Smith, Harold #2

Interviewee: Harold Smith

Narrator:JoanneElliott

Tape#:117A

Place of Interview: Bloomer Lane, Salisbury, Ct.

Date:August18, 2006

Summary of talk: parents both born in Salisbury, early education and marriage, size of Scoville estate, Taconic School and teachers, Laura Johnson daughter of his first teacher Mrs. Holmes, Whittlesey School, various locations of post office, the chapel building, Taconic school, Taconic Reading House, Scoville’s power house for making electricity, Scoville green houses, various ski jumps, his home now,, burning of the two mansions, watch geese, horses, children, number of employees, goldfish, holiday parties for Taconic families, swimming areas, sound of bull frogs, Mr. Angus, viewing pictures of the estate, discussion of other houses on and off the estate, Miss Edith Scoville and sister, location of Pope estate, the boat house, his stolen motor, and his dog Kelly.

Date: August, 18, 2006

Property of the Oral History Project

Salisbury Association at the Scoville Memorial Library

Salisbury, Connecticut, 06068

 

JE:OK Mr. Smith, I guess today we’re going to talk about you growing up on the Scoville Estate in

Taconic. Was your family always living in town here?

HS:My father and mother were both born in Salisbury. When they were young, they came up here

and went to work for Scovilles, the Herbert Scovilles. My father was there for 42 years. My mother was there about 20 years, and we lived at the Scoville estate; I mean in one of the houses. I was born in the house at the Scovilles in 1922, and I just lived around here all my life. I didn’t finish school because my mother passed away when she was 40 years old. I had 2 years left in high school. I had to go out and make my own living at that time. I did ok. Then Blanche she came along; she worked for the Scovilles.

JE:This is your wife?

HS:Yeah. Blanche, she worked for the Peter Scovilles, and that’s where I met my wife, up at the

mansion up there.

JE:She came as a baby nurse you said?

HS:Yes, as a baby nurse. I have a picture of her I’ll show you the picture. That’s how we met, and

we got married. Then World War II started, and I had to go war for three years.

JE:She stayed here.

HS:Uh-huh. We lived with my father up in the Scoville estate, right near the Scoville’s old carriage

house, the white house right there. We lived in there. Then I come back, and my dad he got sick. We had to move out of the Scoville house. We came here, and bought this house in 1948. We had a real good life.

JE:How big was the estate back when you were a youngster? Did it go from the old Whitridge

estate all the way up to Taconic Center?

HS:Yes, it was 800-900 hundred acres, a lot of acres. They were good people, the Scovilles. I went to

school at the Taconic School. No buses, you walked every day. It was cruel.

JE:Well, that wasn’t too far.

HS:No, it was nice.

JE:There was another little school along on Twin Lakes Road.

HS:Yes.

JE:Down there. That was where the kids downin the Whittlesey District.

HS:Exactly, exactly. I went to school about there until the sixth grade; then I had to go down to

Lakeville, the central school.

 

JE:So you went to this little school that John Funt’s son fixed up- right?

HS:Yes. My first teacher was Mrs. Holmes, Laura Holmes.

JE:Oh my goodness.

HS:Her daughter used to work down at Town Hall, Laura Johnson. Then I went down to Lakeville to

school down there up to eighth grade; then moved from eighth grade to the high school down in Falls Village. As I was growing up here, I remember passenger trains that used to come into Taconic, at the station there. That was my first train ride from Taconic to Salisbury.

JE:It was called Taconic, not Chapinville?

HS:No, it was Taconic. That was my first train ride.

JE:Into Salisbury.

HS:The mail used to come in here, and there used to be a man up the road here, Stanley Pickert, I

think it was. They used to have the post office in their house years ago. He used to come down then to pick up the mail with a horse.

JE:No wagon, just a horse.

HS:Just the horse. The post office was there for a while and then it went from there; do you know

where the Channel Road is?

JE:Yes.

HS:The first big house going up the hill from the Channel Road used to be the Kelseys’ place. The

post office was in there for a long time. Then it went from there up to where it is now, and that used to be a little mom and pop store.

JE:I remember that store when I first came to town.

HS:A gas station there.

JE:I don’t remember the gas station, but there was always a convenience store had bread and milk

and so forth.

HS:The O’Nells had it. In another part of that same building is I think a piano repair store. They used

to have square dances and stuff in there a long time ago. Do you remember the little church?

JE:No!

HS:On the Taconic Green?

 

JE:Let’s see, on the west side of the green? There’s a building that looked like it should have been a

church, but it doesn’t have a steeple or anything.

HS:There was a church there. It was built just like a church.

JE:Is it torn downnow?

HS:Yes.

JE:It’s gone.

HS:When we werestudents, we used to go up there in the wintertime and kind of volunteer a little

bit to keep the paths open in the wintertime. They used to heat the place with wood, and keep the stove going.

JE:A wood stove.

HS:The school I used to go to, that school house was heated with a big wood furnace. During recess

there used to be a great big pile of wood outside the school, and we used to go out there and get all the wood from outside inside, during recess.

JE:That was your exercise.

HS:Well, we got all the wood in, and then if we had time, we’d go down in the basement and pile it

up real nice. It was good, real good.

JE:How many classrooms were in that school house?

HS:From first grade to high school.

JE:Oh, my goodness.

HS:First grade to high school, and they had two great big mammoth doors, sliding doors. They could

open them up or they could close them.

JE:So there were two separate rooms or all one room.

HS:Yeah.

JE:Oh for Heaven’s sakes: all eight grades in one room.

HS:Then there was another lady, just where Ed Palco lives, used to be people named Curtis.

Every day we’d have to go up there; we’d take turns. Great big baskets with a lot of cups and two great big mammoth like tea kettles. They used to make hot cocoa every day for us. We’d go up there and get all that.

 

JE:So the kids had to transport it, only boys.

HS:Yeah. Then down right across the Channel Road there used to be another house, kind of a brick,

stone building. That used to be the Taconic Reading House.

JE:Oh, is it still there?

HS:Still there.

JE:Yeah, that stone house, next to or well, sort of across the street from where Myskins used to

live.

HS:Exactly. That used to be the Taconic Reading House; they used to have picnics and little get-

togethers and stuff like that; that other big building right direct across from the channel there that used to be Scoville’s power house. They used to make their own electricity.

JE:When the Pogues lived there, there was still water running through the basement.

HS:Exactly, very true.

JE:That’s where the generator was, and I have a picture of that we can look at.

HS:Then down in back of there, there used to be this beautiful spring. Oh, what water. There were

three or four older people up in Taconic that didn’t have water, and us kids they’d give us their big empty buckets, and we’d go down there and get water, a bucket for those people, for their drinking water. I was up there about four or five years ago and just took a walk down in there, and it’s all been filled now. No more…

JE:No more spring.

HS:The Scovilles, they used to have a big hot house, and six green houses, remember the green

houses?

JE:No, I have a picture of them.

HS:They used to have six green houses, and they used to have a great big vegetable garden. They

used to raise all their own vegetables and they’d given them to the people who worked for them.

JE:So this area here on Bloomer Lane, this wasn’t part of the estate?

HS:No, this belonged to the Bloomers. The people who owned it their last name was Bloomer.

Right out here there is an old foundation; it used to be a big saw mill. I remember the saw when it was still running, and we used to, they had a saw mill and a big planer and right out here the planer would throw all the chips out from the planer. When we were kids, we were out playing in all those chips. Then

 

as we got older, over here a little ways there was a, eight or ten of us lived around here, we had a nice ski jump. Just over here.

JE:Oh, there’s enough of a hill there.

HS:Yeah, a nice hill. The man who had the saw mill used to let us have the old wasted lumber for

building the ski jump ramp over there.

JE:Well, there used to be a ski jump down here, on the, what do they call that hill at the end of the

road by the blinker?

HS:Rabbit Hill.

JE:No, I’ve hear a different name for it, but I guess it was Salisbury School’s…

HS:Exactly, I remember the ski jump up there, I remember that ski jump.

JE:We walked that hill once, and it was all grown up…

HS:Exactly

JE:To brush.

HS:Maybe a couple of years ago I took a walk up there.

JE:It’s probably even moregrown up.

HS:I’m sure.

JE:It was twenty yearsagowhenI was up there.

HS:Are you a native from aroundhere?

JE:No, no, we built our house in1976; we came up full time in 1970.

HS:Where did you live?

JE:I was born in Massachusetts.

HS:Oh, Massachusetts.

JE:My husband was from New York State, and we met in New York City. So we were trying to get

out of the city.

HS:Exactly, I know what you mean. So I bought this place in 1948; before it was an open porch and I

had it enclosed. Now I stay out here most of the time, when the weather is good.

 

JE:This is your living room in summertime.

HS:Yes. I take care of my birds out there, they come for bird seed. Last night I sat out here and I

could hear the hoot owls. There was one here and one out there. They were communicating back and forth.

JE:The doves sound like hoot owls sometimes, those mourning doves.

HS:I like the doves.

JE:We just saw them close by. They sound so sad.

HS:I know. The Scovilles years ago they had their own ice house. They used to make their own ice.

JE:Right out here on the…

HS:Yes, they used to; you know where the Scoville’s boat house is?

JE:Yes.

HS:They used to go down to that big boat house to get the ice off the lake. They had a big ice

platform. There was quite a few people around this area that was helping to get ice. You go up Beaver Dam Road; it is the first little road on the right hand side. They called it Pirate Road. It goes from there over to Grasslands Farm. The ice house was there, and the pump house used to be over there. When my sister and I were young, my father says, we had no ice box then. We had to have ice.

JE:Yes, to keep the cold.

HS:My father, he worked for the Scovilles forty two years, he said, “Ok,” then he checked the

refrigerator. “We’ve got to have some ice. I’ll meet you up at the ice house.”

JE:So they trucked it from the boat house all the way over to the ice house, and then packed it in

what?

HS:Sawdust. My sister and 1 would go up there with a little cart, a four wheeled cart, and he would

put a big block of ice on it. We went home; the gal would say, “Now wash it off; make sure that all that sawdust is off there. “The ice house is still there.

JE:Is it before you get to the water tower?

HS:Yeah.

JE:Before where the Scovilles live now?

 

HS:You just get off the Taconic Road and go ahead to start up Beaver Dam Road; if you go slow, it is

on the right hand side, a little road just mule tracks with the grass growing up. It’s an all brick building, and they also have a big help house down in there. That pump house used to supply all of the Scoville’s houses and territory. Now they don’t use it. They don’t need it anymore, but the building is still there. All that pump house water used to go up into a big tower. They used to have two great big mammoth wooden tanks.

JE:Well, that tower just got a new roof not too long ago, didn’t it?

HS:Yes, exactly.

JE:A nice shiny roof probably dulled up by now; it was done a couple of years ago.

HS:I worked for Scovilles for a while; in the summertime we used that big old water tower and

there were stairs along inside the tower.

JE:Inside?

HS:Yup, we’d have to go there, way up to the top and take the shutters off. Open it up in the

summertime because Scovilles used to spend a lot of time here in the summertime. I don’t think the wooden steps are up there anymore. I’ll have to ask Bill. Do you know Bill Stanton? He’s the caretaker.

JE:I’ve heard the name.

HS:He’s the caretaker. They used to have horses out there. In Scoville’s mansion up where it is

now, I can remember, Scovilles going away and we had to go up there one night and stay up there. During the night the mansion caught on fire, that’s the second mansion up there.

JE:Oh, my goodness. Yes, this one across the road here was where they lived before they built that

one, right?

HS:That’s the second one there, too.

JE:That one burnt?

HS:Yeah, they both burnt. That was Herbert Scoville, no that was Robert Scoville, and Herbert

Scoville ended up on Beaver Dam Road. Father and son and stuff like that.

JE:Oh, I see.

HS:My father, he, we were lucky we had the dog that night. The dog woke us up. Smoke and stuff

like that, my father had a pillow case and he kept it for years. It had the outline of his head, all the rest of the pillow was all smoke.

JE:

Oh, my goodness.

 

HS:We were lucky.

JE:Yes, because smoke doesn’t wake us up.

HS:We were lucky people.

JE:So how did you put it out?

HS:Called the fire company.

JE:Oh, and they came.

HS:It was a total. I don’t know how it really started. I was about four years old at the time. I

remember….

JE:That would have impressed you.

HS:We used to spend a lot of time up there. The Scovilles had two wild geese for watch dogs. That

gander, boy oh boy, if he didn’t want you, he’d put it on to you. He’d beat you, and he’d bite you.

JE:And chase you.

HS:And chase you. We had to walk up to the school, we used go out through the woods. At night

when we’d come home from school, we had to watch out for that gander. He got us a few times. Oh boy!

JE:Never mind Dobermans.

HS:That’s right, that’s right. They had horses; they had three stables there at the mansion. They

used to have riding trails all over the place. When I worked for the Scovilles, I used to have to go up there and keep all those trails brush free and everything. Keep them so for riding, and all that. They were good people to work for, the Scovilles. They were very, very good people.

JE:Did they spend all year here, the Scovilles, or did they just come in the summertime?

HS:They also had a place over in Portugal. They spent about half a year over there. They spent the

summer, nice weather here; went over to Portugal the rest of the time, spent winters over there. They were really pretty good people. I’ve had a really good life there.

JE:Yes, it sounds like it was a good childhood.

HS:It was.

JE:Were there a lot of children of the families on the estate?

 

HS:Scovilles had Tony, Tommy, Nicky, and what was the girl’s name? I’ve forgot the girl’s name;

they had four.

JE:And the other workers on the estate had families?

HS:Yes, the Scovilles at one time employed about all together about thirty-two people. They used

to have something to do with Grasslands Farm.They used to have something to do with what used to be called the North Wales Farm over on Route 41, now it’s a horse farm.

JE:Where the Morgan horses are now?

HS:That used to be a big dairy farm over there. The Scovilles up there had a nice swimming pool

which we took care of; had tennis courts which we took care of, and in the summertime up at the mansion on the lawn they had these great big outside pools with lilies; it wasn’t very deep, and it had goldfish in there. Then in the fall you’d have to catch all those goldfish and bring them down to the hot house or green house, indoors where it is warm. That’s where the goldfish spent the winter.

JE:Oh, for Heaven’s sake.

HS:Inside, then in the summertime we’d catch all the goldfish and take them back up there to the

outside pool.

JE:They must have had to change the water in the…

HS:Yes, yes.

JE:In the greenhouse.

HS:Exactly.

JE:To keep it fresh for them.

HS:They were good people to work for, the Scovilles. When Mr. and Mrs. Scoville were there, and

their children were growing up, they would invite the whole Taconic up there every Fourth of July. They would have mammoth fireworks.

JE:Oh, on Fourth of July.

HS:Yup, mammoth fireworks. Then around Christmas time they had another big room up there,

and they would invite all the children from Taconic for a Christmas party. They used to have this, I forget what they call it, it was a big bag and had a rope on it, and they would blindfold you and give you a stick, to see if you could…

JE:Oh, a pinata.

HS:There you go, exactly.

 

JE:It’s a Mexican thing.

HS:Sometimes you have to be careful because kids are too….

JE:Hit you in the head. Then when you break it open there’s candy, right?

HS:Yeah, a lot of candy. Everybody scrambled to get all the candy.

JE:Did you swim in the lake as a child or as a kid?

HS:Up a little bit south of Scoville’s boathouse. They used to let a lot of the people drive down in

there. There was all, oh golly a big area, no mud or no, all nice gravel, a big area.

JE:Oh, where that rock is now?

HS:In that area. It was beautiful then in there. You could go out there quite a ways; there was one

great mammoth rock. We used to go out there and just stand on that big rock.

JE:And survey the area.

HS:And survey the area. Sometimes you’d not be doing anything, and the perch would come and

nip on your legs.

JE:Nibble? Yeah, that’s what on our dock, if you put your feet in the water, they’ll come and nibble

at you.

HS:Do you have your dock near Smithwick’s?

JE:It’s the same one.

HS:Oh, the same one.OK.

JE:All of us who live on that side of the road share that lake front. It’s nice.

HS:Exactly.

JE:You didn’t swim in the outlet down here off the cliffs; off those stone cliffs?

HS:Where the lake went into the channel?

JE:Yes.

HS:Yes, that was nice. Then up by the channel itself where the control for the water, over in back of

there with all those rocks, that was a good swimming area.

JE:

Yes, I’ve heard other people say they swam there.

 

HS:Yeah, there was one big tree there with a big rope on it and swing on the rope, swang and

swang. That was clear, no weed or anything: that was really nice.

JE:When the lake wasyoung, huh?

HS:Exactly.

JE:The lake is aging

HS:One thing I don’t hear any more, I used to hear, I don’t know if this treatment of the lake has

anything to do with it or not. I don’t hear the big old bull frogs anymore. I used to like to hear the bull frogs at night haroof, haroof. You don’t hear them anymore.

JE:You don’t think it’s your hearing?

HS:My hearing’s good.

JE:Yeah, do you hear the low pitches, too? Because sometimes when your hearing goes, there is

one register that disappears first.

HS:I know, but I don’t think so.

JE:I haven’t noticed; I’ll have to listen.

HS:Listen and see. Sometimes I set here, matter of fact it was the night before last, here he comes

that great big mammoth airplane. Sometimes I think,” Don’t take my chimney off my house.”

JE:Well, let me…

HS:I’ve had a good life here.

JE:Let me see if I can show you these pictures that were donated to the Salisbury Association. They

were sent by a lady from California, who was the daughter of the Head Gardener. (Annie Angus Ed.)Now this is her father I think and these children…Are they you? Are you in here?

HS:I don’t think so.

JE:No?

HS:That’s down by the hot house, green house, Mr. Angus, Walter? I think it was Walter.

JE:Yes, well her name I guess…

HS:Yes, I remember all those buildings. No I don’t…. likeness.

JE:Yes, but the slides were donated by Mrs. Angus, widow of the estate gardener.

 

HS:I remember him; he always smoked a cigar. He always had a cigar in his mouth. He used to live

on Beaver Dam Road, the first little stone house on your left.

JE:On your left, the one that is sort of in the trees, now.

HS:Exactly, there’s some lady that lives in there now. I don’t know her, but that’s where he lived. He

was the Head Gardener.

JE:OK, was that not his house?

HS:This is the greenhouse, this is the potting shed, and this is all the greenhouses here. I

remember…

JE:Oh that’s right, here it is. That’s the big glass part. These are the stairs coming down from the

mansion to the greenhouse.

HS:Yup, I remember those. This is nice.

JE:Now these are with not really many trees around, and this one she calls, now what did she call

it, the carriage house.

HS:Exactly, exactly.

JE:Is that where you lived?

HE:The carriage house and the first little white house just past it. Right near Slater Road?

JE:Yes, ok.

HS:In the white house there, that’s where we lived.

JE:That was part of the estate?

HS:Exactly. Oh yes, there’s up there, the old power house, that’s a picture of the power house back

side.

JE:The back side, people couldn’t place that. I said I think you’re in the back yard looking at the

road.

HS:Exactly. Sure.

JE:But now it’s all grown up. You know to trees.

HS:That was a nice steep bank. We used to just sit on it in the wintertime and slide down on our

butts, slide down that hill. I remember that. Wow!

JE:There’s a picture of the mansion.

 

HS:Yeah, there it is.

JE:With hardly any trees around it.

HS:That’s right, exactly. That’s really nice. This is nice to see.

JE:I can print some of these.

HS:Yeah, I remember all these.

JE:I can print some of these if you want to keep them. I can print some more.

HS:Yeah, I remember all those. The carriage house thereThey didn’t use those old cars anymore.

They used to store a lot of those old cars in there.

JE:Now that’s the building where the Ferstons live now?

HS: This is the building right across from the channel, where they control the water.

JE:OK, the power house.

HS:The power house. And that other house on the land side just before your get to the Channel

Road.

JE:That was this one, right?

HS:That used to be Mrs. Scoville’s pottery shed. She used to do all her pottery stuff in there. She

had one of those kick wheel stuff that you put…, a furnace and an oven. She had everything in there.

JE:To bake the clay.

HS:Yeah, I remember that.

JE:Was that? This is later in the 1950’s, and I don’t know what that building is. It says Head House.

Was that where the Head Gardener lived?

HS:I think so. I’m quite sure. I remember this. There it is.

JE:The old tower.

HS:Now you can barely see it up there.

JE:The water tower.

HS:Wow.

JE:That’s the green house, the big one.

 

HS:Yeah, they used to raise everything in there. Everyone who worked for Scoville there, every once

in a while, about every four or five months, they’d have these great big potted plants. We used to have to put them in their truck and take them up to the mansion. Then bring them back down to the green house, and give them a rest. That’s wonderful.

JE:Well, the Scoville, I mean the Salisbury Association got these slides, and I think they had an

exhibition down at the Holley-Williams House on the Scoville estate. Did you go down and look at it?

HS:I did go down there.

JE:Because I think these pictures were down there, too.

HS:Just down the road a ways there were Scovilles that never got married. There were two sisters,

Edith Scoville and another one; I forgot what her name was. There used to be a small working farm down there with cows and so forth, and stuff like that.

JE:Not Anthony’s sisters, but Hubert’s, ah Herbert’s sisters.

HS:Herbert’s folks, Herbert’s sisters; they never got married. That’s that the last big place on the

right hand side as you go down…

JE:With all the fruit trees that are…

HS:Yeah, that was all Scovilles. The house sits a smaller house I think, forgotten now, that was part

of the little estate.

JE:Tryphena Forsyth lived in one of those houses.

HS:Exactly. He was the chauffeur.

JE:Was he?

HS:He was the chauffeur for the Scovilles. They had another one there that had a small greenhouse,

I forget what his name was, and he was the Head Gardener for those people down there. Now I guess Tony Scoville lives down there now. He bought the one house way over by the Popes, and he bought that and there’s another little house right there with a three four car garage on it. That’s were Tony lives, himself.

JE:The Gate House?

HS:At the Gate House.

JE:Now where is that on this road? Is that that slant driveway that goes up with the iris is planted

along.

 

HS:That was never the Scovilles. When the house was first built up there that was Mr. McChesney.

He used to be associated with Hotchkiss School. My uncle, Jim Smith, used to work for the McChesneys out there on his house.

JE:I can’t place the Pope estate.

HS:You can’t see it. It is way, way back in the woods right near the swamp.

JE:Is it just past where the new house was built on the Whitridge property? Just past it, in the

driveway right next to that new place?

HS:I’m trying to think now. You go out Taconic Road, and there is one house there that’s got a big

white fence in front of it. That’s where Mrs. Miller…

JE:Oh, yes, on the left hand side.

HS:You go by that, and you go down through and start into the woods; there’ll be a driveway that

goes up. That’s where the McChesneys live, go by that and go around this curve then there the first house there where Tony Scoville lives with a three four car garage just past that.

JE:On the right.

HS:Then there’s a long driveway that goes way back. You can’t see it, but that’s where the Popes

used to live, way back over in there.

JE:That was never part of the Scoville estate?

HS:Never. That was part of the Edith Scoville estate, the sisters.

JE:Oh, ok, and they gave the land across the street to the town for that little park.

HS:Exactly. There were two sisters, Edith Scoville and I can’t remember the other one. They used to

own all the land down to the front of route 44.

JE:The name of that little hummock that Salisbury School had their ski jump on and I can’t think

of…

HS:George Kiefer might know.

JE:Bob Smithwick took us for a walk up there. It was park then; it should be used for cross country

skiing and stuff like that, but we had to take a hike every fall. That was Bob Smithwick.

HS:Exactly. I remember him. There used to be right where Tom’s car is sitting there used to be

another great big building there, a car garage and repair shop and stuff like that. One night about midnight my wife, she had a good nose on her, said,” I smell smoke.” You know people lived in those

 

Little apartments at the time. “Oh my god, yes” It was all on fire. They didn’t make it; the young kids had been drinking, and so I went down there and Bob Smithwick, he was a police officer, a real young guy.

He come up here and wanted to know who turned it in. Oh boy, poor guy, he was going down my driveway and it was a little bit icy and he slipped and fell, poor guy.

JE:Oh, yeah. He was the resident trooper.

HS:He was. He was a nice man. I just saw him the other day over in Canaan. His wife used to be

with the Salisbury…

JE:Visiting Nurse.

HS:Visiting Nurse, another nice person.

JE:Yeah, they are good friends.

HS:Yes, they are very nice people, real nice people.

JE:Well, is there anything else you want to say about the Scoville estate? Can you think of anything

that maybe you had planned to say that we didn’t get to?

HS:The boat house down there in the wintertime when there were three of us. We used to like to

go ice fishing; they would let us go down in their boat house.

JE:Could you fish through the…

HS:We’d set our tip-ups out, and we could look out the window to watch our tip-ups.

JE:Oh, I see to stay warm.

HS:We were inside with the fireplace, and a fire cooking hot dogs, hamburgers and stuff like that.

JE:It’s too bad they can’t run any water to that because you know it is sort of no good as a party

house. It is too close to the lake I guess they won’t let them.

HS:There used to be a boat slip. I used to keep my boat in there. I used to have a small boat with a

motor on it. I went down there one day, and the motor was gone. Somebody broke in the window. Now where did it go? So I was down there one day, and I saw this guy come out and cut down toward Wick’s. That looks like my motor. I had trouble with him one timewas gone. I went over to Twin Lakes one day, and there he is again.

JE:Bold as brass, kept it right on the lake.

HS:So I came back and I went up at Wick’s, and I sat where the lake goes into the channel, right

close there. Sure enough here he comes. I said, “That is my motor.” I had dropped it one time and had

 

put some paint on the side of it. The paint was still there. He had a small camp over there near where the Riverards (?) used to live. By golly that is my motor. So I called the police, and this is two years after. The police went up there and looked. I had the serial number and everything.

JE:Oh, yeah, so you could prove it.

HS:That is your motor. They were from New Britain. I had to go to court, Judge Raynsford?

Remember Judge Raynsford?

JE:No, I don’t think, before my time.

HS:He was a real big man. They got a good fine; I got my motor back, and everything was ok.

JE:I just remember you taking your dog in the canoe.

HS:Yeah, little Kelly.

JE:She liked to ride in the canoe, you said.

HS:Yes.

JE:You had to take her out, you know, and paddle and come by our dock.

HS:Little Kelly, she sat up on that seat there one time and we were going out. There was a beaver

out there that time and boy, she was about ready to…and I said, “Kelly, don’t jump!”

JE:That beaver will bite you. Not fair.

HS:Yeah, she was a good little girl, that little dog.

JE:Ok.

HS:I want to show you Blanche’s picture.