Interview date: 2014-11-24
Interview date: 1998-10-02, at her Main Street home.
| Time | Topic – Corey, Edith, 1998-10-02 |
| 00:00 | Nathan Corey came to Brookline in about 1880. He lived at the “Inncroft” house on Main Street. He had a son Wilkes, who had a son Charles. Charles had two sons, Herbert and Walter. Herbert was Edith’s grandfather. He had a son Harry (her father) and a daughter (Eva). Harry married a woman by the name Shattuck from Pepperell. Eva married a man named Horace Jackson. They had three kids, one of whom died. They have lost touch with that part of the family. Harry had Helen, who married Ralph Dwyer from Merrimack and who formerly lived in South Lyndeborough; Bernice married John Towne and lived in Mont Vernon; Clarence married Ann Tasker. His two other children were Irwin and Edith. Edith remembers the sounds of the train when she was young. She remembers when they took up the tracks in 1936. Her home on Main Street is on the site of her father’s grain store |
| 05:00 | The ice house burned in about 1935. She was about 7. She saw the flames. Her parents did not let her chase fires, so she saw the place the next day |
| 06:00 | Alpha Hall said that the sky was red and it was raining embers |
| 06:30 | She remembers the Townsend forest fire |
| 06:45 | Florence Barnaby was afraid of fires. She would always put hers out when she left home. Edith remembers Florence as pleasant. She rode her bike everywhere. She would go to Pepperell. Elsie Fessenden would sometimes ride with her. Florence would ride to the snack bar for lunch. She worked in Ayer packing apples. She was a very strong woman |
| 08:30 | Edith went to school from 1st to 5th grade in the Milford Street School and from 6th to 8th at Daniels Academy. Her teacher at Daniels Academy was Alice Ouellette. Ms. Ouellette left when Edith was in the 8th grade and they had the first man teacher in town, Mr. Lemieux, to replace her. After Daniels Academy, she went to Milford High School |
| 09:30 | She does not remember anything about the meetinghouse fire. At the Milford Street School, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades were in one room, the 4th, 5th and 6th were in another room. |
| 10:00 | There were two teachers. Edith’s was the biggest class to graduate, 18. She lists her fellow pupils |
| 11:00 | Hazel Corey studied family history. Edith does not really know much about it |
| 12:00 | Hazel’s maiden name was Taylor. She is from Milford |
| 13:40 | There was a livery stable by what is now the Cooks’ across the brook from the Village Store |
| 16:30 | She remembers that a row of trees came down across the road in the 1936 hurricane |
| 19:00 | There was a granite quarry on Milford Street across from Austin Road on Bedders |
| 19:40 | She understands that the granite was hauled by wagons to the railroad station |
| 20:20 | There was another quarry by the ski tow where they cut pink granite |
| 21:00 | There was another quarry on the way to Milford and went across from Chrysanthi’s Restaurant on Route 13 |
| 22:15 | The inns in town included the Elmwood Inn |
| 22:30 | By Larry Searles’s house, there was a boarding house and a pool room |
| 23:00 | There was a boarding house in the alley where Norman Homoleski lives |
| 23:20 | Some of the ice workers lived in local homes. One of them was that of Guy Campo. She remembered a story when there was a flood and Guy got up on the kitchen table and refused to leave. The water was that high |
| 25:00 | Guy Campo had a penny candy store. She was not allowed to go there. There was a home that took in Ayer kids across from what is now RMMS School. There were bunkhouses out back |
| 26:30 | There was an ice cream stand by the former Geraldine Philips house (the large brick-ender on the east side of the south end of Meetinghouse Hill Road, Lock’s Ice Cream, in the mid 30s. The ice cream was made in Hollis. They built a little stand |
| 28:20 | As a child, Edith did a lot of gardening in the field behind the Corey homestead. They grew peas, beans, corn, cucumbers and sold them at the roadside |
| 29:00 | Her father was a milk carrier |
| 29:30 | They also had pigs, cows, horses, ducks. They had a large chicken house that stood nearby |
| 30:00 | They traded eggs for groceries at the store |
| 31:00 | Behind Maurice Marshall’s house on the east side of the fork of Proctor Hill Road and South Main Street, there was a large melon field. At about age 13 or 14, Edith work at Camp Hideaway in Amherst in the kitchen. She also worked at Textron in Milford for about a year and a half. She quit to take care of her mother, who died last February |
| 32:50 | She worked at the railroad snack bar for over 30 years. It was sold in 1971. Someone named Vern bought it and ran it for a year. Then it was purchased by Alex Stewart, who did not do good business. The place failed. He took the 135 railroad pictures and sold them at an auction in Weare |
| 34:30 | She and Laurence own the snack bar |
| 35:00 | The Whitcomb snack bar began as a small place built on Route 13 across from the Potanipo Garage after Route 13 was built |
| 35:20 | The snack bar started in 1948. One day, there were 45 tractor trailers parked. They could not go on Sundays in MA until 8:00 p.m. They were headed to New York City |
| 37:00 | She speaks of the successive owners of the ski hill |
| 38:00 | The cars of the skiers used to be parked up and down Bond Street and Steam Mill Hill. It made for big business on Saturdays and Sundays. “Things have a way of just passing by.” |
| 40:00 | There was a beach where the locals swam beyond the camp, but most people were too busy |
| 41:00 | Referring to her family: “We were just hardworking people. We kept to ourselves” |
| 43:00 | Her father was born in the next door to hers |
| 43:30 | The next house to the south was that of Charles Corey |
