BOOKS, FILMS, NEWSPAPERS AND MUSEUMS HAVE ALL RECORDED NEW HAMPSHIRE?S 20TH CENTURY HISTORY.
AND NOW THE MONADNOCK INSTITUTE OF NATURE, PLACE, AND CULTURE, IS ADDING TO THAT COLLECTION.
LONGTIME RESIDENTS ARE RECOUNTING THEIR MEMORIES AT LOCAL STORY CIRCLES.
HUMANITIES REPORTER KEVIN GARDNER ATTENDED ONE IN MARLBOROUGH.
HE FILES THIS REPORT.
SFX: (Trk 5: pre-meeting conversation, slow fade under following)
THE history of places isn?t just about matters of fact.
It IS also the lives and memories of people in that place over time.
ON a recent Sunday afternoon, several dozen longtime residents gathered in Marlborough?s Community Building.
THEY CAME TO recall, and record, the personal histories that aren?t available anywhere but in their memories.
Oliver Derby (Trk 10) I have a picture here of the mill?.they had a small truck which they used to take blankets to the railroad station up on Water Street?..
Gardner: Oliver Derby was one of a dozen or so who spoke.
Derby: (3:06) George Ward would always come up and meet the passenger trains (from the ?livery stable complex?)?.and he always smoked a cigar?in fact, he used to wait on people down here at the filling station, he used to pump gas with that lit cigar in his mouth, and nobody could make him stop?(laughter) you?d drive up and say George put that cigar away and he?d say well, I?ll put it on top of the pump?
Gardner: For more than two hours they talked.
THEIR memories Reach back not just to the sixties and fifties, but to the war years, the Depression, and even before THAT.
THE SMALL TOWN OF MARLBOROUGH LIES Just a few miles southeast of Keene.
INCORPORATED IN 1776, IT?S Exactly as old as the United States itself.
ITS modest Main Street looks a lot like a hundred other small New Hampshire villages.
FARMERS WORKED THE LAND HERE.
QUARRYMEN DUG (?) STONE.
HISTORY OF THIS PLACE IS NOT HARD TO FIND.
Allen Williams: (Trk 14 - 1:00) I?d like to comment a little bit. I?m Allen Williams, I?ve lived here in Marlborough almost 73 years, and I wanted to mention a little bit about the quarry, my father worked in it, he was a paving cutter, he came over here in 1907 from Wales?.?(talks about working in the toy factory, combining school and work ? great quotes)
Bill Yardley: (Trk 8) ?My brother and I used to milk cows, take a shower, deliver the milk in Little Canada, and then go to school?
Another voice: (Trk 15 - 4:34) That was a silk mill up there ? remember when that burned? I came home from school that day and boy, that was really going, the telephone poles?.That was a hot fire?wires and everything?
Another (female) voice (Trk 18 - 1:10) ?My father was a dynamiter?he would go down into the mine and set the dynamite off?fix it and light it and then he?d run?
SFX: Talk continues, fades, under following?
LOCALS REMEMBERED THE QUARRIES WHICH ARE GONE NOW.
THEY RECALLED WORK IN THE MILLS?WHICH ARE ALMOST GONE.
Fires and accidents, cutting ice and courting the neighbor girls.
The devastating hurricane of 1938.
The railroad figured in many stories.
SOMEONE ONCE shipped a live whale through town in a big tank on a flatcar.
ONE WOMAN RECOUNTED STORIES OF HER FATHER.
HE WAS the RAILROAD Station Agent in NEIGHBORING Troy for many years.
AND HE WAS EXPERT AT THE TELEGRAPH.
Woman: (Trk 19 - 2:38) I used to be fascinated with my father sitting there in the kind of bay window in the station, and just watch his hand go, I just stood there fascinated, and he could send messages so rapidly?..
THESE stories make it clearer than any history book ever could how much MARLBOROUGH AND TROY have changed.
And how quickly.
John Harris, Director of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place, and Culture, says the stories circle brings the towns to life IN A WAY HISTORY BOOKS CAN?T.
Harris: (Trk 22) It grows out of an interest in place, first of all, the idea that professional writers that are working on essays, which is where this project began, have a sort of polished version, and though it?s very interesting, and they?ve reflected on history, it really doesn?t have some of the rough edges that are important to understand what a place is all about, so it?s kind of the unpolished version of local history that?s important to consider if you?re going to come to a full understanding of any locale.
Gardner: The Marlborough stories circle recalled not just buildings and streets, personalities and occupations.
BUT THE STORY TELLERS REMEMBERED RELATIONSHIPS.
THAT?S WHAT GIVES a community its texture.
R. Fuller Ripley?S family owned and managed the Troy Blanket Mills for many years.
HE GOT UP TO RECITE a bit of the MILL?S history.
BUT Rita Grace INTERUPTED HIM.
SHE USED TO WORK IN THE MILLS.
SHE WANTED TO TELL HIM SOMETHING HE ALMOST CERTAINLY HADN?T KNOWN.
Rita Grace: (Trk 14 - :20) ?Fuller, did you ever know how many blankets were thrown out the weaving room window? And the kids caught ?em and we had blankets that fit the beds? (big laugh) Did you ever know that? Oh, there?d be a pretty plaid coming out and the second shift weavers threw out big chunks of blankets and the kids would be there to catch ?em? (another voice) ?Fuller, you don?t suppose that?s the reason the plant?s been goin? down?..? (more laughter?.)
Gardner:
The most exciting part the exchanges was WATCHING THE speakers jog one another?s memories.
THEY WERE ABLE TO TEASE out long forgotten details and events.
John Harris says this is a common feature of the stories circles.
AND IT?S ONE reason why the gatherings are so valuable.
Harris: (22) (6:11) It happens every time we do it and I think it?s largely because they?ve forgotten so many of those reminiscences and it?s when someone else says something ? the fella who had a wonderful memory of back to when he was 6 years old, so he has a tremendous memory but he said I?d forgotten completely when that mill that made silk burned, I was in high school, I remember that fire that all of a sudden that vivid memory that came back to me, I?d completely lost that from my memory until someone else mentioned it.
New Hampshire?s landscape and LIFE HAVE CHANGED ENORMOUSLY since the 1920?s and 30?s.
THAT?S WHEN many of the Marlborough storytellers were born.
PROFESSIONAL HISTORIANS HAVE CERTAINLY DOCUMENTED THEIR HISTORY.
BUT few of THOSE HISTORIANS Carry the immediacy of living memory.
John Harris?s Monadnock Institute plans to continue gathering STORIES.
HE?D LIKE TO PUBLISH some of the stories together with essays and accounts from other sources.
The Purpose is part of the Institute?s larger mission: to help create ?a context for living.
THAT CONTEXT COMES FROM LEARNING THE DEEPER nature of a place in stories
STORIES ABOUT mill fires and stone quarries
AND THE TIME they brought a whale through town on a flatcar.
SFX: Storyteller fades in ?We used to swing out over that quarry on the cable?..I was the only girl who dared to do it?. Say, I think I saw you there?.(laughter)
Gardner: For NHPR News, I?m Kevin Gardner.
