On Sunday January 30, 2022, I drove to Danvers and briefly visited the neighborhood where my childhood friends and classmates (Janet, Ray, Gordon...) had lived. It was a beautiful sunny morning, the day after the huge snowstorm that had dropped two feet of snow on Danvers.
Here are a few photos I took from my car window as I reminisced about who used to live where...
My best friend Janet Hoberg had lived here, in this one, with her parents and 3 sisters:
Mr. & Mrs. Charles Poirier had lived just down the street, by the corner of Durkee Circle. Pat and Chuck did not yet have children, but welcomed neighborhood kids. We especially loved to gather there on Saturday mornings for Pat's puppet-making sessions. Week after week, our creations took shape under her patient and skillful guidance. Here's the Poirier house, as seen in 2022:
Further down the street is the Lindroth home, where Gordon lived. I never was inside their home, but Gordon was a frequent companion for activities in the neighborhood. We, with Ray Dirks and Janet Hoberg, climbed trees, played at the pond by my house, roamed acres of woods and pastures in the Locust Lawn property adjacent to Nichols Street. So many adventures!
Years later, when the family-owned Locust Lawn property was divided into segments, our cousin Betty Nichols Clay and her husband Earl Clay (who was our Geography teacher at Richmond Jr. High School), built a home at the southern end of Locust lawn. Here is that Clay home as seen the morning after the January 2022 storm:
I'm struck by the familiarity of these scenes and the continuing connections here. This segment of Nichols street (south of the break caused by construction of Rte 95) has hardly changed. Yes, there are a few new houses, especially the added Clay family homes, but overall, it remains so familiar.
Not so, north of 95. The northern segment of Nichols Street has been drastically modified. None of the homes I remember still exist. On this trip I didn't bother to explore up that way. I prefer to envision my first home as it looked when I lived there:
For another snowy photo of that old home on Nichols Street, and my memories of childhood there, see my posting, 120 Nichols St.
On January 30, 2022, after this quick detour into the old neighborhood, I drove down Maple Street to the O'Donnell funeral home to pay my respects to Tage Gordon Lindroth and convey condolences to his family members. During that funeral service I happened to sit beside Gordon's eldest nephew. I learned that he now owns and lives in the Lindroth home on Nichols Street. He has lived there for decades and he DOES REMEMBER the little house at 120 Nichols Street. He recalls walking by it with his mother (or grandmother?) en route to Almy's store up by Rte 1. Ah, so many memories!
3 comments:
Thanks for the memories and seeing it with fresh snow.. so familiar from old winters there.
You're welcome! I'm glad to be able to share these fresh images, and trigger memories.
One of the current residents I met Sunday said she came to Nichols Street 43 years ago, moving into a house that had just been built. (It's near the knoll called "Grandmother's Rock" and on the approach to our old sledding hill, which we called "Cranmore.") Forty-three years! That quickly put in perspective how long I've been gone, and how relatively SHORT was my active period playing with friends in this neighborhood (1949-59). Before 1949 I was too young to walk so far down the street from our home, and by fall 1959 I away at a school in Vermont.
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