Turner's Public Spirit, July 4, 1925
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant
Center. Mrs. F. C. Clements and son Harry have been the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Gumb. Mrs. Clements is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gumb.
The Men’s club of the Congregational church conducted a successful lawn party on Mrs. George F. Walker’s lawn on Wednesday evening. A band from Somerville furnished the music.
William Woodward, who has been principal of the Rockport high school for a number of years, completed his services there at the close of the present school year. Two farewell parties were given in his honor, one by the teachers and one by the pupils of the senior class. In addition, as a mark of appreciation, the pupils of the school presented him with two twenty-dollar gold pieces. Mr. Woodward will be pleasantly remembered as a former principal of Westford academy.
An auction sale of household goods was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Gumb on Thursday. Mr. and Mrs. Gumb are leaving town on Monday and will spend the remainder of the summer in Maine, leaving about the first of September for Florida, where they will make their home. Their many friends regret their departure, but extend best wishes to both in their new home, and hope that the change of climate will prove beneficial to Mrs. Gumb’s health. A number of their Lowell friends attended them at a farewell party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Burgess, Westford street, Lowell, Tuesday evening, and presented them with a beautiful electric toaster.
A strawberry supper and entertainment were given in the town hall on Monday evening in charge of Westford Grange. The entertainment consisted of piano solos, Elizabeth Hildreth; vocal solos, Miss Elva Judd, Charles Roby and Clifford Johnson; harmonica solos, Albert Hildreth; piano and violin duets, Mrs. Freda S. Prescott and Mr. Lehman. At the close of the entertainment dancing was enjoyed. The committee in charge consisted of Frank A. Wright, Clyde Prescott, Clifford Johnson and Charles Robey, assisted by the master, Frederick Robinson, and lady members of the Grange.
Miss Eleanor Colburn has gone to Ithaca, N.Y., where she will take a six-weeks’ course in music at the Conservatory of Music.
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Bridgford recently gave a large dinner party in honor of the former’s sister and husband, Mr. and Mrs. William Warren, of Wessington, S.D. Among those present were Mr. and Mrs. William Warren, Mr. and Mrs. Guy McElrath, Mr. and Mrs. John Bridgford, [paper torn, two lines missing] Sarah Swanwick, Mrs. Lena Blodgett, Mrs. Ada DeCarterest, Mr. and Mrs. T. McGrath, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Machon and daughter Edith, [and] Mr. and Mrs. John Pratt. A general good time was enjoyed by those present, consisting of music, whist and other games. Mr. and Mrs. Warren, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. McElrath, came by auto from South Dakota, using a Reo sedan and trailer for the long trip.
Mr. and Mrs. John Prescott Wright, of Wollaston, announce the marriage of their daughter, Frances Elizabeth, to George Washington Cornelius, at Wollaston, Friday, June 26. The bride has the best wishes of a host of friends in town.
Miss Lillian Sutherland, of the Billerica teaching staff, is spending her vacation in town.
Miss Gladys Ingalls has accepted a position at the Lawrence Training school.
About Town. Never, no never, did we ever get such quick results from our questionnaire conundrum as we proposed last week to the town of Littleton in regard to better fire apparatus. So spry was the answer that nothing short of radio could have delivered the questionnaire so quickly and returned such a correct and satisfactory answer. I am just proud of the part that I played. And say, see here, I did not charge anything for it. But listen, when I arrive over that way before long, if you feel like contributing a few nice, ripe peaches to my physical palate, why it will make me feel more like a peach than I do now. As a substitute, remember me to ice cream, and keep your snapping turtle soup for yourselves.
Irving T. Wright was in town last Saturday, haying at the Morning Glory farm. At present he is stopping in Lowell.
We in the United States spent $8,000,000,000 on automobiles and accessories in 1924. Is it any wonder that textile manufacturing is only running on part time? Like all good it is excessively overdone and the time is approaching when we shall have to resort to limiting the number per population if we have any hopes to prevent the killing rate to the present 19,000 per year. Come to think of it, would it not be an infringement on personal liberty? That would never do. Better by far to kill everybody than to shorten the present tether of personal liberty of go as you please and do as you please, say what you please and all public rights be damned.
We have before us the total vote on Tuesday in the fifth congressional district. The total vote was 42,921; of this total Edith Nourse Rogers received 33,614, Eugene Noble Foss 9,291. Westford gave Mrs. Rogers 405; Foss 38. The precinct officers in the Brookside precinct were Walter A. Whidden, Bernard J. Flynn, Orrin Treat, [and] Albert G. Shugrue.
The farmers in Northern Vermont are abandoning their silos and installing drinking cups in the barn as a substitute for watering them. It has been a long time getting the thought incubated in their minds that the silo is an expensive way of watering cows.
President Coolidge arrived at Swampscott from Plymouth, Vt., on Wednesday morning. The presidential party traveled by automobile over unfamiliar roads 200 miles in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, without police escort. The motor caravan was made up of a dozen cars, most of them filled with newspaper reporters and photographers, and lost its way a dozen times, the first time at Springfield, Vt. The president’s car was halted at a toll bridge over the Connecticut river at Charlestown, N. H., and a woman toll-gate tender assessed the president the customary fifteen cents, explaining later that she did not know who it was. In Lowell the president’s car passed a parade of automobile floats placarded with slogans for ex-Gov. Foss, candidate for congress. The president’s car lost its way in Lowell four times and his chauffeur received a rebuke from a traffic policeman for stopping in a “no parking” zone while getting his bearings. The party landed at White Court[1] an hour before dark.
There are various kinds of tar and repellents for treating corn as a preventive insurance against crows pulling the corn. There is a brand of tar that the crows like better than they do the corn; hence they pull up the corn, eat off the tar and leave the corn. Such was the kind J. Willard Fletcher used, and last Saturday found him a busy man replanting the work of the undoing crow. Let it be known once and for all, that coal tar is the most reliable insurance against the corn-pulling crow. There are several prepared repellents; they dry off better than coal tar to go through a corn planter. One such was used this spring at the Old Oaken Bucket farm, and not one kernel of corn was pulled, although the field was well supplied with crows pulling grubs following the plow, with plenty of corn in its pulling stage close by. Who says shoot the crows? Why not shoot your best friends?
As usual the McIntosh apple, which blossoms to the propping-up point, has passed the danger point of needing to be propped up for the apple yield. A large share of the trees were so white with blossoms that green leaves were not visible, and not even one apple set as a reminder of these blossoming promises. The non-setting propensity and scab propensity and tumble off propensity makes the old Benjamin Davis apple with its blossoming to bear, and bear every year something to be reckoned with in competition with the many and increasing weaknesses of the MacIntosh. For ordinary cooking purposes the Ben Davis apple is the equal of the McIntosh; as an eating apple it is not.
As there seems to be a nearly unanimous wail against the devastations of the cut worms this year I will volunteer a prescription—plant all of your hoed crops on chemicals; plant early. Early planting is when the ground is in a moist condition under a mulch crop. This holding around until towards mid-summer to plant when the ground is drier than the eighteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution is just the sort of linger lounging that the cut worms encore.
Alfred W. Hartford, insurance salesman for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, was one of eighty men to qualify to the all-star convention from the United States and at Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, for a week’s stay as guest of the company. Mr. Hartford’s office is in Lowell and he covers all the suburban territory in Middlesex county.
Successful Raid. Between 400 and 500 bottles of home brew were seized at a camp on the borders of the Chelmsford, Westford and Tyngsboro town lines. The three towns come to a flatiron apex at this point, with Chelmsford on the east and Tyngsboro on the west, with Westford as the center apex. As the premises are in Westford, on the road from North Chelmsford to Dracut, the raid and the seizure were made by Officers John C. Sullivan and William L. Wall, of Westford, assisted by Officers Charles Shugrue and James R. Gookin, of Chelmsford, and Joseph Riley, of Tyngsboro. A thriving business was being carried on here and while some of it was drunk on the premises much of it was carried away in suit [paper torn, two lines missing] were armed with a search warrant and made a successful bust of the whole unconstitutional business, whereby the alleged proprietor, Damase J. Raccetti, was taken to the district court in Ayer by the Westford officers to see what the court and Damase think of each other.
This place is familiar to Westford people, although eight miles from the center of the town, as the old Jane Tyng place; also, the part of Dunstable road in Westford is well known as the Makepeace road, where many years ago Westford got beat in a lawsuit with a man by the name of Makepeace, who claimed to be a peacemaking man until he got ditched in the mud, and then Mr. Makepeace would not make peace until the town cashed his mud bill and a jury decided how much this mud was not worth. This little flat-iron apex part of the town will always be remembered for its mud suit, rum suit and Jane Tyng. Here also lived Billy Patch.
Wheat Shortage. Government reports show that there will be a shortage of 100,000,000 bushels of wheat, compared with 1924, and little or none for export. The unfavorable winter is held responsible for the shortage of wheat. The Rural New Yorker, in commenting on the shortage, says, “At present six or seven western states produce the great bulk of our wheat crop and claim that it does not pay. As wheat becomes scarcer and scarcer we shall look to see New England, New York and other northern states come to their own again in raising wheat for home consumption and little grist and flour mills of the olden days located at every little power mill come back to work again and we shall economize in the use of wheat, using more of the whole wheat and a darker bread, and not bolt it so white and throw away what the scientists call the best and healthiest part of the wheat.”
I feel like contributing a good, loud Emphatic Methodist Amen, and will add as an opinion that there is no more need of bolting your flour for bread to be palatable than there is to bolt yourself with lightning. I am not so young or old but what I can remember when there was a flour mill at Brookside.
Long Lake City. John L. Greig and others in town are working teams grading up roads at the new Long Lake city in Littleton. We took an auto stroll of exploration past this Long lake layout on Tuesday. I could not repel the regretful thought at seeing such valuable tillage and hay land being cut to pieces to make room for summer camps without restrictions as to who camps or what they camp for. Our average would have been served better if this resort had been reserved and preserved for Littleton and the close-by surrounding towns. There are some environments in life that are too valuable an asset to rural and social life to be sold out for cash, regardless of the price.
Aside from public consideration, there are the sacred attachments of home environment with its hours of quiet thought and rural luxuries that cannot be sold on a world basis of many times its worth, with getting badly cheated for the rest of life.
The thought also occurred to me who will be likely to be the first mayor of Long lake city. Someone suggested “Revere Beach.” It would not be surprising if it was the first and continuous mayor. Aside from looking over the prospective new city we called on relatives and friends, and had a jolly, refreshing time; saw prosperous farming, much more than we have seen since blossom time opened in Westford on the Boston road from the Center to Minot’s Corner. Here they hang like the days when they did hang. We arrived home at six o’clock, picked a bushel of peas for the Lowell market and called it a much better system of vacation than is being laid out at Longlake [sic] city in Littleton.
Sightseeing. On last week Thursday I was one among others who went to Framingham. It was a moist, rainy day for farm sightseeing, but our interest was good enough with all the dimming of the rain moisture to see much to encourage Stony Brook valley farming and nothing to discourage it in comparison with what we saw. We went by way of Nine Acre Corner in Concord [intersection of Rte. 117 and Sudbury Road], the market garden paradise of this part of Middlesex county. Everything looked thrifty, but somewhat backward, but as we are not in the market garden business perhaps it was not backward. If sweet corn is called market gardening, then the Stony Brook valley farmers beat the Nine Acre Corner and Sudbury farmers on a steeper downgrade than the swine in the story of old. With some effort we observed some peas that were so straggling and feeble that they looked as though they had a combination of infantile paralysis and home-grown developed tuberculosis. They are a bright lot of successful farmers and it looks like symptoms of a swelled head of an eighty-year-old hayseed to inform these successful farmers how to not raise peas.
There were acres and acres of the thrifty, green, growing beans for Boston market. With my limited experience in raising this class of beans I am tempted to say that they were slightly behind in stature. Be this as it may, I am safely with safety in saying that they are not as far advanced as the sister elsewhere who planted beans in February.
Outside of market garden farming the grass hay crop had the appearance of being very light, a sort of ten hundred pounds or less per acre. And there were dairy farming and hen farming all requiring lots of grain and from the western farmers to raise all of this grain and pay high freight rates and contribute to the support of expensive commission men while we cut from five to ten dollars’ worth of hay per acre, when a little labor and 450 pounds of chemicals would raise about all the grain needed. Someone suggests this speed work. Gosh, I forgot this. Well, this will not do. Let us remain in the house where we are now and see that farming does not pay and petition the government to hold us up while we look out the window and see ourselves held up. I hope when I get as lazy as that I shall have the use of my legs left so that I can walk to the town home and get our good, sunny, sensible board of charity to hold me up.
One of the encouraging signs of a return to old-fashioned hayseed farming which I observed was several acres of wheat on some thrifty and progressive farms—of what town it was in I do not know, but I think it was West Acton. But this has nothing to do with the vital point that I saw some heavy wheat growing and still more vital yet, the dairy and poultry farmers have got to come to raising all kinds of grain before they are much older or grayer, or add to their stock of folly invested in too much idle land.
To Reclaim Land. The Old Oaken Bucket farm is contributing clay marl for the benefit of the lawn tennis courts of the Lowell Y.M.C.A. camps at Lake Nabnasset which will open for the summer frolics as soon as the camps can be put into recreational order.
Secretary of the Interior [Hubert] Work on May 4 awarded a contract for building the Guernsey dam on the North Platte river reclaiming project in Nebraska and Wyoming to the Utah Construction Company of Salt Lake City for $1,288,121, congress having appropriated $800,000 to begin the work. The agricultural papers as far as [paper torn, line missing] the use of public money to cheapen farm produce, while at the same time it is claimed farm produce is financially dangerously cheap, and farmers are on the danger list. Hence the farmers’ bloc to procure government aid freely relies and uses the danger list. Personally I am for this dam and for other proposed dams, including damn so much talk about so many farmers on the financial danger list. If some farmers succeed under the same conditions that others get on to the financial danger list, isn’t the trouble due to an inherent incompetent individuality, for which there is no remedy this side of Emerson’s “It’s too late; we should have begun with their grandparents.”
Most everything of a public progressive nature must be tithered [sic, tethered?] to meet the reach of the inherent incompetent. But for all this the spread between producer and consumer is too great for economical, sound, balanced business as illustrated under Nashoba news last week, when a box of apples raised in Washington sold in New York city to the consumer for five dollars. After paying the freight and commissions, wholesale and retail middle men, the producer received a net of seventy-eight cents out of the five-dollars-a-bushel apples as his share for raising the apples—spraying and fertilizing, trimming trees and harvesting the apples. Certainly conditions need overhauling to reduce this gap, but the gap is not any wider for the farmers on the financially dangerous list than those who have the inherent goods to succeed, even with this wide gap; can’t let a lot of us unsuccessful ones out by any such thin excuse as that our trouble is deeper seated than gaps, too deep for the government to reach by legislation as a permanent reach. As a temporary relief the government might see to it that this box of apples was not legally robbed of everything except seventy-eight cents in handing this box of apples from producer to consumer. If the government deems it wise to regulate carfares and busfares and license fares and hunting and fishing fares and a multitude of other moneyed regulations I want the government to regulate the transition fare of a box of apples from producer to consumer where it is not delivered direct from producer to consumer.
But to get back to the dam over which we got dizzy and fell overboard and floundered and splashed about over the price of victuals generally. This dam is being built in the interests of raising more wheat, corn and other grains. Now just why the New England farmer should set up such a unanimous squealing against the building of this dam in the interest of raising more grain, all of which we have to buy, having become so shiftless or lazy or proud in our upper tenement that we have graduated from grain producer to grain consumer while we enjoy life riding in a mortgaged automobile and our acres that might be raising this grain is raising numerous grasshoppers and a few grass without hoppers is more than I can make out.
Oh, Mr. Government, for reclamation of waste land for more and cheaper bread for the laboring class, the underfed, the underpaid, the unemployed and the unfortunates generally, including the farmer who is so unfortunate in graduating from raising grain.
Fish and Game Preservation. For lack of time last week to catch the last mail in season to get my notions and others before the public on the vital question of fish and game preservation as set forth in the appeal of William C. Adams, state commissioner, I wish to take this seasonable opportunity to quote more fully from his appeal to the fish and game clubs of the state:
“Having just completed a trip of inspection to all the game farms and fish hatcheries I feel that there are certain facts that I should submit to you for action. The sentiment of the hunters and fishermen in the state, as I have been able to size it up, is strong in favor of raising as many of our pheasants as we possibly can to adult birds to be liberated in the autumn of each year, and to raise as many of our trout to be one to two years old before planting. Last year we distributed in round numbers 12,500 young pheasants and 1,125,000 fingerling trout. We could have raised these young birds to adults and liberated them this spring, allowing for the usual losses. We could have held over a large number of selected fingerling trout for distribution this spring as yearlings or a year hence as two-year-old fish had we the rearing pools and feed. This year our appropriations were cut to the extent that we did not receive one cent for new construction work at any of the game farms or fish hatcheries. In addition our appropriation for the propagation of fish and game was cut $4,400. This seriously restricts the funds available for feed. This is not to be construed as a reflection on the government, the budget commission or the legislature. The governor has had a tremendous problem this year in cutting down state expenses. He is deeply interested in the work of this division and we in turn are trying to co-operate with him in working the situation.”
The situation was referred to last week and calls for the raising of $10,000 by the 140 fish and game associations in the state between now and June 15. As catching on early this request of Mr. Adams, our genial Joe Wall, town fish and game warden, and president of the Lowell Fish and Game association, informs our correspondent that there will be an old-fashioned ball held a little later on in Westford for the benefit of fish and game. This movement is clearly in the line of self compulsory conservation, the same as forestry—it has all come home to roost as the result of our wasteful, reckless disregard of the fact that there is a future tomorrow to be looked after.
Graniteville. Children from the seventh and eighth grades of the Sargent school enjoyed an outing to Revere Beach on Tuesday. The trip was made in Carl Lydiard’s auto truck, and with good weather prevailing the outing was one long to be remembered. James H. Fitzgibbons, principal of the Sargent school, who resides in Beverly, met the children at the beach and spent the day with them.
The special election for congress was passed very quietly. A light vote was cast and as was expected Mrs. John Jacob Rogers won over Eugene N. Foss by a large majority.
A big time is being planned for the “night before” and the Fourth at Forge Village. The committee in charge plan to make this the biggest ever. It is needless to say that the entire town will take part in this celebration.
Miss Hilma S. Hanson, daughter of Mrs. Sophia M. Hanson, and Walter Bradford Doane were united in marriage last Saturday afternoon at five o’clock at the home of the bride by Rev. A. L. O’Brien, pastor of the Methodist church. The bride wore blonde georgette crepe and carried butterfly roses. She was attended by her sister, Miss Emily Hanson, who was attired in flowered georgette and carried Columbia roses. The best man was Walter B. Todd, of Webster. A dinner was served following the ceremony and only relatives and a few friends were present. Mr. and Mrs. Doane left on an auto trip to New York and upon their return will live at their summer home at Whitchmore Bluff, Harwich Port, and later will reside in Mi [paper torn, rest of word missing].
Littleton
News Items. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Whitney attended the Day-Swenson wedding and reception at Westford on last week Wednesday.
[1] “White Court, a Great Gatsby-like property with a sprawling waterfront, was designed and built in the Classical Revival style in 1895 by Boston’s renowned architect, Arthur Littles. President Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1925 there, with his wife and their dog, Rob Roy. According to the Coolidge Foundation, the president spent most of that summer inside the home, but would join his wife for strolls around the 6-acre, ocean-front property. (They would occasionally go on the presidential yacht, Mayflower, which was docked in Marblehead.)” The “iconic Swampscott White Court estate” was demolished in 2018. Developers planned to build 18 luxury condos, each about $2.5 million on the site. See https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/swampscott-reporter/2019/02/12/white-court-quietly-demolished/6004926007/.