EARLY LIFE

Thomas J. Glennon

As one grows older, the world of what has been assumes a qualityapproaching the holy and the reverent. In the far-off places of the mind thecountless things done, said and seen lie in orderly arrangement, waiting fora look or a word, a sight or a sound to stir them into waves of recollection.

The people of the past appear and disappear like corks bobbing in aturbulent sea. A glimpse of a face brings a series of pictures and a flood ofmemories. An avenue of time long gone opens to the view. The sound of avoice or the turn of a page, and straightway from the mind erupts a sequenceof lightning-like images which reveal whole sections of a life lived years andyears ago.

Joys and sorrows, successes and failures and countless inconsequentialthings, that had been forgotten in never ending new impressions, crowd intoone's consciousness. The present becomes unremembered and the future amystical uncertain thing.

What does one do with these constant and repeated reminders of otherdays? Does he yield to the spell of yesterday, or does he subscribe to thevoice of the modern and let the past bury its dead ?

Not easily are the feelings of recollection and longing stilled. In theevening of life what better occupation can be offered to please and placate aman who sees before him the black promise of war and the destruction and thesubjugation of the sweet and the good to the bitter and the unkind ?

I shall go with the past. I shall live it all again, and I shall see it in allits simplicity and sadness, through the long years of poverty, hard work and want,of struggle and sacrifice, of despoilation and desperation. And those dear soulswho lived in the cold bleak atmosphere of privation and non-recognition shallfind in me, one small voice to proclaim their nobility, and recommend them tothe glories and peace of heaven.

Long after I had reached manhood I noticed how readily my contemporariesdirected conversation into a discussion of life in the so-called olden days of ourchildhood. To reminisce is one of the luxuries of growing old, and one canunderstand the eagerness of a friend to recall pleasant occasions and successfulventures. But such deep-felt interest in a way of life long gone, and beyondhope of reoccurrence, indicates an unusualness that pleads for description andrevelation.

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As one would delve into volumes of history to learn the particulars ofliving in ancient times, to discover what people.did, what they wore and whatthey ate, and to become acquainted with the environment in which they lived,so must the chronicler of one's childhood existence reach into the crypts andcrevices of a mind that has stored away in the wonderful miracle of memory,every detail of those days that excite such recollection and such desire forutterance.

With the passage of fifty years the ordinary changes of time would makefor some modest variance in the living of a child, compared with the living ofhis grandfather. Through the centuries, up to the twentieth century, this changehad been so gradual that one generation was but slightly removed, in its habitsand thinking, from the several which followed immediately, or from those whichlay just behind.

But into the first fifty years of this seething century God has crowdedunnumbered revelations in the fields of science and industry. The forces offreedom have broken the shackles of the poor and released to millions what wasonce considered the exclusive property and privilege of the rich and the dominant.

It is this universal improvement in the welfare of man that brings into sharpfocus, in the process of recollection, the harsh and pitiable struggle that was thelot of the men and women of my childhood. Looking back, the first swift compre-hensive glance reveals a fierce desire and determination to make, from littlemore than nothing, a foundation of strength for the children who would live afterthem. Their suffering and their work would be a small price to pay to obtainsecurity for those they brought into this world through love.

It is only when the child becomes man, with an awareness of all theresponsibilities of raising a family, that he sees the awful extent and the complete-ness of the sacrifice that has been made that the old-world handicaps of prejudiceand poverty might be overcome.

The neighborhood of my birth and my childhood now provides a livingplace for new generations which consider it an unchanged and unchanging scene.They have no knowledge of structures that were or of people who used to be.Yet for me every fence, every frame building and every open field stands outin a mind that will not forget.

I can recall every i ouse and every occupant, the height and range andcolor of every shop and shanty. I can see men dead for forty years as clearlyas if their slow steps were today carrying them to boarding house or homeafter a long day at the mill, the jack or the buffing table.

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The tragedies of childhood, the accidents, the sickness and death pourforth in a torrent of recollection, each sorrowful occurrence rushing to thefore and demanding remembrance. Even if one would, there is no forgetting.

The magic of memory brings back the first scenes that left their im-pressions on my young mind. A birthday at the age of six, a day withoutpresents or any recognition beyond the gift of six blows on the back, thelustiness of the striking expressing the measure of the affection. The customprobably had its origin in the poverty which prevailed, the cheapness of thedonation appealing to those who had nothing to give.

My home at that time was in a tannery house, a wooden structure of twotenements on John Street, the rear wall of which stood no more than twenty feetfrom liquor pits housed in a low flat-roofed building, foul smelling, dimwindowed and bleak. A high fence afforded the only barrier between kitchen andthe refuse from the vats which was dumped in the intervening space. The resultwas a large pool of brown liquor, soft and slimy at first, but soon becoming solidunder the influence of the weather. Even today I can see the wide cracks as themass split open in the hot summer sun. Winter's low temperatures caused theformation of the neighborhood's dirty ice rink.

Beyond the liquor pits loomed the five-storied red shop, or tannery, withsteeply pitched roof and two tall smokestacks. These last belched forth constantlyhuge volumes of black smoke, the waste from the burning of soft coal. Sootspread over the neighborhood, befouling the clothes newly washed and strung ona line which stretched from the fence to a hook near the kitchen door. In the openfield close by, newly tanned half hides, brown and wet, were draped on racksfor drying, exuding the characteristic obnoxious tannery odor.

There was no such thing as grass or a paved road. I remember dirt, mudand gravel. A rain storm turned everything under foot into a quagmire. Thismade little difference in the warm weather, as the children wore no shoes, andthe black oozy accumulation could be easily removed by placing the feet in thebucket of water always standing at the back door. In the spring and fall themud-laden shoes raised havoc with the attempts of a mother to keep the kitchenfloor clean. A blow with a strap or a spoon became a ready reminder that themud must be left outside.

The kitchen furnishings and facilities were minimal in number andefficiency—a black coal stove, a shallow iron sink with one co^ water faucet,a bare table with a f<?'v wooden chairs, a rough board floor and a kerosene bracketlamp set in a frame on the wall.

Once a week the stove was cleaned and blackened. The smoke-markedlamp chimney was washed and polished regularly, while the floor, swept through

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the week, was scoured every seventh day by a mother who covered every squareinch of the splinter-laden surface on her knees, with a scrubbing brush in herhand and a pail of water by her side.

Bedrooms were two in number and small, furnished meagerly with plainiron bedsteads and oldfashioned commodes. Rugs were non-existent, as was heatof any kind beyond the kitchen range. One wakened to a cold house when the firefailed to last the night in mid-winter. And I recall clearly how the frost on thebedroom windows, on many occasions, remained undisturbed for days at a time.When work was slack for my father there was little coal to spare, and most ofit must be used for cooking the large loaves of inexpensive bread and for boilingthe water for the hot tea which was the family beverage three times a day. Thebudget of those days did not allow the use of milk as a beverage. It was usedonly to sweeten and color the tea and for cooking.

The coal problem was solved a short time after the first year ofrecollection, but not by any sudden affluence on the part of my parents. It wasdiscovered that an eight year old boy could get up at six in the morning, andeven earlier, walk to the cinder pile of the gas works or a factory and pick, pieceby piece, almost a bushel of coke before breakfast and school. This activitycontinued throughout the year, but the demands of the kitchen stove during thesummer not being great, a huge pile of coke was gradually built up in the farcorner of the dark cellar in anticipation of the winter's burning.

From my eighth year to my fifteenth, because of my early morningexcursions, there was never a need to purchase coal or coke. Wood could alwaysbe obtained by picking up the broken liquor slats and general debris around theshops and railroad yards, and the wooden boxes discarded by the grocer on thecorner. As a junior in college I still provided wood for the household, usuallyby cutting down dead trees on Horn Pond Mountain and in the woods beyond,sawing them into four foot lengths and splitting them by the use of wedges anda sledge hammer. These I hauled home on cart or sled and stored in the cellar.I later cut them into stove lengths, using the oldfashioned back breaking bucksaw, then split them into kindling for the wood fire that was started every morning.

An automobile or a truck was a rarity in the neighborhood, but tip-carts,wagons, buggies and drays, all horse-drawn, were plentiful. The iron tiresof the vehicles rumbled noisily over the rocky unpaved roads, stirring up cloudsof dust in dry weather and carelessly spraying mud and water during the rainyseason or in the difficult period of melting snows.

Pedlars, on foot and on cart and wagon, shouted their wares, and junkmen called for rags, bottles and bones. With this writing the faces of the olddays appear and names come readily to mind. I recall my admiration of the tip-cart men, Phil Kelley, Pat Hessian and John Bustead. They were strong men

to a small boy, robust horse trainers who gave joy to a little lad by riding himin the jouncing two wheeled cart from barn to coal pile and return.

Mr. Kagan and Mr. Raymond, traveling merchants, opened their packson the kitchen floor to display the few articles within the reach of the poor.Long before the deferred payment plan came into general usage, these menwould allow the selection of a dress, a shirt or even a suit, accept a fiftycent payment, then come each week for a similar amount until the debt wasdischarged.

As recently as the middle fifties I had communication with Mr. Kagan.He still carried his merchandise in a pack, tucked under his arm. I recognizedhim after a long absence, spoke to him and evidently gave him pleasure bymentioning his visits to my mother's home. Contrary to the usual success ofmen of his type, his graph showed a steady decline. His pack was a pitifulthing, a few articles done up in brown paper. His step was a faltering one, andhis clothing threadbare and drab. One day I found him beating his way in a coldwind, obviously half frozen for want of a heavy coat. He took no offense at theoffer of an overcoat, and through that winter and a few that followed he worethe warm outercovering I had long before discarded.

Billy (Dinky) Duffy, sitting low on the slanting seat of his vegetable wagon,rolled over the gravel road by the house a couple of times a week. Mr. Olson,in his full length white butcher coat, cut beef and chops to suit on the cutting blockin the back of his brown meat wagon, while little Joe Kenney appeared regularlywith his box-like fishcart to satisfy the needs of my mother and her neighbors.Swinging scales dangled from the side of the cart. From the scales to thecutting board a cod would pass, the head would come off, the tail trimmed andthe remainder handed to the housewife on a piece of brown paper. Cats trailedthe slowly moving wagon, gaining a head here and a tail there. Occasionallythe poorest of the poor would beg for a discarded head to provide the fish flavorfor a chowder.

The junk men, Goldman, Robinovitz, Resnick and Kaplan, all had theirdays. They lived in the south end of the town and they were successful inmaking a good living in the business, buying odds and ends for a few pennies fromthe boys of the neighborhood, sorting them and then carrying them to Chelsea fora profit. These men stand out particularly in my mind, for in my early years Ihad the best junk business in the South End.

My regular routes through the shops, around the railroad shanties andfreight cars returned an unbelievable number of bottles, rubbers, copper wireand boilers, rags, bones, zinc and other articles which had value as junk. My

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mother despaired at times when the accumulation in the yard and on the porchgrew to such proportions as to be unsightly, but she never discouraged opera-tions, since there was a monetary reward for all my efforts, and every dollarwas needed to supply the wants of a growing family.

The neighborhood had its eccentrics, alcoholics and week-end drinkers.One of my best sources of income was a man who lived a life of seclusion in asmall tenement on John Street, and who slowly drank himself to death over aperiod of ten years. On occasion he would call me to the door and present mewith a clothes basket filled with empty whiskey bottles, a collection which wouldordinarily require hours of walking and seeking on my accustomed routes. Inever questioned the donation at the time, but in later years I tried to under-stand why he did not sell the empties himself to the junk man and so get moremoney with which he could indulge his sad and destructive appetite. I now knowthat his generosity was the unconscious gesture of a gentleman who had seenbetter days. He was, in fact, the last surviving member of an old Winchesterfamily that had enjoyed prominence and wealth for generations.

While coke-picking was an everyday affair, Saturday mornings were re-served for covering the main route in my search for junk. Leaving home shortlyafter seven in the morning with an empty bushel burlap bag, I struck out firstfor the railroad shanty on Conn Street, a favorite hangout for those who wishedto blot out the troubles of a long work week by seeking the oblivion available ina bottle of liquor. The gate tender was John (Monk) Callahan and his job anenviable one to a young boy. He lowered and raised the gates for trains as theypassed, lounged in an easy chair between trains, read newspapers and daringmagazines and seemed possessed of all the knowledge that one needed for thesuccessful and happy life.

There were small trees and grass behind the gate-tender's shack; a tanbed beyond provided a soft ground on which to lie or to fall. These features ofthe terrain and the seclusion of the area made it a most satisfactory place fordrinker and scavenger. Toss the bottles as they would, the men seldom brokethem, and it was a poor day when one could not recover at least a half dozenempties in the sheltered spot.

The railroad tracks and freight cars offered the next choice area. Again,the remoteness from the observing eyes of the policeman on the beat providedthe inducement. Shops lined the tracks in those days, there being betweenCross Street and Green nine leather factor es, all active, a gas works and aniron foundry. All used spur tracks for their supplies of bark, coal, coke,hides and pig iron. One shifter and a crew of four men worked the freightyards and the sidings, keeping the cars moving in and out in a constant stream

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of activity. Men drifted to the tracks for privacy and seclusion, and as aresult, the whole area was a prime source of empty bottles, a young man'schief stock in trade.

Along the spur tracks between freight cars and buildings there was anarrow space, out of sight of passersby and far enough removed from houses toallow the exaggerated and loud talk common to those who drink more than isnecessary for mild stimulation. With bag slung over shoulder one would slidethrough these narrow spaces and pick up three or four empties before droppingthe bag and stowing within his quarry. The bad feature of this strip of territorylay in the severity of the surroundings, for a bottle had only a fifty-fifty chance ofsurvival if carelessly dropped by the drinker. It always hurt to find bottlessmashed on the rails or against the cars.

One did not try to criss-cross the tracks. Even in those early days itseemed natural to use a one way system, up one side of the tracks and thenhomeward on the other side. There was a shanty at every crossing and each onewas a possible source of revenue.

As one neared the Main Street crossing and the engine turntable, the broadacres of the freight yard, with its innumerable coal and grain sheds, came intoview. Here the chances of good business improved and the burlap bag beganslowly to fill. Not only in the open did one look for empties but in abandonedbuildings and their accessible cellars. I still remember squeezing through thecellar window of a deserted grain mill and searching every square foot of thefloor in the darkness. There were no empties, but I did come up with a fullbottle of beer. How long it had lain in the darkness of the damp cellar I do notknow, but my father pronounced it excellent in taste and quality on my returnhome.

It pleases me now to retrace in my mind the route of those days. Doesit seem possible that one could carry a burlap bag bulging with bottles and as-sorted junk up the steps behind Masotta's store, climb the fence to Buel Place,then squeeze through the open space between what is now the Times buildingand the adjacent structure. At that time the three horse hook and ladder companywas housed close by the present Times office, a statement that surely indicateshow far removed from the problems of heavy traffic was Montvale Avenue inthose days.

Across the street to Nanny Goat Hill the route lay through Walnut Strt itand the open field opposite the old xhoenix House. Then behind that boardinghouse by Bailey and Blendinger's knife making factory, the shops onJefferson Avenue, the lumber yard and a return to the railroad tracks. AtFox's shop one turned to rummage behind the row of Greek boarding houseson Fowle Street, around the Cummings tannery, back to the shanty onConn Street and home in time for a well earned lunch, but not before everyarticle had been removed from the bag and sorted into its proper category.

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While the chief return was derived from the sale of bottles, wire,rubber, etc., I should mention a secondary source of revenue indirectly dueto the accumulation of empties. Occasionally I would find a corner of whiskeyremaining in a bottle. In the course of a few weeks of junking, one might havea sufficient number of corners to actually fill a half pint bottle. This I wasable to do once in a while. The refilled half-pint would retail at twenty fivecents and there was no lack of customers. While the collecting of bottles wasusually a slow process, a few instances come to mind in which I hit the so-called jack-pot. In lifting a board in the wall of the leach house of the oldCottle tannery on Conn Street, I found a cache of bottles which had evidentlybeen secreted there in the far distant past, for the labels were faded andbrands of another era. This find, of course, made for a banner day.

On another occasion I crawled under the floor of Nathan Leader's cobblershop, now Tedesco's Barber Shop, on Main Street near Conn, and there Idiscovered enough beer bottles to fill a bushel basket. In the rear of .the oldFrench House on Conn Street—long inhabited by Turkish tannery workers—wasa small shed. During a searching expedition I discovered a trap door, in theceiling, which opened into a dingy space below the eaves. The floor wascovered literally with gallon size crocks. For weeks I passed in and out,carrying a few at a time, until I had removed them all. I kept the source tomyself and sold the crocks at the high price of ten cents each.

License to sell alcoholic beverages had been voted down when I was aboutseven years old. This caused the eruption of so-called kitchen barrooms oftenoperated by widows or industrious partners of lazy husbands. The professionwas held in poor repute by the sober minded wives and mothers but it filled aneed of the moment.

Police raids were frequent and always provided excitement for the young.In my innocence I saw nothing wrong with the activity. In fact, I profited by itby supplying an old lady operator with a steady supply of empty whiskey bottleswhich she filled and labeled to suit her fancy.

Delivery was always made after dark. These transactions produced agreater financial return than that obtained from the regular junk dealers. I amfamiliar today with several of the old lady's grandchildren and great grand-children but I do not reveal my long ago connections with their ancestor.

It was inevitable that tanneries and all the particulars of their operationshould be associated with my early years. From the day of my birth to mythirteenth year I lived within a hundred feet of buildings in which the foulsmelling business was conducted. In one case, where my family occupied ahouse owned by Murdock Tannery, the kitchen was located no more than twentyfeet from the dankest and most odiferous of all the ramifications of a sprawlingtannery, the liquor pit building.

My parents were well aware of the effects of such propinquity, but ajob that carried with it the opportunity to rent at a low figure, removed ordulled away any sensitivity that a poor man might be tempted to indulge. Thelabor market in those times was a plentiful one, and competition for jobs waskeen among the Irish immigrants who came to Boston and mushroomed out intothe neighboring cities and towns. This profusion of supply caused a low valueto be placed on the physical performance of a laboring man.

Food was correspondingly inexpensive, but the ratio between the twofactors changed little, and when it did, it was inevitably to the disadvantage ofthe working man. Seven in the morning to five in the evening, with half an hourfor lunch, six days a week, was the schedule fifty-two weeks a year when workwas plentiful. More often than not there were several slack periods each year;and many claimed that some of these intervals were created by the managementto make men more amenable to a program of small pay and long hours. Sincemany of the workers had families, and since most of them were honorable anddevoted to wives and children, they seldom complained of the poverty of income.They doggedly accepted the proffered wage and spread it as thinly as possible.

When lay-off came, these same men took advantage of the kindness andcompassion of the owner of the corner store, and fed their charges on groceries"put on the book. " I remember well carrying the book, a paper-covered thingwith horizontal lines, to the store, calling for bread, milk and other staples,then handing over the book for the penciled entries to be made. I never heardof anyone who altered the easily changed entries. Sometimes there would bepages of entries before the bill would be paid and the slate wiped clean. Andthen, in her show of gratitude that her faith in the customer had been confirmed,the storekeeper would hand out, as a bonus, a bag of candy, a plug of tobacco,or both.

The store had an appearance not seen today, a sort of general storeatmosphere that smelled of sour pickles, exposed crackers and bread andkerosene. Tall glass cases held the supply of bread and cake, noticeably freeof wax paper or wrapper of any sort, while a broad flat case enclosed endlesstrays of penny candy, mostly three or four pieces for a cent. The back roomalways wore an air of mystery to young boys. One could watch the store lady,Annie Ahern, disappear in a maze of boxes and barrels and soon return with abag of flour, rolls of fly paper and even a broom or a wash board. A boy'sambition in those days reached no higher than the opportunity to "wait on" thecandy counter, a job "'hich most certainly appeared to be the best one in theworld.

Mrs. Ahern, an early widow, raised a family of two boys and two girlsby her efforts. The boys were good boys but their interests were outside the

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house and store. Even as late as my college years, many times I did for herthe one chore familiar to most boys of that era—I filled the coalhod from thecellar bin and placed it behind the kitchen stove. I recall another family whichincluded eight boys, all athletes. They were always so busy in that activity thatI must occasionally split the kindling for the mother and carry it in my arms toto the kitchen. This last, when repeated to these same boys in later years, alwaysbrought forth a chuckle.

The meat market on the opposite corner offered the same easy credit indifficult times. Ready cut meats were unknown. The meat man, J. B., as hewas called, stood majestically in his long white coat behind the cutting block,knife or cleaver in hand, waiting for the order that was given by a sheepish andfrightened little boy. Occasionally he had a chance to show his skill with thecleaver, but more often than not his work on my order consisted of cutting up afew beef scraps for stew meat or slicing a pound of beef liver from the blood-like mass of jelly consistency. There was little choice when one had to buy thecheapest meats, but strangely enough, I and my sisters never thought to complain.Meat was meat in those days when one's little mind held no knowledge of sirloinor porterhouse.

The sawdust on the broad floor of the meat market had a scuffy attractionthat caused one to drag his feet all the way to the bell that tingled when the doorof the shop was opened. There were no harsh cracks of shoes striking the woodenfloor. Present though were sounds peculiar to a meat shop, the slapping of beefcarcasses on the heavy platforms, the slamming of the doors of the ice box andthe crunching sound of the cleaver as it cut through the bones of the rigid cuts ofpork and beef.

Meat markets were also a source of kindling wood in the form of dis-carded wooden boxes. The local distributors, Armour and Swift, delivered meatin wooden boxes as ordered. The meat was transferred to the huge ceiling highice box, and the crates set outside the back door for the first arrival to carryaway. I watched many an hour for the cases to be brought out that I might havethe chance to take them home in the hope of getting a reward in the form of apiece of bread, butter and sugar, or a slice of cake from a grateful parent.It mattered little that dried blood stained the wooden slats. The boxes yieldedeasily under the axe and they made excellent kindling.

The meat market provided the only telephone available in the neighbor-hood. It was fixed to the wall of a small room just off tu^ shop. A tall stoolgave me acces" to the mouthpiece and receiver. It was a proud moment wlieu Iwould go to the store and request permission to use the phone, usually to callWinchester to tell the lady of the house that my mother would be unable to workthat day. She worked out by the day doing washing, ironing and cleaning.

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The charge for the use of the phone was five cents. Writing of the phonebrings to my mind how ignorant I was of what must have been obvious to othersin those days. I used to observe the two abbreviations painted on the side of themeat delivery wagon, Tel. Con. I had the habit of saying tel con without knowingthe abbreviations indicated that J. B. 's meat market had a telephone. Phoneswere so scarce at that time that a business man had to advertise that he wasconnected, as the saying was.

In dwelling on the happenings of more than fifty years ago one finds himselfamazed repeatedly by the clearness of the pictures which come to mind. Seem-ingly from nowhere there erupts a series of events, details of which had long beensupposedly forgotten. Yet the orderly storehouse of the brain, in its own re-markable way, had catalogued each mirrored scene and sounded words in thegreat book we call memory.

One has but to tap the door of recollection and the page of his intereststands open and distinct. Word leads to word and picture to picture. Even thesounds and feelings connected with past events are revealed to us, and we liveagain the moment and the hour, the joy and the sorrow.

The faces of friends early taken seem eternally youthful. Time passes,but the youthful countenance and the childish smile change not. And suddenlythe realization comes that the grief of long ago was a mistaken thing.

'Tis the young dead who have conquered, the early taken who have lived.The world has not touched them. They have gone pure and untroubled to thegreat goal, while we have been left behind to fight out the years through repeatedsorrows and shattered illusions.

I was not much more than five years old when the white coffin of deathfirst came to my little mind. A year old child died in the small apartment overthe crude rented space on the street floor occupied by my family on John Street.I recall being taken up the wooden stairs to a front room, dark but for a fewcandles which burned by the side of a plain white casket. I have the feeling thatI sensed, even then, that death was a still quiet thing. There was weeping andthe sound of hushed voices. Even the atmosphere possessed a pitiful quality—as if time were standing still and waiting.

I am sure that my parents in later years never mentioned the event butthe name of the family has come back to me as clearly as if the child had diedyesterday. The name was Moran. I recall nothis^j of the father and motherafter the funeral. They moved from the place of their first great sorrow and wereforgotten. But the day of death, the room upstairs, the still small face and thewhite coffin make a picture I shall never forget.

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I lost my first playmate about a year later. He was an only child, adoredand pampered as much as a poor child could be in those difficult times. Helived on Conn Street, a short distance from my home. The father was a firemanin one of the local tanneries.

Young John Burns was stricken by one of the ever present children'sdiseases, I believe it was diptheria. He died long before advances in the field ofmedicine produced the toxin antitoxin that might have saved him.

The depth of the grief of the father and mother was lost on me at the time,but as the years passed by and the parents grew old, the completeness of thetragedy that engulfed them became apparent in the reserve of the mother and thealmost crippling slouch and the hang-down look of the father as he trod the streetsto and from work. I remember the father in his last years, and with everymeeting I could sense the sadness repeated. The man became a sort of hero tome when I realized that he had to live through a long life of silent and unaidedgrief. There were no more children. There was only work and the bitter re-membering.

The house where little John was waked still stands. In fact it was laterconverted into a two family dwelling. My folks occupied one of the tenementsfor six or seven years. I still pass the place on occasion, and though its appear-ance has been changed radically, I have but to close my eyes and the newnesspasses away and I can see the dark heavy door with the iron knocker, the openporch and the picket railing. Truly nothing experienced is ever lost.

I do not recall weeping at the death of John Burns. Perhaps I was tooyoung to express that type of emotion. But a few years later a childhood tragedygave me my first deep feeling of sorrow and grief.

Even at nine I was interested in baseball. I was accustomed to walkingto all parts of the city to play the game. One of the bitter rivals of my groupwas the team fielded by the youngsters of Mt. Misery. The older boys playedthose of corresponding age and the younger ones like myself played a sort ofaftermath—the tail end of a doubleheader.

The names come leaping out of my memory—O'Doherty, McHugh, Dever,Winn, McGonagle, Gilgun, Morrissey and Doherty.

One of the most active young ball players on the Mt. Misery team was aboy named Danny Duherty, who, like everyone else, had a nickname. His was"Mush. " He was small and quick with a strong desire to win. He would fight,argue and use all the tricks of a good competitor. I considered him a closefriend. We were of a size and we were in the same social strata.

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Danny's life was cut short by a bullet from a rifle in the hands of an olderboy. Carelessness was the chief factor in the accident. He died instantly andthe news spread like wildfire through the neighborhood.

I had moments of grief on hearing the news, but on the evening before hisburial the sadness of his passing overwhelmed me. I sat for hours on a kitchenchair holding to its back for support, and there I sobbed for hours withoutceasing. I recall the softness of my mother's hand in stroking my head, and herwords as she attempted to console me. But the tears were bitter ones and theydid not cease until the blessing of sleep relieved me.

Again, I remember the little house at the end of a lane off Arlington Street,the quiet room and the muffled sobbing, and the still form in the white casket.

Little did I know that I was to have much to do with his sisters, brotherand nephews all through the later years. Again, he is gone and who is to sayit is not well.

In these disturbing times one hears often the word freedom. It comesglibly from the lips of politicians and high level officials. It is a big word,used in reference to countries, a generalizing word that contends with ideologies,dictators and revolutions, quietly peaceful or violent.

One marvels at the change in meaning over the span of the past fifty years.To a child in the early part of the twentieth century freedom had a meaning asliteral as the most liberal dictionary would supply, freedom to come and go, toclimb, to visit, to poke one's dirty hands and chubby legs into any area that mightexcite the curiosity of a young boy. There were few fences and these for or-namental purposes. Occasionally the apple or pear orchard of a modest house-holder warranted a picket fence, a barrier to discourage the inroads of juvenileraiders, but the effectiveness of some of these was reduced by the generosity andkindness of the owners.

No orchard was more completely surrounded by fences than that of RosieBrennan's, a soft gentle voiced spinster who lived quietly in a small house onConn Street. Early in my life I learned that she was no ordinary householder.She kept no dog. She was no diligent caretaker nor watchwoman. By thatmysterious medium that informs the young, I and others of my age came to learnthat a lifting of the gate latch, a knock at the door and a stumbling request for anapple or two would always bring the .ame response, "Take what you want of theapples on the ground, but do not touch the trees. "

An apple or two may mean little to the well fed spoiled child of today, butto a boy whose stomach was never satisfactorily filled, the joy of eating over-the-fence fruit, freely given, was a great one. I cannot estimate the generosity ofthe little lady, but her kindness extended over a period of years, and the summerappetite of a lad of those days was not a delicate one.

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The tanneries with their interesting outbuildings and yards were easilyaccessible to me. There were no fences to climb, no watchmen to outwit. Thetan yard, the liquor pits and the outdoor drying racks were all available as playareas. Even the shop itself offered no barrier to a boy of the neighborhood whoknew almost every workman by name. He could roam freely from cellar to topfloor of the five story wooden factory a scant hundred feet from his front door.

There was a fascination in watching Mr. Conlon, called Turk by hisfellow workmen, soaking bundles of leather scrap in grease and oil, then tossingthem into a circular press to be squeezed into huge flat pancake-like masses.These were dried slowly in stacks and then sent to the factory ovens to be burnedas fuel. In my own time the process was eliminated, the job abolished and thescraps sold by the bag or wagon load to Joe Kaplan, a dealer in junk originally,whose acumen discovered the great possibilities in discarded and apparentlyworthless materials.

The embossing machine was another attraction for me, as was the manwho operated it. Also in the basement, as its enormous weight demanded, theten ton giant opened and closed its massive jaws with regularity, as the operatorcarefully slid the side leather over the polished surface of the flat metal base.The work was done from the side for reasons of safety, and John LeClair followedthe rules faithfully. In his long years on the job he lost not even a finger nail.

Not so fortunate were several men in the city of my birth. Known to mewere at least three men who, by accident or by carelessness, found their arms,hands or fingers between the plates at the moment of pressing. There was norepairing a wounded member. The thousands of pounds' pressure precludedall possibility of repair and the injured part was invariably amputated.

Mr. LeClair appeared to be a man far above the level of the ordinarytannery workman. He had a dignity that could not be denied, a manner of speechthat indicated a modest education and a confidence that could have come onlyfrom association with wealth and prosperity at some period of his life.

I guess I was his favorite, for often he would send a message to my homeacross the street requesting that I go to his residence on Upper Main Street forkeys which he had forgotten. To me the satisfaction of recognition was a wonderfulthing, but the prospect of receiving a ten cent piece as a reward for my troublewas a not too inconsiderate incentive.

After I had become a ^rown man I learned that his sister was the wifeof a prominent local leather manufacturer, Edward Dow, a wealthy man and ownerof the Dow mansion which dominated Academy Hill. Little did I know as a child

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that I should have the opportunity of roaming through the rooms and halls of thatmansion and of delving through the books and correspondence of that man and hiswife. One of the greatest thrills of my life occurred during an excursion underthe Mansard roof of this old house. Tucked away in a corner of a well worn trunk,where it had lain for more than half a century, was a well written letter addressedto the mother of John LeClair, telling of the finding of the body of her husband onthe battlefield of Antietam. It was signed by the soldier who had found the body,and its four pages described in detail the appearance of the body, the searchingthrough the clothing and the discovery of the address of Mrs. LeClair. Whoknows the story of the sadness created by the arrival of that letter, the readingand rereading of an epistle that represented the last link between husband and wife,the end of a period of happiness and the beginning of a term of grief that must lastforever.

The automatic and electric elevators of the present day bear no resem-blance to the equipment of more than fifty years ago, as demonstrated in thecrude elevators of the American Hide Tannery. Before electric motors had comeinto use, all machinery in the factory received its impetus and power from themain drive shaft propelled by steam from the great boilers in the engine room.To operate even one or two machines in remote parts of the tannery it wasnecessary to generate enough steam to start the main shaft.

Thus the transmission of power from machine to machine and from floorto floor was a noisy operation requiring miles of belting and hundreds of wheelshung from the ceiling or propped up on the floor. There was a waste of power,but this could be tolerated in a period when wages were low and coal cheap. Ascompetition developed and efficiency experts moved into the field, the outmodedmachinery had to go, and so did the factories that could not or would not convertto the new. The noon-day din of local shop whistles has gradually diminished tothe point where only two are now heard in a town that once boasted of twenty-fiveor thirty.

The main elevator in the American Hide ran from the dank dark basementto the fifth floor. It was a stumbling piece of equipment, slow to respond to thestrong jerks necessary to start it on its upward journey or its hesitating descent.There seemed to be endless yards of steel cables, greasy and squeaky, all laboringto move the battered black platform that was the floor on its way. As the elevatorand its load moved upward the floors above opened to allow the passage. Atripper on the under side of the platform caused the floor to open on the way down.Freedom to look at the elevator, the loading and the operation thereof, wasalways allowed but no machinery in the shop was more dangerou.. Woe to theboy who came too close. Old Mr. Coyne's bark was a horrible thing to hear, adeterrent strong enough to make a boy swing wide when passing the well that

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housed the crude piece. Banned though the area was, I had my share of rides,but usually on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon when my father put in extra timeand had occasion to transport a horse of leather from one floor to another.

There were many tales told of faulty elevator cables, of two, three andfour story drops, of deaths and maiming, but that was in the time before StateBoards of Industrial Safety and Workmen's Compensation Laws came into being.

I recall clearly the cruel death of the man across the lane, Mr. Shea,whose head was crushed by a piece of a broken fly-wheel of a putting out machine.He lingered for two days, unconscious, in the small stuffy bedroom of the framehouse, visited a couple of times by a local doctor. But there was never a mentionof a hospital nor the suggestion of a comfort to be offered to the poor widow. Idoubt that the lady ever received a penny for she boarded several children foryears for the few dollars the state would allow for her so doing.

The tannery operating procedures gave me many hours of pleasure and Inever tired of staring at the men and the machines and of listening to the hummingof the belts and the whirling of the great mills.

During the winter months, the tannery was most attractive. There wasdampness and there was little natural light. At such times men moved likephantoms in the eery light of small electric bulbs which dangled on long cordshanging from the ceiling. There was an air of mystery in the rambling structureand objects seemed far away. The recesses of the upper floors excited visionsin a child's mind, and most of them were fearful, causing one to hurry over theoil-soaked floor and down the creaking stairs.

The open sheds, where was stored the materials used in the tanning pro-cess, were always available on rainy days. The huge bags of nuts from whichtannin was extracted, could be moved, piled one upon another in such a way asto make small compartments, ideal for hiding in games which demanded conceal-ment.

To run over the oil barrels, and to jump from prominence to prominence,provided the exercise so necessary in the lives of youngsters. The play wasrough and the surroundings not delicate, but all was sufficient and satisfying toboys who had no knowledge of any other way of life. Today's refinements inchild care and control are the result of an economy that has tended to eliminatethe poverty and /ant which characterized the period of my childhood. There isdoubt in my mind that elaborate schools, buses, television and general pamperinghave done much to increase self-reliance and independence in the character ofpresent day young people. What fun we had, we made for ourselves withoutexpenditure of money or an increase in the tax rate.

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What boy of the old neighborhood does not remember the drying room ofthe old American Hide ? Tucked away between the two main shop buildings it wasa haven for small boys during the cold weather.

When the no school signal would sound on a stormy day and the streetswere impassable because of the snow, invariably the cry would go out, "Let'sgo to the hot house. " And hot it was. Hundreds of yards of steam pipes werestretched on floor and walls providing the high temperature needed to dry thesides of leather strung up on wooden racks. These racks were close togetherbut a few well dried pieces of leather could be taken down creating a spacesufficient for a play area. The leather removed from the racks, being hard anddry, provided the table on which card games of a simple nature could be played.One boy would supply cards, another a checker board, and usually each boy broughtalong a book, usually a ten cent volume authored by Horatio Alger or the creatorof Nick Carter. Home libraries were very limited or non-existent, yet it is myconviction that the young man of my day did far more reading than do theircounterparts of today.

The Horatio Alger stories were particularly popular, in that every volumedealt with the rise of a poor boy to success and wealth. In an era when the country-was growing into a financial and industrial giant, the accomplishments of the heroof fiction could be and were duplicated in real life. It was this fact that appealedto the poor lad whose ordinary future must be limited to the uncertain securityof life in a tannery. I believe that I read every one of a list of fifty or more ofthese novels. They will not go down in history as examples of the highest formof literature, but they were clean stories with never an off color word or pageto mar the mind of a growing boy. I look upon them as my first source ofdreaming, an exercise which developed into a habit of reflection which now givesme much pleasure and peace of mind.

No one seemed to resent our incursions and stays in the drying room,least of all little George, a rotund middle aged Greek who toiled all day longloading the mills, removing the wet leather and then placing it on the racks todry. Because of the heat and the moisture the place had a dim smoky look,as if steam were ever rising, which I suppose it was.

I was no more than thirteen when I left the immediate American Hide area,but I can see in my mind's eye the machines and the men who operated them.Most of the men I can recall by name more than fifty years later.

N_i all the men who befriended me in those days lived in the neighborhood.When the five o'clock whistle blew in the shop yard close to my home, a horde ofworkmen streamed into the street to walk to their homes in various parts of thecity, or to catch the trolley cars that ran on Main Street at the head of Conn Street.Many there were who saved an odd tea bottle for my junk collection, and many morewho shouted a greeting to a bare legged boy who stood on the street as they passedby.

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I always looked for one old man, called "Kush" by everyone. Old Kushworked the cellar mills. He was a slow moving slightly bent over man, ofquiet nature and with a kind word for everyone. As a small child I used to waitat the red gate for him every night at five o'clock. He would stop, open hisdinner pail and lift out a piece of cake for Jimmy Glennon's boy. He seemed likea king to me, for he certainly was an old man, his hair was bushy gray and hewalked with the grace of one of God's Apostles.

In my later years when I began to evaluate people more from theirbehavior than, from evidence of their material worth, the face of this kind manwould come to me like a joy and blessing out of the past. He has been dead forforty years or more, but his gentleness and goodness still live to me, a constantreminder that the good men do lives on long after they have gone. He workedhard, lived with simplicity and humility, and he most certainly has earned heavenand glorification.

A young unapproachable Greek ran the rolling jack as the machine wascalled, and Jack Coyne's father controlled the elevator. Phil Kelley, Pat Hessianand John Bustead drove the carts and took care of the barn. Mr. Frizzell andDarby Shaughnessey ran the shaving machines. George Bowers was the shipperwho tossed the well wrapped bundles of leather into the chute that led to truck orwagon outside. Often he would pick me up and send me through into the arms ofMike Winn, the trucker. Mr. Cahill dominated the third floor south corner ofthe new part of the shop, while farther along on the same floor friendlyMr. Mahoney labored the long day preparing the leather for the tackers.Rooster McElbinney and my father did the tacking, while the measuring wasaccomplished by a sour faced man who always appeared ready and eager tochastise boys who neglected to close the door in cold weather. His last nameescapes me, but his nickname will be with me always. It was a crude and un-flattering moniker certainly not fit for the printed page.

On the third floor of the old shop there was always a smile and a word fromJohn Gallagher and his Greek helper, Steve. They were kind to me and helpfulalmost daily, picking up stray bottles that I might add to my junk collection. Untilhis death a few years ago John would eagerly exchange a word or two when we met.The subject, of course, was "the old days. "

Bucket-hat McCarthy, the boss of the liquor pits, has been dead for fortyyears. He had a habit of kicking out at boys who invaded his domain. The habitbackfired on one occasion when my father learned that I had been the recipient ofone of his kicks. My father's resentment vvdS demonstrated in a beating he ad-ministered to said McCarthy. I recall my father's saying that it was a pleasureto go up before Judge Johnson, a statement not nearly so far out as it might seemto be, since the alternative was to appear before Judge Maguire.

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Old Mr. Brackett was the wet cellar boss, a man with a stern look, whokept youngsters out of his territory as much as possible. The open pits weredangerous, as I can understand now, and his roughness in driving us away couldhave been for our own good. Mr. Nolan, an upstairs boss, was a bit on the un-friendly side, and one hurried through his department without hesitation. ParkerPoole was an easy going supervisor, and the superintendent, Dan Bond, a digni-fied and soft spoken gentleman.

A certain romance existed, in the broader sense of the word, in the livesof the youngsters of more than fifty years ago. There was poverty, but it was apoverty of equality. Nearly all families had the same income, the same rentalproblems and the same successive crises of sickness and lack of food and clothing.

Where a hot coal or coke fire in a small kitchen, on a bitterly cold day,offered the supreme luxury in the field of expectation, there was no longing forthe habiliments of the rich. In the summer a screen door was an item to besought for and enjoyed. And when individual screens could be bought for thedownstairs windows a family had a feeling of prominence, of moving up in thevery low social register.

In the days before screening was general in the neighborhood, one mads agame of the flies which swarmed through the rooms on a hot summer's day. Allthe shades were drawn, the children armed with folded newspapers and the backdoor left wide open. Then the excitement began. In the far corners of the housethe children hooted and shouted, swinging the newspapers right and left. Theharried flies raced to the nearest exit, the open kitchen door, to escape destruc-tion. For a brief period the house was free of the pests, but constant opening andclosing of the door and the opening of windows at night, in a desperate attempt toget a bit of cool air, soon brought the number again to the nuisance level. Theprocess was then repeated. As a wealthy shop owner might say, "There wasexcitement and laughter and good exercise, all for nothing, and these things weregood for the people."

The huge water tower in the yard of the American Hide supplied, onoccasions during the summer months, the pleasures of an open-air shower bath.By mistake or design, the tank would overflow for a period of half an hour, andthe water would tumble in a fall of seventy-five feet, in cascades of pure delight.In overalls or trousers, one would stand in this free shower, getting the bath ofthe week at no cost whatever. There were times during the winter when the excessof water produced the same phenomenon, but one could only look through the frostcovered windows at the spectacle.

The round wooden washtub placed on the kitchen floor and filled from thecopper bottomed boiler on the back of the stove, took care of the winter bathing.

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Usually a week went by between baths at this season of the year, but since thewhole neighborhood lived by the same general plan, there was no offense givenand none taken.

All young children tend to look with awe upon their parents, to feel certainof their great knowledge and wisdom, and to believe that their lives have beeninteresting, if only because they had been lived in the distant past.

Every old wall or foundation, every farm and monument and every abandonedhome or factory had a history to me, and for information concerning them I alwayslooked to my father. Where a factory had been destroyed I must know all thedetails of when and how, the people involved and the incidents leading to its des-truction. In my mind's eye the building would rise again, and the throbbingactivity of the business return. Even today as I pass the last remaining founda-tions of these once thriving factories, my thoughts go back to my father and hispointing and describing.

The romancing of a child returns and I can renew the old joy in the newrecollection. Today houses have been built on the foundations of liquor pits, shopbarns and the factories themselves. One muses that new generations come tocover up the past and to build up the present to seemingly last forever.

The romance of factories long gone was a joyous one to me. Digging, asa child will dig in any open area, I often unearthed bits of leather and scraps ofequipment buried in a disaster of long ago. It took no effort at all to root outleather scraps in the open field beyond Reardon's house or the lot betweenSmullen's and the railroad track. How it all happened was told to me many timesby my father, a story of fire and explosion, of men running from burning buildingsin flames and collapsing in the street. It was because of this calamity that therewas no Mr. Tobin, only Mrs. Tobin and the children. The father of the househad lost his life in the explosion and fire in the grease factory years before I wasborn. It was romance to me then, and it is today in the reflection that I am oneof the few who have occasion to recall the incident of a man's passing so long ago.The world goes on, it does not know, or it does not remember, but it was atragedy of the first order, and it caused sadness and tears beyond measure.What must be the sum total of misery, suffering and grief in all the years sincelife began. There is no measuring the depth of a heartache or the inreaching ofsorrow.

There was romance in • "atching the men of the neighborhood at their gameson the old Maguire lot on Vining Court. Originally a garden enclosed by a solidwooden fence, the field became a gathering place for all in the hours betweensupper and darkness when the barrier had been removed and farming abandoned.

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To see grown men strive, after a long day in the shops, in contests of jumping,running and horseshoe pitching was a delight to the boys of my group. One hadpride in his father and one cheered and suffered in his victories and defeats, asthe children of today do in contests which involve school, college, city or town.

Hours were priceless things indeed, and the time was stretched to includeevery moment of daylight. Often the stretching would carry it into night as thesmall white papers tied to the stakes on the horseshoe court would attest. As alast resort a match might be struck to determine a winner, and on the grandoccasion of an important match, a couple of kerosene lanterns might be used toaid in the umpiring.

To remember these things is romancing indeed. Simple as were thepleasures of my boyhood, they are long lived in my memory. They give joy inthe recollection, and they keep fresh and virile the picture of my father. Thereare many things to thank him for, physical, moral and mental, and of them allthis joy of youth recalled is not the least.

In these days of plenty when almost every wish can be readily satisfied, itdoes not seem possible that a period one generation back should have offered solittle in the way of pleasure and relaxation for our hard-working parents. Onecould live through a whole year of musical silence except for the brief interludesof parades and banil music given free on such prominent holidays as MemorialDay and the Fourth of July. Radio and television were then only dreams in theminds of eccentric scientists, and the new-fangled graphaphone, with the cylinderrecords, was a toy to be enjoyed by the well-to-do.

Occasionally a visitor to the house, proficient on the mouth organ orJew's Harp could be cajoled into performing for half an hour or more. Hisrepertory included nothing in the field of opera or musical comedy. He playedmostly Irish numbers or some of the songs popular during the Civil War, such as"Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," "Just Before the Battle Mother" and "TheBattle of Mill Springs." The last was my father's favorite. I recall hearing itin my earliest years sung as a lullaby to put me to sleep. Even today I findmyself humming its plaintive tune during my work, or singing snatches of thesad verse as I tramp along a country road.

I believe that the first instrumental music of my recollection was thatproduced on the banjo in the hands of a local celebrity on John Street when I couldhave been no more than four or five years old. Though the occur.* mce took placemore than sixty years E.JO, the playing and the setting are as clear in my mind asif it all had happened yesterday.

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I can see a little man in shirt sleeves sitting cross-legged on the groundof the gravelled yard on John Street, his back pressed against the broken downpicket fence which separated home from the tan bed of the tannery, and hisfingers as they plucked away at the strings. The men of the neighborhood stoodor sat in a half circle, many holding T D pipes in their hands. At times theirrough voices attempted snatches of the songs turned out by Billy Mooney. Inever discovered where he lived or what work he did. I only know that he couldplay the banjo, and that he was a popular man in a neighborhood starving formusic and song.

I have a faint recollection of fiddle music and dancing in my early years,so I assume that my house was the scene of more than one "kitchen racket, " aterm used to describe the getting together of young people new come from Ireland,where they could meet one another and dance for the low cost of just appearingand bringing a can of beer or a bit of food. These gatherings were occasions formatchmaking, and many a fine family can trace its origin to a meeting of an up-stairs maid from one of the West Side of Winchester families and a recent im-migrant who had found work in one of the local tanneries.

Some years after the incidents related, when I was about nine or ten, mymother received the gift of a square piano, the pride of the neighborhood simplybecause it was the only one. With visions of penetrating the awesome regions ofmusical art, my sister started to take piano lessons at a price of twenty fivecents for half an hour's instruction, fifty cents for the whole hour.

I have no memory of great heights reached in the next few years, but I doremember that these lessons required my attendance upon my sister in her longwalks to and from Franklin Street when she took her lessons in the late afternoonsof dark winter days. To sit in the anteroom while my sister played scales andfinger exercizes was punishment for an active young man whose interests weremore physical and concerned with the great outdoors. From the long collection ofpieces which my sister studied, I have a memory of only one, a violent thing thatliterally shook the piano in a cascade of noisy notes, "The Midnight Fire Alarm. "

With music in all its forms as readily available today, I can almost cry insorrow for the long years of musical starvation that must have been my parents'.I discovered, in later years, how quickly my father's feet responded to music ofthe dance; and that there was song in his heart I learned from some of his associ-ates who drank with him on occasions that offered opportunity for release of thelong pent up expressions of the spirit. Men have told me >.~at in his later years,after a few drinks in bar or tavern, he would relax a bit from his quiet manner,and sing or recite dozens of stanzas of song and verse he had learned in his youth.

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I can well believe that what little appreciation I have for the arts of poetry andmusic has come to me from my father and his people before him through thewonderful miracle of heredity.

One might wonder what could happen of interest in an era that knew nothingof the numerous pleasures that crowd the days and nights of the present day child.Oddly enough, I do not recall ever hearing a boy or girl of those days complainthat, "There's nothing to do around this place. " Yet today, with a thousand op-portunities available, this is a common complaint.

Nothing could be more exciting to a lad in the early part of the century thanto have the notorious Mr. Mullen move into the neighborhood with his low-slung,high-walled wagon. One trailed eagerly behind the slowly moving vehicle, tryingto guess what shop, barn or farm was its destination. Mullen's presence in thearea meant only one thing. There was a sick horse somewhere close by that wasto be dispatched with a huge horse pistol.

When the shop, barn or farm was reached, the man moved boldly to thehorse, which was usually lying on the ground or on the stable floor. Thoughthe youngsters were held back by helper or policeman, once in a while theexecution took place in full view of the small audience. The muzzle was placedbetween the eyes of the stricken animal and the piece fired. One shot was usuallysufficient, so large was the caliber of the pistol. In my childish mind I couldnever decide whether the pistol was called a horse pistol because of its large sizeor because it was used to kill horses.

Loading the dead horse was always exciting. There was no such thing asa wrecking car or hoist in those days. The wheels of the wagon were locked anda heavy rope tied around the neck of the dead horse. By the use of heavy tackleinstalled in the van and with the driver's horse for power, the body was slowlydragged into the wagon. The gate was closed and Mr. Mullen was on his way.

As boys always will, we discussed the operation and the ultimate end of thecarcass. We concluded, after listening to the knowing expressions of the menpresent, that the hide would be used for leather, the fat for soap and the remaindersent to a factory to be made into gelatin. The last operation created in our youngminds a fierce antipathy to gelatin in all its forms, a feeling that remained with meuntil I had acquired a knowledge of the basic construction of most food products.Until I wat, a grown man I could not understand how the fine-grained, clear lookinggelatin powder could have hau its origin in the carcass of a dead horse.

In the days of which I write there were many occasions during the year whena house or barn would be moved from one location to another. There were fewobstacles to the movement of buildings in those days, a few overhead wires on themain streets and some branches of trees to be overcome.

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It would take a day or two to move a barn the length of Conn Street, aperiod of great excitement to young boys. Inch by inch the building would be movedon wooden rollers under the direction of Jake Ellis, the power provided by a horsewho walked in a circle on a platform fastened to the ground, the center of whichsupported an upright pole about which the tow rope was coiled. It was slow,laborious work, but the operation used up all the available waking hours of theyoungsters, an inexpensive pleasure and a useful one in that it provided all thebenefits that sunshine, the great outdoors and constant activity could produce.

The streets were always being dug up in those days, as in these. Therewas no macadam. The heavy gravel yielded slowly to pick and shovel in thehands of city workmen and the long trenches were soon opened for the receptionof water or sewer pipe. There was joy in jumping in and climbing out of theditches, crawling through the huge mains and swinging on the large derrick whichwas used to raise and lower the heavy sections of pipe. A rain storm would halffill the trenches with water and a cheap pool would be provided in warm weatheruntil the hot sun had caused evaporation of the accumulation. There was much todo for a child in that period and at no expense to parents beyond the repair of atrouser leg or the replacement of the sole of a shoe.

The earliest snapshot in my recollection shows five boys seated on one ofthe wooden racks used for drying hides in the tan yard of the American Hide andLeather shop on Conn Street. Four of the boys are wearing long sleeve shirts,trousers and well built shoes. The fifth one, yours truly, sits clutching the railfearfully. He has no cap, he wears, a sleeveless shirt, canvas short pants andsneakers. His hair has been clipped close to the scalp for the summer forpurposes of cleanliness and easy care, the operation performed the day afterschool had closed for the annual vacation. I had just completed the first grade.My father had the only hand clippers in the neighborhood, and he was called uponto clip the hair of half a dozen children, usually on the back steps of the smallhouse on Conn Street.

The second oldest picture is one taken on the steps of the old LawrenceSchool, now the Administration Building of the Woburn School Department. Itis one of the third grade class, teacher Miss Ingalls. It shows a thick set ladwith scowling face, bull-nosed shoes, heavy ribbed stockings, knickers and ajacket of a mongrel nature. By comparison, a few of the other boys sportpleated jackets, straight pants with buttons on the side, Tom Brown collars,white shirts and well trimmed hair.

This lack of refinement in dress continued for years into high school andthrough my college years. In the fourth grade I was forced to wear a long tasseledhairy stocking cap of which I was so ashamed that I preferred to throw it on thefloor in the corner of the coat room rather than hang it on a hook where it could

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be seen. It was a hand-me-down from one of the rich families where my motherworked out by the day.

When I was about seven years old, an uncle recently come to this countryoffered to make a coat for me from an old one discarded by my mother. He hadbeen a tailor's assistant in Ireland, familiar with only one pattern. Even todayI can easily recall the visits to his house in Winchester, the fittings and the finalresult—a very plain coat with shiny buttons. I do not know for how long a periodI wore the coat. I must have outgrown it in a short time for I have little memoryof it beyond its construction. Maybe I refused to wear it as I had a year or sobefore, in the case of a Lord Fauntleroy style suit purchased for me by a relative.This was girlish in appearance and not only offended my pride, but made me thebutt of many a gibe from my immediate pals.

In high school the poverty continued to trouble me and I wore a batteredmackinaw long after it had outlived a decent appearance. In my junior year Iwas forced to wear my father's broad-toed high shoes of brown, strange piecesto wear with ribbed stockings and short corduroy knickers.

In my senior year I was able to pick up a few pairs of discarded oxfords, asize too large, from Jim McGrath, owner of the department store which gave mework during the afternoons. My class picture for graduation shows me wearing ahigh stiff collar and a huge four-in-hand tie, both borrowed from the store forpicture purposes.

There was little relief during my college career. For the first twoyears I usually got along with one pair of pants and a single shirt, pressing theone every night and washing the other. Discards from the family where mymother worked provided an occasional sweater, shirt or pair of shoes. Fromthe same source came my first topcoat, a thing of black hard cloth more suitedto a minister than to a college student. It was very long and without style, butit was serviceable and carried me through a difficult period. A local dentistwas kind enough to give me thirty dollars to pay for my diploma, so it can beassumed that my wardrobe in my senior year was not an impressive one.

Looking over the broad picture that represents a long life, one is truckby the astronomical odds against another's repeating the living year by year,and running the whole gamut of sorrow, joy, success, failure and the endlessvariations of thought and application which have resulted in the man that is me.It is by some miracle of divine direction that the road has become straight,that the boy whose every early action .nd thought were concerned with physicalsurvival and comfort, should now indulge in the quiet delights of lone andsatisfying meditation.

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The resulting habit of reflection, a constant reviewing of the countlessconflicts, decisions and especially the choices selected without thought in a blinddependence on fate or on the goodness of a guardian angel, makes the recollectiona frightening thing. I can see now how often a slight turning would have set theerrant bark on a shoal of destruction; how a continued association or a streak ofstubbornness, pride or stupidity might have ended all chance of my attaining amaturity of mind and spirit. That I am what I am is owing in part to an uncon-scious shaping in the hands of parents, associates and teachers, a moulding tooslow to be obvious, but producing, in the gradual accumulation, the creaturethat is me.

Only God can list every factor that had influence on my growth, but in-dividuals and single actions stand out like beacons on the road behind. It isnatural that my early teachers should hold a prominent place in the recollectionsthat are mine.

From her well deserved niche in heaven the kindly eyes of my first gradeteacher, Miss Alien, must look down on a vast array of men and women who tookthe first cautious steps into the new world of learning in the small classroom inthe northeast corner of the Lawrence School. I can see her, a little lady ofgentleness and patience, in shirtwaist and skirt, belt and high collar, standingbefore the class, a constant smile on her face, as she led me and my classmatesthrough the intricacies of alphabet and numbers. There was no rebellion againstthe tyranny of school in those days, only an eagerness to be present and to takepart.

She had no favorites; she loved everyone, and the affection was returnedthrough the years of her long life. She remembered thousands of faces and names;and as the pupils moved into the higher grades and out into the world of businessand marriage, she was never too busy to ask concerning their welfare and tooffer her wishes for success. Even in death she wore the gentle smile and the lookof quiet calm which characterized her whole life.

Promotion to the second grade brought a certain sense of maturity to asmall boy of five. The first year of school experience must have been one ofexcellent preparation, for I remember the second grade only for the steadinessof the routine and the expansiveness of the teacher.

Miss Flagg was a large woman, though certainly not old, with a roundsmile and an easy way of working. Nothing violent ever seemed to happt^ in herroom. There was good discipline and a high percentage of promotions to the thirdgrade. After I left the Lawrence School I never saw Miss Flagg again. She marrieda local leather manufacturer whose factory fifteen years later, provided the summerwork which returned me enough money to pay my tuition in my senior year in dentalschool.

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The third grade offered a year of gentleness, a projection of the teacher,Miss Ingalls. I never heard her raise her voice. She was soft and kind, and fromthis far-off point of observation, she appeared to be ever lifting the pupils fromthe depths of their childish fears to the broad level heights of joy and success intheir work. Tall and thin, dressed in the mode of the early 20th century and withthe voice of a sweet old lady, she monitored a quiet classroom. When she died afew years later she left a monument in the gratitude and fond recollection of athousand young people who had passed through her hands.

The lack of confidence excited by my awareness of my social status, wasnot helped by the seemingly tyrannical behavior of my fourth grade teacher,Miss Fowle, called Granny by her pupils in the regions beyond the school. Herwhite hair, stern manner and her black somber clothing often caused me to freezein fear, but I am sure now that I mistook her determination to teach the childrenfor a fiendish delight in punishing them. I can chuckle now at my temerity, but tosit on the floor under her desk for half an hour at the age of eight was no pleasantexperience.

One never outlives the satisfaction of moving upward, whether it is inbusiness, profession, social acceptance or in the simple occupation of makingfriends. The early years offer in proportion, though, a far greater sense ofaccomplishment and satisfaction in the simpler forms of recognition and advance-ment. For instance, my promotion from the fourth grade to the fifth was morethan a move from one grade to another. It was a transfer to the huge red brickbuilding, the Cummings School, majestic in its nineteenth century architecture,a school where boys of eight and nine were associated with young men of fourteenand even fifteen. I remember the anticipation of the September which saw myentrance into this school. There was a measure of awe in the feelings which cameover me when I passed through the narrow outside door and turned left into theroom of Miss McCormick. I was conscious of some trepidation as I was seated.This changed to positive fear when the teacher made her opening remarks to theclass. Though I had been forewarned concerning the strict discipline maintainedin this grade, I was wholly unprepared for the whiplash behavior and high-pitchedvoice of Miss McCormick. From the first moment of admittance there was noquestion about the determination of the middle-aged and slightly hawk-nosed ladyto rule the group with an iron hand.

Through the long year she paced up and down the room, slapping a deskhere and there with the limber wood of a light rattan to stress a point, and layingon back and hand of man;, an unfortunate who failed to obey her staccato demands,or who, through carelessness or inattention, were unable to recite the lessonscorrectly.

I was ever fearful of exciting her wrath. I dared not speak out of turn,or neglect a single lesson. But the day did come when I was "bawled out" before

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the class, and commanded to "Hold out your hand." Two cracks on the palm ofthe hand brought tears to my eyes I must admit, but the embarrassment hurt morethan the beating itself, particularly since the cause of it all was such a simplething. My family could not afford to pay for corrective dentistry and, as aresult, a large cavity developed in one of my molars. As one will play withsomething of this nature carelessly, I sucked on the open cavity producing a loudnoise when the suction was broken. The only other correction I recall in thatroom was a verbal castigation for sniffling. What poor boy of those days evercarried a handkerchief?

Looking back I now realize that the apparent contrariness of the teacher wasnot an evil thing. I can see it now for what it was, the determination, at any cost,to do a dedicated work, to teach discipline, and to drive into the minds of hercharges, the lessons that would prepare them for the next step higher in the fieldof education.

From the extreme harshness of this atmosphere I entered the room of onewhose every word and movement suggested calmness and a quiet assurance thatthe demands of the grade could be satisfied by an easy application of a few simplerules of behavior. I remember how Jennie Gallagher's class went week afterweek without the raising of a voice or the infliction of punishment in any form.What transgressions were discovered by the teacher were paid for in other ways,such as in staying after regular school hours, a tragic occurrence to a boy in-terested in the physical enjoyment of the daylight hours between school time anddarkness. Or one might be called upon to write, a few hundred times, a sentencepromising good behavior in the future.

I recall one of the last mentioned punishments because it had a comic facetthat I believe has never been repeated. Tom Degnan, because of an act whichdisturbed the teacher, was required to write two hundred times the sentence, "Ishall not drag my feet." Unfortunately for Tom he had learned, a few days before,the value and use of ditto marks. He applied his newly obtained knowledge incompleting the requirement by writing the sentence at the top of several pages andthen placing ditto marks for the full extent of the pages. Miss Gallagher respondedto this novel idea by increasing the punishment to five hundred copies of the sentence,each word to be written in good writing form. The accomplishment of having donesomething new in school history caused Tom to become a sort of hero to his not sodaring companions, and this satisfaction was to him sufficient to alleviate the stingof the punishment.

Being ver/ small and somewhat younger than the other members of myclass, I became what must have appeared to be the teacher's pet, sitting in thefirst seat of the row in front of the teacher's desk, and being available for the

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running of errands. This last chore was a welcome one, and often I was enviedwhen Miss Gallagher would ask me to go to her home to pick up her eyeglasses.To get out in the middle of a school session was a treat, and I took advantage ofthe release from study by dragging my feet on the errand and crossing the streetswith more than due deliberation.

The recollection of this year brings not one single moment of pain orpunishment. I always mark it as one of the most even and enjoyable of myschool life.

The seventh grade brought me into contact with a teacher supposed to be amartinet, but who provided me with a year of good schooling. I was a close chumof her nephew, a fellow classmate, and this may have softened the road for me inthe room of Miss Nellie Sheehan. My timidity may have saved me from theseverity of her routine. And again, she being in her later years, her manner mayhave become modified from the sternness of other years that had given her areputation I found to be undeserved.

For that most important grammar grade, the eighth, I was blessed with thelast perfect example of a dedicated, driving, determined and discipline demandingteacher, Miss Hevey. I firmly believe that the big change in my life can be tracedto this white haired and seemingly harried woman who could teach well everysubject in the long list that must be covered in the preparation of pupils for pro-motion to high school.

In this room came to me the first sensation of desire for superior attain- .ment. Under her driving I felt an urge to climb, to find my name among thatsmall group set aside as honor pupils with an average of eighty-five or better.Besides the honor of seeing one's name on this prominently displayed list, wasadded the privilege of by-passing the grammar school ninth grade and goingdirectly to high school.

I can remember the first day-dreaming of my life during this period, afirst looking into the world of higher things. This awareness brought with it adegree of suffering inevitable to one whose mental and esthetic vision encompasseda spectrum far beyond his capacity for expression and indulgence. But that oneglimpse of the glorious vista gave me a feeling that some guiding hand had offeredme a blessing reserved for a higher form of man, a new level of thought that mustbe man's first approach to the supernatural.

Though my living has had a character of irre0alarity, the sense of havingbeen plucked from the horrible abyss of the commonplace at that time has neverleft me.

Even the urge to put these thoughts on paper is a direct outgrowth of adevelopment that had its origin in this eighth grade awakening. How much is

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attributable to the influence and urging of Miss Hevey, I shall never know. ButI must ever associate that dear lady with the beginnings of a philosophy that hasgiven a purpose to the living of a life that has contained so much joy in the pastand promises so much of hope in the future.

How well I remember those who guided me can be gathered from theseremarks concerning my early teachers. Except for Miss Flagg, not one ol themever married, and all worked at the dedicated job of teaching until they reachedthe age of retirement. How could I ever forget them!

Along with countless other sources of joy available to a boy in the earlypart of the century the old swimming hole has gone far into the country places tothe north and west. The crowding populations of suburban Boston have eliminatedthe shady woods and sheltered ponds in the search for living space, and in thebuilding of homes, factories and roads.

In a time when the population of a town remained small and unchanging,when only an occasional new house was built or a new family settled, even thesmallest brook or pond offered a privacy unknown to the properly attiredfrequenters of the bathing beach of today. That the activity was forbidden bylocal ordinance and subject to interference by police gave a quality of excitementto the venture that stimulated a boy far more than the actual immersion in watercould ever do.

In the early part of the century trees crowded the far shores of Horn Pond.Heavy brush and vines covered the forest floor and fringed the sandy areas soinviting to the young swimmer. One could get lost easily in the maze of shrubberyand green that stretched from the pond over an area bounded by Pond Street, theState Road and the broad swamp through which flowed Put Fowle's Brook.

Each youngster had his favorite swimming hole, the cove, the grove,Strawberry Bend and even the dangerous and conspicuous water adjacent to one ofthe many icehouses which lined the north and south shores. There were few auto-mobiles in those days, none available to the police. Patrolmen walked their beats.The naked lads on the far shore of the pond might be spotted occasionally by thepatrolman on Canal Street, now Arlington Road, but the law's presence moreoften than not would be discovered in kind by the boys in time to allow them tosnatch their clothes and hide in the woods. It was a sad day for the boy who hadto flee without his clothes, for his plight made parental detection certain, withresu *ant punishment in the form of a hiding with hairbrush or strap.

So much a part of the day's activities did swimming at Strawberry Bendbecome that during one summer when I was no more than eight years of age, Inever failed to make the long walk around the pond for my morning swim atseven-thirty, except on days of violent storm or unreasonable coldness. It was

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routine to walk from Conn Street to Buckman, call for Lennie Kearns and trampto the Bend. There was often a return trip in the afternoon, but by that time thetwo would have grown to six or eight with consequent reduction in the excitementof the adventure.

The next hole in popularity was Little Deep, a small pool in Horn PondBrook just over the Winchester Line in the rear of the old felt mill. As the namesuggests, the pool was deep, a condition resulting from the presence of largegranite blocks which had originally supported a viaduct of the Middlesex Canal.The canal had been abandoned years before and many of the slabs had tumbledinto the brook partly damming the water and so creating a broad pool. Therunning water was always cool, and its depth offered opportunities for diving andunderwater swimming.

Here, as in other areas, there was danger of interference, and lookoutswere usually posted to watch for the approach of policemen. Again there was nosuch thing as a bathing suit, and again there was the risk of lost clothing or, whatwas sometimes worse, a hopeless knotting of one's garments by older boys or bysome prank-minded companion.

Frog Pond, on the site of which was later built the Winchester BrickCompany sheds, was another bathing place frequently visited. The area wassternly forbidden to most boys of my acquaintance, but occasionally the force ofattraction was too great to resist, and a group would climb Blueberry Mountain,walk along the dangerous edge of the stone quarry and descend to the forbiddenwater. There was much broken glass and debris in the pond which caused seriousinjuries to youngsters, but which seldom affected their determination to swimthere. I still carry a scar on my little finger as a memento of the horrible place,and I know of one boy who lost an eye because of crude play at the same spot.

Even more unattractive was the casual water that gathered after a heavyrain in back of the degreasing shed of the American Hide Tannery near the endof Crane's Lane. Though I never had enough courage to swim there, I have seenmy companions dive into the murky water only a week after the junk-laden bottomhad been exposed to our eyes. Debris of all kinds littered the floor of the pool,old barrels, bottles, broken wagons and on occasion a dead dog could be seen inthe foul depression.

Boys lived dangerously in an age that knew no antibiotic or antitetanusserum. There were some serious injui ".es, but the overall results would indicatethat exposure in early life to disease developed a resistance that proved effectivein battling the ills of life in later years. That is, if one survived the earlyperiod.

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With the development of Sandy Beach by the Metropolitan District Com-mission on the shores of Mystic Lake in Winchester, the first movement tookplace in the change from swimming in the nude to bathing in proper modestattire. For three cents one could ride the train from Woburn Highlands toWedgemere Station. A half mile walk brought one to the small beach and bath-house. Here one could change to the cheap white bordered blue shirt and trunkswhich could be bought at the local five and ten cents store for ten cents apiece.If one did not have the three cents for the return trip he had to walk the two milesand more to Woburn, a chore to be despised, I'm sure, as plebian by most of theyoungsters of today.

It is interesting to note that as late as 1925 I did not own a proper bathingsuit, and I was twenty-two at the time. I recall very clearly riding to RevereBeach at that age, after a year in the office, in the company of a young lady, bytrain and trolley, hiring a suit at the public bathhouse and taking a dip in the ocean.The suit was black, full skirted over the shoulder style, and it had printed in boldwhite letters on its front, M.D. C.

The whole sequence must appear unbelievable to the modern young man, butI still recall the satisfaction I felt in daring to take a girl to the beach, hire a suitand swim in her presence. That I entertained her by buying popcorn and candymight indicate the degree of progress I had made in the feminine field. I did notknow enough of the world to take her to a decent restaurant for a full meal, and Iam sure the thought never occurred to her.

The memory of that long day alone with a girl is with me yet, even the ridehome on the trolley car, most of which trip of fifteen miles I endured standing inthe aisle by her side, and indulging in all the satisfaction a young man might havein having given a young lady a wonderful day.

Today at twenty-two most men have been dating for seven or eight years, andmany have gone through all the usual steps of romance to a point that includesmarriage, a home and children. Late though I was in my courting, hungry thoughI had been in my late teens for female friendship, due to lack of money and con-fidence and an unbelievable shyness, induced I am sure by my nonpossession ofgoods, I feel certain that such an early life is far superior, in producing an ulti-mate satisfaction and depth of feeling, to that available in these days of highschool going steady and unrestricted dating of teenagers.

The joys and anticipations of young manhood today are apt to be sr^~theredand destroyed in the too early a_ rociation of boy and girl in a period when thenatural inclinations of sex predominate in minds that are immature, and inhibitspirits that have not yet been touched by the fire of deep thought and loftyreflection.

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Boarding houses were a necessary institution in the neighborhood duringthe years of my living on Conn and John Streets. They catered to the unmarriedmen who worked in the tanneries. Most successful and most prominent of thesehouses was that of Mrs. Tobin at the corner of John and Conn Streets.

She ran a wonderful house, a home for men who had no ties, at leastlocally. The place was spotless, a beehive of industry. I have a recollection ofpeering into a steamfilled kitchen, seeing a stove covered with kettles, copperpipes and a huge water tank standing upright against a wall. These things impressedme as belonging to a house far above the level of my own.

That the Tobin yard was a large one, that it sported apple, pear and cherrytrees and a small house full of hens placed the property and its people on thearistocratic plane in my poor childish eyes. This impression of affluence wasaugmented by their possession of the first automobile in the neighborhood, a hugeopen car standing high off the ground, with brass radiator and accessories andornaments of like material.

One of the ladies of the house was my godmother, which connection seemedto give me special privileges, among them the chance to enjoy the fruit which hadfallen to the ground, and the privilege of gazing into the far confines of the largecellar on the pretext of cleaning it.

Only last Sunday, June 18, 1972, I dropped in to see the fine old lady at herhome on upper Main Street, Woburn. Her vision is impaired at the age of ninety-two, but she recognized my voice and soon she had her arms around me in a warmembrace. As always, she mentioned the day of my baptism—how she, carryingme in her arms, we were both transported to the church in a herdic, a horse drawnvehicle which was the taxi of the day. Again, as always, she spoke of my earlyyears, recalling incidents that have remained in her memory of that long agoperiod. I left her as I have so many times before, wondering whether I shouldever see her again.

Weekend tipplers were numerous among the boarders. The long hours ofthe work week, and the drab and uninteresting life of the times caused some ofthe men, on occasion, to slip past the point of control and do something silly orunusual. There was never any harm in these eruptions, merely a show ofexuberance that manifested itself in thick tongued monologues and a generositythat must have been inherent in every one of them. Because of my excursionsinto the shops, I was known to most of them, and as a result many a nickle andtea cent piece was thrown to me.

One little man, Danny Kelley, was a favorite of the young lads, for he wasknown to spend extra money on a weekend when his enthusiasm was high as aconsequence of his having imbibed too much. He seldom gave us money, but hiskindness was expressed in gifts of baseballs, hats and even gloves. He gave no one

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trouble, but his generosity during these periods was a source of joy to us young-sters. We looked upon him as a fairy godfather, free with gifts our parents wereunable to supply.

Later when my father had become a smoker of a plug tobacco that carrieda dividend tag, I was able to get a baseball glove on occasion by turning inseventy-five of these thin metal Mayo's Dark tags.

Jimmy Doherty is another name that comes to mind, a quiet currier andfriend of my father's. He was ever aware of the poor boys of the neighborhoodand he demonstrated his interest by tossing them coins for what was at that timebecoming very popular—ice cream cones. A nickel would buy what must havebeen a quarter of a pint of ice cream, loaded on a cone at the elaborate parlorowned and operated by Bill Young.

Bill was a huge man with a round ever moving face and a mouth that alwaysheld a cigar. He had a way of talking that made him appear very learned, and hepossessed a confidence and worldliness that would leave us boys awe-stricken andamazed.

To sit on a rotating stool at the long walnut counter was the height of one'sambition in those days, particularly in the summertime when the huge propellerblades of the ceiling fans were changing the air and producing a cooling effect.

When one speaks of boarders he finds it difficult to forget the Dapper Danof that group, Charlie Hart, a round little man with a prominent corporationalways covered with a buttoned vest decorated with a heavy watch chain. Hissuits always seemed to be gray in color, his head covering always a derby. Hiswalk was of the staccato type, short steps and quick. To my knowledge he neverappeared in working clothes, and where he worked I never knew.

When I became a young man I learned that Charlie had ambitions in theoolitical field, and that he had served as alderman. The picture I have of theman conforms to the stereotyped and familiar cartoon of the early Irish inpolitics—impressive, pompous and conscious of a superiority over men who hadcome to this country with him a few years before.

I was no more than eight when I acquired another daily chore, that ofcarrying a hot lunch to my father's place of work, the American Hide Factory onCross Street, a ha.' mile from home. This duty was a welcome one for it meanthurrying home from the morning school session, carrying the dinner pail and abottle of hot tea down the railroad tracks, through the tanning shed that alwayssmelt of wet warm bark, then up two flights of stairs and through a maze ofmachinery and a host of sweating men, always jocular and friendly. On the thirdfloor I would find my father trimming the last of a table full of side leatherrecently removed from the tacking frames.

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I remember the bench in the corner, walled off to afford a little privacyby hanging half a dozen thin splits from the ceiling. Here I would sit while myfather ate his dinner of stewed beef, boiled potato, bread and butter and maybe apiece of cake. I seldom left before he had finished because there was always thepossibility of my being offered a piece of cake, ample reward for the accomplish-ment of so interesting a chore.

In my search for bottles I had, a short time before, discovered that awayward hen had developed the habit of laying her eggs in the hayloft of the barnassociated with this tannery. This discovery caused me to visit the loft on everypossible occasion, and that included my trips with dad's dinner pail. One eggadded to my diet was a tremendous thing, for only on a holiday such as Easterwas one allowed to have an egg.

Long after my father had moved to another factory, I continued to seek outthe stray egg, rushing from school at noon and racing down the tracks to the loftof the small barn. The result was a luxury not enjoyed by many of my chums. Ioften wondered why the owner of the hen never missed the results of her labors.

Looking back now I can understand the craving for an occasional egg, forthe diet of my childhood, while filling, certainly was inadequate according tomodern standards. Bread and tea were the staples, with stew meat or liver atthe evening meal because they were inexpensive. One might get a banana a fewtimes a year, but citrus fruits were practically unknown except for the orangeone might find in his stocking at Christmas time.

Milk was used for tea and cooking in the early days; and later when moneywas more plentiful and the family could afford a bottle or two, the lack ofrefrigeration forced us to keep the bottles on the outside window sill. Thisexposure made the milk most unattractive and unpalatable.

The saving dish that must have given strength was the oldfashioned oatmeal,set on the back of the stove in the evening and allowed to cook slowly through thenight. It was heavy and sticky but it was filling enough to sustain one through thecold mornings of the long winter.

Once a week, on Saturday, mother would bake a huge pot of beans. Theseshe would soak the night before, then place them in the brown beanpot earlySaturday morning with a broad slab of salt pork. She left them in the oven allday, occasionally adding water to offset the evaporate n.

For times without number the Saturday night meal consisted of baked beans,homemade bread and molasses and tea, filling and appetizing. Not a balancedmeal according to present day standards. The molasses and oatmeal were crudeand unrefined—so we children evidently received some of the vitamins and mineralsstressed so strongly in the approved diets of today.

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Although I had made some money in my earliest years gathering junk andrunning errands, I was nine years old before I attempted the long day's work fora day's pay. I was fascinated by the prospect of taking home fifty cents for aday's work on the farm of Chet Graham in Burlington. The work area was almostthree miles from my home, but the distance factor I hoped to overcome by ridinga secondhand bicycle given to my mother by the family for whom she worked inWinchester.

The farm day was a long one, from seven in the morning to six in theevening, with time out for lunch. With a dozen others I was sent to a field plantedwith onions. The job was to straddle a row and thin out the excess plants. It isimpossible to adequately describe the horrors of that long day. The sun burned

hot in a clear sky, the dirt stuck to skin and clothing, and the minutes and hoursdragged by on the clock with hands of lead. Small and immature or not, each onewas expected to keep up with the others. Sore knees and an aching back added tomy miseries. When twelve o'clock struck I plodded wearily to the barn forrelief from the sun and to eat my meager lunch, delighted to break the painfulmonotony that had almost overwhelmed me.

Lunch was eaten quickly but there was no rest. As a first day boy I mustbe subjected to the cruel hay.ing customary in those days, for the entertainment ofthe older boys. Demonstrations of respect were demanded of me. In spite of mysubmission I was picked up bodily and tossed into the huge tank of water used forthe washing of vegetables. I scrambled out, frightened and fearful. Through thelong afternoon which followed I shed a few tears.

I never forgot the arrant cruelty of the two older boys responsible for myconfusion and embarrassment. As I grew to manhood I had occasion to come incontact with them locally, and I never met them without experiencing a feeling ofdisgust. I confess even to a feeling of satisfaction when they encountered obstaclesin their search for success. They are now dead and gone, and I forgive, but thememory of a child's hurt will be with me always.

I was anxious for home after the arduous day, and I anticipated a receptionfrom my parents and a good meal. I had a long wait for both because of anotheract of cruelty in the name of fun. Someone had let the air out of my tires, and Ihad to push the bicycle all the way home. Later I realized that it was envy thatprompted the offender to release the air. No youngster of nine was going to gethome before him.

Next day I walked to and from the farm, and I repeated the program for aweek. After that my parents rebelled and I returned to my collecting of junk toaugment my income for that summer.

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With another year's growth I was able to do a complete summer's workon Russell's farm in Winchester, the same long day at fifty cents. Ten weeksI worked through the heat of the summer and the abuse of bosses and foremen.But I was launched on a working career. Never again would I be able to rest forthe summer vacation period until I had school, college and many years of profession-al work behind me.

In the light of present day standards, the work I did might be classified ascruelty to children, but though there was pain on my part and exploitation on thepart of the farmer, I believe that basically the program benefited me in making mebetter able to tolerate discomfort, endure punishment and do hard physical work.

The next summer there was an improvement in work and pay, for I waschosen to be house boy of the farm. This job required my attendance at theowner's house for errands such as getting the mail and the milk at the Symmeshouse at Symmes Corner, tending to the flower beds around the house and washingthe endless boxes of vegetables as they came from the field. Four dollars andtwenty cents was my pay for the week.

The following summer I spent on Marion's farm in Central Square inWoburn with another increase in pay to ninety cents a day. During the fall andwinter of this year I acquired a small Saturday morning chore, that of emptyingthe wastebaskets in the print shop of Mr. Andrews in the office building over theFive and Ten Cents Store. I carried the papers to Nanny Goat Hill and burnedthem. This duty paid twenty-five cents for about an hour's work.

By this time, because of my early entrance and my by-passing the ninthgrade, I was in High School. An all day Saturday job was my ambition, and Isucceeded in obtaining one at the Walnut Hill Rifle Range. During the goodweather the duties were pleasant, cleaning the hen houses belonging to themanager in the morning and pushing up and pulling down targets in the afternoon.When October arrived the problem of wood for the stoves had to be taken care of.I was invariably chosen to go into the woods for dead trees and limbs. I cut thetrees down with a double edged axe, dragged them to the clubhouse, sawed theminto stove lengths and then split them. This had to be done before the membersarrived for the afternoon shooting.

The pits were cold during the winter months and one was able to performhis duties only with the aid of a small oil stove, carried to and set up in the pit.The two hundred yard targets were the popular ones, but on occasion one had tocarry his equipment to the five hundred and one thousand yard targets. I marvelnow that a boy of thirteen could raise and lower all afternoon a target the size ofa living room wall. But the bigness of the target and the work it involved weremore than offset by the satisfaction in being chosen for the task.

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I was now receiving a dollar a day. Each time I pass the new mattressfactory on Route 128, my mind goes back to that huge target in the woods, thelocation of which must be on that factory site.

In the spring of 1917 war was declared and I bought a fifty dollar LibertyBond, to be paid for at a dollar a week. I recall my walking into the bank eachSaturday night and reaching up to the counter with my dollar to give it toMiss Buckman. Even at this late date she chides me when I mention it. Shesays it makes her feel old.

The government farm program in 1917 made it possible for a boy tofinish the school year a month early if he would put in his time on a farm.This I did, working for Mr. Hosmer in harvesting his asparagus crop, andthen for Mr. McKinnon of Button End doing general farm work.

The long summer was a pleasant one, first because the work day hadbeen shortened by one hour, second because my pay had been increased to adollar and twenty-five cents a day, and third because I was doing a man's work,driving the horses, plowing and cultivating. I rode back and forth on a bicyclealmost three miles each way. I was launched on my career.

In the fall of 1917 I was given my first town job, store boy at McGrath'sDepartment Store in the center of the city. I was to work afternoons from twountil six, and on Saturdays all day for a salary of five dollars a week.

My duties included sweeping the aisles of the store and the sidewalks,washing the large plate glass windows, opening incoming boxes of merchandise,baling loose paper and delivering bundles. What a joy it was to receive twentycents for carfare for the trolley car ride to East Woburn and return, to delivera few bundles of clothing to Mrs. Murphy who served as foster mother to eightor ten so-called state wards!

Here I bring to a close the story of my early years. The struggle and thewant did not end at this point. Late high school and college, though they wereaccomplished, are worthy of a sequel which I hope to construct in the leisure timeof my later years.