and got one in the eye, but "there were no doctors then," so you had to heal yourself. But that sometimes was not possible, and she notes that her sister died when she was 5. "She was a blue baby, and it was before anyone knew what to do." It's now known that the syndrome is caused by low blood oxygen levels.
      During her high school years she worked at Camick's drug store, helping with the lunches at the soda fountain. "There were a lot of coastguardsmen then," who stayed at the Hotel East. "It was busy then."
      There were more organized activities for youth, and she was a leader for the Campfire Girls in the 1950s and would take them on camping trips.
      Over the past century, she has witnessed many changes in the city. As for the secrets of living a long life, McInnis notes she only drank one summer when a friend who liked liquor came to visit. And she only smoked a cigarette once and promptly "threw it down." While at the normal school the students would smoke at parties, and since she didn't smoke she didn't go to the parties.
      "I read a lot," she says, and she knits. "I like animals," she adds, noting that she feeds a sparrow who lives under her back deck. "He's had different wives, and last year they had five babies."
      Still running her bed and breakfast, McInnis is less mobile now but stays busy, keeping up on the local news, and she's always been interested in history. The Todd House at times has been a beehive of activity, with guests -- some of whom come back year after year and some staying longterm -- and friends and neighbors dropping in to share the news from around town. She has served on the city council, has been very active in the Border Historical Society for years and still is working on plans for the Barracks Museum. With memories stretching back 100 years, she's considered a local historian and a fount of knowledge about her home, the island city.