On a recent afternoon, I drove up Hayden Rowe and saw that the house at 147 was gone. It was razed to make a driveway to go to the new Charleswood School. The memories came pouring back, of a time around 1954. I was on my journey to become an Eagle Scout, and one of...
Through the 1980s, we owned a cottage in Dennis Port, on Cape Cod. We had many great times there. It was a small place. I used to say it had 1 1/2 bedrooms, and the small bedroom was so small that you had to hang the curtains on the outside of the windows! We would...
Ice fishing season used to end the last day of February. However, things changed around 1975, and there was no end to the ice fishing season. So, a lot of years, we got another week or 10 days to ice fish. In 1989, we had a lot of ice — around 2 feet thick — on the...
This tale is about my first ice rescue in two years time. It was a Monday, Feb. 29, 1988. I was working the day shift at the Hopkinton Fire Department. At that time, we had two men on duty, and the chief was in and out. This afternoon, he was out. In the early...
I first became acquainted with the green rocker on my grandmother’s front porch at 33 Ash Street when I was about 3. I would stand there hoping someone would lift me up onto the chair, which they often did. I would rock as hard as I could. I was “king of the world.” I...
In the journey from childhood to independence, my 16th birthday was a giant stepping stone. My friend Jackie’s birthday was two days before mine in August. He lived on a large farm with many acres of woods. When he was around 8 years old, his father purchase a World...
This tale takes place a little farther from Hopkinton than my usual stories. I was a third-class quartermaster aboard the SS Barry DD933. At sea, my duties while on watch consisted of helping the officers with navigation, keeping the bridge clean and keeping the...
Early spring 1954, and word of Little League Baseball coming to Hopkinton spread rapidly among all the guys in town between the ages of 8 and 12. There were many questions: Where to sign up, where are we going to play our games, is 12 too old? The answers: We signed...
Back in the 1950s, the winters seemed to be longer, colder and snowier. Our fun consisted of skating and sledding. The skating part was pretty well covered in my article “The day we burned the bogs” published Jan. 25, 2023. The sledding part took place in the Thomas...
I went to Hopkinton Drug on Jan. 31, the closing day for the store. I bought a couple of small items. I sit here today, and my mind wanders back, back, back — 70 years, to be exact. I was 13, going to eighth grade in the Town Hall building. Half of my class was going...
This story is about Jim and my greatest adventure in the ’47 Chevy (the first tale about this vehicle was published in the Jan. 10 edition of the Independent). We were cruising in the Chevy one night in the fall of our junior year at Hopkinton High School (1958). We...
