 So welcome to the old town hall. Heath is going to be our moderator. We're going to introduce, he's going to be the introductions of the women who agreed to do this event. And full disclosure, there are a few that grew up close to Burkfield but not technically in Burkfield. The other thing I want you to add is that we're kind of closing out the month as we approach Labor Day weekend. At the beginning of this month, there was an event that kind of was about people talking about why they moved to Burkfield. And I would say this is the flip side. And these are people that grew up and know the history of what it was like when they were younger. All right, again, thank you for coming. So those of you who don't know me, I'm Keith Sprague, son of John and Linda Sprague. And Linda's here tonight as you'll get an introduction from her. And I also moderated last year the men's version of this. I suspect it is. So that was great fun. I was hopefully, I'm sure, this will be that also. And remembering back of the men's version of this. And I just remember, well, first off, they were very difficult to manage. But I think we'll see how this goes here. But I remember like just a takeaway as I left there that night and went home and thought about it days after how simple it was back in that time frame or that generation to find happiness in your day-to-day life or day-to-day entertainment or whatever it was. And I just took that home with me and just continue that. And my thought process of this modern world was just so complicated. And we're just constantly running into people not happy or we're not happy or this or that. But my god, it just seems so simple. And the simplest things were just so entertaining. And they still can be to this day. So hopefully, we'll see that light again here, I'm sure. But anyway, yeah. So we're going to try to end this thing at 8.30. That's what my marching orders here are. And with that, this event is going to be pretty dull and boring without participation from all of you guys. So as far as me being the one driving questions, I'm going to be playing. That's what I mean by that. So I think that a lot of questions need to come from you guys. We're going to start with introductions of each. And then we're going to open it up to two questions. So there are two people I know, my mother, for instance. And I'm not sure who the other person is. But that didn't grow up here in Brookfield. But I would encourage you to talk about your upbringing some, because I know on my mother's side, for instance, I'm sure they're just tremendous stories. Very similar to the ones that did grow up in Brookfield. Without being sad, I don't know what it says you guys. There's my microphone. Oh, can you hear me? Yeah? Yeah. OK, I'm Mary Waldo. And this is my sister, Betty, and we were brought up on Southeast Hill in the first year. We were brought up on Southeast Hill, OK? Everybody refers now to East Hill? Well, there's a South East Hill. And that's where we were brought up. So I guess that's a start. And we had very different childhoods, because we're significant years apart. And by the time she came along, there was busing for the students, which didn't happen for us. And so I was in fourth grade, fifth grade. And right after that, our parents had to bus us for somehow back in Brookfield, which was very good, and set us up with our own little school. Where one year there were nine kids, and one year there were 11 in all eight grades. And five of us were old. So it was really quite funny who could walk to school at that point. And I understand now that the schoolhouse has just been taken down. So it was quite sad to hear that. But otherwise, I went to start out in East Randolph, then went to South Branch, which is by the weeklies, and then went to North Branch for the other years. And then of my eighth grade class, there were, is this too long? No, it was eighth grade. Of my eighth grade class, there were, I think there were eight of us. And Steve, isn't it right that three of you went to Spalding? Yes. To high school. And two went to, or three went to Williamstown. And two of us went to Randolph, because at that point, there were no buses to any of those schools. So we all had to find our own transportation. And my family's basically stayed with family or other people in Randolph until I was a junior. And then they decided to have a bus. And so then Brookfield joined Randolph as a union. And so we all could go to Randolph on buses. So that was a big change. So by the time Betty came along, she was bussed. OK, I'm the oldest sister. I went to school in South Branch for four years, then North Branch for four years. There were four people in my class until we got to seventh grade. And then they brought down four people from Palm Village. So they were eight of us. But as Mary said, by the time we didn't join the union until I was three years off of my high school. So the kids in my class could choose where they went to high school as well. And some went to Randolph and many went to Spalding. And that's all I understand. My name is Melanie Lora. And I grew up on West Street on a dairy farm. I had four older brothers and sisters, two sisters and two brothers. I was the baby. I went to school on West Street. I had to walk to school every day, rain or sun, snow, sweet, everything. Eight years. And our eighth year graduation was held right here. The same was these ladies did too. I'm scared up because I was a teacher for a very many years. And Lora's going to stand behind the chair and keep says, keep it short. But I spend this afternoon really thinking about what I wanted to say. And so I have only 13 pages of notes. So how is it going to be really short? But please don't bring the hook up. You'll have plenty of chances. Oh, OK. So I'm Pat Mercer. I taught at the Berkfield School for many years. I'm a tire now. But when I was young, I was Pat Lavender in the same house that I grew up in. And the land where I live has been home for almost 100 years for my family. I'll talk about going back 100 years ago to how it became part of my family, part of the home for my family. In 1920, my grandmother and my mother left Schenectady, New York. They left with my grandmother's second husband, George Hewitt, and their two children, Catherine and Henry. George was a carpenter. And he had three grown children from a previous family. His wife had died. And they were all grown and brought away. And then George had an accident that prevented him from being a carpenter. So his son, Joe Hewitt, who had recently come to Berkfield, he had bought a farm. And he decided that he would invite these city people to come and live with him, his father and his stepmother and their three children. So off they came. And they hired a trucker from Schenectady to bring them to Berkfield. Apparently, the trucker did not enjoy the dirt road from Rutland to Berkfield. Apparently, it was quite awful having overkilling two mountains. And when they got to Randall, the driver deposited the people and their possessions at the hotel in Randall. He was not going any farther. So they had to find a horse and wagon to bring them to Berkfield. When they arrived, of course, there was this farmhouse that had been lived in for 40 years by a family before then. But there was no electricity. There was water into that kitchen sink through a lead pipe, or the spring that was up behind the house. There was an outhouse surrounded by those lovely golden gold flowers that my mother always called outhouse daisies. There were wood stoves for cooking and heating. There was a team of horses to work on occasional trips to town. And chickens and a couple of cats. There was a city girl who had worked for a very prominent family in Schenectady, New York. As a house servant, I can just imagine her reaction. And of course, she was a feisty Italian-like Irish lass. So my mother didn't have stories. My mother was probably about nine when she arrived. And she had a few stories to tell about life then. She did go to the Gaylord School, which was a school that was in the neighborhood, still there. Lived in by Kevin Ring. She told the stories about going to school and walking there and walking back. And also the time that somebody decided to stare her in the middle of the afternoon by hiding behind the stone wall at the orchard and pretending to be a bear. And she didn't know whether she was going to go back to school ever again. But she did. She talked about the oranges that came from Texas at Christmas time because one of the older sisters, the grown children of her stepmother, lived in Texas. And she was called Sister Lucy. And her husband was Brother Parker. And they had quite a lot of money. But she loved the oranges because they didn't have fruit except for what grew on it. She also has tales of her sister Catherine being sent to Minneapolis, Minnesota when she was in about seven, probably, to live with Sister Orr and her husband, Brother Frank. They were also the oldest sisters. And my mother always said that maybe they were childless. But probably she was sent because she was a feisty child also. My mother loved a little Morgan Philly that belonged to the neighbors and spoke often about the joys of driving to town with a lovely little Morgan Philly driving his wife. And in New York, when she was 16 to live with Aunt Middick Golden, my grandmother's sister. She attended secretarial school, worked, married a city boy, and made a co-locational trips to Vermont and a model 2. Then World War II began. And my father enlisted in the Navy. Aunt Middick was the son of that. My mother and my infant brother returned to Vermont to be with her mother at the end of the war. My father was convinced that he had city ways for over and he should be a farmer. He must have really loved her. But maybe he'd developed in love with the place, not the difficulty of permanent at that time. In 1946, when they did move here, or shortly thereafter, a transition was taking place with agriculture. There was a market opening up for a whole milk, not just butter, as it had been in the past. There was a need for more cows, for more milk. And then there was a need for cooling down. And then having a trucker come to haul it to the primary and testing for buttermilk. And there was a lot of feed for all these extra cows and building machines and barns. All of this was a rapid change because electricity came and the rural electrical authority, that's the RDA, in 1947. So before then, there was no electricity. So when electricity came, then, of course, there was an opportunity to have coolers. There was a refrigerator in the house. There was electric lights and not those kerosene lamps, lamps that people had to use. Our 73-acre farm was no longer able to support the potato crops that my uncle had grown for money. He was very proud to be a 100-bushel seed potato grower. That's 100 bushels per acre that he would grow. But they couldn't do that anymore because they needed the lamp for pasture. And for the hay, the tree to cat, the newborn cat. Also, horse power was not adequate. You had to have a horse power that was produced by machines on the truck. So there was no end machines cost money. And there was not enough for farming. And so farmers and their wives worked away. My mother's strawberry business and her egg business was not enough. How am I doing? Yeah, perfect. So when I was six, which was probably early 50s, I have some memories because I was there and I was a little kid living in this changing world. And so I have some that I'd like to share with you. And I thought about this today. One of them was ice cream, because I had recently just finished a kind of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. But we only had ice cream in the wintertime. And we only had it in the wintertime because there were icicles on the roof. And we could use those icicles for the ice. And of course, we had the cream from the cattle. We had the eggs from the chickens. We could get sugar and vanilla from the store. And so we had a hand pranker. And we spent a lot of time pranking ice cream in the winter. And it was luckily that I had a birthday in January. One brother had a birthday in February. And one brother had a birthday in March. So we all had lovely birthday parties with ice cream. And my mother would make angel food cake from scratch. So you do that because you have lots of eggs. In the springtime, I would go down to the neighbors to John Bray's sugar house. And we would sit with him when he did his sugary. We would go out with him into the woods with the horses. And the sled had to prop the sack in. And we would go into the sugar house and sit on a couch. He had a couch because he spent all his time here. He slept there at night time. And he was always there for the torturing weeks of winter. And he was there doing sugaring. And his wife would always have lovely donuts for us to eat. And then we'd sit, that's pretty nice. In the summertime, my brother and I would pretend to be cowboys. And we would gallop out through 10 horses, through the pastures to the next door neighbors to play with the cats. And this was at the Blodgets. And Mrs. Blodget always had freshly baked rolls. And she would share them with us. So we went quite welcome. Now when I was six or seven, my playground was the Brook. The pine grove and the pasture where I was witness to the birdy calves. It was just a very lovely quiet town. We would also have visits from city people, the family that still lived in the city. They would come and we would have techniques by the girl queer children and watermelons were cooled. On one of my visits, my aunt happened to run a boyfriend. Never occurred to me to wonder where her husband was. They liked to drink Valentine beer. And it was in the cooler when it kept this Valentine beer in their hands to be cooled. So this poor boyfriend was sent to the cooler to get the beer. His arm was filled with cans of beer, put his hand down to get over the electric fence. And he got the shock of his life. The beer was flying. The people who were watching laughed. He was kind of angry. I just noticed that they were soon off to the east branch of the store, to different places in beer because you couldn't drink that because it was just his arm. But I don't think I ever saw him again at the farm. When it fall came around and it was time for school when I went to school at the Berkfield Center School. Steve Hill was my only other first grade classmate. Went a half miles to the school. Some advantages to all of that because Mr. Wilmer, the farmer who lived across the street from the school, raised turrets for his house. And so on the way home and walked home, my brother and I would pick up turrets and we would have a feast at home. Turnips and whatever else my mother made. And we would also stop at the old Churchill Orchard, which is where the Macmanities lived. And that was an abandoned house at the time. Nobody lived there, but they had a old river tree that I would take home pets and bushels of apples in the fall. And we would have lots of pies all in for long. And one more thing that I remember about when I was that age was it must have been 1952. Maybe General Eisenhower had been elected president of the United States. And my father had this quite large picture of him hanging over his desk. I did not really understand that, but I suppose because he was a veteran of the war, that it was very important for them to do that. The race of God, I'm still here. 60 some years later. The land of the farm has been divided. Where my house was the only one on my road, there are now 13 dairy farms are gone. Open land struggles to remain open. We get in our cars to work so we can pay the taxes and support our home and families. With global warming and unsure economy, worldwide political unrest, violence and a lack of humanity, there is need for change. My sister-in-law's granddaughter might say some 60 years from now. Thank you. In the coldest spring, I was brought up in Brookfield. I was born in Orange, a town about 20 minutes away from here on the other side of the mountain. I'm one of eight children. My parents were born and brought up in Canada and met and married, bought a farm and had eight of his children. I was in the middle, number four. He never milked cows because he said he couldn't. He just didn't have a man for it. So then he went to raising beef cattle and cropping the land, sold his hay and sold some wood. And we worked in poor ways. All eight of us children went to a private Catholic school in Grandville. We'd get up at six o'clock in the morning and be ready to leave at six thirty. And we had breakfast in that time. Got in the car and dad dropped us off at school in Grandville and then at seven o'clock, he went to work. Well, school didn't start until nine. So sometimes the good ones would let us in on a frigid cold day and sometimes they wouldn't. So we entertained ourselves for two hours. One of the excuses where we could get in at eight thirty was that we decided we wanted to go to Mass and we just came very good Mass goers in the winter time. From here, that was all eight years. We went to school there and I went to Spalding High School. After that, I went into nurses training. We became a nurse and shortly after that, I met my husband, John, and as he will tell you this, and move to Brookfield, and as he will tell you this, when I really started to be brought up. Because he came right to the fire, he owned the fire, had bought it from his parents. We milked about 40 cows. We were in the process of changing from all jerseys to whole steams. This was bucket milking. I never learned how to milk, but I did do everything else. Fed calves, scraped cows down, and all that good stuff. We started having children and it wasn't long before those children, Keith, Carrie, and Abbey, were part of our lifestyle. And they remained active on the farm. As young children, they each had one job that they had to do. And they did not have to go to the barn before school, but they did have to come with me after school. And it wasn't a big job. I can't remember what Keith had to do. I think he had to scrape the cows down. I did cat chores. Oh, okay. I did cat chores. Well, I did cat chores, C-D-T. I did cat chores, C-D-T. One of my first memories of when I came to the farm is John, I don't know if he's trying to impress me, but he took me right down to the barn to show me this one cow that he had just bought and paid $900 for. I was very impressed. And he looked to say that cow always was kept clean, had an extra shovel full of sauce put underneath it all the time. It was never, it wasn't allowed to get sick. That cow he mentioned, we did have to sell it. But it was a pretty big sum of money back in 1969 to pay for cows, I think. So I like them on. Our kids were born, we had treated them for three years. I decided about when the oldest one got in high school that I really, they were all gonna be in college at the same time and we needed some extra income. So that is when I went back to nursing. And there was a good life, it was a busy life. We were milking three times a day. Then I did not get up to the middle of the night milking, but I did get up at like 4.30 or five and go down and help out then and then come up to shower and load work. And it was a very good life, we enjoyed it. And now our son does it and his wife and their two daughters. Thank you. I'm Kathleen, I live on Westry. Looks like I'm the youngster of the group up here. I lived there all my life. My grand-grandfather came there in 1914. That was a problem in the Brown family. He came from Chelsea and a horse was swayed with my grandfather, his older brother and his baby sister that was about four years old. And he came on horse and sleigh from Chelsea when their house burned out in Chelsea and they had a fun place to live. So my great-grandfather looked around and found this place. But in order to get here, the horse and sleigh was too, the snow was too deep. And they had to roll the road and it took them two days to get here with three little kids on the sleigh and all their belongings that they had in Halloween food. And I live up on the end of Westry and there was only two houses there that fun was established in 1781 when this house started. And so the neighbor that we're John Cole is right now and I can't remember the name but he saw them come in and that neighbor came up with a load of wood and some goods, food for food for the family because he knew they didn't have anything and I helped them out. Otherwise he said they were approached to death the first few days there. And my grandfather came there at barely eight years old and he wanted to farm. So my great-grandfather wanted to farm because he wanted to farm. His older brother was about six years older than my grandfather and he didn't really care about farming as much as my grandfather. So he talked to my great-grandfather into farming and bringing on cows and eventually I would bring the milk and herder burgies back then six or eight cows was about all they milked. So, and then my grandfather wanted to do some other things and diversified out a little bit and he helped his father pay for the farm and he grew potatoes. And I don't need an acre or two, it's 15, 20 acres. It took him over two weeks to harvest those potatoes every year and all those potatoes he got a contract to supply North University. And of course, North University is from, you know, the year, it was from September through May so they had potatoes to supply them. And my father said it was a paycheck my grandfather got every week he could count all that money coming in. That's why he did it. And that helped pay for the farm, paid the mortgage for that farm. And my grandfather was quite the worker. At eight years old, he bought his own little one long engine and went around helped the neighbor saw wood and he paid for that engine that first year he had it. Now he borrowed the money from his father, $500 and he paid that off working around to the neighborhood and helped cut the wood. Now he was a stout man, he was not really tall. I don't think his legs were more than two feet long but he got around. And then eventually the rest of the generation came along. We pretty much was like the Waltons living together with my grandfather and grandmother in the house. Set there's only four of us instead of seven kids. And then my younger brother came along years later but we all had chores to do. We, as soon as we were big enough to carry a bucket and feed a cat or hold the bottle to feed a cat who were in the barn working. I don't think I even knew how to wash a dish till I was up in my teens because I was in the barn all the time. And then the one hand season was around. We did a lot of hanging on a lot of lease property and we'd hang all over the west street here. So I told my dad, I said, I was getting moved up. I said, at night we'd have supper and we'd have to go back down the hand. I said, dad, I don't know if it counts. You go finish hand. You can, the boys can do it. And at 15 years old I went in and I milked the cows by myself. My grandmother was a little worried about me because she says, what if something should happen to her and they milked the cows? So she'd come down, walking down the barn, check me out, make sure everything was okay. I was in there milking the cows and singing along to the radio and she's wondering what the hand was going on. But it was a good life. It was, you know, a lot of work. We enjoyed it. I went to school over here in Berkfield. If the school was fairly new at that time, we had two classes and one in one school room. Most of the time those kids was around about 30, 35 class kids in one room with what first and second grade was together and then fourth was together and then fifth and sixth was together. And Mrs. Maloney kind of was my first teacher and she would always be there in my memory because she's quite the lady. I remember her sitting there and having lunch and drinking her buttermilk. And then her husband at the beginning when that school opened was the janitor and he would, if he'd seen any kids going down the hallway in their shoes on time and say, hey, tie up your shoes. But he had to stand right there until your shoe was tied before he'd leave you. He didn't want you tripping and spalling. So then we went on to Randolph High School because that was where we went from here. We didn't have a choice back then where to go. When I graduated there, I brought my dad milk and sugar and all kinds of things. I went out working. Men came home and helped them milk cows. So I was around there sometimes like, the rest of the siblings would be gone out of the barn and I'd stay there and help my father finish up and milk him. So he wasn't in the barn at all. So, you know, we worked hard as soon as we were able to but it was a good life and it gets embedded in here. And once it's in there, you just don't know a different life and I love cows. They're like my pet cat dogs to me. So it's where I started and that's where I live right now. And I guess I wouldn't change anything. Good to hear. For a church girl, I was born in Randolph on the other outsider. My parents were Kermit and Lois, Louvallie and I grew up on the farm there where my father had grown up. Let's see. I was thinking about one of your stories about, I have a younger brother and when the kid used to come up to play, especially the boys, he always had a fun trip for the town kids and he had a voice peaking on the fence. And we all got battered. They came back too. I went to school down to Randolph. I remember when all the one-room school kids came down from Brookfield and Braintree. We'd have study hall and we'd be ready to course around and these kids are studying and it's like, what are you guys doing? Of course, when they were at one of our school houses, they were told to study over here to these kids, so. Anyways, that was the memory of those kids. Grandpa didn't want us around the barn that much for chores or anything, we had the time down at the barn but I didn't do any real barn chores until I met my husband Ray and moved up here to Brookfield. I moved all of six miles. He had already moved the whole mile and moved to the old Jewish place. So were you not allowed in the barn when you were young? Was it like, because you hear stories of that, some of the women weren't allowed in the barn? Well, it wasn't just the women. My mother didn't go down unless it was on Father's Sunday to work and then we could all go down and go off and stuff but Grandpa kind of just wanted us and Father too, he, both of them, Grandpa and and Kermit are male showing this time. I don't know what to say. It was very common. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I remember driving the tractor once picking up hay down to when I was growing up and I happened, the wagon went over the higher man's foot and Grandpa says, ah, he didn't tell me what I did but to do different. So if I come up to Churchill's and we're haying, we always take together between the two farms, Bob and Margaret and Ray and I. And I remember I had a load of hay on with the old David Brown and a little old Pachter and we're headed out and Bob Hallard. Whoa, I don't know if you remember Bob Churchill but he had a little bit of hay on. So I stopped and what's the matter? I just wanted to see if you could stop before you got out on the main road. Okay, playing things that allow to do stuff and, you know, and that's the way I brought my kids up when they were two weeks old or so. They were out in the emergency and the barn and sat in front of the cattle watched their tongues lick their nose and do different things. I just kind of match it from a little chance of perspective fun. So we had three girls, Amy Brenda and Tina and a one is a teacher over to Mrs. Barris over to the grade school, writing her saying school she went to, Brenda is an accountant, works for, what would you call it? Don't work for me to see anymore. She's not a psychologist. Oh, yeah, she's an accountant. And Tina, the youngest one is down in Boston. Oh, what a place to go visit. I don't do that very often. I just, if I do, I write down on the bus and they pick me up at self-station and take me around. I have been married for 46 years and I have been not having a very good life in the country. So where did you and Ray first meet? Oh. Okay, Amy, we should get started. We should get started. It was a great place to start because she would have these drinks that she makes up for whoever stopped by and so people, one of her great drinks was pussycats. It was a drink mix that she got at that time. I haven't seen it lately. And her, let's see, moustache, West Snow and Wendell Bushey and Ray. And Mother said this was from her perspective when they were sitting there in the kitchen. Okay, so I was, I ball in the twin ball. West was my ball and me and Ray just sat in the corner. So Ray, the quiet ones, you have to watch those quiet ones. Ray was the one that called up and asked me out and so I did. So we went on a snow machine. All right, thank you guys. It was a quick introduction. So we have plenty of time left and I have questions in my mind but I'm sure all of you from these quick introductions that we just did have some questions also. So I would encourage people a good time now to ask. You want to just shout them out or raise your hand if you feel lucky. Yes, Ted. Yeah. Well, Teresa, what school did you go to? Did you go to the what? In Brookfield, yes. Down here? Yeah, the new one over there. Okay, was the other school up on the schoolhouse over there? No. My dad was there. Okay. And second question that all of you that went to school in Brookfield, did you come here for graduation? Yeah. No. No? Yeah. Is there a microphone on the post if you can answer an answer? No, because the town hall wasn't really functioning right then. So, and it was owned by a single person. And so we had our sixth grade graduation right here at Brookfield School right in the Canadian. We did our little dance and everything and our little speeches and our little marching in and marching back out and that was about it. Then it was a little scary when we went to Randolph because we'd never been in a big school like this before and then having to transition from one class to the other and we got like three minutes to get from one class to the other and it's like, how am I going to get from this end of the school to that end? So, in three minutes, who are they kidding me? So we, so last year I went to school and graduated there and I went through the vocational program like a lot of kids did back then to the technicals classes and but it didn't really melt too much as I ended back up on the farm so. I did graduate here on the stage of the old town hall. I had gone to the Brookfield Center School for four years. When I went to the first grade it was one through eight and the next year they divided and they had one through four stay at the Brookfield Center School and from four to eight, from five to eight the kids came to the Pond Village School so we went to school and the school house out by the pond. Which was very nice. The pond was there, it was a temptation. But our graduation was here and that was the first time that we met some of the people who were from West Street with us at the West Street School. It wasn't you. And I think probably there were people from East Brookfield too that we had never met before really except for being four-hitch. So it was kind of a close community and it was not until I was an adult that I ever got what would reach for with Brookfield. Which it seemed like it was a foreign country over there because it was so far away. The town hall was used for graduation but at that time it was also used for square dances. And square dances were really a lot of fun here. They would have benches along the wall. They had a loaded band and they had a square dance collar. And one of my favorite partners in the square dancing was Wendell's brother Carl. And I also had this great dancer, Frank Vigia from East Randall. His father was a middle player here so he would come and he danced and we danced. Then we had a good time. So the question was about graduating here. Yes, I graduated here in the Gulf in eighth grade here in the town hall. This was used every Saturday night for round and square dances. Oh, what a great time we had. Yes, sir, well, that's the, the young people don't know what it's like to go out and dance and just have a good time. Now they can't do that anymore. I went to school west street and had to walk. I grew up on a dairy farm which I didn't get to tell all this before. Yeah, you're right, pour it out. I don't know what to speak down to. I got to do that. Went to school, I had to change my clothes and put on my work clothes. My school clothes were usually framers and I was not allowed to wear jeans to school. I had balls in them. But now they buy me a ball of jeans. Change, change, change. And they cost too much. I mean, I wore my app to get those holes. I helped feed the calves, had to help hay and where did I learn how to draw it in the hayfield? Standard ship on sale. I usually was very, very nervous because when they said stop, they meant stop then. So you got to push the clutch and push the brake and then when you had to go, don't let it go backwards because there's an old man in there and it doesn't hang a ball off if you do fast with that. And then when they had to use to pick up the hay not before they nailed it. My father had this thing called the tooth that he had on a tractor that would go out and get under the hay, piles of hay that was piled up and lifted up and take it into the barn where they had to pitch for it over into the haymills which I helped do that too. How many cows were on the barn? Do you remember? 40, 50 probably. So it was big barn? Yeah, it was large. Yes, he did. And he bought a lot of land. When the neighbors were ready to move off from farming by the neighbors' land he owned the hours to one new door and then the one next door and then Fred Lackley who all turned on tools to count he bought his farm and then there was another one about a mile down the road that went up for sale and he bought that one. My mother was very mad at that. She did not need to have more land until she went down there that was on the home and dry and she saw the view from down there. Then she got over it. So did you have similar experiences like Lauria and Sarah joining the barn like it wasn't really like welcome? I had to go to the barn. I had to help keep the calves that didn't know how to drink out of the bucket and you've got to watch out because you might get some alcohol over you. And then they invented the pan with a nipple on it so that was a little easier. We had chicken and we had to gather the eggs and we had to weigh every one of those eggs and pass them into crates and we had a truck come from Boston to pick them up and Hans didn't like us going in to pick up our eggs. This is what we had to weigh the eggs on. This is what I brought because when I was six or seven and my mother had chickens they was filming. This was what my job was is to put the eggs here and something happened up there and somebody knew what this all meant but I didn't. It does have a small, maybe a small minimal part. So were some of the eggs rejected like you kept for yourselves and the rest went to the market? This has numbers on it that goes from 18 to 30. So what did that mean? But it was quite exciting when you were 16 years old. Wow, we had to clean it. Yeah. They'd come and clean them all up good. No, I'm not a very broken seal. But they get saved. They weren't cracked too bad. We were just like Pat said that we had all our beef, our meat and we had chickens. We had eggs, so we had math. My mother baked bread every Saturday to feed five kids. My grandfather lived with us and we had one or two higher men too. Our table in the kitchen was a long table with benches on both sides. So when we got set down we didn't get out. So how did you meet your husband? How did I meet my husband? My brother knew my husband. He brought him home one day and said Derek doesn't have any place to stay right now. Would he stay here? My mother said sure. So that's how I met him. 16 years old. And then we'd come to the dance and my brother would drive and we'd get home. My husband... We'll open the back up. We had a eighth grade graduation up here and like the other set then we met the kids that were from Pond. No, not Pond Village. They came down to the North Branch but the kids from West Street and the kids from West Brookfield we also went to the legislature when I was in seventh grade and we saw them at that time. But often that wouldn't have any contact with the kids from the other parts of town. So I think it's a really nice thing that they built the central schools so at least the kids in Brookfield know the other kids from Brookfield before they go down to that huge school in Randolph. We came home with us. We did our chores. I went to the barn. I fed the cows. I got the cows in. I ran the cows. I gave them hay. I couldn't do it now. But I gave them. I cleaned the gutters. I put down fresh banning. Because I was much younger than my siblings, I was left. They moved on pretty much. So I do whatever. I never melt. I don't think I ever melt. But I did every dance. And I met my husband at UDM. My house was, you had breakfast? You were not to come back into the house until supper. And so, all summer we didn't go into the house at all. And most of the winter we didn't. After breakfast, if we were home we just spent the time out on the barn. Or picking strawberries or blackberries. Or just laundry. Because we were the only kids in our area. One time, my two younger brothers and I decided to go visit a cousin a mile and a half away. And we were probably 5, 4 and 3. And we put on our older siblings boots. And we wandered off over to Jimmy's house. And Jimmy's mother called our parents and said do you know your children are over here? And of course they didn't. And so we were sent promptly home. But there was there were no other kids around when we were on the hill. They said about the postman I seem to be wondering. They said tell about the postman. One time my older brother and sister decided to climb up on the barn. Our barn was a three story affair. But you could access the roof from ground level. And so they tied me on a boat on the roof and the mailman saw it. And he ran into the house and said do you know what your children are doing? But we had it was a wonderful barn. It was three stories high and it had what they call a high drive barn. We could drive up to the third storage to take the hay off. And we never got as sophisticated as these folks. We never had fields. So everything was done with pitchforks. But you drive up on the third floor and then you could drop the hay in the bay. And we pitched it all the mowing way of the hay which we just put it in position. And we always helped with the hay. And we all learned to drive tractors that way. As soon as we were heavy enough to push the clutch down we were allowed to drive the tractor. So we were probably six, five or six years old when we started driving tractors. But we all had small tractors. And we had, initially we had 17 cows. And when Betty came along we went up to 21. And they took upstairs. No, but that was as big as we got. We were pretty small. And as soon as Betty left, I caught us all the cows. So no more labor. And that was we farmed with some of the 1968. But in 1950 he went to Tumbridge Fair and he bought his first tractor and he came home and immediately sold the horses. And he also bought milk cooler. And he said he never went back to the fair again until that it was 12 or so and wanted to get a dog. Because there was way too expensive to go. We did we did get as far as having a milk cooler what they called the bull tanks. But that was going to be on this apartment. So it went from upstairs to downstairs at that time? In the farms to the old people? We were all upstairs. We had a second floor stable. So even with the milk cooler you were still upstairs? Yeah, the cooler was downstairs. And one of the reasons I think he stopped farming when he did was because the dairy board, whoever it was, decreed you had to have cement floors. And we had to put the floors in a raised barn. There was no way to do a cement floor practically. So he said it was my house. So we have 15 minutes left here and I know we have dominated some things and I want to give people off some of this. I'll just throw it out to all of you. Did you have sledding parties? Did you have ice cream? All the time. All the time. We had one neighbor that had this Travis and it was big. You could all get on. And he had steering wheels. We all get on your feet on the runners and the ones in the back you push it. And we had the hill on our farm to down that hill and down another one. Two hills? Three hills. Three hills to go down and then up which is the interstate went through so that it was there anymore. It was such fun. How did you get back up? Pulling the Travis. Everybody pulled. Long walk. Very nice. Long walk. They used to close off Bannerstair Hill East Hill a couple of times in the winter and then we got a sliding party there with the church group. And so we could slide up and walk up and just slide down and round. It was before they put that last curve in so you came across straight across the bridge. We had those sliding parties. Quick ones, you know. That was a really good drive. Do you have sleigh rides or no sleigh then? That's when you put the slide on the road. Yes. We had I had eight brothers and sisters and we had an eight-seater Travis and right outside our driveway was a long hill. That was a great slide. One of the hill was a road. A travel road. And so one of the kids somebody could stick down at the bottom and tell us when the road was clear. Well, I had five brothers and they put me in the front of the Travis. Needless to say. So I was just glad to be good. So of course I sat there and steered it until you get down at the bottom of the corner and I couldn't make the corner and so down across we were going to the cover rush in the woods and I came out with a lot of scratching and lots of many hats but then they were good fun and I couldn't say no. We also had a pond that froze over that we went skating on and another thing we had I was a French Canadian my father had many brothers and sisters and they all lived in Berry and there were three of them in Berry and each family had seven and eight kids. Well, it was a tradition for Sunday night they would all come to our farm with their musical instruments a fiddle and a accordion and guitar and among those among us there were 24 cousins all the same ages and we had a kitchen junker those kids would go out and play hide and seek until it got dark and then the music would start and we'd all go to the house and sit around and listen to music and dance. Those were great great memories. To that they'd all still do. You were talking about sliding I got some fond memories of my father sliding with us anytime he ever went sliding with us something always happened so one day he took the runner's sled and you know we've been sliding pretty good on the crux well my father got on it the runner's went through and he kept going and he was just gone and then another this was really not nice but it's a fun memory of my mother we used to have the saucers and you'd sit across like it and you'd go flying down through and again mother went over but she didn't lose she hung right onto the saucer and her head went in and here she was you know the saucer and she upside down I can still picture her we used to have a clown pond but I'm still there now and grandpa we weren't kind of spoiled grandpa used to shovel out off for us to go skating and then have a little pill too if you wanted to get your saucer to sled and go flying across the pond somebody mentioned 4-H over here and we had a lot of sliding parties with 4-H I remember going to Isley's down here that's where Jeremy is now we'd get way up in the corner and down to go and then had to walk back up but it was so much fun going down and she did walk back up and then when he got our kids used to slide down my neighbor's driveway Chris and George blacks they had a lot of fun on that they got to go on pretty fast going down there sometimes and were you guys on 4-H? yeah yeah that was East Brook Hill 4-H yeah Mr. Hill started right Steve Allen's mother yeah you guys were in 4-H Mrs. Gage taught us knitting and Florence Montgomery taught us cooking yeah 4-H is another member of the pond remember I had a little 4-H club of Pat and we always map over in Drysdale's red barn and I joined when I was I don't know 9 or 10 I'm still at the foundation of an Orange County ice cream building coming up at Tumwich Bear I'll be there and I still teach the kids sewing there was another thing I just flashed it in my mind now go again is there some other questions out there? yes just for information the end of Brookfield was the one of the longest running continuously running clubs in the state yeah there was so was there was there just East Brookfield one and then there was like a West Brookfield one was there several obviously probably in the state or in the town because there were a lot of East Brookfield kids when I was yeah Mrs. Wakefield Mrs. Wakefield did it over at West Brookfield right there we had one on West Creek I know my mother taught yeah Margaret used to teach cooking in that one I thought of the other it was very important in my life when I was 11 years old Lester Welch he needed some hay he was short of money but he had a really nice little colt named Duke and so father had some hay a little bit of money and I got my first form and Duke was he was the most perfect horse I know everybody says that but Duke was and we had so much fun and we had broke and showed him I got my grandfather on one time took him to the old Colby show in the lead line class and you see people like this but anyways grandpa in the class Floyd Fuller was also in that lead line class and grandpa and he was so tickled that he had feet with Floyd Fuller I don't know what the life of three might have been there but that horse Floyd was quite a horse jocky and that could have been it and my horse was always some place I could go you know from mad at folks or mad at the world and Duke and I would go for a ride and everything would be all right so Eddie yes yes what Floyd Fuller was really famous for what Floyd was really famous for doing oh Floyd was yeah and oh he could judge an animal I had this really nice horse he wasn't quite as perfect as Duke but he was good but he pulled back meaning he pulled back and sit there until something broke so Floyd came over to Floyd Fuller's he hadn't been there five minutes you weren't brought up quite right for him but you know that he just knew all these things and he was so good with the horses lots of times people now have had him dropped and everything but Floyd would just talk to him and whoever he did it all done and we have the last couple over here but I wonder about the interstate being what group are those does that never happen my husband had fun when the interstate was going through before it got thoroughly study you know the interstate to go to VTC and it's taught all the time of course it wasn't supposed to be up there there was no machines on it no it wasn't Gigi had an exit until he got caught but you know though that was pretty bad they took a lot of the sugar maples at the church home farm today my mother still has sugar in operation she wants all of us to have some trees but I was just I was just a little kid but I remember the interstate coming through my grandfather caught it at the news and tale at the state house but he lost they took 42 acres out of our land and over 1500 sugar maples and my grandfather liked the sugar so it kind of broke his heart I remember just as a little kid you know they threw the blast in at night and we just about ready to sit down for supper they knocked on the door tell us we had to leave we had to leave our supper we had to get in the car we had to drive down the road so they could blast we came back we had a lot of broken windows in the house they had to replace that this went on for several weeks we had to get out and leave the house drive down the road so they could blast we could find all kinds of sharp rocks in our pastures and fields from the blasting it was pretty hard when we hear that blasting going on and it took our water from the house and it took our water from our pastures when they blasted we interrupted our water supplies we had springs for the house and we had springs for the cows so we had no water so the states ended up bringing in water for our cows for over a year as we didn't have water and then they drilled us a well for the house fixed our windows and we still didn't have water for the pasture we passed it down on the other side there on the stone road there was a spring there and that was interrupted so there was no water there so they had to haul water for the cows there for all summer long they guess they could do that so they drilled us a well so we got a well out of it but as I remember when I was a kid at night we'd sneak up on the interstate see what was there we'd walked up and down far as our land was see what they were doing sometimes they'd leave something there and we as kids you know we didn't know we just picked it up and brought our own and my dad said would you get that and I said I'm only left it there who shouldn't be doing that as kids we just thought it was fun but you know when that interstate came through and cars started going 90 miles an hour through there and sometimes we had to get our cows on the interstate so as kids we thought we'd just jump a fence and run a shortcut across the interstate well of course it wasn't many cars but dad knew what we were doing he figured it out let's pass along we have less than five minutes here so we'll try to be wrapped up by 830 it was true because when I was a kid my brother had to go to Burlington for speech therapy and it was a very long day it would take three or four hours to get to Burlington and then it would take three or four hours to get back from Burlington and now when you think about it you can zoom out here to Northfield and say 5 be in Burlington in 45 minutes so it has certainly made that commute a little easier however I hope it's so nice to be so close to Burlington or so close to Boston or so close to Leviton the only advantages we have many hospitals very good hospitals very close to us now so there's three are still involved with fire yeah involved is that well we still have a couple of times I still live on the old fire block I could never hold it one point they were talking about putting the entrance and exits right here in Brookfield so Mary do you have something about the interstate yeah I was going to say without the interstate you all wouldn't be here so we're grateful because we have a vital community and we would not Keith wouldn't be sending his note without the interstate and it's just been as far as the entire community is concerned I think a valuable resource brought the entire state it brought the out of state it brought the deputies in thank god Keith did you have a question that you were there was the main road from the Grand Mall Center to Brookfield it was dirt I used to drive my car and slaved it up from the store and then the next couple of years it started to get paved in the hailstorm because it looked right on the road how muddy it was it was crazy muddy by chance by habits there and sometimes you couldn't get through because the dirt was so heavy so is there any let's say we have we can squeeze in some more questions I'm just curious about how the clothes have changed what most I I must be the oldest one here but we had to we were spurts to school we used to have problems with stockings we could go to the store when we came home we changed out of our school balls and then we could put on slacks our family didn't wear jeans until we were pretty old and because my father didn't think they were appropriate and so we wore pants but they weren't jeans when we were home but for school in fact all the way to UBM I had to wear a skirt and that was just the times I could have wore skirts in high school but by the time I got to UBM 68 didn't happen all the girls were gone but we always had school clothes in others so you took off your school clothes when you got home yeah, any questions? oh, that's yeah, so can I just say one thing? you may this place I've come to Floating Bridge since I was seven years old my mom would bring us, Sue is my cousin and we'd all come up and hang out on Floating Bridge and sit on the edge of the drive and let our butts get wet and the boys went over it was very thrilling and we just love this place it was magical it has been magical my whole life and so I want to thank you all for telling us about your childhood because I love this place it's a beautiful spot but thank you welcome tomorrow this isn't about holding me we can finish well, it keeps recycling like they're talking about the short short to sit down in school right now but remember the hot pants? I remember wearing hot pants one night I got ready to go for a date and my parents went home oh, this is a neat thing, we lived in a big house one side was us and the other side was my grandparent so my parents were gone when I got dressed and I was going out for a ride to the drive-in always with my hot pants on I remember whenever you say goodnight to Grandmother and Grandmother and Grandmother was just you can't do that you can't go out with those on and Grandmother sits there with the Grandmother why can't she alright, let's give a big congratulations for these guys thank you