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Snow Day!

February 28, 2023

What kid, or teacher for that matter doesn’t love a snow day? As kids we would get up early and listen to the No School announcements on WHDH or WBZ radio praying to hear “No school, all schools in Dedham.” Then as quick as we could, we’d stuff our feet into Wonder Bread bags and rubber boots and head out the door to go sledding! In the days before the streets were intensely chemically treated and plowed to bare pavement before the last flake has even fallen, the little hill on Tower Street by my house made for great coasting. I’m sure this was the case all around Dedham on quiet streets with even the slightest elevation.

From the Boston Record-American, February 1959: “Pre-schoolers and their mothers take to the street with their sleds…This scene is being duplicated in all sections of New England…This was made in Greenlodge, Dedham.” To be exact, it is the intersection of Heritage Hill and Ledgewood.
The same view, January 14, 2023.

If we were feeling really adventurous, we’d take our Flexible Flyers (or Speedaway knockoffs) to the hill at the Capen School. Now THAT was a hill! If you weren’t careful, you could speed-away right onto the basketball court or the woods at the edge of the baseball field, especially if you were flying down the hill on one of those plastic or metal coasters.

From a 1943 report on the schools. That’s a pretty steep hill for downhill skiing!

Other popular sledding locations were the Community House and Federal Hill (Highland Ave) where sledders in the 1890s covered the hill with water taken from a nearby brook to create an ice covered surface for even more thrills. Even the dangers of car traffic didn’t stop some enthusiastic kids in December 1933.

Back at Tower Street, the Parr kids and our neighbors had a safe sledding option right in our own backyard. Even the installation of a rail fence by my father didn’t keep us off that hill.

From December, 1967. If the snow wasn’t too deep and you had enough momentum, you could duck under the fence rail and continue into the O’Berg’s yard next door.
I get creative and use my little brother’s plastic bathtub as a coaster. Oh, and I forgot to mention the rocks we had to glide over at the top of the hill.

Those childhood days of sledding are best captured in this poem I wrote recently. Feel free to share your coasting memories in the comments!

Our Hill

Our hill was not so big a hill,

But still, it was the only hill

In any backyard up and down the street.

And days when wind and winter chill

Dropped snow upon our little hill

It was the place where neighbor kids would meet

For coasting down that snowy hill,

A simple childhood winter thrill

That kept us in the cold outdoors all day.

And down and up we crossed that hill

And didn’t stop the fun until

The cold and darkness drove us all away.

The next time that it snows you will

Find new kids sledding down that hill

The way we did so many years ago.

Their happy shouts of joy will fill

The skies above that ancient hill

And echo over freshly fallen snow.

Categories: ...all the old familiar places, JP's Dedham
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Tales from a Dedham Graveyard 2- “Snatched from the tomb…”

October 16, 2016

shuttleworthThis is the monument to the Shuttleworth family. The elder Jeremiah ran a general store and operated the post office out of  his house on High Street, which was located where the Dedham Historical Society building now stands.

shuttleworth-house123   The Shuttleworth House, late 19th century.The house was later moved to Bryant Street and torn down in the 1970s.

Hannah Shuttleworth became the niece of Dr. Nathaniel Ames the 2nd  (son of the famed almanac publisher) when he married her father’s sister Metiliah.  When he died in 1822, Dr. Ames’ substantial estate went to the unmarried Hannah, his closest living relative.  Upon her death in 1886, Hannah bequeathed $10,000 to the Dedham Historical Society, for the purpose of building a headquarters. She also donated funds that allowed for the construction of the Dedham Public Library on Church Street, as well as $30,000 to the Town of Dedham to be used as aid to the poor.

Don Gleason Hill, town clerk and president of the Dedham Historical Society, understandably wanted to honor this generous benefactress and desired to have a portrait hung in the new society headquarters. However, no photograph of Miss Shuttleworth had been made in her lifetime. That didn’t stop Hill from executing a plan that, in his own words created a portrait that was “literally snatched from the grave.”

Hill describes the plan in an introduction to Dedham Records, published in 1888 on the occasion of the town’s 250th anniversary:

“The morning following her funeral, a cold blustering February day, Gariboldi, the statuary manufacturer, was summoned from Boston, and inside the receiving tomb a plaster cast of her face was taken, and from this alone, with the descriptions which a few friends who knew her best could furnish, Miss Annie R. Slafter, of Dedham, made the crayon portrait which now hangs in the place of honor  over the great mantel in our Historical Society room.”

040The portrait “snatched from the grave.”  Dedham Records, 1888.

The receiving tomb in which Miss Shuttleworth lay before burial was in fact, the Ames family tomb, featured in the previous post.

 

Categories: History/Mystery
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