No sooner had I graduated (just barely passing) Bridgewater State Teachers College, but I received the dreaded notice from my Draft Board. Seeing my patriotic duty in front of me I immediately signed on to be an Air Force pilot. Don’t ask how I ever saw myself at the controls of a jet plane, being just an average driver of an automobile at best, but away to Camp Edwards I went for testing. Somehow I passed the written exams, but failed the eye test. No problem; I’d just be a navigator then. As one who could get lost between here and Scituate, I’m not a prime candidate for navigator of any …

The clay marbles were not much valued. Ten of that variety might be worth one of the glass agates. We played for keeps. This came as close to gambling as we got. Of course, it was ultimately a game of skill and I recall myself as only able to about break even. One thing I knew was that you did not play against Teeny Freitas. He was the school yard’s best marble player. My friend, Richard L Anderson and I were matched pretty evenly and played often. We did not play standard rules of making a circle and trying to knock your opponent’s marbles out of that ring.  Our objective was to toss and …

Sometimes we played touch football, but the old fashioned tackle variety was more popular.  Equipment was unheard of. Some games were played in the field behind the Furnace Village Grammar School. Players in the line were matched off by size; we never had enough to fill anywhere near the eleven man complement. There were no referees, of course, and bloody noses and serious bruises were common to say the least. One day Billy Moreshead broke his right arm. Small of stature, Billy was as tough a nut as one could find anywhere. It was a compound fracture with his forearm bone protruding through …

My old man was quite the horse trader, but he never limited himself to the equine breeds. I’m about twelve years old and it’s a chilly fall morning. “Get up, Pete”, says Avery, Sr. He always called me Pete because my mom wanted to name me Peter, but dad insisted I be named after him. In exchange for her acquiescing, he proceeded to call me Pete all my life. Into the broken down “car of the day” we stumble, but only after putting the large white rabbit dad had acquired for small money in a cage in the area of the jalopy that in another’s vehicle would be the space for the back seat. Dad was a …

Boys wore corduroy Knickerbockers (knickers in the vernacular) in the Furnace Village in the forties. These pants went down only to just under the knees (in theory) with an elastic band sewn into the seam to hold them up properly. It never happened that way in practice, however, with each of us lads running about with our socks down around our ankles and the trousers drooping down below the knees. Today’s baseball players wear a variation of the old knickers, but the elastic bands are much improved! A young lad, maybe eight to twelve years of age, could be heard coming down the corridor of …

Ever tried sour milk pancakes? We thought they were the very best. Mom would put a container of Gracie Farm raw milk in the full sun on top of the well cover just outside the back entry. Once curdled the milk was put in the fridge for use the next morn. My siblings and I were raised on nothing but raw milk. If mom forgot to do the aforementioned  task, she just added a little vinegar to fresh milk and put all the ingredients together “from scratch”. She used only King Arthur unbleached flour, I recall. Blueberries, canned fruit or other fruit in season was added to the pancake when she cooked…

It could be that people as far away as North Easton Village never knew of the wonderful years in the late forties and early fifties that the Furnace was host to some of the most colorful race drivers in the area. Bobbie Barboza, Eddie Smith and Hilt Nordbeck come to mind. This was a time when “stock car” meant just that. One took his vehicle as it came off the highway and put the old crate on a race track and tried to outrun and outwit other locals doing the same. Our venue was Lonsdale, Rhode Island. Lonsdale was at first a dirt track and later with asphalt. No sooner than the rules of the …

Well, we had them, but we did not own them. The deal went this way: In the off-season from fair and carnival time, the Doyle family down Route 106 a couple of miles from us would let families take a pony for their use in exchange for housing and feeding the animal(s). The Doyles lived at what is now the location of the Maplewood  Country Day Camp at 150 Foundry Street. At the time the property was profiled above the level of the street in contrast to the great depression we now see in the earth there. The Doyles sold their property to the construction cause of building Route 24. The new …

Not everyone built his house as my dad did, but there were several in the Furnace Village area that were put together this way. Married in 1932, Avery and Margaret (Adams) Williams started life in a rented apartment at the Warren and Ethyl Blood house on Route 138. The house burned down last year and has been replaced. It was located next to the old Pickle Barrel pub, which later was the Blackthorne Tavern. My folks had to elope as my Irish Catholic grandmother was not going to let her daughter marry a Congregationalist Protestant. This left me and my siblings to be raised in the Episcopalian…

With no manufacturing of cars during 1943, 44 and 45, those vehicles that remained on the road became pretty beat up. Add to the shortage of gas with people putting a little kerosene into the gas tank to stretch mileage the fact that parts for repairs were scarce. There were frequent breakdowns and flat tires were common. Some people kept an extra spare tire or two in the trunk to meet the need. I did. Autos of the 1930s vintage were quite common on the roads in the late 1940s, as the big three had changed production from autos to war tanks, planes and other heavy military equipment. Just …

Farm Work... That was the option for young folk in the Furnace Village in the forties and fifties. Starting at age ten I went to work for Mr. Frank Gracie, who owned the farm at the spot that now holds the Sunoco station at the Five Corners. His hay and grazing fields became the site of the Shaw’s Plaza. Frank Gracie had a dozen or so milking cows that he milked by hand at first, but later increased his herd and bought milking machines. He had Jersey cows, which give a heavy butter fat content and had a rich towards tan colored liquid. When we did not have our own cow, we bought our milk from…

Back then a paper route was a sought after privilege in contrast today’s ads in the local rags requesting adults to take on the task. It was a “paper boy” (or an occasional paper girl) that did the delivery job with pride. One had to be put on a waiting list until a route came to be open or in my case to have Bob Wry put in a good word for me when he decided to give up his route for the then Brockton Enterprise and Times. Bob was the eldest of a large contingent of Wry kids who lived diagonally across Foundry Street from the Belcher Malleable operation. There was no Sunday edition of the …

If we were not poor in the Furnace Village, and most folk were, we sure lived as if we were. Among the important resources to husband was fat. Almost any kind of fat, but that derived from cooking was most precious, particularly during WWII. Pork fat was good. We raised our own hogs. They were garbage fed and plenty plump. My mom roasted all meats up on a metal rack in the oven. The juices with the fat fell in the roasting pan below. That glop was set out in winter to cool and let the fat rise. It was then easy to scrape the fat off the top of the “drippings”. Other seasons it was put down in…

I’ve seen it all in my fifty years as a stock broker and financial planner. From my start as a “Furnace Village Rat”, through Oliver Ames High School (Class of ’53 and the Bridgewater State Teachers College (now Bridgewater State University, of all things), I’ve been a life long resident of my beloved home town. I consider Easton to be “Massachusetts best kept secret”. Two of my Great Granddads came to Easton in the late 1880s, so I am a true “townie”. My career started on Wall Street as a Specialist Clerk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Specialists in those days “kept the book” …

School started for me in 1941 in September of the year, two months before the beginning of WWII. At the end of the first  9 a.m. to 3 p.m. day, I asked my mom if I could go back to school that same day. My first year I had Miss Belcher as my teacher. This was to be her last year in the profession before retiring. Her nickname was “Old Biddy Belcher”. She was of the real Belcher family and lived across from the Belcher Malleable Foundry and beside the Swift Store. She tended to the first, second and third grade in our room, while the other teacher, Mrs. Heath, taught the fourth, fifth and …

 At Pearl Harbor time I was 6 and one half years old, and so have few specific memories of the “day that will live in infamy”. However, the day to day constraints to what had been the normal life style remain sharp in my mind.  It was a time to save – anything and everything. Cigarettes were wrapped in tin foil and we collected it with a vengeance. Fat for explosives should be mentioned, but all old metal pots, pans, tools, steam heat radiators, car parts (and old cars themselves) were all scrapped to meet the war’s needs along with any other metal materials that could be found.  Furnace …

The center of activity was Ed Rhodin’s Sunoco Gas Station. Ed himself might have been described best as a “taciturn Swede”. The name Rhodin is pronounced “road’-in” in English, but is said as “road – een’” in Swedish. Heavy set and slow moving, Ed was comparatively prosperous among the clientele at his small variety store that ran in conjunction with the gas business. He had a fine penny candy assortment and a nickel bought a huge candy bar. Baby Ruth, Snickers, Almond Joy and Mounds were big sellers. People went around singing the Almond Joy jingle – “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes…