Growing up in Crary Mills

Growing up in Crary Mills was very idyllic during the years that I grew up. I like to think I knew everyone that lived there at the time. Starting at our end of the street

 

Jack and Sally Taylor

Dorothy Hazeldine

William Pharoah

Herb and Marie St Dennis

Claude and Freida Caswell

Old School various families lived here

Carl and Lena Rood

Ashtons

 

Ernie and Judy Rose                                                                                                

 

Other side

Bill and Ruth Meenan

Bob and Ellen Davis

Jim and Vivian Hayes

Grange Hall

Glen and Majorie Ames

 

Bower and Ilda Noble

Charlie and       Davis

Adam and Kate Helmer

Pitts family

 

Brown

 

These were the boundries that I was allowed to wander anytime I pleased

 

There was a place right by the old school house that was the Pierrepont-Potsdam townline and as kids we would jump and say I am  in Pierrepont jump again and now I am in Potsdam.

 

We would go behind the Brown’s by way of a path that was across from the end of the ---- Road. A farmer must have mowed the path for us each year, We didn’t care about the blood suckers that would attatch to our legs and arms. When we got out of the water we would just pull them off.

Another place we would swim was gotten to by a path along the Meenan’s property to a place we called the falls. There were large stones with moss and slime on them that we would ride on our bottoms down. Sometimes showing off seeing how long you could stand up and go down. With the fast moving current right there we no longer had to worry about blood suckers. We would catch small little crawdads and play with them. Some on had lined rocks in a semi circle to make a small pond that might have been a foot deep. I wonder now exactly who put the stones that way. Had it been years before ??

 

Summer time meant kick ball in our side yard with as many kids as we could get together. I still remember my father getting upset over our baseline and bases. They were whatever we could find. He would never have that nicely groomed lawn as the neighbor. Neighborhood kids and his kids were having way to much fun. And in the end that is more important than a great looking lawn as my Dad never did win that battle.

 

Behind out house was what seemed like an endless forest full of scary things. My brothers and I would sneak and take our fathers hammer and nails and old pieces of wood and build forts between trees. More than once my father would look for his hammer only to have to trudge through the back 40 and find his hammer and forbid us to ever use it again. No we did not listen very well as it would happen over and over again.

 

Around the corner lived an elderly lady named Nellie Dandy. I remember thinking she was the most interesting person I had ever met. I loved how her hair was always in a neat up do all the time, I also remember that she made me feel welcome and at home when I would just show up at her door.

 

On the very end of the street was another elderly couple named the Eastbrooks, Don and. They lived where the Crary Mills Might Mall would end up being years after I left the Mills. I was always selling greeting cards or stationary to make money and they always bought from me. In those days in the back of magazines were places you could find companies that you could sell there items and keep part of the money for yourself. I believe I still have a piece or two of stationary and some birthday cards that would make their way back to me from grandparents and such.

 

We were always taught to call everyone Mr and Mrs so through my stories as I use their given names that is never how I referred to them.

 

Jack and Sally Taylor always had an ice rink behind their house. Sometimes we would put our skates on right in the house and walk over to the rink in our skates. They had large flood lights on the rink. I remember having to shovel it off if we had a new snow fall. My brothers thought me a pest as they wanted to always to play hockey and I just wanted to skate. I have skated my whole life without learning how to stop. From those early days of plowing into a snow bank to slowing down and hitting the walls at the arena in Canton and then Massena as my children got older. My kids all had skating lessons and do a much better job than their mother,

 

We were outside most of the time summer or winter. We had a large black and white Television that had the possibility of 13 channels although we only had 3. One was out of Watertown NY channel 7 and one was a Canadian one and the other a PBS. Canada who on earth would watch that channel that was a whole other country ? I know that is how I remember feeling. Never realizing that someday I would learn I have many Canadian ancestors and that I was part of an immigrant family. The 2 shows that I probably remember the most was gun smoke and the Beverley Hillbillies . Gunsmoke with Matt Dillon Miss Kitty and Festus was on Monday nights.

 

My mother had a huge stereo that had a radio and record player in it. It was a 3 foot by1 foot large cabinet that housed everything and when you were done you closed the top and you didn’t know it was in there. My mother would play records by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Inglebird  Humperdink , She would stack the records and they would fall one after another on top of the other and you would have hours of music without having to go and put another on. I especially loved the Christmas Albums my Mom would put on. She had many and of these and I remember sitting next to our Christmas tree listening to the beautiful music.

 

I remember during the summer a man named Arnold Barnheart  would walk by our house talking to himself and swearing. We were told to stay away from him and so I was scared of him. He was always carrying a brown bag and staggering around the road. Later was told that he had been in one of the world wars and suffered what we now call PTSD but at that time was called shell shocked. I know some of the kids would throw stones a him to make him go away. I wish his story would have been told then as I know there would not have been fear. I don’t remember ever hearing of him hurting a soul.