I was a city boy. My early memories center around this home, a second floor tenement in a two-family house. Barton Street was a short street joining two main streets running parallel north and south, both having trolley lines: east, Broad Street; west, Dexter Street. Barton Street had one store and houses. There was a vacant lot between my home and that of my pal Louis. The home of Ned was commodious, probably the best on the street, with open grounds around it. We seldom played there. We played in the street (no autos those days) or in my yard. Just a block away was a primary school with four grades.
The Cousins-From bottom right, clockwise,
Lawrence,
Molly, Ernest, Kathryn and Donald
We entered the first grade together, under Miss Currier. I don'+ remember much of this school life as reading, writing, and arithmetic. We sang songs and memorized simple poems. Until the family went summers to Greenfield. we lived on the street or in back yards. We did not spend much time in each others homes. One thing Pawtucket had to offer was boat trips, down into Narraganset Bay. My first recollection was of a family vacation Prudence Island. Ralph and Emily were involved. For some reason I was allowed to lie on a sandy beach in the sunshine. still remember the pain I suffered from sunburn. Also if my father could find time, we took the boat to Rock point in the bay. Baked clams, oyster stew and clam chowder were served in quantity, so I learned to love those delicious seafoods early in life.
I was talking with Fran the other day about early recollections of foods, breakfast foods among them. I was given two for breakfast which are still available on store shelves Shredded Wheat and Grape Nuts. I have retained my liking for these to the present. For cooked cereal my mother prepared rolled oats.
My mischief loving pal Ned wanted to grow up ahead of his years. A box of cigars had been left in our cellar by someone. I was still under eight. We discussed the find and decided that we were old enough to develop an expertise in smoking cigars. So one day we set out on our entry into adult life via cigar lighting. The operation started successfully. We did just as a grown-up would. It lighted just as we had seen it done. Then we took hard drafts on them, just as a grown-up would. The first few made no trouble. I did not enjoy the flavor. A few more breaths and I was a desperately sick. boy. I was not sure that I was going to live. My pal Ned staggered home, while I went upstairs, falling on a sofa. So I confessed to my mother the error of my ways and prepared for the ultimate. My father did not use tobacco, so when I could understand what he said to me, I received counsel, but not punishment, which is still with me to this day. It sure worked.
Below--The berry pickers,
Kathryn and Donald
returning with berries.
In 1903 my father purchased a ten-acre farm in Greenfield, N.H. My brother Ralph was working in Nashua, N.H., about 25 miles south. I often wonder if my parents bought the place so my brother could take the steam train home weekends, to be with family. He did just that as long as he stayed in Nashua. Try to imagine my early boyhood. Crushed stone street. No automobiles to speak of, only horse- drawn traffic. No woods, no pleasant garden spots, in our area. Then we went to our ten-acre farm in the summer; woods, open fields, garden, and not far away a lovely stony brook.
You can't imagine the wonderful change this brought into our lives. Who were included? my mother and father, Donald, Emily and me. Grand- mother Gilfillan joined us part of the time. Weekends my brother Ralph came up from Nashua, and through all of those years my double-cousin Molly was there with her family: parents, brother and sister, sometimes living in a tent or in a farmhouse nearby. We children all slept in the hay in the barn. We were always together, in work, in play, and in church.
We loved to play in the stony brook. We built low dams for entertainment. As we became more familiar with the brook, we found that it ran into a meadow. This slowed it down and a large pool of still water was formed. It was a little over waist deep and made bathing much more fun. Our bathing suits were whatever we were wearing. Leaving the brook wet, we were pretty well dried out by the time we arrived back home. The brook occupied more of our time than any other form of entertainment. From time to time the parents took us to one of the lakes or ponds for a few hours. One was Gould Pond, another was Otter Lake.
Crotched mountain to our north was the nearest mountain. Local people had little interest in mountains. But my brother Ralph and my father in my earliest years cut a trail on the south, to the top. Local lack of interest in mountains had never produced a trail. The north side had a trail, too far away for an afternoon climb. Only the south side was available to us for an afternoon's walk and climb. This is what prompted the climb. On Sunday afternoons after church and dinner, if the day was clear we would start for the summit. Never on a cloudy or hazy day. Any- one who wished could join us. About a two and a half mile walk to the new trail at the foot of the mountain. On the way up we always stopped to look at a natural rocky foundation of an eagle, with wings raised ready to take off from a cliff. I have a photo of that bird.
I have lost count of the number of times I climbed that mountain as did the rest of the family. North Pack Monadnock, to the south, was several miles farther away, so we generally climbed using horse and wagon to get us to the start of the trail. This generally required a full day so we used a Saturday or a holiday. The views north from Crotched we felt were superior to those from North Pack. Now, near the top of Crotched Mt., a hospital and rehabilitation center for children is well known.
We went to Greenfield in 1903, leaving in 1908. Ivy's father always planned a good garden, and he brought me up to help take care of it. As I added years, more was expected of me, going from planting to weeding. Our water supply came from an old-fashioned hand-operated pump in a well about fifty feet from the house. My mother was not physically able to bring the water into the house. I looked like the best bet, so I took on the job at an early age. It was particularly difficult on wash days. Our primitive equipment, two wooden tubs between a hand wringer, required a lot of water. Sometimes the laundry of both families was done on the same day. In my younger days, I came to dread the trips, pump to house, carrying two ten-quart pails of water at a time. Hot water was produced a wood-burning stove. It was also up to me to keep the woodbox full. Fuel was mostly alder and gray birch. Then I was old enough to use a bucksaw and sawhorse, I was elected to cut long lengths into stove length. There is a difference between gray birch and white birch. Gray birch never grows big; it burns readily, green. We had a lot of it, so it became our summer wood.
How could my father earn a living working for a toy factory spend so much time in Greenfield? I would like to tell you about his work. He had been changed from making wooden toy tool chests to a department making toy pianos. These pianos did not use strings for producing musical notes. Instead, when the Key was depressed it operated a hammer which struck a piece of flat steel fastened to a cloth table. These pieces of steel were of different lengths. Long ones produced low tones; short ones, high. The pianos were designed to produce a keyboard about one octave or one and a half in length. As made, they were never in correct pitch. My father proved that when the pitch was low, cutting a small amount off the "steel" (as they were called) would bring It up to pitch. If the steel tone was sharp, nicks were made in it which lengthened it a little and lowered the tone, bringing the steel to the correct pitch. A board carrying steels of correct pitch was uses in checking new sets, so correct action could be taken to bring them all long and short, to correct pitch. A special cutting press was used in cutting or nicking . My father was very skillful in this corrective process so was given the job One advantage: he did not have to work in Pawtucket. During the winter months he shipped all materials to Greenfield, where he set up the materials in the barn, so he could spend his summer with us. It was this factor that made it possible for us to be in Greenfield the whole summer. My sister Emily got so she could tune the steels, so she helped out and was able to stay in Greenfield while we were there. I was taught to form them in to sets, so I was working also. (See note on page 19.)
In the early 1900's the Hopkins family built a grist mill in Greenfield, below the village. It found plenty of business and was a place where my pal Don Hopkins and I spent considerable time, both during building and after completion. There was no electricity in town. To provide power they used a large internal combustion engine that ran without an electric spark. It was called a hot bulb engine. To start it in the morning a cap on the cylinder head was removed. It exposed a steel bulb. A gasoline torch was used to bring it to red heat. The cap was put back on. The engine turned over, using a compressed air motor. Oil hitting the red hot bulb would explode. After a few turns it would run without the driver. It produced enough power to run the whole mill. Years later in the technical museum in Munich, Germany, I found a hot bulb engine of similar design. See my photograph #224-36A.
The local church was Congregational. That was our church. So we felt at home. I do not remember the names of the ministers who served during our years there but we attended regularly. Following the church service came Sunday School, in which we found a place summer and winter. I got to know boys who lived out of town on farms. There were no Boy of Girl Scouts in those days.
My grandmother, Sue Gilfillan, always kept a few hens; but she did not need my help in caring for them. She would never allow a rooster in her flock.
We had a neighbor about three quarters of a mile away by the name of Low. He had three very attractive daughters but no sons. Their names were Frieda, Clara, and Elva. They were very popular in school, bright; and we enjoyed having them come to our home when it could be arranged. I have been able to follow Elva's life to some extent. She was the youngest. But I have no idea about the two older ones.
Then came the depression years of 1907 and 1908. My father had no work, so we stayed in Greenfield. Our home was not suitable for winter habitation so we finally made arrangements to live with a family friend during the winter of 1906-07. Their name was Jeffers. They lived on the outskirts of the village. We (Donald and I) were transferred from the district school under one teacher for all ages to the village school, which I entered as a pupil attending with one teacher in one room, grades 5 through to high school. This was a different experience. Being in the village, there was much going on, in town activities and church life. Don and I walked to school each day. If something of interest was going on at night, I stayed overnight with my friend Don Hopkins, with whom I kept in touch until his death a few years ago. We enjoyed winter life, mostly sliding down the church hill.
The following year there was still no business so we moved to the home of a neighbor who was a Boston businessman. He spent only summers in his Greenfield home but had some livestock that had to be cared for. A horse, dog, cat and poultry. The house was modern and warm.
I want to mention the horse, whose name was Tiger. He may have deserved his name at some time in his career, but not during the time we cared for him. We were a couple of miles out of the village so he came in handy for shopping and getting to church on Sunday. Don and I had to walk to school The reason I am mentioning Tiger is to try to describe his gait. When hitched to the wagon, he preferred to walk. If urged to trot, a very strange gait developed. After accepting the increasing demands made on him, he broke into a trot with his front legs and into a gallop with his hind legs. The result was an experience I expect that horse never forgot, nor did we. It was not a synchronized movement. We did not gain enough in speed to make Tiger's effort worth while.
We spent the winter and spring looking after the livestock and in the spring sold our farm. We spent the summer in an adjoining farm. My brother had left Nashua. We returned toPawtucket, where my father regained his work tuning "steel." I entered the ninth grade at the Baldwin Street Grammar School, near our house on Carpenter Street.
Well, what did it mean to leave our lovely home in Greenfield for the drab streets of Pawtucket? It had to be done, so all of us made the best we could of it. Our recreation was different. We returned to Park Place Church, which we had attended as children, Don and I. We found the Christian Endeavor Service on Sunday afternoons, for young people of both sexes. The leader was a young man whose name I think was Kirk. The current pastor of the church was Mr. Brokenshire. He had several growing. sons. The church burned up, accidentally, a few years later, after we had left Pawtucket for good.
I loved trains, particularly the locomotives. There was a bridge over the railroad track at one end of a busy freight yard. I got permission from my parents to stand on that bridge and watch the rail traffic Regular trains going through at scheduled times as well as constant switching activity in the freight yard, cars to be unloaded and loaded cars to be picked up by freight trains going through. The rail line was the main line of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Before the days of trucks, freight was horse drawn to and from the freight "house" as it was called. This was before the manufacture and use of motor driven trucks. There was always something to watch.
Suppose, for instance, that a freight train was being made up with loaded cars. A locomotive would pick cars up at the freight house, go 'way down to the end of the freight yard, where switches could be opened to allow the newly filled cars to be sent down to join others already in place, getting ready to go to some place far away from where I stood. Someone had to guide all movements. The freight agent, as he was called, was a friend of my father; his name was Oscar Jeffers.
Being older, I had freedom of the city. I was interested in a fine new public library. I was free to take out books, at an age when I loved reading; and in the same area a brand new YMCA had been built during the years we were in Greenfield My parents encouraged me to join, so I got the planned exercise provided boys of my age. One thing was available that I hoped to take advantage of. That was a swimming pool. I was encouraged to take swimming lessons. I wanted to do this because of the history of my cousin Lawrence, who drowned because he never learned to swim. So finally, I signed up; but to no avail. I had developed a fear of the water which I could not control. The swimming instructor could not understand it. So because of his lack of patience and understanding I was discharged as a swim student. Incidentally, I finally learned to swim, years later. Ralph and Eunice became excellent swimmers, a fact I had worked hard for them to achieve. For the record, I was in my 40's when I did learn to swim, but I never felt at home in the water. For neighborhood fun in the Pawtucket years we did such things as high jumping and pole vaulting in our yards.
My brother Ralph was now an editor of "Machinery" and had left his bicycle at home. After some help from my father, I got it fixed up so I could learn to ride it. I did much better with that interest than I did with swimming. It did not take too long for me to master the art, which I continued to enjoy for many years. The bicycle frame was too high for me. I could not sit on the seat, but who cared? I could ride it at will.
Here I made new friends. One in particular, Tom McQuaid, was a neighbor and an accomplished pianist. We kept in touch for many years, but he went to France for further study and we lost contact. But he never forgot me and in 1977 he called on me here in Springfield (Tape#T-46). He wanted to tell me how much he loved and respected my mother.
I graduated from the Baldwin Street Grammar School in the class of 1909. I then prepared to enter as a freshman at the Pawtucket High School. I was fourteen years old and allowed by law to take a paid job in industry. My father and sister both were "tuning steels" in R. Bliss Mfg. Co. My father needed me to assemble "steels" into sets for tuning, so I took a job, going in after classes at about 1:30 p.m. and working until 6:00 p.m. The extra money was needed by us all. This continued through the winter.
Then in the spring of 1910 my father and brother Ralph bought a 65 acre farm in North Brookfield, Massachusetts. It no longer exists. A huge school has been built on its site, but I still have a picture (#419-16) of our home; and a wonderful new life it offered us. In early spring my father and I went up with furniture to open it up. There were wood and coal stoves in the home, so we were comfortable. As soon as possible I enrolled in the freshman class, to continue my high school education. It was quite different from the large high school in the city of Pawtucket.
