Okay, the recorder's started. And today is January 7, 2010. This is Fred Merriam speaking with John Alden, and later his wife Louise will join in.

And we were just talking about the Town History Book Project, and how we have a book designer lined up, the same one that did Looking Back with Eleanor Parkhurst. And, John was just talking about, back during the Bicentennial, the Revolutionary Bicentennial.

Revolutionary Bicentennial. That was 1975, right.

Yeah, as opposed to the U.S. Bicentennial. Well... Which was 1976, right?

Well, no. Uh, you're talking the same thing. It's, uh, the American Revolutionary War Bicentennial.

And this part of the country started in 1975. April 19...1975. Okay, so it was, uh... That was the march to Concord.

That's right. I remember driving down Concord Road, and there was a sign I passed every day.

And it said, In 1775, the Revolutionary soldiers from Chelmsford marched to Concord. April 19, 1775.

Right.

So I remember driving by the sign on April 19, 1975. Yeah. 200 years to the day.

Well... I was involved with Boy Scouts at that time. Uh, Troop 74.

Uh, and, uh, I had read that they had a, uh, a Boy Scout patch for, uh, boys that, uh, did a camp out the night before and then walked an historic trail. And, uh, so I looked into how do we set up an historic trail and, uh, got the information from, uh, Boy Scout headquarters in Washington. And I did the research on where the men and men would have, would have, how they would have gotten to Concord from Chelmsford.

And, uh, rolled it up, sent it in, and got it approved. And, uh, then we made a patch because each, each, uh, group had to have their own patch. So we designed a patch, had it made, and then we formed a jamboree committee.

So, uh, right here in this area, we had a Boy Scout jamboree the night before and had, I don't know, about 500 scouts here, I guess, camped out in this area. And, uh, that night, after being with the scouts all day, I went back home and got a call from the Concord Celebration Commission. And, uh, they asked me if I would, uh, along with other, uh, group leaders, uh, intermittent leaders, uh, from the area, would act as a, uh, what do you call it, a guardian?

A chaperone? Well, set up a... Uh, no, a, uh, you know, guards on each side of the road.

Uh, there's a term for that, I think. Like a reenactor?

Well, they were reenactors. Yeah.

But they wanted us to, to form up. And the president would walk between us Oh. to the, uh, park.

Which president is this now? Uh, Ford. President Ford?

President Ford, yeah. So I said, gee, I wouldn't miss an honor like that. An honor guard.

Honor guard. Yeah. And, uh, but also, I was involved with the scouts, so I couldn't let them down either.

So, uh, I waited for the boys. And the morning of the 19th, I rushed into Concord, uh, as fast as I could walk. Uh, got there in time to form up with the, with the, uh, captains from all the different groups.

And, uh, the, uh, his guards, uh, the security people came down, told us to keep the musket butts on the ground. Anybody lifts them off the ground is dead. So, uh, those of us who could, uh, you know, who listened to such things kept the muskets on the ground.

But, uh, submarine men and men, they don't listen to things like that. So, uh, when the president came walking between us, they fired a salute. Whoa.

They got away with it. Much to my chagrin. I would not have done like they did.

I didn't have the nerve. But, uh, well, that was... So you walked from Chelmsford to Concord and then were there in time?

Was that in the afternoon or... No, morning.

Morning.

So you must have walked, you must have... Had to be there at 8 o'clock. In Concord?

Yeah. So what time did you leave Chelmsford? Uh, I think it was about 6.

So two hours only to walk to Concord? Yeah. That's not long.

Yeah, well, I walked as fast as I could. Did your, did scouts walk with you, 500 scouts? Well, they walked, but not as fast as I did.

So you had to, like, head out in front of them and, uh... Yeah. ...leave them behind. Started out with them, but, uh, left them. Yeah, yeah. But it was quite a, quite a mass of boys walking down Concord Road.

So were they there when the president was here, or did he have to leave before? Well, the president was there, so the boys got to see him. Yep.

So what kinds of activities did they have? I don't know, but they had a little, the usual ceremony. Lexington Green?

They lay a wreath at the, you know, at the British graves, and another one at the American graves, and then the different militia groups march over the bridge and fire a salute as they go over the bridge, and then there's the parade in Concord, and that pretty well winds it up. I don't remember him giving a speech. I'm surprised he didn't.

That was a big day for us. We had, you know, we formed up the Chelmsford Minuteman Group. It started in 69.

Were you part of that? Oh, yes. There were 13 of us originally.

On the day of the parade, I think there must have been about 100. I think we had the largest contingent. Is that still going, the same group that you were in?

Not really the same group. Some of the same people, except they don't call it the Chelmsford Minuteman. Now it's, what is it, Middlesex, it's the Massachusetts, I think it's the 4th or 5th Regiment.

Is that Regiment of Foot? Or is that the British term? No, no.

The thing of foot is the British. Okay, that's what I thought. It's their terminology.

Yeah. But they have a different group. I was part of the British outfit too.

In 75, right after the parade down there, we had an election, and I didn't get re-elected captain. It had been agreed beforehand that someone else would be named. What was that?

Do you remember any of the fellows that were in that? Oh, yes. I remember quite a few of the fellows.

Dick Reinstra is still in town. I see him occasionally. Ray Larson.

Is that George Larson? No. I'm trying to think of his first name.

Larson. I can't think of his first name now. A nice group of guys.

There was Ray Day. Is he related to Richard Day? No.

But Ray was a tall fellow. World War II veteran. Had been captured by the Japanese.

Was sunk on a Houston. Got captured by the Japs and tortured. Nice fellow.

He was the only veteran. A gentleman from the town, named Vincent Kehoe, K-E-H-O-E. He formed the British 10th of Foot.

Actually went to Britain and got it approved as a part of the 10th of Foot in England. But they did a review for her in Boston on the big day. I had pictures of that.

That I took mostly from the garage. You know the municipal garage when you first drive into town. On the right-hand side by City Plaza is a parking garage.

Oh, in Boston?

Yeah.

And I had parked in there. They were having a review. So I took pictures because they kicked me out of the 10th of Foot.

Because I was too tall. Yeah, Vinnie came to me one day. John, you can't be in the 10th anymore.

What do you mean? What? You're too tall.

You've got to be a grenadier. And I said, Vinnie, my wife would divorce me before she made another uniform. She would never make another one.

A lot of fun. So that was quite a time. And then you were on the Bicentennial Committee with George A.

Parkhurst. With activities in town in 76, right? 75.

Oh, it was all 75? It was all 75. So the dedication of the 1802 Schoolhouse, raising the flagpole.

Yep. There's an effort going on right now to raise a flagpole at the 1802 Schoolhouse. Were you aware of that?

Well, I talked to George Merrill about it. And George assured me he'd take care of it. I think they've loaded it in the tree and everything.

My son set the first one. The outcome of the last meeting, they have to go to the Historic District because it's on district domain. So I'm not sure if they did that or not.

I didn't get an email or anything, so I don't know. Well, my motto is don't ask. I think I went to the district with regard to the town hall restoration coming up.

And they were very grateful that we came to the meeting and presented our plans. So I told the guys at our meeting, the Historic Commission meeting, that I thought it was well worthwhile making an appearance because our guys, Dick and Bill and George,

they were inclined to just do it. And I said, no, I think they would really appreciate it if you go down to the meeting and talk to them.

Well, if they say no, what are you going to do? I don't see how they could say no because there's a precedent. It was done in 1975.

Well, hopefully they don't say no. I don't see why they would, to be honest with you, as long as we keep it up and handle the flag properly according to the rules. If it's up at night, it's going to be lighted, so it would have to be a light installation.

We could mount one, I guess, on the schoolhouse. I never thought of that. Then we wouldn't have to worry about going down and raising it over the flag all the time.

We got a third quote on the schoolhouse job, too, by the way. We just got one a couple of weeks ago. Oh, good.

So we're progressing very slowly on that. My feeling is that we should concentrate on the schoolhouse, I mean, on the town halls this spring. That can cloud the issue too much with more.

Very good. I'm hoping, perhaps by fall, we'll have three quotes in and know what we want to do, what the scope of work is. There's two schools of thought.

One is to do the exterior, the part that shows and looks shabby. And the other part is to worry about the structure and the walls falling out and do that part of it first. So we're still debating that.

Oh, it's interesting. I was at the Historic Society working on the archives and I ran into a notebook that Dick Leahy had put together. And it had all the receipts and all the details of what was done to the 1802 schoolhouse.

So I saw that the roof had been replaced in 1990. We thought it was back in the 70s. So it was good to know it's much newer and a lot of useful information.

There were plans that showed how the front of the building was reworked with the brick added in and the door put in and so on. So we have a little more historical background on the building than we did before. You were probably involved in that.

Was Dick involved? Or did he just archive that information? Was he involved in the schoolhouse?

We started out by getting the NashobaTech to do the desks for us. And Dick was unhappy with that work. So he said, hey, I'll do it.

I'll do it the right way. So he took over. So he ended up doing all the finished work on the desks and benches.

Yeah.

You know what the latest thing is? When they redid the building originally to put the hearse inside, we think there were a couple of poles supporting the roof because there were some holes in the beams. Yeah, there were.

I remember. There was a piece of one of the supports from the floor. You know how they have the stanchions on the floor with the holes for the desks?

Well, there was one of those up in the attic shoring up the roof. So this went all the way up from the floor to the ceiling? It went on at an angle, but yeah.

So you think there may have been some diagonal braces holding up the middle of the ceiling? Well, there was one that I'm sure of. And this is when you got in.

It had been used by the cemetery department, right? Yes, it was there when we took over. Okay, which was from the cemetery department.

Right. And it was a diagonal. Did it go down to the corner of the floor?

Or did it go somewhere on the floor? It went down to one of the floor joists. That's all I can remember.

So when you took over, there was a wood floor there with joists? There was no wood floor. No wood floor.

I'm talking about the ceiling joist. What do you call them? Oh, ceiling.

Yeah, well, the ceiling was nailed to it. The rafters. The rafters. So was there a support from there to the floor? No. Or are you talking about to the roof? To the roof. Okay, there are braces all the way along between the roof and the rafters. What we were talking about was, it appeared that there were some holes where there may have originally been some holes that went down to the ground.

That's interesting. Yeah, that's Bill Nolan. And we went in with some contractors and they discovered that one day.

So our theory is that the building originally had supports because the ceiling supports the roof through those braces. And right now the ceiling is sagging and the roof in turn is sagging and pushing out the walls. The brick walls are pulling out. So the ceiling is pulling away from the walls because of the pressure of the roof. And part of the reason that the ceiling is going in is they wouldn't install the furnace in the middle of the ceiling. And there's no support.

So what used to just support the ceiling and the roof now supports the furnace as well. Okay. So we were thinking, gee, what if we were to put back a couple of posts, you know, pull the building back together a little bit.

Originally we were talking about cables or rods and turnbuckles to pull the sides in a little bit. I don't know. But then when we discovered the possibility of posts being there originally, we thought maybe that would be a good way to do it.

So it was a dirt floor when you got there, right up to the foundation walls. Yeah, they just... It's like a garage door.

Did they have a little ramp coming up the outside and down to the inside? Or was it just dirt? No, the dirt was level with the outside.

Okay. So they could just drive straight in? No.

Did you dig out some of the dirt so that you could put in the floor?

I don't know.

A couple of feet maybe?

I don't know.

You've got floor joists now and then flooring.

Dick took care of all of that.

So he did all that. Yeah. Yeah, Dick did that. When we got it, it was just a dirt floor. You know, they had two, like a bind door in the front. Yes.

Got a lot of good pictures of that.

Did it slide?

Did it slip to the side or did it open outward? Outward. Outward.

From the pictures, it's a little confusing as to how it opened up. Yeah, they just opened outward. Yeah.

And George Packers and I climbed up into the attic to take a look at the construction up there and how we were going to put the heater in. And that's when I saw the post in the back end of the thing that was supporting what looked to appear to be one of the stanchions for a floor. And I said, gee, I'd like to get that because that would give us an indication as to whether or not we had a sloping floor in the schoolhouse.

And I still strongly think we did. So the stanchion, do you think, went from the ceiling to the floor? No.

Where did that go? No, just from the ceiling. The beams that go across up to the rafter.

Up to the roof? Yeah. Because there are a whole bunch of boards, but they're not in the center of the building.

They're off to the side. Well, this was at an angle, but it was off at one end. About four beams in.

Three or four. So could that hole that the guys found, could that have been for that stanchion? A round hole beam up there?

I don't know.

We'll have to think about that and see if it could have been up above. So is it still up there or was that removed? Well, last time I was up in the attic, it was still there.

Was that after completion of the ceiling or before? After. After, okay.

It was still there. In this notebook, there were some pictures. None of them were really that good, but there were some pictures of the rework being done, which is very interesting to see.

It'd be fun to have a set of pictures when they were actually working on it.

Yeah.

If I keep looking around through the books that Dick has stashed in there, maybe I'll find some. Yeah. I could have sworn there were holes in the walls of the brick building that I assumed were to create a flow of air underneath the floor.

No holes. There's no holes now. But there are ants that could go through the bricks and I think they will fill it in.

Three years ago, I think we hired Bain Pest Control to put some ant poison down. Last year, I went over and there was a huge nest on the north side of the building, so I took my personal ant poison from home. Don't tell anybody I did that.

It's probably not legal to poison public property.

Yeah, right. Although we have no records. I'm on record now.

But even that didn't get them all, so I went back a second time. It was a huge nest. Carpenter ants?

Huge, yeah, carpenter ants. Oh, great. So they're going down through the bricks and into the bottom of the building, so I think what they're doing inside the building.

But the bricks are soft and I'm sure the moisture is just eroded. Those bricks are terrible. Because the size is different.

We have access to some replacements the same size. We offer the town can supply. Bob Morris has a supply.

I think he got them down in Boston. There was a project where they had similar sized bricks. Yeah, we were thinking of taking the paint off to get back to the natural brick.

You know, they did that on the Fisk House and on the Russell House down on Watton Street. They removed the paint from the brick. I read a bulletin through the Mass Historic email updates.

There was a bulletin that said it wasn't a good idea. I got that just before they did it, but it was too late.

That's right.

They were the ones that told us don't do it because the brick is too soft. So we painted it again. Oh, you actually did remove it at one point?

No, no. You were going to, but you just stopped.

The paint was flaking off. It was in bad shape. We ended up repainting the brick.

So who else was on the Bicentennial Committee? There was George A. Parkhurst.

Yeah, George. We made him chairman. Let's see, who else was on there?

Oh, Jarred Davis. Jarred? Jarred.

Jarred. J-A-R-D-D. Okay.

And who's his name? I see his face, too. Isn't that kid?

We had a couple of them. We used to spend an awful lot of time at George's house. George would get wound up.

He was the talker.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Too bad he's gone. Everybody.

Most of the ideas for our celebration came from George Parkhurst. Really? Yeah.

George was a wonder. Dick Leahy and Perry. John Perry Richardson.

John Perry Richardson. Perry and they didn't want us to appoint George because he would run everything. He did indeed, but boy, he did a great job.

He did take over, though. Oh, yeah. You know, I have to tell you my John Perry Richardson out-of-body experience.

I did, for the website, the Historic Commission website, there was an archaeological dig back in the 70s that John did for the Historic Commission, possibly around 1980. They actually hired a professional archaeologist and they got some high school volunteers. One of the things in our file cabinets was a big, thick folder.

It had typewritten pages of the results of the archaeological study. A lot of it was dry reading and facts and figures and data. But the summary, the letters leading up to the study and then the summary of the study, I found pretty interesting.

Then there was a slide collection of the activities. I put it all together on the website so you can go through from start to finish if you ever get onto our website. Look under meeting halls.

The first meeting, site, archaeological study, go through there. You'll enjoy that. But anyway, I kind of got to know John through that presentation on paper.

Carol had known him because he was an antique dealer. He had a place over by Four Corners. She had known him for years.

I was thinking, you know, that guy has a lot of local knowledge. I'd like to meet him. I was thinking this and I was thinking of actually giving him a call when I saw his obituary in the newspaper.

Oh, my goodness. There was some energy, some reason why I was thinking about him just a couple of years ago at the exact time when he actually died. I didn't realize he was dead.

I was afraid. So one of the reasons I got this tape recorder, there were the tapes that Ruth Jeffs did years back in the 70s, and they were all lost. But just for example, I was on the way over earlier this morning on the way over to get this tape recorder.

I stopped by a Welsh insurance agency, and the reason was I had to stop by that building because Carol had some historic society business I had to drop off a letter. It was a bill. But on the other side of the building is Sheila Gilet, who used to be friends with Carol.

And also I had worked with her son on the town hall's utilization study committee. So I just said hi to Sheila while I was there, and we get to talking, and it turned out her husband, Bill Gilet Sr., worked upstairs, and he came down while we were talking. So I ended up going up and sitting down with him, and he started talking about the mills and his brother Gene, and how they had had a couple of other mills, and they ended up buying the Gilet mills.

And Gene was actually working at the mill that they bought, at the time they bought it, because that's how they knew it was up for sale, I guess. So I'm thinking, you know, we've got to get these guys and get them on tape before everybody's gone. So it turns out even the Gilets, they were like the generation after the people that actually ran and worked in the mills, so a lot of those people are gone.

But still, whatever information is out there, it'd be nice to get.

In the digital world, you don't have the worries about losing the data.

You said Gene Gilet, the daughter. Are you sure it's the daughter or not the son? Which is that now?

Gene. Gene Gilet, his brother Bill, was in with them when he bought, back around 1960 when they bought this. Because Louise worked with Gene Gilet's wife.

Okay, Sheila. No, no, his wife is not Sheila, that's Bill's wife. Okay, it was Gene's wife.

Where was that? Where did she work? She worked at Lowell & Fison Savings.

Okay. In Lowell. Okay.

In fact, she was Jerry Wallace's secretary. So Gene listed a bunch of people that we should talk to. So yesterday I was debating whether or not to do it, and then after talking to Bill and Sheila this morning, I decided to go ahead and do it. Yeah, good.

I'll see if I can get some volunteers to set up a few more. But at the next commission meeting, I think I'll have everybody provide a few names. And once you get going, another name you mentioned was Duffy, Mark Duffy's father.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He's got a lot of sense of history. So I think in the North Chelmsford business community, there are quite a few people.

I think you're right.

And then you've got Krasnicki's daughter, who runs the business over next to Town Hall, the catering business. I met her last summer, and she'd probably be willing to sit down and talk. Anyway, yeah, so what the heck.

We'll leave it for other generations to listen to. It's not something that we need today, but I got it 20 years down the line. If those 1970 tapes were around, they would be fascinating.

We could actually transcribe it to text today. You can integrate it in with the histories. The only tapes that we have left are the ones that Jane Drury actually sat down and typed.

She transcribed a few of them, and they were pretty interesting. She was a wonder. Yeah, she was amazing.

Starting in 1973, she resigned from the commissions because she was spending all her time doing commission research. So now Linda Prescott's picked it up. She resigned as chairman because she couldn't do both functions.

Well, the other one we probably get is Charlie Parley. Yes. Yeah, we work with Henry and Donna all the time in the Historic Society.

That's right. And the Parleys don't necessarily speak to each other, but I'm sure there's a lot of history there. But there's a lot of history there.

And Charlie knows a lot of it. Yeah. He built Parlmont Plaza.

He built Parlmont. He built the North Chelmsford where the Szechuan restaurant is.

Oh, yeah.

He built Parley Farm on Proctor Road. He built Parley Farm, which used to be another...

Well, he restored it.

He restored the place on Pine Hill and built the nursery across the road. Right. And then he restored the farm over there on South Trenton.

Right, that's on Proctor Road at Walter Belleville Square, the yellow place.

Right.

One of our historic homes.

Yeah.

That's quite an operation. I drove by that day before yesterday. Yeah.

There's quite a few horses out there with blankets eating those. Yeah. Looking at them trying to eat grass through the snow.

They kind of brush the stem aside and eat the grass. Yeah. Yeah, he had to go for a demolition permit to tear down the wing on the right-hand end of the house.

So we have pictures of that. That was part of our review. But we didn't have any teeth back then as to delay of demolition.

That was just a small partial demolition. So I think that one got approved. That's right.

You don't happen to remember when the first demolition by-law went into effect, do you? It was 100 years and 14 days. I was trying to find that.

I don't know. I didn't know we had one. Well, that's the one that we replaced a few years back.

I didn't know we really had one. In 0405, we got our new one. It was 75 years and 30 days to do research.

Now we've changed that to 60 days to do the research. Originally, it was 14 days to do research. Is that right?

Yeah. And no delay. So the only delay was the 14 days to do the research.

Wow. No teeth at all. And it was only houses over 100 years old.

Then what happened was, I think it was 2004, just before I got on the commission, Linda had gone up for, what was it, spring annual town meeting. And she got clobbered. She went in with 50 years and one year delay.

Too much. Yeah. They said that's bothering people.

There's too many houses. You're starting to get into Campanelli housing. Actually, Campanelli was already included in 50 years.

Yeah, it was. So that just explodes the database that you have to work with. That's right.

So she got clobbered. So then I came on the committee, stupid naive me, and I got elected to do the next one.

So we got to push through with 75 years.

It was your job to get it through. But, you know, I was very active in organizing the Minutemen. And because of that, Margaret Mills came to me and asked me to join the Historical Commission.

And I said to Margaret, the only thing is that I have some ideas. And if you get me appointed to that commission, I'll push those ideas. You may not want them.

What's that? Well, I want a historic district set up. She goes, oh, that's not good, John.

We'll never get that through. Well, she got me appointed, and I pushed it. And we did get it through.

You sure did. I have the preliminary report, the final report, and the national register all on the website. And your name is right there on all of them, on the preliminary and final.

Yeah, who were you working with on that? I'm trying to think. Jane was on it.

Yes. And how about Bill Drury? Was he on it too?

No. He was involved early in the commission, I believe. He was one of the earliest members on the historic commission.

Before my time.

Yeah, yeah, before your time. So Jane and... Richard Davis.

Okay. So was that team independent from the commission? Did you work through your own research?

Yeah, independent.

Yeah. We had to go to the selection and ask them to establish a study committee, which they did. So that's the committee that produced the preliminary report?

Yeah.

That got approved. You put out a final report. There was a public hearing.

The final report included the preliminary report and the public hearing changes. So it was window changes in the final report. Yeah.

So that was a good piece of work, John, getting that published. Well, it was, I thought, an important piece of work. It's got a few quirks to it, though.

You wonder why, John, that owns the gift shop. What gift shop? John Handley.

Oh.

You know, the really, really old building, the historic building next to the counting house, mill counting house? And the mill counting house, too. That's not in it.

No.

So you wonder why it stops at the central house and doesn't go down. There's quite a few historic buildings beyond that.

Well. And then the other side of Beaver Brook, too, you've got the building where Michael's upholstery is. That's not in it. That building's got a long history.

There was a blacksmith shop there we have some good pictures of, and then there was a two-story building with a store underneath. Who would have thought that the people in the center of town, the businessmen, would fight this? Well, apparently John fought it a bit, did he?

Is that why? Because he was actually on the historic district commission. Not now, but he used to be.

And he's not included. No. The only thing I can think of.

I remember we talked about, you know, extending it through the business district. And we thought, well, we're going to get too much flap from the businessmen. And we want to get the thing through.

Okay. So the thinking at the time was to get most of the public buildings and central house really. Well, that included a few businesses in the basement, but it wasn't the downtown business district.

That's right. I got you. Oddfellows Hall was the bank at the time.

Yeah. So that was a business.

They were agreeable.

Yeah, they were agreeable. So we didn't want to get a fight there. Funny though.

When we went to town meeting, we got so many people from upper end of bird street and Westford road, the Western street that asked, Hey, how about including me? That we didn't expect. So it ended up going up to route 495.

Yeah. I saw different versions of the map. Some did not go up to 495.

And then, so those were added later at people's requests. Yeah. People came and asked, can't you include me?

I'd like to be part of that. Yeah. That was unexpected.

Here's a few names, people that were on the committee to update the town history.

You didn't meet him? I didn't know Arnold.

Levi Howard? No. I believe he was a doctor.

And you said you didn't know Lester Ball. He was very active in the historic society before your time. Ruth Jeffs, who was his daughter.

She's the one that did the audio histories. I think she actually did the interviews back around 1970. Margaret Mills.

Margaret Mills. Tell me about Margaret. Oh, Margaret was a wonderful woman.

Quite elderly. Her husband was so busy working on the old house next door, where she lived. Was that the park?

Was that Hezekiah Park first house?

Yes.

It had two doors. It looked like it was split up. Yeah.

And it looked pretty shabby back then in the 1970s. My kids used to call it the haunted house. Yeah, that's in good shape today, but those pictures that George Parker took back in the early 70s, it looked like a derelict.

And then we have some pictures back around 1900 where it looked good. But there were vines growing all over the front, so it took a beating. You know, when you get down, what's the shortcut around town?

Watton Street? No. Shortcut, let's see.

Summer. Summer Street, right. Summer Street Extension.

Yeah, Summer Street. The first brick building on the right, there was an attorney that owned that. His wife was on a study committee.

Was the brick building a house at the time? Did it get torn down, or is it still a house? No, it was a brick building.

So anyway, you were talking about Margaret. They owned the house next door. Now her father was Martin Robbins, right?

Yeah. In the early part of the 1900s, he was the big real estate magnate. Yeah.

The CCD building that St. Mary's has next door to the church there, that white building, white house, he owned that. Louise says that's the building they moved up from Fletcher Street. I'm not sure it is, but she's pretty sure it is.

Well, the Emerson family moved several houses around town to Fletcher Street. There was one right down next to the gift shop, John Handley's gift shop, that they moved. I think they put in a brick building that became a car dealership, a Ford dealership.

And that house, we have pictures of it when it was on Fletcher Street, and it got torn down. There were four houses. There was a pair of twin houses, which we have pictures of, and then there was the one that had been on Central Square, and another one that had been moved.

And the Emersons moved those to Fletcher Street. And then when Brad Emerson, I guess, developed Emerson, the plaza there, the two plazas, I guess two houses went with one plaza and two went with the other one. And another thing, where the animal hospital is, on Fletcher Street, our neighbor across the street bought that from the original person that owned it for the last 30 years. And so that's our animal hospital now. But he went for demolition on the house, which we decided wasn't historic. And I didn't realize, but the Lean-To building that his animal hospital was in was a part of the Emerson house next door to the fire station.

It was actually on the back of that house. And Fred, our animal vet, told me that the original intention was to take that Lean-To that was on the back of the house and raise it up a story and build a story underneath it. And when they started lifting it, they realized it wasn't suitable to do that.

So they moved it down the street and gave it to the vet. So there was a lot of moves going on in Fletcher. But I don

't remember in our history that that other house next to St. Mary's got moved from Fletcher Street. I think there was kind of two halves to the house. It wasn't all built at one time. And there was a huge barn in the back of it. If it really is the house that Louise is talking about, it was over where Well 5 is now. On Fletcher Street? Yep.

Well, that's good information. I'll have to go back to our website and see if there's anything on the history of a move. Yeah, they moved it so the bank could build it.

Okay. Yep. Now, Margaret owned that later?

She inherited that? Well, Margaret told me that her father owned that house, the one that's on North Road next to St. Mary's. She said that it has an interesting attic.

She said somebody should get in there and report it. That's all I can remember about it.

Well, there was a fire.

There was some discussion in our history about a fire starting up in that attic that was put out, fortunately. So there may be some charred timbers still up there. Maybe.

She said she used to play up there when she was a girl. So she was elderly when you moved down there? Well, she was quite old when I moved.

What was she like? Talkative?

Oh, yeah.

Bubbly? Oh, yeah. Knowledgeable?

Oh, everything. Everything. Oh, yeah.

She was bubbly, knowledgeable, full of enthusiasm. She'd hold meetings at her house. Commission meetings?

Yeah. And, boy, try to get out of there. Only one place I had to get out.

That was George Parker's. So you had meetings at his house, too? Oh, yes.

Who was one chairman? George. Different times?

Probably mostly the Celebration Commission. Okay. The George Parker's meetings.

Because he was on the historic commission also, I believe. I believe so. But, boy, he'd get you down in his basement.

He had all kinds of pictures. He'd get rummaging through his files, come out with stuff. Well, you know where all that stuff is now.

His stuff? Historic Society. Oh.

We're going through it. We've got a massive collection there. We're entering it into our digital database.

Some of it will be available on the Internet. His wife is still alive. Yes.

Barbara and. . .

She may be a bundle of love. Yeah. And his daughter, Sandy.

. . Yes.

In fact, I just talked to her this week. Just by email. I just had a discussion with her.

But her husband has got real serious problems. Who's that? Sandra?

Sandy? Tell me about it. The reason I talked to her was she had offered to do a piece of our history book.

And I emailed and asked her if she was able to follow through or if she wanted me to reassign it. And she asked if I could reassign it because she said.

. Well, it was 10 o'clock in the morning. I called and I woke her up.

She was sound asleep.

Oh, boy.

So she said between work and home life, some things were really pressing. So Linda Prescott took over that piece of the project. So tell me about her husband.

Well, I forget what he's got. Parkinson's? He's having a tough time of it.

That's about all I know. I don't know exactly what it was. I know we were talking to her at the board.

And she's kind of having it rough. But her mother is still alive and quite capable of talking. I'm pretty sure.

She lives out of town, down in Bedford, I think, is it? In Bedford. There's a school they converted into a nursing home.

Right on the shortcut from Room 4 to 62. In fact, it might be by the 62. She's right there in that corner.

She'd be a good one to get ahold of. Yeah, she was at the Society a few years back for the Guardian Award for George. Yep, right.

His contributions to preserving town's history. So let's see. Who else?

We talked about Margaret. Arthur Parker. Did you know Mrs. Arthur Parker?

You know, the names aren't familiar, but I can't place them. Mr. Warren Wright. Mr. Raymond Greenwood. Ms. Carolyn Wright. Mr. T.W. Emerson. That's Ted Emerson, yeah.

Tell me about Ted. Did you know him? Did he own the house next to Town Hall or next to the Davis House and Fire Station?

I don't think so.

The Emerson that owns the center house. That's Brad. Brad.

Yeah, Brad owned that house. Oh. The one next to the firehouse.

Okay. Yeah, that the bank owns now. Yes.

And you know who owns it now? Yeah. Phil Eliopoulos owns it now.

Yeah, Phil Eliopoulos . And he just completely re-did the place. And he got into it a lot more than he was planning.

He did a good restoration, but it cost him. So we appreciate the extra effort he went to restore the place. Well, that's nice.

I think he's trying to impress you guys because he wants to put that... Yeah. It's four offices, a two-story building.

Yeah. Some people think it's three, but it's actually two. That was a beautiful firehouse.

I think he's got all his approvals at this point. So he's ready to go. Oh, he's ready to go?

Yeah. That's too bad. Yeah, the last meeting he came, did a presentation, and I think the next night was the final approval.

It was planning, appeals, one of those boards. It's the last hurdle. So the historic district, he got all through without him.

I'm sorry he got that through. I think Peter Lawler, his office is on the other side of the pond right nearby. I think he's filing some sort of complaint. But he's actually within all the rules and regulations, so it's hard to justify other than the fact that it's not in my backyard, or, gee, you're going to spoil my beautiful view. But you know, people will get used to it after a while. I suppose.

Yeah. Well, at least we cleared out the fire station. Yeah, you wonder...

Hi, Louise.

Hi Fred.

Yeah, we're still going strong here.

Good. Really good.

Yeah. Yeah, the fire station, you'd hate to pour any mon ey into redoing the floor, but it just failed inspection, and they've got to put some money into it. To shore up the timbers, it's really in danger of shaking loose some major pieces of concrete.

They've got to go right through the netting.

Yeah.

It's a shame that the refs were short-sighted and voted that one down. Anyway, you know, pay the piper later, so we'll be doing something. Yep, that's right.

Yep, I think that was a bad move, but what are you going to do? So let's see, Ralph Emerson, Mrs. Ralph Emerson. Yeah, I remember that.

Mr. Brad Emerson. Did you know Brad? Oh, I knew Brad.

I've actually met him. We had a big party at the 350 at the library. He was there, and that was the first time I met him.

Of course, he was the real estate magnate in town when we moved into town. He owned all the real estate. Walter Hedlund.

Walter Hedlund on your committee? Yep. And he's still around.

I think he is the emergency management coordinator for town still or something? Probably. Yeah, I think he was.

He's been on the parade committee, too.

Celebration commission.

Yeah, parade to a celebrations committee. He is. Every year.

He's always in the review stand. I go take pictures by the review stand, and I always see him in that area.

Oh, yeah.

But I think he's also like the emergency coordinator for town. Yeah, I think you're right. I was over at town office yesterday when I found out about the history book project and how it had gone on to 1991, and I saw that car.

It was an old Crown Victoria that had the emergency management, and it had reflectors on it, and it looked like it might have had flashing lights. It looked like a pretty old car. I could just picture Walter driving that thing at 20 miles an hour down the street.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So what about Brad?

Do you have any reminiscences about him? Well, I don't know. He used to occasionally come to the meeting.

He was always affable. Never gave us a tough time. Yeah.

He was like a good customer. One of the old cronies, you know. I always thought it was nice that he picked up Central House and maintained it as well as it is.

Yeah. It seems respectable. You know, the trash is always organized.

Oh, yeah, and he tries to follow the…

The railing along the fence is historically kept up-to-date and repaired, and the businesses underneath seem to be doing well. As you look at some pictures, we have pictures of that building since it was fairly new in 1900, 1889, 1900. It was too bad it was sold off.

Now, which one is that? That's the one next to the fire station. That was his father's.

And his father ran it. So that was Ted Emerson.

And he ran it.

Now, he sold it to the town originally, didn't he, because they needed space to move town offices temporarily? Who did he sell it to? He sold it to the bank.

But the town had it for a while, or the town leased it for a while. Because when they were converting for space, and they moved some of the offices into that building, I thought. Well, that's a minor one.

The bank had their offices in there. But it was run as a farm. I guess the barn burned.

The barn out back was a big fire. Do some people still remember that? I don't remember the fire.

We have pictures of that. We moved into town. It was still a farm.

They had cows out there. They had geese in the pond. In the pond, yeah.

That's where that pond is. They got some geese. So he owned all the land where the two plazas are now, right?

In the back of the houses along Fletcher Street. I think they owned the land on Fletcher Street, too, because they moved those houses over there.

You're right.

All the way up to the railroad right away, perhaps. Eustace Fisk. Where was Eustace Fisk?

Was he around? Oh, yeah. But I don't remember him.

I know he was there in 1955, because I saw his picture in the 1955 terrace of town. And you were here after that, right? You were here for the Terrace of Town, right?

Yeah. He was one of the old-timers in town. Still around, though, when you were here?

He was still around, yeah. Was he living in the Fisk house at the time? Yes, he was.

Yeah. That's before it became a restaurant. Yes.

Yeah, we all know. Carol and I ate at the restaurant one time, and we found it a bit pricey, and we didn't go back. But then I guess if enough people like you and I went there and didn't go back, then it's not good for business.

You've got to go back. So they had what Michael would have said is a Jewish fire.

Yes, Jewish lightning. Yeah, that's it.

Eleanor Parker. Do you have any connections with her? Oh, yes, a lot of connections.

She was very active at the Garrison house, and I was active in a minute, man. We had quite a few guys, and she called me up one day and said, John, I wonder if you guys could convert the chicken coop to a craft house for us. I told her what we needed to do that, and she got the materials, and I got the guys, and we went down and did it.

One day she said, we only had enough of a flagpole. So I got my sons to make a flagpole out of wood, a tree. Yeah, so we put up a flagpole for her.

As men and women went down, we had a flag raising ceremony. Whenever she needed something, she'd call. Quite a gal.

What looked like men's clothing. She wore the pants in the household.

I guess she never married? Nope. Well, I'll tell you, we have her files in town offices. I've been working with her manuscripts, so I've gotten to know her writing style pretty well. She worked right there.

Her handwriting is horrible, and I have a tough time reading it. Sometimes I have to look at a word, and I cannot understand it, and I have to think what words fit in that location. And finally, I'll eventually get it.

Luckily she typed most of it, but her typewriters had a lot of quirks. For instance, I had one case, I had a manuscript this week. There was a number that showed up several times, and I couldn't understand it.

It was either a one or a four. So I looked at the beginning of the manuscript, and it definitely wasn't a four, because four was very clear. In the manuscript, it looked like a four with a cross going across the middle.

And then I realized that she had switched typewriters halfway through the manuscript, and they had a completely different number four. So once I figured that out, I was able to decipher the four. So it's been a little detective work.

And Carol had some connections with Eleanor too. When Carol ran for school committee, Eleanor had supported, or she supported women's rights, and she wanted to see women on the predominantly men's school committee at the time, so she kind of helped Carol along with that. And Carol was interested in getting into that history in town, and she had suggested the Garrison House or the Historic Society, and I guess she ended up getting steered to the Historic Society.

So Carol had some fond memories of Eleanor. Well, you know, I was involved very heavily, like I said, with the Minutemen and then the Boy Scouts, and I would write an article for the newspaper, and she always published. I'd feed her the stuff, bingo, it would get published.

So even though of a Krasnicki's on the newspaper, she was the editor. She was the contact, the content. Her articles, we put out that book last year, Looking Back, she had some nice articles.

Oh, yeah. She was good. Historically minded.

Charlotte D. Wolf. Treasurer.

Tax collector. And town clerk. Town clerk.

I didn't realize that. I knew about Evelyn Haynes, so she was before Evelyn's time. Oh, yes.

Got all three positions. And got paid for all three. At the same time or different times?

No, all the same time. Wow. So when she decided to drop out, several people ran for different offices.

So it took three people to replace her? Well, it hasn't worked out yet. Now, was she involved in any of our historical groups?

No. No. She was on this committee, or actually what it was here, it says, articles for our use, or have made tape recordings, for Miss Ruth Jeffs.

The list is as follows. That's where I got this list from. So they may have talked to her.

Done some interviews. Yeah, maybe. With regard to working on this book.

Yeah. Good possibility. I believe that this list is from before they actually selected Eleanor to do the work.

So this is 1965, so it was early on when you first came to town. Yeah. I bet she was involved with getting Eleanor appointed.

Mr. Glenn Blaisdell. Name is familiar, but no. And Mr. Edward Russell. Again, another familiar name, but that's it. How about Charles Watt? He was on this committee.

Oh, Watt. Yeah, Charles E. Watt.

He was active in the Historic Society, because we have the Watt-Stevens Center. Right. And he was on the Celebration Commission, and he was a friend of Davis, Jack Davis.

Who was a friend of yours on the... So I knew him, yeah.

Yeah.

And Walter Hedlund, also, from the Celebrations Committee. So what was his... When did you get involved in the Historic Society, let's put it that way?

Because he may have been before your time. I didn't really get involved in the Historic Society until Louise got involved. Do you remember what year that was?

That was her. She'd been so long, man. I kind of forgot.

A long time. You still around, Louise? Nope.

Upstairs, I think. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't have to do that anymore.

I bet I...

You're right here.

Are you online here, too? Yeah, I've got one of those... Wireless?

Yeah, a router. So I don't have to. That's good.

Because I can't climb the stairs.

Someone call my name.

Yeah. Good ears, good ears. What year did you join the Historical Society?

The first time or the second time?

Both times.

The first time around, I think, was your mom. I didn't get involved. That's what a lot of your time was.

Hello? Yes. Well, you know, I was...

Yes, I know, but I... I'm really not interested in talking about it. In fact, it wouldn't even matter.

They screwed up.

I can't remember what year. I think I just started working. That would have been in the early 70s.

We're still living in the Fisk House. I can always remember one Wednesday afternoon. She asked if I'd like to go and see the Fisk House because the Historical Society members were going to have a tour of it.

She lived down, you know, not too far from Harvey's, remember? She and her husband both were active. And they also had little workshops that they carried out.

They used to do clean silverware. They'd do all kinds of little jobs. Jobs, or maybe this was their hobby, I don't know.

But... I remember when I went back the other year, I just never kept track of this, to tell you the truth.

So you were out for a few years?

I mean, I was always a member, but I wasn't on the board or anything. And that was probably at the time of the bicentennial. I was more active at the garrison house.

Who were the key players in the garrison house when you were...

Mary Guraldy.

Mary Guraldy? Uh-huh.

But... Betty Ripson, too. She was very active.

She still is.

Yeah. Betty... I don't know, her husband.

George.

Pardon? George?

Yeah, George.

I'm thinking of... Some names come back to you so quickly.

Well, I don't want to back-curse you.

Yeah, she was. But she didn't go to Juan Divis. No.

She was a member of the guild. Several doctors were... Betty, the one that was so involved with the library.

Betty on Bartlett Street. And her husband was... the town moderator or whatever.

Oh, after you leaved, I don't remember.

You don't remember.

Yeah. I couldn't remember who else. Mrs. Bragdon. Because we had a meeting at her house, and that's when they formed the guild. And... quite a few of us were there, actually. And we were all volunteers, you know, for the second grade school program. That's how I... Wow.

And we were just busy enough there. So I should have... You know, I may have some old papers.

I used to save everything. If I can't remember the name of the lady they're called, a lot of me can't be on the board. And the first position I had, and I think this is what most people do, is your corresponding secretary.

And then you can fill up, because I was membership. I've been a treasurer for probably 20 years.

Wow.

George... I was there... What was the historical society that started that?

Was it 1960 or 1930?

1930 was the original founding date, and then it was in the 60s when they got the Murray's house. Yeah. Okay.

I don't know about the other. It was all about... They were having a celebration, and George Parker was in charge of that.

Oh, yeah.

We brought in all kinds of ideas. Unfortunately, John and I were invited to this meeting, but we were the first ones to come up with ideas. You know, we were supposed to go home, think about ideas for the celebration, and we went in with these highfalutin ideas that come to fly out.

Nobody had any ideas. We did have... I don't know what we did.

We had a very quiet event. And there's also a period there. I'm not sure which organization was which, because I think it was probably Garrison House when we had our fashion shows.

We had a model there. We modeled the old-fashioned hats.

So this was part of the bicentennial of different organizations had pieces of it?

They just put on shows.

Okay, so this would be their program, part of their yearly schedule.

I remember I walked down the aisle with Bruce Friedman. It shows you how long ago that was.

Well, I wonder if you were a customer.

What? I wonder if you were a customer of this.

Oh, I wasn't. I told you that.

I know, you said he was a nice guy.

Yeah.

I'm just saying.

Oh, John, you speak nicely. You know, we always said that Bruce was a good rep, in that he always made appearances wherever he was expected, when the Girl Scouts had special ceremonies, getting awards. He was always at the Boy Scouts, Eagle ceremonies. Every time he turned around, there he was.

The unfortunate part of Bruce was that he was a Prudential agent. Oh, so did you have your turns with him? I didn't know, but I knew some people that did.

At Prudential, they taught their reps to do some things, which I considered to be, not just irresponsible, but it should have been frustrating. Well, that's okay.

That's way back in the past.

I like to leave it at that. I'm trying to think of some of the names of the people.

Well, Bruce was there when the dam broke over there in North Charleston. That's right. And he got it repaired.

He worked hard. They got it repaired. And the bike trails.

He was a big guy.

He worked hard for the public good, that's for sure.

He also pushed for the widening of Route 3, way back in the early 60s. I remember when we moved here.

I'm a major beneficiary and fan of the widening of Route 3. Yep. I saw his wife when they had the dedication of the Freeman Trail.

She was there.

Yeah, well, I go to an exercise class two days a week. Actually, it's not like you laugh if you saw what we do, but it's a bone building. It's an exercise class.

And Daphne is in it. Daphne is there. We do see her once in a while.

She's very nice.

But, you know, there was always so much animosity between the garrison house and the historical society that some people just couldn't understand how you could be in both groups. Fortunately, most of those people have died. But because I was in both groups, you know, a few of the old farmers had a few things to say.

Well, you know, there's a lot of ties between the groups. Carol and Daphne are very good friends.

I think now it's started. Actually, AmeriCorps was trying to push for that because it was ridiculous.

There was a fight between them, but it never made sense because, you know, both groups are historical. Sure. But garrison house people felt that the White House was not as old as they...

Well, I also had heard that at the time, it must have been 1960 or so, at the time that the historical society was still in formation, they didn't have a place, you know.

Yeah, before the 1960s.

But I think some of the garrison house people thought that the historical society should take over the garrison house.

Well, you know, it's funny. Let me tell you a quick story about that. I was working with Bob Peterson.

We work Wednesday nights whenever we get a chance. And Bob is doing the library catalog items in the digital database. And one of the things he came up with was a notebook of minutes of the meetings.

And he happened to come up with the minutes. And I'm going to say 1959, okay. And he happened to open it up to the page where they voted not to take over the garrison house. And they voted not to conscientiously because they felt it would be... that there was a lot of work required and it would be beyond the scope of their... Right.

So at that point the same year, the garrison house association was formed and took it over. So the historic society had first read a refusal on the house. And they officially turned it down and had a meeting.

And we happened to see the minutes. All the time.

All the time. So I think that's where it all started. And, of course, Jim Leahy, you know, was always involved with the historical society.

Well, his brother.

But the brother was with the other.

He owned the other one. He owned the garrison house. Yeah, when the garrison house association took it over, he had offered it to the historic society.

So he was up to his eyeballs in the transition between the family and the society, the garrison house organization. And you mentioned something about the historic society not being as old. Well, it isn't.

Okay, they have the date something like 1600-something on the front of the building. That's incorrect. So that house is nowhere near as old as the garrison house.

So that's absolutely true. So one of the things we're going to do, we voted at a meeting to... Actually, I presented a new business to get a sign made, one of our oval signs, historic commission, with the correct date on it for Jane Drury's research.

So we're going to replace that 1600 sign. We already got rid of the one down on Route 27. There's no date on it now.

John Goffin had a new metal sign made up that directs you up Byam Road. But now we're going to get rid of the house sign and put on one of the historic commission signs. Well, I like the historic commission signs.

Yeah, they're pretty good. They're handsome. And we got a...

I don't know if you saw, if you looked at the email, there's a design for the one for Red Wing Farm. It's called the Hildreth Robbins House. This Hildreth Robbins House is registered in the National Register of Historic Places, something like that.

It's a very nice brass plaque that we're going to have the CPC fund, because I think it's over $100. Have the CPC fund it and put it on. CPC puts their own signs on, too.

So this is the National Register, and they'll have their own sign that they contributed to. Which is funny, because Bob is in charge of the CPC. But they go around and put signs like that.

When I went to the Cranberry Bog, they had a plaque. It was a little oval plaque, and it was nailed to a tree. But sometimes, like at Pond Street, they have a sign, a pretty big sign, that says this beach was purchased with funds from the Chelmsford Preservation Committee.

And that's funny, just another quick story, too. The Cultural Council, we got a grant. I was telling you about, for $400, for the person to design our book.

And I got an email just before I came over here today. And it was from the Cultural Council. And they said, in your project, you have to have our logo, and you have to give credit that funding was provided by the LCC, I think it is.

Local Cultural Council. I'm not sure if it was from Massachusetts Cultural Council, but it was an official letter. And it gave me the link of where to go to get the logo.

They want credit, and they want it made known. So our book will have that logo right in it. But it's funny, it just happened this morning, before I got here.

Interesting. History is still being made. Yes, on a daily basis.

When did you move to town?

We came to town in 1971. We lived at Drum Hill, on Lowell Princeton Boulevard, for one year in 1970. And the incinerator was still running down there.

The what?

The Lowell Incinerator.

Oh, my.

You know, it's a motorcycle dealership or something now? Yeah. But at the time, it was still the Lowell Incinerator.

And when the wind was right, you know, you get your lungs full of that good stuff. And it was a swamp across the street with purple loosestrife and wildflower was growing. And then by the time we moved, it was all under construction, and it's all apartments now.

But there still is a pond down there, if I'm thinking of the right area.

Well, it's right there. We were next door to where that was First National at the time. And now there was an Osco there, and now it's some other drug chain.

Right A.

Well, we lived just two buildings down from the Right A.

Okay. I was thinking you were closer to that.

In fact, there was a bar there, a club.

Well, the Blue Moon was down there.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, we lived there when the Blue Moon was there.

Oh, my gosh. And the Platters, one of our favorite music groups, they played there in the wintertime, and they went to Hampton Beach in the summertime. And Carol and I, we were going to walk over some weekend night and listen to the Platters.

And it's funny, because we were talking about it one weekend. We came home that weekend from visiting Carol's parents or something. And we talked about going to see the Platters.

Well, Monday morning before work, we hear radios crackling outside our window, and all this radio talk. So I got up, lifted the shade. It was just about dawn, and I saw all these police vehicles and fire trucks all lined up and down the street.

So I pulled on my bathrobe, and I got my camera, and I went outside. And I have a full set of pictures. I have a full set of pictures of the Blue Moon burning down.

Oh, my gosh.

It had been set from one end to the other. It was a windy day, and the wind was blowing it toward the river, not toward any other buildings. It was just a perfect setup, and that place got destroyed.

So you've always been interested in the streets.

I always have a connection with that. You have a camera, right? Yeah.

Well, I've always taken pictures, right? Pretty good. Yeah.

It's funny.

I used to take slides. Sorry, just one quick story.

Oh, yeah.

And the slides were a pain because you had to drag out a projector.

Sure. Oh, yes.

So it turns out when we bought this Historic Society scanner with a grant, it turns out that it does a fantastic job with slides. So the slides that I've taken back in the 70s, the ones that I've scanned, are as good as digital pictures that you take today. It's incredible.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. It's like taking about a 5 megapixel digital camera out and shooting. As long as you don't put them on a CD.

Well, I have them on my computer hard drive, and I back them up, of course. But we have a picture frame, and a lot of the pictures, old family pictures from the 70s, they scroll through on the picture frame. So, yeah, it takes a lot of work to do it. It takes about four hours to do 100 slides. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So it's, you know, one day you can get two trays done if you're lucky.

Yeah.

But it does a nice job with the slides. You do a really high resolution, so it's 2400 dpi, and I can take the 35 millimeter slide, and you get the equivalent on your screen of a picture this big.

Wow.

So you can zoom in.

You can zoom in and look at things.

It's got good resolution. And after that, we went to prints, photo prints. And the prints are a pain.

You have to scan those and the quality of the prints. Some of them faded. So the slides ended up being better archivally than prints.

You put the prints in albums, and they get stuck to the sticky pages, and it's a pain to work with them. But the slides, if you have the patience, you can put them on a CD.

What's that?

Yeah, it's not a problem, a CD or a thumb drive. A CD, to me, you remember how you had floppy disks? Yeah.

Well, to me, a CD is like a floppy disk, because a CD will only handle 600 or 700 megabytes of data. I can take a thumb drive. The ones we bought for the Historic Society have 4 gigabytes.

So I can put so much more.

Yeah, a thumb drive, it's much smaller. You carry it in your pocket, and it carries a lot more data. So a CD is like old technology.

Yeah, you're right. And you can get 16 and 32 gigabytes of thumb drives today. In fact, in my camera, I have a 16-gigabyte card, and a camera at full resolution will take 2,600 pictures.

I went to Staples, and I bought another memory card for my camera. And then I got thinking about it, and I said, you know, I think I saw these over at Radio Shack. I went into Radio Shack.

Sure enough, it cost less money. It came with one of those things you're talking about, the little… Thumb drive or a…

What do you call it? It's like the thing you plug into the computer. Oh, a USB port.

It's a converter so that you can read it on your computer. Yeah, you can download one, and you can read it. So how about your picture taking?

Did you get into photography much during your years? Well, not as much as you, but I took a lot of pictures. I know we have a few in our archives down there in the file cabinets, especially from the bicentennial with you where your sons were involved.

Wow.

Yep.

And George Parkhurst took a lot of pictures. We had a notebook in our files of houses that he took 1970 to 72. He was pretty prolific.

He did enlargements, too. He had a bunch blown up.

All the old-timers were all going away.

Yeah. So who was your favorite old-timer, Louise, that you used to like? George, was he your favorite?

My favorite, that's for sure. How about you, Eleanor or Margaret or…

Judd. Judd was more friendly with Margaret and Eleanor, although we were talking way, way back. Eleanor used to call a lot because she was quite talkative.

So I ended up, you know, half the morning talking to her. Southern California wasn't working at the time. But I wish I could think of a name of this other gal.

There was the Norton's, Mrs. Norton.

Hazel Stephens was involved in the Historic Society. Hazel Stephens was involved in the Historic Society. She was before your time.

She was prolific in updating the accessions. And Julia Fogg also, who was on that update to the History Committee for 25 years, I found out, which we're finally publishing. Julia Fogg.

And I'm carrying pictures of him.

I told John the story where I was actually going to call him and visit him. That was the week I read his obituary. He died that same week.

So I was actually thinking about him because I had done stuff on the website. So I thought that was weird. Kara believes in that.

I shouldn't say that on the record, but she's had enough coincidental things that she's got me convinced that there's something going on. You can almost feel energy when it's happening. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes. We've been discussing things like that.

Have you? Yeah. I used to feel very much that way when I was younger.

Really? Yeah. I used to feel a lot of those things.

Did you ever think back to your namesakes back in colonial times when the Pilgrims first came over? Because you got steeped in the – I think about it a lot. Do you?

Yeah, because, well, you know, I get a – well, you know, I have the connections to the Alden Kinder. So, you know, I've been corresponding with them because I had to resign for – I've been on the board for years. This is the Alden house you got in Plymouth.

Right. Yeah. And so I had written to the genealogist and said to her, you know, I don't look forward to dying, but I do look forward to meeting my ancestors.

So she wrote back and said, well, when you see John, please ask him his background because nobody knows. Oh, really? You mean when he came from England, nobody knew what he – Yeah.

Nobody knows.

Oh, really? Yeah.

He's the only one they don't know. How about that? The Mayflower Society has done a lot of research trying to locate his background. Nobody has ever been able to find out anything.

So was he a young man when he set out? So maybe he just left his home somewhere out in the countryside and set off to make his fortune and didn't make a big deal out of it. You see, John was a cooper.

Making barrels. That's right. And you couldn't make a long voyage without a cooper.

He had to hold water and supplies. All the supplies. Yeah.

Especially, you know, meat and that kind of thing.

Well, I thought that John's parents had died, and an uncle was basically looking after them.

That's one of the theories.

Because they also thought that his uncle was a friend of the captain of the Mayflower and figured, okay, we've got something for John to do. Let's put him on the boat. He could have come back.

He wasn't a pilgrim.

So he may have been a favor to a family friend, a friend of the captain's. That's one of the theories. Yeah.

Perhaps he was related to the captain indirectly.

Instead of coming back, he met Priscilla.

And he decided to stay. But we don't know. So I have directions to ask.

Yes. Well, we haven't figured out.

How are you going to report back? That's the question.

Maybe if you take one of these things along with you. There you go. E-mail it.

Make sure you've got a wireless connection with you, too. Yep. There you go.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they make movies about stuff like that. Yep.

Maybe I should write a book about it then. Fiction, but no, no, no. Yep.

Well, you've got some good fiction to read here with the Westford Knight. I get it Sunday. Carol's dad finished it, so he's bringing it up Sunday.

I brought the book home, and I lost it immediately. That's what you get.

Even in the car.

Now, I don't know if the town history book is going to be quite that popular. I know the Historic Society of Westford is selling those. Pretty good book.

In fact, the author is coming to Westford. She told me that he's coming this coming year to give some talks on different subjects.

The book was written only two or three years ago, wasn't it?

Yeah, Eleanor's style of writing, it kind of grows on you. It's not a fast read. At first, it kind of puts you off because she quotes from the annual reports a lot.

So it reads kind of like an annual report. But then you realize the wisdom. When you see the introduction and the conclusion, you see how she pulled it all together. You couldn't see it when it was a file drawer this big, full of typewritten pages. But now, when you get all the errors and corrections ironed out, when you start to read it, it really makes sense. I've got my fingers crossed hoping that it catches on to people.

They don't just buy it and put it down. When I was in grade school, high school, I sat in on a course that one of the teachers was teaching about writing for a newspaper. One of the things she said was, she would say over and over, when you read an article, it's who, what, when, and where.

You answer those in the first paragraph. Then you write the more detailed. So did Eleanor's articles meet that criteria?

Right. I bet they do. I bet they do, too.

Did you ever write yourself for that paper? Oh, I wrote articles on things that I was involved in. I always wrote it that way.

So those are the articles you sent in to Eleanor and she published them for you? That's right. Just the way it was written?

Yep. Yep, she always did. She never changed.

Yep, she was great. One of the things, you tend to think that our forebearers knew what they were doing and things went in a straight line. You find out it was no different then than it is now.

The town meeting reps, they were just as cantankerous and unpredictable as they are today. I remember sitting in the town meetings and some guy would get up there and start asking questions. You'd think, boy, we'll never get to voting on this.

And then you see that cranky person come up again. The town cranks. They'll think of some other point and they'll keep driving the same point home over and over again.

Right, exactly. Just a quickie, I happened to find in my travels a newspaper clipping and it was about the North Chelmsford residents at town meeting. They kept shooting down a new town hall for the center.

They figured, hey, you guys have got the basement. What more do you want? We've got the town hall.

You want your town meetings? You come to North. Yeah, we'll concede and we'll alternate between your basement and our town hall.

But we've got the town hall. The center kept saying, we've got to join forces. The North keeps shooting us down.

We've got to overcome this and get a building so we can be the great center that we always should be. So the poem is kind of funny, but I had never realized that the North kept shooting it down. It just reminded me so much of the Republicans and the health care bill.

That's how the North was treating it. But finally they did get their way in 1879. And now we've got two town halls to figure out which we're trying to do.

And we'll see what happens at the next town meeting. The architect that was selected is very, very good. They're doing the Westford town hall right now.

If you've ever driven by, you'll notice it's closed. And they're building an addition on the back and redoing the entire thing. Well, this lady is the same person that designed that.

And she's next Tuesday. Same night as the commission meeting. I've got the next permanent building committee meeting.

She's going to bring in some ideas. One of her ideas, I thought you might be interested, where to put the elevator. I thought we'd put it on the left side of the building where the fire escape is because that space is between the driveway and the building.

And it would cover all three floors and there's already windows or doors there. And she took it to the back of the building and put it kind of in the middle in the back. But she took away a lot of the space where the food pantry is.

So we explained to her that, no, we have to leave the food pantry space. So she's going to rearrange it. But by having it out in the back, it leaves space for a bathroom in the back and some closet space and some other things.

And if you look at the sight line of the building, they may have to take down the fire escape anyway on that side because it's turn of the century and nonconforming. And there's plenty of stairways inside, plenty of exits inside. The sight lines is going to be more like it was in the beginning.

If we put it on the side, it's going to interrupt the sight line. But by having it, she had it set up so it was indented and then went back. And the elevator was here and she had all these facilities laid out on both sides.

Are you talking north or center?

I'm talking center.

Center. Okay. So if you look at the town hall, it looks a nice rectangular building like it was originally.

You don't even see what's behind it because that was an addition that was put on it.

Yeah. It was brilliant.

But now she's going to come back with a plan that includes everything and has space for the food pantry because we can't kick Sandy Donovan out. She's providing a valuable town service. Yeah.

I've seen several times, I've just seen how many people depend on that. Yeah. And they're not beggars.

Basically she only has a hole in the wall.

I talked to her a little bit and I saw her volunteers that work there and I saw how hard they work and how much supplies. She goes to Lincoln. She's got a network of stores and people that are very generous.

I was amazed. I almost felt like volunteering a day a week. It's just that worthwhile.

That's wonderful.

So I thought you'd like to hear that little tidbit.

Yeah, thank you.

She talked to Laura Lee who's in the north group and she was invited to the meetings. And she gave her more of an idea about the youth programs that they wanted to have at the community center up north. So she's going to firm up some plans for that.

Laura Lee and her family just moved into North Chelmsford recently. It seems as though all of a sudden her name appeared.

Yeah, I'm going to guess five or six years ago.

It wasn't that long.

Because I see her name everywhere. She's not married, I think, but she may have some relatives. She bought a historic house.

The one behind?

It's right next door to the town. So she got interested in it, but she was traveling all over the country and the world until recently. And her job gave her more time to spend at home.

And there's this whole network of people. It started out with the Varney Playground Improvement Association, the Varney Playground Association. And that group of people, once they got wind through our study committee that they could have an input, they showed up in force, and they pulled together the plans.

We said, hey, you have to come up with a plan that's going to finance the yearly operating expenses for this building, or nothing's going to happen. So they came through. They went out, and they beat the bushes.

They found people that said, you know, if you had space today, we'd sign up. Of course, we realized that you're not going to do anything, probably for a year and a half, two years. But, yeah, we could use that space.

So they came up with what we thought was a much more reasonable plan than we ever thought could happen.

I like that little neighborhood up there.

In the north?

In the north, yeah.

With the mill houses?

Well, you know, just behind the...

Oh, up there in Washington and up toward the pond. That's the mill. Well, that's mill workers and mill executives and owners.

Yeah. Well, our daughter-in-law's parents grew up there.

Foundry workers. Oh, did they? Which street?

I don't know. Did they provide the money for the funds for the playground? It's been recorded.

I brought all the papers out.

The baseball field, I guess.

Yeah. No, it wasn't. Shawcross.

Shawcross, Royal Shawcross. Yeah. Oh, okay.

That's my daughter-in-law's grandfather.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah, at the meetings, somebody was brought out that there was a connection with Royal Shawcross because he took a lot of pictures.

And that's the library collection.

Yeah, because we brought them in. Because I went home and asked Leah about... She had the pictures?

And her mother had a lot of these newspaper clippings.

Yeah.

And I brought them in to the Historical Society and someone took them. How about you?

Well, the library, I don't know how the masters... Well, it's North Chelmsford Pictures. It's the Royal Shawcross collection.

And they were on a green background. And it looked like the green background. It had been a bigger presentation at one time, and it had gotten sliced up.

And George Merrill had pieces of it, and the library ended up with pieces of it. So I'm not sure what the history was before my time.

Yeah. Did he have a puppy? Was he a mill owner?

I don't know. She never told me that. But he lived just down a couple of houses from the library.

Yeah. Across the street. Yeah, we had some friends from church that lived right there in that same little intersection by the library.

Yeah.

It is... There's some interesting houses in there.

Well, there are. Officer Adams, the first officer to be killed in military duty, I think he lived in there. And he was up there?

We were in time when he was killed. Oh, really? Yeah.

This was in the 30s.

Oh, we're thinking of... No, this was late.

We're thinking of somebody else.

Was he the fire chief?

There was somebody else that lived there, too, that died. There was another policeman. Yeah, right near Varney Park.

I don't know. I just know that there was an officer, a captain. He was either the captain or the fireman.

He died. It was a Sunday morning. We were at church.

We heard about it. How much of a fire? Right there on the corner of Boston Road and Warren Avenue.

Yeah, right. Oh, Boston and Warren. Okay, down in that section.

Yeah, different. Yeah, there was...

And that was quite a while ago.

Yeah. Officer Adams, I think it was around 1935, he was a motorcycle policeman. There was a person right downtown near where the library is who there was a complaint against this person.

That person hopped on a trolley. So the officer got on his motorcycle, ran down to the next trolley stop, got on the trolley in front of the guy. The guy had a gun, and he shot him.

Oh, my gosh. That happened in Chelmsford?

Yeah, that was the worst thing. Go on our... Oh, you know what?

It's not there. It was there because I had the history book originally. I had it online.

Remember, you were there, and we voted to take it off and publish the book.

Oh, yeah.

That's in the police section, so that was on there, but you can't access it at the moment. Got a picture of him with his motorcycle and everything. Well, more important, it shows in the book.

It'll be in the book.

And when will the book be ready?

When will the book be ready? We have funding for the designer, courtesy of the Historic Commission and the Cultural Council. We're talking with Courier about publishing.

They're developing a print-on-demand capability, and we're going to see if... I like them because they're just down the street. We'll compare them with the others in the field.

They've done other historic things locally. Can they do writing? Oh, yeah, they'll do full publication right now.

Courier Corporation, they're the ones that used to do all the phone books. It's the same company, but I think it's a smaller, leaner version. Okay, but they're paperback.

No, they'll do hardcover, anything. Yeah, big-time publishers in this area. They used to do newspapers and things like that, but phone books, industrial, commercial stuff.

I talked to the guy down by Williamsburg Condominiums. They have an office, and he was very interested in the business. I think he did something for Westford, a historical thing.

So we're talking about a publisher. I'm editing as I get sections in. We had to do a couple of transfers.

Remember, we lost a commission member recently. So Laura Lee actually picked up one of the sections. One guy, he left, and had another person bail out.

Actually, it was George Parker's daughter had to bail out because her husband just explained to me why. What's this? Her husband is sick.

Yeah, that's Sandy Parker's husband.

He died.

What?

Sandy Parker's husband. Sandy Parker's Johnston.

Johnston.

Her husband died, what, two years ago. We went to the wait list.

Really? That's interesting. Well, she said right now she's got a lot of work and personal things going on.

So I asked her if she wanted me to reassign it. She said yes, please, and I thanked her for volunteering.

She's like her father. She's very interested in all that.

So she took it on, but then I had to set a deadline to get things done. So Linda Prescott actually took that section. Linda, it turns out, when you get Vista and Windows 7, it has a built-in voice-to-text converter.

So Linda just talks into a microphone, but you have to say the punctuation. You have to say the comma, the period, and all that. And what was neat was Linda's text formatting is horrible, but I go in with a few format paste functions.

I can reformat it. And her text, once you get it formatted, her text is actually more accurate because the voice-to-converter forces only correctly spelled words. Now maybe you get a correct word that's not the right word, but you don't get all the stupid misspellings that you get when you type it or scan it.

So her stuff was actually easier to decipher. She did the health section, and Linda is a dental hygienist, so she was interested in the health. And hers was one of the bigger ones.

It's like 70 pages long in the manuscript, so it's going to be maybe 40 to 50 pages of the book. Well, maybe 30 pages of the book. I don't know how it's going to work out yet.

It's going to be silly, but I just saw a copy of Waters' history for the first time yesterday, and I didn't realize how thick it was. It's almost three inches thick. I've seen it online.

I've never seen her copy. Alan's book is so much thinner. So our book, I don't think it should be more than two inches thick.

We're going to have to make it a little bigger, I think.

Anything else you want to say? No, I think that's all I got right now. Okay, John, we'll turn it off here.

I've been going all this time. What kind of a memory?