Barnett, Mary Tuttle

MEMOIR

of

MARY TUTTLE BARNETT

Transcript of a taped interview.

 

 

 

Narrator: Mary Tuttle Barnett

Tape#: 31 A

Date: January 25, 1984

Place of interview: Mrs. Barnett’s home in Lakeville, CT

Interviewer: Eleanor Dorsett.

Mary Barnett was a teenager when she moved with her family to Lakeville. She lived in this town all her life. In this interview she speaks of the town as it was in the 193.0’s and 1930’s. She describes the schools, businesses and activities of that period.

 

1984

Property of the Oral History Project.

Salisbury Association at the Scoville Memorial Library.

Salisbury, Connecticut 06068

Mary Barnett Oral History #31A

 

MB: The birds are kinda fun to watch out here, and what else should I say. This is going to be part of the record, I hope.

 

ED: Good enough. Yes.

 

MB: I’m really not a native. I now feel like one because I came here …. My father …. We lived in Kent and my father, it was during the flu epidemic and both of the doctors, Dr. Peterson and Dr. Bissell, who were the doctors here in the town of Salisbury, had gone into the service [World War I. ed.J and left no doctor here in the town. Dr. Shannon, who had sort of a sanitarium, TB sanatarium, over in Falls Village, sent an SOS out for another doctor. A new, younger doctor had just come to Kent. My dad thought he could be spared, so he came up here and he lived at what is now the …. well, later became the Housatonic Book Shop. Mrs. Price ran a boarding house, my father was with her and ——– was here. Mother and I remained in Kent until I could finish the 8th grade. And that next June we came up to Lakeville. For the first few weeks we lived in at the boarding house where Dad did and I started school from there. The high school was where the Lakeville Post Office now is and it had the grammar schools on the first floor and the high schools on the top floor. I went to school there. I was a new girl in school, so of course, I was a curiosity, sort of. The boys used to tease me coming home from school because they were trying to get my goat, which they didn’t really.

 

ED: Did you walk?

 

MB: I walked. Well, no, we rode the bus from Salisbury. They had a bus which was a far cry from the present school buses, more like a pickup truck, which had benches installed on either side. It did have a roof over it and it had curtains that pulled down like the old surreys and we sat on those. We went from the Salisbury Post Office, we were picked up there, and then driven down to the school—–That was the first half of my first year at high school. And then, ah, while we were living at Mrs. Price’s, her husband died and she no longer felt she could run the inn. She was a friend of Dr. Peterson and they were, Mrs. Peterson had gone out to California, I guess, or somewhere. Anyway, that house was made available, and so we moved down and lived in the house. I don’t know who owns it now.

 

ED: Is that the one on the corner of Orchard Street?

 

MB: Yes, it’s on the corner of Orchard Street across from where Evelyn Dann now lives. So we moved down there and lived thereuntil the war was over. In fact, the war was already over, as a matter of fact, and Dr. Peterson returned. Then we, Dad and Mother, bought the house across the brook, that Salisbury Bank is now building on a place. Garritys lived there for a while. That’s where we lived, right by the brook. [Burton Brook. ed.] It had formerly been the Norton house, I think it belonged to – I don’t know whether it was Lot Norton or not, but it had been in the Norton family because we found papers and things up in the attic there .

 

Anyway, that came during the flu epidemic. I remember I was intrigued because we had a horse, called Peggy, and a sleigh. We also had a Hupmobile roadster, which was quite a car at the time. But he came and it was during the wintertime and the snows were deep. He’d ride with the horse and sleigh to the foot of Brinton Hill. There seemed to be one hundred people over there that had the flu. He’d throw the saddle on the sleigh and when he couldn’t go with the sleigh any farther, he’d take the saddle out and put it on Peg and then he’d ride horseback to the places. I remember the names. One name that intrigued me was Sadie Winterbottom. As a matter of fact, I think she was related to Emma Belter. That name, I thought, Winterbottom, was a very interesting name, especially with winter weather and so forth, and with the flu. Anyway, the flu epidemic got over and Mother and I came to town and we lived here for a while. And we used to go …. the snows I can remember too, …. Helen and Marion lived in New York and when we would go to meet them (they came up for holidays and Christmas time) and the snow would be so deep a couple of times we went to pick up Helen and Marion at the station in Millerton and we’d get to Boulevard Hill and that would be all drifted in so we’d have to go all the way around—

 

ED: What’s Boulevard Hill?

 

MB: Well, that’s where that new development is on the right. That’s Boulevard Hill.

 

ED: Just before you get to—

 

MB: We would drive way around to: pick them up with the horse and sleigh. Then we’d get back home and enjoy the things.

 

Oh, well, in high school, that’s my first memory when I was in high school, I remember I went to the first day of school and my father thought no child was educated unless they had Latin, so I was enrolled in the Latin class. I was the only girl because girls never thought and the only reason they had Latin was that the boys had to have Latin to get into Hotchkiss. I went into this class and I was there—–because there was a girl studying Latin, what for, it was such a horrible subject. I did get along. My father was a good Latin scholar. I got through it all right.

 

And,. ah, we used to go to school, and as I said before, it was where the post office now is, and in the spring that was (we didn’t have snow plows like we do now) just a river would be running down. We would have to wear high boots to get into near the school. It would be, like you know, a couple feet deep of water running down along the things. In fact, that year was the year that the road was paved with cement. To get to Lakeville you had to go around through Lime Rock to get from Salisbury to Lakeville because this road was closed.

 

ED: Around the hill?

 

MB: Yes. But we used to slide downhill. That was really fun. We would start on one hill and slide all the way down and then we would walk up to the top of the other hill and slide back. The post office then, ah, was where the Holley …. I don’t know. It was where …. It’s gone now. The Holley Block was there was this big building where Boardman’s store and Triss’s Drug Store was on the corner.

 

ED: Was that the one that became Leverty’s?

 

MB: Yes. Leverty finally took over.

 

ED: And the post office?

 

MB: The post office was the other end of that building and later Wagner had his insurance/real estate office there. But anyway, the last mail came in at eight o’clock at night and that was the thing to do. The young people would gather, we would slide down the hill and go get the mail at eight o’clock and then slide back down and by then it was time to go in and get your homework done for school the next day. And, another thing, going to school, it was fun to have, I don’t know whether they were called bobsleds or what they were. They were big sleighs that had two sets of runners front and back and drawn by horses, of course, a pair of horses and Hamlet Hill Farm delivered milk. I don’t know where they delivered it to, but they had these big cases with the bott}es in it and it was fun to run along and hop on the sleighs, stand on the runner and go along and, ah, get a free ride. I remember I did that one time and I grabbed hold one of the boxes, pulled the whole thing off and bottles allover the place. But the driver was very nice. I was petrified, I was sure I was going to be arrested for something. But nothing ever came of it. He just said, “Well, that’s too bad. Never mind, I’ll pick it up.” …. And then where the Lakeville Cafe now is, was Roberts Store. And they had a movie house it was up on the top floor. It was a hall where they had dances and also they had the movies and after school we could go up and take in a late movie, if we were lucky. It cost five cents to get in and if you didn’t have a nickel to get in, why Clarence was usually there at the door and he would let some of us in for free because we had missed part of the show.

 

We also played basketball up there. We had a town team. They were good. There was Bill Raynsford and Ed Garrity and a couple of Silvernail boys. They could shoot marvelous baskets. And, ah, that was another thing they had, these basketball things at night and then——-the town team would play and quite often they would have a free game with the local high school boys and sometimes the high school girls. The high school girls played teams from Canaan and Millerton. They were not Millerton and Canaan high schools. They were the women’s team and I can remember they were …. The women were rough, they were big gals, compared to we high school girls, but we usually did pretty well.

 

And there also was the, ah,—–theatre which was over . where the Brothers Pizza now is.

 

ED: Oh, that’s the same one that …

 

MB: And that burned down Christmas Day, I remember. But we used to go over there. It was wonderful.

 

ED: Two movie houses!

 

MB: Um h,m, we had two movie houses. I don’t think they were every night. They probably had them Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturday nights. Those were the days when we had Wally Reid and Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

 

ED: Pearl White.

 

MB: Yes. Oh, the Perils of Pauline and the three Barrymores and John Gilbert and Greta Garbo and, you know …. The Hotchkiss School had a play every spring and their …. The night of their real dress rehearsal, the local people could go to the plays. The plays were given in Roberts Hall. They didn’t have an auditorium at Hotchkiss then. The plays were given in Roberts Hall and you could sign up and have reserved seats. You could go to see the Hotchkiss plays. They were very real. It was as close to a real theatre that we had and I can remember I was quite intrigued that some of the boys had such lovely singing voices.

 

And, ah, Roberts store, that was the store around. They had a delivery business and they delivered to all the wealthy families in Sharon and around about. They had products like red bananas. I had a red banana one day recently and it didn’t taste a bit the same. It just wasn’t good at all. It just didn’t have the same flavor. I don’t know.

 

ED: Did they sell just groceries?

 

MB: Oh, no. Everything. They sold groceries and, ah, fresh produce and boots and shoes and dress goods and all sorts of …. sort of a dry goods and grocery store, I guess.

 

When the girls played basketball we wore bloomers. I don’t know if you could buy them ready-made or not, but I remember mine had five yards of blue serge. They were pleated and they had to come down below your knees, way below your knees and our teacher, who was our basketball coach, she wouldn’t let us go out of the hall unless we had nur coats on to cover up our …. It wasn’t modest to have these bloomers. We’ve come a long way from the bloomers I wore playing. Bloomers and middy blouses, that I wore playing basketball. Practically nothirg but bikinis they wear now. But she used to let us go down in between, after we played for a while. We had to rest and she let us go down to Roberts store and bring up raspberry lollypops. You can’t buy them anymore.

 

The grocery store was up there on the hill in the Holley Block and they made their own peanut butter right there. It must have been …. He had a barrel under the counter and they’d scoop…. It wasn’t very sanitary. They ground the peanuts right there. I don’t know whether they ever cleaned the machine or not, but he just put the peanuts in and ground them up. They also had the biggest prunes I have ever seen. Perfectly luscious, great big ones, like that.

 

Then, of course, there was the A. H. Heaton’s store, which later was Barnett’s Ben Franklin store. Heaton’s sold everything, hardware, men’s wear, furniture and bedding and all thosse things. They did a lot of business with Hotchkiss School. The boys, they bought furniture for their rooms and lamps and all that sort of …. The families would provide, furnish the boys’ rooms. They weren’t all furnished like they are now.

 

ED: Did Mr. Heaton live on Ethan Allen Street? The same house that Louise Heaton lived in?

 

MB: Um hm.

 

ED: Was there another store beside that building then? The one that became the A&P?

 

MB: It was built for A&P. It finally was. But there was Charlie Wing, had this Chinese laundry there and Ellis’ lived in the house that was there. There was the annex, but then eventually they sold, uh, sort of a gift shop with china, glassware and things like that in it. One time. they carried women’s clothing. It didn’t go over so good. But, ah, Barnett’s built, they had the A&P store built. The A&P was there for a while. That’s now where the Gulf station is.

 

ED: What was originally, ah, where the telegraph office and Paul Argall had his barber shop there? What was there then?

 

MB: Charlie Osborn had a harness shop and did a lot of work. Harness was in then. Also there was a Miss Stuart. She was a dear, little, old lady. She had Miss Stuart’s little, she called it a novelty shop. But she sold needles and thread and pins and a little bit of russing and certain bobbins and that sort of thing. She was a cute little old lady and she had nice things there.

 

ED: I can remember when Bessie had the lunch.

 

MB: Before Bessie had it, it was Goderis’ meat market underneath and then they moved out to, I don’t know what. Chris Dakin had his legal lawyer shop there.

 

MB: That’s right.

 

ED: I don’t know what is there right now but ….

 

MB: But then Goderis’ moved up there and that was our meat market. But Bessie had a lunch down there and that was very good and also the Hub which was on the corner, where Barry’s jewelry store is. That was called the Hub and Ma and Pa Dufour ran that. The garage took all the rest of the corner there, which is now, you know, open park way. They sold lunches, ice cream cones. The ice cream cones were a nickel.

 

ED: What was the building where the Laundromat now is. Wasn’t that a lunch …

 

MB: That was Hamm’s luncheonette. Mr. and Mrs. Hamm, they lived there and then they turned the front part of it i~to a store and Bessie eventually moved up there and ran their place. I don’t know whether they served luncheons or not. I think it was more ice cream and candy and sweet shop sort of a place.

 

ED: Was that Frances LeMoine …

 

MB: Frances LeMoine’s parents. Yeah. Let’s see. What else would there be? Where Borden’s place is now, that was a place run by Mr. and Mrs. Greer. They made the best oyster stew ever. They had what was really a nice eating place. I don’t know what you would call it. It was just Greer’s. Sort of a tea room. Where Bill …. I think it is Bill Stilta’s house. Well, it isn’t now, it is where his parents lived. I don’t know who lives there now.

 

ED: Ed McCue?

 

MB: I think that place, that was next door to Ed’s. They had a tea shop there. That was Cox and Ives. They were two maiden ladies and they ran a tea shop.

 

ED: Just think of all those places!

 

MB: And up where, at the top of the hill, where, oh dear what is it now? Beyond the Journal office, building beyond that.

 

ED: Community Fuel?

 

MB: No, before you get to Community Fuel. Ah, maybe there isn’t anything there It was where the Journal office and oh, it was,ah, Tony the barber shop man. I think part of that anyway. There was a Mr.—–who had another restaurant and he specialized in waffles. That was a great place to go have waffles and coffee for evening meal.

 

ED: Amazing when you consider all those places to eat!

 

MB: Where Community Fuel is now. That was another little t~a room. I have forgotten the name of the ladies that ran it, but they served homemade ice cream. That was a nice~place to go. And, uh, you could take a date there, you could get a, you know, nice…. You didn’t have to spend more than a dollar for a date for the evening. You’d go to the movies for twenty-five cents apiece and then go. have ice cream afterwards. Yau cauld have a nice date far a dallar.

 

ED: And then there were places where you cauld buy foad to. caak, tao..

 

MB: Yes.

 

ED: Naw we have all the eating places and no. place to. buy faad to caak.

 

MB: But, ah, in the Halley Black they had a unian hall there that’s where the, ah, I think the Masans met there, but I’m nat sure. Ahh, but they had this hall and that’s where we used to, the high schaal had dances there. It was called Unian Hall. Always had the Hallawe’en dance there. Then eventually they …. Somebody baught the place. They made apartments aut of it and …

 

ED: It was still apartments when we came here. What was where the firehause now is?

 

MB: Where the fire hause now is was the hase campany’s house. It was just a little waaden building. Always, as far as I remember, that was always the fire hause was there. Then Raynsford shap, af caurse.

 

ED: About when was the new past affice built? I don’t remember anything else but the post office being there. Am I …. Is my memory faulty?

 

MB: No.. The date when it was built, I think is an a plaque right on the front af the past affice.

 

ED: Probably.

 

MB: Danny Parsans was the last class to be in the ald high scho9l and that wauld have been abaut 1927 and I think prabably the past affice dates to. the early 1930’s, I would guess.

 

ED: That wauld be the time that the new schaal, which is where the old building of the Central School is.

 

MB: The present Central School used to be the high school. That was before the Regional. Donny Parsons was the only one in his class in high school. There were only twelve in my class in high school and that was in ’23. Bill had only three in his, which was ’21.

 

ED: Now when that school was built, was there,ah, a Lakeville grade school in the bottom part?

 

MB: No.

 

ED: None

 

MB: Because they went to either Salisbury or Ore Hill or …. Originally there was a school, Salisbury, the Salisbury School and Lakeville and there was one in Ore Hill, one in Lime Rock, one in Amesville and one in Taconic. Then they all came to Lakeville High School in back. Then, I, let’s see, they had high school, the old high school building was still used for the grammar school.

 

ED: Oh, I see.

 

MB: It must have been. I’m hazy about that, but it must have been then because that was just high school there to start with. They may have had the high school and sixth, seventh and eighth grades there to begin with and this was still the lower school. Salisbury, the school in Salisbury, that was discontinued. The building itself was condemned, but when Mike was little, he started kindergarten. The Mother’s Club started the kindergarten there and that used the first floor of that building.

 

ED: Now, was that the old Academy building?

 

MB: No. That was the old Grove building. The old Academy building there, that had school in it because that is where Polly Miner taught when she first came to town, which was 1927. It must have been—–We had—–Girl’s Friendly Club was very active. I don’t know what they were supposed to do, some sort of charitable work that they …. I don’t remember just what …. More of a social group. That was where the Masonic Hall is now.

 

And, ah, also the Methodists had their ladies Aid Society. They met, I think it was the first Wednesday of each month. They would meet in the afternoon and sell and make aprons and so forth, getting ready for the fair in the summertime. Then they always had a supper, which began …. First it was twenty-five cents for the supper and then they had to go up to thirty-five cents to make ends meet. One month they’d serve baked beans and they usually had cake for dessert. The next month they’d serve corned beef hash with raw onions .. Bill Curry was an old bachelor. He manned the Farnum Tavern, which is now the Farnum Apartments and he always, when we had the corned beef, he would always come down for the supper. He always came in late, after everybody was served. He’d come and they would set him up at the end of the table with a big plateful of corned beef hash and a whole saucerful of sliced raw onions. He would pour vinegar on them and salt and pepper, and he’d sit there and eat those. It was a good thing he was a bachelor, because nobody would have wanted to sleep with him after that! I can’t think of what they served with the baked beans. They had the baked beans …

 

ED: Brown bread?

 

MB: Not nec …. I don’t know, they could have. I guess they did have brown bread. Of course, the baked beans were all made by the women. They sometimes had pies, too. Then in February for a number of years they had their George Washington’s birthday chicken pie suppers. They were speclal. They were …. The men would go out and solicit for the food and they’d buy the chickens and take them to the different ladies in the town, in the church. They were asked to make chicken pie. I remember my Dad solicited and one of the things was “please take all the bones out”, not leave any bones in. The chicken pie had to be all chicken. And they would make pies. They had cherry pies, chicken pie with cherry pie. Coffee and tea went along with it. Invariably, there would be two to three feet of snow for that.

 

They couldn’t, ah, the roads weren’t plowed so that sliding, especially on the hills and occasionally there might be a horse and sleigh come by,. But there really wasn’t any danger sliding downhill. There wasn’t any traffic to deal with. I can remember walking to school one day and the snow was quite deep. The people that lived where the bank is now rebuilding, the house there …. Before we moved there, it must have been. They had their path nicely shoveled, but it was about …. The snow was about two to three feet high. We went in and sat down like in a Pullman car, making our seats—in the snow. That was really fun. We used to make angels in the snow …. I can’t imagine kids doing that now. It was fun too, you know, it was really a lot of snow and it wasn’t that –like now.

 

ED: It stayed clean then.

 

MB: Yes, it seemed to stay clean. We used to get ice out of the lake—–fill the ice houses. People didn’t have electric refrigerators or an ice box.

 

ED: You know, I think people in Salisbury were nicer than people in Maine because we used to say, when we were making what you call angels, we were making butterflies. Not angels.

 

MB: Oh, I see. Buttereflies. Angels would be more apt to be in the snow than butterflies, I should think.

 

Oh, and Hotchkiss had their mid festivities,what did they call it, midwinter dance. The girls would be invited from the Miss Porter’s School and, ah, Farmington. I don’t know all the different …. Miss Hall’s School was in Pittsfield and Miss Porter’s School was in Farmington, girls’ schools.comparable to Hotchkiss and the boys would all invite these girls and they, of course, were all city girls, supposedly, and all upper crust and we used to watch and see what they were wearing. Actually, they weren’t dressed much differently than we country folks were.

 

They also had their Olympian Pythian meet, which was a show of gymnastics at their Hotchkiss gym. This was the old building, of course, and, ah, the kids used to walk from here up to Hotchkiss to watch the competition. I remember they did a lot of things on their rings and the horse. I don’t remember any balance bars like they show nowadays. They really were very good. That was sort of a big event for the local high school age kids, to go up and watch and view these things.

 

It was definitely a town and gown—-The Hotchkiss masters and their wives were far superior to the local husbands and wives around. They didn’t, they really didn’t mingle like they do now. They didn’t get into politics or anything. They were just themselves.

 

ED: What was …. Has Community Service been there for years and years and years a hardware?

 

MB: It used to be E.W. Spurr Company and I think they were more coal and feed.

 

ED: Is that related to, ah, Charlotte Reid, Spurr Hall?

 

MB: That was her grandfather, I think. Or greatgrandfather. I think they were mostly just, you know, coal, fuel and feed. For horses and so forth. Then Community Service bought and that was when it became a hardware store.

 

ED: How many trains were there a day?

 

MB: There must have been …. There was one in the morning. I think there was probably about three trains. There were at least two trains each way. To go from here to New York, you took a train at the station here, went to Millerton and then got off the station in Millerton which is where there …. now where their post office and parking area is. That was where the train was. You got off the train up there and then you had to walk down across down to where the present old station is now and get the train there to go to New York. But the trains used to bring the mail. There would be one in the morning. I don’t know whether there was one each way in the morning or whether it came from Millerton and went north. Then there …. Then, I know, there was one that came in at eight o’clock at night that got the mail from New York and there must have been some kind of switching around from one place to another. I know that when Bill went to …. went away to college, that was in ’21, he’d get the train here in the morning and it would ride Bill all the way to Boston on the train. Now, we drive to Boston.

 

ED: When was that overpass that the train went over, when did that go out? I’m not sure. I can remember the one in Canaan, but I’m not sure that I really remember the one in Lakeville.

 

MB: Well, it was there. And it wasn’t too, too long ago. It was after 1931, because our steps that go down to my garden are part of the stones that were part of that.

 

ED: Then it must have been down before we came here because we didn’t …

 

MB: It would have been in the early 1930’s, I would think. Let’s see now, it wasn’t in the 1940’s because we have pictures of the twins when they were discontinuing it ard they must have been about ten. So that would have been ’49.

 

ED: Then it must have been the late ’40’s or ’50’s. Did Mr. Spurr get his stuff delivered to him from the train?

 

MB: They had a train … The coal used to come that way. I remember seeing the coal cars down here on the track—- Of course, the bank was up on the hill, there where Wagner McNeil …

 

ED: Was it built there?

 

MB: Oh, no, they are not there anymore. They have moved too, haven’t they? They are down in the old Bissell house.

 

ED: Yes, that’s where Walter Shannon …

 

MB: Yes, Walter Shannon, the lnsurance company.

 

ED: Was that built to be the bank building?

 

MB: I don’t know, but I rather suspect it might have been.

 

ED: What about the building that was between Farnum Tavern, the big building between Farnum Tavern and the Lakeville Food Center, which is now the Lakeville Cafe?

 

MB: Well, for a while they had a men’s club in the upper part of the building. We used to play basketball there too, but that was really a low ceiling for basketball. Judd’s Barber Shop was in there and Harry Miller had his plumbing business. There were two wooden buildings there and … the part, the thing that was owned by Campbell’s, those apartments ….

 

ED: Fern, yes.

 

MB: To the left of that was a garage. What was the name of the people. I think it was Smith, Smith’s garage. They had a driveway and they had bowling alleys in there, too, at one time. They had a big fire there though. At Smith’s, while it was still a garage. There was a big fire there. Then I guess it was after they cleaned up after the fire, they had the bowling alleys back there. So there have been a lot of things have come and gone in Lakeville.—–grocery stores now where you can’t buy any groceries.

 

ED: Right.

MB: Let’s see. There was Danny’s shoe store. That is still there. Before Danny came that was, I think the man’s name was Tony Tufo. How I can remember that was …

 

ED: You don’t mean Tohu?

 

MB: I mean Tufo. Tony Tufo.

 

ED: Was it a shoe shop then?

 

MB: He was a, what do you call it? A cobbler. He mended shoes there and everything.

 

ED: I don’t remember him. I remember Danny only.

 

MB: No, you wouldn’t remember him because Danny came after Tony.

 

ED: What’s this about a Hallowe’en dance?

 

MB: That was used when we had Hallowe’en dance at Union Hall. The freshmen always had the Hallowe’en, gave the Hallowe’en dance and that was rather …. They used to also, I think it was the sophomores always had a wiener roast the first. That was held …. These were two things that were tradditional, but the freshmen had the Hallowe’en dance at Union Hall and the sophomores had a wiener roast. I think, I can’t remember if that was in the fall or in the late spring, but it was held at Jenning’s fireplace which was up beyond the Porter ore bed. We used to go through Porter Street and then through a field and there was this stone fireplace up there, Jennings woods and the house that was now empty. It’s next to, it is now advertised for sale. The Patons and somebody, they bought it. It was apartments, Thelma apartments they finally called it. That was the Jennings house—-somebody after the Jennings moved out. But that was back, way back up in there, they had this stone fireplace and I guess you had to have special permission to go up there. But we had a wiener roast and toast marshmallows.

 

ED: What had it been? Was it built for just ….

 

MB: The Jennings were sort of summer people. I think that was part of their grounds there.

 

ED: Summer entertainment.

 

MB: Yes. They had …. It was nice as I recall. I haven’t been there in years and years, probably not since the last wiener roast I went to.

 

ED: I’ve never been up that way.

 

MB: Well, this, you went up aways and then you had to cut cross lots.

 

MB: It seems to me we went …. It was more apt to go through—-Bostwick. I think we used to follow the brook up there to get to this place. It seemed a long way to walk, but it couldn’t have been too far. We did a lot more walking.

 

Oh, another thing. Our favorite Sunday afternoon occupation was walking the railroad tracks. I don’t think there were any trains on Sunday. I would walk the railroad tracks up to Whittier’s boathouse, which Mrs. Whittier …. Let’s see, I guess her house was then over there but they had a boathouse on the lake, past where the Grove is now. That would have been back of Holley Rudd’s house there. Not on their property, but there was a right-of-way there and there was this boathouse and that was a favorite Sunday afternoon to walk the railroad tracks. You didn’t walk it with your boy friend. They had gotten there ahead of you or something and you don’t care to meet them, crazy things. Those were the good old days. I don’t think there’s any more to say. Mary Barnett was a teenager when she moved with her family to Lakeville. She lived in this town all her life. In this interview she speaks of the town as it was in the 193.0’s and 1930’s. She describes the schools, businesses and activities of that period.

 

END

 

 

 

 

 

1984

Property of the Oral History Project.

Salisbury Association at the Scoville Memorial Library.

Salisbury, Connecticut 06068