Bridge

Memories of the Townsite

Neil Laidlaw

“All the houses along the ravine had apple trees or cherry trees. We used to go down through that gully and go up and steal apples and stuff and then get chased by the guys. They’d chase us down through the ravine. Nobody ever caught us. It was just as much fun for them as it was for us”.

Thelma Davies

“Lots of apple and cherry trees. of course we were pinchin’ apples continuously from anybody who was unfortunate enough to have an apple tree in their backyard”.

Marjory Kingsbury

“There was this old plank road that used to go from the top of Fourth Avenue, actually the trucks drive up through that way now, I guess there’s a road through. But it used to be just two planks, and there was this road way and my mom and I used to go up and take my dad’s lunch quite often. Sometimes we would go up that way and go down – because he was on the pumphouse we used to mostly go up the lower one. But dad used to talk about coming home on a midnight shift one night and it was always scary going through there because it was pitch dark, you know. And he had a newspaper in his back pocket and he was walking along and he could hear this “flap flap”, and he thought someone was following him and he kept turning around and looking and he’d go a little bit further and he’d stop dead and there was nothing there you know and he couldn’t figure it out. By this time he was perspiring and his hair was standing up on end and it wasn’t until he got home and down to the street he realized it was the newspaper in his back pocket that was flipping on him but he-you know-Thinking about all these animals at that time, you know”.

Clifford McGowen

“Oh it was cold because we had no furnace. We had an oil burner on the kitchen stove that gives about as much heat as a candle. Then we had a fireplace. Cut wood and burn it in the fireplace but that didn’t heat much either. And then underneath it was all open. It was built up on stilts, you could walk underneath it. In the winter time, we have linoleum on the kitchen floor, and there’d be ice on it”.
“Most people-I guess everybody looked after their places pretty well and kept them well-painted and the lawns cut and all that kind of thing. I don’t think there was any that didn’t. I know I spent a lot of time on the grounds there”.