Cleaveland, Paul

MEMOIRS

of

PAUL CLEAVELAND

Transcript of a taped interview

Narrator: Paul Cleaveland.

Also present: Clarinda Ulin, who has been taking care of Mr. Cleaveland the past few years.

Tape: #2 A&B.

Date: May & 1?, 1981.

Place of interview: Mrs. Ulin’s home, Walton Street, Lakeville, Ct.

Interviewer: Donald G. Kobler.

o

A lifelong resident of Lakeville, Mr. Cleaveland was one of leading dairy farmers of the area. Now eighty-six years of age, he describes the dairy industry and the new methods in the production of milk that came about during his years in the business. He reminisces about the sport of harness racing which was popular at one time in Lakeville. He also speaks of his employment as a boy at the Holley Knife Factory, and also of the changes he sees in Lakeville.

o

1981

Property of the Oral History Project.

Salisbury Association at the Scoville Memorial Library.Salisbury, Connecticut 0o068.

 

Cleaveland. – 1

DK: Mr. Cleaveland, where were you born?

PCs I was born down on Farnum Road.

DK: Just where? What house? Is it still there?

PCs Yes, the house is still there. Dad built it.

CU: Bill Stanton’s house that they just sold next to…

DK: Next to Community Service?

CU: No. You know where you go up to Decker’s Laundry (Perry Street)?

It’s the second one to that corner going up into Perry Street.

DK: And what year were you born?

PC: September 1^, 189^.

DK: So, you must have a lot of memories of the town. Who were your parents?

PC: Benjamin Cleaveland and Margaret Cleaveland.

DK: What was your mother’s family name?

PC: Ryan.

DK: Did you grow up in that house on Farnum Road?

PC: Oh, yes, until I was fourteen.

DK: Until you were fourteen?

PC: Pretty near fifteen.

DK: Then where did you go?

PC: Then we went up on the farm on Town Hill.

DK: And where did you go to school?

PC: On, I started in school in Catholic school.

DK: Where was the Catholic School located?

PC: I started kindergarten here. I went to that the first year, “kindlgarten” (sic). That was up where the post office is now.

It was a kindergarten downstairs, high school upstairs in those days. Salisbury had a high school of its own. And Lakeville

 

Cleaveland – 2

had one.

CU: When you went to grade school, was It In the Manor or in St. Mary’s Hall?

PC: In St. Mary’s Hall.

CU: To the nuns.

DK: What grades did you go there?

PC: Oh, just first grade. I didn’t go there very long.

DK: You went to parochial school one year?

PC: After kindergarten, I went there. I was there, I don’t know two or three years. Then I went on up to where the Masonic Hall is. Do you know where the Masonic Hall is now? (Montgomery Street)

DK: Yes.

PC: That was a school building. There was an upstairs and downstairs.

DK: How far did you go to school there?

PC: I went three years, I think, to eighth grade.

DK: Did you graduate from the Lakeville High School?

PC: No, I didn’t graduate. I went farming. I wasn’t going to school.

DK: Your parents bought a farm on Town Hill Road?

PC: Yes.

DK: Just where is that located?

PC: Do you know where Dr. Noble is? The Miner Farm?

DK: Yes.

PC: The big house, the big barn’s across the road.

DK: That’s the house that Dr. O’Connor lives in now?

PC: Who lives in it now?

DK: Dr. O’Connor

 

Cleaveland – 3

PC: Let’s see, he married a Belcher?

DK: Yes, his wife is Sara Belcher. She’s our librarian now.

(Mrs. Wildes owned the house at one time.) Did your parents live the rest of their lives on that farm then?

PC: Mother died there. She died, when she was forty-two. Dad kept on the farm about a year, I guess. I had three sisters.

DK: What were your sisters’ names?

PC: Florence, Katherine and Ruth.

DK: Did they all stay in this area? Did they stay in town, or did they marry and leave?

PC: Ruth married Joe Hanlon up at Twin Lakes in Taconic.

CU: They have a farm down in Falls Village. Paul Andrews was his brother-in-law. He just died this winter. His other sister Katherine married him, Paul Andrews.

DK: What was it like living on a farm in those days?

PC: Oh, there was a lot of work to do. We had a big house with a chimney going up through the middle of the house. There was a fireplace in every room. Dad had them all sealed up. We didn’t use them anyway. We had stoves.

DK: And did your father primarily raise crops, or was it a dairy farm?

PC: It was a dairy farm. We had about fifteen – twenty head of cattle.

CU: Did you ship milk?

PC: Well, we sold a good part to a milkman who lived over at Lee DuFour’s (on Bostwick Street), Frank Chapin. And he peddled it by horse around the village when I was a kid.

DK: So he would get the milk from you and then sell to…

PC: To the homes in town.

 

Cleaveland – 4

CU: How did he sell it? In cans or containers or…

PC: In cans.

CU: But I mean if you sold it to the people in town?

PC: Oh, I put it in cans. At first, I used to ride around with him a lot. He had a covered wagon, you know, and his cans in there, and he had a can that held about 10 quarts. He had a spout on it. He’d go up to the customers. He’d go up to the stoop, where ever they had their buckets and things to get it in, and he went about the same places every day. If he didn’t, they’d be out there waiting. They’d take a quart or whatever they wanted.

DK: It was up to the housewife to have something to put the milk in?

PC: Yes.

DK: It wasn’t bottled.

CU: No, it wasn’t bottled.

DK: Or homogenized or anything like that?

CU: They didn’t have nothing like that in those days.

PC: We started bottling it.

DK: When did you leave the farm and go into farming for yourself then?

PC: 1920. Yes. 1920.

DK: And your farm was on Wells Hill Road?

PC: Yes. Right on the corner.

DK: What kind of farm was that?

PC: It was a damn good one.

DK: Dairy farm?

PC: Yes.

DK: Also a dairy farm, and did you bottle the milk yourself?

 

Cleaveland – 5

FC: We did the first ten years (Oakwood Dairy). Then we started the Wells Hill Dairy.

CU: They went into partnership with Frank Vaill, and he and Frank formed the Wells Hill Dairy.

PC: Frank Vaill lived down the road toward Lakeville.

DK: Could you remember what year the Wells Hill Dairy was organized? When you and Frank Vaill went into business?

CU: I was married in 19^1 and I was your first bookkeeper. I think it was in 19^-2.

PC: I peddled milk over Lakeville way. Frank Vaill peddled more or less up in Salisbury.

CU: His (Vaill’s) was Rosehill and yours (Cleaveland’s) was Oakwood Farm. Rosehill Farm and Oakwood Farm.

DK: Was Frank Vaill’s farm on Wells Hill Road, too?

CU: Yes, just above where the Fleishman house is. You remember that brick house? I don’t know who lives there now, this side of Ann Lloyd’s, a big white house-quite a farm.

DK: You peddled milk then to all the houses in Lakeville and Salisbury between you?

PC: We started putting it in Roberts’ store. He was the first one to put it in. There were other stores. He had quite a business in cream. Hotchkiss boys would come down and buy a half pint of cream and a box of shredded wheat and take it over to the Hub and eat it, where Barry’s jewelry store is now. (The Hub was run by Mrs. Robert (Ma) DuFour.)

CU: That was the eating place. That was a three story building where the Lakeville Food Center is now.

PC: That was the big building then.

DK: So there were several other things in it, were there?

 

Cleaveland – 6

What other things were in the building?

PC: Well, Roberts store had all the bottom. Then the next floor was a dentist and he had two or three rooms in the corner there.

DK: Who was the dentist? Do you remember his name?

PC: Dr. Hurd was the first. Then he had to give up, and Dr.

Bartle, young Bartle who lived over in Ore Hill. He studied to be a dentist and came in Dr. Hurd’s place.

CU: Then after Hurd and after Bartle was done…

PC: Bartle was here three or four years and then he went to Torrington and got married.

DK: What was on the top floor then?

PC: That was the big hall. They used to have shows there, moving pictures, when movies first came out, silent pictures, you know. They had one of the first there.

CU: We used to go to the Chautauqua there.

PC: They had big wide stairs, four floors.

CU: The stairs were about as wide as this room.

PC: They had to put a fire escape on the back side when they got the movies going.

DK: Was there a gymnasium, too?

CU: I don’t remember that. Just as a theater.

DK: Did you raise horses, too, on your farm?

PC: Oh, yes, after I got it going…

CU: Got some money ahead.

DK: Did you race those horses?

PC: Well I didn’t do any racing as long as I was farming. I raised draft horses. The horses were kind of going out. After, I turned the farm over to Ben, when he got through high school.

 

Cleaveland – 7

DK: This was your son?

PCs Yeah, he took over. Then they got the Thorne farm (and worked both together). The farm’s gone now.

CUs Bill Ford lived over there. Mrs. Ladd bought it. (Thorne farm)

PC: Mrs. Ladd died and left it to her daughter.

DK: Where was that located?

PC: Well, you know where the watering kettle is? You turn left there and go straight up there. That was called the Asylum District. Thorne Hill goes down to Farnum Road by the Cannons’.

CU: You know where Slayman and Emerson lived? across the street from there, the house that had the silo. That was where the farm was.

PC: There was a big barn, one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, three stories high.

CU: He and his son ran it together.

DK: In addition to the other farm?

PC: Yes, I was milking about two hundred fifty cows.

DK: You must have had some help, didn’t you?

PC: We had one man in the barn on what we called the Wells Hill Farm and he was working in the barn, keeping the barn clean. That was Corcoran. There was another guy over at the other barn. He looked after the cows. He was s boy who came there when he was eleven years old. He lived there. He used to live on the Bauer Farm.

DK: What was his name?

PC: Joe Honer.

DK: Tell me about the horses.

PC: The track horses? In regard to that-Dr. Noble, he got kind

 

Cleaveland – 8

of itchy, always liked horses. There was Dr. Fowler, down in Sharon. They got their horses. Then they got that old track that belongs to Mrs. Baroody. She got hold of it. We could just as well have had it from the start, but we didn’t think about it. It lay there twenty years. I owned the land the other side of the road. So we built a barn where it is now.

DK: And you had races there?

PC: We used to have matinees there. We wouldn’t get started until about the -first of June. We’d get the horses up there about the first of May and start training them and get them in shape.

DK: This was harness racing?

PC: Yeah.

DK: Was it free to the public? Did you charge admission?

PC: Oh, we never charged nothing.

DK: Who were some of the people who raced there besides Dr. Noble and Dr. Fowler and yourself?

PC: Well, there was a fellow from Rhinebeck, and Folger. He came from Copake. He was an auctioneer, and he had a big sales

• i .

auction in Copake. He got interested and he had a horse over there. Sometimes he had two.) He came over in the morning and worked them for an hour or so, and would leave them and the next day I’d feed them.

DK: Did Bill Ford race there, too?

PC: Yeah. He got interested. He bought a couple little horses. He never had much luck with them, but he worked at them hard. He was very smart.

CU: Dana Creel, was he up there, too, or did he come later?

 

Cleaveland – 9

PC: He came later. He has a farm down towards Sharon, By Seymour’s. The farm back in there. That was Hosiers. He had some seven or eight brood mares. He was going to raise colts. He had some man to take care of it. He had something to do with that.

CU: He was connected with the Ford Foundation.

DK: Did you have a favorite horse?

PC; Yes, I got a picture of that horse.

CU; Woody?

DK: What was the horse’s name?

PC: Gaywood. That was my favorite. I got him down in Millbrook.

This guy used to be a driver out in Ohio. Dr. Noble and all those people would go to a big party. This man who used to be a trainer out in Ohio told Doc he had had this horse. He was eight years old and never raced, but he was going to try him. He just let a girl take it for a riding horse. 5he rode him.

I got a hold of George Miner, and we went down and brought him home. He hadn’t given him to me. I didn’t want any trouble. He hadn’t had a harness on in seven years. The next day I put a harness on him.

DK: You trained him then? How long did you have him? How long did he live?

PC: We raced him until he was fourteen. You can’t race him after that. Not on a legal racing track. So when he was fourteen, I let Bill Ford’s daughter ride him. She thought she was a great rider. She could ride anything. She got along pretty good with him. She took him and kept the horse at Shagroy.

CU: Who was Becky Alden?

PC:She was the one I bought at Saratoga. She was a great big

 

Cleaveland – 10

mare. She was hard-headed.

DK: You had her after Gaywood?

PC: Yeah. I had a couple of others in there, too. I didn’t pay much money for them. I guess I gave four hundred dollars for Becky Alden.

OK: How often did you race at the track? Did you have a regular time?

PC: Oh, yeah. We’d jog them every day. What we’d call jogging – Just go round the paces. Races were every Saturday in the morning, Noble and Ford. Sometimes Noble wouldn’t get there until eleven. Dr. Noble had to be at the hospital then. He gave up doctoring and went in for heart research at the Sharon Hospital. He’s still got them horses, eight or nine, I thought that I’d only give him five years and then he’d get sick of them. Fowler, he stayed three years, and he threw in the sponge. He had to get up to be there at seven o’clock in the morning, be at the Sharon Hospital at eight o’clock and start operating. He got quite tired of that. Larry Perkins worked for Dr. Noble.

DK: Where was the blacksmith shop in town?

PC: On Walton Street, two of them. One was on that side (where Larry Boyles lives now) and then they built one on the other side. Hines came up from Palls Village or Lime Rock. Lime Rock had a blacksmith. Lakeville had this one. And they had one down by the Spurr Co., by Community Service, by the brook. That was a blacksmith. They had a wagon shop. They used to make wagons and sleighs there. They’d paint them there, too. That was where McArthur lives.

DK: Who ran the blacksmith shop on Walton Street?

 

Cleaveland. – 11

PC: Irishman was for (four?) years, the old man. I remember him as a kid. I used to go there and stand in the doorway and watch. I was just horse crazy. Then when Lime Rock went out of business, they had a lot of horses down there and big working teams. Hines went and bought this. He started to bunch them down there. They all used to have to bring their horses to the blacksmith. Then they got so they thought the horse was going out and the automobiles were coming in. Pete Hines, he stuck to it. He started to do some work with cars.

DK: When did you get your first automobile?

PC; 1922

DK: What kind was it?

PC: Ford

CU: But you never had a driver’s test, did you, to get your license?

PC: No, I didn’t like it. I’d rather have a horse any day.

DK: Crin said there was still a mill over here on Cleaveland Street.

PC: Yeah.

DK: Did you ever live there? I suppose that street was named for your family.

PC: Yeah. They owned a little house across from Patchens’.

That was a Cleaveland place. They had all the land clear down to Cannons’.sold it off.

DK: That was your grandfather?

PC; No, my uncle. My grandfather’s name was Frederick. My father’s name was Benjamin. He was one of fifteen children. I think he was the oldest one. There were several boys. My father always stayed home. When his mother died, he went out west.

 

Cleaveland – 12

to North Dakota, for a season. They would take a bunch of men out, work them all summer on the wheat farms. If they had a really good one, they wanted to keep him. They wanted to keep my Dad, but he couldn’t stay. He’d had enough. He stayed for the harvest. When they started plowing, they ’d start out in the morning at seven o’clock and come back at noon to feed the horses. When they brought the grain in, they’d take it to the elevators. There wasn’t much to do but talk to himself, so he got going.

End of first session –

Continued 5/17/81 –

DK: You worked where Pocket Knife Square is now, as they call it? PC: Yeah.

DK: That was when they were making knife handles there?

PC: They made all kinds of things. Pocket knives. Cases for all kinds of different knives. Kids got along when they opened up the shop.

DK: What was your job?

PC: I had to do everything after I got in there. I was 12 years old.

DK: What were the wages then?

PC: Fifty cents a day, ten hours a day.

DK: And how many days a week?

PC: Half a day off Saturday.

DK: You didn’t have one particular Job?

PC: Well, what they did, they’d give me a job that I was capable of following. (Indistinct: got something on the wheels… put them in a drill press) Had to scrape all those wheels off soak them first in a big tub, put them…

 

Cleaveland – 13

DK: That was for grinding?

PC: That was quite a Job. They’d get all the blades in the spring for all they were going to work up, all stamped out, put them in a drill press, ….push them down ….raise your knees up like that….

DK: How long did you work there?

PC: Just in the summer. Then I…. It was during the school vacation, whenever that was.

DK: Did they employ a lot of young fellows in town?

PC: Well, they used to, years ago. They had something like seventy-five or eighty. I think there was about fifty or sixty working there when I was there. They had two floors and a basement. Down in the basement was the grinders and machine shop. The next floor was the Jack knives, you know, where they made the Jack knives. The top floor was for the small knives.

DK: Must have been a busy place?

CU: They made scissors there, too, didn’t they?

PC: They didn’t make them, but they finished them up. The same as they did the butcher knives. They’d get them someplace else and finish them up there…. warehouse…. all different kinds of knives, you know, and they had to finish them up. Saturday they were supposed to be all done and then they had to be put in a (tray – train?) and taken in,

DK: Did they have anyone employed on piece work or was it all hourly wage?

PC: They had a lot of piece work, too. Not so much in the Jack knives. Then they had a place on the second floor, a small

Room where they had six or seven finishing them up, polishing

 

Cleaveland – 14

the knives, buffing them and all that kind of stuff. That was the last in all that processing. They got them ready for market.

DK: I wanted to ask you also, what you think are the most important changes in dairy farming over the years.

PC: When I was a kid, of course, there was always small dairies. Fifteen or twenty head, hat would be a big one. They got so three or four would get together and get so they could build a herd of cows. I’d like 250 cows.

DK: That’s when you had the dairy?

PC: Yeah.

CU: The horses did all the work. Now they got tractors.

DK: When did machinery begin to come in? For instance, when did you first get milking equipment?

PC: Oh, they had it before we come here, back in 1916-1917, maybe ’18, the first milking machine come out.

DK: Who was the first to have it in this area?

PC: Joe Honer, down on the Bauer place. He was the first. He put in a good milking system. The gas engine was down in the basement of the barn. You could hear it all over the hills.

DK: When did you get milking equipment?

PC: I didn’t get it until after I bought it myself about 1923-24.

DK: Did it make a difference in the number of people you had working for you?

PC: Yes. Well, when we got ours we had two barns. Bach man had seventy-five and he had a helper. He did all the milking and cleaning and outside work. They’d come up and do that. It took two to do that, or three.

DK: Who were some of the people who worked for you?

 

Cleaveland – 15

PC: Burt Honer…. before his father had. He got tired of it. He come up and stayed with me eleven years, and his boy, Joe, when he got out of school. He took one barn, and Ben had the other. They all tried to see which one could make the most milk.

DK: A little competition?

PC: Joe was a good boy, a good worker.

CU: You had Gray Corcoran for a long time.

PC: Oh, yeah. Old Corky was with us seventeen years. He had never had anything to do with cows on account of he worked for the telephone company, splicing. He had a good job, but he drank like hell. They let him go. He came to work for me and stayed for seventeen years.

CU: He just worked in the barn with the cows, that’s all he did.

PC: Kept the barn clean and the cows clean.

CU: You had Buster Parsons.

PC: Yes, he worked mostly outside.

DK: How long did he work for you?

PC: Oh, six or eight years. He was a horse person, too. I always had pretty good horses.

DK: What are some of the ways the town has changed? What strikes you the most about the changes in Salisbury?

PC: There’s quite a lot of difference. Take Lakeville. When I was young, there was a Holley Block at the top of the hill where the bank was. That was a drug store and a grocery store and the post office in that building. Next door, next to the stairway, was a road that used to run out…. Right at the foot of the hill was Roberts’ store, a big grocery store. Store stood there a long time. They finally tore it down.

 

Cleaveland – 16

They tore down the building that Richardson was in always in Lakeville. They had pretty good steaks, you know. They wanted to get rid of all those places. They didn’t like it.

CU: Wasn’t there a road that went down through the park by the fire company?

PC: Called Furnace Hill. It went down there where the sidewalk is. That was Furnace Hill. Tt’s where we used to slide down hill in the winter. Way up by William’s place and come down on the hairpin turn down to DuFour’s and DuFour’s garage.

CU: The train was here all the time in those days.

PC: They had nine trains, running every hour.

DK: Where did the ‘dinky bus’ come from?

CU: I don’t know. It came over from Canaan and that way. I know my sister used to take it to go up to the library.

PC: One train to Lakeville, it was the 7:10, stayed there overnight in Millerton. It came back in the morning at 8:15 to go to Hartford. They took on two cars both ways. There was a whole lot of coal.

DK: What other kinds of freight did they haul?

PC: Milk went by train, too.

CU: Where was that platform they put the milk on?

PC: Right by the pond, about there. They used to bring a (switch car) at twelve o’clock over to Lakeville, leave it on the switch. Then they’d come back at 12:10 or something like that and pick up this car. They had to put ice on it to keep it cool. They built a big ice house up Lincoln City way, up above the post office and they used to put up their ice. Somebody had to get it out every day and bring it down and put it in.

CU: What was up by the Porter Ore bed, that ice house?

 

Cleaveland – 1?

PCs No, there was a little pond on that brook up there.

CU: I thought it was the ice house. They used to cut ice off the Porter.

DK: What do you mean by the Porter?

CU: The ore bed. You see. Porter Street goes right up by the ore bed. They took the ice out of there and from the lake.

DK: When the milk train would go to Hartford?

PC: They had a station at Taconic. They had to ice it there, too.

DK: Didn’t the Bordens have a plant over in Canaan.

PC; Yes

DK: What other changes have taken place?

CU: They had a lot of buildings there where the garage is now.

They had A. H. Heaton Co.

PC: They tore down all the big buildings.

CU: The Chinaman had a laundry there. A.H. Heaton had their big building. Years ago they had that Dr. Knight’s up there across from the church.

PC: That was the

DK; That was an institution?

PC: Dr. Knight took care of all the…

CU: Feeble-minded, simple-minded.

PC: He had about five hundred there at one time. He was quite a fellow.

DK; Where did they house all those people? Did they have other buildings that don’t exist now?

PC: Oh, yeah, a lot of buildings, all facing the lake, right across from the Catholic Church.

CU: Where the Gallery is. Where Scholles used to live. Some of

the houses were moved

 

Cleaveland. – 18

PC: Dr. Knight dropped dead in 1912. He was running for governor. He got up to make a speech… at the time. He dropped over dead. That ended that. Then his brother came and he was a doctor In Sharon. He took it over and run It for a year. But he wasn’t the man the other doctor was. They started building down in Mansfield. Then they sold the buildings and got rid of them.

DK: When did they close the institution here?

PC: 1916.

CU: That house right on the corner, somebody has an office there. Is it Warner? That gray house going down to Community Service. That was one of Knight’s, wasn’t it?

PC: Yeah, that old building.

DK: Where Rod Aller has his office?

CU: and wasn’t Lee Dufour’s, where Baylis Surdam lives? That’s one of Knight’s? That was moved down.

PC: One in Salisbury. Just by the Milk Bar.

CU: Where Harris Rosseter used to live?

PC: Yeah, that building on the corner.

CU: Right across from Minton’s. That place. I don’t know who lives in it now, but it used to belong to Harris Rosseter.

PC: Oh, there are quite a lot of changes that way. The Knight farm used to hire a lot of help. They made all the feeble- minded who could, work.

DK: Where was Knight’s farm?

PC: Up towards Wells Hill where Vaill’s farm was. It started… acres up there. Old Pettee used to be up there. He built the house where Vaill used to live.

DK: So the Pettees ran a farm there also?

 

Cleaveiand – 19

CU: He ran the farm for Knight?

PC: Oh, no. Pettee owned it first,

CU: And then went up to Lincoln City?

PC: Pettee owned one hundred ninety acres. Different ones bought them up. See, they had two hundred or three hundred acres in there. And he kept a pair of horses up there. They burnt coal.

It came in to the Spurr Co. They’d order carloads at a time. They’d go back up there and get coal for the institution.

DK: That must have made quite a difference when that closed down. It must have employed a lot of people in town.

PC: Oh, yeah. Dr. Knight always had nine or ten horses. Nice horses.

DK: Who were the doctors who took care of the townspeople at that time?

PC: Old Dr. Bissell. And they got Dr. Tuttle. A whole lot of people liked him.

DK: Was Sharon Hospital in existence then? When did it get started?

PC: I remember when that started, right across the road from the brick house. Dr. Chaffee, he started the hospital up there, and he was there for two or three years. He raised the money. It was a small building with an office and maybe six or eight rooms. That was the first real hospital.

DK: What year was that?

PC: I can’t think.

DK: Do you think of anything else?

CU: He gets very disturbed when we go to Millerton now, where Mr. Firmer had that whole hillside where Campbell Becket lives, this side all the way through. He had sheep in there, and you

could see the lake and everything else. It was all meadow

 

Cleaveland – 20

PC: Billy Bissell owned it.

CU: Oh, Billy Bissell, was it?

PC: They kept everything just so. People could sit on their porch and see the lake and everything else.

CU: Which house was his? Where Beckets live now?

PC: Where Becket is now. Lyman lived there where the Drummond

apartments are now.

CU: Were you around when they were going to dynamite the bank to get the money out of the safe?

PC: Who did that?

CU: Well, they don’t know. They made a mistake when they put the dynamite in and blew the door in on the safe and couldn’t get the money anyway. The door went in.

DK: Where was the bank then?

PC: Right on the corner. The bank was on the first floor. Three women lived there a long time, three sisters.

DK: What was their name?

PC: Fritz. They ran a millinery store, made hats.

CU: Josephine Cullen had one, too. Did the telephone company start in that building up above there?

PC: Yeah, up where Leubuscher was (now Community Fuel). Also that big building was a hotel.

CU: Was that the Wononscopomuc Inn?

PC: Yeah.

DK: Now, which one was that?

CU: That is gone. That was what was called Gateway Inn across from where Mr. Mayland had his chimes over there. They had that Wononscopomuc House. A lot of people came in the summertime. And they had a bridge going over to the lake.

 

Cleaveland – 21

PC: They had a big inn on the other side of the lake.

DK: What was the name of that?

PC: Interlaken Inn.

CU: Was that the one that burnt?

PC: That was a big building, four stories high and with a big porch. Eighty beds at one time.

CU: The Wake Robin used to be a school.

PC: Taconic School.

CU; Was it Mrs. Hunter who ran it?

PC: Ho. She ran the inn after the school was discontinued. She took over then. (Miss Lillian Dixon was head of the school.)

DK: Was that a boarding school?

PC: It was. They had about thirty^ students. Dr. Knight owned the land. He gave them the Iand. They built the buildings and that’s how the school got there. They run it for a long time,

CU: How many school districts were around then?

PC: Thirteen,

CU: Can you still remember what they were?

PC: Pretty near. I don’t know where they all were. I’ll start in Lakeville: Lakeville, Salisbury, then all around the foot of the hill where Al Borden lives now (I can’t think of that name), Chapinville, Taconic (had a hard time changing the name), Salisbury School Hill, Ticknor, Mt. Riga, Lime Rock, Amesville, Harrison (over by Long Pond where those pillars are).

CU: That’s ten.

PC: I had them all. I let George take it. I don’t know what become of it.

DK: Was there one superintendent in charge of £.11 of them?

PC: Each one was separate.

 

Cleaveland – 22

DK: When did they begin to consolidate?

PC: Well, the first school that closed was ___ because it was getting old. There wasn’t room enough.

CU: Ticknor, they closed before that, didn’t they?

PC: No was the last teacher to teach there. She taught in Lakeville four years.

CU: There was only one teacher in each school?

PC: Until they got to Lakeville. They always thought that Salisbury was a little better than Lakeville, that they learned more there high school there for years. After they closed up, they made him superintendent of schools.

DK: Was there any rivalry between Lakeville and Salisbury? Did they have teams that played each other?

CU: Tom (Ulin) used to play with Lakeville. They’d play up in Salisbury. I can remember when there was a Lime Rock school and when the Ore Hill School was operating.

PC: Ore Hill School stood right out on the corner.

DK: On the corner just beyond 112?

PC: Yeah. That’s where they dumped the sludge. They had five or six teams hauling iron ore all the time loads a day.

DK: You never worked in the iron ore industry?

PC: No. They’d come back, get the other load, load that up, feed the horses and head back for Lime Rock. They made three trips a day.

DK: There must have been a lot of traffic on those roads.

CU: All dirt roads.

PC: They used to get stuck. They would pull over to the side and leave it until the road was better. They would weigh before and

weigh it again after they got there.

 

Cleaveland – 23

CU: They didn’t want to pay for what fell off. Where did they get what they took to Mount Riga?

DK: Did they use sleds in the wintertime to hail the ore?

PC: Oh, yeah. They liked good sledding. They’d go up over Wells Hill Road and come into Lime Rock that way.

CU: Farnum Road used to be called Muck Alley because it was always muddy in the springtime. 01’ Muck Hole, they called it.

PC: There was a pond down there.

CU: Where the swamp is. That’s where they did their first skating down in there.

PC: The boys skated on what they called the big pond. The girls were supposed to stay on their own.

DK: Boys had their pond and the girls had theirs?

PC: Yeah, but it got so the girls…. Sometimes the whole thing flooded over and would freeze up and people would skate all over it.

DK: Did you do any skiing in the wintertime?

PC: Oh, yeah.

CU: A lot of sleigh riding.

DK: And in the summertime, it was mostly baseball, wasn’t it?

PC: Yeah Baseball.

DK: Did you play on the baseball team?

PC: I never did. I always worked. I was too tired.

Brick Whalen worked for me. Him and Hop Rudd played together. Brick was good, but he didn’t care whether he could play professionally or not. He tried out for the majors.

o