Spencer and the War Years

As World War II raged on, life in Spencer also raced along for this growing boy. As soon as I reached the age of 12, I became a member of Boy Scout Troop 115. The other two Boy Scout troops were 149, which met at the Cherry Street Fire Station, and Troop 116, sponsored by St. Mary’s Church. My Troop 115 met every Tuesday Night at 7 p.m., with Ralph Warren as scoutmaster -- the best scoutmaster a boy could have. 

He took us on weekend camping trips, taught us scout and outdoor lore, and for many years gave up his yearly vacation from the Spencer Printing Co. to escort his Scouts to Treasure Valley. Some of my fellow scouts were Al Stebbins, Scott Gerrish, and a tall, lanky kid by the name of Eddie Budnik. It was a wonderful time of my life; I truly enjoyed scouting.

For three years I went with my troop to Treasure Valley Boy Scout Camp on Browning Pond. I would save the $7.50 it cost for a week from my paper route money. Treasure Valley Camp was one of my favorite places in the whole world. Each troop had their own campsite, where we lived in large wall tents. We did our cooking as a troop, and learned boating, canoeing, swimming, and other activities. 

One day, on my first year going to camp, I was sawing wood with a two-man cross-cut saw. I was kneeling on one side of the saw, and the scoutmaster was on the other side. I let go of my side when Ralph Warren was pushing on his side of the saw. I won’t go into detail as to what happened, but I did learn a valuable lesson that is, never let go of your side of a two-man wood-cutting operation. I still have the scar above my right knee to prove that theory, 56 years later.

Earlier in the story I shared that Luther Hill Park had been destroyed by the Hurricane of 1938, with not one of those beautiful, tall evergreens left standing. The storm had just devastated the park. It was during my time of scouting that the Boy Scouts of Troop 115 -- with the help of Spencer’s strong man, George Willey -- re-planted all the trees. To this day, the pines that we scouts planted back in 1943 are the ones that still provide shade and beauty.

Another one of my favorite pastimes in the summer was to walk to Alta Crest Farms to visit and play with my friend, Richard Sagendorph. Alta Crest Farms, as I mentioned before, is where St. Joesph’s Abbey is now. It was a four-mile hike, but I did not mind it at all; in fact, I found the trek fun. There were two ways I could get there. I could hike along Route31 to the road, now blocked off, beside the Guaranteed Fitness Center. That road would take you by Kerlin’s Chicken Farm -- run by Nathan Kerlin and his son, Isaac -- over the hills and past the Town Poor Farm, run by the Wilsons. 

Do you remember Mr. Wilson, the pony ride man on the East Brookfield flats? When I was a kid, he was the warden at the poor farm. Before the state of Massachusetts took over supervision of welfare, the cities and towns were in charge of taking care of their citizens in need. All towns had a poorhouse or poor farm. It is where the authorities sent their real down-and-outers. The town farm, I can assure you, was not a very nice place to be. It is good that they are part of history in Spencer and New England, and are no more. Anyhow, over the hills to a great day playing at Alta Crest Farms.

The other way my hike to the farm was up Northwest Road right past the old Proctor Farm. I would get a ride home on a truck that used to come into Spencer to pick up the milk at the Alta Crest Village Farm. This was a smaller farm the Sagendorphs owned on the west side of Pleasant Street, right above Smithville Road. The pastures of Alta Crest Village Farm were where the housing development is today, on Smithville and Old Farm roads. The overseer of that farm was a Scottish immigrant, Bill Gibson.

At the beginning of World War II Alta Crest Farms was awarded the milk contract at Lowell General Hospital in Fort Devens. On Sundays, so that the milk truck driver could have a day off, Dick Sagendorph, Sr. used to take the run to deliver the milk at the Fort. One Sunday he invited my friend Richard and me to accompany him on the trip. It was probably the biggest adventure of my life to that date. Imagine riding in a big yellow truck, hauling a load of milk all the way to Ayer and a real Army reservation. This was not a story my father had told me about the Army; this was the real thing, me, Marty Civin, at Fort Devens. What a thrill it was!

On the more academic side of those days, my love for US history might have started with a boy who had moved from Harlem, New York City, to Spencer. Lauri Ahlbom was sent here by his alcoholic father in New York City to help with the chores, in exchange for room and board, on the farm of Erick Johnson and his wife. (Mrs. Johnson was Jim Grant’s grandmother.) The farm was located where the Klem Dept. Store is in the west part of town. Lauri was quite proud of his estranged father, and with good reason. His father, a world-class sprinter, had been a member of the, I believe, 1928 Olympic Team from Finland. Lauri’s dad had immigrated to the United States to ply his trade as Henry Ford’s personal tailor.

Unfortunately, booze had done him in, and he was now working at his trade in New York. Lauri, who was my age, came to David Prouty Junior High at the beginning of the seventh grade. He was the smartest kid I had ever met, and he excelled in everything. Though he was rough around the edges, he must have been a teacher’s dream. Our history teacher, Miss Silk, gave extra credit if you could memorize the summary of each chapter in our history textbook. A competition began between Lauri and me, with both of us memorizing the summary, word for word after each chapter. I don’t remember who won, but I do recall that we both memorized our whole history book. After he returned from visiting his father (on the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem) over Christmas vacation our seventh grade year, there wasn’t a boy in our class who didn’t envy Lauri. While in the Big Apple, Lauri and one of his Harlem friends went to Chinatown, to Charlie Stewart’s tattoo shop. For 25-cents my buddy got a sailing ship tattooed on one of his biceps, with seagulls flying above the sails. Lauri Ahlbom was my friend until he moved to Florida a number of years ago.

Jimmy Bogle was another good buddy -- known as a tough kid, but a good kid. He lived upstairs at One Valley St., the house next to the Spencer athletic field. His mother did housework, and his father, Scotty Bogle, worked in the dairy at Sibley Farms. My mother was not at all happy with my friendship with Jimmy, whom she was sure was going to lead me astray. Besides attending school most of the time, Jimmy Bogle was a striker on Sibley Farms’ milk truck.

The summer of 1944, when I was 13, I gave up my paper route, and Jimmy got me a job as a striker. You were paid $7 for 7 days’ work, $1 a day and breakfast. I worked for a driver from East Brookfield by the name of Don Wagner. He would drive the truck around the route, and I would run door to door putting the glass bottles of milk on the doorsteps. My day started at 5 a.m. and usually ended about 2 p.m. I haven’t seen or heard from Jimmy Bogle in years, but I do know what happened to him. He quit David Prouty in his junior year and joined the Navy 1947. After boot camp, he became a pigboat sailor. Pigboats were World War II-class submarines. It was like going to sea in a sewer pipe. He ended his seagoing career on atomic subs. Jimmy retired after more than 30 years’ service, with the Naval rank of captain -- that would be the same as an Army colonel. Not bad for a dead-end kid from Valley Street.

It was around 1943 or 1944 that Civin’s Specialty Shop moved from 10 Mechanic down the street to 20 Mechanic St. My parents went all-out in designing this store: They finally had a fashion shop. They had their fixtures built in knotty pine, which was the trend of the day. No more makeshift racks; it was a real women’s and children’s shop now. My parents were now drawing $42 a week out of the business, a sum they would draw for many years. My mother -- who could at times be quite frugal -- used to boast that they managed on a $42 weekly salary for years. What she did not mention was that the business paid all their expenses, with the exception of food.

In the autumn of 1944, I entered David Prouty High School as a freshman. My subjects were English, Latin, Ancient History, Algebra, and Science. My marks stunk; I just got by with five Cs. Most of my time in classes I sat and dreamed, and when I got home I did very little studying. I dreaded report card time, because I knew there would always be yelling, lectures, and punishment from my parents. I also became quite introverted and withdrawn. It took me many years to come out of my shell.

Scott Gerrish and I got a job in the fall that year for the whopping sum of 40-cents an hour. I am serious; we thought that was darn good money for a couple of 13-year-old kids. The job was with Johnny Ficociello’s vegetable farm on the East Brookfield flats, across the road from Petruzzi Farms. (Johnny was the brother-in-law of Sandy Petruzzi’s grandfather.) Our job was to walk behind the tractor and plow as it dug up the carrots, pull the foliage off the vegetables, and throw them into bushel baskets. It was all stoop labor; talk of earning your money. Wow. From that period of my life until 1996, I have had some interesting and varied positions, but it was topping carrots for a few weeks where I started to learn that a dollar did not come easy.

In November 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term as president, with Harry S. Truman as his vice president. Roosevelt, though only 60 years of age looks like death warmed over in his pictures. The war in Europe is beginning to wind down, or at least everyone thought it was winding down. In December 1944 the Nazis made a desperate last attempt to reverse the tide of Allied advances. The Battle of the Bulge in Belgium turns out to be one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Fortunately, the Germans’ last great push failed, but not without crushing casualties on both sides. The Allied advance now resumes across the Rhine River and into Germany. From the east the Soviet Army, which had held the Nazis at Stalingrad for over three years, was making the Germans pay for the 30 million Russians -- both military and civilian -- that had been killed in the war.

Franklin Roosevelt did not live to see the end of World War II. He died in Warm Springs; GA, in April 1945.The greatest leader of the 20th century was dead at the age of 61. Harry Truman was sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States. The beginning of May of that year troops of the US and Red armies linked up at the River Elbe. The war in Europe was over, but there was very little celebration, because there was still a bloody war to be won in the Pacific.

The war in the Pacific rages on in the spring and summer of 1945. The battle for Okinawa turns out to be extremely bloody on both sides. The US and her allies are preparing for the invasion of the Japanese mainland. Casualties are expected to be catastrophic. Japanese kamikazes (suicide bombers) are hitting our ships one after the other. Meanwhile, off the coast of Okinawa, a young radioman third class in the radio tower shack on a destroyer gets a relief to get a cup of coffee. While he was in the ship’s dining room -- or galley, as it is called -- drinking his coffee, a Japanese kamikaze pilot crashes his plane into the radio shack, killing the radioman third class’s relief. The radioman was someone familiar to you Civins: R.M3/c Kenneth (Mookey) Bernstein.

On Aug. 4, 1945, President Truman makes a weighty decision. He gives his consent for a B-29 bomber, called Enola Gay, to take off from the island of Saipan, and go on a bombing run to drop its load on Hiroshima, Japan. The first atomic bomb is dropped, and a couple of days later another A-bomb is dropped on the city of Nagasaki. On Aug. 14, 1945, the Japanese Imperial Government surrenders to Army General Douglas McArthur, aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Harbor. World War II is over, the Atomic Age is born, and the world will never again be the same.

I will never forget V-J Day, the day World War II ended. What a celebration it was here in Spencer! Scott Gerrish and another friend, Richie Lilystrom, went downtown that evening of Aug. 14, 1945, to watch the parade. I can remember a drunken sailor coming down the Town Hall hill lickity-split on a tricycle. People were dancing in the street, horns and whistles were blowing, and it was a night like none I had ever seen. After a while, Richie went to his grandmother’s house and stole a jar of homemade peach brandy. The three of us went out to Scott’s backyard on Cherry Street and downed the brandy. It must say, that was my first time that I did any serious drinking, and I did have quite a shine on. We three celebrants then borrowed Scott’s father’s 12-gauge shotgun, and we each fired off a few rounds. We all then went home, and went to bed. I will never forget that night. I was 14 years old.

Behind the Memories

Medical Miracles —Yet to Come

It is easy to forget that some of today’s routine tools — especially in medicine — had yet to be developed. Take Richie Lilystrom, who lived at 95 Main St., the house on the east corner of High Street.

A year younger than me -- and a little on the wild side -- Richie was one of my best buddies. He looked like someone in a Norman Rockwell painting, a skinny kid with blonde hair hanging down over his forehead, and a freckled face. However, Richie had a bad problem; he had a bad heart. Today, most likely some surgery and a couple of days in the hospital would have fixed him up. Back in the 1940s open-heart surgery wasn’t even a dream. Richie died of a heart attack at age 15. My pal knew that he should have restricted his activities, but – such is a teenager -- he refused to do it.

Back to the High Street Neighborhood

It’s time to return to Main Street, and back up High Street on the Civin side of the street. The house where the Cormier's live was not a house, but an auto repair shop run by a man by the name of Leslie Hodgerney, who was killed in an automobile accident shortly after we moved to High Street. Jerome Cormier bought the garage, converting it to a house a few years later.

The next house going up the hill belonged to a man by the name of Thibault. I don’t remember too much about him. It seems to me that he was an executive in the shoe industry.

Going up the hill, the following house belonged to Jack Baker, his wife, Gertrude, and their son, Sherman, who was at that time a student at Harvard. Jack was a very rich man, accumulating his wealth in the retail shoe business. People traveled from all over the East Coast to buy the reject shoes from Kleven’s that Jack sold in a shop in the Kleven shoe building. J. Baker’s, as the business was called, was probably one of the first discount retailers in the country. Sherman Baker, Jack’s son, was listed a few years ago by The Boston Globe as one of the 100 wealthiest men in New England. He is still active in the shoe business, trading under many national names.

Jack Baker was a drunk, gambler, and profane, but with a heart of gold. Originally, Jack “Baker” was Jack Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein ran a poolroom in Chelsea before meeting and marrying Gertrude Kleven, the sister of Archie Kleven, a sharp young Jewish salesman from Boston who was employed by the Harris Shoe Co. (Harris was Ernie Roberts’ uncle.) A few years after arriving in Spencer, Archie managed to buy the I.H. Prouty Boot and Shoe Co. that was on the verge of, or in, bankruptcy. Kleven brought Gertrude and his brother-in law-, Jack Goldstein -- now “Baker” -- to Spencer. Gertrude was to be the office manager for Kleven Shoe, and Jack would work in the factory being taught the skilled shoe laster’s trade. After a few years of working in the factory, Jack made a deal with his brother-in-law to buy the reject shoes from the factory. The rest is history.

I believe that George Cournoyer, owner of the White Star Laundry, also owned the next house. He went door to door picking up and doing people’s wash, if they could afford a laundry man. George Cournoyer was the brother of Dr. Romeo Cournoyer. At times my mother used the services of the White Star Laundry, until she purchased a round, wringer-type washing machine. Mom and I also patronized the White Star Laundry when we first got married.

Ambrose and Irene Tower lived in the house now occupied by the Weninger's. Ambrose was an electrician and the brother of Dewitt Tower, owner of Tower Box Co. Irene used to spend hours on her porch not missing a trick. She was the neighborhood gossip and busybody. The Towers had two grown children; Ambrose, Jr., also an electrician, and a daughter, Marjorie. 

For a short time Marjorie was married to a man by the name of Charley Green, who made his living in Spencer as a wood chopper but was originally from Maine. She had two children with Charley Green before they split. Rumor has it she then had quite a few more kids by Shortline Bus drivers. (Marjorie loved uniforms, and was most generous with her charms.) Ambrose and Irene brought up her children. She called all the kids by the last name of Green, except for the final one; who was named Luke Tower.

Mr. Beaulac, the Spencer tax collector, lived in the next house with his wife. I don’t remember much about him, except that he was already quite elderly back in 1939.

The Spencer Broom Shop on lower Cherry Street, the largest manufacturer of corn brooms in the United States, belonged to a gentleman by the name of Leroy Latown. He either had built or purchased the cottage on the corner of Prouty Street -- you may remember it as the Sundburg house -- for his aged mother.

In the home on the north corner of Prouty Street was the home of Dr. Raymond McMurdo, his wife, Inez, and two sons, Raymond and Gordon, all on the first floor. Raymond was Uncle Bob’s age, with an unbelievable passion for trolley cars and trains. Raymond died about a year ago at the Masonic Home in Charlton. He was in his 70s and still talked about little other than trolleys. Gordon was a year older than me, and was the leader of the High Street kids. The second floor apartment was occupied by Sam and Ella Hyman and their only child, Marilyn (who you all know as our friend, Marilyn Budnik). I hope she will not slug me for telling this, but I remember her as a nice kid -- but most of all, I was quite impressed with her hair always being fixed in baloney curls.

The next house was ours. If you proceeded down the street there was, of course, no Art and Linda White home. There was just a large vacant lot, overgrown and full of poison ivy. My mother sold the lot in the late 1950s to a home builder by the name of Huckins.

On the other side of our lot we were fortunate to have the widow, Emily Roberts, and her two sons as our neighbors. Emily’s whole life was wrapped up in her sons; Ernie, age 26 and machinist at Kleven Shoe Co., and Zane, a high school senior. My parents first met Ernie when he came into our store on 10 Mechanic Street to welcome us to High Street. We were also invited to Zane’s high school graduation that June, which I am sure was done as a welcoming gesture. As you all know, Ernie was my neighbor for 60 years. No one ever had a bad word about Ernie Roberts, and Ernie never had a bad word for anyone. Ernie was among my dearest friends, a beautiful human being. I miss him very much.

Bordering the Roberts house on the south side was the Methodist parsonage. The Rev. Mr. Fulton, his wife, and two daughters occupied the church residence at that time. One daughter married a man by the name of Vernon Jones. The other daughter married Norman Kenwood, the son of the Sagendorph chauffeur. Norman Kenwood made his living as the projectionist at the Park Theater, and by building quality rowboats in a woodworking shop on Wall Street.

We had a busy neighborhood. I have memories of the milkman and the iceman coming to the door every day. On the kitchen wall facing the porch, there used to be a little door where the iceman could put a chunk of ice in our icebox without coming into the kitchen. We used to buy our milk from Cottage Farm Dairy. Frank Parker owned Cottage Farm, but his son, Roy, delivered the milk with the help of a teenager.

Good old raw milk, none of this stuff they call pasteurization -- everybody knows that boiling milk kills the taste. When we finally did start to drink pasteurized milk, it took me a long time to get used to the taste.

Very few families owned cars before World War II, so people depended on all types of peddlers and tradespeople to bring necessities to their homes. There were the Dion brothers, riding on the running boards of their truck, shouting out the merits of the fruits and vegetables they were selling. Bob Gregoire’s father, also a fruit peddler, had a pretty healthy set of lungs. Mr. Menard sold meat from a truck going door to door. There was a gentleman by the name of Mr. Raymond, nicknamed “Celery,” who sold celery and other vegetables grown in his garden, out of a Model T Ford.

When we still lived on Cherry Street a man by the name of Harry Pasov -- also known by us Civins as “Grishka” -- used to come to our house and sell us fresh mushrooms that he and his wife had picked in the woods of Spencer. Grishka was Russian, and his wife, Agnes, was an immigrant from Estonia. Quite ample in size and of much larger stature than Grishka, Agnes was given the nickname “Ignatz” (ANY IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS? BET IT’S FUNNY! by my Uncle Nathan.

Spencer had all sorts of colorful characters -- alcoholics and just plain nuts -- wandering the streets. Remember, television wasn’t around to keep these people at home. It was at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York that the wonderful medium of television was first demonstrated for the public. It would be at least another 10 years before it started to appear in homes. There was Mary Jantos -- known as “Crazy Mary” -- who lived with her alcoholic husband, Walter, in an old trolley car that had been converted into living quarters on Valley Street. On this street, there were four old trolley cars where poor people resided. Crazy Mary was a little bit of a woman, standing about 4’10” tall and probably 80 pounds. She always wore a long dress, and a kerchief over her hair. Mary, a Polish immigrant, made her meager living doing house cleaning for Spencer’s more prosperous residents. When I think about her today, she probably was not crazy, just a poor, illiterate Polish peasant women who could not speak English.

“Vos Maste,” translated to English means “how are you.” I know I am spelling it wrong. Unfortunately, I cannot speak or spell in Yiddish. (I wish I could. It is one of my regrets.) Into my adult hood that was the greeting I always got from Bill Lareau, alias “the Chicago Kid,” a.k.a. “Billy the Kid,” or just plain “Crazy Billy.” I’m smiling as I write this; in fact, ask any old timer in Spencer if they remember the Chicago Kid, and watch the person break into a smile. Bill Lareau was also very small in stature, perhaps 5’ tall and 90 lbs. He always wore a suit and necktie. Bill wore cheap rings on most of his fingers, three or four wristwatches on each arm, and played the meanest harmonica you ever heard. Bill lived in a shack, where the former Hodes Market was located. 

When he needed money, he would chop cord wood for local residents. When not chopping wood, Billy would be seen picking the dump. Billy had a retarded daughter by the name of Alice, whom he got caught having an incestuous relationship with. He was sent to the old state prison in Charlestown, where he served three years. When he was paroled, people would ask him where he had been. He would always say he was in Chicago; consequently, he began referring to himself in the third person as the Chicago Kid. Alice married an old coot by the name of Charlie Keene, who was 40 years her senior. They lived in a barn down on Valley Street near the athletic field. Charley Keene used to drink and beat the hell out of Alice. She was a poor, unfortunate soul.

My Neighbors on High Street

In spring 1939, it was decided that I would finish the third grade at Grove Street School with Miss Miriam Kelly, a teacher I was quite fond of. She is still alive, though quite infirm and afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. (You probably know her as Miriam McCourt, a former selectman of Spencer.) Though it was a walk from Grove Street to home, I used to come home for lunch. We used to get one hour from 12 noon until 1 p.m. The route from the school took me down a small gravel road off Grove Street into some woods, past Angel’s sawmill, down to the rear of Kleven’s, a jump over the brook in back of the Sugden block and up Pleasant to Prouty Street.

Let’s take a walk up High Street on the west side from Main Street. The first house was a duplex inhabited on one side by Frank and Anna Mahar. They owned a food market in a building destroyed by fire on the site, where the Cumberland Farms store now is located. On the other side of the duplex lived Jack Mulcahey and his wife, Mae, Anna Mahar’s brother and sister-in-law. Jack was the proprietor of Jack’s Lunch; a diner hitched to the end of the building where Cormier’s Jewelers now is situated.

The next house going up the hill was the Arthur and Martha Sagendorph mansion (the former owners of Alta Crest Farms). Mr. and Mrs. Stan Kenward and their grown son, Norman, lived in the cottage in back of the mansion. Stan Kenward doubled as both chauffeur and butler for the Sagendorphs.

The Dennisons lived in the next house. Gretchen Dennison was the daughter of the Sagendorphs. She had two children; Patsy, who lives in Pennsylvania, and Allan, a retired Air Force master sergeant.

Mrs. Fortier and her mentally challenged son, Edward, lived where the Gallants now live. She was the Mrs. Fortier from the electrical shop on Mechanic Street. Dewitt Tower, one of Spencer’s industrialists, lived on the first floor of the next house going up the hill. Mr. Tower owned the Tower Box Co., manufacturer of shoe boxes. His factory was located in a building in back of Kleven’s. His daughter and son-in-law, Tom and Alice Duggan, and their son, Dick, occupied the second floor of Dewitt Tower’s house. Tom Duggan was probably in his late 20's, but he was dying. A short time later he passed away, leaving his widow and young son. (Tom and Alice were the grandparents of the Duggan kids you Civins grew up with.)

I could not write this story without all of us spending some time with the person who resided in the next house going north on the west side of High Street. I have met a lot of memorable people in my years, but Miss Mary Cruikshanks would have to be on the top of the list. She was born during the Civil War, the daughter of the Rev. James Cruikshanks, minister of the Congregational Church. She was straight out of the Victorian age, slender and ramrod straight, with high lace collars and wire-rim glasses. When she was younger she had been a companion for wealthy women traveling Europe and the Middle East. When she related stories of her travels you almost felt that you were along.

I remember when I was a high school freshman; and one of my courses was Ancient History. I asked Miss Cruikshanks if she would talk to our class about her travels in Egypt. I can still picture her, though she was probably in her 70s, down on the floor on a prayer rug that she had brought from the Middle East, praying to Allah. She wrote a social column for the Spencer Leader for many years, advising the people of Spencer about the events taking place -- some very important, most just good reading. I could go on forever about this wonderful lady from an era long gone by. The last time I saw Mary Cruikshanks, she was well into her 80s. She was walking down High Street on a snowy winter day. I said to her, “What are you doing out on a day like this?” She answered, “Marty, when I put my feet down, I put them down like I own the earth.” You know she did. A month later, she fell down in her apartment and died from a broken hip. (Damn, here come those tears again. Miss Cruikshanks, I have never forgotten you.)

Continuing along the street, the mansion that now belongs to Rick and Gail Lacaire was owned by a wealthy widow by the name of Mrs. Prouty. (I don’t think she was related to Dick Prouty. If she was related, she was a distant relative.) James and Grace Seymour and their three children occupied the cottage in the back of the Prouty mansion. The children were a little younger than I -- Jane, Ann, and Peter. Mrs. Seymour was Mrs. Prouty’s daughter.

The owner of the next house was Dr. Alonzo Amasa Bemis and his wife. Dr. Bemis was the great uncle of Richard Bemis, owner of Bemis Nurseries (and, of course the great-great uncle of Todd’s classmate, Eddie Bemis). He was also very proud of being a direct descendant of Samuel Bemis, the first settler of Spencer. A few years later he would be listed as the oldest practicing dentist in the United States. It was quite an experience to have him do some work on your mouth, because he had Parkinson’s Disease in his later years, and his hands shook. The tenants on the second floor of the Bemis house were the manager of the Worcester County Trust Co.,”-- then situated on the southeastern corner of Main and Maple streets -- and family; Charlie Putnam, his wife, Evelyn, and their two daughters, 5-year-old Connie and two-year-old Judy. 

The house across the street from ours had been vacant for a few years. It belonged to some people by the name of Wiggins, who had moved to either New York State or Pennsylvania. The house across the street (where Gary Wood, the state cop, now resides) belonged to Harris and Louise Gray. The Grays had two children, Harris, Jr. and Shirley, Harris’ younger sister. Shirley lived with her maternal grandmother in Leominster. Harris was much older than his wife, who taught dancing. A few years later, Louise left Spencer with a male dance teacher by the name of Bill Jarvis, deserting her husband and 5-year-old son. She never again got in touch with her family. On the second floor of the house lived Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Hodgerney and a son who was my age, Raymond, Jr. In the early 1940s they moved to Pennsylvania.

Next door we go, heading down the hill to Raymond Tower’s house. A brilliant Worcester Tech graduate, Ray Tower managed Tower Box Factory for his father, Dewitt Tower. During World War II, Ray would leave Spencer every night to go work at a think tank on secret war projects. Ray and his wife, Olive, were known to all the kids in the neighborhood as Uncle Raymond and Auntie Olive. Auntie Olive was also known by a couple of generations of neighborhood kids as the “cookie lady.” Her elderly mother, Flora Hazelhurst, lived on the second floor of the house with her bachelor son. Flora was a very pleasant little lady, and her son, Harry, was a shoe worker, very quiet, and a loner. I do remember sitting on our porch on a hot summer night and hearing beautiful music coming from across the street, as Harry sat by his upstairs window playing his violin.

Where the Graves now live was the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Sibley. Mr. Sibley worked for the L.D. Bemis Coal, Wood and Ice Co. In the winter he delivered coal to heat Spencer homes, and in the summer he delivered ice door-to-door. (Remember that very few people had electric refrigerators.)

Behind the Memories

Five Uncles and an Aunt

Well, here’s a good time to have you meet your great uncles and aunt and their families on the Civin side. Thinking back, they were pretty nice people. Solomon and Rose Civin had eight children, all born in a shtetl near Slutzk in what today is Belarus. Six of their children survived and came to America. Two died, one of small pox, and another son drowned in a pail of water while still in Europe. I will introduce them to you by approximate birth date.

Samuel Schultz -- who took the name of the uncles he lived with when he came to Worcester -- was the oldest, born around 1888. In his youth he was known as “Sam the dancer.” I am told he loved the ladies and was also a terrific dancer. Like my father, he learned the dress cutter’s trade when he first came to this country, but after he married his wife, Eva, he ran a grocery store. Uncle Sam and Aunt Eva -- who was a very beautiful woman -- had two children The first, Julian, became president of New England Wholesale Grocers -- now out of business – and now writes the wine column for Worcester Magazine. Miriam died a number of years ago. She was married to Gurson Levine, also deceased, and they had two daughters.

Nathan Civen was born in 1889 and married to Aunt Anna. No, I did not spell Civin incorrectly; two of the Civins spelled their name “Civen” instead of “Civin.” Nathan graduated from Clark University and became a chemist for the US government. During the Coolidge administration there was a big cutback of government workers, and Uncle Nathan lost his job. He took a one-year course in optometry and set up a practice on Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester, which in those days was inhabited by mostly Eastern European Jews. Nathan was a very quiet, gentle man, whose health was always quite fragile. I understand he had promised his dying mother that he would do everything possible to keep his brothers and sister close, a promise he tried his best to keep for the rest of his life.

My father was born next, in the spring of 1891. Uncle Oscar Civen was born about 1893. Born Isaac Civen, he changed his name to Oscar; my Dad said he wanted a more American-sounding name. (He sure picked a good one, didn’t he?) Oscar was a nice person, but one of most important things to him in life was status. Uncle Oscar was also taught the dress cutter’s trade, but he didn’t ply for long. When they worked together in the garment industry in New York, he used to say to my father, “Israel, working in a dress factory is alright for you, but I am going to be educated someday and be a somebody.” Shortly after he left New York, Oscar went to Boston and worked his way through Tuft’s Dental School doing menial jobs. He also started his practice on Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester. He later moved his practice to Boylston Street in Boston, next to where the Colonial Theater is now located, and became a very prominent and wealthy orthodontist. Uncle Oscar met his wife, Eva, at Tufts. She was a MD, though she never practiced. They had two children; Morton, a PhD and a professor at UCLA (I am sure now retired), and Sherman, who lives in Wisconsin. It’s sort of interesting how wealth and status change a man. My father once told me the Oscar was a Communist during his days in the garment industry. In 1968, he was singing the praises of Barry Goldwater for president. He had a lot to lose by then.

Bernard Civin, born in 1898, was the youngest of my Civin uncles. “Barney” was a master salesman. My father used to tell me that, even in the darkest days of the Depression, Barney made big bucks. Well-tanned and beautifully dressed, Barney used to spend more on a necktie than a lot of men spent on their yearly wardrobes. Barney traveled New England representing a manufacturer of women’s fine slips, and a sportswear company. When not traveling he boarded with his brother, Sam, and his wife, Eva. He did marry in his later years to an underwear buyer from the G. Fox department store in Hartford. As a member of the Boston Polar Club, Barney went for a swim in the ocean every New Year’s Day – something he was quite proud of. 

The youngest -- and only -- Civin female was Aunt Miriam, born in 1900. Miriam became a registered nurse way back when nurses were expected to scrub floors. She became a private duty nurse working at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. I am told she made and lost a fortune in the stock market. Aunt Miriam was estranged from my mother and father. I only remember meeting her once in my life, and that was at Dorothy’s and my wedding, in 1955. My mother used to blame the divide on my father -- because he helped support her and sent her lots of presents -- and when he got married he could no longer afford to dote on his sister. (I tend to think their estrangement had to do with more than my mother cared to admit.) When Aunt Miriam was well into her 80s The Boston Globe ran an article about her, still jogging along the streets of Framingham. I am now going to tell you something that I have never mentioned to anyone. About 20 years ago, I was driving along route 9 in Framingham, and I saw Aunt Miriam walking from her daily jog. I wanted to stop and tell her who I was, but I didn’t. Sad isn’t it?

A Hurricane and a Home

In the fall of 1937 I entered the second grade at Grove Street School. My teacher was a young, new teacher and Spencer native by the name of Miss Margaret McQuaid. I don’t remember too much about the second grade. I guess that I was a decent student and my school year was uneventful. (Incidentally, Todd and Keith, Miss McQuaid’s brother, Frank, though he did not graduate, attended Syracuse University in the 1920s. Frank McQuaid married Miss Rachael Dufault, who was my grammar school art teacher.)

One day as I was walking home from school, Dad picked me up in his first brand-new car. It was a 1937 Hudson Terrraplane, with tin instead of cloth upholstery on the inside of the doors. Did I think that car was the cat’s meow? The car before the Hudson Terraplane was a 1930 Essex that I guess left a lot to be desired.

Life moves on that year. The Kimball family, who lived above us on the second floor at 48 Cherry, moved to one of the yellow houses on East Main Street, across from Frank Kimball’s job at Sibley Farms (now Ragsdale Chevrolet). Uncle Nathan and Aunt Gertrude and baby David move from Phillip’s on lower May Street, to the apartment above us. The Spencer Savings Bank sold 48 Cherry Street to Wilfred Cournoyer, who had a market on Chestnut Street, but had started to speculate in rental property. (Wilfred Cournoyer was the grandfather of Bobby and Steve Kowal, and Jimmy Latour.) One of Mr. Cournoyer’s (whose nickname was “Beaverboard”) first projects was to convert the barn in the back of the house into apartments. Maybe the time was coming to relocate, but not for a little while.

The family business is beginning to do a little better. Mother stays in the store, and Gertrude comes in to work even though most of her time is taken up with her infant son. Dad and Nathan peddle on the road to the outlying towns. Dad covers North Brookfield, South Barre, Gilbertville, and West Warren. Nathan covers the Palmer villages of Thorndike, Bondsville, and Three Rivers. Civin’s Specialty Shop is supporting two families -- not lavishly, but we are all eating. Don’t forget, this is still the depression.

I also start to go on the road with my father on Saturdays. What fun it was for me! We would start in North Brookfield, then go on to West Warren. Most of Dad’s customers on that route were Polish immigrant farmers and mill workers. I used to marvel at the way my father conversed with his customers in Polish. I guess I forgot that he came from the same part of the world they did, though I think he most likely spoke Yiddish in Russia, not Russian or Polish. It was on these Saturday trips when my Dad used to tell of his days in France with his 306th Infantry. I knew, when I grew up, that I was going to be a soldier just like my father. Lunch was always brought from home, eaten by the side of the road, but the day always ended with a treat at Tony and Annie Holda’s Diner in West Warren.

There were many places around Spencer that a boy could enjoy on a warm day — but not Peloquin’s Beach. “No Dogs, No Jews, No Niggers Allowed” was the policy of this beach, located on the south side of Lake Whittemore, in back of where the Dairy Queen now stands. Peloquin’s bigotry hurt me a little bit when I was a kid, but it could have been worse. I still had a place to swim and picnic with my family, in Luther Hill Park. This park was a beautiful place, with tall pines, picnic tables, and stone fireplaces.

Disaster stuck in September 1938, when the Hurricane of 1938 destroyed (among other wonderful things and precious people) Luther Hill Park and every one of those beautiful pines. What a terrible hurricane, one of the worst storms of the century! One of the two big pine trees adorning the side of our sidewalk at 48 Cherry Street fell. I remember the morning after the storm, climbing over trees lying across Irving Street. One of the tragedies of that day was the death of a farmer by the name of Rich. (Remember that there were no warning systems in those days.) Mr. Rich’s farm was where Bob Welch’s house is on Greenville Street. During the storm he noticed that his cow barn was about to blow down. He ran into the barn and tried to hold it up so his cattle could get out. He was successful. However, the barn however collapsed on him, taking his life.

After the hurricane, my parents, Uncle Nathan, and Aunt Gertrude decide that it was time to look for a home to buy. During the winter of 1939 they found a vacant Victorian house at 26 High St. It was owned by Richard Sagendorph, the son of Arthur and Martha Sagendorph -- who owned the mansion at the bottom of High Street -- and the grandson of Noah Sagendorph. Noah had the house built in 1876 and moved in with his bride, the former Emma Sugden. Emma was the daughter of wire manufacturer Richard Sugden, who generously donated the library to the town. The Sagendorph family in 1939 owned Alta Crest Farms, a beautiful 1,000-acre spread, where they raised Ayshire cattle. Richard Sagendorph lived on and managed the farm. Alta Crest was purchased by the Trappist order in the 1950s, and is now St. Joseph’s Abbey.

Uncle Nathan and my father went to the Spencer Savings Bank and asked for a $2,900 mortgage, the price Dick Sagendorph was asking for the house. Mr. Walter Prouty, treasurer and manager of the bank, denied the mortgage, saying the house had been vacant for a long time, was in disrepair, and was just a bad risk. J. Henri Morin was on the Board of Directors of the Southbridge Co-Operative Bank. My father went to see J. Henri Morin to see if he could help. Morin called his bank, and a 12-year mortgage was secured for the house at 4%. Thanks to their friend, Henri, the Civin and Israel families were now homeowners. I am told that, back in those days, many families who could not secure mortgages from the very conservative Spencer Savings Bank secured their mortgages through the Southbridge Co-Operative Bank, thanks to Henri Morin.

We all moved onto High Street in March 1939. The house was a mess, with broken windows from the hurricane, and an accumulation of dirt and grit that had collected from many years of vacancy. There were downed trees everywhere. A small orchard, completely destroyed by the hurricane, had occupied the backyard. Everybody’s work would be cut out for him or her for some time. But, it wasn’t all grim news. As Dad was cleaning up fallen limbs in the side yard, he was chopping up the magnolia tree that was lying on its side, a victim of the storm. As he was about to pull up one little sprig left in the ground and was still growing, my mother walked by. She said, “Oh, don’t pull that up, let it stay.” Thank you, Mother, for the spectacular magnolia tree. It has been a joy for over 60 years.

The house was very much in need of paint, and much work and cleaning had to be done on both the exterior and interior of the property. Nathan, Gertrude, and David lived upstairs. A kitchen had to be put in up there, and the walls plastered in that area. They used the beautiful front staircase to access their apartment. The only difference on the outside of the house is that the windows have shutters. The shutters were removed a few years later, because they rattled when it was windy. They are still in our possession, stored in the attic. A big coal boiler in the cellar did heating. Hot water had to be heated on our kerosene stove. When we took our baths, mine was on Saturday night. Dad heated a big tub of water in the kitchen, and carried it into the bathtub in the bathroom. On cold winter nights he used to heat bricks in the oven, wrap the brick in a towel, and place the brick under the covers of my bed to keep my feet warm.

Being the spring of the year, a large vegetable garden was planted. My mother planted just about every vegetable that could be grown locally. We even had watermelon and cantaloupe. We had blackberry bushes, currant bushes, and an herb garden. My mother canned a big enough supply of vegetables and fruit to last us most of the winter. Father made great pickles in a crock, using dill from mother’s herb garden. The crock my father used is on the floor in our kitchen. Oh yes, flower gardens; they became grandma’s love until she was close to 80.

Next to the house there was a barn of the same architecture, even with the same rod-iron gingerbread. It was two stories high, with stables and a place for carriages on the first floor. On the second floor there was a complete theater with a snack stand and projection box for the movies. A few years later Bob and I raised Rhode Island Red chickens in the basement of the barn. We even peddled eggs in the neighborhood and joined the 4-H poultry club. A young poultry farmer headed the club by the name of Eddie Thibeault, Sr.