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...
This tale takes place between the years 1957 and 1959. The main characters are my friend Jim, the ’47 Chevy and me. Unbeknownst to us, in 1957, the Chevy — more than “just a car” — would be the “magic carpet ride” that would transport us from childhood to the next...
This tale takes place around 1952, when I was 10 and my friend, Tom, was 11. We spent Saturday at the pumping station on Fruit Street, like many other Saturdays, at work with my father. In the morning, Tom and I went up the brook trying to catch small trout...
This tale takes place in 1951. It was a Saturday, and my friend Jackie and I had gone to the pumping station with my father in the morning on our bicycles. We played in the woods, where Pyne’s sandpit would be located, all morning. We cooked hot dogs on an open fire...
Before I start my latest tale, you’ll notice the word Island in the title is emphasized. Back in my time and before, it was called Sandy Island. I don’t know when the title was changed to Sandy Beach or who did it, but that is one of my four pet peeves. (I’ll tell you...
This tale takes place during April school vacation in 1954. Things were a lot different then. The Fire Department’s three engines operated out of the old wooden fire station that would be razed in the summer of 1954 to make room for the new station. There were no...
This tale takes place around 1953. I had just joined Boy Scouts the year before. Besides regular meetings on Friday nights with the whole troop, we had patrols that consisted of six or seven guys. The patrols usually met during the week in the afternoon to work on...
This story takes place at the “Little Meadow,” which was located near where 58 Ash Street is now. Generations of us kids from the Ash Street-Fenton Street area learned to skate there. It was a small, shallow meadow probably about three-quarters of an acre, with two...
I ride off on my bike with a book to return to the library. I head up Pike Street to Church Street, passing Callanan Funeral Home on the left and St. John’s Church and Seymour Woods’ Funeral Home on the right before arriving at the library, on the right. I give my...
Unlike all of my previous stories, most of this story takes place in June 2022. On the first Monday of June, I worked in my garden in Westborough. Finishing around noon, I sat in my chair and reflected that the only way to describe the day was “delicious!” I went home...
