More Of Summer Days Of Old

PHOTO: Hair Clippers that cut my hair when I was a child.

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

Summertime in New Hampshire for a young boy in the 1940’s and 1950’s was not always fun.
We had our pandemic then, though I don’t remember it being called such. It was polio, and I do remember seeing someone in an iron lung and finding out about cases close to home. Yes, I said “ in ” iron lungs because the machine to help people afflicted by polio to breathe was actually something they were placed into rather than something that was placed into them or on them. Back then in those olden days we contracted most of the diseases that most children are vaccinated against these days. They were measles, German measles, mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough, along with what seemed to be frequent colds in the winter time. We got through those bouts of sickness alright, and survived another dreaded experience – the haircut.

As I remember it, the summer haircut often took place on the back porch that was on the north side of the house. The haircut was done on the back porch by my Father or Mother. It was done with scissors and a hand-held and operated trimmer that was not electric. I am including a picture that is the actual machine that cut and sometimes pulled on our hair. Those times that the hair got caught and pulled so that we yelled in complaint were not a good time for either barber or client.
The back porch was also where we prepared fresh vegetables for supper or for canning. The stove used for heat and for canning was a wood- burning stove, so when there was canning going on there was extra heat in the middle of summer from the stove. The canning was done in a metal enameled “canner” which was heated to boiling on the wood stove and which I think held about eight quart jars.
The time came when a pressure cooker was used, still heated by the hot wood stove, but I remember mostly the hot enameled pot and the fact that the jars had to be carefully examined to make sure the lids on the tops were sealed. Canned goods were important for our winter supply of food, and the fresh vegetables in summer were especially welcome.
As children, my five siblings and I would shell peas, break up string beans, shell beans, and husk corn on the back porch. The corn also, once husked, had to be cut off the cob. When it came time for the agricultural fairs it was on the back porch that we would, under the guidance of our Mother and Father, if he wasn’t working, choose the vegetables that we would display as Grange or 4-H exhibits at the Fair.
I recently came across a letter my Dad wrote to my Mother just a short time before their wedding in which he told her of going to Plymouth, Vermont and seeing the former President sitting on his porch while smoking a pipe. Some years later during my childhood we traveled as a family to Plymouth to view the home and grave site of that same former President, Calvin Coolidge. My Dad didn’t get much vacation time from his work, and much of that was spent working around home, but there were some day trips that we took to special locations and an occasional overnight stay somewhere in a tent.
Actually the somewheres I remember were a field near the seacoast a couple of times, White Lake camping grounds, and in the woods and another location very near our house. There were also day trips to the white mountains, including through the notches, stopping to view the Indian Head, the Old Man of the Mountains, and learning about the big slide and the Crawford House in Crawford Notch. The Morse Museum was another special place to visit with artifacts from distant places, but also the big fish that we could feed in the pond behind the Museum.
Speaking of fish, I was taught how to fish for brook trout, but never became a frequent or highly successful fisherman. One summer when I was a child I had the desire to go fishing, and tired of waiting for my parents or an older sibling to take me to the brook. My patience finally came to an end and I put my boots on, dug up some worms, grabbed a pole and walked to the brook and fished, probably going farther down the brook than I had ever been before. It is the walk home that I remember the most, however.
Going uphill, those boots, overshoes, as we called them, got heavier and heavier, and the excitement of fishing, particularly with no fish to show, was not so great.
Another time my patience wore thin involved my desire to have a bicycle of my own. This wish was made known to my parents and, though our birthday presents did not usually involve something as expensive as a bicycle, particularly a new one, I had an idea that my parents would have tried to somehow get me one for that special day.I think it was probably in May or June, however, that I learned that a classmate had a new bicycle. His old bike had a broken frame, but was still able to be ridden, so when he offered it to me for five dollars, which I somehow happened to have in my pocket, and, not wanting to wait until my July birthday to see if I would get a bicycle I didn’t hesitate to accept the offer. My parents said little about my purchase and the bike served me well, even with a break in the frame.
My childhood days are far enough behind me that I can say that we didn’t have the abundance of entertaining “toys” that the children of today enjoy. We manufactured some of our own toys, such as making toy cars out of cereal boxes. I do believe those Cream of Wheat and Ralston cereal boxes were more sturdy than most cereal boxes today. When President Eisenhower was promoting “super highways” we made our own super highways out of wood planks.

One of my favorite pastimes as I grew older was roaming through the fields and woods and looking for bird nests and the birds that made them, occasionally climbing a tree to access them. On one of my fishing trips to the brook I was able to capture a young red-tailed hawk that was sitting on a limb of a tree. I kept it as a pet for several months and it stayed around our home even after it was cage free. The hawk would perch on my bare arm without inserting its talons into the flesh and causing injury, though my parents seemed concerned that harm would occur. The hamburg treats I gave it certainly were encouragement to stay around. I don’t believe that hawks were a protected bird in those days of the past. A walk in the woods at any age can be calm and relaxing, therapeutic, or it might turn out to be a time of discovery and excitement or even spiritual awakening.
My childhood days were often fun and simpler, less complicated and confusing than those of today, but I realize that I have lived in an era when change takes place at an alarming speed.