Interviewer - That's going to pick up the voice. This is Fred Merriam and I'm here with Francis Miskell at 38 Groton Road. And today is February 18th of 2010. So, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit first about your family and when they came to Chelmsford and where they lived.

Francis Miskell - Well, I was born July the 25th, 1922.

I have one brother, two sisters. My brother was a fireman. My sister, Nora, taught school in Chelmsford for 39, 40 years.

I don't know which. She started in a South Road school. She had two grades and we rode the bus.

We had no car. My father worked in a mill. My mother stayed home, took care of the four kids.

We lived, what was it, number 8 Dunstable Road. We had one old stove and a kitchen, no central heat. My brother, my sister Nora, and I slept on an open porch year-round.

And my mother would put up burlap bags to keep the snow out from us. And she would put three red Mickeys. We each had three red Mickeys she'd put in the oven.

And we'd take them in in the morning, put them in the oven. She'd wrap them up in paper at night, maybe a half an hour before we went to bed. One at the head, one at the middle, one at our feet.

We'd go to bed, we'd take the bricks out, throw them on the floor, pick them up in the morning, bring them in, put them in the oven. My father died. They both came from Ireland, my mother and my father.

My father died in 1940. He went in for an operation. He never come out.

He was in his 50s. I can't say. I don't know what.

But I had just graduated from Chelmsford High. I had taken a college course, but that was the end of my college. I never got to college.

My sister Nora, she was in, just graduated from Lowell College, Teachers College. My sister Mary was a secretary. I was the youngest.

I was the baby. My brother was next to me. My brother was a, he worked in a mill with my father.

Then when my father died, that was my only outlet, I guess, if I wanted to keep living and get some money. So Mr. Dixon, the owner of the mill, I guess he had a soft heart for mother Miskell.

So I bounced around. I did almost every job in the mill. My brother, he was in a trucking gang.

Me, I started as a, where do you want me to start now, at the beginning of the mill or when the bags come in? Why don't you start? I started as a ducker.

Why don't you start, well, let's talk about where the mill is, which mill it was, that Mr. Dixon was supervisor of. The mill was located, I think at 71 Princeton Street, was owned by Edgar Dixon. And he lived on Middlesex Street where Earth Realty is now.

He had one son and two daughters. One son worked in the office. And he had, I'm positive, two grandsons.

They went to college, but then they wound up in the mill. What was the name of the mill? Pardon?

What was the name of the company? George C. Moore.

Oh, it was George C. Moore Wool Scouring. And it was all commissioned.

He didn't own any of the wool except what was on the floor for sweepings. And if you had too much wool on the floor, you got a howl from the bar, from Mr. Dixon when he walked through the mill every day, two times a day. He walked through the mill every day, two times, once in the morning, once in the afternoon.

And if there was too much wool on the floor, he'd tell you, that wool belongs to somebody. That's not ours. Pick it up and do what you're supposed to do with it.

He didn't steal a thread out of that mill. So then the mill, it had its ups and downs. You had slow periods and you had busy periods.

What year did you start there? I started in 1940. Okay, and this is when your father passed away, the same year?

Yeah, the same year my father started away. That was where I never got to college. I took the college course in chords in school, Latin and French.

That was the end of me. I didn't do no more because we didn't have the money. And then I started.

I'm going to start when the wool comes into the place. It came in needed by freight. They had a track down there in the back. It came in by the big wheel trucks. And Mr. Dixon had two big Mack trucks that were run by chain. Oh, yes.

Run in the back. I've seen pictures of those. Yeah, we had two of them.

And then they had a flatbed that when the wool was scoured and stuff, they'd roll it out from the dryer room and roll it off a platform onto the truck and store it. And they had a big, big shed out in the back that was used for storage. Most of it was for wool that was to be worked on.

And the wool that had been scoured would be transported across the street to where we used to call it the storehouse. It was, I don't know the name of the street. I think it was, it wasn't Depot Street.

It was just a connection between Middlesex and North. It's still there. Across Middlesex Street toward the tracks?

No, no. You'd go from Princeton Street down. You know where they have the furniture sales now?

Oh, down across the tracks, down. No, you wouldn't go across the tracks.

Interviewer - No.

Francis Miskell - You'd come out of George C. Moore's, go right across the street. And Southwell was on the left-hand side.

But way down at the end, George C. Moore had his storehouse. Is this where the Baldwin Mills are?

Where? The Baldwin Mills? No, no.

The Baldwin Mill was over on North. I guess I'm disoriented. As you come out of the...

The front of the Mill that you're at, the Moore Mill, is it on Princeton or is it on Middlesex? Princeton. Princeton, okay.

And across the street from that where Bainbridge's Restaurant is? Bainbridge was where George C. Moore's.

Okay. And was the storehouse in that area? No.

The storehouse, the shed was on that area, in back of it. Okay. But the storehouse was down on Middlesex Street. You'd come out of the Mill, go right straight across the street like today, and they have handicapped people down there now. You know what I mean now? If you go down Middlesex Street, you can turn in where the fence is there, the opening, just before you hit the pizza shop.

Yes, before the pizza shop. Right on that corner. I think it's Wojcik Plumbing or Building or something there now.

And that's where George C. Moore had the storehouse. I think it was three floors high.

Now, was that next to a track? I have a picture of a storehouse that's not there anymore. It was on the depot side of the road.

It had a track coming up to it. There was a picture with a young man standing on the track. Where was this now?

Well, right across the street from where the pizza place is. Yes. There used to be a gas station here.

Oh, Abaco Oil. Abaco, yes, Abaco. And so was it the place, the warehouse you're talking about, was it uphill from Abaco?

It was almost across the street from Abaco. Oh, across the street. Almost across the street from Abaco.

That's where the big mill still is. That's where what? The big mill is, across from Abaco.

No, that was just the storehouse. Oh. That was the storehouse.

The mill is where Bainbridge's is. Okay. Okay, so you're talking about that mill now, that Gillette owns now.

Yes. That's okay. Across the road you're talking about is the warehouse, which is where the other big tall smokestack is.

And it's between Middlesex and Princeton. That was where the storehouse was. That's where the storehouse was.

The George C. Moore mill was all on Princeton Street. On this side of Princeton Street.

Where Bainbridge's is, back further in. Okay. Back towards Stony Brook.

Okay, now, where was we left? Anyway, they used the storehouse for the wool that had been scoured, waiting to be shipped out to the owner. So the wool had come in.

It came in. We worked on Australian wool. They came in on bales.

South American wool came in on bales. And then the wool from domestic would come in from the west. That was all bagged. There was no bales. The bales, South Americans would go maybe 200 pounds or better. The Australian, maybe 150, 175. And the bag of wool, most of it would go over 100 pounds. It depended what it was. If it was coarse wool or fine wool.

The fine wool would be the heavier because you'd get more in the bag. It would come in on trucks. It would come into the wool shop.

I didn't start in the wool shop until that's where I wound up, after I had done everything else in the mill. I had very little time off. I worked five days a week.

And if one department got slow where I was working, Mr. Dixon must have had a soft heart for me because he'd put me somewhere else. I never got time off. If you wanted a vacation, you could tell them.

Tell them you wanted to take a vacation. They'd give you time off. You'd sacrifice your pay.

You didn't get your pay. So it was a five-day work week, no weekends? Pardon?

No working on weekends? Very seldom. Very seldom.

If it was a rush job, yes. Then every, I think it was every three months, we used to get a bonus. Southwell Mill right across the street, and the one that's down in the field now, they never got a bonus.

They were union. Mr. Dixon didn't want no union. Ah.

So he gave us bonuses. And then at Christmas, we got a bigger bonus to keep the union out. As he said, if you bring the union in, you're kissing your benefits goodbye.

We never had insurance. You wouldn't. You were on your own.

You had to have your own insurance. So what else did we do now? But anyway, then the rule, I guess, when I get married, the day, the last Friday I worked, I get married on a Saturday.

Mr. Dixon's son came down and gave me a $100 bill, which was a hell of a lot of money in 1954. I sold a wedding gift. Pardon?

I sold a wedding gift. That was my wedding gift from the boss, yeah. So then at that time, I was working as a ducker in a Scouring room.

Now, what's a ducker do? Wash, rinse the wool. I'm going to start in the wool shop, but I'd rather go through from the beginning and wind up down in that area in a scouring room in a dryer and all that, because the way the wool come in was in a bag.

It would go to the wool shop. There was usually about eight wool sorters, maybe two floor hands, a boss, and a second hand. So truckers would bring their wool in, put it on the floor there somewhere in bags.

The wool sorters would go over, pick up, grab a bag, just anyone, you'd have to wake them in a row, grab anyone, bring it to your bench. Your bench was pretty near as wide as the couch there. And everybody had a...

You had to make a quota every day of how many bags you were supposed to sort. You had to sort so many bags. And if you were lucky and ran into good stuff, if you did an extra bag, you used to duck that under your board, not turn it in.

Give it to the boss the next day and have a light day for yourself. And we worked from 7 to 12, 45 minutes for lunch, and then we'd go home after that. After 12, after lunch?

Yeah. Half day? Uh-huh.

Was it only half day work? No, no, we'd go back. We'd start back at quarter 4, I mean quarter 12, quarter 1.

Okay. We started back at quarter 1. And then... And went to quarter 4. Quarter 4. That was your...

You went 5 hours in the morning and 3 hours afternoon, if you make your rate. And then you broke down a wool. There was a science to it because you had to have really, really good sharp eyes.

But there weren't many woolsorters that wore glasses. They had good eyes because they could tell the different... I don't know what you call it, the grade of the wool, I guess you'd call it.

First it was a fine. We had a half-blood, two-thirds, a quarter, a britch, and a stain. The stain was a part that was around the sheep's butt.

You know, when they'd urinate or pass waste, it would stain the wool. It would just get stuck to the wool. So did you sort it by color and texture?

Interviewer - Not by color.

Francis Miskell - Okay, by grade, into different piles? Into boxes. Okay.

Into boxes. And then the boss and the second hand would overlook your work, and if you missed something, they'd pick it out and tell you, you know, you're missing it. So you're supposed to take all the wool, and it has to go into one of those categories?

You're not supposed to take what? All of the wool. Oh, yeah, we had boxes.

Every woolsorter had about four boxes inside of them. Yeah. And then...

There was no junk box. It was all used. It was all into the box, yeah.

All used. Every box we had, every bag we had, we had to sort it and put it int

o the boxes, and then it was overlooked by the boss or the second hand, and they either piled it on the floor with the aid of a floor hand, or they used to drop it through a hole in the floor into a bin. The bin was maybe this tall and another half. A whole floor of mill was a bin from the cellar. It was all bins, and that's a used part of it for storage, but the other half of it was all for bins to keep one grade of... One owner that owned that wool would have that one bin, and that was the worst job in the mill.

If you had to be a floor hand and get in that wool, put the wool in the bin and spread it because the wool was coming down on top of you, and the bins were from that door maybe to that door. You had to spread it out so you could get more in there. While you're spreading it, you're trapping it down at the same time, and if you happened to get hit with some, it was tough luck for you.

It would never hurt you. But then I was about to woolshop, and they used to have two floor hands. Like I said, I think there's about eight sorters, and one boss and a second hand.

And the floor hands, they were there mostly to make piles, or if it was going to be bagged, put on the floor, they used to have to put a... We had a hole in the floor where you put a bag with an iron rim. You used to tap the trapper down and put it into that hole, and then holler, get out of the way, it's coming down, and you'd drop that bag into the cellar.

It was a box like the size of a door, and you'd put the ring around it, and you'd trap the wool down, sew it up and drop it down. And Brian Hare, you know, the priest from North Chelmsford, he played football for Chelmsford High. He's a priest now.

I don't know where he is now. But his grandfather got killed because somebody dropped a bag and didn't holler, and killed his grandfather. And Brian's father was the boss shipper.

But like I say, the worst job I ever had down there was that if we had to sort dead wool, you know, when the sheep would die out there, they didn't just bury them. They sheared them, and you'd get a bag of dead wool. And, of course, it was not...

Our hands were nice and soft from the lanolin. You didn't get lanolin in dead wool. Everybody was afraid of anthrax at the time.

Thank God nobody ever got anthrax from our place anyway. But that's what they always told you, that you could get anthrax from the dead wool, from the dust, because it was always gray and very dusty. And nobody wanted it, but that was your job.

If there was a shipment of dead wool, you had to do it. So then from the... If we went down into the basement where I said the bins were, they used to have...

There was up on the third floor, there was machines that would pick it more apart so it could go down into the scourer machines. And there would be two or three guys loading boxes, big, big boxes. Maybe they had two wheels on the side and two in the middle in the front and the back to balance.

And then you... That would go up in the elevator to the third floor. It would go through the feeder and it would drop down into the scourer machines.

And the scourer machines, there was one, two, four scourer machines. And they were... The first one would be the washer.

And that had big hunks of... I don't know what kind of soap it was, green soap plus sodiash to get the dirt out. And when they...

That would go for the eight hours. And that first machine would wash it. And the second would wash it some more.

And then the third and fourth would just rinse it. And then it would go into another truck. And that's where I started.

It would go over to... We called the duckers. There was six tubs.

We called them tubs. They were maybe a good size, a little bigger than that door. And we used to take the wool out of the box by our arm, throw it in the water.

The water was running permanently from the canal. And that would rinse it out finally. And then the tubs would go up and there was another guy down at the end and he'd pull it into what we called an e-extractor.

It's like your washing machine. It would spin like hell and get most of the water out of it. So then from there, it would go in...

Let me see now. It would go up onto the second floor where the dryers were. And the dryers, there was one, two, three dryers.

And Jack Toms was the feeder. And the dryers were in two... Oh, wait a minute, go back to the wool.

The wool, when it was being washed, had to have a certain temperature. It couldn't get burned if you had the water too hot. The first two were hot water.

The second ones weren't because we had the steam coming from the engine room. They made their own steam. So some of the...

Was it a tank? Or was it like a bucket with a grate on it to let the water in? It was the heated water.

It was heated like. So did the water go right through this container? No, it was in that container.

Okay, so the water gets poured in and either it's heated by steam or it's cold water. Mostly it was from steam. Right out of the canal.

Interviewer - No, it wasn't out of the canal.

Francis Miskell - The first two were hot water. And you had to keep it at a certain temperature because if you kept it too hot, you'd be burning the wool. And if you let it get too low, you're not going to get the dirt out.

So that came out of a hot water tank that had a thermometer on it? No, they kept taking it into the... With thermometers.

They had their own thermometer, the guy that was running the machine. He had one. And the two last machines were cold water.

And then it would go over to the duckers. They put it into the canal and the water was running permanently in there. You had a pretty good grate and you had this big, big long stick.

So the grate kept the wool from going out of the water? Oh no, it was like a screen. A screen, okay.

It was like a screen. Okay. So then when that tub went up, like on a pulley, it would go up.

The water just drained... Oh, the wool comes up right out of the water. Yeah, the wool came up out of the water.

Okay. Like a tub, but the tub had a screen. Okay.

So the water would drain out and then it would go down into the extractors. And the extractors would spin like hell. Like a spin-dry cycle.

Yeah, like your washing machine. And then it would go up to the dryers. And the dryers, there was two sections of the dryers.

And they had to keep that at a certain heat. That was steam. Pipes were steam hot.

And they had to keep that at a certain time to dry the wool. Because if you put wet wool in, you were in trouble. And that was Mr. Dixon. He'd come around every day. He'd always wind up in the dryer room. And he could tell by feeling how much moisture.

If there was too much or it was too dry, you had to have it at that pitch where it was not going to get ruined by having too much water in it. So the soap that was used in the first containers with the warm water and so on, that got transferred to the canal wash. And that's where the soap got pulled out.

The soap would get rinsed out. And it just flowed right down into Stony Brook? Yeah.

Did it make a lot of soap suds or bubbles? No, it stunk when I used to wash it. When they washed them tubs out, it would stink.

Interviewer - Okay.

Francis Miskell - If you were down there when they'd wash the tubs out, you'd say, what the hell are they doing in there? So did that smell go all the way down to the Merrimack? That stuff went right down into the Merrimack, yeah.

Because that was coming down from Stony Brook. But the water that we were using to rinse the wool was coming from Crystal Lake. Because there used to be a canal there.

Was there a name? Did they used to call that canal any particular name? I never heard it called a name.

I never did hear it called a name. But Mr. Dixon used to... I don't know if he owned the canal or not.

I don't know. Because he could regulate how much was coming in, you know. If the lake got low, he'd have bars across there and he'd take one off them so more would come in.

Because we never ran short of water. We never ran short of water. Was the level controlled up...

By the Red Gate.

Interviewer - The Red Gate, let's see.

Francis Miskell - Can you describe where that is? You know as you go down... I don't know what the hell the name of the street is up there now.

Spring Street, I think it is. You know how you go across to... Have you been up where the dam is now?

Yes. Well, that's where... The Red Gate used to be down this side of the canal.

Minus this side of the... Okay, this would be the exit from the lake with the granite walls. And they had gates there that they controlled the level with.

Was there a hand wheel or anything? Or was it just boards that they pushed in? I think it was just boards.

I don't know. I can't recall. I don't know.

So that controlled the level going down through the canal. Going in the canal and into the mill. There was a thing there.

Was there another control gate down by the mill? There was a bigger gate, yeah. And that's where they regulated the level?

They could regulate it, yeah. And sometimes they'd get eels coming in there. Really?

Yeah, yeah. My father brought home eels. I ate eels from that place.

My mother would cook it up with tomato sauce and stuff. Tomato sauce? Yeah.

Interviewer - Wow. So then in the dryer it went twice.

Francis Miskell - And there was a hole in the floor. It would come off the dryer, off of the belts. The belt kept rotating so the wool would keep coming through.

The wool wouldn't stop. Once it was fed into the hopper, the belts had nails on them. They could call pick up, pick up, pick up.

It would go into the dryer. And then if there was a, if you ran black wool, and scoured black wool and dried that out, and then you went going on to white wool, the wool sort of always had to be out at the end of the dryer, sitting with their back, and the wool was coming over their heads, onto the floor. But they had to pick out the black pieces.

So this is like a quality check? Yep. They didn't want black in with the white.

And you'd have to take the black pieces off. So did it catch it on the fly as it was coming down? No, it would drop on the floor.

So you had to reach through the stream? No, no, no. Once it came off at the final dryer, it just dropped on the floor in front of you.

Okay, so then you'd go over after it fell. Like I'd be sitting here, the wool would come over my head, and then you'd spread it out there. Oh, you got a tray or table or something.

No, the floor. You had a floor. Okay, so you got to bend right over and reach down.

You were sitting on a little box. Okay. You had a little box, and you'd pick out the black piece.

And then there'd be a man at the end of that with a rake, and there was a hole in the floor. And he'd put the finished product into the bag, and then he'd have a couple of hooks, throw the belt, and the belt would pull it up. He didn't have to drop it.

He couldn't drop that down after the dryer. He had to get that out of the hole, and one of the truckers would come, weight a bag, put a lot number on the bag, and the weight of the bag, and then they'd store it. That would be the end of the thing.

So that's the final output from the wool scouring operation? Yeah. Or did he do something else?

No, after it went into the dryer, that was it with the wool pot. But then they had the rayon and the nylon. That was them further in in the mill.

And you want to go into that? Did you work there? Like I say, I did them all.

Well, let's just finish up with the... With the wool? The wool, yeah.

Okay. I just got a couple of questions. Were they running the steam engine in 1940?

There's a steam engine down there in the Gillette Mill right now. The big wheel? With the big wheel, yeah.

Interviewer - That was it.

Francis Miskell - Was that powering machinery, or had they switched over to electric motors? No, no. That was in there.

That was running in the engine room. That was running the belts, the pulleys? Yeah, that was in the engine room.

And the machines, like some of the wool, like the spin dryer, was it running the spin dryer, for instance? The spin dryers? They were run by pulleys.

Pulleys from the belt shaft, from the big steam engine? Yeah. Okay.

So were they running coal in the smokestack down there? Coal, yeah. It would come in on a freight car, and they'd open the bottoms.

Buildings to store the coal, or just a big pile? They had piles, big piles outside. It was covered.

Did they have a siding, a railroad siding, off the Stony Brook line? Yeah. And bring up a car and just dump it right there?

The car would come out and then open the bottom somehow. I don't know how they'd do it, but coal would drop in. So they must have had a fireman out there shoveling coal into the- Oh, yeah.

The fireman had to shovel the coal. Yeah. There was no gas down there while I was there.

No gas, no. And that's about the whole thing with the wool pot. They had to- Then when it was finished, like I say, they'd bag it up, put it in a hole, and they had the plunger that would come down.

So that was like a compactor? Yeah, like a compactor. Pack it down tight and then sew it up.

So you put the bag in the hole first, and then you put the wool into the bag, and then the plunger comes down? Plunger comes down on top. Makes a nice tight bag.

It didn't shift too much. When it came in, it was loose. So the wool that came in was right after it had been sheared from the sheep.

They just sheared it from the sheep, they put it in a big bag. They'd have it tied up in a fleece. One fleece would be usually tied up.

You had to have a knife to work to be in a wool shop. So you cut the fleece off? You had to cut the strings.

Okay. And then the strings were- We'd throw the strings underneath the bench, and then when you got a pile, you'd pick them up, took them, and throw them in a box. Billy Hafey used to take- He'd work on his own on the weekends because Mr. Dixon gave him a small pickup truck, and he used to take the strings that the fleeces were tied in, and he used to sell them. Oh. And you'd get money that way. And now, that's about the whole story on the wool.

But if you wanted one for the rayon, I'd work that too. Okay, well, just a couple more questions before we get to the rayon. Across the street, there's a place right now called The Mill, I think, and there's several businesses in there.

No, The Mill is where George C. Moore was. That was Moore, but that's where you said the warehouse was.

No, no, the warehouse was down on Middlesex Street. On the Middlesex Street side. Across the street from a bake-off.

Okay. And McKittrick Machinery Company was also there. They were down there too, more recently.

On that road, yeah. Yeah, in the same general area, but it was on the same street. Yeah.

Okay. Anyway, across from where that condo development, Princeton Ridge, is today. Princeton what?

Princeton Ridge. There's a new condo development they just built. Yeah.

Right across the street from the big wheel. As you go into Bainbridge, as you go into the Gillette Mill, there's a wheel. The wheel was used for decoration.

It was a steam engine flywheel at one time. But across the street from that, the canal used to continue. It did.

And it used to go under Princeton Street. Yep. And it went into the Moor Mill.

Into Southwell's Mill. That was Southwell's Mill. Yeah.

Okay. What did they use that water for? What was that?

What did they use that water for? They had a scouring machine over there too. They scoured Woolville.

Okay. So that was Southwell. There was Southwell down there, and there was Bentley, and there was Nichols.

There was three out there. Okay. Nichols, Bentley's, and Southwell.

But they had their own wool sorters. They had their own trucking gang. They had their own scouring machine.

I don't know if they had dryers or not. They must have. I think they just sorted wool.

No, they had scouring machines because you could see them from the street. Okay. Now, you mentioned that was also Moore's Mill.

Was it G.C. Moore that built it, and then these other companies bought pieces of it? Or were they all separate companies? I don't know.

G.C. Moore was just where Bainbridge is, and the big warehouse that they had down across from a bank. Across the street. Okay.

There was also the Chelmsford Foundry over there. Was that still there when you were there? That was inside the street.

I think that's right next to where the bridge is now. Right next door to the railroad tracks, where the bridge goes up over the tracks, Princeton Street. Yeah.

I think the foundry was that building.

Interviewer - Yeah.

Francis Miskell - There was a place down there. I can't recall the name. They made the fallers for the machines.

Fallers? Fallers. The fallers were like this.

They were running the—we didn't have them. They had them in a rayon, but we didn't have them in a wool. They had like nails sticking down all the time.

They were pulling the wool apart. We didn't do that. We just scoured and dried.

So did you say they used the machines or they made the machines over there? They had a place there because Eddie McGovern worked there. Okay. Was that McKittrick? It could have been.

Interviewer - I don't know.

Francis Miskell - I think they made textile machinery. Fallers. Fallers.

Yeah.

Interviewer - Okay.

Francis Miskell - They were about that, maybe a foot wide. You mentioned Eddie McGovern. Was he related to the McGovern that had the service station?

That was his uncle. That was his uncle. Okay.

That was his uncle. Eddie was a fireman. Okay.

After he got through with the thing down there. Yeah. Eddie lived on Church Street.

Okay. That used to be called Depot Street when the depot was there? Church Street.

No, no. It's Church Street from Princeton Street to Middlesex Street. And from Middlesex Street to the railroad, it's Depot Street.

It's Depot Street. Yeah. And just that short little dead end.

Okay. Down there to the railroad tracks. That was the deep end.

Now, if you want to go into the rayon part. All right. Let's go there.

I worked everything there, too. Let's do it. The rayon would come in in boxes.

And that was on the furthest end of the mill, way, way down. And on the second floor, you'd lay it out to make a blend. Why?

It had to be a blend. What did it look like when it came in? It was white.

Was it a powder? No, no, no, no. A string?

It was like a fiber, some kind of fiber. Okay, a fiber. In spools?

Huh? Was it in spools? No, no, no.

It was just like it was thrown in a box. Like loose fibers, maybe a few inches long? They were packed in.

They were packed in. So you could reach in, grab a handful of fibers? You could grab a handful, yeah, throw it in a box, and you made a blend.

Okay, gotcha. And then it would go, let's see now. From there, it would go downstairs into the cod room.

And the cod room would run it through the picker, and the picker would just, like, pull it all apart, and it'd blow it into a bin. And then there'd be a guy in the back of the bin. The machine wouldn't be running now, the bin.

He'd have to shut it off so he could go and grab armfuls and put them into feeders that were running the cards. Have you known what the cards are? No.

The cards were big, big drums. I don't know how many drums were on them, but the drums would be going like hell. And you were supposed to, you fed them from the back, and when it came out to a doffer, it came out in a strand.

What's a doffer? The doffer would be the guy that would take that ball off the end of the cod room, I mean off the end of the cod. Now, was that ball strands all aligned together?

It'd roll like a ball of string. Okay. But it'd be good size.

Okay. It'd be good size. It wouldn't be more like a rope, more like a rope.

And from the doffer would take it and put it over to the, what was the next one, the gill boxes, and the gill boxes were nails-like, and they were pulling it more apart. And they'd come out, and they had another rope, which would be much more solid, but much thinner in diameter. And then they had to watch.

They had a yardstick, and the weight would have to be on the yardstick. You had to weigh, you know, every once in a while. You'd maybe have six or seven boxes feeding into that one gill box.

And then from the gill box it would go to the finishers, and the finishers would stretch it out some more, and they were fed by maybe six or seven boxes. And then it would go from the finishers. So is it getting to be like string, smaller and smaller?

It'd get down smaller, yeah. Every machine would turn it down smaller. And then it would go to the combs, and the combs, I don't know how many balls were on a comb.

I never did the comb. I did the gill boxes. I did the finishers.

I did the breakers. I did all of them, but I never did do combs. And the combs would get a, you'd make like another ball, but it'd be much finer, much finer stretch.

And then it'd go over to what they called the bagger, and the bagger would wrap it up in paper and put it into the, they had a box like, well, about the width maybe of half of the couch anyway. And it'd pack so many in a bale, and then sew it up and then shove it. So is this a uniform-sized thread now that you've got in this ball?

Oh, it was more than a thread. It was a little thicker than a thread. A little thicker?

It was more, say, like a finger. Oh. Was it a bunch of strands all twisted?

Yeah, they were all together. All together, okay. So it's like a thick yarn almost.

Like the yarn. Did they use that for making textile, or was there more? I don't know where the hell it went from there.

I don't know where it went from there. Maybe into another mill. So they took in loose clumps of fibers and kept rearranging the fibers and putting them in a row kind of.

So did they twist it? Were there twisting operations? Yes, the combs were twisted.

The combs were twisted, okay. They didn't stretch it. Did they stretch it at all?

No, most of the stretching was done between the gill boxes and the finishes. Because that's where they had the, like I say, the nails that were coming down through the follies. That's where they had the follies.

And then the follies were jammed. Sometimes they'd get jammed up on you. And then on the cards, they had the drums were going so fast.

The drums wouldn't spin the same way. You know what I mean? If one would be going this way, another one would be coming this way.

Right next to each other? Huh? Right next to each other, they'd be going opposite directions.

Yeah. So the threads would go through, and then all of a sudden. And then another drum would pick it up the other way.

So just when it gets comfortable in the pattern, then all of a sudden it gets completely broken up. Yeah, and it comes out into a strand, into the doffers. The doffer would take it off the spin.

And if the doffer was not on the ball, and the ball got too big, it'd screw up the machine. You'd have a lap. You'd have to shut it down?

You'd have to shut it down. You'd have to shut it down. Unwind it by hand, or do you just take it off?

No, you'd cut it off, bring it back to the breaker there, and put it back through the machine again. Okay. The doffer had, I'd say, maybe at least five machines, five car machines that he had to take care of.

But if it was running good, you had a good lawn, you had a little box there, you sat down. Had a little rest. But you had to keep your eyes on them, because if you didn't, and they got too big, and you were dozing off or something, you were in trouble.

And the card room at the cards, the stuff was flying around, and it used to make, we'd call it a lap. Like on the, what the hell am I going to say, on the shaft that ran the big drums, there was a small place there about that big for a, and if that got a lap on it, it could burn and cause fire. So you had to, they had a guy they used to call an oiler.

That's all he did was go around, because them drums, they spun like a son of a gun. They had to. And if they got, if the laps got too high, it could burn, and you had to cut them off.

You weren't supposed to do it while they were going, but everybody did. And Bob the cartwright, I'll never forget Bob, he lost a finger there on his ring finger. And Mr. Sykes was my boss, and he says, you got your car out there?

I says, yeah. Will you take Bob to the hospital? So I took Bob to the hospital.

It's an emergency room. Doctor looked at him. He says, I can't touch that until he gets the ring off.

So I had to go find a jeweler in Lowell, cut the ring off, and then go back to the hospital and pull Bob off a chunk of his finger. That was pretty near the whole bit. But like I say, Mr. Dixon must have had a soft spot for the mystical crew. He was good to us. Good to the family. He was good to us.

Was rayon a synthetic material? Yeah, rayon and nylon. So I'm wondering, when you say this clump, did it actually melt and form almost like a blob of glue?

No, it was dry. It was almost like, you say, it was almost like wool, but it was white. It was always white.

You never see any other color down here except white. And you just grabbed the handle of it and threw it in a box, and you made like you call a blend. And it would go, like I say, into the machines from there.

So then at the end, was there a bale with a plunger? A guy would bale it up and put a... Just like with the wool?

No, the wool was just bagged. The wool was just bagged. They never bagged.

They never had the machinery to do the... All they did in the wool was wash it. There was no finer part.

You know, it was just to rinse it. Wash it, rinse it with a strong green soap. I don't know what kind of soap it was, but it was strong.

And then in the wool shop, we had a big trough in what we call a restroom. And that was one. We had drinking water in there, but the water we used to wash our hands with was coming from the canal.

It had a trough where the pipes were on the cross. So everybody just goes in, and you pee in the trough, and it goes right into Stony Brook? Before you went to eat, you went into the restroom there.

You'd wash your hands with water from the canal. And then the canal water went through the trough? The canal water would go in, wash your hands, and go down into the drain, into the scour run, and out into the canal.

Those were the bad old days. Huh? The bad old days.

Yeah, everything went into the canal. Everything went into that canal. And like I say, when they used to empty the scour machines, if you went down there near the railroad tracks, you got a good swift of cow manure.

Oh, now wait a minute. You mentioned the Baldwin. I haven't talked to you about the Baldwin.

Yes, the Baldwin mill. The Baldwin is where the apartments are now. Yes, that's what I was wondering about.

I'm glad you mentioned that, because I didn't say nothing about that. The Baldwin, when you were sorting wool, some wool would come in and would have seeds in it, like grass seeds and stuff. So you'd have to put that aside.

You couldn't put it in, and that was not a pile, a seedy pile. So that would be boxed, and it would go over to the Baldwin. The seedy would go over to the Baldwin.

Sometimes a stain, and then what they called, we used to call them dung balls, you know, when a sheep would pass through it. Hmm. Just like yourself.

You'd get clumped in with the wool. If you didn't clean yourself good, you got a clump there. When you mentioned seeds, I couldn't figure out how a sheep could produce seeds.

Seedy? Yes. That would be from the sheep laying down.

Okay, so it would be from the ground.

Interviewer - Yes, it would be from the ground. When the sheep would lay down.

Francis Miskell - So like burrs and things like that. Burrs, yes, seedy, but we called it seedy. But it was like Mother Nature's ground.

And over there, they had two-star machines, and it was the same principle. You had to keep the water hot and let it dry and all that stuff. They had the first thing, after it left the wool shop, it would go over to the Baldwin, and it would go through a machine, and it would spread it out more, and then it would be fed in to the scouring machines, and it would be the same purpose again.

You'd have the two hot ones and the two cold ones. But the Baldwin, they didn't rinse it again for the third time. They had enough with the first two tubs, the last two tubs.

The first two would wash it, and the last two would run it. And then what we called dung balls, that was the waste from the sheep that would stick to it. We called it stain.

The stain, that used to go through a machine. They called it a breaker. And it would break it all up.

It would be like dust, like dirt, fine dirt. While it was dry still. It was all dry.

Yeah, that didn't go near the water. That was all dry. But they used it, they'd sell it for manure.

It was good fertilizer. The wool fibers and everything mixed together. No, most of it was the wool.

I mean, the wool would be pulled out of it. Oh, okay, so it was just the residue. All the wool would be out of it.

It would be just the waste. Was the Baldwin Mill, was that much older than the other one? Oh, yeah, the Baldwin was much older.

It was a wooden shack. Oh, okay. Did Mr. Dixon run that operation also?

So it was like a satellite, just a smaller portion of the same operation. Oh, yeah. And then in the Baldwin, to kill the seed, the truck would come in with sulfuric acid.

They had a big, big tank of sulfuric acid. Myself and Peter Solomon, every day we'd have to go over there and fill bottles. The bottles may be stood this high.

But you know what sulfuric acid is, if you get it on your body, you get a burn. Oh, yeah, you're good, right. So did you have big brown bottles, heavy brown bottles?

We had to crank it up. We used to throw a bucket in the sulfuric tank, wind the crank. To pump it?

Drag it up with a hand pump, just like if you had a pump that was just rolling, like a hoist. Then Peter would dump it into the barrel, I mean into the walls. Did you have big rubber gloves on?

Oh, yeah, we had aprons. Aprons, okay. But you still used to get it on your shoes until we swanned up and put the rubbers on.

He didn't let everybody do that. So that was up at the Baldwin? That was in the Baldwin, because that sulfuric acid would kill all the seeds.

And when the wool came out, it was in pretty good shape. It was almost the same as if it were... So it wouldn't burn the wool or anything?

No, no, no. Dissolve the seeds? It was all gone out, the seed. It would kill the seeds, what we'd call seedy. It'd be called... Like you say, it was some slight grass and stuff that was in the sheep's wool.

Like I say, the two worst jobs were dead wool and then spreader. Those were the two I hated the most. Because the sheep wool, the dead sheep was awful stuff.

And when you went in, you had to go in a bin. Ah, yes. Spreading the wool around on the floor.

The wool was coming down on top of you. That wasn't the bales, though, right? That was just the...

No, no, this actually was sorted. Sorted wool, but it was sort of fluffy still. It was all fluffy.

But then was it another level down where the bales could drop? No, that was... The wool shop was on the middle floor.

See, and further down was the cellar. Yeah. And there was nothing up on top of the wool shop at the time.

There was nothing on top. And then down further was where they had the scouring machines. The scouring machines were in the cellar.

Another part of the cellar. You know, it's a good long length of mill down there. There's a lot of mill down there.

How many floors were there? Three floors. Three floors above and one in a basement.

No, count in a basement. Three floors total. Yeah, three floors total, yeah.

It was... Everybody in North Chester, I think, worked there. Wow.

And that one shaft, that one engine powered the whole thing through a long shaft? What? There was a long shaft powered by the one engine that went the whole length of the building?

Yeah, but I think there was three boilers down there in the engine room. I think there was three boilers down there. Feeding one engine?

What? Feeding the one engine, or did they have more engines? I wouldn't say.

I think there was one, but I won't say for sure. I think there was only one, but it was a big one. Because that wheel that's down there now was the one that was running us at the engines.

A big, big pulley. Anybody ever get caught in the belts? Not that I could say.

No, no. The belts would come off, but you always could put them back on again. It was a trick to do it, but they did come off.

They'd come off. If you fed too heavy, you know, the wool, the aprons wouldn't go, and the pulley was still going. That's when your belt would fall off, if you fed it too heavy.

But that was, well, it kept me going until I got married. That's good. Fifty-four, from 40 to 54.

Fourteen years. Huh? Fourteen years.

Yeah, I was down there for 14 years. Where did you go after that to work? You would never guess.

No. Women's Reformatory in Framingham. Really?

Yeah, I put 21 years in down there. The last five years, I was a boss on the third shift, and then when I got time to get out of there, I quit, and then I went working for the post office, because while I was working in Framingham, I had a wife and four kids. My wife wouldn't go to school.

My wife was a teacher when I married, but my wife said, They're my rock kids. I'm bringing them up. I'm not going to go teach.

I said, Good. So I moonlighted. I'd bring my post office uniform with me.

I'd change at the jail, go right to work. So you worked there for a while in Framingham? 21 years.

For the post office? No. I get credit for 19, because I only worked part-time.

Was it North Chelmsford Post Office? No. So you come right from Framingham right to the post office?

Right to the post office. Now, where was the post office? Tell me about where it was when you worked and what that job was like here in town.

You know where Rosie's is? Yes. Maybe a couple of doors up from Rosie's.

It's a hairdresser now. Yes. I don't know what the name of it.

Is that the cement block building? Or a wood building? You know where the restaurant is?

Up on this end of it, the pizza place? Yes. All right.

Then there's a little jewelry shop or something there where they take gold. It's the next building was the post office. And when we had to transfer everything over to the new place, I don't know what the hell year that was, but we had to do that on a Sunday.

We had a truck and pushed it across the road. I moonlighted there. I worked part-time for the post office.

I used to, like, work mornings. Well, first what I did was what they used to say, special delivery. Ah. You know, if a special delivery come in and if there was two or three of them, I think we used to get ten cents a delivery to deliver them to walk around town. You know, the town wasn't that big then. And then finally I worked in to do them, like, part-time seven.

And then I wound up permanent. So when did you finish with the post office? God, I don't know when it was.

70s, 80s? I'd say maybe in the 80s because they gave me credit for 18, 19 years. Okay.

But I'm a double dipper. I'm getting two pensions. Great.

One from the state and one from the government. Well, you said we moved here in 77, and you said you were our letter carrier. Yeah, I was.

Interviewer - Over on Lovett Lane.

Francis Miskell - I used to do Lovett Lane on Saturdays because you had George Matley during the week. Did you know George? I think he might have been the one that insisted everybody shovel.

Yeah. He was a bug about that. That was George.

I remember that. Well, Saturday was his day off. Because you'd catch hell if you didn't shovel.

Interviewer - That was George.

Francis Miskell - Yeah, he'd bring the mail back. Or leave you a note or something. I remember there was some way he could let you know.

Yeah, that was George. But I used to do his route on Saturday. This was after I quit the jail.

I used to do his job on Saturday. And the other guys, there was only four routes then. No, three routes.

Arthur Smith, Tommy McEnany, and George. And I used to do their day off for them. So Tommy McEnany related to the store down by the tracks where the pizza place is now?

That was his brother. Okay. Yeah, John.

John McEnany. Yeah, that was his brother. It's like a convenience store he had down there.

Yeah. Before the pizza place. Yeah, before the pizza.

And there was a barber shop there. Yes. Murphy's Barber Shop was there.

Okay. And McEnany had the store. Okay, now I'm interested in, you mentioned that you lived, I think you said 8 Dunstable Road?

Yeah. Was that the place called the Howard House? It's on this side of the street, just this side of the building?

Interviewer - No, no, no.

Francis Miskell - The Howard House is on Groton Road. Groton Road, okay. You said you lived on Dunstable Road.

Dunstable Road, the brick building. On the right-hand side. Is that the one that used to be the reed mill, Adam's Reed Mill?

Oh, I don't know what it was before. It's got four different entrances? It's got four entrances, yeah.

Yeah. It was a reed factory, the center portion, and then they put the two ends on later. Yeah, you could tell that, yeah.

But originally it was a factory. I never knew that. Okay.

There was four tenements there. Yes, yes. We were there.

Yeah, the back side is almost on Middlesex Street, and the front side is on Dunstable Road. No, there's no Middlesex. The other side is on Tingsborough Road.

The back side is on Tingsborough Road. Not Middlesex, Tingsborough Road. Yeah.

Okay, which turns into Middlesex Street on the other side of Browns Square. Yeah. Gotcha.

Yeah, there's a tax man down there now on the back side, right? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, and we lived upstairs, number 8, the furthest one away from the square. And Frankie De'Amicis owned the building. He owned Paramount Diner.

Oh. You know where Paramount Diner was? No, tell me about it.

You know where McGovern had his automotive? Yes. Right across the street.

You know where the town has the parking lot? Yes. And the building to the Lowell side of that, that's where the Paramount Diner used to be.

Paul, the father of the guy that owned the garage, he was the short order cook in there. Oh. That's way, way back, too.

And that was another job I did before, well, while I was going to school. I used to go over there and peel potatoes in the back room. So that was the local restaurant people went to?

No, that was me, Bobby Wharton, and Frankie, the De'Amicis's son. We used to peel potatoes every night. They'd chop them up.

We never chopped them up. All we had to do was peel them. We'd get a sandwich or something, a hot dog or something out of it.

That was our pay. That was your pay. That was our pay, yeah.

We'd sit in the back room and peel the potatoes until we had enough. What's that? Well, I've got a picture here that I'm going to show you.

Oh, okay. I can't find it. I went looking through my sister's album, but she didn't do many pictures.

Where the hell is it? It's got to be here somewhere. Well, there it is.

Ah, it's a small one. Okay, now that is, is this the Merrimack River we're looking at here? Yep, the flood.

Oh, okay. 1936. The flood, yes, yes. And you get down in the back of it? What's the building? Well, that's, this is the mill right here?

Yep, Southwell's Mill. That shed is gone now. The white part is the shed.

They used to use the storage. Yeah, okay. So is this the Southwell Mill on this side of Middlesex Street or the one down by the river?

Down by the river. Okay. The one down by the river.

Okay, okay, I recognize it now. So this water is on the inland side. Yep, that's the water.

That water was almost kept in them. In back of Charlie Parlee's development, the Szechuan Restaurant and all that. That's what we're looking at here.

So water in the street goes right down through this river here. Yep, right down through the middle there because I remember that shed, the water was getting into the shed. Yep.

And Southwell's had wool in there. Oh. And my father and a bunch of the truckers, Mr. Dixon, let them go in over there and help them get the wool out of the water. My father had to go over there, but they had to go by boat to get over there, but they got the wool out. That was the only picture my sister could take. I don't know why.

She must have been sleeping half the time. Yeah, that's interesting. You want it?

Sure. Go ahead. You can have it.

Thank you. What I'll do, I'll put it. The Historical Society has a collection, and they have a collection of 36 flood pictures.

Oh, yeah? So I'll put it right in there. That's all right.

That's all right. This white part here, this here, that's gone. This part?

The shed. Are you sure? Because there's a white shed there that was there within the last couple of years.

I think it's gone. I'm not sure. Maybe it's still there.

I can't tell you the last time I was down there. The last time I was there, it was still there. One of the reasons I was down there was a flood there two or three years ago, and I went down to take some pictures.

Oh, yeah? And the ball field was flooded. Okay.

And Middlesex Street was flooded also. Up through the gas station there. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. What I'll do is enlarge it, and then I can see more of the detail in there.

Can you make me a copy now of what I told you? Of tape? No, of the whole thing, of the tape.

Yeah, I can. You can? Yeah, I can put it on a CD for you.

Go ahead, because my son asked me today. Oh, okay. He said, Daddy, can you ask him if he can make a tape for you?

Sure. Yeah. I can do that.

Yeah? And thanks for the picture. Any more questions?

Interviewer - Yeah.

Francis Miskell - I'd kind of like to know about some of the people in the neighborhood that you grew up with, went to school with. Tell me about the school over on Princeton Street, what it was like going over there. Well, we had— How you got to— We're in a firehouse now.

We had two buildings. Yes. First, both buildings, of course, are gone.

But the one closest to the square now was 3, 4, 5, and 6. 1, 2, 7, and 8 were the ones closest to the mill. Okay.

So was there any high school? No, all grammar school. All grammar school.

We had to go to— Where was the North High School? We didn't have one. Well, before then, I think originally, before they had school buses, my understanding was that they had—the center school had some high school students.

And then over here, I thought it was the building nearest the town hall was the high school originally that was built at the time of the Civil War.

Interviewer - I don't know. You got me now.

Francis Miskell - Maybe that was before your time. Way before my time. But then once they got school buses or barges, they started taking people down to Chelmsford Center.

We had to go over to Chelmsford Center for the high school. So you went to Chelmsford Center all through your high school? Yeah.

Yeah, because I went to Chelmsford High four years. Yeah. But I went up here for eight.

And then it kills me today to see these kids. We had a 45-minute run from school. We came home to 8 Dunstable Road, had dinner, and went back.

Back to school? Yeah. And we made it in 45 minutes.

How we did it, I don't know. By bus? My mother-in-law would have dinner ready for us.

By bus or walk? Walk. We had patrols.

Chelmsford Center? Huh? Chelmsford Center?

No, not from Chelmsford Center. Oh, right down the street here? From where the firehouse is now.

Okay. This was grammar school. Yeah, yeah.

This was grammar school. Oh, no. Once we left here in the morning to go to Chelmsford Center to the high school— You had a long bus ride.

We had a long bus ride, yeah. Now, were those the truck chassis buses? What?

Did you ride the old truck buses they had? There was one bus that George Marinel had that had a seat in the middle and two seats on the side, you know, like a bench. Okay, bench.

And the rest of it was— Did it have curtains on the side? I don't recall. No, no, no.

Because we could open the windows. Okay. It had windows on it.

And then the rest of the buses had regular bus seats, you know, one in the back of the other. But there was one bus that had the seat down through the middle and then two benches on the side. And I don't know.

Marinel had—he was the contractor all the time that I was in school anyway. And still, when we moved out here, he still had the bus— Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer - —concern over the S-93.

Francis Miskell - When he died, Roger Welsh, his son-in-law, took over. Yeah. And P.T. Robinson had a bus, too. P.T. ran one bus. And that was where Charlie Crowley's building is now. And that used to be a garage, too.

A garage there. Yeah. That's where P.T. had his garage. Do you remember the stores that were there before Charlie's development? Was it A&P? The A&P was there, yeah.

What else? Healy was the manager. Healy?

Arthur Frost was there. At the store? At the A&P?

No. Arthur Frost? No, Healy was A&P.

Okay. Arthur Frost had a drugstore. He was on the end.

Okay, right next to Wharton Street? Before he went to Wharton Street, yeah. And it was A&P.

And then George Hill. He had a little variety store and a little lunch cart there, too. Oh, okay.

And then it was P.T. Robinson's garage. On the end where the real estate guy is now? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And down there and back of that was where Wharton had his barn.

Oh, what kind of barn? Cow barn. Cow barn, okay.

Yeah, and he Where was his house? His house was next door to Muscat. He ain't done civil road.

He was the next house down going up towards. So he had to go across Kingsborough Road to get to his barn? He had to come up through the square and go down Wharton Street.

Yeah. He had the cows down there and let them out in the field. Yeah.

And he had gardens in there, too. And there was an apple orchard there as you went down towards the mill. On the left side, there's still a few apple trees.

Well, they're still there then. Yeah. Well, they're there.

So that was part of his orchard. Yeah, that was. When I went down to that spring to take pictures of the flood, the apple trees were in full bloom.

It was kind of pretty.

Interviewer - Oh, yeah.

Francis Miskell - The apple trees are still there. Like I say, I couldn't tell you the last time I was down that area. It's been years, years.

Now, where Rosie's is, the cement block building was a garage. Did you know the crew that ran that? Yeah, P.T. Robinson. That was P.T. Robinson, right? No, wait. Before P.T., it was Milton Hare. Okay. And then it was P.T. and Chandler. Milton Hare lived up on Dunstable Road.

I think it was up at 106 or somewhere in that area, almost across from La Rose Pond. You know where La Rose Pond is? You never heard it by that name.

No. That's Swains Pond, isn't it? That's Swains Pond.

Okay. It was La Rose Pond when we were there. Oh, okay.

That used to be one of the first places that was free so we could go skating. Oh, yes. We used to go skating there.

Oh, we used to go down there on the side of railroad tracks. Now, you said La Rose. Was there a family by that name that lived there? Is that why they called it that? Yeah, La Rose lived up there on Dunstable Road, about 168th and 160th in the area there. And there used to be a nice house there at the end of Swain Road.

Oh, really? Yeah. Where those new houses are, right around the end of the pond?

Right at the end of Dunstable Road. One of the canal goes out and across the street where the Swains Mill used to be. Yeah.

Back in 1860s or so. Because I remember my father used to go up there when I was... They used to store the ice in there in big, big blocks.

They'd cut it out on La Rose Pond and then they'd make a trough. And they'd keep pushing it through a big spot. I don't know what they would call them.

Did they have a belt or chain to lift it up to store it? Once it got into the solid ground or, you know, inside the mill, the ice house we used to call it. Then they'd move it up on belts.

Okay. But they used to cut a... So they brought it in the bottom of the building on the pond, on the water, and then they have a belt that they could move inside.

Interviewer - Yeah.

Francis Miskell - And they'd pack it. And then the... They'd pack it right up to the top.

Huh? And then stop. They'd fill it right up.

Pretty near close, yeah. Because they'd start chopping ice way, way out. But they'd make a trough, like a road.

Yeah. They'd just float it right in. It's a lot easier to float it in.

Float it right in. To haul it. Yeah.

Sure. Float it right in. Yeah, that was La Rose Pond.

Now they call it Swain Pond. But Octave La Rose was the wheel there. And he lived right up to here.

Now, what's the oldest house in the neighborhood? Pardon? What's the oldest house in the neighborhood?

Is it the Howard House? I used to own the Howard House. Okay.

Let's hear about it. Huh? When I came home from the service, my mother was still living on 8 Dunstable Road.

I took a GI loan, and I bought that house off of Hattie Buchanan. Roger Welsh was a real estate guy. But me, I'm a wheeler and dealer.

I went right to Hattie because I knew Hattie from way back. Hattie was the first one in town that had a TV. She let us use to come in.

We'd all sit on the floor and watch the ballgames because her sons were our buddies. They were two buds, Warren and Jackie. And then I went right to Hattie, and I asked Hattie what kind of a deal she could make with me.

So I think I paid $16,500 for it when I bought it. And I had it. Well, I come home from the service in 45, November of 45.

So I must have bought it in 46, I'd say. And we stayed there. Well, then when I bought it, my mother moved over.

I bought that for my mother to bring her over there because then we had steam heat. It was a big hell of a difference. We had it.

Oh, I don't know how many years. We haven't been there. We've maybe been out of there maybe 10 or 15, maybe at the most.

Because then it was getting too much to take care of that and live up here, too. So you owned this house by then? Your mother was living down there?

I lived down there. I owned that one, too. Yeah, but your mother was living in that one?

My mother was living there. That's where I got married. I got married from that house.

And then when I got married, I lived one year in Cambridge. And I said to my wife, I said, Honey, I'm going back to the sticks. I don't like this city.

So you owned this and you were living in Cambridge? Yes. For a while.

Yeah, I was living in Cambridge at the time. We only lived in Cambridge one year. And we moved back here.

I bought a house up on 47 Mission Road. And then this one came on the market because where we're sitting right now used to be an open porch. And old Tom Stewart was in a wheelchair.

And he rolled off the porch. So then they converted it into what you're sitting in right now. So did he survive the fall?

He survived the fall, yeah. Then they built this for him. And then he died.

But I owned the Howard House a good many years. I don't know how. Like I say, I was getting too much.

I had four kids. One's a lawyer out near Arizona. He's the head of the criminal department for the Justice Department.

I'll show you his letter. And the other one's in Washington. He teaches handicapped kids.

So they come to see me twice a year. But the rest of the time it's telephone. I've got my son, Joe.

He works for a printing place in Lowell. My daughter, Mary, lives with me. It's just the two of us here now.

The house is too big for us. But she don't want to move. I want to move, but she says no.

So I'm going to die here. And I don't know what the hell she's going to do with it. But that's why I bought the house.

And I'll say 1946 I owned the Howard House. But then you had to go down. It was a lot of maintenance because the house is old.

Yes. The house is old. Let me ask you this.

The house is old. It looks like it's a bunch of connected buildings. But I've seen pictures where it was actually a separate barn and a house and a couple of smaller outbuildings.

Now it's all joined together. Yeah. Was it joined together when you bought it or was it separate?

Interviewer - No.

Francis Miskell - It's just the way you see it now because I had it sited. We painted it one year. Freddie Whitmore and I painted it one year.

But it took us, well, we were working at the mill, and it took us a long time to paint it. And we sprayed it with paint, stain. I remember Alan Adams, he was a cop, and he told us get some cow oil, drainage oil, and get some black stuff, bland black. He said that's just as good as the stain. We never did it. I bought the stain.

I didn't want to put the oil on it. So you mentioned Whitmore. Was he related to Floyer Whitmore who had a place down on North Road, a carriage shop, at the turn of the last century?

Oh, boy. I think there was another Whitmore in North Chelmsford that also had a carriage shop. There were two Whitmores.

Freddie used to live on Tingsboro Road, almost across the street from, well, there used to be an old house down there. They finally tore it down. It would be just this place that a cop dealer, you know where the gas station is.

On Tingsboro Road? Yeah. You know where Dunkin' Donuts used to be?

On Tingsboro Road, just a short distance. I know where there's Dunkin' Donuts.

Interviewer - They were in the gas station.

Francis Miskell - Yeah, in the gas station. Yeah, they had half of it now. Yeah. Well, Whitmore lived two houses down from there. Okay. And Stevie Boumil lived in a house next to the gas station.

Stevie was a, he worked in a mill. But he was a pretty good fighter in a 135-pound class. Oh.

Him and his brother Bobby. Bobby was a heavyweight, but Bobby went crazy. Bobby, woman and drink.

Bobby was a good fighter, but woman and drink got the best of him. He went downhill fast. But Bobby was a good fighter.

He fought some good battles. Well, where the town hall is now, we used to have wrestling matches up there and boxing matches. Yeah.

Tell me about town hall and what your activities were, everything you remember about North Town Hall. Well, I didn't do much up there until after I came home from the service when I was in the legion. And we used to have a little, two rooms, I guess, out in the back there and the bottom floor.

We used to run whisk parties there. We used to run dances there. We had spaghetti feeds there.

But then we had a chance to buy our own building, so we bought the old library on Gay Street. Gay Street. Now, I think there's a driveway or something.

That's all that's in and out. We took the building out. And there's a driveway there.

Interviewer - That's all that's in and out.

Francis Miskell - The old library's gone. I don't know what happened to it. We have some nice pictures of it.

Huh? We have some nice pictures of it. Oh, yeah, I can imagine.

Inside and out. Well, we went in there and the legion, myself, Joey Mungerman, and Joe Sadowski, they're both up in heaven. And we painted and did everything there.

And then the legion just started to go downhill. There weren't that many guys that were interested, so I quit, too. I don't belong to the legion.

I belong to the DAV. I didn't belong to the legion. So eventually they reformed and bought the place over on Freeman Lake?

Yeah, yeah, and built that one. I don't know who they bought the land from or if the town gave it to them. I think maybe.

No, because there used to be cottages in there as you go down the lake. Yeah, so where that building is, there was cottages. Yeah, there used to be cottages in there.

I remember the Adels used to live down in there. I don't know anybody else, but I know the Adels used to live in there. But there used to be cottages there.

So if you go way back when you were in school, did they do anything at North Town Hall? Not that I can recall. Not a heck of a lot if there was, no.

I don't remember anything going on. The school department took it over about 1967.

Interviewer - It wasn't open to the public after that.

Francis Miskell - Then when they left it, it was pretty much closed. It's used for sports, for athletics. That's all used now is Little League and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. But like I say, I dropped out of the legion because I've never drank in my life. They like to drink, so...

No, they didn't like to drink, and that was all that was up there for me. Yeah. They liked to, but you didn't.

Oh, yeah, they wanted me, because I used to be working. I'd go over there, and we'd run whiz parties, like I say. We'd run dances.

We ran minstrel shows. I was always involved in them. Were there any other groups there at the same time as the legion?

Was there what? Any other groups in Town Hall? I think the auxiliary was in there too.

Yeah, the auxiliary was in there too. The women's auxiliary, but I don't think there was anything else that I can recall. But then there were some guys that used to, like I say, they had wrestling matches there.

It used to be, maybe before your time, the Company F used to have a setup there. It used to have what? Company F used to have a setup.

I think that was a Civil War military... Oh, I don't know. I think it was before your time.

Oh, it had to be. They used to have flags and souvenirs and stuff, because they kept those Civil War companies going for a few decades afterward. Oh, yeah.

Until they all died off. Kind of like the legion. It was way ahead of my time.

It goes through a cycle. Yeah, it was way ahead of my time. Because we used to stay, we didn't do much traveling.

Like I say, we didn't get a car until my sister went to work for the school. Oh. We never had a car.

So you remember the trolleys? The trolley cars used to come right up here and stop right there at the square. Do you remember what year they took those out?

No, I don't remember. It was somewhere in the 20s, wasn't it? I think...

I don't think it was. Maybe in the early 30s.

Interviewer - Early 30s.

Francis Miskell - If it was in the 20s, it was the late 20s. Okay. But the trolley used to come right up and stop right there at the square.

Yeah. Right at the V. Actually, it used to go up Tainesboro and it used to go up...

It used to come up this way, too. Dunstable or Groton. It used to go up...

Groton. Yeah, Groton Road. It didn't go up Dunstable.

It didn't go up Dunstable. No, it didn't go up Dunstable. It used to come up Groton.

Okay. I don't know how far it went because we used to get out down here. I think it went out Groton Road.

It went to Brookside Station. And I think the railroad wouldn't let them cross the track. So the people had to get out of the car and then they had to get onto another car on the other side of the tracks to keep going.

Oh, oh, oh.

Interviewer - Yeah.

Francis Miskell - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard that story. And that Brookside Station is the building that became Abaco Oil Company.

That used to be located at Brookside in Westford, Brookside. Oh, yeah? On the train line on Stony Brook Line.

We have pictures of it on the tracks at Brookside and then we have pictures all through the years as Abaco during the glory days. In fact, I got a picture of it in the flood with the water up over the... Because Abaco was owned by...

So you pronounce it Abaco, not Abaco. It's Abaco, not Abaco. Yeah, it's Abaco.

Abaco. That's what they used to call it, yeah. I'll try to keep that straight now.

George Swallow and Wilson were the owners. They had the oil business there. Yeah, they had some big tanks in back.

Yeah, the tanks were up there, yeah. And I think the Stony Brook actually went right underneath it, didn't it? It did.

Yeah, it was built over the brook. Right out near the street, it's all paved over now. There used to be a big hole, two steel plates that would come up like this.

That's where the town used to throw snow. Oh, so they'd lift up the plates and dump the snow. They'd pick up the plates right into the canal.

How about that? All the way into the river. That's an interesting story.

So that's concrete now? It's concrete, yeah.

Interviewer - They're covering it up now.

Francis Miskell - It's blacktop now, I guess. But there was big, big, well, the hole was maybe twice the size of that couch that they're sitting on. And the trucks would back up to it.

Dump it in. Dump it right in. So where did you used to go on the trolley?

Who? Me? From the trolley?

Yeah. We'd go to Lowell. That would be the farthest we'd go.

Okay. Lowell for me. You couldn't get up to Lakeview Park, could you? We'd have to go to Lowell to get up to Lakeview Park. Interviewer - I don't know.

Francis Miskell - I don't know. We used to go into Lowell. I know my mother used to go in there.

Sometimes she used to have to go to Kennedy's. So, oh yeah, down on Central? On the main street in Lowell?

Is that one of the bigger stores? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kennedy's was a butternut and tea.

Did the trolley go direct to downtown Lowell?

Interviewer - Downtown? Yeah. You didn't have to change?

Francis Miskell - You just went the same trolley?

Interviewer - No, no. Francis Miskell - One trip. One trip? Yeah, one trip.

Right downtown? Yeah, you'd get to come back. And my mother had to get some kind of Irish tea, butter.

I don't know what the hell else they had, but I remember my mother had to get butter and tea down there. And then there was a Brockelmans that was down there. That was on the other corner right in Kearney Square.

And she used to go for trade there, too. All we had was Siggy Rossler's Market here. Right there on the corner now of Adams Street.

Okay, across from where the A&P was, the little market building there. Yeah, with the Asian, if now, isn't there? Yes.

That used to be Siggy Rossler's. Okay. And he had a little variety store.

He had dairy meats and milk and stuff, but you could get more in Brockelmans. Brockelmans was more like DeMoulis. You could get more in Brockelmans.

And that's the way we used to go to the city, back with the old trolleys. I don't know what the hell we ever paid for transportation because my mother always paid. Your mother always paid.

Yeah, I never paid. My mother always paid. How about the train?

Were the trains running at the depot? The trains would stop at the depot. Did you take any trains out of there? No, I never took the train out of there. No, no. But then P.G. Robinson, I wasn't, I used to be hanging around the square then. This was before I went into the service. The train had come down from, was coming from Nashua anyway. And P.G. Robinson used to go down, he'd go to the post office every night, get the bag of mail that was going out. He'd put it on a post down there at the depot. The train had come by. It wouldn't stop.

Pick it right up? Just pick the bag right up and it'd fly. So they didn't stop for passengers?

No, no. Was there a flag or anything if there was a passenger? No, no, that wasn't one of the stops at night.

Oh, okay. They did stop during the day. Okay.

But at night the train that was coming in would just, he'd put that bag somehow on a post. They had a hook or something, they'd come around and just grabbed it and off it went. But that was P.G.'s job at night to take the mail down to them. Did you know Bill Tobin at all? Well, yeah. His daughter still lives in the same house where he was living.

Right across the street, 127 from Middlesex Street. That's his daughter. Number 127 Middlesex?

127 Middlesex Street. She's married to John Welch. Oh, okay.

That's Bill Tobin's daughter. Okay, and Welch is the same as the Welch Insurance? No, no relation.

No relation, no. Yeah, because I have all the interviews that were done in 1975 and a few from 1960s, late 1960s, and Bill Tobin is one of those interviews. Yeah.

So I was just listening to him this week. He was the station agent. He was the station agent for the railroad.

Yeah. He was the switcher or something down there. He pulled the switches in the tower before they were electrified.

Actually, it was a picture of the switches, but Bill's not there in the picture. Well, that's his. That's funny.

During his interview, the person who's interviewing, I think it's somebody that worked at the library, was showing him some pictures, and one of them was the North Chelmsford Depot, and I have several of these pictures, and there's a young fellow standing out front, and he says, I'll be darned. He says, that's me standing there. So now I've got to go back and look and see if I can figure out which one's Bill.

Well, you want to go down and maybe talk to his daughter. Yeah. 127.

Yes. Right across the street. I've got it on tape, so I know what the address is now.

Yeah. She might be interested in a copy of that interview. No, I don't care about that part, because I see her every day, every second.

Oh, no. She might be interested in an interview with her dad. She maybe could add you some more.

Yeah. Yeah, because when Bill Tobin retired, I'm pretty sure it was a guy by the name of Brown that took his place. I'm not sure, but I know Brownie was down there, too, on the switches.

And then they used to have the gate on Middle 6th Street. It used to be when the gate would come down to stop the traffic, when the train was coming. Was it a hand run?

Huh? Was it run by hand? Yep.

Was he the guy? Huh? Okay.

He was the guy. He was the guy. They used to have a little shack right there.

I don't think it was half of this room. Yeah. Well, they had one at Central Square, too, and there was a guy who was sitting there during the day.

Oh, yeah. They must have had to.

Interviewer - Yeah.

Francis Miskell - I don't recall who that was, but Tiny Gray was one of the ones that was down here handling the gates up and down when the train would come by. Maybe at night he'd have a lantern or something, too? I don't remember.

I think they hung lanterns on the gates. When it was down so people would see it. Yeah.

They had lanterns on the gates. Yeah. Now, I have another picture of Bill Tobin, and maybe you can help me, when the Congregational Church that was in the millyard burned down.

When the Congregational Church was where? The Congregational Church used to be in the millyard before they built it over on the street it's on now across from Vinal Square.

Interviewer - Oh, yeah.

Francis Miskell - It used to be in the millyard, and there was a store underneath. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

And I'm trying to figure out. George Merrill, your friend down the road, is going to show that to me someday, but I wondered if you had any recollection of that. No.

George goes back. He's more into history than I am. There's a picture of a kid with the people milling around the fire damage outside, and there's a picture of a dog.

Well, the dog is the one that started the fire, and the kid is Bill Tobin. He ran down to the station, the depot, and told them to ring up the Lowell Fire Department. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Yeah.

Well, Tobin, he married a woman. I think she came from Ireland. Her name was Elizabeth, and they lived right up here on Adams Street.

That's how I knew them, because she was a friend of my mother's, his wife was. But I know his daughter is Mary, and she married to John Welsh, and she's still living in the homestead down there, 127. See, my postcard, I still can remember some numbers. But the first time I talked to you, I thought you said your name was Marion. That's why I couldn't get that name. It's one of the hardest names for people to spell.

In my lifetime, 31 people have spelled it right. Because I used to be water commissioner, too, in town. And for nine years, we had three years term.

You got elected for three years. I did it for nine. But then the two commissioners were with me.

One had an unlisted number, and the other guy didn't. He was never around. So I said, to hell with this.

I don't want this anymore. If I made a decision and they didn't like it, I would get in hell. We'd be fighting all the time.

And you were getting all the complaints, right? I was getting all the complaints. My phone was listed.

I'm not hiding. I was getting the complaints till I quit. So you were on the North Chelmsford Water District?

For nine years. Did they do any major improvements during your time? Did we have what?

Any major improvements during your time over at the lake? Yeah, we built the thing up there on Swain Road.

Interviewer - Swain Road. Yeah, that's fairly new, isn't it?

Francis Miskell - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had a lot of trouble with that. Really?

All the people in that new development. Scotty Hollow? Scotty Hollow.

Because that comes right back down onto Swain Road now. You follow me? The water pipe?

Huh? No. Scotty Hollow.

Scotty Hollow. Yes. That area comes down.

Yeah, right into the tank. There was one woman up there that lives, well, she was in Scotty Hollow, but her house was like a button, Swain Road. She wanted to pick out the color of the paint.

She gave us a hard time on that. What is it, sky blue now? Huh?

I don't know. She didn't get her choice. We didn't give her her choice.

Interviewer - What did she want, hot pink?

Francis Miskell - I don't know. We picked out blue, but it wasn't her choice. I know that.

And then she's gone now. She's out of there. I was in there when that was built.

I had enough. I was getting all the complaints. But I go up there when I'm healthy.

Like I say, I haven't been healthy since the 30th of January. I've had a colonoscopy, and I can't get my guts back in order. So, you see, I'm in ship slippers.

That's what I haven't been doing much outside, staying in. But I go up to the Waterhouse every day. I go to the bank every day to get changed for the post office.

I never have to go in the post office on the front door. I can still go around the back door. All the post offices that we've had, even since I retired, they all let me still come back in.

So you walked down to Kennedy Drive? No, I was in the War Department when we built them houses. Them houses are no good.

You've got a good house. Much better than them down there. Which ones are you talking about?

Kennedy Drive or the development down there? The Kennedy Drive ones in the back of the post office.

Interviewer - Yeah. Francis Miskell - No good? I haven't driven down there. They're no good.

They've got an upstairs room. I don't know how the hell they even get furniture upstairs. They're narrow or something.

They weren't built good. They weren't built good. I would never recommend anybody buy one of them.

So we know people who live in Williamsburg condominiums. They seem pretty happy with those. That's a good house.

Yeah. Yeah. Tommy Gonzales built them.

I was in the Water Department then, too. One of them were going on. There was a house there that got wiped out by the 36th Flood.

I don't know if you remember near where Williamsburg is, between Southwell Mill and Williamsburg, there was a big house. And all that was left was the chimneys. When we started poking around down there in the 70s, there was just chimneys left. No, I don't remember that one. No, Tommy built good houses. He didn't cut them on the corners.

I don't know who the hell was the one that built the ones at Kennedy Drive. I do know now. Wait a minute.

It was a guy that took over Morris Mill when it was sold the first time, I think. And then Gillette's. I don't know if Gillette's bought it first.

Somewhere around 84, I think. There was another group in there? No, I think Gillette bought it about 1984.

Yeah, but Gillette has bought it. They bought it twice. Oh, did they?

They bought it. They bought it. Somebody else bought it and defaulted?

They sold it. And then this guy developed it. And then Gillette.

I think the other guy went bankrupt. Yeah, so they got it. And they got it back again.

At a bargain price. Yeah, they got it back again. Gillette owned it twice.

Well, I can't think of it. So you think it was the developer? The developer was there.

Did the Kennedy Drive development too? No. No, okay, you're talking about a different project.

I think it was a different project. I'm not sure now. I think I remember that in the news, but I don't remember the name.

I can't think of his name, no. Yeah, it wasn't Jomp or Carey or anything like that. One of the guys that was in, that lost it, was McCletchie.

McCletchie? Yeah. Okay.

And he's the guy now that's trying, he's got a rich girlfriend that's loaded with money. She was a Sullivan in the printing business in Lowell. She's loaded with money.

She's in back of him. He's the one now that's fighting the Attorney General to build a college dormitory down there in Lowell, by the college. That's McCletchie that owned the mill and lost it.

Okay, so Gillette bought it back. And Gillette bought it back again. Okay.

But McCletchie was one of the partners in there. But he lost it there. McCletchie and another guy, I don't know who, John was his name, because I know they were way behind on their water bill.

And Billy Jones was the superintendent, and he said to me, he says, hey, we've got to get some money out of them guys. So I went down, and I told John, I said, we've got to get some money or we're going to shut the water off. And he says, don't bother me now.

I said, I'm telling you right now, if you don't come up with some money, and then we got into a big argument. We got some money, but not enough. He didn't pay the whole thing.

But I remember we did have a big argument, him and I, over the finances that they weren't paying their bill. I know McCletchie was one of the partners. I can't think of the other guy's name.

It was John, but I can't think of what the hell his last name was. So I did my three years in the service over there, and I got hit in St. Louis. Where's that?

In France. Okay. We landed in Sherbrooke.

Was that D-Day? No. No, I went in on 3, D-3.

Day 3, okay. So did you parachute, or how did you get in? Parachute?

No, no. We came in on the LST. Okay. After the beach had been secured.

Yeah, the beach was secured when we got there. And we fought our way up over the fields into Sherbrooke, captured the port at Sherbrooke. And we started back, and I think it was about the second night, I was with Patton in the 3rd Army.

If Patton had gone, if they'd have left Patton alone, we'd have been home 8 to 10 months earlier. They made them hold back? They held us back.

They took the gas away from us once. Myself and Jacob Beck, I went out with Jacob Beck, and my partner, the other spy man, George Mina, he went out with Betz. And you know who we borrowed gas from?

Who was our best ones? The black people. The black outfits.

They would give us one or two cans. So what were you driving? Huh?

We had tanks. Okay. Tanks.

But Patton wanted the worst way to go into Paris. He wanted to go into Paris in the worst way. Patton was a good general.

He had fire and guts, as they used to call him. He wanted to go, and he wanted to win, and he pushed. But I'd say to this day, they killed Patton.

He was in an accident, right? In a bad accident, and that killed him. And I'd say somebody wiped him out because he was doing too much.

Of course, this was after. Yes. This was after.

But they wanted him out of the way because he wanted the worst way to go to Paris. But no, they stopped us, so the Englishmen could go in. Montgomery.

Yeah. Montgomery went in first. We never got to Paris.

We never got to Paris. Not my end. My gang, anyway.

I don't know. We were with the 4th Army. We were following them.

Anybody else from North Chelmsford go over there with you? Oh, yeah, yeah. There was Joey Mungerman, Nell Davis, Bernie Hunt.

Well, Bernie Hunt came with us, but he left us. He was from Chelmsford Center, but he left us to go to paratroopers, and we all tried to talk him out of it. Bernie, you're going to hell.

Don't go over there. Those guys are too tough. And they were tough, the paratroopers.

They was a good heart. They didn't take no lip from. We were in Bastogne.

We had our rations already drawn, patent for Christmas Day. This was 1943, 44? Because I come home on 45.

Must have been 44. So 43 into 44. We went in to rescue the 101st Airborne.

There was circles around. The Germans had them circled in there. They couldn't get out.

We got in close enough to them. Our guys wouldn't stand guard because the 101st Airborne, they were going to shoot. They shot everything that moved at night.

We were sleeping under trucks. We got our ass kicked up there. We had to move back three times before we finally got through.

Because you were getting shot at by our own guys? No. Huh?

No, we didn't know. I didn't know any of us got hurt. I didn't know anybody got hurt, but they told us that the other...

To be careful. Yeah, to be careful, because the 101st are in there. They want out, and anything that's going to move, they're going to shoot.

So finally we got to one of them. Thank God everybody got home. Yeah.

I mean, I cannot say... I remember one kid from... I think he was Shirley or Pepper up there, Dickie Liddell.

He got his arm tangled up. We didn't lose too many guys, because most of the guys... We went in there as...

My gang, we went in as fillers. You know, the outfit was already formed, and they just brought us up to the strength where you have to have so many in a battalion, in a battery. So we went...

It was a crazy, crazy draft. We went the day after Christmas in 1942. There was such a big gang going.

Most of the guys that went the day before Christmas were married, and the single guys went the day after Christmas. Now, does that make sense? You'd think they'd want to let the filers stay home with the Keogh, but they didn't.

We had to go... I remember one guy, Eddie Davis, he wouldn't take the bus. The bus comes down and picks us up.

He says, I'll get there myself. I'm not riding with you guys. And he got up there himself to Fort Devens.

That's where we got... That's where our first place was. And then from there, I went to Carolina.

I did my training in Carolina. Yeah. Well, you gave me one reference, one possible person to talk to.

Mary Welch. Yeah. And I wondered if you had any other suggestions of people that might have worked in the mills or...

Most of the guys in the mill are gone. ...businesses in the town here or... No, the ones that had the business, like you say, they were all gone.

Well, McGovern, McGovern had a lot of knowledge of Chelmsford. Where's he at? He used to live right up here on Newfield Street, next door to the library.

That's where he was brought up. And he delivered papers. Are you talking about the gasoline station, McGovern?

Yeah. I think he's in Florida now, isn't he? No, he was here today to visit me.

You're kidding. I'll tell you, I was at Rosie's one time. I've only been there three times, I think.

I was having a cup of coffee out front, and there was a guy sitting at the next table having a cup of coffee, and some other people, everybody that went by seemed to know him. And just about the time he got up to leave, I overheard that he was... Was it Bill McGovern?

No, Paul. Paul McGovern. Paul.

That used to own the station, and he'd retired from it. Yeah. And he was on a racing team.

The racing team was based in Florida, and he was with the crew. No, he never was on a racing team, as far as I know. But he's a gung-ho NASCAR man.

Well, I think he was with one of the NASCAR teams. I don't know if he was crew or owner or what he was doing. But he was talking about this crew, and then I just found out, just as he was getting ready to leave, it was McGovern.

And I used to have my car serviced there. Yeah, that's Paul. He's a gung-ho.

So you say he's still in town here. He lives in Tyngsboro. Oh, Tyngsboro.

Paul McGovern. Okay, I think I should look him up then. You know where Robert Hall used to be on Tyngsboro Road?

Yes, yes. You know how that road goes up there? Kind of.

There's one road that goes up next to it, up to Mission Road, is it? Mission Road is an intersection. Yeah, it's not Cross Street.

It's just a small street that connects over. And it goes right all along to Dunstable Road. Yeah.

Well, he lives the first house, the first road rather off of him. If you go up Dunstable Road to take a left at the Four Corners, his house is... Oh, Jesus.

Well, I can look him up in the directory. It's number 10 on 12. I'm up there every day when I'm able to be.

Oh, are you? Oh, he's got a backhoe, a little small Kubota. And he does planting and gardening and stuff.

And he's a mass electrician.

Interviewer - Oh.

Francis Miskell - He's good. Every time I have any electronic problems, Paul's the guy. I come down, no charity work.

No charity. We go shopping together. We go food shopping together.

He comes down to see me almost every day. His family's been in town quite a long time, so... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're natives, what I call them. Natives, not a blow-in. Yeah.

I'm a blow-in, 1970. You're not one of the natives, though. Paul, he knows a lot, and he knows what the hell is going on in town.

Like today, he's telling me the gas station down there on Tingler Road, the guy that was supplying, the company that was supplying them with gas, they weren't paying. So they shut them down. They didn't give them no gas.

It used to be mobile, and now it's at other... I don't know what it is now, because I never got... I never heard of it before, but it's just started to come into the area.

Yeah, well, they weren't paying their gas bills. Is that why they lost the mobile? Huh?

No, I don't know why they lost mobile. I never did get gas down there. I always used to either go down here to Princeton Street or I'd go to Nashua.

I used to go over to the Dunkin' Donuts when I'd go to Jerry Cowgills where I had my car service down there. Yeah, Dunkin' Donuts. If I had to wait, I'd go over there and have a cup of coffee.

Yeah, because they used to have a little... They must have rented a place, part of the garage here.

Interviewer - Mm-hmm.

Francis Miskell - The station and... Yeah, a lot of... They're down, too.

A lot of gas stations have convenience stores and Dunkin' or something like that. Dunkin' Donuts, yeah, well, they're... Everything is closed up tight, and Paul was telling me...

Oh, right now it's closed up tight? Huh? I didn't realize that.

It's closed up now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're out of business.

The guy wasn't going to give them any more gas. Okay.

Interviewer - Huh.

Francis Miskell - The guy was giving me that story this morning. Yeah, I was just by there, and I didn't notice the Dunkin' Donuts signs and stuff, so I wondered if... I wondered what was going on.

No, that's closed, too, I guess, because now... Of course, the post office, they still come to visit me.

Interviewer - Yeah?

Francis Miskell - Maybe not. I'm only supposed to get one carrier, but they dropped in to see me because they're missing me down there. But they're telling me today that they have to go to Westford now to get their gas because they used to go to that one that's closed. And they had one cart. I don't know what the hell cart it was, but they're going to Westford now to get it. So that's like a federally approved...

Yeah. ...purchasing cart or something? Yeah, I don't know what it was.

I never did see it because we never had that problem. But I don't know why the hell they don't get another cart and go right over here to Princeton Street. Hmm.

Well, before our time's up, maybe five minutes or so... Oh, my two hours are up. Do you have any favorite stories you want to tell?

No. The only time I can tell you is when I got hit at St. Louis. I got wounded at Langston Low.

Interviewer - Yeah?

Francis Miskell - And we had been up there to give some more supplies. And my friend George Mena, he was like a brother to me. He was closer to me than my brother.

I got hit in the back because they were strafing us. I still got the shrapnel in me. So you got hit by a plane?

Yeah. I still got the shrapnel in me. Really?

I got it underneath my fifth rib. But to break, they put me back. Anyway, George put his hand in my back.

I said, What happened, George? He said, You got hit with a rock because I was on the ground there. Plop.

So he pulled his hand out. I said, George, bullshit. What is that in that blood for?

I could see the blood. So I knew I was in trouble. But anyway, they brought me back to one field hospital.

And I got back to another hospital. And they didn't want to touch me. Then I went back to another hospital, that third hospital back.

And they flew me to England. They operated on me. They wouldn't take the shrapnel out because to break, it's underneath my fifth rib.

And to break the ribs, they would have to get the shrapnel out. So he said, We're going to give you something and it'll make it like an M&M. And case it?

And it'll make it like it coated. And thank God, it's never bothered me. Never bothered me.

Does it set off metal detectors at airports? Oh, I tell everybody. I tell everybody before on x-rays too.

Because if you forget to tell them, they get all excited. They see that blob there. Does that mean you can't take

an MRI?

No, I can't take an MRI. No, I can take a... What the hell is the other one? CAT scan. I can take a CAT scan, but I can't take an MRI because it's all... The magnet would pull it up.

It was maybe a couple of years ago, one of the doctors had me scheduled for one of them. And when they found out that I had the MRI, he said, No, you're not eligible. They said, Cook you.

So that was the end of my story. Okay, well, I'll turn off the machine here. I hope I helped you out.

I think you really did. People are going to enjoy this for generations, hopefully