Fudge and Jam

Sometime in the 1980’s another change came to what used to be Wells’s Wilton News and Joe’s Barber Shop, which had changed to Wilton Country Kitchen and Lliamos’s Pharmacy. George Lliamos the pharmacist retired ( a story about him another time) and a new guy came to town.

If you have frequented New Hampshire’s country fairs, think Deerfield, Hopkinton, et al, you likely are familiar with the delicious fudge sold by Nelson Family Candies. Nelson’s was also known for salt water taffy and other sweet treats sold at various venues around New England.

Doug Nelson, one of the founder’s grandsons, had been working out of a space in Salem trying to keep up with production to service the family’s venues. He claimed customers kept interrupting him so he moved to Wilton where he thought it would be quieter and he could concentrate on his candy making. Little did he know what was to come.

Carl Anderson and I immediately came to know Doug as a friend and neighbor who could be counted on as a valued member of our Main Street community. Doug and Carl especially delighted in pranking each other in a long-running race to see who could out-hoodwink the other.

Doug set up shop quickly, firing up burners supporting the huge copper kettles that had been part of the family operation for many years. Huge flats of delectable fudge soon filled the shelves to be picked up by other family members to stock the fair booths. Then came the taffy, rolled out on the chilling table and then transferred to the contraption that pulled the taffy to the right consistency and then to a machine that cut and wrapped the little gems to be sent for sale at the Hampton Beach shop. Summer and fall would come and go and soon the call would go out to friends and neighbors to come to the shop to help make the multitude of Christmas candy canes that would fill the shop through the holiday season….it was a real team effort to roll the canes to the right thickness, curl and cut them before they cooled too much to be worked.

On top of all these delights came the wondrous array of fancy chocolate delights themed to the closest holiday, be it Valentine’s, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas. What a sweet addition to our little Main Street!

Some say candy is magical; maybe that is why an older gentleman named Reggie and his friend from Massachusetts started coming to the shop and began a weekly musical jam session with Doug that continued for several years. Somehow their conversation turned to Doug’s love of guitar playing and one thing led to another and the tunes started….first just Doug, Reggie, his friend, Doug’s brother Mark, then, eventually upwards of ten or fifteen folks all gathering on Tuesday mornings to play whatever happened to feel right.

By the time the music crowd got as large as it did, Doug had moved the operation down the street to the former Joslin Hardware Store where Jeff Enright sold the last nuts and bolts in the mid-nineties. Doug’s candy-making space tripled and also gave him the space to set up a music venue for the jam sessions and then occasional blues performances from all manner of artists from Boston and beyond. All the senses satisfied through the work of this one man.

We just learned today, July 8, 2021 of Doug’s passing. He was a couple years into a well deserved retirement having sold the shop to local buyers who have continued and enhanced the confectionary with great success. He had dabbled in real estate restoration and enjoying his passion for fishing. He truly made a lasting mark on our business district that will be honored and remembered for generations to come. May he keep playing and sweetening the universe for all time.

Roar of the Crowd

The “roar of the crowd” for me was not in a large venue nor was it the sound of thousands or even hundreds of voices. It was the sounds of a church supper, of a crowd of perhaps thirty-five or 40 friends and neighbors gathered in the parish has to feast on the efforts of the very same attendees; casseroles, salads and splendid pies washed down with (mild if you were a kid) hot coffee poured expertly by the men of the church in their white shirts gliding between the tables with huge porcelain pitchers.

There is a steady hum of conversation punctuated by peals of laughter at some humorous tale being shared. Sometimes the meal would be followed by and “entertainment’; most often just the sounds of cleaning up and the scampering and chatter of the young children as the adults put the room back in order, washed the dishes, parceled out the leftovers and said their good-byes.

Interesting how a sound can wash one a soul even sixty or seventy years hence.

The Flowers May Wither

     Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was originally known, has always been a big deal in Wilton..  Begun just after the Civil War and continuing to this day, it honors those who have died in the country’s service.

My recollections and what I’ll share with you, begin about 1948 or 1949.  Just two or three years old, I have flashback memories of man uniformed citizens of our little town marching down the street, six abreast in what seemed at least forty rows sorted by branch of service.  The ranks, according to a photo I have stretched from the war monument, up Forest Street nearly to the Stimson Sheet Metal building.  This occurred just after the end of World War II and emotions regarding that war were still fresh and raw.  Most in town could remember a friend or family member who never returned.

Looking back, I can understand why my Dad was especially caught up in the ceremonies.  His duty in the Army was as a member of a Graves Registration unit in General Patton’s Third Army as it swept through France, Belgium and Luxemburg.  He saw first-hand the result of the carnage of battle as he processed the personal effects of those thousands of soldiers who would be laid to rest in cemeteries across northern France; battered bodies, buried beneath simple crosses in graves laid out with geometric precision to lie forever thousands of miles from homes never to be seen again.

Each year Dad would don his uniform and march the streets of Wilton with his fellow veterans in honor of those brave souls.  Such pageantry and ceremony were appealing to the  town’s younger citizens as evidenced by marching units of Scouts and school children the early years after the war.We all aspired to participate in the exercise which was so important to our parents.

Folks my age that grew up here in town will also remember the unfettered and blatant patriotism inculcated in us by our teachers, especially Mrs. Frances Pellerin and Miss Ethelyn Edwards.  Through songs and recitations, we were filled with patriotic zeal that would stay with us for years.

I marched in my first parade at the age of eight as a member of Cub Scout Pack 10.  I remember the thrill of wearing a uniform and marching with our den flags following the same route we march today  —–  Maple Street from the Legion Home —–down Hatch Hill —-  around the Dummy  —–  down Main Street  —-  up Russell Street  —-  up Maple Street and back by the Legion.

Then and until I left home in the sixties, the parade would turn up Park Street  —-  march across the Flat (Whiting Park) and into the auditorium at what is now known as Florence Rideout Elementary School.  The flag line and the firing squad would form an honor guard at the front door while the veterans, the band and all the your organizations wold file into the hall.  Then the honor guard would march in, firing squad on either side of the stage: stiff, precise, fearsome with their white helmets and rifles, staring straight ahead solemn and serious.

The ceremony was always the same, as it is to this day;  musical selections, recitation of Flanders Fields, America’s Answer, the Gettysburg Address.  The speech was customarily by the current Legion commander and was always, oh so long.

In the late fifties, I advanced from Cub Scout to Boy Scout and that added the thrill of staying with the parade as it reformed to march from the auditorium to the monuments at the head of Main Street via Gregg Street.  Ceremonies were held at the monuments with the first salute to the dead by the firing squad. The roar of the rifles struck awe and , depending on age and proximity, even fear.  The volleys were a reminder of how serious this whole exercise was meant to be.

The parade would again reform and proceed to march across the Island and up Abbot Hill to Laurel Hill and Sacred Heart Cemeteries for ceremonies and rifle salutes there.  After the hike to the cemeteries, the parade would come back across the Island and down Main Street, the band belting out march after march. and turn up the Cut (Park Street) to the Legion where the parade would finally end.

This route would last until sometime in the late sixties when good sense replaced valor and the World War II guys finally threw in the towel and decided it would be better to leave out that climb up the hill and just drive to the cemeteries after the first part of the parade.

Sometime in the early 1960’s, coinciding with the final years of Miss Edwards’ career, the School Board decided we needed a High School Band.  An instructor was hired; a Mr. Edward Hamilton, from Ashburnham, Massachusetts.  Not real sure if he was a trained educator or a washed up dance band leader, but into town he came and “Boys” we had a band.  We practiced two or three times a week at the end of the school day and became “sort of” good.  Actually it was kind of fun.  As soon as the snow melted in the spring after Mr. Hamilton’s arrival we became a “marching band.”  Marching in step, playing an instrument, keeping straight lines (and a straight face) was a monumental task.  We were whipped into shape by tow local men, Lester Yohe, the founder of the Color Shop and Bob Mackintosh, a local plumber.  Drawing on their military experience, the train us to be a presentable marching unit.  Countless laps around the school, tying up traffic on Tremont, Park and Livermore Streets several evenings a week certainly aroused interest in Wilton’s new band.

Memorial Day, 1961 was our grand debut.  Head majorette, Louise Dodge, baton twirlers Brenda Broderick, Judy Stover and Betty Bartlett led our intrepid unit proudly down Main Street with one song in our repertoire and stupid grins on our faces as we were observed with disdain by the old and jaded members of Ferdinando’s Band who had played this gig for over twenty years.  Not one of my fondest youthful memories.

Fast forward eleven years to my return to the valley after five years of school, four years of service in the Air Force and two years working at my chosen career as a studio technician at New Hampshire Public Television.  Now I would be marching as a uniformed veteran of the military.  It was a real kick to march side-by-side with my Dad and many other veterans whom I had watched in the ranks for so many years.  Now this ceremony was “for real”, its importance magnified tenfold as I carried the weight of the loss of fifty thousand of my contemporaries, one of whom could just as easily been me.  Then and there, it became hugely important that no one I know would be allowed to forget those deaths and how wrong it was they had to happen.

So, some forty-five years later, I still put on that uniform, walk up to the Legion Hall and join my comrades for another march around our little town, heart=broken that lessons haven’t been learned about the futility and horror of war; that mankind can’t figure out how to resolve differences and live together in peace.

Don’t ever forget those who died and don’t ever stop trying to make sure they  didn’t die in vain.  The flowers may wither, but the cause for which they are a symbol will endure to the end of time.

 

 

Woof

After months of drifting in a wordless fog, some thoughts are finally beginning to surface. It seems a bit of a leap to include dogs in a compilation of Main Street memories, but two classes of canines come often come to mind.
First would be the pooches one would most easily describe as “townies.” Yes, they had real owners, but they belonged to everyone on the street in some way, if only for the fact that they were always around. Norm Wells’ hound Tippy,   Fred Nelson’s Brownie; Major, a grumpy old bulldog, that belonged to the Langdells; Fritz, a basset hound of Mrs. Paro’s next to the town hall. These dogs were just always around, trotting up and down the street, glad for a handout, marking all the sign posts ad telephone poles….behavior that, today would have the owners answering a summons; back then, not so much.
The other class would be described as the Store Dogs. These are more recent and different in that they belonged to one or another of us merchants and stayed pretty close to us. Les and Ruth Yohe, the original owners of the Color Shop had Pierre, a full size poodle. He was a fixture at the store and also part of the Dale Street neighborhood where I grew up.
Two other favorites were Tawny, the gentlest, sweetest husky there ever was. She belonged to Stan Fink who owned the hardware store. She was always out for a pat whenever we entered the store and then back behind the counter to quietly wait for the next customer to be greeted.
Blaze was owned by Kathy Rockwood at her first Magic Mirror location. Like Tawny, he was gentle and well-mannered….friendly to all who entered .
We can’t forget Marie Fortier’s continuing rotation of highly personable pugs, Belle, lulu, Oatus, Bart and more whose names escape me. There are more: Dawn Tuomala’s shepherds and Allison Meltzer’s Maggie May the St. Bernard.
Best to end this tale with memories of my own brief stint as a store dog owner. My wife and I adopted Jax when my daughter moved to Massachusetts and was unable to take her beloved black German Shepherd with her. Jax started coming to work with me and quickly became a fixture, resting on his cushion beneath the front counter. Wonderful times that lasted until his final days.

Shave and a Haircut; Two Bits

 

One of the first human needs met in a down-town, after groceries, is hair care. Vanity, it seems, carries a lot of importance.   Wilton has been no exception to this rule over the years. Today, hair salons and related enterprises are more prevalent on Main Street than barber shops, but this wasn’t always the case. Most shops for women were located in the homes of hairdressers all over town. I remember my mother, at various times going to Gloria Paro on the Island, Bertha Paro on Whiting Hill Road, Helen Hurley on Russell Street and then Helen Egan who was located on Main Street. Several others were scattered around town working out of a spare front room and serving a regular clientele.

My first professional haircut was given to me by Angelo Grasso. I was helped up onto the huge barber’s chair which was fitted with a little bench affair that sat on the arms of the chair….no belts, no fastening, just me, up in the air. I remember Angie as being very friendly and patient; he snipped and clipped with electric clippers that hummed in my ears and really tickled. I stayed as still as I could and before I knew it he was done and I had my first haircut.

I didn’t understand at the time why I went to Angie and my Dad went to Joe Germino, up the street. I switched to Joe sometime when I was about eight or ten and , now looking back, I understand perfectly. Simply put, Joe couldn’t stand little kids, so my folks took me to the much more patient Angie.

Both were “old-school” Italian barbers, probably having apprenticed to a master barber before setting out on their own. Both lived in Milford and were fixtures on Wilton’s Main Street for many years. Angie cut hair in his shop until 1959 when he sold his business to the legend most of my readers are familiar with…Elmer Santerre. He came to Wilton, newly licensed and fresh out of barber school in Manchester and embarked on his career which continues to this day. I came to Elmer as a customer in the late 1960’s after Joe retired. Silly as it sounds, and I still remind him from time to time, I gave up on Elmer when his price went up to a dollar. After that my wife cut my hair for many, many years.

Back to haircuts with Joe and his very standard, but very odd shop. There were two classic old barber chairs on the premises, but I don’t recall any other barber than Joe.His tools of the trade were his scissors and hand clippers, no electric stuff for him. I think there was one electric clipper that he used for touch-ups, but that was it. Several memories stand out: first was his infernal cigar clenched in his teeth and just missing the end of my nose. Second was his affinity for radios and televisions. One feature of waiting for and getting a haircut was listening to WLLH-FM, light classical music from “Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill “(WLLH). Joe had installed a loud-speaker just outside his door out front which would broadcast, most memorably, the play-by play commentary of the World Series in the fall. The back of the shop was set up with a work bench on which televisions were repaired. The first repair-man I remember was Al Heath who eventually lived in Lyndeborough; the other was Calvin Locke who lived in town and also happened to be the uncle of someone else we all know, Dennis Markaverich of Town Hall Theatre fame. After a while, Joe got more involved in the TV business too. I remember him selling sets to both my folks and my grandmother who had taken up residence in Wilton.   If the television set wasn’t working, he would show up at the house, lugging a monstrous case full of vacuum tubes, charts and meters, and showing a vast (?) knowledge of the craft, would begin replacing tubes, one at a time, until the set would start performing properly.

Dear reader, you can rightly accuse me of rambling, but these are the memories as they are….can’t help it if they don’t end up having a lot to do with a haircut. Joe, Angie, Elmer and some others I don’t remember all had their role in keeping the men of Wilton groomed and well clipped and shaven. Ask Elmer to share his memories with you, how he lifted Angie’s shop off its foundation and moved it back next to the tracks to become his home and built a whole new shop up at street level. Ask anyone my age about growing up in Wilton and where they got their hair cut. I bet they’ll all have a neat story to tell you.

Apples

The next time you bite into that crunchy apple, think about the tree it grew on: Where is that tree? How far away from Wilton is that? How many pairs of hands handled that delicious orb from picker, to packer, to trucker, to grocer? Up until the mid 1960’s (and actually, even today, on a much smaller scale) the answer could have been as few as one.
When I sat down to write this post, I was immediately able to list a dozen growers with no hesitation: Parker, Whiting, Holt, Rose, McLeod, Putnam, Batchelder, Badger, Frye, Barry, Stephens, Jarvis. Make no mistake, apples were big business in Wilton as well as in most of southern New Hampshire. The sweet combination of weather and rolling, hilly terrain are conducive to the production of some of the best apples anywhere.
Apples left town by mail (see previous posts about the Post Office and Curtis Farm), truck, train and bags in the back seat of the old Chevy.
Let’s follow the seasons, because each one is important to the process of apple growing. The dead of winter from January to early March is busy with the annual pruning to make sure each tree receives the maximum sunlight and air circulation to insure formation of the best apples.
Early spring sees some spraying and then in May comes that enchanted time when the orchards burst into full bloom. The hillsides become first pink and then clouds of white. The honeybees work overtime buzzing from tree to tree, gathering and spreading pollen, insuring the formation of the prize. Apple blossom time was significant enough to cause regional development groups to map out road routes to encourage public viewing of the spectacle.
After the fruit is set in early summer, it is time for thinning to ensure each fruit has sufficient space to grow to the perfect size. Then comes periodic spraying to keep the nasty bugs and worms away. Come late August, the earlier varieties of fruit begin to ripen and the fun begins.
At the larger orchards, the bunkhouses would fill with migrant workers; sometimes the school schedule was adjusted to allow employment of older students, mill workers off their shifts to help with the harvest. In any case, it was “all hands on deck.” Each of these categories of extra employment carries a whole set of stories to be told another time. All over town one could see huge stacks of one-bushel boxes and 15-bushel bins, all stenciled with the names of their owner’s farms, waiting to be filled, sorted, shipped or stored.
I’ve certainly left out many aspects of this industry those more familiar with the details could easily fill in, but suffice it to say, the memory of a huge part of the local economy is just that….a memory. Consider that most anyone living in town now could walk to the site of an orchard that once existed in less than ten minutes. Cue the square-dance fiddles, turn up the nostalgia machine and know it was a special time.

Up On the Farm

It doesn’t seem so long ago one could travel down almost any road in Wilton, or anywhere else in New Hampshire, and pass a farm or two. There were Frye Farm, Badger Farm, Kimball Heights Farm, Stiles Farm, Hartshorn Farm, Holt Brothers Farm, County Farm, Greeley Farm, and probably a dozen others. Closest to me, both in distance and familiarity was the Curtis Farm. Located on the upper reaches of Dale Street, it was an extension of my back yard, a place of adventure, a place of learning, a place of fond memories.

Grace Joslin Curtis and her husband Alfred bought what was the Dunbar Farm sometime relatively early in the twentieth century. They had a son and three daughters, Alfred, Elizabeth, Helen and Jennie. I have had the pleasure of knowing all but Helen quite well at various stages of their lives and children and grandchildren of all of them to this day.

The senior Mr. Curtis had passed away by the time I came on the scene in the late 1940’s, the daughters I came to know more recently, so Mrs. Curtis and Alfred were the first of the family, with whom I became acquainted. Alfred had had surgery to correct an ear problem and was left with issues that kept him from doing little but manual labor. I do remember him as gentle, friendly and firmly under the watchful eye of his mother, Grace.

She was the matriarch and “grand mistress” of the domain known as Curtis Farm. A most awesome woman in all senses of the word, she single-handedly operated an extensive operation that included dairy, beef, pork, poultry, apples, peaches, maple, and more. Her staff was a cast of characters worthy of great respect, derision, laughter and more than a little head-scratching. You see, most of these folks were wards of the state, , who would have had little opportunity to succeed except under her loving care and supervision. There was Ruth, hustle-bustling about the kitchen with its eight foot long wood stove that was fired up every day, all day. There was Sarah, taking care of the cow barn. Then there were John and Priscilla, doing garden chores, working in the house and in the orchards. A neighbor confided to me once that Grace was confounded that these two were “do-diddling” somewhere, but she could never catch them.

My main interest was in watching the tractors pulling wagons, cutting and baling hay, plowing and harrowing fields, spraying apples and pushing snow. The main man in this department was a wonderful local native, Carroll Hutchinson. Except for a bad back, Carroll knew no limitations and would work tirelessly dawn to dusk. No teeth made him difficult to understand, but his smile was all the assurance a little kid needed to know this guy was ok, so ok that the little tin figure that sat on one of my toy tractors was, of course, named Carroll.

Grace’s grandson Pete was the first “other” family member I met. He was really cool, because he would boost me up on the tractor he was driving and ride me around the field. That put him in a whole special category of important people in my young life.

When I was old enough for a part-time job, needing to earn money for my Scout trip to the jamboree, up the hill I went to Mrs. Curtis, who gladly hired me to help with the apple harvest. For several Saturdays, cold, early-morning Saturdays, I picked up drops (apples fallen from the tree) for the princely sum of ten-cents a bushel. When I went to collect my pay on about the third Saturday, watching her carefully count the proper amount from her fat coin purse….(watching her count money was a whole word picture unto itself; careful, deliberate and graceful all at once; and darned if her daughter Elizabeth did it just like her mother)…she looked at me and asked if I might be interested in helping Ed Willette at her retail stand located on Forest Road. The pay would be seventy-five cents an hour, which would be a considerable improvement over the picking gig. Since I knew how to count change and deal with the public through my limited experience at Dad’s store, she thought I was up to the task. What fun I had…loading and lugging the baskets and boxes of apples, setting up the stand on Saturdays and Sundays and selling to all those Massachusetts tourists, up to see the foliage and take home some fresh fruit.

Yes, the barnyard and all the activity loom large in my memories of the farm; where I skinned my knees running from the farm collie, where I saw a freshly killed pig layed out ready for the butcher, where a stream of milk was squirted at me by the person milking the cow, where I had my first exposure to the world of work, where life was truly lived by folks that wouldn’t have had a life but for Grace, Curtis that is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuff a Little Paper in the Toe

Anybody who grew up in Wilton in the 50’s and 60’s and whose Mom took them to the Boston Shoe Store to buy footwear will likely remember that phrase  in the title, or one similar. Salvatore Crisafulli was a fixture on Main Street from the 1920’s to the 1990’s;  love him or not, he was there to sell you your PF Flyers, your Jack Purcells , your Timberland s–t-kickers and your Florsheim fancy go-to-church shoes.

He immigrated from Sicily in the early 1920’s, recounting memories of seeing Mt. Vesuvius erupt when he was young. He would settle in Milford and come to Wilton to work for a cobbler when he was still a teenager. Through the years he would come to own stores in Wilton, Greenville and Milford.  Wilton, however, was where he came to work every day until he finally gave it up at the tender age of 96. He was a living example of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, despite his rotund figure.

A trip to Sal’s was an adventure without a doubt. I would walk in with Mom, sit down in the row of seats on the left (the row on the right was for the women); Sal would walk over and sit (envelop) one of those little stools with the foot-rest on the front and proceed to measure my foot with that special ruler with the sliding indicator which would determine my shoe size.   We would tell him what we were shopping for and he would turn and shuffle through the hundreds of boxes on the shelves behind him. Out would come just what we were looking for, but, invariably, a half size too big. Then he would say, (are you ready) “Just stuff a little paper in the toe….it’ll fit fine…you’ll grow into it….last you a little longer….eh?” Argument was useless; that was as good as it was going to get. Back we’d go to the counter where the box containing the shoes was neatly wrapped in paper and tape and paid for. That was the way it was; right up to the last shoes I ever bought from him as an adult. There was always a good reason to buy that particular pair of shoes; like it or not.

Some more recollections…..more than one person has recalled that Sal would always extend a friendly greeting to all who passed by his front door. However, his eyes would always be directed downward to see what footwear was being worn and where it might have been purchased. One could feel the temperature drop if one’s footwear did not come from his store.

I remember one day not long after I was back and working at the store. My wife came in and said, “Quick, go down to Sal’s; I think he’s dead! He’s leaned over his desk and he won’t respond!” Well, I went down and found him, just as she described, but now snoring loudly. Laughing, I gently tapped him on the shoulder and told him about the scare he had just caused.

Sal was a dedicated gardener. Each year, about the first of March, one would see in the back of his store, hundreds of little containers of sprouting tomato plants destined for his backyard garden in Milford…Roma’s, Beefsteak, and, most important, Ox-heart, a paste tomato for making sauce

The ladies of the Main Street Design Committee would have had an insurmountable problem if their time had come while Sal was still around. He parked his car next to the building in what is now the park, not parallel to the street along with everyone else who parked there, but head in , right next to the building. If he were around, he’d be doing it to this day and woe be to anyone who tried to change his behavior. RIP Sal.

 

Banking in Wilton

It’s 1949 and I’m three years old; I have one of those early flashback memories of seeing my Dad at work in the Wilton National Bank. Soon he would decide that banking was not a career he wanted and he resigned his position. His Uncle Charles Putnam would pass away in December of that year and Dad would be offered a position at our store.

Back to the bank; I still have a cast replica of the bank building, which is a coin bank in which I saved nickels. When it was full, my folks would take me to make a deposit in my savings account.

After I started school, there was “Stamp Day” every Friday when we would purchase U.S. Savings stamps to be mounted in a book, which, when full, could be redeemed for a U.S. Savings Bond. Looking back, I have some discomfort in remembering that some kids purchased red 10-cent stamps while others purchased green 25-cent stamps thus sowing seeds of class-consciousness and privilege at a tender age.  Seeds like that should never sprout.

Names of folks associated with the bank are a kaleidoscope of memories for me. I can barely recall Don Proctor, the head cashier, smiling as he walked by Dad that day I mentioned. He was a neighbor on Dale Street and would move to Jaffrey and a similar position there. There was Earl Watts, Don’s successor; always bustling around the office looking very important with ramrod-straight posture and a confident air that belied a truly warm and funny guy. Sometime in the late 1950’s, John Hutchinson arrived on the scene as Earl’s assistant and future replacement when Earl moved on to Keene. Always a smile, always a pipe in his teeth, and darned if he couldn’t whistle at the same time.

There was a bevy of tellers, bookkeepers and clerks behind the counters; Dot Boutwell, Edna Bean, Marion Hardy, Ruth Gage, Athleen Hall, Marion Siggins, Chris Caswell, Fran Rougeau, Isabel Neudeck, Priscilla Jowders, Bill Schooley, Leona Foote, Nancy Pollock and probably a dozen others (tell me who I’ve missed), all keeping the wheels of commerce rolling on our little Main Street. Of course I have to mention one other person who spent time in the Bank’s employ; that would be my lovely wife Vicki who was a teller between 1968 and 1970 when she joined me at my military duty station. I do remember (brag, brag) that the line of customers waiting for service was always longest at her window.

One story to cap off my tale this week. Wilton High School had a longstanding tradition called “Freshman Initiation” during one week shortly after school started in the fall. It was the standard week of “hazing” popular nationwide in those times. Seniors were in charge of “initiating “ the Freshman class by dictating their wardrobe for the week, daily rounds of teasing, taunting culminated by a school-wide assembly on Friday, where each Freshman was given an onerous and totally silly task, most having to be accomplished downtown in full view of the public. I recall such activities as rolling a peanut up the Main Street sidewalk with one’s nose or being given a toothbrush and a glass of detergent and being made to clean the pigeon droppings off the railing on the town hall steps.

What does this have to do with the Bank, you ask….Well, it seems Earl Watts’s son Neil, a Freshman in 1961 was told to go to his Dad’s bank, armed with a squirt gun and rob the joint. The way the trick was supposed to go down was that Neil was to be intercepted by Rob Wiggin the Police Chief before he could even get to the front door. Yup, Rob got to yacking with someone down the street and Neil charged in and yelled, This is a stick-up!” Needless to say, bedlam ensued; alarms sounded, automatic calls to the state police were activated and Earl, who also happened to be Chairman of the Wilton School Board at the time decided that Freshman Initiation would become a footnote in the town’s history…..Immediately!

 

 

 

Follow Me, Wilton Boys

The Boy Scouts of America have had a presence in Wilton since the 1930’s at least. Many over the years have attained the rank of Eagle Scout including some recognizable names such as Stan Young, Stuart Draper, Joe Pollock and in July of 1960, an incredible seven Scouts, including your’s truly, earned the award. I should name the other six as well:  Bill Beauregard, Fletcher Seagroves, Gary Foster, Frank Gordon, David Nadeau and Jim Nelson.  Many since then have also marked this milestone, but those seven at once also marked what was easily the pinnacle of scouting activity in Wilton.

The decade from 1955 to 1965 saw as many as seventy boys in Troop 10 plus sizable groups in Explorer Post 10 and Cub Scout Pack 10. All of this activity can be ascribed to the efforts of one man, Mr. Frank Howard Bardol. Howie came to Wilton in the early fifties, saw his marriage dissolve and by lucky circumstance, was convinced by several Scout committee members the perhaps he could occupy his time by becoming Scoutmaster of Troop 10.

I can honestly say, as I imagine a hundred or so other Wilton boys can, that Howie was, without exception, the most important and positive role model of our generation. He was a man of considerable means, retired military and possessed with a marvelous sense of humor, generosity and love of mankind in general. He also served Wilton as a Selectman and Representative to the General Court. His scouting activities came to reach beyond Wilton to the state and northeast regional level, but our Troop 10 was his pride and joy.

Sometime in the mid 1950’s, Howie convinced Mr. Sam Abbott that it would be nice to lease to Troop 10 the Curtis Cider Mill and the land where Wilton/Lyndeborough Coop High School is now located for a dollar a year. The mill, diagonally across Forest St. from Intervale Machinery became known as the Scout Hall….no explanation necessary. The land, then a pasture and apple orchard, became Camp Frye. He worked tirelessly creating meeting rooms, campfire rings, tent sites; he even talked Elmer Draper (Stuart’s dad) out of an old 1946 Chevy pickup retired from the plumbing company. The ” Scout Truck” hauled camping gear, newspapers for the paper drives and large numbers of scouts all over town. Try that today.

Life as a Boy Scout in Wilton during the 50’s and 60’s was nearly a full-time occupation. Tuesday evenings at 6:30 was Troop meeting filled with songs, usually a game or two, then patrol meetings upstairs in the Scout Hall where each of the eight or ten patrols (Eagles, Foxes, Flaming Arrows, et al.) had their own meeting room where they would plan for the next camporee, paper drive , or other future activity. Dues would be collected (10 cents) and more than a little goofing around occurred.

In the summer, meetings were at Camp Frye and activities were more geared to sports, woodcrafts or the cool obstacle course. The evening would end with songs and a campfire.

Each August, the troop would fill one of the campsites at Camp Carpenter, just outside of Manchester, for a week of work on Merit Badges, boating, swimming, sports and sketchy camp food.   Corn Meal Mush and mystery meat come to mind.

The height of my scouting career came in the summer of 1960 when, along with 30 other Wilton guys and about 170 other NH scouts, I was able to attend the National Scout Jamboree in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was the 50^th anniversary of Boy Scouts in America that year, so, guess what, Howie Bardol made sure our Jamboree Troop number was 50. He was that kinds of guy, made sure his boys were special.

The Jamboree was a week-long event, but the NH troops, traveling by bus, were gone for a month, staying at military bases and YMCA’s. We traveled to Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, Niagara Falls visiting museums, historic sites and small towns along the way. All this for the princely sum of $300, which also included matching, travel bags and pack baskets. Fifty-five plus years later and I remember it like it was yesterday.