No. 22095 Harry Adams Hersey, circa 1920
Harry Adams Hersey was born on April 22, 1870, in Dorchester. He entered Tufts University as a freshman in 1899. See short biography at https://dl.tufts.edu/teiviewer/parent/f1881x54h/chapter/H00023
Reminscences by Harry Adams Hersey, 1870-1890
Foreword
Theodore Adams Hersey suggested to his father, Harry Adams Hersey (1870-1950), that he write up reminiscences of early days which might be of interest for his (Theodore’s) son, Burnell Adams Hersey, and other grandchildren (Donna Lee Hersey, Glen Alden Hersey, Nathan Paul Dick), about things they can never experience. These were included in the weekly family letters, starting in October 1945.
I, Helen Hersey Dick, with the help of my niece, Donna Hersey Sandin, edited the original material in 1996. I greatly appreciate Donna’s help in putting the material in its final form.
At this time, I think it proper to dedicate our efforts, not only to the original grandchildren, but to the two subsequent grandchildren, Jeffrey Campbell Dick (now Taft—Dick) and Noreen May Dick (now Redd), and the great—grandchildren: Joanna Ross Hersey, Eleanor Longridge Hersey, Sheila Christina Sandin, Craig Whitehurst Sandin, David Champlin Hersey, Harold Howland Hersey, Jonathan Charles Taft—Dick, Joya Eleanor Taft—Dick and Philip Robert Taft—Dick.
REMINISCENCES — 1870-1890
by Harry Adams Hersey
Table of Contents
Page
#1 – The Days of the Horse and Buggy — October 5, 1945 1
#2 — Horse and Buggy Days (continued) — October 14, 1945 3
#3 — Transportation in the Days of My Youth — October 21, 1945 4
#4 — Streets and Roads — October 28, 1945 8
#5 — Heating Apparatus — November 4, 1945 11
#6 — Stores and Shopping in my Youth — November 11, 1945 13
#7 — Lighting — November 18, 1945 16
#8 — Floors — January 12, 1946 18
#9 — The Boston Fire Department — October 12, 1946 19
October, 1945. REMINISCENCE #1 — THE DAYS OF THE HORSE AND BUGGY
When I was young every retail store of any size had one or more delivery wagons, and some had a large, covered wagon, with which a weekly trip to Boston was made to buy supplies (for grocery stores).
Plumbers and other craftsmen kept a horse, and usually a “democrat wagon.” This was a four—wheeled vehicle with the floor extending enough behind the seat (as well as under it) to admit of light loads of tools etc to be carried. It was the “station wagon” of that day.
Coal was delivered in huge, wooden “carts,” heavy four—wheeled wagons, seldom large enough for more than two tons, drawn by two horses carrying a driver and helper. Lumber was delivered in a long dray (truck—wagon) which had an elevated roller across its width and immediately back of the driver. The lumber rested on this roller, at the front, and was lashed to the wagon at the rear. The load slanted about thirty degrees, so that, when the load was released, the weight of the lumber caused the roller to revolve and let the pile of lumber down with a delightful crash.
Many persons kept a horse (but few of them for pleasure driving) and stables (barns) were frequent in every neighborhood, not quite so many as there are, now, garages, but much more in evidence (to the sense of smell).
The fire engines were drawn by two horses (the engines and hose reels will be described in a later letter). We used to consider the speed of horses drawing an engine to a fire as very fast and thrilling. (It was actually not more than nine miles an hour, a fireman tells me).
These horses, wagons, equipment (harness) gave many figures of speech which are still in use but practically meaningless to the present generation. For instance — if we say a person whiffles, or is a whiffler: that is, is unreliable and changeable, that comes from the whiffle—tree of a vehicle. This was a short bar between the two shafts of the wagon, and at the end. To it were fastened the traces (see explanation following) or tugs by which the horse drew the vehicle. In order to permit him to step forward, moving first one shoulder and then the other, the whiffle—tree was hung on a pivot through the center, and first it would move forward at one end, and then the other. Always moving, but not going anywhere, “whiffling.”
The traces (or tugs) were long, heavy leather straps attached to the horse’s collar (or in a light harness breast plate) to enable him to pull the vehicle. So when we say of somebody who gets mad, and spoils a game, or a conference “he kicks over the traces,” we mean that he has stopped progress just as a horse, who got his leg over one of the traces, stopped the vehicle. When (as in Ebene Holden Bacheller’s famous book) the old
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man says, as he nears his end, “I kept my tugs tight” he was likening himself to a horse who was a steady-puller, not slackening the traces (tugs).
If we, or anyone, complains much of his lot or his work, we say, “his collar chafes.” We do not refer to his linen collar, but to a horse’s heavy collar which, in many cases, chafed through the skin and made a sore shoulder.
The ultimate figure of speech for high speed was “2-40 over the dasher.” In those days the record race track speed was a mile in two minutes and forty seconds. The dasher was the light leather framework in front of the driver to protect his legs. The reins, of course, had to cross the dasher.
When Boston is called the “Hub,” it was a reference to the wheels then in use (and still often to be seen on wagons) which were composed of a round hub in the center from which the long wooden spokes extended to the rim of the wheel (the felloe, encased in a steel tire).
In this automobile age we hardly ever think of the “hub” of the wheels (and in disk wheels there is no hub).
Today we still hear, sometimes, the expression, “he took the bit in his teeth.” The reins were attached to the horse’s mouth by a short steel, or iron round bar which went across the horse’s mouth back of his teeth. One rein was attached to each side. Thus when the rein was pulled the horse was “steered.” Some horses, anxious to get home, or to run away, would in some way get hold of the bit with their teeth, then it became very hard to hold them in (hold them back). So for anyone unruly, we say, “takes the bit in his teeth.”
(Must stop here.) Affectionately, Pa
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October 14, 1945. REMINISCENCE #2 – HORSE AND BUGGY DAYS (continued)
The winter vehicles were the sleigh, single or double, (two seats or one), the sled (a large platform on runners, sometimes with sides making it a box-sled) and the pung. The pung was just like an open wagon body (floor with sides about fourteen inches high), but it was on two sets of runners, the front set turning on a transom-bolt, just as the front wheels of a wagon can be turned, to steer it. Single sleighs were of two kinds. First, with shafts centered as on a wagon. Second, with the shafts to the right of the center. This was called “off-side” hitch. It enabled the driver to see clearly any approaching vehicles. It also enabled the horse to travel in the path made by one horse of a two-horse hitch.
One of the sounds my descendants will never hear is the excruciating shrieking squeak made by wagon wheels (steel tires) on the snow on frosty mornings. The lower the temperature, the higher the pitch, the steel tire being contracted (and also some difference in the arrangement and resistance of the snowflakes). An experienced listener could estimate how low the temperature was by listening to the wagon wheels.
Going back to wagons. The most characteristic was the milk wagon. These wagons were made with the “Concord x” (axle) which had a distinctive and easily recognized rattle or tone of its own.
The tip-cart (dump cart) was exceedingly common. Perhaps some of you recall that I hired one in Foxboro one afternoon. I believe one or more of you rode in it. It was a short wagon body on two wheels. It was so mounted that when a pin was released, in front, the body could be tipped up and dump the load.
Heavy, two-horse coal wagons also had a tipping body. One Dorchester coal dealer was fifty years ahead of his time when he had a coal wagon constructed with a tall threaded post in front, engaging a gear which, when turned by a crank, would cant the wagon at any desired angle to shoot coal out. Most work wagons, dump-carts, coal wagons, were painted blue (Ox-cart blue).
Sleighs had a high curved dasher, but even then an ice ball from the horse’s rear hoof would sometimes fly over it and hit the driver.
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October 21, 1945. REMINISCENCE #3 — TRANSPORTATION IN THE DAYS
OF MY YOUTH
Private transportation was chiefly by buggy (four—wheeled carriage with hood) and carry—all (two or three—seated four—wheeled carriage with top).
Public transportation was by steam railway, horsecars, and hacks. A hack was the height of elegance to us — a heavy solid—top, four-wheeled vehicle, drawn by two horses, and doors somewhat like auto doors today. They had a characteristic, unmistakable “sound” when they were slammed shut — a sort of “finality” flavor to it when a large number of hacks were used at a funeral. (Ma and I, as all “stylish” couples rode to the church in a hack, to be married, and back to the house similarly elevated above the hoi polloi.)
The “importance” of the dear deceased was, in the public eye, measured by the number of hacks at the funeral. But the hundreds of Roman Catholic funerals of South Boston Irish, processions which passed my father’s store daily, had from ten to fifty hacks each, the majority of the occupants being neither relatives of the deceased nor mourners, but people who paid a dollar apiece to get a ride in the country. The trip to the cemetery was at least five miles (each way). The hack was supposed to seat four, comfortably, but the above-mentioned funerals often found six or seven occupants huddled together.
The horse-cars were small, compared to present day trolley cars. They seated only eleven on each side. They were drawn by two horses in summer and four in winter, and by railway mathematics it took four horses twice as long as two to make the trip. In winter the floor of the cars was covered with coarse straw, about six inches in depth, to keep passengers’ feet warm. The two horses were trained to a certain short trotting gait. It took three quarters of an hour from Uphams Corner to Scollay Square. At the foot of each grade was a boy with a tow horse which he would hitch to the front dashboard of the car.
The cars were painted beautifully, each district having a separate color. Our Uphams Corner, Fields Corner, Meeting House Hill cars had a heavenly blue dash board and general color scheme. The Dorchester Avenue cars were red. The Eggleston Square cars were a sort of French gray and highly ornamented. One need not wait till the signs were visible for he could spot his car as far as he could see it by its distinctive color. There was no vestibule. The driver had to dress heavily and be exposed to all sorts of weather and temperature.
The cars would stop anywhere to receive or discharge passengers. There was a gong over the platform at each end of the car. A flat strap ran through the car just above the passengers’ heads. To signal the driver, one had to pull the cord backward. An untrained person in the center of the car would pull the strap straight down and ring both bells. One day an ancient Irish woman did that and the conductor bellowed, “What did yer ring
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the bell at both ends of the car for?” To which she made instant reply, “Because I wanted both ends of the car to stop.”
The roadbed was of very light construction – about 4 x 4 joists, as I recall it, laid end to end and parallel, and separated and kept so at intervals by light iron crossrods. The rails were of light iron or steel called strap rails. They were so light that the rails for curves could be bent to the right curvature by inserting them in a very heavy horizontal long vise. A heavy jackscrew device with a blunt, oval end about the size of the crown of a derby hat, pushed against the center or some other section of the rail and bent it when the screw was turned with handbars.
The flange on the car wheels held them to the rails, but so shallow was the rail edge that when any obstacle was in the way the horses could be made to pull the car off the track and around the obstruction. The only brake was a crank, operated by hand, which turned an iron post upon which a chain operating the brakes was wound. This meant much hard work for the driver, especially when the car was crowded.
The open cars, in summer, consisted of a platform which supported about eight bench-like high-backed seats (about like ordinary park benches). Each seat held five persons. If the one at the end would not move over to let a new passenger on, he was called “end-seat hog.” A running board extended the full length of the car on each side and passengers were allowed to stand on it, on BOTH sides. At rush hour, people would literally hang off it and almost brush against passengers on the car on a parallel track. The cars were lighted by kerosene lamps. (So were the railway cars.)
The railway coaches had no vestibules. They were heated by stoves and lighted by kerosene lamps. What an invitation for the fire-fiend to do his worst in case of accident. There were no water tanks for drinking water, even on long distance trains, but from time to time, a boy would pass through the cars with a sort of tin teakettle and a tin cup and the passengers could, in turn, drink from this common cup. All this was before boards of health knew anything about present principles.
Speaking of vehicles, I forgot to say there were no taxi-cabs, but somewhere along my later boyhood or early youth the Hansom cab came in. This was a two-wheeled (I am sure) vehicle, with a closed top, and with the driver’s seat high in the air, at the back of the high top, over which the reins were carried through brass rings. The driver was thus far removed from the horse and inaccessible to the passenger, I believe.
There were air brakes on railway trains but often the brakeman had to operate hand brakes.
One could get to Boston quickly by train. I could be in the South Station (the old NY and NE RR station which preceded it) in ten minutes after leaving my house. It was but 2.8 miles from Dudley St to So Station and it took only seven minutes to travel it. I
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could walk to the station in three minutes. That speed cannot be equaled today in that particular location. Electric cars came after the horse-cars and the first line, as I recall it, operated on an underground trolley wire with which contact was made through a central slot between rails. The overhead trolley wire and trolley came later and caused Oliver Wendell Holmes to write the poem, “The Broomstick Train.” [Note added by Helen Hersey Dick. The poem tells about witches who, with their broomsticks and cats, are forced to pull a train. The last few lines are:
As for the hag, you can’t see her
But hark! you can hear her black cat’s purr.
And now and then, as a car goes by,
You may catch a glimpse from her wicked eye.
Often you’ve looked on a rushing train,
But just what moved it was not so plain.
It couldn’t be those wires above,
For they could neither pull nor shove;
Where was the motor that made it go
You couldn’t guess, but now you know.
Remember my rhymes when you ride again On the rattling rail by the broomstick train!]
The cars began to make only stated stops. Their speed was such that passengers could not board them while in motion, as they could the horsecars, or leave them while in motion. The open cars gave way to the cars with openings, and the running board disappeared forever.
All this now seems “long ago and far away.” The world moved at a slower pace. We knew most of the passengers on the horsecars within a mile or two of home, particularly those who rode to business daily. There was sociability and fellowship en route.
Long before the cash register, the conductor carried a heavy punch with a bell in it. He was required to punch the car tickets and register the cash. The bell rang loudly each time he pushed the lever. That was the day when the poem was popular: “Punch, punch, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passpengair.” Car tickets were sold in strips (predecessors of the modern token). I believe it was a five cent fare with an eight-cent charge for a transfer to a continuing line.
The horsecars ran on Tremont and Washington Streets. At rush hours there would be a solid line of horsecars from Scollay Square, up Tremont and onto Boylston Sts as far as Charles or Arlington Streets. It would take as long to travel the first half-mile as the remaining two miles. The fact that there were no one-way streets made heavy and tangled traffic jams, through which mounted police tried to make their way. Profanity
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in every modern language could be heard on such occasions as the drivers swore at each other, their horses, the police and the universe in general.
Well, this is quite enough. But I wished to finish up this section so that I may begin one on “roads and streets” next week. At the end of this long day (4:30 A M to 11:30 P M I am fresh. Hoping you are the same,
Affectionately, Pa
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October 28, 1945. REMINISCENCE #4 – STREETS AND ROADS 1870 – 1890 (circa)
In the heart of Boston the streets were paved with granite blocks from Quincy, except a few of the older streets, of which, I believe, Batterymarch St was one. These were paved with cobblestones. They were the thick, flat, oval stones of which one finds many off the Rockport and other ledges. These were set on edge in gravel. Of course, the top edge protruded from the ground an inch or more, leaving spaces between the stones. They were terrible to ride over and they have been painful for horses’ feet. The rattle of steel-tired wheels over those stones was deafening when there was heavy traffic, as there was in that district. There were some cobblestones, I am quite sure, as recently as 15 years ago (i.e., 1930).
In a very few places there were asphalt pavements. But everything in those days was considered from the horse’s point of view, and the solid, unyielding surface was deemed hard on the feet of horses.
In all the suburbs, within two or three miles of the State House (including our Dorchester district) the streets were of solid gravel, gradually evolving to true Macadam. True Macadam is constructed by placing heavy stones (probably 20 pounds average) on end, close together. (* Honorable MA inserted, “Not in Connecticut. Here three layers of trap rock crushed by steam power were used. First coarse – fine – finer.”) A laborer wields a small-headed, very long, flexible-handle hammer. With this he strikes each stone repeatedly till the vibration imparted by the flexible handle cause the stone to crack. Each stone is broken into several small pieces. Then a gravel surface is rolled in. (See rolling, later.)
This made a durable and fairly-drainable road. It was “crowned” by having the center considerably higher than the sides. (Some Danbury CT tarred streets unwisely retain the crown.) A man watching Pat crack stone for Macadam base said, when at last the stone cracked, “Well, Pat, it was the last blow that did it.” To which Pat replied, “Yer wrong, Sir: It was the first blow, and the last blow, and every blow bechune.” (NB “between” ?) That is the way great reforms come.
The gutters were paved with blocks, or more often, cobblestones. No streets were oiled or dust-proofed with calcium chloride. When the rains descended and the floods came, there was deep mud. The surface wore rapidly, but smoothly (not “washboarded” as by automobiles). Every week or two a gang of Irish laborers would come along and hoe the loose surface into the gutters. It was heavily loaded with pulverized horse-droppings. This was carted to a city dump – sometimes presented to influential VOTERS for their gardens. In early fall and late spring (mud-time in the country), the road surfaces would be penetrated an inch or more by frost and would then thaw into an indescribably sticky slime. It was torture to ride a bicycle during several fall and spring weeks, on this account. And in early morn, before the thawing, the frozen ridges made cycling
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osteopathic. At any time of year it was very disagreeable to ride a bicycle within a day or two after a heavy rain, especially in the fall and spring when drying was slow.
In March, when it was too cold to water the streets, huge, thick clouds of red—dust—and horse—droppings (pulverized) would rise to a height of five to ten feet and sometimes be as thick as fog. How nice for long skirts, open windows, and in general! When the watering carts could be used, they wet the surface (and wore it away) several times a day on hot days. The “cart” was a wooden, round, long tank, holding perhaps 200 gallons. There was a curved and perforated platform behind, about 15 inches from the ground. From it shot a curved spray of perhaps 100 curved streams, each 1/4 inch in diameter, or thereabouts. These struck the surface forcibly.
The surface of the streets was renewed every few months as follows: First a gang of Irishmen, with pickaxes, loosened the gravel. Then new gravel was added. A two—horse iron roller was used. It was not a smooth roller but a grooved one, made by successive iron rings, about 3 inches wide and two inches apart. After these (which rattled delightfully to boys but distressingly to adults) there followed the smooth stone roller, a cylinder perhaps 4 feet in diameter and seven feet long. It required four horses, I believe.
Somewhat later (perhaps 1880-85) a steam roller was used. It weighed 18 tons. It consisted of a front iron roller about four feet in diameter and seven feet long, and a rear roller, perhaps six feet in diameter and seven feet long. Between the rollers was a tall, four—foot in diameter, tubular steam boiler with tall smokestack. It was noisy and smokey and it “scarred hosses.” We boys used to wish it would get out of control on steep hills. I believe it was preceded, where traffic was frequent, by a man with a red flag.
The width of most suburban streets rarely exceeded that of Washington St at Boylston. Double car tracks occupied nearly the whole surface. In winter this resulted in high banks of snow, when the tracks were plowed. But these were quickly leveled to sleighing depth. The R R Co sent high box sleds, four horses each, and gangs of young Irishmen, with shovels, covering the entire city in an incredibly short time.
In the suburbs the remaining snow remained recognizable as such, but in the city the snow was soon reduced to a brown powder which resembled brown sugar. As a child I would not believe it was “cold” till I took some in my spotless hands (I was from
Missouri!).
I forget what the present Massachusetts Ave was named in Cambridge between Harvard Bridge (then non—existent) and Harvard Square. Later, when West Chester Park and East Chester Park, now Mass Ave West and East of Washington, were extended to Edward Everett Square, near Uphams Corner, the entire thoroughfare was renamed Massachusetts Ave.
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Beyond Harvard Square, in the early days, it was “North Ave.” A mile beyond Harvard was Porter’s Station (where the Cambridge R R Station still is located). It took its name from the famed Porter House, where Porter House steak originated. It was a narrow street, possibly twenty feet, as far as Arlington Heights.
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(Possibly November 4, 1945). REMINISCENCE #5 – HEATNG APPARUTUS, 1870 ff
I knew little of anything other than direct heating from stove or furnace. I know that public buildings, such as school houses, had steam heat, for our school house had radiators in the halls, with the then universal simple stopcock valve. We boys used to open the valves to hear the steam hiss and to annoy old Connors, the janitor.
But practically all the families I knew and of our class, had no furnace but just one or all of three common types of stove. We had a cylindrical drum parlor stove, which burned anthracite, a conventional kitchen range, almost the same as the ones now widely in use, and, in our bedroom, an “air-tight.”
Nothing ever made equaled that type of stove for instantaneous and red-hot heat. It was a simple, oval drum of thin sheet iron, with no grate, but with an iron top in which was set a removable cover, to admit wood being fed from the top. A bundle of newspapers would heat that drum red-hot within five minutes and the radiation from that drum was powerful. I believe the dimensions were about thirty inches in height and probably twenty-eight the long way of the oval and about fifteen crosswise. In northern Maine, when we were in Aroostook, I found an ingenious adaptation of such a stove so that it heated two rooms, one above the other. The first floor stove was the real thing. The second floor stove was a dummy, which looked just like the real stove. But it was full of “baffle” surfaces, and was really an “interlude” in the high chimney. All the smoke, gasses, and heat which ordinarily would have gone through the chimney were arrested by that dummy and robbed of the heat, which was strong enough to take off the chill of the bedroom.
Our kitchen range was a dandy. We had Franklin coal and I have never seen its equal since. Mother would keep the fire overnight. In the morning she would simply open the draughts and within three minutes that fire would ROAR like a wood fire.
Undoubtedly a number of families had a Franklin Stove. Do you remember the one in my study in Canton? This was Ben Franklin’s invention, a portable cast-iron fireplace, looking like an air-tight stove with one side cut out to admit an open grate. It was a very efficient heater. My first piano store proprietor, at 465 Washington, sixty-six years ago, had such a stove and he burned cannel coal. That is “channel” coal from under the English Channel, a sort of cross between anthracite and soft, and it came in small slabs. It was used under the boilers of fire-engines. It gave a quick response to draft and a fine heat.
I do not know when modern, “fancy” enameled stoves came in. Until quite late in my youth, I am sure, no one was ever inventive, brave, or unorthodox enough to make anything but a cylindrical or oval sheet-iron drum stove for the “parlor” and a regulation range for the kitchen. Nowadays one cannot tell which is the radio, the piano, or stove
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when he enters a modem apartment where the stove is usually an enameled (maroon) thing.
Our stoves had to be BLACKED. What a rub was there, my countrymen. No modern paste blacking (almost worthless because they burn rusty and dull quickly). Rising sun CAKE was the thing. To do a good job the covers of the range were removed, the stove left slightly warm, the polish mixed with vinegar and plentifully applied and then RUBBED hard with a polishing brush. THAT gave a brilliant and lasting polish but filled the room with an irritating haze and made the blondes brunettes, and the brunettes negroid, for a season thereafter.
(Father got five tons of the Franklin coal, brought three miles by two horses and two men, and carried twenty feet to the bin for FIVE dollars a ton. Must have taken the “team” the whole afternoon to deliver and house the coal and return to the coal yard. Those men probably worked for $9. a week and the horses “keep” cost $1.50, or $6. at a livery stable, which fee included care of harness and wagons and cleaning animals and gear. THEM DAYS IS GONE FOREVER.)
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November 11,1945. REMINISCENCE #6 – STORES AND SHOPPING IN MY
YOUTH (circa 1870-85)
My knowledge of the Boston department stores, in my childhood, is meager. I am sure that they kept long hours (probably 8 A M – 6 P M) and that they had no half-holidays, and that they may have kept open Saturday nights. I distinctly recall that almost all Christmas shopping was done LATE and that much public VOCAL sympathy was expressed for the department store clerks who had to work in a madhouse from 8 A M to 10 P M or later, in the week before Christmas. “T’was the night before Christmas and all through the store was a crowd pushing hard midst a mighty uproar.” No store had a Santa Claus, I am sure. Store windows were not lighted nights, except Christmas week. Elevators were slow little cabs operated by water, and a device which demanded that the operator keep pulling down on a rope, to open the valve, and up on the rope to close it. There were not express or limited elevators, and no “batteries” of elevators, and no superintendent of elevators, and no escalators. I do not know whether Boston stores put shutters on their windows (see later description of rural stores).
Money received over the counter was, in my earlier years, carried to the office by cash girls (before days of child-labor restrictions, and general high school attendance, many of the girls were very young). The clerk would scream, “CASH! CASH!” and a nimble sprite would run pell-mell, get the money, run to the office and return. It was bedlam, with perhaps forty clerks all crying “CASH” all day. Later the cash carrier – (I had in very early childhood dreamed of a wire across the parlor close to the ceiling, with a little carriage running back and forth, a little basket or cylinder thing. Well, that was a foregleam of the cash carrier, of which the first ones were just that sort of device) ¬propelled up a slightly slanting wire to the office by a mighty spring at the start. It returned by gravity. Soon the pneumatic tubes were introduced. Then the stores looked as if piped for oil wells. Hung pipes (at least two and a half-inches) arched from each counter and conveyed a cylinder by compressed air to the office and back. Then came the almost noiseless electrically operated belt device, with little box-carriers running between parallel rails. The noise, confusion, delay of the early years had disappeared. There was comparatively little display of goods on open counters. The prevailing theory was that people knew what they wanted, and would ask for it. All devices for inducing them to see, want and purchase things they had no intention of getting when they entered the store, were largely non-existent.
The piano stores simply ran little half-inch ads in the daily papers and waited for the customers to come. No high-pressure visiting the patronage house, taking pianos out on trial, etc. etc. in those days. Only teachers and tuners acted as voluntary agents, and they received usually ten per cent commission, a tidy sum on a $400. piano or more (or less).
The great stores were lighted by gas. At first the simple open burner with lava top. That was a small dome made of volcanic lava and with a very narrow one-fourth inch slit. This flattened the flow of gas and made it, when ignited, spread out fan-shaped exactly
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like a flat—wick lamp. The gas pressure had a tendency to blow the flame too hard. It made a very dark gaseous center with dust accumulating. The flames were symmetrical but had forked or pointed ends. They flickered continually from pressure from within and air currents from without. They illuminated (?) only relatively small areas. (Not light but only darkness visible.)
The Welsbach mantle was undoubtedly the greatest single improvement in illumination ever made. By putting a short, cone—shaped (at top) cylindrical, feather—weight, white mantle (made of asbestos possibly) over the gas burner, and enclosing it in a small glass chimney, a light of great brilliancy was obtained. I used these in my college days. (The same mantle device is still used on gasoline lamps).
The theaters were also lighted by gas, almost smothered in huge, ornate, glittering cut or pressed—glass chandeliers (see a fine one, on a smaller scale, in the Gloucester Massachusetts Universalist Church.)
In Dorchester Massachusetts and similar suburbs, the stores were open 8 — 6, except certain stores. Grocery stores, for instance, were open 6 A M to 7 P M and Saturdays till 9 or later. There were no “refrigerators” in those days, but there were “ice—chests.” Almost no one used them except in July and August. Milk was not pasteurized nor was it as clean as nowadays, and it soured quickly. Many families sent to the grocery stores every morning, early, for milk and similarly sent for milk for supper. The cash system was a drawer under the counter with four “finger—tip” levers underneath. These were set in combinations known only to the clerks and proprietors. Every time the drawer was opened, it rang a fairly loud bell.
Every store had heavy wooden shutters. These had to be put up outside the large windows nightly and fastened by a heavy strap—iron bar. Once they were up (ostensibly to keep burglars out), it made a perfect shield for burglars who got in and they could move about freely with lights as long as they wished, without a chance of the policeman on his beat seeing them.
The store doors (before the days of Yale and other flat—key locks) were locked with locks about four times the size of house—door locks and these were turned by a brass or iron key about five inches long and one—quarter or less in diameter. They weighed about four to six ounces each. The American idea was the big lock and the big key of impressive strength.
Window dressing, in our vicinity, was a rare occurrence. About three times a year, the standing exhibit would be changed.
There were very few packaged goods or cereals — H 0 (“Homby’s Oats”), “Wheat
Farina”, “Fould’s Wheat Germ Meal.” Few soap powders — “Soapine.” “Pyles’ Pearline.”
Flour came in barrels and we put it up in paper bags. Kerosene came in barrels. We
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pumped it into a tank, then pumped it out in small lots. Milk came in eight and one-quarter quart cans. We sold it from a tin measure, cleaned with sal soda once a month or so. Oatmeal, cracked and whole, was chiefly in bulk. Coffee in bulk, ground by hand. Molasses NEVER in cans or bottles, always in huge hogsheads, in the back room. So hot in summer that the molasses would sometimes “work.” So cold in winter that it took a LONG time to draw a gallon. When the hogshead was empty we knocked in one end and found 25 to 40 pounds of sugar, about like brown sugar. We sold it to the confectioner. No nice little boxes of codfish. The fish came flat and unwrapped, shaped like a tapered kite, and very thoroughly salted. One could tear out strips. Very few, if any, packaged crackers. Once a week Kennedys’ (forerunner of Nabisco) agent would come and examine our 5-lb glass front tin cans of crackers, and would replenish the stock. There were soda crackers, somewhat like the Uneeda’s. Boston crackers came in chestnut half barrels. They were round, three-fourths to an inch thick, about two inches in diameter, two superimposed hemispheres, easily separated, style. The same size and style were Bent’s water crackers, hard as plaster, baked over a fierce heat from fagots. Still so baked in Milton, and fagots still gathered where they have been grown for more than a century. No other heat is “fast enough.” (Hard tack crackers for chowders.)
No particular attempt at display. NEVER any goods on sidewalk, steps or other space beyond counter. Everything on shelves behind the counter. No attempt to “induce” trade.
Supposedly every customer knew what she wanted and “only this and nothing more.”
No telephone. The grocerymen went out on a wagon all the morning and took orders (but delivered the eggs, too fragile to pack up with other groceries). Returned at noon. In early afternoon the orders were put up and the delivery man took them out. Two men, two horses, two round trips, a costly method (but believe it or not, horses were boarded, harness cared for, wagons washed for $6. a week).
Merchants were SLAVES to the public. No grocer ever dreamed that HE could close his store half a day, any day in the week. The fact that, with phone and automobile, the buying of groceries can be done in a shorter time, helped shorten the hours open.
Well, I MUST stop. (Signed) PA
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November 18, 1945. REMINISCENCE #7 – LIGHTING
Our home was lighted – as were most – by kerosene lamps. At first they were the simple flat-wick type, which gave a fan-shaped flame from one to two inches wide and perhaps nearly as high, if the wicks were properly trimmed. These lamps had to be trimmed, and the chimneys (usually) cleaned daily and one or more of them refilled. It was “smelly” work and the “fragrance” pervaded the room. Later on the central draft lamp, with a round wick, in a circular casing with a central hole perhaps one and a half or more in diameter. These lamps gave the same yellow flame as others but with a very strong draft and a brilliant (for the sort) light and an intense heat. Imagine how they added to the discomfort in summer.
Edison’s carbon incandescent lamp came on the scene in my early youth. It seemed a vast improvement but was a pale thing in contrast to the present incandescent.
The street lights were, at first, kerosene lamps set in the center bottom of a large “lantern” on top of the “lamp-post” (about nine feet tall). The “lantern” was a glass box about the size and shape of a square-tapering waste basket (like Ma’s wooden one). The lamplighter carried a short ladder by which to ascend high enough to light each lamp.
When gas took the place of kerosene, the lamplighter carried a forked wrench on the end of a pole, or some device like that, with which to turn the flame off or on. Robert Louis Stevenson’s fine little poem about Leary, the lamplighter, is suitable to be read at this point.
When electric lighting for streets came in it was by the arc light. On top of a pole perhaps 14 – 20 feet in height, was a globe probably ten inches in diameter. In the center were two sticks of carbon, each about one-half inch in diameter and several inches in length. These were pointed, like a pencil, and the points were near together so that an intense electric spark leaped the gap and gave the light. It flickered and “dimmed” frequently by imperfect adjustment of the carbons, or defective places in them. The light seemed to spread on the ground in sort of light-to-dark circles. The carbons frequently made considerable noise, spluttering etc. Compared with modern lighting the arc light was rather poor. That we had it at all was due to Mr Brush doing the impossible. The greatest electrical experts said that the arc light would never be commercially possible because only seven could be operated on one circuit. Thereupon, Mr Brush constructed a circuit of thirty-seven, and proved the experts wrong.
You are familiar, of course, with the later lighting devices and improvements and the rapid replacement of the incandescent by the fluorescent lamps. What NEXT? Something, surely, for science and invention have no termini.
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In this connection I might mention matches. In my boyhood there were sulphur and brimstone matches which came in wooden “cards” about three inches wide. These were in fact fine-toothed wooden combs, each tooth having a friction head. Each match had to be detached from the continuous wooden base by pulling it sidewise. Sometimes there were two matches stuck together and they both lighted and set fire to the rest, when pulled apart. A case where two heads were not better than one. These matches “smelled to heaven,” but strongly of the other place. We kept them in a tin box about the size of a cereal package. When the box was opened the fumes began to rise. The single matches, somewhat like those we have today, were called “parlor matches” and were used only by the wealthy or aristocrats. I believe they were quite expensive (the common matches which I described were more or less square, not round). In my chapter on stores I believe I described the dull, flickering lava-tip gas flame, then the universal fixture for stores. Next chapter, probably will be on heating apparatus. (NB See REMINISCENCE #5)
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January 12, 1946. REMINISCENCE #8 – FLOORS
In the “Christmas Carol” (by Charles Dickens), the preparation of Old Fezziwig’s warehouse for the annual Christmas party contains the phrase, “the floor was watered.” No, children, this does not refer to the presence of infant grandchildren!
Floors, in my childhood and youth, were about 99% soft wood. I presume that well-to-do and wealthy families may have had hardwood floors, but the only hardwood we knew was hard pine for the kitchen floors, in some cases. It was a broad-grained, dark brownish-yellow wood, and was laid edge to edge, without matching, with visible nails.
It looked well when dressed with kerosene but that gave it halitosis.
The rest of the house floors downstairs were covered with stout carpet, according to financial status (thin or heavy Brussel1s). This was laid over newspapers and tacked down around the edges.
Upstairs, usually we had straw matting (not Japanese but coarser). This never lost its summer odor and was “redolent” of a smothery atmosphere in dog days. It came in 3 foot breadths and had to have many tacks. Kitchen oilcloth, thin and unsubstantial, compared to modern linoleum.
In stores and warehouses the tendency of the soft wood floors was to get heavily “pock¬marked,” and rough. All the little cavities retained dirt. This was what made “watering” necessary. Otherwise a stifling dust arose. In very old buildings, the floors were exceedingly dry and fibrous and splintery.
Sweeping the carpet, before the days of dust-layers, was a dusty performance. The young folk were banished, the doors locked, the windows opened wide and the carpet stoutly swept with a heavy broom. This filled the air with dust. Once a year the carpets were removed. Underneath would be a layer of dust finer than the finest bolted flour.
Cellar floors were almost always plain, damp dirt. Cement had not come into general use.
A cartoon I saw, some years ago, would be wholly unintelligible today. A hostess, short of help, called Mike, the gardener, to sweep the parlor floor. The picture shows Mike sprinkling the carpet with a large watering-pot, the technique he used on the gravel driveway. Thus do figures-of-speech, customs and vocabularies, of one age fade out.
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October 12, 1946 Reminiscence #9 – The Fire Department as of 1870 in Boston.
I almost “remember” writing on this topic earlier, yet it is not listed in my memorandum.
If it is a “repeat” you need not read it. Perhaps some local fire department men might be interested.)
My memory is fairly good back to the situation in 1875. We lived about one-fourth mile from Engine 21 B F D. That was, and still is, on Boston St, now Columbia Road, just a short distance from the junction with Dudley Street (toot-a-la strit in Italian). All the engines in Boston were “steam-fire-engines,” a large cylindrical, vertical boiler on four large steel-tired wheels. I am quite sure that Engine 21’s company was entirely of permanent members and that all suburban districts of Boston, So Boston, Roxbury, Charlestown, East Boston, Dorchester, were the same.
The engines were drawn by two very heavy and powerful horses. We thought their speed terrific, but a modern fire chief says that it did not exceed nine miles an hour on a level, gravel road.
Engine 21 had but few calls in a year, in those days. We children were always hoping to hear Box 314, on our engine house, but almost NEVER had that hope realized.
When I was about five years old, there was a real conflagration almost next to the engine house – Sumner’s dairy barn. He had a fairly large herd which used to pasture in Rocky Pasture, the present Virginia Street area. Every morning, he would drive his cows up Boston Street, and down Dudley, to the gate nearly opposite Belden St (then Berkeley Place) and every afternoon drive them home. (Imagine how rural Uphams Corner was, not even street cars till about 1876.) But none of us children knew anything about that night fire until morning. I used to race up to Dudley Street whenever the engine went by, hoping the fire would be within the range of my legs and parental permission, but it seldom was.
When housed, the steam in the boiler was kept up by being connected with a boiler in the basement. As soon as the alarm sounded (the tapper in the house preceding the public alarm), the connection was broken and the fire started. The fuel was exceedingly combustible wood under a layer of cannel (channel) coal, a coal in slabs about an inch or more thick, and a sort of compromise between anthracite and bituminous. It ignited quickly and burned fast under forced draft and from the natural draft created as the boiler was drawn swiftly along. The result was a full head of steam as soon as the fire was reached. To see one of those fire-engines at night was indeed a sight, flames and sparks mingled with dense smoke. It is said that a green Irishman awakened one night as a succession of fire engines whizzed past and he cried out, “Come quick. They’re movin’ hell tonight and have already gone by with three loads.”
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Our engine, and probably others, carried the hose on a large reel, mounted on two wheels probably forty inches in diameter. A pole extended from the axle and was slipped over a tail-pin on the rear of the engine. But no lynch-pin was used, so, occasionally, when passing over “bumps,” the hose reel would become unhitched and left behind. The fireman could with difficulty, if at all, make the driver hear of the accident.
Extra coal was carried in a coal wagon, an ordinary, but rather heavy, four-wheeled wagon, open top, wooden sides about a foot or more in height.
There was no BOOSTER HOSE, and there was the delay consequent upon attaching ordinary large hose to hydrant and engine and getting the stream started and the pumper in full action. The chemical engines, of which there were very few, had a booster tank and small hose but was only for fires where chemicals were needed. The length of time it took to reach the fire, and then get the stream in action, was one cause of the severe conflagrations they had in those days. Nowadays the department travels 50-60 mph and gets a booster line in play in a few minutes while regular hose, if needed, is attached.
There were no hose-towers or aerial ladder, in those days, at least in the suburbs.
The fire-chiefs, and some of the men, perhaps, wore very heavy high-crowned hats, probably a steel shell. There was a very wide visor behind. In those days roofs which were not wooden, were slate, and falling slates could decapitate a man. That was the chief reason for the armored hat.
I believe the “siamese” stream, two lines of hose connected with one nozzle, was not introduced at the time of my earliest recollections.
The gravel roads were, of course, very much smoother than any gravel road is today, for they were not “wash-boarded,” or corduroyed as they are under automobile impact.
There was an AUTOMOBILE fire engine in place of horse-drawn Engine 21, probably as far back as 1878. It could be heard “humming” for a mile or more, due to the tremendous speed of the revolving fly-wheel. I do not know what the maximum speed was, but probably not over 15 mph on those roads and with the tremendous weight. I believe the chief reason for discontinuance was that it frightened horses.
About fifteen or twenty years ago, the Chief of the Boston Department told me that old engine was still in use at headquarters, as a training for men who were to operate steam-fire type.
The pole for men to slide down from the second floor was not used in my early years; neither was the snap-on harness, suspended over where each horse would be hitched. It was necessary that those horses, idle most of the time, should have exercise, so every day, a fireman would take them out, hitched double, and ride one horse and control the
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other. Occasionally the horses would draw a coal wagon for exercise. It was dramatic to see those horses whirl around at the first sound of the bell, if they were out on the street, never more than perhaps 500 feet from the house.
Harking back to the day when most firemen were call—members, as many still were, perhaps, it was necessary to have a very large and loud bell in the tower of each engine house. It could be heard a very long distance. We children knew perhaps forty frequently—sounded boxes by memory. The districts each had a different “hundred” numeral. A Dorchester fire was always in the 300’s. Charlestown 400’s etc.
In those pre—telephone days, the public alarm served, also, to inform owners of property if the fire was near it. That is why all the alarms were sounded in every district, for many years after the need for doing so had passed. There were three full—rounds struck, and that would reach everyone who should be reached.
The chief reason why the great Boston Fire, Nov 9 ff, 1872, became so widespread, and buildings had to be blown up to make fire—gaps, was that those substantial brick or granite buildings had pine roofs coated with tar and gravel. It was as absurd as a raincoat on a person with a paper hat. Yet, the Sunday following, several pious men preached on the Boston Fire as a Judgment of God. But it was the im—providence of man, not the “Providence of God,” as in many another disaster.
SHORTLY BEFORE MY BIRTH, my father “ran” with old Tiger 6, the predecessor hand engine of steam engine #21. He and other young huskies, after a hard day’s work, would run a mile with that heavy tank and then “man the brakes,” long rods (continuous) on each side, grasped by all the men who could stand side by side, and work mightily. Today contests with such engines are waged at many fairs, to see which team can throw water the farthest and highest. Once my father and companions ran a long distance to put out the sunset, mistaken for a conflagration at a distance.
It was a great day for children, who got more excitement and thrill out of seeing the engine going to a fire than any modern child can get from a motorized outfit. And the capacity for “thrills” was far greater, in that day of no local theaters, no movies, seldom any picnics, or ice cream, and only the annual “circus” and S S (Sunday School) picnic to break the smooth course of child life in a time that seemed indeed long ago, but all well within my lifetime! ALL OUT SIGNAL HERE.
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