Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

GROWING UP INNOCENT
(Life in a small border town)

by Louise Dubrule

Recently we received an e-mail that contained a list of events, people, and goods from the past. We were told that if we remembered them all, we were truly ancient. We did recall them all, and how grand it was!

Our little town of Richford, Vermont is right on the Canadian border, down the hill from Abercorn, Quebec. The town, at its height, had maybe 2200 souls, and it was a fine place to be young. There is a tree-lined Main street that is bisected by the Mississquoi River. A sturdy bridge, always painted green, allows traffic to cross. Most of the homes are frame houses with painted clapboards. There are a few public buildings of red brick, and the post office is finished in white stone.

When I was growing up there, there were three mills that provided most of the jobs, and nobody was rich. Every family had a push mower, and no one was fussy: if it was green, they mowed it and it was a lawn. Porches sported flower boxes with geraniums, and many people had a small vegetable patch. The insurance man arranged life policies for his blue-collar clients and collected weekly premiums at their homes to make sure the policies didn’t lapse. Often, the money was left in an envelope just inside the door in case the owner wasn’t home when Archie came.

The town, established in the 1780s, weathered all sorts of natural disasters and sent its sons off to war. Shortly after we moved to town, the citizens began pulling together during World War II. Like the rest of the country, they endured rationing of sugar, meat, shoes, and gasoline. They collected cooking fat and scrap metal, bought War Bonds, grew victory gardens, and went without a lot of things that just weren’t available. Then, in 1945 the war was over, my brother came home with other young men from the area, hemlines dropped, and life went on.

The main memory of Richford is of safety. Our mothers knew that we were being watched by everybody, for every family knew every other family. We left the house in the morning with only the reminder that we had to be home for supper. If we had a problem, we could ask anyone for help; and if we got into trouble, you can be sure that our parents had been informed at least a dozen times before we got back home. We were not afraid to walk from one end of town to the other, summer or winter, day or dark of evening. True, the town had its share of characters who were strange and quite removed from the average, but they were our characters and they were totally harmless. Papa never locked the car. When the whole family left the house, Mama locked the door….and she put the key in the mailbox in case a neighbor needed to go in.

Somehow, we felt insulated from the rest of the world. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, we only knew what our weekly newspapers reported. Movietone News at the movies filled in some gaps. We were far from big cities and we didn’t have anything worth being attacked for, so we didn’t worry about “the bomb.” Drugs were found only among wild musicians or actors, certainly not in the Vermont countryside. If there were child abusers or wife beaters, we didn’t hear about it. I was in the fourth grade before I heard the word “pregnant”, and then I didn’t know what it meant! Maternity clothes in those days could have hidden a Sherman tank.

Religion played a large part in our lives, and even in such a small town there were four churches: Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian. Our summer vacations from school were interrupted for vacation Bible School, and the public school building was used for the classes, first for the Catholics and then for the Protestants. Nobody talked about separation of church and state. It was the same way for fund-raising suppers that featured chicken in some form or baked beans in several styles…everyone attended. The vacant field next to the Atlas Plywood Mill became the grounds for events called “lawn socials.” Regardless of the sponsoring church, everyone showed up to play the games of chance or sample the various treats for sale.

There was a “little” school for grades 1 through 3, and the “big” school that housed every other grade through Senior High. School buses brought the children from the outlying farm areas, but everyone else walked to school. Only one boy in my class had a car, a 1920-something little Ford Model A that he painstakingly restored. There was no school lunch program: we went home for lunch and walked back after eating, or we brought our lunch to eat at our desks if the weather was truly ugly.

School started the Tuesday after Labor Day every year. We prepared for that event by attending the fairs in Essex, Vermont or in Brome, Quebec, trying to delay the inevitable. Classes were rather large, teachers were strict but fair, and cheating was unheard of. Girls were not allowed to wear slacks to school. We did wear them under our skirts in the winter but had to leave them in the cloak room with our coats. We all wore bobby socks with loafers or saddle shoes, and we styled our hair with pincurls.

School work was done with Dixon Ticonderoga pencils on lined paper. We went to the town library to do research for important papers, and if we were lucky we got into the typing room to use a typewriter. Starting with our Freshman year, we bought our own textbooks. We certainly took good care of them so we’d be able to sell them to a student the next year. As often as not, a particular textbook was replaced with a newer edition and we were stuck with the outdated version. I actually have a couple of those volumes as souvenirs.

The sport that reigned supreme was basketball, both for girls and boys. The whole town turned out to cheer our teams, and they drove to the out-of-town games too. Our little school won several championships. After school, the Snack Bar was the local hangout, where a nickel bought a Coke with your choice of syrup added if you wanted. An ice cream cone was a nickel, too, but sprinkles cost two cents more. The very best maple walnut ice cream was found across the border in Canada, and it was worth the short drive just for a cone.

School dances were simple, usually just sock hops with records for music. Members of the sponsoring class brought cupcakes, brownies, and ingredients for punch, and the refreshments were sold for a modest amount. The formals were reserved for the Prom in late Spring, when the gym was decorated to a fare-thee-well with a dropped ceiling of crepe paper and a proper band was hired. Some local adults attended these affairs, and they led the Grand March that opened the evening’s dancing.

Some of us attended box suppers in outlying little villages and stayed for the square dancing. The nice part of these outings was that you didn’t need a date to go and have fun. The same sort of arrangement existed for the dances on Thursday nights at Lake Carmi during the summer months. The pavilion next to the bowling alley hired a small local group that played big band music, and we all went stag.

The Park Theater on Main Street had once been the Adventist Church before being remodeled. We saw first-run movies in the evenings. On Saturday afternoon we paid ten cents to see a grade-B film followed by a Western. In those films, the bad man wore a black hat while the hero always wore a white hat which he never lost, even in a fight. If he ever kissed a girl, it was a chaste peck on the cheek before riding off on his horse.

Our entertainment of choice was the radio. My father listened to a Canadian program called “Ceux Qu’on Aime” as well as “Gang Busters,” “Gunsmoke” and the news. My tastes ran to “Jack Benny,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” and “Baby Snooks.” Later I enjoyed ‘Lux Radio Theater” and “Make-Believe Ballroom” from Montreal. TV came to town in the mid 50’s but programming didn’t start until 4:00 PM, and of course it was all black and white.

Sexism was alive and well. Girls were encouraged to study to become teachers, nurses, or secretaries. We were reminded that we could always be a maid or a waitress. Our mothers wore dresses every day, they went shopping dressed well enough for church, and very few of them worked outside the home. Our fathers went to work in overalls, but they wore suits and fedoras when they went to church or out visiting.

Food was simple and hearty. Our mothers put great dishes of beans in the oven for Saturday night supper. Sunday dinner was a big meal, and Friday meant fish or macaroni and cheese made with that sharp white Vermont cheddar which I still buy today. My mother baked pies for the hotel and restaurants and I awoke every morning to find several pies cooling. She baked bread and fried donuts by the dozen, habits left from the years on the farm. The jars of fruit and vegetables from the cellar were the start of many meals, and she made leftovers taste new and wonderful. I don’t remember instant anything. The most exotic food came when the American Legion sponsored wild game meals every November.

Our parents entertained themselves with card parties with friends where they played a game called 500, something like bridge. Warm evenings were spent on front porches, calling to neighbors who went by. Sunday afternoons called for a ride on the back roads to see who had painted a barn, who had new work horses, and who had had a new baby as evidenced by diapers on the clothesline.

As for us, we never ran out of things to do. Summer meant long days to while away with skates, bicycles, and scooters. There were plenty of vacant lots begging for a pick-up baseball game, and we could go swimming: at the Railroad trestle where we braved leeches, the “Big Hole” with snapping turtles, or if we wanted to walk 13 miles or could beg a ride, there was Lake Carmi which we called Franklin Pond. We jumped rope to rhymes, played hide and seek, and brought out board games to play in the shade under a tree. Sometimes our family would pack a simple picnic supper and spend a couple of hours at Hazen’s Notch or the Belvedere Woods. It was easy to organize a wiener roast; and if you couldn’t afford a hot dog, it was fine to bring a potato or an apple or an ear of corn to roast instead. Once a week, the people turned out for the Band Concert on the Town Hall steps. Our high school band teacher kept his students in practice by providing music for those who sat on the lawns and applauded loudly.

It was quite easy to find a way to earn money: baby sitting, splitting kindling, raking leaves or mowing lawns or shoveling snow (depending on the season) stocking shelves in one of the grocery stores, filing at the library, or running errands. We didn’t make a lot, but it was nice to have a little cash because we didn’t get an allowance.

Winter settled in early and lingered long. We had sleds, toboggans, crude skis, and ice skates. We built forts and had snowball battles. The baseball field was flooded for ice skating and it stayed frozen the whole winter. Various groups offered sleigh rides. We sat in fragrant hay, covered with quilts, and watched the huge Belgians or Percherons pull the open wagon without much effort. Our destination provided hot chocolate and a place to warm numb toes and noses before the return trip.

The railroad ran through Richford on its journey between Boston and Montreal. We heard the train whistles at night and wondered about the people who were aboard. Sometimes we caught the train to Newport, Vermont and walked their Main street and went through their dime store that was just like ours. In February, it was such a treat to ride the rails to Montreal to see a matinee of the Ice Follies at the Forum. If time permitted, we walked to St. Catherine Street to admire the Eaton’s store and maybe get a snack at the Windsor Station before boarding the return train.

Lest you think that life in this era was totally sublime, reality must be addressed in the matter of medical care. We had one doctor in town, and he did make house calls. But other than smallpox vaccinations, there were no preventative inoculations, so quarantine signs were regularly posted for red measles, German measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, mumps, or whooping cough. I think we caught everything that came to town. Tonsilitis was treated by painting the throat with iodine. People who developed TB were sent to a sanitarium and they often died there. Leukemia and cancer were usually death sentences, and heart patients struggled without benefit of bypass surgery or pacemakers.

Smells are powerful in evoking memories: baking bread, burning leaves in the autumn twilights, lilacs on Memorial Day, new-mown hay, spicy meat cooking for tourtieres, and incense at Midnight Mass. We were familiar with the aroma of cows and horses, fishing holes, and cut wood. Perhaps nothing compares to the sweet steam of the sugar house.

It’s now official: I’m as old as dirt…and I have the memories to prove it.

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