Card, Gordon

Salisbury Association Oral History Project

Narrator: Gordon Card

Interviewer: Ethel Thrall

Tape: 24A

Date: June 7, 1983

Location of Interview: home of Mr. Card, #22 Allen Street, Lakeville, Ct.

Summary: parents, siblings, and other family members; education, classmates and teachers; Lakeville Lake and Main Street changes since he was a boy; railroads, barbers, job experience, WWII, marriage, Town Home & Abe Martin, religion, Chief Joseph Brant, Black Brant, Sullivan/Morrisey fight in Boston Corners, his sons Carlton and Dennis.

Property of Salisbury Association

Located at the Scoville Memorial Library, Salisbury, Connecticut 06068

 

GC: Well, They were born in Ancram, Ancramdale. They used to call it both. My mother was one of seven children. My father, I think, was one of about seven, too. Father’s side there was twin boys. They’re all dead except my Uncle Willis’s wife, who still lives up in Philmont. She’s about 90. They moved over here sometime around 1915 or 16.

ET:Your mother’s people were…

GC:My mother’s people livedoverthere.My father’s homestead is something called “The Pond”.

ET:Oh.

GC:You know where they hadthatrestaurant?

ET:Oh, yes.

GC: That’s the old Card homestead.

ET:Oh, oh, yes, I see. Good.

GC:There’s still Cards…

ET:Yes, I know there are some Cards over Millerton way.

GC: Yeah, they’re on the other side. They’re my grandfather’s brothers.

ET:Oh, yeah. Kissing cousins, as they were called.

GC: Supposedly every Card in this country is related. There was only one Card that ever came to this country. He came into Rhode Island back in about 1620 something like that. He was the only one that came, and every Card has latched onto him.

ET:And your mother’s people…Are there many around?

GC:No, I’ve got oh about five cousins left from her side of the family. There again she was born over in Ancram. She was a direct descendant of Chief Joseph Brant, Chief of the Mohawks.

ET:That’s what I understood.

GC:If you saw her picture…

ET:Oh, yeah I remember…

GC: She looked just like an Indian.

 

2.

ET:Oh, I remember when I first came here, I didn’t know anybody, and I’d go home and say I’d seen

somebody downtown; this beautiful woman, black hair, and she lives near the lake, and he’d say,” I think that is Mrs. Card.” She was handsome with that nice black hair and that coloring. She was wonderful looking.

GC: Yeah. Two of the uncles, my Uncle Fred, Frank, they both lived with us at one time. They both looked exactly like pictures you see of Chief Joseph Brant.

ET:I made… There they down with the Kent Indians or were they…

GC:No.

ET:They weren’t.

GC:They were Mohawk.

ET:Mohawk.

GC:They were down there, it begins with an S. They were a different branch.

ET:I know it’s down there by that Silver Lake. There’s an Indian monument, you know.

GC:Yeah. That was ah…

ET:We went up there one time, and saw it. I guess there was all Indian settlement around there.

GC:I was born down on Farnam Road in the house that young Len Godding now lives in. I was born

there in 1917.1 think I was about a year old when we left there and moved up to Hotchkiss School. My father went to work in the old power house there, stoking the furnace and like that. When we lived down here, when we came over here, we worked for old Mr. Peabody in the livery stables, taking care of horses, and like that.

ET:You came to this house here?

GC:No.

ET:No. Oh.

GC:When we moved up to Hotchkiss, we lived in what they called the old farm houses down by

Baker Field, right this side of the old school, the grade school they had for the children. We moved down here, my people bought this place in 1927, so I’ve lived here ever since then. They bought the place from Willets Jeffers, Jefferies. The house was built, I think, about 1874, and the land was bought from old Governor Holley. One of the stipulations that he had in the deed: no alcoholic beverages could be sold on this land.

ET:Could you drink it?

 

3.

GC:Oh yeah, you could drink it. Oh boy you couldn’t stop that down here. But if you sold it here, the

property could revert back to the original owners.

ET:How does that stand today, then?

GC:I don’t know. It would probably not hold up in court.

ET:That was Gov. Holley’s stipulation on all the land? He must have been….

GC:Yeah, in the original deed. Another thing that said in there that you had to maintain a good,

sturdy fence or hedge between our property and his on the west side, a stone wall there.

ET:Oh, for heaven’s sake.

GC:So we’ve always had to have a fence or something. That was for as long as he owned the

adjoining property.

ET:Oh yeah, but now with the lake, you still have a fence, that nice…

GC:Yeah, but that’s just for…

ET:And it’s pretty, too. It’s worth it.

GC:We’ve had cars pull in up on the front lawn and park.

ET:Yeah, I know. You had a brother and a sister?

GC:I had two brothers, my brother Fayette, he was the oldest, then Wallace. He’s living out in Santa

Monica. He married Marion Bartie. My sister, she’s retired. She was a nurse. She was a nurse in the Army. When she got out of the Army, she married, and she had two children. She’s living in California, and she went back to work out there in a veteran’s hospital. She retired from there just last year, 1982. She’s living now with her daughter out in Colorado Springs, a small town…a part of Colorado Springs.

ET:Now what about school? Where did you go to school?

GC:I started the school in, the school over by the Masonic Lodge. That spot they made into two

apartments?

ET:Oh yes. It’s like a school inside, the way they fixed it the last time I…It was a two room

schoolhouse.

GC:It was a two room school house.

ET:Who was the teacher? Do you remember?

GC:Yeah, when I started off over there I had Miss Horty. Do you remember her?

 

ET:Well, I’ve heard the name.

4.

GC: She was Mrs. Fitting’s sister. She taught the first and second grade. Third and fourth was Lila Stankgurd.

ET:No, I don’t know that name, good. You went up to the eighth grade in that school?

GC:No, I only went to the fourth grade there, and then we come down and went to school down

where the post office is now.

ET:Oh yes, I heard the school, and you went there to eighth grade.

GC:Went there to, yeah, that was up to the eighth grade, downstairs. Then they had the high school

upstairs.

ET:Oh, I see. Were there any teachers you remember there?

GC:Ah, Mrs. Eggleston.

ET:Was Bessie Dann a teacher there?

GC:Oh yes, Bessie was there, yes, I had Bessie.

ET:Bessie Argali, her name would have been. Do you remember the Principal?

GC: The principal was Mr. Mosley.

ET:Oh, do you remember Henry Mosley, a great friend of mine.

GC:Oh, he was?

ET:Oh yeah, he was my best man at my wedding.

GC:Oh, he was?

ET:Yes, he was a great friend of mine. He’s dead now,her and her daughter, great friends of

mine.

GC:Gosh, that’s interesting.

ET:Who was in your class? Anybody…

GC:Ho Ho Ho.

ET:Was it a big class by that time, because I know when Bill Barnett graduated….

GC:Oh, yeah, we had something like thirty, something like that.

 

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5.

ET:

Oh, anybody that I know, just three or four of them? Was Paul Argyle

in your class?

GC:No, Paul was before me.Louise Bohlman,

ET:Oh, yes.

GC:Reuben Tolliver, youwouldn’t know…

ET:No, I wouldn’t…

GC: They were a colored family who lived down Farnam Road. There was Reuben; there were four or five kids. Reuben, and Minnie, and I forget their names, but I do remember Reuben because he was arrested in New York State for murder.

ET:Really? Oh my gosh, he was a bad boy in the school. He was bad in school?

GC:Everyone was afraid of him.

ET:Really. Oh for heaven’s sake, goodness gracious. How was the discipline in those days? Could

the teachers spank you, I mean rap you?

GC:Oh, yes.

ET:Which they can’tdo today.

GC:Scars all show.

ET:You were a model boy?

GC:Never, never.

ET:Never. That’s good. The high school was upstairs.

GC: The high school was upstairs. I didn’t go up there, but, I think, matter of fact, I don’t think I went to the eighth grade there. I did the eighth grade up where the grade school is now.

ET:Oh yeah, that’s…yeah…

GC: They built that, and then the high school’s up there, so I went there.

ET:Oh so the high school is there, too. That’s great.

GC:Oh, Billy Hines, Ed Markey, Katherine Decker, Virginia Kimball Carter,

 

ET:Oh, yes.6.

GC:I can’t remember….

ET:Mr. Mosley was a good Principal, wasn’t he? I always heard that from everybody.

GC: When we were up there, we had Mr. Loring.

ET:Oh, I remember him. He was just about the time I came here. Oh, yes, he was good, too. He was

darn good.

GC: AT least they had discipline over the kids in those days.

ET:They respected their teachers, didn’t they? and their Principal

GC:That’s right.

ET:Today, it’s too bad.

GC:Up there Miss Olfin… Mrs.Miner…

ET:Oh, yes, sure Betty Miner,yes.

GC:Milton Hallen, Mrs. Fitz…

ET:Oh yes, Mrs. Timothy…

GC:Grace Procton…

ET:I remember her.

GC:Elizabeth Taylor…

ET:THE, not THE Elizabeth Taylor!

GC:No, her name was Elizabeth Taylor.

ET:Was it Elizabeth Taylor? Oh.

GC: She still comes to our reunions. She was at the last one.

ET:Oh, do you still have reunion?

GC: Yeah, we’re having another one in this September.

ET:Which one will that one be, now?

GC: Oh,

ET:I shouldn’t ask.

 

GC:No, it’s just for anyone who ever went there.7.

ET:Oh, I see. Open to anybody that graduated that old school.

GC:Well, whether they graduated, or just wentto the seventh or eighth grade.

ET:That’s great. I think it’s nice to see old friends like that.

GC:Gosh, we’ve got them coming from Oklahoma, and Florida.

ET:Is it going to be this summer?

GC:In September.

ET:That’s wonderful. I think, a lot of people like to come back. I don’t know whether it is good or

bad. People change.

GC: They say you never can come back.

ET:I know, I know. Now tell us something about the lake. It certainly was different than it is now.

GC:Oh, yeah there was no beach, like we have over there now. The beach was all big rocks, and you

had to fight your way in, and come out with bruised feet and toes from kicking those. Dave Timmons ran it; he ran a good place.

ET:You have a little confession to make.

GC:Yeah, the boats, but you couldn’t expect him to fix the place all up, it wasn’t his.

ET:No, he just rented it.

GC:He leased that for, gosh, I really don’t know for how many years. But I do know he had a bat…

when I lived up at Hotchkiss. Every year before graduation they’d have some kind of a water show over at Hotchkiss down on the lake. They’d have the Hotchkiss boys there doing things with canoes, and have water fights and all that. I remember he used to take candy and soda in the rowboat and row over there and tie up and sell it.

ET:Good for him.

GC:He’d been there for a good many years. He had an old launch out here, he called it Thelma. I

think he, I heard someplace that he named it after Thelma Hand.

ET:Oh really?

GC:Yeah, but it was named “The Thelma”.

ET:

Good.

 

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GC:I don’t know how much it got to ride, but you’d see that thing chugging around the lake. It had a

little gasoline engine. It was a good sized boat; it would probably hold about 20 people or so.

ET:Oh really? Should have that now; lots of people to take a ride. They probably wouldn’t bother.

No. That’s great.

GC:1 say why don’t they rent canoes over there? People wouldn’t bother with it.

ET:Probably not. They didn’t give any swimming lesson like they have now, did they?

GC:No, no, there was nothing like that.

ET:You learned to swim by yourself, or your family.

GC: Yeah. No lessons of any kind. He was strictly in it for the money.

ET:Oh yeah, yeah.

GC: Talking before about the things I always remembered about Dave was he had all these docks in, and the water dropped way down. He was going to move them out so they weren’t so far out of the water. He was pulling this one out, and he had on a pair of boots. Dave always smoked a crooked stem pipe.

ET:Oh.

GC:He always had that in his mouth. His foot slipped, and I can see him, yet. He just fell over

backwards. The only thing you could see was that pipe sticking out of the water. He never got that wet. Face went under and all, but he didn’t get his pipe wet.

ET:He saved that.

GC:Saved his pipe.

ET:Were there a lot of fishermen used to come from out of town like they do now?

GC:Oh, yes.

ET:Always havebeen.

GC:Yes, back, oh, I think in the early 30’s the state started dumping rainbow trout in out there.

ET:Oh, I see.

 

GC:No one realized that they were in here. They kept dumping them in, and dumping them in. All of

a sudden people would be out there fishing, and they were getting these big rainbow trout. It would be

9.

nothing to go out there early in the morning, I used to have pictures of my brother Fayette and a friend of his from Poughkeepsie, George Birchall-Fishset. They’d come in with, they’d go out early in the morning, and be in here by nine o’clock. They’d both have their limit of five trout, and they’d weigh up to five pounds apiece.

ET:Good heavens. That’s wonderful.

GC:But the word got around. Boy, they really started coming in here then. It didn’t take them long.

ET:No, no. There weren’t trouble with all that algae, and all that nowadays.

GC:No, if you were out there fishing and got thirsty, you’d just cup your hands and get some water

and drink it, but I wouldn’t dare to that now.

ET:No, no, that’s too bad, isn’t it? Of course it wasn’t as populated then, as it is now.

GC: That’s it. When they put sewer a little ways around the lake, and they’re never going to have a decent lake until they get it all the way around.

ET:I guess you’re right.

GC:Everything around here drains right into the lake. It isn’t raw sewage but it’s nutrients going in,

and that’s what stimulates all the growth in there.

ET:Why sure, that’s too bad isn’t it, really. I don’t know what’s going to happen anywhere. What

about Main Street? What was that like? Lot of changes?

GC:Oh, gosh, all kinds of changes. I remember when there used to be First National, that’s where a

new building, Lakeville Cafe, now. Where Ronnie Barry was, there was Grand Union.

ET:That’s right.

GC: There was an A & P down where the Gulf Station is now.

ET:That’s where Ralph Gardener was manager at one time?

GC: Then there was Borden’s store at the top of the old Holley Block.

ET:Now you can’t even get a quart of milk.

GC:You can’t…

ET:A loaf of bread…

 

GC: You can’t go down street someplace and get a cup of coffee.

10.

ET:I know it, and still, you know, there wasn’t those supermarkets in those days. You had to shop

locally. It’s too bad in a way, because you have to run…

GC:You have to run to Millerton or Canaan, or Salisbury.

ET:It’s too bad.

GC: There’s been changes; I don’t know whether it’s better or not….

ET:At one time did the railroad….

GC: Yeah, at one time the railroad ran right in front of the house.

ET:I remember that when I first came.

GC:Used to be able to get a train here to go to Poughkeepsie or Hartford, Albany, any place.

ET:Came through every day?

GC: Yeah.

ET:Was it the CNE railroad?

GC:It was the New York New Haven Hartford, which started out as the CNE.

ET:Now all the tracks are gone.

GC: Yeah. As a matter of fact, when they ripped up the tracks, they ripped them up from here to Millerton, and up towards Hillsdale, and all the track over in New York state. The fellows who did that stayed here at the house; had quite a crew of them. They were a hard bunch, too. Nice guys, but I mean, they were rough because they had rough work to do.

ET:Oh, yes, sure, going all overdoing that kind of work. Who ran the freight station in that…

GC:Milo Martin, Milo Martin and Tom Martin were in there.

ET:Was Tom Martin his father?

GC:No, he was brother or uncle or something.

ET:Oh, I think Milo, Tom Martin lived now up there near, not the Kane house but the one…

GC: The one this side. Yeah.

 

ET:I think they were, Milo Martin’s father and he were brothers, weren’t they?

GC: That might be it.

11.

ET:I think so. I remember old Mr. Martin when I first came to town. Those folks worked…

GC:Yeah, they worked down there, and then, I guess, they were closing up the line here, I think Tom

retired, and didn’t Milo go to work at Hotchkiss?

ET:Yes, he did. In later years he did go to Hotchkiss.

GC:He went up there.

ET:But all the freight came in here for all the stores.

GC:Yeah.

ET:For heaven’s sakes.

GC:Used to be busy.

ET:Yeah. Used to be quite a, you know, things are different now with automobiles.

GC:Matter of fact, Johnnie Clark used to work for that outfit. He helped tear up that line.

ET:Johnnie Clark?

GC: Yeah, Gert Clark’s husband.

ET:Oh really? Oh really, for goodness sakes, for heaven’s sakes.

GC:He said, too, it was hard work.

ET:I imagine, yeah, he was a young fellow then. What did they have down to the ball field? Did you

play any baseball?

GC:I didn’t play, but they used to have this time of year, golly, they had twilight leagues, and there

was a ball game going on down there about every night. They wouldn’t get in 9 innings, but they’d get in 5-6 innings.

ET:Something to do. Sunday they had a game, didn’t they?

GC:Game, and a big crowd.

ET:Yeah, well there was nothing else to do.

GC: That’s right, no television…

 

ET:No cars, they didn’t have cars that many to run around all over the creation.

GC: And back then they didn’t have the money…

12.

ET:No, right.

GC:Remember Saturday nights, we’d go over to Millerton Brick Block, and maybe between four or

five of us we’d scrape enough money to get a couple pitchers of beer. That was it.

ET:That old Brick Block was that old brick building. It’s too bad that went down…

GC: That was a fun place. Well, they all were over there, Sharkey’s, Annings; you could always go over there on a Saturday night and have fun. You didn’t have to get into trouble.

ET: Oh no, just somewhere to go and talk.

GC: Sure, sure.

ET:Like people go up to the White Hart and sit around there.

GC:That’s right. That’s right.

ET:They need something….

GC:No drugs, nothing like that. We’d just go over and sit around…

ET:and have fun.

GC:Have a couple of beers and have fun. Get home twelve, one o’clock.

ET:I remember my father used to sit down in front of the old DuFour’s.

GC:Sit on the bank, there, across the road, too.

ET:and even on the stoop, there, you know.

GC:Waiting for Paul to come back to get a haircut.

ET:Yeah, that was the only way to get a haircut, wasn’t it? Paul Argyle’s place or Chet Thurston’s

for a while, wasn’t it?

GC:Yeah, Chet Thurston, Bill Judd

ET:Oh they were together, were they? Chet Thurston..,

GC:No, Al White used to work with Chet Thurston.

ET:Were there three barbers in those days?

 

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GC:We had four.

ET:Oh, for heaven’s sakes.

GC: Sure, we had Bill Judd, he’s, that building is gone now but that was between Fern Campbell’s and where Morris Brickman’s store was. That set in there. Dolph Bohlman had his offices in there too. Bill Judd’s part was facing…It was on the right, like an addition on there. Paul Argyle, when he first started cutting hair, he worked in there with Bill Judd.

ET:Oh, that’s where he learned the business?

GC:Paul used to cut my hair when I lived up to Hotchkiss.

ET:Oh, for heaven’s sakes.

GC:He cut it all the time he was here and I was here. I miss him.

ET:Yeah, I know. You were always good friends, too. Where did you work after you got out of high

school? Did you go to Hotchkiss to work?

GC:No, I worked in the First National. I worked in the vegetable and meat department. Oh boy,

they were a cheap outfit then. They wouldn’t pay you anything; you’d work in there for 50 -60 hours a week for $15-$20. They always wanted a little bit more. This was about 1940, no ’41. I was working down there, and the superintendent came around one day, and he started chewing about something. I just took off my apron and said, “Here, you can have it.” So I just went home, and my brother Fayette wasn’t working then, so I said, “Let’s go down to Waterbury and get a job.” He said ok, so we went down. We saw Jimmy DuBois’s brother.

ET:Oh, I remember, he worked at Waterbury Brass.

GC: Scoville Brass. He was personnel manager. So we went in to see him, and got a job making decent money.

ET:Did you commute every day, or…?

GC: We did for a while, but then it got to be too much. We had to be at work at seven. So we had to get up here around four thirty. So we finally took a room down there.

ET:I didn’t know that.

GC:Matter of fact, I lived down on 47 Prospect Street in an apartment house. I had a room with a

woman, her name was Mrs. Goodrich. She had a daughter and her husband was a retired railroad man. That’s the place that this Puerto Rican torched down there that burned 14 people.

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ET:Oh!

 

14.

GC: Cause when I lived there…

ET:Oh, really? That was just recently! I was just reading that in the paper. Yeah.

GC:He torched that. He burned down the two of them, right next to each other. It was a nice

apartment.

ET:How many years were you there, before….

GC:Oh, I was only there about a year. Then one day I got through work, this was after Pearl Harbor,

and I went up to the Post Office and joined the navy.

ET:Oh, you were in the navy.

GC: So I spent about four years in the navy. I went to the Great lakes for my training. After I got through that I went down to Oklahoma, down to Norman, Oklahoma, for school. I went to Aviation Ordinance School. I graduated from there. They kept me on as an instructor out there for two and a half years. I was on the North base, and my brother Fayette, he was a flier, he was on the South base.

ET:Oh I didn’t know he was a flier. I never knew you were.

GC:NO.

ET:Did you get overseas flying?

GC:No, I didn’t fly. I was an instructor. Aviation Ordinance, that’s cons, and bombs, and all that. So

when I left there I went to St. Louis. I was there for a couple of months. From there we went to San Francisco, we got on what they called an LSD, it was a landing ship dock. It was one of those things that was all open in the middle, and when they wanted to take a boat or something aboard, they’d sink the thing, run it in, and just pump the water out, and raise it up. So we went out on that, and then when I got out there, I went with Squadron BF93. That was a fighter squadron, and I was aboard the carrier “Boxer”. The war ended just when I was going out.

ET:Good for you,

GC: Well, I don’t want to shoot people.

ET:Yeah, I know, right, right.

GC: So I spent about eight months aboard the “Boxer”, and we were out in the Pacific. I got over to Japan, over in China, all the islands down through there Guam, Saipan, Okinawa….

ET:You’ve seen a lot then. I never realized that.

 

GC:It was interesting.15.

ET:When the war was over, you got out, huh?

GC:Yep.

ET:Came back to Lakeville.

GC:Back to Lakeville.

ET:Picked up your life again.

GC:Picked up my life again. Felt kind of lonesome. I’d been writing to Sandy.

ET:Oh, yeah, you met her. She was from the west.

GC: She was out in Oklahoma. I met her in Oklahoma. She worked on Will Rogers Air Force Base out there. She worked as a hostess, too, in the Salvation Army.

ET:Oh, yeah, they used to have them…recreation centers for the officers and men.

GC: Yes. So when the war was over, she left there. She went out to Oregon, out in Portland, with a girl, two girlfriends. The one was from Portland, so they stayed with her parents for a while, and then they took an apartment on their own. So I say I got lonesome, so I asked her to marry me, and she said, “Sure enough!”

ET:She came back to Lakeville. That’s good. That’s wonderful.

GC:Never regretted it a day. Maybe she has…

ET:Oh I don’t think so, no.

GC: Selectman that I first remember was Abe Martin. He was selectman until he died. Then Bill Barnet took over, then Charlotte Reid, and that’s the only three that I remember.

ET:OK Abe martin was for many years, too.

GC:Oh, he was a lot of years. Everything was done out of his garage down there.

ET:Yeah, I remember when I came to town; he was in his last days. Everything was run from…he

had no office. He was good, though, I guess, to people.

GC: Oh yeah, they who didn’t have a job and needed money, they went down to see Abe.

ET:He was very good.

GC:He used to have the town home. That is up where the school is.

 

16.

ET:Yeah, that’s right. They used to have a town home up there. Ed Stanton ran that, didn’t he?

GC:Ed Stanton, yeah, and before him, there usually the janitor of the school, too, Charlie Whitford?

ET:I don’t know about that. They had no Welfare in those days, so the people went up there to

live?

GC:People would go up there to live.

ET:Ed Stanton and his wife did the cooking and took care of them, didn’t they. I remember…

GC:Did a good job.

ET: was up there when we first came. Things are different now, aren’t they? Did you always go to the Methodist Church, your people?

GC: Yeah, well, I have. My mother did, too. My mother was really an Episcopalian. She died; she was buried with an Episcopalian service. I had Rev. Chiera.

ET:Oh, yes, I remember him.

GC:But there again it branches back to Chief Joseph Brant. He started the first Episcopalian church

in Canada.

ET:He did?

GC:Yeah, he was quite a boy.

ET:You hear a lot about him. That’s great.

GC:He’s very interesting. I’ve read a lot about him.

ET:Oh, I would think you would be very proud.

GC: Another thing that dates back to my mother’s side is a fellow we called Black Brant. Have you heard of him?

ET:Oh, yes, yes.

GC:Black Brant over in Boston Corners? He’s the one that put on the Morrisey bare knuckle fight

over there, that time.

ET:Oh, yes, Sullivan, wasn’t it?

GC:I think so, yeah.

 

17.

ET:Yeah, because there’s a book at the library that Sandy had, and I thought was great. There’s a

marker on that old road, and it says, you know, the Sullivan fight. It isn’t that big Sullivan, it’s the other one. Oh, I read that book, and everyone should read that book.

GC:That’s some of my mother’s relatives.

ET:Oh, really? They had that big inn or hotel.

GC:Yeah, black grocery and all that.

ET:Yeah. This gang brought horses from Saratoga and colored them, and sent them to some cave

over there, and they got up to Egremont, somewhere up there. I don’t know where that cave is. Every time I go by, I always say wonder…

GC:It’s probably all overgrown, or caved in or something.

ET:Those were the days, weren’t they?

GC:Yeah. I remember Sandy was reading the book one night. She was sitting in there, she’d read for

a while, she’d look up at me. She wouldn’t say anything. She’d start reading again; finally she looked up at me and she says, “Is this some of your relatives?” Yes.

ET:What was the name again?

GC:Black Brant.

ET:Yeah, Black Brant. That was a regular center there, Boston Corners.

GC:Oh, sure. New York State didn’t want it; it was really part of Massachusetts. They didn’t want it

either.

ET:Yeah, I know it was sort of a no man’s land, wasn’t it for a while. Everybody should read that

book. I mean, I hope they never lose track of it. I got Patty and everybody to read it. I interviewed John Rand once, not John Rand, John Blood, and oh, you’ve got to read that book, if you haven’t read it. Everybody should read that book. That was something, wasn’t it?

GC:It was. I tried to get a copy of it.

ET:You can’t, I guess you can’t. I don’t know. I know this one has been rebound.

GC: Yeah, yeah.

ET:Now you have two children.

 

18.

GC: Yeah, I’ve got two boys; Carlton and Dennis. Carlton is the oldest. Carlton lives up in Saugus. He’s the buyer for Holt Hardware Outlet. It’s a group of brothers, and an uncle, I think. They’ve got one up in Boston, and they’ve just opened a new one down in New York, New York City. They have another place down in Waterbury. They sell hardware wholesale. You or I couldn’t go in there and buy….

ET:No, plumbers and people like that.

GC:Well, like Community Service. They come in there and buy.

ET:Big stores, big companies.

GC:Yeah, of course, if I tell them I need something,

ET:Oh, yeah, sure, naturally, it’s only right.

GC:He does all the buying for them. It’s, everything is done on computers, all their ordering, and

every sale and everything is entered in the computer. When it is time to reorder, something pops up.

ET:You know just how many you have in stock, and all that. Itthe paperwork, doesn’t it?

GC: That’s right.

ET:And the other one is?

GC: Dennis. He worked for an electronics concern, name of Terradine. He’s got a good job. He’s been going all over the world; he goes to Japan. He’s been over to Europe. He’s got to go to Japan again in about another month. He enjoys it.

ET:He married a local girl?

GC:He married Peggy Marquette. They have a little girl.

ET:Yeah, yeah, very nice.

GC:Our first granddaughter. She is a little sweetie. She’s down all last week, you know, with Ed.

ET:How is he?

GC:He came home today.

Tape ends abruptly