During WWII as you may or may not recall, Draper Corp. was well entrenched in the war effort. People employed had picture "ID's" to gain entrance to work There were guard houses in a few places around the shop. One place was at the corner of Hopedale and Freedom St where our "Little Red Shop" is currently located. As kids we passed this corner at least four times a day going to and from school.
I vividly remember one of the guards in particular was a gentleman by the name of "Bill" Honey. He was extremely well liked by the kids. He being a smoker, as most men were at that time. But "Bill" had smoking tricks to entertain us with. One of them was to take a lit cigarette and flip it into his mouth and make it disappear, only to flip it back out in a second or two and continue puffing away on it. This was with no hands, just a flip of his tongue
Another was to hold the cigarette up to his ear and appear to breath the smoke in through his ear and exhale it out of his mouth. Sure fooled us. He would always have some type of harmless trick or entertainment for us. I am sure that more than once, I was his assistant, or at least he told me that he needed my help.
Incidentally, around 1949, I was the lucky kid that was the "Safety Patrol" (today they call them "Crossing Guards") on that same corner. Needless to say there were no more guard houses needed in 1949.
Just another little thought. When we walked along Hopedale St., in front of the shop approaching the "windy corner" of Freedom St., we often looked into the "tilted" open shop windows and talked with the folks doing "piece work" at the work benches in that area. I remember that one of them was "Larry" Heron, a well know disabled WWII blinded veteran. We marveled at the way Larry could precisely insert small loom parts into his "jig" and bend, punch, shape or whatever he did to them just as quickly as possible. Not only that, but he would talk to us and knew many of us just by our voices.
Wonderful times, great people, great little town. Bob H.
The following is from an email sent by Bob on May 15, 2008.
DAN,
I was sad when I saw these pictures of the rail cars being scrapped.. I still picture them in fine shape, well not so much anymore. Progress?
We grew up in what we thought was a very healthy environment. Living at the corner of Freedom and Progress Streets seemed just about as good as it could ever get. However, when you think about the G & U tracks about 100' to our west, the large scrap iron piles next to the tracks and right next to that, the dump burning almost constantly. We would watch the magnetic crane hoist the dusty rusty scrap iron into the rail cars, breath in some of the dust for sure, they then were taken to the foundry for smelting and when the furnace was stoked with the necessities for the high quality gray iron casting of Draper Corp. the black smoke would billow all over the valley of our fair town, on warm, humid days, I remember my Mom having to do the wash all over again because they would be covered with cinders from the foundry. We often would enjoy climbing on the scrap iron and "pig iron" piles, a bit of a challenge. Sometimes we would find very interesting discarded treasures in the iron piles.
I am sure that the air in Hopedale is of a better quality than it was then, but I think the quality of life and the feeling that your neighbors were almost family was greater than it is today. This is not to say the neighbors are not as nice, but not many of them have lived next door for two or three generations.
Someday, I will do a tid-bit on the wonders of the dump.
Dan, I did enjoy the pictures.
Thanks for the memories,
Bob H.
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