THE NO



A TOWN AND A TIME TO REMEMBER

Northboro (1937 to 1950)

BY:

Bill Flynn

47 Dogwood Drive

Nashua, NH 03062

603 880 6054

Copyright c 2006

A TOWN AND A TIME TO REMEMBER

Northboro, Massachusetts (1937 to 1950)

But it could be about a kid growing up in Anytown, USA during those depression and WWll years

It was 1937 when the old high school burned down. Fire trucks with their flashing lights and sirens blaring were called in from Marlboro, Shrewsbury and beyond to bolster Northboro’s own volunteers... They filled Main Street around our house, next door to the blaze. This vivid scene created enough drama to instill it in the memory of my 6-year-old mind.

We lived at what is now 59 Main Street on the left side of the school as it faced Main Street. My sister Maryjane and my two brothers Peter and Richard lived with my parents William and Marion in a large, rambling Victorian style house, bought by my father in 1936 for short money. It was built in the 1880’s. The original owner was SAMUEL WOOD. At some stage of early occupancy, the nine-bedroom house became an inn to serve those who traveled the OLD POST ROAD. It could have been called THE LINCOLN INN, because that’s what it said on a sign we found stored in our barn. The bedrooms retained room numbers on the doors from that time to lend credence to the inn theory. My room was number 5. I had Scarlet Fever at age 8 and a large quarantine sign was placed on our front door. My throat was swabbed every morning for a month with a vile medicine, called Argirol by a doctor on a house call. A white sheet soaked in antiseptic was hung over room number 5.

The high school was a goner, but cascades of water directed from hoses by my multi-town heroes saved our house. A new school was built next door in 1938 to replace the one destroyed by fire and when we were all old enough to attend it, the 7:30 AM bell was our wake up call. The ringing sequence thereafter would prod us to wait until a last minute jump over the hedge got us to the class room on time or late, but never early.

On the other side of the school we had a famous neighbor. His name was WILLIAM KILLETTE who wrote the lyrics to the song; I’M FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES. The Killette's lived modestly on meager royalties from that song. Mrs. Killette was a kind lady who outlived her husband by many years and after she passed the house was sold to Doctor Watson one of two MD’s serving Northborough at the time

Our neighbor to the right was the parsonage for the then Congregational Church located at the corner of Hudson and Main. The resident minister at the time was REVEREND DOUGLAS. Next to the Killette’s to their left or East was a house and barn owned by MR. POLAND. On his property, in back of the house, a perpetual pure water spring gave forth its cold clear product through a pipe that never stopped running. Everyone in town could fill their jugs there for free. Trespassing was never an issue in the Northboro of that era. It was truly open ranging.

My next vivid recollection is about a year after the high school fire. I was in second grade at the HUDSON STREET SCHOOL. It housed grades one through four then in its yellow box like structure. I remember the teachers. MISS ZEH for first grade; (a talented landscape artist that now has a elimentary school named in her honor.); MISS COREY for second grade; MISS KELLEHER for third and last but not least MISS FARQUAR (became Mrs. Mayberry later on when married to the owner of Mayberry’s Market ) for fourth grade and acting principle. These teachers drummed reading, writing and arithmetic into our heads with straightforward methods and accepted little nonsense from us during that process.

A day in September 1938… was dark and rainy and I’d been home from school about an hour when chaos hit Northboro. We hadn’t any warning of the storm, unlike the advance hype of today’s television storm tracking. The HURRICANE OF 1938 came at us with its 100 plus mile per hour gusto. The wind was howling around our house and small things started to fly around outside. When I looked out a window I saw a big thing take flight. It was the church steeple from the Baptist Church at the corner of School and Main Street, across the way. Its bell hit Route 20 with 3 bounces that produced the same amount of cement instigated deep ringing sounds.

My great grandmother, who lived with us at the time, had fetched her bible and convinced us little ones by her actions that the end of the world was upon us. This proclamation by Granny Peasley was soon buttressed when no less than six large Elms were uprooted to come to rest against our Victorian style domicile, breaking a few windows along the way. A glance to the back yard told us that our small grove of tall pines was now lying flat on the ground. At its raging peak this hurricane’s excitement and terror had made the high school fire of the year before seem a benign event. Enough traumas in one year to cause a seven-year-old to wonder if volatile happenings like the fire and the hurricane were a way of life.

When the quiet eye of that 1938 hurricane graced Northboro, we were evacuated next door to the parsonage. This was suggested by some men who were concerned about the weight of all the trees leaning against our house. We were carried there through downed electrical wires lying all over. It was two months before power and phone lines were restored. A man was killed when a tree fell on his car after he stopped on Main Street, near the library. It took my dad the whole night to make it from his mill in WOODSIDE to our house. Route 20 was completely blocked by a downed grove of tall pines and walking home in the dark over live wires was perilous so he found refuge at CHET'S DINER after abandoning his car somewhere near what is now the Memorial Ballpark. Those stranded at CHET'S may have taken part in the first hurricane party. The high school students attending MARLBORO HIGH because of their own school's fire didn’t make it home until late the next day.

Fallen trees blocked our roads for days and the smell of saws ripping into green wood is one that stayed with me to bring back the memory of a time when nature’s wrath hit hard on our town. We got used to reading by candle and kerosene lanterns and boiling our drinking water for some time after that Hurricane of 1938. Our barn cupola with its antique copper racehorse weathervane somehow survived. It's the same cupola on our old barn that was portrayed in the ‘VIEW OF NORTHBORO IN 1887’ map on sale at The Northborough Historical Society. The weathervane horse was retired from hurricane racing and resides with my nephew in New Jersey. Our old house at 59 Main has become a rehabilitation facility for substance abusers.

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My portrayal of Northboro as a place like an Armageddon because of the high school fire and 1938 hurricane isn’t intended. Those kinds of events were rare for one growing up when I did. The town had a lot to offer to a boy between ages of 7 to 18. (Circa 1937 to 1949.) It was open ranging with no roaming restrictions. Just like the song of the 40’s said, “DON’T FENCE ME IN”. We walked and biked in the summer. “Short cuts” were the only way to get to where we wanted to go. We used roads and sidewalks only when they were convenient. Our roaming rights extended from ROCKY POND on the northwest border of Northboro to BARTLETT POND on the southeast. In between it was SOLOMON POND, MILL POND, and WALLACE'S POND in summer and ASSABET PARK in winter where the steel edges of our Flexible Flyer sleds carved a trail down the steep hill from the water tank to West Main Street. It was cross-country skiing in the winter because that's how we got to the downhill slopes. Sometimes in warmer months we swam at Rocky pond, where we dove off the big rock there. Fishing for hornpout near “the quag" at Rocky was a fruitful adventure. Bartlett pond had a long pine log anchored to its beach. It extended out in the water for use as a diving and frolicking platform. Skinny-dipping in the streams. Cold Brook behind GRANGERS NURSING HOME on West Main was our naughty swimming hole. The beach at Salomon Pond was more formal with its man made raft, trucked in sand, and appropriate bathing trunks were in order. Ray Lemay owner of THE GRILL, also owned a roller skating rink there where we skated to recorded music, the likes of “Accentuate The Positive…Eliminate The Negative”…A good message for the time we lived.

`Mill Pond, near Blake Street was the premier winter skating spot. A bonfire would always roar its warmth while lending light for night skating and hockey. The Assabet River wound its way through town to offer a rafting and fishing adventure for all along its way. Some, as a way of earning cash trapped for muskrat, beaver and fox along its banks.

I have an early recollection of accompanying my father to his mill, around 1936. The mill was located on Hudson Street in a section then known as WOODSIDE. In fact it was called WOODSIDE MILL. A water wheel generator located in a sluice tapped from the Assabet River powered the machinery and lighting. My father left the lights on all night much to the chagrin of the townspeople in the throes of a depression... It wasn’t blatant extravagance on his part, but had to do with eliminating an involved restart of the electric generator every morning, and after all, waterpower was free.

The long, low brick building had machinery throughout that was earlier dedicated to some form of woolen goods production. My father, WILLIAM V. FLYNN, took the mill over to manufacture an imitation felt material. He was a chemical engineer out of

M I T. He had developed a process whereby woolen fibers were rolled and then adhered together by his own rubber base formula before entering a long dryer. The material was about ¼ inch thick and three feet wide as it rolled up at the end of the dryer. The product was sold as an insulating material and filler for cushions. Some World War II aircraft contained seats stuffed with this material. My father called the company, BONDED FIBERS, INC. About 20 people worked there at its peak. He developed an insect repellant and called it KILLSECT. It was distributed in 100-gallon drums to the dairy farms of Vermont and New Hampshire.

In 1942 my dad took on a project to dry some wet cotton. The German submarine wolf pack was torpedoing our ships leaving New York at will. Some went down a few miles off Cape Cod with bodies of sailors and goods washing ashore on the outer Cape. My dad received a consignment of many bales of raw cotton that had been on a torpedoed ship. The long dryer in his factory was used to reclaim the cotton, along with some tables hastily constructed out in the summer air to do the same. I recall being given the task to turn the sunning cotton over on those outside tables. The products my father developed were good ideas, but they had limited success because of the times. The country was just coming out of a deep depression and the banks owned and operated by Brahmans were reluctant to lend money to a second generation Irishman. His struggle to receive the proper financing ended with his early death in 1944 at age 52. Jersey Cloth and Gothic Craft, a wood carving company that designed and manufactured altars and furnishings for Catholic churches took over most of the mill. Now it’s a condominium complex.

THE DEPRESSION hit the proud citizens of Northboro hard. I could see it in my schoolmates. One dress or one pair of pants was meant to last the whole school year. Sometimes lard sandwiches sprinkled with sugar were in their lunch pales. If it weren’t for the school milk program that served everyone a pint of milk at recess, nutrition deficiencies would have been worse. In our house at 59 Main it was feast or famine. Money came and went due to the nature of my fathers business. Many nights it was cereal, and then a roast beef would grace our table if an order for BONDED FIBERS insulation material was paid in full. A section of ceiling in the dining room fell from a roof leak and it was a year or so before the money to repair it came in. Engineers were out of work. Three that worked with my father to develop the manufacturing process were given free board and room at our house, but little salary.

And so it went with the country in a depression. We were better off than those in the cities. Most everyone in Northboro was at some level of being poor by today’s standards. People did help each other, though. I remember that our family had accumulated a six-month bill at a grocery in the town center and the benevolent grocer waited patiently until a deal my father made paid it off.

Life went on. The first day of May held the tradition of hanging a colorful MAY BASKET filled with candy on the door of you're special someone. There was a MAY POLE, where different colored ribbons were assigned to each child. I recall songs were sung as the kids marched the ribbons around the pole. This tradition was abandoned when associated with the COMMUNIST HOLIDAY, also on May 1st.

There was very little prejudice in Northboro. There wasn’t a racial mix that would prompt such undesirable action. One African American family lived in our town then. The demographics were of mostly of Irish, English, Swedish, Italian, and Scottish descendents. We threw slang words around for those nationalities, such as; Harp (Irish), Wop (Italian) ….Limey (English) etc. The intention was not to be cruel. It was done in fun to chide and ride each other. There may have been a little religious prejudice then, between Protestant and Catholic factions. On or about 1935 it was said that a cross burning on Assabet Hill took place by some town members of the KLU KLUX KLAN. (KKK) dressed in white robes that masked their facial features from fellow townsmen. It was a one-time event, never to be repeated.

We had an iceman…he was. Mr. Mitchell and used his tongs to grab a 50 or 100 pound cube from the truck, sling it over his back covered in a rubber apron and place it in our icebox. My chore was to empty the pan underneath, of which I failed to do on occasion. We had a vegetable man …his name was Mr. Brigham. He drove a 1936 Ford Beach Wagon with wood paneling and lived 4 houses to the West of us. His truck was filled with fresh fruits and vegetables…a scale hung on a hook weighed the goods while housewives watched, making sure Mr. Brigham’s fingers and thumbs did not add to the weight of their spinach. There were other peddlers that came to our door…Knife sharpeners, fishmongers etc.

Our early hang out in the town center was STAPLINS'S CORNER STORE, located at the corner of South & Main. A quarter could go a long way there. It had a gumball machine. A penny got you one and by chance if it were speckled there was an exciting prize. Ralph Falardo owned a little store next to the rail road tracks on the same side of the street. It was 12 feet long and 6 feet across and stocked with things like caps and cap pistols. The older guys were across the street on the town hall steps, off limits to anyone under twelve. PEINZE’S STORE across the way on Blake Street sold potato chips in bulk. It was a treat to get a large bag of those fresh, crunchy morsels. An ever-smiling Mr.Peinze dressed in his signature apron scooped them from a barrel. The Town Square was a kinder and gentler sight then. Tall Elm trees that were later killed by Dutch elm disease shaded the area and the town hall seemed to better blend into the surrounding landscape. Certainly it was more functional then than now, with a drug store, post office hardware store and town offices.

I financed candy, potato chips, cap guns and chances for speckled gumballs with my first employment. I mowed the lawns of MISS COFFIN THE TOWN LIBRARIAN and Miss Corey my second grade teacher. The depression era wages for those jobs were 10 cents an hour and a stale cookie with lemonade. In the winter some of the proceeds from shoveling snow went to Elsworth’s Restaurant, where the best 20-cent hot dog could be had for lunch.

The war started December 7, 1941. President Roosevelt made his famous speech over the radio on that Sunday evening. He told us the “day would live in infamy”…he said, “the only thing we had to fear was fear itself’. All of Northboro were glued to their radios and they put their trust in this man. He had already got the attention of the town’s people by implementing programs such as the WPA and the CCC to ease our depression distress.

RATIONING started immediately…It was ironic in a way because the depression had already impinged a form of rationing on all of us. Due to the lack of cash the amount of food we were able to buy was in most cases less than that allowed by the ration stamps. Young men rushed to enlist. In a year there were few between the age of seventeen and twenty-five left in town. After that the draft reached up to snare those as old as thirty-five.

I was ten years old at the beginning the war, but war year memories are vivid.

Life went on in our little town. The economy improved with the advent of factories in Worcester gearing up for war goods production. Fluffer nutter sandwiches (Peanut butter spread under marshmallow fluff) replaced lard sandwiches sprinkled with sugar . As kids, we did about the same things we’d done before Pearl Harbor, except the fighting overseas influenced our play. Mock battles raged. I remember one in the center of town when we actually fired Red Ryder bee bee guns from a skirmish line in back of FAIRLEY’S HARDWARE Store on South Street at the “enemy” in a tree hut in FOGARTY’S BACK YARD. We had not reached affluence yet, so two guns were shared by the six of us…No one lost an eye.

The influence of the war was strong as we young lads headed into puberty. We hung around the Grange Hall on School Street Saturday nights. Square dances were held there and we watched the girls dance, seldom doing much of it ourselves. The caller begged for “one more couple” to fill the set. It was rare that we would relieve his anxiety. One song of the times by the Andrews Sisters hit the nail on the head. THE'RE EITHER TOO YOUNG OR TO OLD.....TOO GRAY OR TOO GRASSY GREEN ….WHAT’S GOOD IS IN THE ARMY... THE REST WILL NEVER HARM ME. It was the theme song for the women left behind and we lived up to it every Saturday at the Grange Hall. We were young and grassy green, so we harmlessly watched while the older women took a break from SITTING UNDER THE APPLE TREE waiting for their Johnies to come marching home.

We could identify at least 50 types of fighter and bomber aircraft…friend & foe. Our heroes were the servicemen. When they came home on leave we were there to ask a myriad of questions. The reality of war being more than a game hit us when reports of the towns killed, missing and wounded started coming in. I delivered Special Delivery letters for the post office and some of them were the “we regret to inform you” kind.

There were scrap drives when we scoured the town for metal and rubber to melt down for tanks and planes. We knew Hitler and Tojo were evil. We knew “that a slip of the lip could sink a ship.’ The songs like “Coming In On a Wing and a Prayer and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” inspired us. There were blackouts…we knew the pilot of a German Bomber could spot a light bulb at 50 miles. Black curtains covered the windows of our house and pails with sand in them were available on each floor to counter incendiary bombs. Air Raid Wardens patrolled the streets to make sure not a light was visible. Truck and even tank convoys rolled by on Main Street and we all waved to the soldiers. Planes flew over continually with some high enough to paint white vapor trails in the sky.

On occasion a fighter pilot from Northboro would buzz the town and thrill us all… I remember one of the Green boys flying a Navy fighter low over the high school. We had a plane crash up on West Main Street. It was a P-47 fighter and he went straight in, auguring a hole six feet deep. Pieces of that plane were kept by many as souvenirs. Sadly, the pilot did not get out. He was the son of a minister from Georgia and Reverend Douglas the Congregational minister at the time corresponded with his parents.

Airplanes…. The CIVILIAN DEFENSE AGENCY set up a viewing and LISTENING POST on a hill above Solomon Pond, close by the home of Ernest Sawyer. It consisted of a tree hut and a shack below. The purpose was to report all aircraft flying over Northboro by type, altitude and direction of flight. The reports were phoned into a control center where aircraft movements in Northeastern United States were plotted on a large map. The post was manned in eight-hour shifts, seven days a week. 24 hours a day by volunteers. I was one of them. What a thrill for a thirteen year old to pick up the direct line phone and say, “single engine fighter type aircraft believed to be a P-47 flying west at approximately 8000 feet”. And best of all to get a “Roger” and a “Thank you” after.

The Aqueduct ran from the Wachussett reservoir to Boston. It’s a source of water for the city of Boston that passes over Hudson Street and the Assabet River on granite arches, near to Allen Street. The Aqueduct was heavily guarded during the war because of an enemy espionage threat. We kids didn’t conform to the threat and we thought the Aqueduct was part of our open ranging area. The guards thought differently and would chase us away from there constantly.

It seemed to me that we could still buy most anything in the ice cream candy line. Potato chips in bulk were still available at Peinze’s. For some war time reason walnuts on the sundaes at Shattuck’s Drugstore were replaced by peanuts. I never did find out what walnuts were doing for the war effort, but I now prefer peanuts with the chocolate syrup on my ice cream instead of that other once scarce wartime nut. My mother made one pass at serving us that French delicacy, HORSE MEAT….she failed in convincing us it was a replacement for beef.

We took the Worcester Street Railway Bus to Marlboro for movies. There were two theaters in competition. MARLBORO THEATER and THE MODERN. I preferred the Modern because for the 11 cents admission we got a free comic book with the feature and Tarzan was serialized there. Free movies every Friday night at WESTBORO STATE HOSPITAL lured us to a seat in the balcony above the patients below us. We walked or rode bikes for 4 miles to get there. Our radios gave us the likes of JACK ARMSTRONG…THE ALL-AMERICAN BOY on weekdays and THE SHADOW on Sunday afternoon. Strange how we would watch the radio during programs that presented only audio. Maybe we were getting ready for the visual event to follow.

Television came to our town for the first time in 1946 when a set was placed in Stone’s appliance store window next to the Red & White on Main Street. We watched the Red Sox win a pennant and lose another World Series from that small black & white screen. Northboro’s own; Mike Duffy, gained his 15 minutes of fame by appearing on that first TV set. Mike jumped the wall at Fenway Park and was chased across the outfield by police while the town folks watched live and in black and white. Mike’s run would have looked better on radio.

Our local entertainment consisted of MINSTREL SHOWS on the TOWN HALL stage. The six END MEN (three per side) were in black face and they acted as straight men for a MR. INTERLOCUTER, the master of ceremonies. The end men each had symbols and they would emphasize any point made by Mr. Interlocutor by shaking and then banging them on their knee. Local acts were key. It was Eneo Sipriano a son of the MURPHY”S DEW DROP INN owner who with the mellow sounds of his saxophone captured first place in the talent show each year. Minstrel shows with black faced end men justifiably left with the civil rights movement.

The war in Europe ended with hardly any celebration in town because the Japanese were still at it. With victory in the Pacific, it was a different story. On VJ DAY a huge bonfire was built at the intersection of Church and Main Streets. I can remember helping to stack boxes tires, railroad ties and the like about 30 feet high. Liz Walker of Walkers Market piled all the combustibles she’d saved in anticipation of this day on top and I think it was Sim Fouracre who torched it. I hitch hiked to Worcester…It was bedlam there. Front and Main Streets were in full celebration.

It was the end of an era and the start of a new one. The boys returned to Northboro as heroes. They celebrated life for a while subsidized by the 52/20 CLUB. (Twenty dollars a week for 52 weeks.) Some went back to jobs they had before and others took advantage of THE GI BILL to attend college. Songs of the time blasted out from their radios... Hubba, Hubba, Hubba and a hello Jack, hey I just got back.... What ever happened to the Japanese?

During High School I was very much into basketball. It was the sport of the town. We didn’t have a football program, although we had many pickup games in Maynard’s Field, bordered by Summer Street. A home for the elderly occupies that field now. Our teams of 1947, 1948 and 1949 did well, but we lost the big ones at the CLARK TOURNAMENT in Worcester by a few points. We started the basketball season with playing pick up games in COLE’S BARN on Bartlett Street in September and by November we were ready for our first real practice in the high school gym.. The sport was influenced by the antics of BOB COUSY at Holy Cross then and we all were throwing passes and dribbling behind our back to emulate him. A semi-pro team was started by Sim Fouracre called THE FLYING RED HORSEMEN. They played in the Town Hall, except when a championship game demanded the high school gym. Perhaps, Cousy may have appeared once or twice in the Flying Red Horseman line up under an assumed name. For Twenty–five dollars a game, he was well worth it.

Baseball consisted of The Legion team then. Games were held at what is now a greatly improved Memorial Ballpark. There were some outstanding teams and players. One that should be mentioned is Junie (Ernest) Sawyer. He pitched for The Legion and went on to the minor leagues. His fastball and stuff would’ve got him to the Major Leagues if an arm problem hadn’t developed, during his stellar, too short, minor league career. Junie Sawyer would be a certain inductee if ever the Northborough Historical Society were to inaugurate a HALL OF FAME to honor the best town athletes of the century.

My mother, Marion Flynn did most of the supporting in our family and did it well. She eventually became the Town Clerk and held that office for some time. During high school, I worked at Juniper Hill Golf Course when it was a 9-hole course. I recall that my early morning task was using a long bamboo pole to knock the dew off the greens before the sun would boil them. The third green on the old course was close to the Westboro State Hospital. Screams from the patients there came across Little Chauncey Lake through the morning fog. It was an eerie feeling to be alone with that banshee like screaming coming from those poor souls whose morning medication hadn’t kicked in. The third green was always polled of dew much quicker than the rest. Later it was bussing trays at The Grill, where the jukebox blared with the best music of our generation. Songs by Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme’ and others were unforgettable like one of the songs said. Then it was work at BIGELOW’S NURSERY in the summer and sanding roads for the state in the winter months. The pay for those jobs never exceeded a dollar an hour, but it was enough to take a date to the movies and a buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents to get you there and back.

Palmer (Bill) Bigelow took me for my first airplane ride in his 1947 Taylorcraft. We took off and landed at Westboro Airport, where I took lessons later on from Bill Plumber. Plumber was an ardent fisherman and designer of lures that he sold from catalogues nationwide.

It was always a thrill when the fire whistle on top of the town hall blew 8 blasts. It was the signal for a brush fire and my age group rushed to the fire station to get in on the action. The action was a red truck loaded with Indian Brand hand pumping backpack tanks. The first one to arrive with a drivers license got the excruciating pleasure of driving the fire truck and leaning on the horn button to make the siren wail. All for the thrill of it and 60 cents an hour we ate smoke and ruined our clothes.

One of my classmates (Barbara Tobin Cole) lived at THE YELLOW BARN off Church Street. Our class of 49 was given the privilege of using that facility for dances and outings. We even had our own band. (THE SENTEMENTALISTS) …Allie Schoefield on Sax, Dottie Leland, the pianist, Bob Van Hagen on Drums and Bernie Warren on guitar. Dick Beckstrom sang the theme song …Sentimental Journey …of course.

After high school there was another war on the horizon called Korean. My age group may have been eager to participate in that so-called “Police Action” by President Truman. We were the kids who envied older guys who were in WWII. We were the kids who knew all about warplanes and saw them buzz the town and fly high with white vapor trailing. We were the kids who staged mock battles with bee bee guns in a skirmish line behind Fairleys Hardware. And we were the kids who wanted to go to war like the older guys did.

Korea accommodated our wish. I got in one year of college before joining the Air Force and returned to Northboro 4 years later. One of my first acts was to get a hair cut

from Al, The Barber who had cut my red hairs before I left town for the service. His shop was located above Mayberry's store on Main and a hang out for us during high school days.

Al said, “Where you been Flynnie? I haven’t seen you around for a couple of months?”

Hello, Al…It’s been 4 years!

Al the Barber's remark made me realize there wouldn't be another era like the years of WWII. It was a time when Northboro and the whole country's focus was on one event. When victory came we all felt like heroes who had made it happen, so much unlike the Korean War, Vietnam or Iraq. WWII was the last war that could be justified in our generation and there wasn't a better place than Northboro to live in through it all.

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*THEY WERE HAPPY DAYS IN SO MANY, MANY WAYS IN A TOWN I LOVED SO

WELL

* From an Irish song, entitled...The Town I Loved So Well.

Bill Flynn……….Northboro High School /1949

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