A Town and a Time to Remember

A TOWN AND A TIME TO REMEMBER

Northboro (1937 to 1950)

BY:

Bill Flynn

47 Dogwood Drive

Nashua, NH03062

603 880 6054

A TOWN AND A TIME TO REMEMBER

Northboro, Massachusetts (1937 to 1950)

But it could be about a kid growing up in Anytown, USAduring those depression and WWll years

It was 1937 when the old high school burned down. Fire trucks with their flashing lights and sirens blaring were called in from Marlboro, Shrewsbury and beyond to bolster Northboro’s own volunteers... They filled Main Street around our house, next door to the blaze. This vivid scene created enough drama to instill it in the memory of my 6-year-old mind.

We lived at what is now 59 Main Street on the left side of the school as it faced Main Street. My sister Maryjane and my two brothers Peter and Richard lived with my parents William and Marion in a large, rambling Victorian style house, bought by my father in 1936 for short money. It was built in the 1880’s. The original owner was SAMUEL WOOD. At some stage of early occupancy, the nine-bedroom house became an inn to serve those who traveled the OLD POST ROAD. It could have been called THE LINCOLN INN, because that’s what it said on a sign we found stored in our barn. The bedrooms retained room numbers on the doors from that time to lend credence to the inn theory. My room was number 5. I had Scarlet Fever at age 8 and a large quarantine sign was placed on our front door. My throat was swabbed every morning for a month with a vile medicine, called Argirol by a doctor on a house call. A white sheet soaked in antiseptic was hung over room number 5.

The high school was a goner, but cascades of water directed from hoses by my multi-town heroes saved our house. A new school was built next door in 1938 to replace the one destroyed by fire and when we were all old enough to attend it, the 7:30 AM bell was our wake up call. The ringing sequence thereafter would prod us to wait until a last minute jump over the hedge got us to the class room on time or late, but never early.

On the other side of the school we had a famous neighbor. His name was WILLIAM KILLETTE who wrote the lyrics to the song; I’M FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES. The Killette's lived modestly on meager royalties from that song. Mrs. Killette was a kind lady who outlived her husband by many years and after she passed the house was sold to Doctor Watson one of two MD’s serving Northborough at the time

Our neighbor to the right was the parsonage for the then Congregational Church located at the corner of Hudson and Main. The resident minister at the time was REVEREND DOUGLAS. Next to the Killette’s to their left or East was a house and barn owned by MR. POLAND. On his property, in back of the house, a perpetual pure water spring gave forth its cold clear product through a pipe that never stopped running. Everyone in town could fill their jugs there for free. Trespassing was never an issue in the Northboro of that era. It was truly open ranging.

My next vivid recollection is about a year after the high school fire. I was in second grade at the HUDSON STREET SCHOOL. It housed grades one through four then in its yellow box like structure. I remember the teachers. MISS ZEH for first grade; (a talented landscape artist that now has a elimentary school named in her honor.); MISS COREY for second grade; MISS KELLEHER for third and last but not least MISS FARQUAR (became Mrs. Mayberry later on when married to the owner of Mayberry’s Market ) for fourth grade and acting principle. These teachers drummed reading, writing and arithmetic into our heads with straightforward methods and accepted little nonsense from us during that process.

A day in September 1938… was dark and rainy and I’d been home from school about an hour when chaos hit Northboro. We hadn’t any warning of the storm, unlike the advance hype of today’s television storm tracking. The HURRICANE OF 1938 came at us with its 100 plus mile per hour gusto. The wind was howling around our house and small things started to fly around outside. When I looked out a window I saw a big thing take flight. It was the church steeple from the BaptistChurch at the corner of School and Main Street, across the way. Its bell hit Route 20 with 3 bounces that produced the same amount of cement instigated deep ringing sounds.

My great grandmother, who lived with us at the time, had fetched her bible and convinced us little ones by her actions that the end of the world was upon us. This proclamation by Granny Peasley was soon buttressed when no less than six large Elms were uprooted to come to rest against our Victorian style domicile, breaking a few windows along the way. A glance to the back yard told us that our small grove of tall pines was now lying flat on the ground. At its raging peak this hurricane’s excitement and terror had made the high school fire of the year before seem a benign event. Enough traumas in one year to cause a seven-year-old to wonder if volatile happenings like the fire and the hurricane were a way of life.

When the quiet eye of that 1938 hurricane graced Northboro, we were evacuated next door to the parsonage. This was suggested by some men who were concerned about the weight of all the trees leaning against our house. We were carried there through downed electrical wires lying all over. It was two months before power and phone lines were restored. A man was killed when a tree fell on his car after he stopped on Main Street, near the library. It took my dad the whole night to make it from his mill in WOODSIDE to our house. Route 20 was completely blocked by a downed grove of tall pines and walking home in the dark over live wires was perilous so he found refuge at CHET'S DINER after abandoning his car somewhere near what is now the Memorial Ballpark. Those stranded at CHET'S may have taken part in the first hurricane party. The high school students attending MARLBORO HIGH because of their own school's fire didn’t make it home until late the next day.

Fallen trees blocked our roads for days and the smell of saws ripping into green wood is one that stayed with me to bring back the memory of a time when nature’s wrath hit hard on our town. We got used to reading by candle and kerosene lanterns and boiling our drinking water for some time after that Hurricane of 1938. Our barn cupola with its antique copper racehorse weathervane somehow survived. It's the same cupola on our old barn that was portrayed in the ‘VIEW OF NORTHBORO IN 1887’ map on sale at The Northborough Historical Society. The weathervane horse was retired from hurricane racing and resides with my nephew in New Jersey. Our old house at 59 Main has become a rehabilitation facility for substance abusers.

My portrayal of Northboro as a place like an Armageddon because of the high school fire and 1938 hurricane isn’t intended. Those kinds of events were rare for one growing up when I did. The town had a lot to offer to a boy between ages of 7 to 18. (Circa 1937 to 1949.) It was open ranging with no roaming restrictions. Just like the song of the 40’s said, “DON’T FENCE ME IN”. We walked and biked in the summer. “Short cuts” were the only way to get to where we wanted to go. We used roads and sidewalks only when they were convenient. Our roaming rights extended from ROCKY POND on the northwest border of Northboro to BARTLETT POND on the southeast. In between it was SOLOMON POND, MILL POND, and WALLACE'S POND in summer and ASSABET PARK in winter where the steel edges of our Flexible Flyer sleds carved a trail down the steep hill from the water tank to West Main Street. It was cross-country skiing in the winter because that's how we got to the downhill slopes. Sometimes in warmer months we swam at Rocky pond, where we dove off the big rock there. Fishing for hornpout near “the quag" at Rocky was a fruitful adventure. Bartlett pond had a long pine log anchored to its beach. It extended out in the water for use as a diving and frolicking platform. Skinny-dipping in the streams. Cold Brook behind GRANGERS NURSING HOME on West Main was our naughty swimming hole. The beach at Salomon Pond was more formal with its man made raft, trucked in sand, and appropriate bathing trunks were in order. Ray Lemay owner of THE GRILL, also owned a roller skating rink there where we skated to recorded music, the likes of “Accentuate The Positive…Eliminate The Negative”…A good message for the time we lived.

`Mill Pond, near Blake Street was the premier winter skating spot. A bonfire would always roar its warmth while lending light for night skating and hockey. The Assabet River wound its way through town to offer a rafting and fishing adventure for all along its way. Some, as a way of earning cash trapped for muskrat, beaver and fox along its banks.

I have an early recollection of accompanying my father to his mill, around 1936. The mill was located on Hudson Street in a section then known as WOODSIDE. In fact it was called WOODSIDE MILL. A water wheel generator located in a sluice tapped from the Assabet River powered the machinery and lighting. My father left the lights on all night much to the chagrin of the townspeople in the throes of a depression... It wasn’t blatant extravagance on his part, but had to do with eliminating an involved restart of the electric generator every morning, and after all, waterpower was free.

The long, low brick building had machinery throughout that was earlier dedicated to some form of woolen goods production. My father, WILLIAM V. FLYNN, took the mill over to manufacture an imitation felt material. He was a chemical engineer out of

M I T. He had developed a process whereby woolen fibers were rolled and then adhered together by his own rubber base formula before entering a long dryer. The material was about ¼ inch thick and three feet wide as it rolled up at the end of the dryer. The product was sold as an insulating material and filler for cushions. Some World War II aircraft contained seats stuffed with this material. My father called the company, BONDED FIBERS, INC. About 20 people worked there at its peak. He developed an insect repellant and called it KILLSECT. It was distributed in 100-gallon drums to the dairy farms of Vermont and New Hampshire.

In 1942 my dad took on a project to dry some wet cotton. The German submarine wolf pack was torpedoing our ships leaving New York at will. Some went down a few miles off Cape Cod with bodies of sailors and goods washing ashore on the outer Cape. My dad received a consignment of many bales of raw cotton that had been on a torpedoed ship. The long dryer in his factory was used to reclaim the cotton, along with some tables hastily constructed out in the summer air to do the same. I recall being given the task to turn the sunning cotton over on those outside tables. The products my father developed were good ideas, but they had limited success because of the times. The country was just coming out of a deep depression and the banks owned and operated by Brahmans were reluctant to lend money to a second generation Irishman. His struggle to receive the proper financing ended with his early death in 1944 at age 52. Jersey Cloth and Gothic Craft, a wood carving company that designed and manufactured altars and furnishings for Catholic churches took over most of the mill. Now it’s a condominium complex.

THE DEPRESSION hit the proud citizens of Northboro hard. I could see it in my schoolmates. One dress or one pair of pants was meant to last the whole school year. Sometimes lard sandwiches sprinkled with sugar were in their lunch pales. If it weren’t for the school milk program that served everyone a pint of milk at recess, nutrition deficiencies would have been worse. In our house at 59 Main it was feast or famine. Money came and went due to the nature of my fathers business. Many nights it was cereal, and then a roast beef would grace our table if an order for BONDED FIBERS insulation material was paid in full. A section of ceiling in the dining room fell from a roof leak and it was a year or so before the money to repair it came in. Engineers were out of work. Three that worked with my father to develop the manufacturing process were given free board and room at our house, but little salary.

And so it went with the country in a depression. We were better off than those in the cities. Most everyone in Northboro was at some level of being poor by today’s standards. People did help each other, though. I remember that our family had accumulated a six-month bill at a grocery in the town center and the benevolent grocer waited patiently until a deal my father made paid it off.

Life went on. The first day of May held the tradition of hanging a colorful MAY BASKET filled with candy on the door of you're special someone. There was a MAY POLE, where different colored ribbons were assigned to each child. I recall songs were sung as the kids marched the ribbons around the pole. This tradition was abandoned when associated with the COMMUNIST HOLIDAY, also on May 1st.

There was very little prejudice in Northboro. There wasn’t a racial mix that would prompt such undesirable action. One African American family lived in our town then. The demographics were of mostly of Irish, English, Swedish, Italian, and Scottish descendents. We threw slang words around for those nationalities, such as; Harp (Irish), Wop (Italian) ….Limey (English) etc. The intention was not to be cruel. It was done in fun to chide and ride each other. There may have been a little religious prejudice then, between Protestant and Catholic factions. On or about 1935 it was said that a cross burning on Assabet Hill took place by some town members of the KLU KLUX KLAN. (KKK) dressed in white robes that masked their facial features from fellow townsmen. It was a one-time event, never to be repeated.

We had an iceman…he was. Mr. Mitchell and used his tongs to grab a 50 or 100 pound cube from the truck, sling it over his back covered in a rubber apron and place it in our icebox. My chore was to empty the pan underneath, of which I failed to do on occasion. We had a vegetable man …his name was Mr. Brigham. He drove a 1936 Ford Beach Wagon with wood paneling and lived 4 houses to the West of us. His truck was filled with fresh fruits and vegetables…a scale hung on a hook weighed the goods while housewives watched, making sure Mr. Brigham’s fingers and thumbs did not add to the weight of their spinach. There were other peddlers that came to our door…Knife sharpeners, fishmongers etc.

Our early hang out in the town center was STAPLINS'S CORNER STORE, located at the corner of South & Main. A quarter could go a long way there. It had a gumball machine. A penny got you one and by chance if it were speckled there was an exciting prize. Ralph Falardo owned a little store next to the rail road tracks on the same side of the street. It was 12 feet long and 6 feet across and stocked with things like caps and cap pistols. The older guys were across the street on the town hall steps, off limits to anyone under twelve. PEINZE’S STORE across the way on Blake Street sold potato chips in bulk. It was a treat to get a large bag of those fresh, crunchy morsels. An ever-smiling Mr.Peinze dressed in his signature apron scooped them from a barrel. The Town Square was a kinder and gentler sight then. Tall Elm trees that were later killed by Dutch elm disease shaded the area and the town hall seemed to better blend into the surrounding landscape. Certainly it was more functional then than now, with a drug store, post office hardware store and town offices.

I financed candy, potato chips, cap guns and chances for speckled gumballs with my first employment. I mowed the lawns of MISS COFFIN THE TOWN LIBRARIAN and Miss Corey my second grade teacher. The depression era wages for those jobs were 10 cents an hour and a stale cookie with lemonade. In the winter some of the proceeds from shoveling snow went to Elsworth’s Restaurant, where the best 20-cent hot dog could be had for lunch.

The war started December 7, 1941. President Roosevelt made his famous speech over the radio on that Sunday evening. He told us the “day would live in infamy”…he said, “the only thing we had to fear was fear itself’. All of Northboro were glued to their radios and they put their trust in this man. He had already got the attention of the town’s people by implementing programs such as the WPA and the CCC to ease our depression distress.