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Grandma was quite handy with her treadle Singer sewing machine. She would get the treadle moving fast enough that it could compete with any electric machine. The sound it made was sort of a kachunka chunka chunka chunka chunka, with a final chunk as she stopped it. One day I heard it going chunka chunka chunka whump, and Grandma said "Oh!". I ran to see what was wrong. She had sewed through her left pointer finger nail, almost to the point of making a stitch. She calmly backed the needle out of her finger. Got up, tended to the puncture wound and sat back down to resume her sewing task. The only complaint I heard was the solitary "Oh!". Grandma dearly loved blueberries, but when she ate them the seeds found their way under her dentures, which always forced her to say, "I love blueberries but I don't like those pesky seeds.". When there was a box of chocolates out, Grandma would press down on the chocolates to avoid getting caramels, that were too sticky for her dentures. If it was a cream that she didn't prefer, it stayed in the box, with a dented top. Frank Howard Bachelder was a traveling salesman for the New Home Sewing Machine Co.. He used to tell about the snow storms in upstate New York that he'd run into. One storm in particular, was his favorite. He'd tell you that the snow piled up so heavily that he had to walk out of the second story window of his hotel to proceed in the business of selling sewing machines. He could tell by the look in his listeners' eyes that they didn't believe him, so he'd drag out a photograph of the drift to prove it. Western Massachusetts and upstate New York are noted for their cold winters with heavy snows. Whittier's poem "Snowbound" was written about a farm situation in Haverhill in western Massachusetts. As I recall, the barn mentioned in the poem is no more than 150 feet from the house. My wife, Crystal and I have toured the house and we have seen the fireplace where they roasted chestnuts. Western Massachusetts also abounds with large gray granite boulders. The Whittier house had a bedroom that was built over one such boulder. The thinking must have been that it was easier to build over it, than to break it up and remove it. In essence then the person, who had that bedroom, had to go rock climbing each night before going to bed. John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker who lived from 1807 to 1892; he was a strong abolitionist. If you desire a flavor of western Massachusetts during that period, you would be well advised to read his poems. He believed that he was related to Steven through Theodate and Christopher Hussey, but was related to the Hussey family of Dover,NH. Grandpa played the coronet, and his high point of coronet playing was when he was asked to play at a political rally for the Bull Moose party and Teddy Roosevelt, again in upstate New York. Well into his late seventies Grandpa would take down his coronet from on top of the piano in the 'front room', and play it. The concert wasn't complete without a piece that required triple tonguing. Raymond Lloyd, my father, apparently learned from Grandpa, as he was a bugler in the marine corps during the first world war. When my father was returning home from the first world war, he was riding the Boston and Maine Minute Man train to Orange. When he and Grandpa ran into each other on the train, it was a surprise reunion for both of them. Grandpa was returning home from a sales trip. Grandpa stayed on the road until the sewing machine company ran into financial difficulties, I believe it was after the stock market crash, called 'Black Monday'. He then set up shop in his garage, building sheet metal cabinets for the local manufacturers. When I was in the Navy and at the Navy Base at Yokosuka, Japan, I spotted one of Grandpa's cabinets that he had made for Union Twist Drill Company. He held a patent on the cabinet's design. You preselected the drill size by turning a selection dial, then as a crank was rotated the cabinet rotated until the correct drill size bin opened in front. Besides, Union Twist Drill, Starrett Tools was a major customer. He built a lot of cabinets for automotive supply houses, including Charlie Bachelder's in Athol. He would make delivery from the back of his car, after driving to the customer's place of business in Vermont or Massachusetts. Many evenings were spent wrapping boxes in paper from magazines and newspapers, saved for that purpose. I can remember Sunday's in Grandpa's shop, wrapping boxes and listening to the radio. After Van Kaltenborn, Grandpa would say," be quiet now and listen to these Austrians sing". It was the Von Trapp Family Singers. -12-
