Interviewer - This is Fred Merriam with George Merrill, and it's February 24, 2010, at 108 Dunstable Road in North Chelmsford.

So...

George Merrill - Good evening.

Interviewer - Good evening.

George Merrill - My grandfather's stool.

Interviewer - I like it. It looks old. So, just to get things started, we were looking at a couple of pictures up on the wall there of your ancestors.

Can you tell us who your ancestors were and when they came into town?

George Merrill - Ah, those people were actually from Dracut. They were from Dracut. And that's a...

They're Colvins. And she's a Perham. His wife was a Perham.

And that's somewhere around 1832 I think they got married in 1832. And his grandfather fought in the Revolution. And there's a big story about him.

Interviewer - Ah.

George Merrill - So... My daughter's done a lot of work on genealogy. And his great-grandfather was at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

He was also at the bridge. You know, the Concord Bridge. And the second charge of the British on Bridge Hill got to...

got to their breast work. One of the British lieutenants climbed up on top. And Colvin had run out of ammunition.

So he picked up a rock and hit him with a rock. That's in the history down at Genealogical Society in Boston. And he hit him with a rock.

And that was the high point of the second charge of Bridge Hill. Then when the British come up a third time they were out of ammunition and they swam. So...

Anyway, that's the story. And that I know is true because my daughter found that in the history down at down at Massachusetts' Genealogical Society. I had all kinds of ancestors in that war.

There was a John Merrill. There were Kidders. There were Stephens' all related.

So where I come from...

Interviewer - Yes, where did you come from?

George Merrill - Okay. When I was born at the height of the Depression 1929, October 29 so I grew up on Middlesex Street down by what they called City Line.

Interviewer - City what?

George Merrill - City Line.

Interviewer - City Line. City Line.

George Merrill - It was called the City Line.

Interviewer - Is that between Lowell and Chelmsford? Yeah.

George Merrill - And we were the house which is 161 Middlesex Street now but in those days there was no delivery of mail. You had to go to the post office and get your mail. Well, the house next to ours which is in Chelmsford but we were the last address in Lowell.

We were at 2026 Middlesex Street, Lowell Mass. That's where we got our mail because it was delivered. If it was in...

If you were in North Chelmsford you had to go get your mail. But anyway and let's see the folks bought that house in 1928. I was born in Lowell General which was near them and they bought the house in 1928 so I came to Middlesex Street right after I was born and because we had a low address I was able to go to kindergarten in Middlesex Village which is in Lowell because they didn't have a kindergarten up here in North didn't have a kindergarten.

In fact, there were no kindergartens in town at that time but they did have one in Lowell. It's where Honey Dew Donuts is now. Down in Middlesex.

There was a big nice old building there. They took it down not too many years ago and I used to walk. Can you imagine that?

Today it's probably a mile, mile and a quarter.

Interviewer - It's more dangerous today than long I think.

George Merrill - Yeah, but anyway five years old walking a mile and a half to school and back.

Interviewer - It wasn't uphill both ways so it was fairly flat.

George Merrill - It was fairly flat. Yeah, so I lived there right through. In fact, we still own the house.

My son owns it now. He still lives there.

Interviewer - Still there. Now this is right across the street from where the mill was that they just tore down. Right?

In Middlesex? The town line marker with a C on it.

George Merrill - Oh, no, no, no. It's further up. It's up opposite Welch Welding.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - Right opposite Welch Welding. And yeah, Gagnon's had their gas station across the street with the two big gas tanks but those are long gone. So, yeah.

So, that's where I grew up. Played in the woods. Saw the woods.

Where the Debow, Lahue built a lot of houses up on the hill between my house and Tobin Avenue. They built a lot of houses in there. So, that's Warren, Lahue?

They run all the way through to Princeton Street.

Interviewer - Yeah.

George Merrill - Beech Street, Oak Street. Okay. All named with trees.

And that's and we used to play there. That was on the woods.

Interviewer - So, that you said was Warren Lahue and partnered by the name of Debow?

Debow. That development in there.

George Merrill - Lahue. Now, where was I don't know what his first name was. He called it Deboe or Lahue.

There was a construction company.

Interviewer - Yes, yes.

George Merrill - And they built those houses.

Interviewer - I'm sure it was Warren, Lahue. He was developing in that time frame. He was Richard Lahue's older brother.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - And I just interviewed Richard a couple of weeks ago.

George Merrill - Oh, okay. The house we lived in and the one next to us were Stevens houses. This is a Stevens house.

They were all built right after the First World War in 1920 to about 1924.

Interviewer - Was he the Stevens relation that you mentioned earlier?

George Merrill - Yeah, but distant. Distant. No.

I never traced that back. It could have very well been because the Stevens' had a farm up near where our quarry is in Westford. Only they lived in Tyngsboro.

But this house, the next one, and then the Blodgett house, which is a relative of mine, and the house next to that. So there's three Stevens' right in a row here. He built a lot of houses all after World War II.

But anyway, went to Highland Avenue School.

Interviewer - That school is still there now, right? It's affordable housing?

George Merrill - It's affordable housing, yeah. We used to walk in the morning to school up Middlesex Street down Tobin Avenue, climb the hill through the woods, and there's the school up on top of the hill. And on the way home from school, there was a sandbank there. And the water had washed down. You know, when kids walked in the water washers in Forty North. And we used to find Civil War mini balls because that was the, that bank back at St. John's Church where it is now, that was the shooting range for the Spaulding Cavalry. And I bet if you went in there today, you could still dig some out of that hill. But it's all grown up now. But that was, and then we'd walk home for dinner.

Then walk back again in the afternoon. But that was a nice school. All eight grades, four rooms, two grades to the room.

Interviewer - So I have to ask the question, how come you weren't in the school next to Town Hall?

George Merrill - Well, because we were the other side of the tracks.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - I wasn't allowed to go beyond the tracks. Tough kids up in the square.

Interviewer - So because you were closer, you were down the hill, so it was actually closer.

George Merrill - Yeah, everybody walked and there was a school there. The school in the square took care of everybody this side of the tracks. The other side of the tracks was for Highland.

Interviewer - That was the demarcation line.

George Merrill - The tracks, yeah. Tracks were rather important. Rather important.

The trains, 25 trains a day.

Interviewer - Wow.

George Merrill - And people complain about the whistles today. Up in West Chelmsford, they complain about the noise.

Interviewer - Yeah, we get two or three a week maybe.

George Merrill - Yeah, but 25 a day. And they go by the house, all day, all night, four trains. In that area, there's 28 feet of sand.

It's all sand in that area down that end, the Middlesex Street. And under the sand, there's a layer of clay. And when the trains went over there, it got that clay to bounce them.

And when the train went by, the house shook. And you know, you had draw poles on your drawers. And when the train went by, they'd rattle.

So that's where we used to keep our ties, put them through those loops and then they didn't rattle. And the river was right next to that. We spent a lot of time at the river when we were kids.

I suppose everybody get all upset now. We crossed the railroad tracks and went to the river and threw stones and caught horn pout. The river was, we spent a lot of time there as kids.

Interviewer - Was it too muddy for swimming?

George Merrill - We swam there, but it got a little dirty when we were from the mill.

Interviewer - Yes.

George Merrill - The mill would let the scouring liquid out and all the foam and fuzz would go down the river.

Interviewer - That's right. You were downstream of Stony Brook.

George Merrill - We were downstream of Stony Brook. And where we used to play was called Crow Eddy. Crow Eddy was the name of it.

Don't ask me why, but that's what it was. The river comes down and there was a bunch of stones. And where the stones were, the river couldn't wash it out.

So they charted across this way and they were going on the other side of the river and then they'd come back up this way and there was a big eddy there. Oh, it was hundreds of feet long. It's still there today.

It comes upstream, rather than go downstream, right next to where we fished. Yeah. Yeah.

But that was, it was a nice, it was nice growing up there. There were poor as church mice like everybody at the time during the Depression. My dad was an instructor over at Lowell Tech in the engineering department.

He taught weaving. And everybody in the neighborhood had a chicken house. And your backyard had fruit trees in it.

We had pear tree, plum tree, apple tree. And you had a garden and beans and squash and that type of stuff and chickens. And we got along pretty good.

And like most people in that area, we didn't know we were poor. My dad didn't have, my dad didn't have a car until I was about 10, I guess, 8 or 10. He walked from the house over to Lowell Tech every day, carry his lunch in a carry bag.

He had a stick. He always had a stick sticking out of the bag. His dog stick.

Interviewer - Oh, in case a dog came at him. Self-defense.

George Merrill - Yeah. But he said, you know, as long as the dog saw that stick, 99% of the time they didn't bother him. Yeah.

So, went to church, at the Congregational Church. I got a picture around here somewhere, 1934. All the children in the Sunday School out on the front lawn.

And it's a big lawn picture like this. And I still know Buddy Adams, who still lives around the corner here.

Interviewer - He's on my list.

George Merrill - Oh, he's on your list? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He was a couple of years, had classes ahead of me in church. But it was a, there were, I never counted the people in the picture, but I'll bet there's close to 200.

And that was, it was a big going concern. But, interesting growing up there, that's for sure. So, on about 10, 11, I was 11.

No, I was 10. 1939, I went to work for Lawton the florist.

Interviewer - Oh.

George Merrill - After school.

Interviewer - Was that Cal?

George Merrill - Cal Lawton, yeah. I went to work for him. 15 cents an hour, after school, three hours, three to six.

And on Saturdays, eight hours on Saturdays. I worked for him for 17 years. I stayed there 17 years.

Interviewer - Now, is this after the military?

George Merrill - No.

Interviewer - Before?

George Merrill - No, no, I was only 10 years old. Oh, you were a kid. I was only 10 years old.

Okay. I went to work at 10. Wow, there was no money.

Interviewer - Yeah.

George Merrill - You want clothes? You want clothes, George? Get a job.

Deliver papers, do something, you know. So I went to work for Lawton. It was pretty cool.

I learned a lot there. I learned an awful lot there. He was kind of an old curmudgeon, but not a bad guy to work for, you know, as long as you keep your mouth shut and don't argue with him.

But, yeah, I did good there. I think I went to high school, Chelmsford High, rode on P.T. Robinson's bus.

Interviewer - That was a truck chassis?

George Merrill - No, it was a regular bus.

Interviewer - Regular bus, okay.

George Merrill - Regular bus, 1934 Chevy.

Interviewer - But I think he was one of the first two drivers that drove the original, when they replaced the barges, the horse-drawn barges.

George Merrill - And it was, I was in 39, 40, 43, when I graduated from grammar school. Then I went to the high school. And I graduated from grammar school from the stage at the North Town Hall.

They had the graduations for the two schools. They had them in the North Town Hall. And P.T.'s bus, 1934 Chevy, blowing blue smoke all over the place. If it was loaded, not everybody took the bus every day because some people walked or rode their bike, you know, over to where the Town Hall is now, Town Hall offices. But sometimes we'd have to get out of the bus so we could climb up Drum Hill. It wouldn't make it up the hill.

So we'd get out of the bus, walk up the hill, pick them up on the other side, and we'd go whoo, because there was a steep hill on the other side. You know where the Rotary is now.

Interviewer - That was a big hill there.

George Merrill - If you look off to the right, as you're going from north up the grade, if you look off to the right, they cut up about 20 feet off the top of the hill. You'll find it's all blasted.

Interviewer - There's a road there.

George Merrill - Right next to where the State Garage is. That road that goes up, that was the old road up there. Not where it is now.

Anyway, on the other side, it was real steep. We'd go whoo, we'd go good down there. What was that, 43, and I graduated in 47, played football and basketball, played on the worst team Chelmsford High School ever had.

Interviewer - Congratulations.

George Merrill - We didn't win a game. I think we tied one.

Interviewer - How many years, four years? No, two. Two years, okay.

George Merrill - No, three years actually, but two years, two years, two years. Forty-seven, it would be 46 and 47 that I played football. And it didn't, and we only had, I think, 22 people.

So if you were big enough to fit the uniform, you were on the team. So that's how it worked in those days. We weren't very good, spirited bunch, but 1946, Buddy Adams, he played on the 46 team.

They were going for the state championship in football. I forget who the coach was. Lupien, one of the Lupien's, great coach.

Ab? No, I don't know what, I forget what it was, because I didn't have him. I had, only one year I had him for a coach. It was a Lupien, that's what I can remember. But anyway, they were going for the state championship. We were class D.

And if you played out of your class, like you played C or B teams, you got more points. So they were going for the state championship. And I don't think they made it that year, 46.

I think they lost a punch in the eye. No, it wasn't punching. It's the one up in Hudson.

Pinkerton Academy.

Interviewer - At Derry.

George Merrill - Yeah, I think they lost.

Interviewer - Pinkerton's at Derry.

George Merrill - Either that, they played Maynard too, which was a class B team. And they did well. I think they only lost one game in 46.

But, to play those teams, you had a guarantee of two years. So, guess what we wound up with? All the good guys graduated in 46.

And we were stuck playing these very big teams. And we got stumped. We got stumped.

But, it was a lot of fun. And years since, we had a good grounding in fundamentals, that's for sure.

Interviewer - And made a few lifelong friends?

George Merrill - Oh yeah. Well, they're still around.

Interviewer - Buddy. Yeah.

George Merrill - Buddy. Buchanan. Auslander.

Interviewer - I met his son. You're talking about Ralph Sr.?

George Merrill - Yeah, well, it's Ralph. Or Ralph Jr.? Frank.

Frank was, Frank, he was, I think he's passed away. He was a chiropractor. Okay.

I think in Nashua.

Interviewer - The one I'm thinking of is the police chief's son. And he still lives over on Smith Street. Yeah.

That's your football friend?

George Merrill - No, his brother.

Interviewer - Okay. So, Frank would be Ralph's brother?

George Merrill - Frank would be Ralph's brother. Okay. Yeah.

Ralph, who, TB's doing war off a carrier. He's a good golfer, too. But, yeah, they're still, still friends around town.

They still live here, some of them. Not a lot of them. A lot of them passed away.

But, 47, graduated in 47. 67 people in our class. 67.

And we, then I went to Long Tech for two years. 49, 48 and 49. And I went back in 50.

But, I was going, going back in 50, I think. But, there was a Korean War, and they were drafting people right and left. So, rather than get drafted in the Army, I joined the Air Force in 1950.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - But, I was still working the lines. You know, all through high school. Still working there.

Still living on Middlesex Street. And by then, Dad was a professor.

Interviewer - Was he at Lowell when you went to school there?

George Merrill - Yeah, he was there, yeah. And my cousins went. My uncle was a professor, and he ran the cotton department there at the Texel School.

And when he, when he retired, my cousin ran the, ran the cotton department there. So, the Romero's over there. Kept it in the family?

Yeah, yeah. I didn't do too good. I wasn't what you would call a good student.

I was going to be a dye chemist because of the, you know, the, there were still mills here, and they needed that. But, in hindsight, that wasn't a very good choice because most mills only hire one dye chemist. And there were probably six jobs in all of New England, you know, for a dye chemist.

But, it didn't work out too well. Didn't work out too well. But, hey, it was a good school.

I should have taken engineering is what I should have done. There's always jobs for engineers, people who can put things together. There's always a job.

Now, like I say, for dye chemists, there were probably a half a dozen jobs that were worth anything. But for an engineer, you could get, in those days, you could get a job almost anywhere. They could put something together, you know, strength of materials and all that.

But, I don't know.

Interviewer - I may have asked you this before. I had a great uncle, Harry Jack.

George Merrill - I know Harry.

Interviewer - I wondered about that.

George Merrill - I know Harry. Yeah, he had a son. Charlie?

Yeah, I knew him. They lived out...

Interviewer - Mammoth Road.

George Merrill - Mammoth Road.

Interviewer - On the left. Marsh Road. Marsh Road branch.

George Merrill - This goes to Pellon. This goes to... Harry Jack's house is right up there.

Interviewer - I think that's Marsh Road.

George Merrill - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we used to go there. Harry ran the machine shop, taught machine shop.

Machinery, yeah. And steam power. Yeah. And later years, when the textiles started going away, Dad was his assistant in the machine shop. Really? He taught some mathematics and he worked in the machine shop because they closed the weaving pot because there was no call for it anymore.

At one time, that was the foremost textile school in the world. My dad had students from everywhere. India, China.

Limey Khoo. I remember one of the Chinese boys was called Limey Khoo. He came to the house a few times.

He was very familiar with Dad. But that was a nice school. That was a very pretty nice school.

Interviewer - Now, our fellow historical commission, John Goodwin, taught there.

George Merrill - Yes.

Interviewer - Was he more recent than your time at school?

George Merrill - He was in the cotton department. And my uncle, he worked there when my uncle worked there. He was second in command in the cotton department.

Oh. Then when my uncle quit, then my cousin went to work and John was the boss. Not the boss, but the head man in the cotton department.

John Goodwin and my cousin.

Interviewer - Yes, he was there when I went to school. Did they tell you you visited him last summer up on a gun quit at his house up there?

George Merrill - Oh. I know he's got a place up there. He enjoys it up there.

But, yes. No, I know John very well. And they were very friendly with my dad.

They used to eat their lunch together. John and Ohlrich, a guy named Ohlrich, a German fellow from Germany. Was head of the weaving department when my dad was second in command.

He and John and Ohlrich used to eat their lunch together. Small world. Yes, a small world.

Yes, Harry was a very interesting person. He had a, like a farm almost. He had tractors and stuff.

Yes. A nice guy. I remember him.

A nice guy. Yes. So.

Interviewer - Well, let's see. We got you through school. We got you, you just signed up with the military.

I just signed up for the military. So.

George Merrill - Now, if you want to know all about my military, I've already done an interview and it's on tape. Oh. With, what's his name?

The guy that's on the TV.

Interviewer - Velu?

George Merrill - No. There's another fellow.

Interviewer - Dennis Ready?

George Merrill - No, no, no.

Interviewer - One of the staff at the Telemedia?

George Merrill - Yeah. And he interviews veterans.

Interviewer - Okay. So it was like the veterans project where they.

George Merrill - And we, it was a good, I think I did two sessions with him, a half hour each one.

Interviewer - So that got broadcast on cable?

George Merrill - No. Yes, it did. It's been on cable.

I got the tape, I got the disc around here somewhere. It's on a disc. But some of the, some of the information I get, I got the dates screwed up.

Interviewer - Well, let's, let's concern ourselves with North Chelmsford and some of the businesses.

George Merrill - Oh, North Chelmsford.

Interviewer - Some of the people in town. Yeah. Right across.

Go ahead.

George Merrill - Right across the street from my house, Molders Foundry.

Interviewer - This is Middlesex Street House?

George Merrill - Middlesex Street. Right across from my house was Molders Foundry. Big, big business.

They had a, it was a foundry, and they had a big, big smokestack that was about six feet high. No smokestack, just six feet high. And in the mornings, they would load, they would load the smelter.

They had a ramp, and they'd open the door, and so many wheelbarrow loads of coke, so many wheelbarrows of lime went into the thing. And then they had a big pile of scrap metal, old engine blocks, and all that stuff. And they had a skills, and they'd weigh that all up, tuck that in there, everything down with a wheelbarrow, go up this ramp, and dump it into, through this door, right into the smelter.

Then they'd fire it up around noontime, and if my mother had clothes on, she'd get out there and haul around, stop that smoking! Because this thing would blow blue smoke, black smoke, because it had a stack only six feet high.

Interviewer - Yeah, the wind was right.

George Merrill - It was all, the snow would be greenish black all winter long. Couldn't do that today. No.

Yeah, they'd pour in the afternoon, and they had a lot of people there. I bet there was 30 or 40 where it was really going. During the war, First World, it was there in the First World War, it was there in the Second World War.

Interviewer - What did they produce?

George Merrill - Heavy, heavy punch press machinery. Some of it weighed tons.

Interviewer - So these were castings that got machined up into machinery?

George Merrill - Yeah, they just made the castings. They didn't machine them there. They just made the, they just made the, they had the molds, they made the molds, and they poured the stuff in, and then they would ship them off to somebody else to do the machining. But they were big, they were big things. Punch presses, drill presses, great big things. They weighed tons.

And that burned. I don't know the date. I've tried to figure out the date, and I don't know what the date was.

I think it was in the middle 50s when I was away in the service. What happened is it got hit by lightning.

Interviewer - Huh, wow. It got hit by lightning. All those years of burning coke and Yeah.

George Merrill - Flames.

Interviewer - Lime.

George Merrill - It got hit by lightning, and it hit where the power, where the wires went into the building. And when it hit it, you could imagine how much dust was in there. And it got the whole place dusty inside, and there was a little fire on the outside where the electricity went in, and it blew up.

It sparked the spark and the dust. They had a dust explosion. Could it have been coal dust?

Interviewer - Well, who knows?

George Merrill - The place was filthy inside because of what they did. But anyway, it blew up, and then it burned. Before that, 1936, the flood.

The 36th flood.

Interviewer - You were there?

George Merrill - Yes. Okay, right up to the foot of Wheat Street, right at the foot of our house. We were on an island for three days because it came through all this foundry between they had a storage house and then the foundry itself, and the river came right through there.

They cut a hole in Middlesex Street 20 feet deep.

Interviewer - Wow.

George Merrill - And it went down the back of our house over by the training school.

Interviewer - Yeah, did it fill up that swampy area by the training school?

George Merrill - Yeah, it filled that all up, and it went down by Dingwell Street, and then it went down by Black Brook and back out again. But we were high enough, so we were on this little island for about three days. Of course, that didn't bother us because Dad always had potatoes in the cellar and we canned stuff and everything, so you didn't have to go to the store because we had our stuff.

Interviewer - What about water? Did it go well?

George Merrill - No, I don't know where we got the water. That I don't remember. There could have been any water.

Interviewer - Was it city water at the time?

George Merrill - Yeah, oh yeah, 1906. Maybe those pumps still work then. I don't know where we got water, now that you mention it.

There was water under our place, but you couldn't have a well without it.

Interviewer - You couldn't use a well if it was flooded, right? Oh, but you had a city water hookup.

George Merrill - We had a city water hookup.

Interviewer - So we probably had a gravity feed tank and that probably worked through the flood.

George Merrill - Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, we must have got water from somewhere. I don't remember that part.

But I do remember it going down back and it coming right up to the foot of the street. And when the flood receded, there was a 20-foot hole right in the middle of Middlesex Street, right opposite where the foundry was. Now, the foundry was there then, so that's 36.

Now, that didn't burn until the 50s. That didn't burn until the 50s.

Interviewer - So was that across from Weed Street? Yeah, right at Weed Street. Right across on the riverside of Weed Street?

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - Yeah, because if you go up like this on Weed Street and down the other side to the Glendale, and that high place is where we were in, there were probably a dozen houses. It went down towards Bruelette Street.

Interviewer - Yes.

George Merrill - Way down the end there. So there was probably a dozen houses in that little circle. I've got to use the facility.

Hold on a minute.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - Yeah, okay. Well, what are we, up to the 50s?

Interviewer - You know, you drop back to the flood for a second. Speaking of the flood, I saw your friend Francis Miskell last week.

George Merrill - Yeah, Francis Miskell.

Interviewer - And he handed me a picture, asked me if I'd like to have it, and it was a picture looking across Black Brook at the Southwell Mill. And, of course, the Southwell Mill was an island too. You mentioned your house was an island.

George Merrill - Pat asked some pictures. I don't know where they are. They're upstairs in the closet.

Interviewer - Oh, have I seen them? I doubt it.

George Merrill - Let's check them out. Taken from a high point where her house is down here. Oh, this house, by the by, it came right up to the end of the, right up to the end of the property right here.

And Bliss, Bliss had a farm, the big house, two houses down. And they kept his cows in my shed out back, in my barn up there. Because they would have been flooded out.

But she has, she has a picture that shows out towards Tyngsboro Road because her parents, her grandparents lived down on Tyngsboro Road and they got flooded out. They got burned out once and then they got flooded out. So that was down on Tyngsboro Road, opposite where the gas station is now.

Interviewer - Yes, that area gets flooded.

George Merrill - That area was, I mean, it was 10, 12 feet high there. Yeah, that was, that was, well, that was really high.

Interviewer - Back in 06, the middle six got flooded and was closed for a couple of days.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - I guess it's Tyngsboro right there.

George Merrill - Yeah. But that was, that was, that was, I remember that. And 38 was the hurricane.

And that blew everything down. Trees everywhere. We had a window blow out, the house, but that's all.

Didn't do much for us. Interviewer - There were some big trees downtown, Central Square, we got some pictures.

George Merrill - It did, it did dump over our apple tree. Dad got a block and tackle and he pulled the stake in the ground and pulled it up.

Interviewer - Did it take root again?

George Merrill - Yeah, couldn't get it all the way up. So for years, for the next 20 years, the tree was like, but it still put out apples. Oh yeah.

It was at an angle of about 30 degrees.

Interviewer - So where were you when the hurricane hit?

George Merrill - Oh, I was, about 38, I would have been 9 or 10.

Interviewer - Were you in Middlesex?

George Merrill - Middlesex. I lived there all my life. Okay.

Till I, till I came here.

Interviewer - So, but no. So was that scary?

George Merrill - Yeah, it was scary. I was pretty young then. It scared me a bit, but we got through it all right.

Dad wasn't home because he taught night school for an extra buck or two. You know, there was an extra stipend for teaching nights. So, and he had the Model A then.

Finally, he could afford a car. And it took him a long time to get home. He didn't even get home till 11, 12 o'clock.

Because everywhere he went to go, there were trees down. So he went half, all through Lowell and kept going because he knows the area. You know, he was born here too.

but yeah, it was pretty scary. It was pretty scary. There were no big trees next to the house.

Nothing came down on the house. Nothing like that. Just the apple tree fell over, that's all.

Like I say, he dug a hole on this side over here and pulled it back. It grew. We had a wire on it for about 10 years to root it again.

So anyway, 50s. Quick trip through my service, Air Force. Went to Lackland.

Went from Lackland to Keesler. Learned to be a radar operator. And then they shipped you all over the country to these radar sites.

And I was fortunate. I could ship to Truro, down on the Cape. I spent, spent a year there.

And when I was there, there was a Captain Trotman, I remember his name. He'd been looking through the records. He was the base commander because it was a very small place.

There was only maybe 50 guys. It was a AC&W site, radar site, controlling traffic on the eastern seaboard. And he found out I had two years of college.

And it was still in the 50s. They were still looking for pilots. So he said I should go to pilot school.

So I didn't want to stand there the rest of my life doing this, just watching the scope go around. So I did. I put in for it, took the test and everything, and went to pilot school.

But I couldn't pass the eye test. I could when I first took the test, but they didn't take us for another eight months till I get called for the class. And watching the scope, I ruined my eyes.

So I couldn't pass the test. I had 2040 and you've got to have 2020.

Interviewer - So when they say, tell kids that if you sit and watch TV, it'll ruin your eyes. They're not kidding.

George Merrill - Well, I think I think things are different now. Because in those days, it was the infancy of radar. And I think there was more radiation coming through the screen than there is today.

Interviewer - And now they have protection on when tubes. They put protection to keep the Yeah. radiation from coming.

So you think it might have been radiation?

George Merrill - I think it was different in those days. Inside the scopes had what they call an aqua dag. They coated them inside so that so that they bombarded the tube.

Interviewer - Like phosphor or something? Some sort of greenish colored phosphor?

George Merrill - Yeah. It was they call it aqua dag.

Interviewer - I don't know.

George Merrill - And what it did, it bled the electrons that hit that screen. It bled them off and then they collected them and they went through the cycle. You can't just keep throwing electrons.

It's something they've got to go somewhere. So this aqua dag would take them and take them away. But anyway, so I got to pilot school and they gave you another they gave you another eye test and I couldn't pass it.

I was very disappointed. But the log watch is out for people because I probably would have killed myself if I'd have got to be a pilot.

Interviewer - Well, they might have sent you to Korea.

George Merrill - That's next. so when I couldn't pass when I couldn't pass the eye test, they said, well, do you want to be a navigator? I said, sure.

You know, you'd still be flying. So I went to navigator school, graduated from there at 52, went to advanced for bombardier and radar operator on an airplane. We were what they called triple headed monsters.

You know, we were navigators, bombardiers, and electronics. You could do all three. So I graduated from there.

It was easy. You have to go on a little check. That was a tough school.

It was eight hours a day, five days a week. Now, now I see kids, they go to school. At one time, I was carrying 11 different subjects.

That was a tough school. Nowadays, if you carry three or four subjects, I guess they think they're overworked. But anyway, navigation school was easy because I'd had the mathematics and all that stuff already.

when I graduated, not in the top of my class, but it didn't matter anyway. When I graduated from there, I got married in 53, and went to advanced down at Shaw, took the wife with me, Pat, and well, let's see. We were there a couple of months, and went to B-26s, reconnaissance B-26s.

Had big cameras. You'd enjoy that. Had a big nine-inch film.

It was a K-9, K-9 camera, big one like this, and it had, the film was 15 inches, I think, or something like that. It was on a roll. It was on a roll.

And what you do is you fly over, you flip the switch, and it would take, it would take pictures that overlapped, so that half of the frame, you take the picture twice, and it would give you a stereoscopic, so that when they went to went to look at the pictures, they could, they had a, you know, a stereoscopic glass, and they looked at it, and then it would show you heights because they overlapped. But anyway, that was, that was pretty cool. Took a lot of pictures of the ocean.

We used to try to find the ship that was sunk, Billy Mitchell. Remember Billy Mitchell sunk a battleship to prove you could do it back in the, what, 1918, somewhere in there after the war? But anyway, the superstructure of that thing was sticking out down in South Carolina, and that's where we were, and we used to go out and try to get pictures of that thing at night when you couldn't see it, all that stuff.

But anyway, it was interesting. I was 53. Yeah.

The war's still on. They shipped me out to Stead Air Force Base and went through survival training, and I was waiting at Pax Air Force Base to get shipped over to Korea, to Washington. They didn't know what to do with us.

We sat there, we sat there for, oh, maybe five, six weeks, till it, because they, all these navigators were in the pipeline, and they were graduating, 30 or 40 or 50 every week, and they started piling up, so they had to send you somewhere. So, we, our household goods were stored in Boston. So, they shipped me to Westover as a navigator, so I was right near home.

Bought a trailer, $1,200, had that up there, and then, after that, I was there about a year, qualified, C-54s, and then went, they wanted, they had an assignment to Bermuda. I was still a second lieutenant. None of the people in my squadron in Westover wanted to go there because they were getting new airplanes, which was the C-124, which they were supposed to get, and they did get them, but later years.

So, none of the navigators wanted to go. So, I said, gee, I don't mind. I'll go to Bermuda and spend a couple of years in the sun, which I did.

So, we, we lived two years in Bermuda, and Judy, my second daughter, was born there. So, but, then I come back, eventually, go back to Charleston, spend a, spend a year there, and then got out in 56, and joined the Reserve. And I've been in the Reserve ever since.

Still? No. I retired from the, I retired from the Reserves in 1982, after 32 years.

So, I got 32 years total, 30, 30 years total. But some of that time, 10 years of that time, I worked for the Air Force as a navigator. Air Reserve technician.

They called me a Reserve technician. We ran the, we were the, we were the nucleus that ran the Reserve units.

Interviewer - So, that was your job during those 10 years?

George Merrill - I was a navigator. Was this? Always a navigator.

I was always a navigator. But, when I got out in 56, I went to work for Raytheon, still in the Reserve. Of course, you go, you know, two weeks a year.

Plus, there were other trips that we could go on. So, I stayed active with the Reserve. And I worked for Raytheon.

Did pretty good there. Which one? Andover.

I got to be the, Shawsheen Mill? Yeah. I got to be my supervisor of quality control.

Interviewer - Nice.

George Merrill - Nine, nine floors. It worked out good. But, then Kennedy got elected.

And three months later, there was 8,000 people working there. Three months later, there was 3,000 people working there. We all got fired.

Wow. Because, Joe Kennedy, Phillips? I think the guy's name was Phillips.

The chief? Yeah, head of Raytheon. Anyway, he and Joe had a problem.

Joe Kennedy wanted to join this guy's golf club. And they wouldn't let him join. They blackballed him.

So, when Kennedy got elected, half of Raytheon's contracts were down the tube.

Interviewer - So, that's a fact. You can check it out. All because of the snub.

Huh? All because of the snub at the golf club.

George Merrill - All because Joe couldn't join the golf club. That's what, that's what. So, anyway, then I had, there was nothing going on.

That was in, I don't remember the date. Must have been 60, 1960, somewhere in there. I went to work in the quarry.

I spent six years in the quarry. I worked for Morris Brothers and I worked for the LaMasuriers. And, then I got the job with the reserve as an air reserve technician and that's where I spent the rest of my career with that.

Interviewer - Okay, so you worked at Raytheon and then the quarries. Yeah. Before the reserve tenures, Joe.

George Merrill - Yeah. Before the tenures. It was a ten year period there.

When I, I did five years, I think. Five years with Raytheon and then five or six years in the quarry.

Interviewer - Well, tell me about your quarry experience and what your family's connection is with the quarries.

George Merrill - Well, it's been in the family for 200 years. And my great, my great grandfather, great grandfather, great, great grandfather, Sam, he ran it. So it's Merrill's all the way down the line?

Yeah. But, it hasn't been always Merrill. We've always owned it.

But in later years, it was leased. We leased it to Morris Brothers and they leased it from about 36 on till about, I don't know, 50, till the 60s. Because I, I did work for him just for a, for a very short period.

But it was my ancestors that owned the place. I got pictures. Did you ever see those?

Interviewer - No, I have to check them sometime.

George Merrill - Yeah. Where are you going with them?

Interviewer - I might have seen them, I'm not sure.

George Merrill - I'll bring them down, I'll show them to you. Oh, it's got the old derricks and the guys sitting on the bars because everything was drilled by hand in those days. You know?

But, yeah, no, so I'm a, I'm a pretty, pretty accomplished stone cutter. I can whack away at it, not as, not as efficient as I used to be.

Interviewer - You still do it? Yeah, I can still do it. Still making stone benches and curves?

George Merrill - Yeah, I can still do all that stuff, yeah. My, my son wanted to learn how, Leslie, even if I haven't now, but he wanted to learn how to cut stone as soon as it was in the family and so forth. So part time we, I got a compressor and some tools and we went up on the hill and there was plenty of stuff around and I taught him how to cut stone.

So he knows how to do it too. like that. It's a tough life.

Tough life. They'll make an old man out of you. Most of the guys, most of the fellows, you know, 50s, 60s, they're gone because, you know, you're sucking up the dust and, Now you mentioned the LaMasuriers.

Interviewer - Yeah. You worked for them or any of them?

George Merrill - Yeah, I did.

Interviewer - You worked with still?

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Another generation.

George Merrill - I worked for John. There were three brothers. There was John, Tom and Joe and three brothers ran it and I worked for those.

I worked for them. And when they got out of the business, John just died maybe five or six years ago. Now their children are running it and there's Stephen, Stephen, Jenna, Richard and John.

John's the bookkeeper and Jenna's the mechanic and Stevie runs the shop. But they all cut stone, you know, when they have to. They all know the business.

Yeah, they're still, they're still in business. Yeah. They, I only worked for them a few years.

I don't know how many, maybe four, maybe four with them. And one or two with Morris Brothers at our place.

Interviewer - So who owns the Merrill Quarry right now?

George Merrill - Yeah, we're still on it. Yeah, we're still on it. It's up for sale and we have a purchase and sales agreement to sell it but we're having an awful time with Westford.

Interviewer - Okay, this is with the town?

George Merrill - Yeah. I don't want to put that on tape. We'll just leave that, leave that line because they're not nice people.

Westford is not nice people. They're all blow-ins from somewhere else and they have no conception of what a quarry is. It makes noise.

It makes dust. Yeah. That's what quarries do.

But anyway, that's another. So anyway, I stayed with the reserve until 1982. I flew a whole bunch of different, C-47s, 119s, 124s and 123s.

Those were all different military airplanes. So in 1982, no, 1980, they were transitioning from the 123 into the 130 and I didn't have enough time left to transition. There won't transition unless you've got two years.

Interviewer - Because they're going to put a lot into your training.

George Merrill - Yeah. They don't want to do that and waste the money because I had, at that time, I had 27 years and unless you make full colonel and I was only a lieutenant colonel, unless you make full colonel, you can only fly for 28 years. That's all and you got to get out.

So that's what happened to me. At the end of the 28 years, they wouldn't transition me into a new airplane because I couldn't fly it. So they gave you an option.

You could take a desk job or you could retire. So I retired. Sounds good.

52 years old. Not bad. 52 years old.

I haven't worked a day since.

Interviewer - Well, I don't know. When you go up to the quarry and play with stone.

George Merrill - Oh, yeah.

Interviewer - Well, that's fine. Heavy day.

George Merrill - Yeah. But no, it has been nice since then. Since then.

Pat kept working. Like I told her. I worked for the first 25 years.

Now it's your turn to work for the next 25 years. Of course, by then the children are gone. The education is completed.

And she did. She worked for Pickens. Pickens Insurance down in town.

Interviewer - I have him on a tape. 1972. Bob Pickens.

George Merrill - Oh, Bob Pickens. He was quite a guy.

Interviewer - Yeah, he sounds like a character.

George Merrill - He was a flyer. He was a pilot.

Interviewer - I'll tell you what. Since we're on North Chelmsford Businessmen.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Tell me about some of the contacts. I know you know several of the businessmen in town.

George Merrill - Well, I know I know the Gillette's that run the mill.

Interviewer - Gene?

George Merrill - They were in the mill. Gene.

Interviewer - Did you know his predecessor, Dixon? I knew Dixon. Did you ever work No, but I don't think it's that Dixon.

I know George Dixon. George? No, George.

George is the selectman. His father. Oh, his father.

Okay, because oh, was he the one that was supervisor of the...

George Merrill - I don't think so. His name was Dixon. But I don't think he was supervisor of the mill.

Because... He worked in the mill, but I don't think he was a supervisor.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - He wasn't the head man, I don't think.

Interviewer - Because I think the Dixon that we're talking about was owner or supervisor.

George Merrill - Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they may have been brothers or cousins or something, but I don't think he was...

Interviewer - Probably a relative.

George Merrill - Okay. George's father, I don't think was...

Interviewer - So you knew George Dixon, the selectman's father. Yes. What did he do?

What was his connection in town?

George Merrill - Oh, I think he... I don't know. I think he worked at Fletcher's for a while.

Interviewer - Oh, of course.

George Merrill - He was a big athlete. He was an athlete. He played for played for Vanya A.A. You've heard of the Vanya A.A. I've heard of it.

Interviewer - Tell me about it. Tell me a little bit about it.

George Merrill - When you talk to Miskell, if you talk to him again, tell him to get out the picture. He has a picture of the Vanya A.A. back in the 50s. Yeah, it would have been in the 50s.

And all those people were there. I knew most of them. Because that was big.

Every Sunday afternoon you'd get on a ballpark. And they played good ball. It was like going to see the Red Sox.

Interviewer - Oh.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Like, almost like a minor league...

George Merrill - Minor league, yeah.

Interviewer - Minor league team.

George Merrill - But, yeah, I knew... I knew the bowling alley. John?

Yeah. I knew the guy that owned it before him, which was Charlie Dinnigan, the one-eyed baller. I knew Charlie.

I knew his... In fact, one of his daughters is a good friend of Pat's. They were in high school together.

Interviewer - And before that... Now, did Charlie own it when it was manual pin setters? Yes.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Francis said he was one of the pin setting boys at one time.

George Merrill - Yes, he was. But I think he worked for Joe Ryan. Joe Ryan was probably one of the original owners of the place back in the 20s.

And Joe Ryan was the fire chief here in North Central. So they kept the fire engine up overhead.

Interviewer - Now, where was the fire station before they built the brick station next to Town Hall?

George Merrill - Well, it was in a number of different places. Opposite the store on the other side of the street from Rosie's Diner. There's a store there.

There's a... Parley's.

Interviewer - Oh, where Parley's...

George Merrill - No, no. No, no. Right opposite Rosie's.

Interviewer - Opposite Rosie's.

George Merrill - There's a parking lot.

Interviewer - Well, where the bowling alley is. Yeah. Same building.

George Merrill - Same building. Okay. Okay.

There was a First National in there when I was young. And next to the First National was a little narrow place over the bowling alley.

Interviewer -

So that's where the fire station was. The First National was in the bowling alley building.

George Merrill - Yes.

Interviewer - Was there A&P across Walton Street? Yes, on the other side. Okay.

Were they there at the same time or different times?

George Merrill - Oh, they were there at the same time.

Interviewer - Same time.

George Merrill - Yeah, yeah. There was Frosty's Drug Store and next to Frosty's Drug Store was the A&P. Uh-huh.

And the fire station was originally now down on Mount Pleasant Street. The other side, way the other side of the mills. That's where it was then.

Interviewer - Is that down toward Highland Street down there?

George Merrill - Yeah. Okay. Quigley Avenue, Mount Pleasant runs into Quigley.

Interviewer - Oh, Quigley. It's in North Chelmsford.

George Merrill - Yeah. It's on the other side of the tracks.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, that's where the station was originally and then it moved up to the center, up to the, up to Vinyl Square and it was over Bowling Alley and then in later years they built another garage that was the other side of the A&P.

And there was Frosty's Drug Store, the A&P and Hills Variety and they built a garage and that's where the fire station was and that's, it moved from there to where it is now.

Interviewer - Was that next to Wyden Street or the other end of the building? The other end of the building. Down, north, north end of the building?

George Merrill - Yeah, this side, which was west. Yeah. That's north.

Okay. It's funny here, everybody thinks that that's north. That's not north.

That's where the sun goes down right in your eyes every time you drive up down to the road. That's north there. That's north that way.

So it's on the west side.

Interviewer - Yeah.

George Merrill - Yeah. That was the fire station. So it was random.

It was Joe Ryan and he owned the bowling alley. He had a, World War II, I think. He was the fire chief and owned the bowling alley.

And some of the other people, you know, I knew Bob Pickett, who ran Pickett Insurance. I didn't know all of the, everybody in town.

Interviewer - How about the McGoverns? There was one that worked in a restaurant. There was a restaurant, apparently.

George Merrill - I don't remember McGovern running a restaurant.

Interviewer - Louie. Francis mentioned he used to peel potatoes at that restaurant. It was on the other side of the public parking lot from where the bowling alley is.

George Merrill - Oh, the Paramount. Paramount Diner. Yes, yes, yes.

Interviewer -

And I think one of the McGoverns had something to do with that also.

George Merrill - Yeah. Yep.

Interviewer - And then Paul McGovern ran the auto repair shop.

George Merrill - Across the street.

Interviewer - Yeah.

George Merrill - Well, he still lives in town. Yeah. Yeah.

What the heck was...

Interviewer - Frank. So did you hang out at the Paramount much? Paramount?

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Did you?

George Merrill - I used to tell my mother if I didn't like what she had for supper, she'd say, What's a diner? And they used to have a blue plate special. You could get beans and two codfish cakes for 99 cents.

Oh, that sounds good. That was delicious. It was good.

That was the greatest place in the world. Between Boston and Manchester, New Hampshire, in those days, back in the 30s and 40s, that was the only 24-hour open restaurant between Nashville and Boston. And this was the old little tree that was the main road.

Interviewer - So everybody had to go this way until like You had to go this way.

George Merrill - And there were trucks and everything. And it was open 24 hours a day. They had a fancy restaurant over here.

Interviewer - What did they park? Was there diagonal parking on the main street or up back?

George Merrill - It was somewhere up back, but it was mainly on the street. And across on this side was a fancy restaurant, a sit-down restaurant. Then you had the diner in the front.

Then over here, there was what they call a bucket, which was the sleaziest bar you ever went into.

Interviewer - Same building?

George Merrill - Same building. There was always fights in there because the quarry guys would come down and they'd fight with the mill guys. And there was a We were never allowed to go near there.

Interviewer - So which side were you on? The quarry guys? The quarry team?

George Merrill - Oh, yeah. You were a quarry man, right? I would have gone in there anyway.

Interviewer - But you had friends that were mill guys. Oh, sure.

George Merrill - There was always fights going on. But, you know, Vinal Square hasn't changed that much. And everybody keeps saying, we've got to rejuvenate Vinal Square.

We've got to spiff up the It never was anything but a sleazy mill town. There never was anything fancy. The restaurant was nice, but that was nothing fancy.

It was just, you know, run-of-the-mill place. And it's just in those days it looked a lot worse than it does today. But what else?

Well, that's pretty much it. Oh, there was a the village house Pete's Barbershop. Next to the barbershop is the pocket lot.

That's where the village house was. There were apartments upstairs and there were stores downstairs. There was Anderson's Market and Hadley's upholstery shop.

Billy Hadley's a fireman. Was a fireman. He's retired and his son is a fireman now.

But that was Hadley's upholstery shop. And there was Santia. Gee, Miskell asked me the other day what the barber's name was and I couldn't remember.

Interviewer - So he had a barbershop. There was a barbershop on the end. Okay.

George Merrill - And that was Santia's barbershop. They were French people. And we called them the short along.

You go in and ask you sit in the chair and say how do you want it? Short along. So that's what we called the guy.

Short along. And there were two of them and two brothers. One was a big tall guy and the other was a little short.

Yeah. So there was a barbershop, Addison's Market and on the end was Hadley's upholstery shop and they had four or five apartments up overhead. At one time I think it was a rooming house but it was broken up into apartments.

Too bad they took that down. That was a nice antique building. It was all wood.

Three stories I think. It was quite a place but it's gone like everything else.

Interviewer - Do you remember when approximately?

George Merrill - Probably 60s.

Interviewer - 60s, okay. What was in Pete's barbershop at that time?

George Merrill - Cap Elliott. Cap Elliott was in Pete's barbershop.

Interviewer - It was his business.

George Merrill - He sold candy and newspapers and he was a character. He was a real character. Cap Elliott, he got the name of Captain because he was a Captain in the Canadian Air Force in World War I and he flew Spads over in Europe and he came back over here and he lived in the back of the shop.

Interviewer - That's a pretty small shop to live in.

George Merrill - Yeah, well, all he had was a toilet and a bed I guess. I don't know. It was a real grubby place and he had an old Model A station wagon that he outside and all his fishing gear was in the back.

He liked to go fishing. He'd go fishing and broke his leg one time, didn't want to go to the doctor, so he sent it himself. He was a real character.

He was a real character.

Interviewer - He liked to hang out with them.

George Merrill - He was a harmless guy. He'd go in there and buy a penny candy, newspapers, magazines.

Interviewer - Comic books?

George Merrill - He had four or five different kind of newspapers. He was quite a character, that guy. I didn't Supposedly, the story goes, he was into racing automobiles at one time in his younger life.

And supposedly, he was the first one to drive a Model T on the Darlington flats down there at the ocean in Darlington, not Darlington, yeah.

Interviewer - Daytona?

George Merrill - Daytona, on the beach. First one to exceed 100 miles an hour in a Model T. Now, who knows whether that's true or not, but that's a legend that goes with Cap Elliot.

Interviewer - Can't picture a Model T, you know, pushing 100.

George Merrill - Well, no, it was designed for racing.

Interviewer - This particular one? It probably had a racing body on it. It had low windows or whatever it was, chopped down.

George Merrill - But in my younger days, in high school, right? In high school and right after high school, I was working as a mechanic on a racing team. We used to race up at Hudson.

They used to race up at Hudson. And he used to come up. He used to come up, and we'd lug him along with us.

He was old. Probably in his 80s, I don't know. He was pretty old.

Interviewer - But he enjoyed being around you?

George Merrill - Yeah, he was pretty knowledgeable about racing, too. He'd give you tips on, that's not right. You've got to do it this way.

Chain that down. He knew what he was talking about. He was quite a character.

Didn't do that very long, though. So, anyway, where were you at?

Interviewer - We were at Pete's, and we were moving to the right where Rosie's is. What was in there?

George Merrill - Oh, that's where the village house was.

Interviewer - Oh, on the right of Pete's. The village house was in a parking lot on the left. So on the right of Pete's is...

George Merrill - Pete's, the barbershop, that was Camp Elliott's.

Interviewer - Yeah.

George Merrill - Okay, where Rosie's was, was Chandler Robinson's garage. It was a garage. And P.T., who was his brother...

I don't even know what his name was. It was P.T. P.T.? P.T. That's it. He and Chandler were brothers, and that's where they kept the school bus.

Interviewer - Oh, in that building? Yeah.

George Merrill - Now, right up the street here, Relation of the LaMosieries, Swain's Pond? Yep. Out back of Swain's Pond, they had a factory that made cement blocks.

Okay? And they ran that with a water power, with an undershot, what they call an undershot water wheel that ran this thing.

Interviewer - On the brook coming out of Swain Pond?

George Merrill - The brook up there. And John, the younger that runs the quarry now, that's where he was brought up, right up the street. He says the flume and so forth that ran that is still in there.

So I'm going to get him to show me where it is some day.

Interviewer - Now, is this on this side of the street? This side of the street. Because there's a flume on the other side of the street.

No, that was... That was Swain's Mill.

George Merrill - That was Swain's.

Interviewer - So you're saying there's one on the other side.

George Merrill - There's one on the other side. There's a pond and it runs up in back. And we're up near the sportsman's club.

The little sportsman's club. Up in there is where the flume was.

Interviewer - So does that run into Swain's Pond then? Yeah. Next pond up.

George Merrill - That's where it fed Swain's Pond.

Interviewer - So it's part of the sportsman's property, the rod and gun club's property.

George Merrill - It might be now, I don't know. But John says he knows where it is. And he's also got pictures of it.

Interviewer - And that was the cement block? Cement block place. Now, was Arthur Truby involved in that at all?

George Merrill - Don't know. Don't know. Could have been.

Interviewer - I don't... Because he lived right in that area and I thought he was involved. I thought he actually built a cement block structure in his backyard.

George Merrill - It's possible he was one of the owners. That's highly possible. I know Bertha, his daughter.

She's my age. She's still alive. She lives in Tyngsboro.

She could tell you. The cement blocks in this foundation came from there. Miskell's garage came from there.

And the P.T.'s garage in the square. If you look at those blocks, all of these blocks, all those blocks are the same. And we're not positive, but we think they all came from that cement.

Because that's about 1925. Between 1920 and 1925 is when it was operating and that's when this house was built. So we think that's where the cement blocks came from.

But John has some pictures. He says there's a big box up in the office somewhere. Someday we're going to go up and sit down and see if we can find it.

My wife's getting home.

Interviewer - Yes. Well, we have a half hour if you want to continue. Yeah.

George Merrill - I haven't told any stories about you yet, dear.

Interviewer - That's good.

George Merrill - So anyway, that's more or less the town.

Interviewer - How about one of the things that was on the 1975 tapes, the interviewer asked everybody about the conflict or the tension between North Chelmsford and the Center. We've got a recorder running right over here.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - So careful what you say. It picks up everything. If you say something in the other room, it'll be on there.

George Merrill - I'll keep my mouth shut. Somewhere around between 1870 and 1888, that was when it started. The mills in this part of town were producing most of the taxes.

The cultural center of Chelmsford was here in the north. At the library, at the town hall, we had the schools, and they had a high school. They were all here in the north.

And the churches, St. John's and our church, were big. So this was the cultural center of town. And they didn't get along with the people in the center because there were nothing over there but farms.

It was not a big community over in the center. There was no industry. The cow farms were right in town.

Emerson's Cow Farm was the stinkiest cow farm you ever went by.

Interviewer - They had a lot of big pig farms, too.

George Merrill - Yep. Make your eyes water when you were by the place. So there was nothing over there but cow farms.

And North got sick and tired of going over there for town meetings because we used no horse, and you got to go spring, rain, snow, whatever. And the town meetings were held over in the Unitarian Church at first, and then they moved into the town hall. I don't know when the town hall was built.

Interviewer - Oh, in the 70s. Yep. 70s, 60s, 70s.

George Merrill - Yeah, but this was built in the 1850s.

Interviewer - Yeah, so they got tired of driving over to the center, built theirs here first.

George Merrill - Yeah, and they wanted, the center wouldn't have nothing to do with that. That's where the center of the town was. So that's where you went to the meeting.

So North Chelmsford was going to petition the state legislature to secede from the town of Chelmsford.

Interviewer - Was it in the 1880s?

George Merrill - Somewhere in between the 70s and the 80s. I don't know the exact time. It happened at a town meeting, and the records of that town meeting is in there, who proposed this and so forth.

And they come to a conclusion that what they would do was they would alternate between North and the center.

Interviewer - As a compromise.

George Merrill - Yeah, so the town meetings were held here one year and over there another year. And I think they moved the selectmen's office over here to North. Now how that worked, I don't know.

I don't know where they would put them.

Interviewer - Well, they were probably running out of space over in that church basement.

George Merrill - Yeah, but anyway, I don't, supposedly the selectmen's had an office over here. It's possible.

Interviewer - It was called the selectmen's wing, I think.

George Merrill - Yeah, those two buildings in the back. And I think that's where they were, but they were awful small spaces. Awful small spaces.

So anyway, that was the compromise. And from then on, there's been this conflict between the center and here. Another thing that happened, 1906, when North Chelmsford, they had a fire district for the water.

It was called the fire district and it was originally built, the system was originally built for fire protection for the mill. And that's why the fire engine was down on Mount Pleasant Street. In 06, North asked the center, why don't you join us in building this water facility?

Because we're going to go from a fire district to a water department. And they were petitioning the state to do that. Well, the center said, being nothing but cow farmers, they didn't need water.

They had Welch and so forth. So they said, nah, we don't want to bother with you. So North said, fine, we'll do it on our own.

And they did. And to this day, they're separate. Because they didn't want to join us.

That's another part of the thing. So anyway, four years later, the center decides they need water. So 1910, they built this.

And North said, we got ours already built. It's going to cost too much to tie in with yours, so the heck with you. And that's the way it's been ever since.

Interviewer - I ran into a document somewhere in the files that said the center wanted to have their own town hall. The church was getting too small. Yes.

And coming out here was kind of a pain. They wanted to build. And they went to town meeting several years in a row.

And every time, North shot them down.

George Merrill - That's highly possible.

Interviewer - Yeah. And there was a poem that was written about it.

George Merrill - Because over here, they didn't want to go over the center. And now you want to build one?

Interviewer - So I think it actually delayed the building by several years because they couldn't get it approved.

George Merrill - Well, it's always been that little. Besides, the millrats live over here. Didn't you know that?

The millrats live over here. They were French Canadians. They were the Jersey Islanders.

And then there was Portuguese that worked in the quarries. And there just wasn't. There was millrats that lived over here.

Interviewer - Now you mentioned the high school over here.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - Was that the building between town hall and the newer school houses? And the new school, right. It was a Civil War-era smaller building.

It wasn't. But only until 1917 when they got rid of center? Go ahead.

You can clarify.

George Merrill - 1910. Didn't they build one in the center in 1910?

Interviewer - The one on Billerica Road is 1917.

George Merrill - 1917.

Interviewer - And that's when they consolidated high schools.

George Merrill - Yeah. Well, there was one there in 1910 is when they built the other school. It was the Civil War-era next to the town hall.

Interviewer - The grade school.

George Merrill - Yeah. But that's where... That's where the high school was.

Then they built the grade school over here.

Interviewer - 1910. So the high school was the building in the middle next to town hall.

George Merrill - 1910 is when they built the grammar school.

Interviewer - Where was the high school before they built the grammar school? It's where it is, and it was there. Oh, they tore down a building?

George Merrill - They tore down both of them. Both of them are gone.

Interviewer - Well, they're gone now, but... You've seen the pictures. Yes, I've seen the pictures with the two schools.

One, two, three. And now we have a picture with only one school. The Civil War-era school.

Was that originally a grade school all the way through high school? Is that how it worked? I don't...

And then they built the grade school next door, and they moved the grades...

George Merrill - They built the grade school next door.

Interviewer - And they just left the high school in the smaller building until 1917? Yeah. I don't know how that works.

George Merrill - All I know is that the middle building was the original high school. High school, yeah. But dates are unfamiliar with the dates.

Interviewer - Well, 17 was the brick schoolhouse on Billerica Road.

George Merrill - Yeah. 1910 was when they built the grammar school.

Interviewer - It was the motorized school buses that made that possible.

George Merrill - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interviewer - Because taking them on the open horse wagons wasn't...

George Merrill - Wasn't very efficient. But the original school there next to the town hall, I don't know when that was built. Oh, that was the 1860s, I think.

Civil War. Civil War-era. Yeah. Yeah. And when Pat went there, she went to the new school, which was built in 1910. So that's where Pat went to school.

Interviewer - But by the time she got to high school, the new... Oh, the high school was gone. The high school was over, right?

George Merrill - Yeah, yeah. It was over in the center. Yeah.

That's where I went. I went to that high school. But anyway.

Interviewer - Was, let's see, was Miss McFarland...

George Merrill - Miss Janssen.

Interviewer - Miss Janssen, Hazel Stevens.

George Merrill - Yeah, she would know the teachers. I knew Miss Agnew, who taught at third and fourth grade at Highland Avenue. And Miss Ryan was...

When I was there, there was Miss Ryan, Miss Agnew. Then upstairs, there was a Meteg. And I forget who did...

I forget who did... Isn't that awful? I can't remember who my eighth grade teacher was.

Weldon Haire.

Interviewer - Weldon Haire?

George Merrill - Yes.

Interviewer - That's a familiar name.

George Merrill - Weldon Haire, lived right up the street here.

Interviewer - Yeah, why do I know that name?

George Merrill - Why do you know that name? Because he was the announcer for the Boston Celtics for years and years and years.

Interviewer - That's why I know the name.

George Merrill - In the Boston Gardens. Yes, yes. Yes, yes.

He played on the A.A. and he's in that picture that Misko has. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was there maybe three...

I think I had him for seventh and eighth grades at Highland. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't stay very long and teach him though.

Wasn't very good at it.

Interviewer - Kind of a smart aleck. Better voice.

George Merrill - Kind of a smart aleck. Yeah, he was an announcer for the Boston Celtics. Golden voice.

Yeah, but that was pretty good. Jack Sargent went there to Highland.

Interviewer - Is he related to Mike Sargent?

George Merrill - His boy, Mike, was Jack's... Jack was his father.

Interviewer - He went to Highland. Here in Newark.

George Merrill - Yeah, he went to Highland.

Interviewer - On the other side of the tracks, right? Because he was in Highland.

George Merrill - Yeah. He was this side of the tracks. They lived down by the lights just below Wotton's.

Mahoney's now. He lived on the left there. Jerry Tuck, postmaster for years.

He lived down in that section too. He went to Highland as well.

Interviewer - Francis says he still walks down to the post office, goes in the back door and hobnobs with the employees. He used to work for them. He used to work for them.

He was my postman on Saturdays.

George Merrill - Oh yeah.

Interviewer - He used to deliver my house on Saturdays. Yep, yep. And he mentioned the regular postman, George.

I mentioned that he was a real stickler about shoveling your mailbox. He would actually not deliver your mail. He'd leave a nasty grim.

He says, yeah, that's George.

George Merrill - Yeah, Francis. And he also worked down at the prison too.

Interviewer - Yeah, see, he was telling me about that. He was a prison guard too. Framingham Women's Prison.

George Merrill - Yeah. You know, a guy who was a navigator when I was in a reserve at Anscombe, he was the head of that. Oh.

Yeah, Bishop. A guy named Bishop.

Interviewer - Head of that prison operation.

George Merrill - Yeah. The Framingham, the ladies' prison. A lot of controversy.

And they shoved him in the job. He was only there a couple of years because the lady that was running it, there was some political problems. And Kenny, Kenny Bishop, he only stayed there a couple of years.

I don't know where he is now. Probably, whoosh.

Interviewer - Probably died. Did you ever take the train service when you lived? Oh, yeah.

Out of North Chelmsford? Was there still passenger train service?

George Merrill - Now, like I was telling you, we lived at 2026 Middlesex Street, the last stop in Lowell. And now it's 161. If we got the bus, and it was a stop in front of our house, okay, headed for Lowell, cost you 10 cents.

If you walked down to the city line, which is, you know, 400 yards, cost you a nickel. So we never got the bus in front of the house. We used to go down to the city line, get the bus for a nickel, went to Lowell, get off in Carney Square, go to the movies, right, come out, get the bus at 1130, come home.

Interviewer - Is this Eastern Mass?

George Merrill - Yeah, Eastern Mass. And you could do the whole thing for 25 cents, you know, go to the movies, the whole works, and have a candy bar for a nickel. But if you missed, 11 o'clock was the last bus out of Carney Square.

And they had a stop, you know where the bus starter is? There was a guy there who was called the bus starter. Never heard of him.

He was the bus starter, and he made sure all the buses left on time. He started the buses.

Interviewer - Make sure the driver wasn't stopping or something.

George Merrill - So at 11 o'clock, if you weren't there exactly at 11, the bus was gone. So he talked about railroads. So you run from Carney Square up to the Old Depot, which is up on Middlesex Street, near the overpass, and get the 11:30 milk train to North Chelmsford.

We used to do that. And that was seven cents, not a nickel. That would cost you seven cents.

Interviewer - It's just a short walk.

George Merrill - Yeah. So you'd get on a bus, and you'd get on a train. And it was as simple as that.

Because the train let you off at the train station here in Arthur, and I just lived the other side of the cemetery. My mother worked there.

Interviewer - At the train station?

George Merrill - At the train station.

Interviewer - As a station agent there?

George Merrill - Yeah. She was the secretary for Mr. Freeze, I think his name was. In fact, there's a picture of him somewhere, standing next to the station.

Interviewer - Okay. Now, let me ask you this. Freeze, Freeze.

Did Bill Tobin work for or with him?

George Merrill - No. He worked for the B&M.

Interviewer - Because he was a station agent there too, wasn't he?

George Merrill - No.

Interviewer - No? He worked for the railroad itself. He worked for the railroad.

What did he do? Maintaining track, stuff like that?

George Merrill - No. No. He was the switchman.

Interviewer - Oh, okay. That's right. He was up in the house when they had the...

George Merrill - There was a shed there.

Interviewer - Yeah.

George Merrill - And they had big levers. Yeah.

Interviewer - I think you have the picture. I took...

George Merrill - Somebody's got a picture of that.

Interviewer - I scanned your picture of that. I don't have it, but somebody's got a picture. Yeah, well...

George Merrill - And you pull these big levers. Yeah. And it mechanically shifted people...

Yeah, through long routes. ...Stony Brook, or they went up the main line, or up Stony Brook. And coming down, they could shift them from the main line on to Stony Brook this way.

Because there's a... There's a place there.

Interviewer - Well, I got a little description about that because Bill Tobin is one of the interviews I've got.

George Merrill - Young Bill.

Interviewer - He was... His father's name is Bill. Oh, okay.

So there's two Bills.

George Merrill - His father's Bill, and then there's young Bill, and then there's Mary. Mary and Bill were brother and sister.

Interviewer - This could be the older Bill because he's the one that was in the picture when the church burned.

George Merrill - Yes, he was 10 years old.

Interviewer - That's older Bill, right? Yeah, that's older Bill. And he worked...

George Merrill - He was the switchman.

Interviewer - The switchman, right. Yeah. Yeah, so we have him on tape from 1975.

So I think this is older. Is young Bill still alive?

George Merrill - He used to live up... He lived there for years. I don't know if he's still...

Mary's still alive. She still lives in the Tobin house?

Interviewer - Yes. Should be an interesting... Yes, and her last name is Welch now, right?

She married a Welch family.

George Merrill - Yeah, he worked for Lawton's for 20 years. After I left, he came in. I was the head grower there.

So he was the head man there after I left. Yeah, but that's all... That's what we did on the train.

We didn't go to Boston. He wouldn't go to Boston.

Interviewer - So you didn't hop the train to go to Boston or Florida?

George Merrill - No, no. Never did trains.

Interviewer - So is it because people generally didn't travel that much?

George Merrill - They didn't travel.

Interviewer - After the...

George Merrill - They didn't travel. If we travel, we travel by car.

Interviewer - Okay, so a car was already... Yeah. ...the plan of the train.

George Merrill - My dad liked to travel. We had a Model A. We used to go up into New Hampshire and visit and go up the coast to the Hampton Beach and that type of...

It was a long trip in those days. Yeah. And a couple of summers, we went to Niagara Falls in the old Model A.

Went over the Mohawk Trail. But...

Interviewer - Mostly the military and people that had to go long distances...

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - ...without their families.

George Merrill - Well, you know, people still worked in Boston.

Interviewer - That's true. You go to the station over there near where Gallagher is...

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - ...and...

George Merrill - It's loaded in the morning.

Interviewer - Yeah, well, it is now. But I'm wondering, when you were younger, people commuted like that daily?

George Merrill - They did, but not on a regular basis. I don't remember. All I remember was the...

When I was here for the station, they'd drop off freight. Freight would be dropped... Because they had a shed, a freight shed.

And the mail. They dropped the mail there.

Interviewer - So that was the main function of that station?

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - For years, not so much for passengers.

George Merrill - Did you ever see that happen? Where they used to...

Interviewer - I heard stories. They had a pole. And if there was mail, they'd pick it up on the fly.

George Merrill - Yeah, there was a hook that went, and they'd catch it, and off you'd go. I've seen them do that.

Interviewer - Really?

George Merrill - Yeah, that was cool. Of course, we used to throw snow.

Interviewer - I've seen it in old-time movies, and I've heard about it.

George Merrill - I've seen them do that. Yeah, they had one there, but not... Because that's where they shipped the mail to wherever it went.

It probably went to Boston or Lowell. I don't know where it went. Yeah, that station was underwater during the flood.

Yeah, my mother worked there.

Interviewer - I've got a picture of it, underwater. Oh, yeah? One of the books I'm getting ready to scan has a series of flood pictures and a series of 38 hurricane pictures.

George Merrill - Excellent, excellent. Yeah, my mother worked there for Mr. Freeze, and everything was done by teletype.

Interviewer - Telegraph or teletype?

George Merrill - Teletype.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - Well, telegraph, I guess that's the same thing.

Interviewer - Well, telegraph is a click, click, click. Yeah, teletype.

George Merrill - It was telegraph, and she knew the call sign, and she could read a little bit of the code. When Mr. Freeze wasn't there, she had an answer. She knew the code.

Interviewer - So you keyed in your answer.

George Merrill - Yeah, she used to do that, but only when he wasn't there, because he's the one who was supposed to do all that.

Interviewer - So I've got to have a picture with him in it, because there's a picture of, I think, a tall guy and a short guy.

George Merrill - Yes, yes, I think that's Mr. Freeze, the tall one.

Interviewer - And I always wondered if Bill Tobin, who hung out at the station a lot, if he was in one of those.

George Merrill - Oh, no, the shed was right there. It wasn't far from the station. In fact, it was further this way.

Interviewer - Good pictures. Well, I've got pictures of the one picture that shows the station and the tower. So you think Bill's main job was in the tower?

George Merrill - Yeah, yeah, he worked the tower. He was a switchman. There was a gate.

There was a gate on Middlesex Street, a hand-operated gate.

Interviewer - Hand-operated. A guy went out with a crank and put a lantern on it. What was his name?

George Merrill - Now, I can't remember his first name. He was a big guy, so they called him Tiny. He drove a school bus, the way he is.

But anyway, he was the switchman there.

Interviewer - Okay.

George Merrill - They had two cranks, the cranks.

Interviewer - The little gate and the big gate.

George Merrill - Yeah, and they turned these big cranks.

Interviewer - One for the sidewalk, one for the cars, right?

George Merrill - Yeah, well, on both sides. In other words, you had to stop them on this side and this side. On both sides of the tracks.

These things, and they went opposite like this.

Interviewer - You mean they got both sides of the street at one time?

George Merrill - Yeah, you had to block the street off both sides. You couldn't just have one side blocked off, somebody running a train on the other side.

Interviewer - But how can you crank it and have the gate go down on the other side of the street?

George Merrill - Well, because it went... Under the street? They had gears and all that.

Oh. Like the shift levers, it was a similar thing. Everything was mechanical.

And they'd turn these big cranks and down they'd come. Two o'clock in the morning, he went to sleep. Uh-oh.

Guy got killed. A car was going by.

Interviewer - No gates, no lights?

George Merrill - No gates, no lights. Supposedly, I... That was...

I don't know when.

Interviewer - Could be an urban legend, but... Could be. It sounds plausible.

George Merrill - Who knows, who knows. But anyway, the car got whacked there. I think he lost his job after that.

That's probably when he went to drive on a school bus. I don't know. It was up the street right here.

Not far up the street. But... All the old stories.

Interviewer - So, let's see. You got on board with the town later in life.

George Merrill - Yeah. When I come back from the service, I get a little interested in it. Not when they...

Not when they built the school in the 70s. Remember when they built the Harrington? Happy Harrington?

They built that in the 70s. I wasn't involved in that. I always went to town meeting.

Always went to town meeting. Were you a rep at that time? Well, there was no reps.

Interviewer - Oh, that's right.

George Merrill - The charter and all that happened later. And in the 80s, I was going to town meeting in the 80s. Didn't care much for the sewer because I knew it was going to cost us money.

And they were selling it the wrong way. They were telling us... 85?

84. 84 or 85 when they were discussing the sewer. The federal...

The state and the federal was going to pay 95% of the cost so you've got to vote for this if it's going to cost you nothing. Wow. What they didn't tell the people was there was only...

The state mandated two areas where we had to have sewer. Which was North Chelmsford and I-129. They had to have sewer in those two places.

It was never intended and the state never intended to pay for the whole town to have sewer.

Interviewer - Never. And of course, you would assume that it would be throughout the town.

George Merrill - So they sold it. You've got to vote for it. So they sold it that the town, that the state is going to pay 95% of this and you've got to vote for the sewer.

Well, they didn't tell them that it wasn't for the whole town. It was only for these two areas.

Interviewer - So if you figure it out for the whole town, it's much lower than that.

George Merrill - Sure. So over the years, they did pay a percentage of... Once they did those two...

They did. The state paid a good percentage of the two areas of North Chelmsford.

Interviewer - So it did go through after 85?

George Merrill - Oh yeah.

Interviewer - That started way back then?

George Merrill - Yeah. Yeah. And they did...

They did... The state did pay a percentage. I don't know if it was 95%, but it was probably 80% for those two areas.

But after that, they never did. They paid a lesser percentage and I don't think they pay anything now. So it was a bill of goods they sold to the town and it never should have been...

It never should have been... It never should have been sold that way. They should have told the people that we are planning to sewer the whole town and it's going to cost you $200 million.

But they didn't. They said, no, we're only going to sewer these two areas and the state is going to pick up 95%. And it was...

It appeared that I didn't... I knew they weren't going to pay and nobody listened. So they voted it in anyway.

But they shouldn't... They should have told the people exactly what it was. The federal government wasn't going to pay 95% of the whole system only for those two areas.

And they never brought that out, which wasn't right.

Interviewer - Well, the job's done now.

George Merrill - Yeah, it's done.

Interviewer - It ended up well.

George Merrill - It's done. Well, it was a poorly designed system from day one. It was poorly designed.

It should have been a gravity feed system. Every broken town, period, every broken town runs into the Merrimack River and the Concord River. So there's no place in this town that's been...

From the Merrimack, where we are here at 90 feet to where the Duck Island Treatment Plant is, it's 70 feet above sea level. So there's 20 feet. And that's plenty, plenty of...

so that you could have used... you could have used the whole town without pumps to let it flow... let it flow into the Duck Island, which should have...

which is where it is now. But when they designed the system, they didn't tell you, when it's finished, there'll be 52 pumps. We have to pay electricity, emergency generators for 52 pumping stations.

Because it's not designed as a gravity feed system.

Interviewer - Are you on the North Chelmsford Water?

George Merrill - No, I'm not a commissioner or anything, but I've been heavily involved with them right along. I'm the moderator for their annual meeting. Oh, okay.

Been for years. So I'm the moderator.

Interviewer - So you're in there.

George Merrill - Yeah. So I know what's going on. But...

Interviewer - So at some point you got interested in the historical commission. How did that transpire?

George Merrill - I don't know. That was, what, 89? I've been on that committee since 89, I think.

Right around 90. That's a long time.

Interviewer - Did you... Well, let's start a little bit before that. Did you have any interest in the bicentennial operation?

Oh, no, no. Okay. So then later on...

George Merrill - Yeah. I've always been interested in history.

Interviewer - In history, yeah.

George Merrill - In fact, when I graduated from graduate school, I won the history medal. I got it upstairs.

Interviewer - Ah, all right.

George Merrill - The American Legion gave you a little medal for the highest score on the... So I've always been interested in history. But I didn't get involved in town until the late 80s.

I always went to top meetings. And I spoke a few times.

Interviewer - A lot of people from that, I'm sure.

George Merrill - Nobody listened. But they still do. But...

Interviewer - So who was on the commission and who got you to join up?

George Merrill - John Goodwin was on it. John Alden was there. I just wanted to do something.

Interviewer - Yeah, John, actually, he was appointed in 1970.

George Merrill - Yeah.

Interviewer - He was on it for a long time.

George Merrill - I just wanted to do something with history because I was interested in the history. You know, having... My ancestors that started the town back in 1653, they were Blodgetts.

And my mother's... My grandmother's mother was Mandana Melissa Blodgett, who was a direct descendant of the guy that started the place.

Interviewer - Blodgettville or Blodgetttown, you called it here? This is Blodgett Park. Blodgett Park.

George Merrill - Blodgett Park. They owned pretty much from here halfway to Dunstable. I was chasing down a deed for something.

I forget what it was. And I went to lowell when you could use the books. Now you got to use the computer. But anyway, I went and there were... Right now I think there's 2,800 books in there. I had to go back to book three.

And they think, you ever been in there?

Interviewer - No, I haven't.

George Merrill - You go downstairs, a little rickety old stairs, and most of the books, and it smells musty like an old library. And then there's this archway, and you go in this little archway, and that's where the old books are. All hand done, all handwritten.

And book three is in there. And I don't know what I was looking for. But this Mandana Melissa, who was my grandmother's mother, her name was all over the book.

Selling land, buying land, and so forth.

Interviewer - So was this an organized development, or was it just that there were so many...

George Merrill - Oh, yeah. No, no. This was divided up in the 20s.

It was all divided up. Okay.

Interviewer - And... What are some of the streets that were in this development?

George Merrill - Don't know. I've never seen a picture of it. I know... I owned three lots. 50, 50, and 50. It was three lots.

The original lots were 50 feet wide on the street.

Interviewer - So you've got some buffer on each side because there's actually buildable lots there?

George Merrill - Yeah, there were buildable lots. Now, over next door here, you go up Coral, okay? And this guy on the corner, his original lot was 50 feet square.

And next to him is another lot that's 50 feet square, and they went up the street. 50 square? 50 feet square.

Interviewer - That's pretty small.

George Merrill - Postage stamp. This one happened to be... Don't know why, but this one's a couple hundred feet this way.

I got three quarters of an acre. But these are all... But it would have been a long, narrow lot.

So... But High Street ran all the way through, and all of that was divided up, where the school is, where the Senior Center is. That was all divided up, too.

But it just didn't develop, that's all. Because, I guess, by the time they started building, there's no houses here that are on a 50-foot square piece of land. Up by the lake, there are.

First street, second, third, fourth. There are some 50-footers.

Interviewer - Yeah, that was a summer...

George Merrill - That was a summer place. I don't know who developed that one. But...

Those are 50 feet square. And there's a lot of streets up in there. There weren't many streets... I've never seen... I've never seen a diagram of what Blodgett Park originally looked like. In other words, how they divided it up, I don't know.

All I know is that on the street, there were 50-feet lots. Because I know I've got three of them. And this guy next door, up until just a very short while ago, he used to get two tax bills.

One for this 50-foot lot here and one for 50 feet for his back lot. He got two tax bills.

That was up until 15, 20 years ago.

Interviewer - So they combined them finally.

George Merrill - Yeah, they finally... It didn't make any sense. It was all one piece anyway.

Interviewer - It's like a landlocked block of land in those backyards.

George Merrill - But, yeah. Blodgett Park.

Interviewer - Well, we're officially done. But if you have any favorite story you want to tell?

George Merrill - Oh, no. I don't have favorite stories. Just little stories.

Interviewer - Anything on the historic commission that stands out?

George Merrill - No. It's just that, you know, the thing we're going through now, people want to destroy old houses. It gets me pretty uptight.

But other than that, it's been a pretty good experience. In fact, up until the last 5 or 10 years, there weren't many people looking to destroy houses. During the housing boom, it was practical to do that.

You know, you could buy a house for $200,000, tear it down and get $400,000 for the house you put there. That makes sense. And we lost a lot of places.

But I don't think it's not happening as much now as it did 5 or 6 years ago. Were you on there when we lost 22 houses in one year?

Interviewer - No, that was before. I've been on it about 6 1⁄2 years, I think.

George Merrill - Yeah, what about 10 years ago? Yes, we lost 22 houses in one year.

Interviewer - One year, wow. And that was with that 14-day demolition delay, which wasn't very useful.

George Merrill - A lot of them, it really didn't make any difference. A lot of them didn't make any difference. Somebody redid a chicken house.

You know, I mean, there was nothing to it, you know. But some of them...

Interviewer - A few jams in there?

George Merrill - Yeah. There was one new school street up in West. Oh, that was a nice place.

It was a cape that somebody had turned into, and they put bay windows on it so it was Victorian. But it was originally an old cape, and it had a small garage, like a garage in the back. But actually, it was where the guy kept his horse.

He had seen where the horse chewed on the side of the thing, and there was a... kept the hay upstairs, and he had bars, and they'd throw the hay down so the horse could get it.

Interviewer - It was a separate barn?

George Merrill - It was a separate barn, yeah.

Interviewer - So he wanted to tear that down?

George Merrill - He got it. They put up a monstrosity there. I don't know.

It's just beyond... What was it? Cemetery?

Graniteville Road. What's the road that runs by Sully's?

Interviewer - That's Graniteville Road. Oh, by Sully's, Graniteville, right.

George Merrill - Yeah. You cross School Street, cross Graniteville Road, and you go around a corner and down, and just up the other side, it's right there. A yellow monstrosity.

All right, Fred. I think we're finished.

Interviewer - Shut her down. Thank you very much, George.

George Merrill - I think we're finished.