John Gould, who for more than 60 years wrote a weekly column for the Christian Science Monitor in which he turned the eccentricities of small-town Maine into droll commentaries on human nature, died Sunday.

Gould, who also wrote 30 books, most of them memoirs, had been suffering from congestive heart disease and died of pneumonia at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. He was 94.

Gould launched his column for the Monitor in October 1942 and remained on staff for the rest of his life. Working from a corner of his barn in Lisbon, Maine, he became a celebrity in his state. In nearby Freeport, the L.L. Bean store dedicated a library inside to Gould. Several bookshops around the state specialized in his work.

“He’s a little curmudgeonly, and people in Maine like that,” shop manager Nancy Burnham of Mr. Paperback in Belfast, Maine, told Publishers Weekly in 2000.

From the beginning, Gould turned his relatives and neighbors into a cast of characters for his essays.

“He never made himself the star,” Gould’s editor at the Monitor, Owen Thomas, told the Los Angeles Times this week. “He brought in his uncle, the Yankee storekeeper; his grandfather, the Civil War veteran; his friends from his childhood. And he had an idea in mind that he threaded through their stories.”

His debut column applauded a neighbor in Lisbon for painting his silo with red, white and blue stripes to resemble a barber’s pole. None of the locals mentioned the “improvement,” but a businessman passing through from Massachusetts wanted an explanation.

“Haven’t other people taken too much stock in the belief that all activity must be rationalized and that the reasons ought to be sensible?” Gould suggested in defense of the Maine way.

Many of his essays described ordinary life in Lisbon — the town parades, the lobster dinners, the winter sleigh rides. Occasionally, Gould made a personal plea for help from his readers. A column from 1959 began, “It’s the little things that count, and if somebody will just tell me where I can catch a three-tined fork, about so big and so long, things may improve about the old homestead. We’ve lost ours.”

In reply he received several dozen shopping suggestions as well as a few actual forks, gifts from readers.

Gould’s books showed expanded views of his lifestyle and his family’s history. “The Farmer Takes a Wife” (1945) told of how he transplanted himself and his wife, Dorothy, to their farm in Maine after they were married in 1932.

His most recent, “Tales from Rhapsody Home, or What They Don’t Tell You About Senior Living” (2000), complains about the poor treatment of the elderly in the United States.

Born in Brighton, Mass., on Oct. 22, 1908, Gould was the son of a postal worker; he moved with his family to Freeport when he was 10. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1931 and worked at the Brunswick Record for eight years before he joined the Monitor’s staff.

Gould is survived by his wife; their daughter, Kathryn Christy; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Their son, John Jr., died in October.