Local historian recalls the glory days of Lenox

By Kate AbbottPrint Story | Email Story
LENOX — In the 1920s, Judy Peters, born Julia Conklin, lived at the corner of Franklin, Tucker and Church streets and played hopscotch, marbles and jump rope in the middle of the road.“There was hide-and-go-seek every night,” she recalled. “The big tree outside the old Roseborough Grill was home base. Every house in the street had children in it. At 8 p.m., when mother clapped her hands, the five Conklin kids had to go home. That ended most of the games.” Main Street looked much as it does now, she said. Horses and wagons still drove it regularly, and there were far fewer cars. “There was always the excitement of beautiful horses and carriages,” she said. She might even see a Tally Ho, an immense four-in-hand — a carriage driven by a team of four horses, harder to manage than a pair — in which everyone sat way up high in the air. The only ones she sees now are those triumphantly finishing off the annual Tub Parade. The town has changed a lot in 80 years, she said. “To my knowledge, there were no ‘no trespassing’ signs,” she said. “If there were, I didn’t know what they meant. Everyone knew everyone’s children. If I said, ‘Mother, I’m going up to the Aspinwall wood today,’ she never worried. We would follow a brook to find out where it started or where it went. Bald Head, Richmond Mountain, the reservoir — we walked over all the estate and knew where all the flowers were. It was one source of entertainment. We walked everywhere.” The bare top of Bald Head Mountain had once been a sheep pasture, and in her childhood it was a famous spot for picking blueberries. Half of the kids in Lenox would gather up thee picking berries and having picnics, Peters said. Some sold the berries they picked. She brought hers home, and her mother canned them, so the family had blueberry pies all winter. The local people could and did walk all over the great estate properties, she said. The estate owners expected it. They put up signs, “Please do not dig up ferns or bark trees.” People brought baby carriages, sketched or rode horseback. They strolled through on Sunday afternoons, dawdled in lover’s lanes, skied through in winter and coasted down the hills. “We never bothered anybody. We just walked through the woods. We never went near the big house,” Peters said. “That was how we referred to the main house.” She learned the names of wildflowers and birds from her father, she said. He grew up in the country and knew all the old New England names: wakerobin for trillium, honeysuckle for columbine, cowslip for marsh marigold. Peters said she used to find a flower in May that looked like a cameo, that she called “lady-in-the-chariot” — she only learned as an adult that it was a wild orchid. “I wanted to walk in the woods all my life as I had as a child,” she said,” so I always took a child with me. One girl I walked with on Sundays would ask me, ‘Do you think this is the day the lady slippers are out?” Four or five generations of children know their wildflowers because of those walks, Peters said. Her mother loved flowers too. She came from England and missed the wild primroses and violets. Peters and her sister used to bring her cowslips. And her schoolteacher taught her the names of birds. The schools were in the center of town, except for the district schools, and nearly everyone walked to school and walked home for lunch. If they lived on one of the estates, they were brought up by a coachman, Peters said. The library ran clubs for the children back then. They did puzzles, learned to knit and made baskets. And in return, if the library needed volunteers, the children would help out. Peters later worked at the library. She attributed a great deal of what the library meant and stood for to the town’s first trained librarian, Edith Olive Fitch. “Many people didn’t like her because she was stern. She came here very young and highly educated. She held story hours, and she could recite the whole of ‘Jabberwokky’ [The Lewis Carroll poem from “Alice in Wonderland]. She had such a sad life — because of the dignity of her position, she had no close friends. No one ever called her by her first name,” Peters said. Lenox had two policemen on the beat at the time — Timothy Dunn in the daytime and Joseph Kirby at night, Peters said. Mrs. Jessie Ferguson ran the telephone office in the building where Tanglewood is now and was known to listen in on the phone calls. Not everyone had a telephone, so a telegraph operator sent messages from the building that is now Eviva, Peters said. The post office also ran a special delivery service for anyone who wanted a message sent especially promptly. A man, or sometimes a boy, stood by on a bicycle, ready to deliver specially marked letters that came by the night mail. Peters’ husband was one of them. He was a stamp collector and got access to all kinds of foreign stamps that way, she said. Dr. Hale, the town’s one doctor, would come to people’s houses day or night, she said. He drove a horse and wagon, and later a car, but always walked to nearer calls. He had a raccoon coat and galoshes that he always wore unbuckled. In “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton mentions a young doctor, Ed Hale, who married the judge’s daughter, Annie Walker — as the real Dr. Hale had, Peters said. She said she saw her first movie at Town Hall. The town showed films two nights a week back then, she said. The films came with the evening mail. Everyone sat in the Town Hall and waited for them to arrive. “Mr. Johnson ran the reel. When one reel ended, you had to wait while he changed the reels,” Peters recalled. “Mrs. Gorman played the piano. These were all silent movies. She could be playing anything. She played popular songs. They were sometimes far away from what was happening in the film.” The town had three selectmen then, and the assessors all ran businesses in town — the department store, the fish market, for example — so people could always find them to ask questions. The Town Hall had been newly built in 1903. “As you walked in the front door, on the right was the Lenox National Bank. On the left was the news stand and the post office,” Peters said. On the first floor, the town clerk and treasurer worked. People used the Town Hall for meetings, dances, basketball tournaments, school graduations, flower shows and even chicken shows, Peters said. Farmers from all the surrounding towns brought chickens, roosters, ducks, and geese in pens to display them, like a dog show. “It was a noisy affair. Everyone was very proud of their chickens,” Peters said. Back then, Lenox hosted the second largest dog show in the country after Westminster, on one of the estates, as well as a horse show and flower show every year. For the flower show, all the superintendents — head gardeners at all the estates — brought their best flowers to the exhibit — dahlias, orchids, anything they could grow in their gardens and greenhouses. The judges came in from New York. Lenox had many famous gardeners, Peters said. They were educated in England at Kew Gardens and apprenticed to head gardeners there. Then they came to America and got hired by garden architects and sent to big estates. Three trains a day ran between Lenox and New York, Peters said. The morning train took vegetables, flowers, eggs and milk from the estates to New York, to the great families in their winter quarters. Each estate had a working farm, and the men on the estates kept working all winter. The local fish market, meat market and fruit market supplied the estates. Local farmers harvested ice in winter from Laurel Lake and Stockbridge Bowl and sold it to them. All the estates had icehouses. The Cowhig family had an icehouse right in the center of town and never could keep the children away from it, Peters said. People who lived and worked on the estates went to school and played games together with those who lived in town. Almost everyone in town worked on an estate, Peters said. Some of the men were butlers or coachmen. Peters’ father was a night watchman. Most of the coachmen later became chauffeurs. “We had all beautiful foreign cars in town,” Peters said. “A Rolls was nothing for us to see — everyone had one.” The wealthy families at the estates often sent the bright children of people who worked for them to college, she said, and they sponsored a visiting nurse and rooms at the local hospital, where local people could stay free. They had Christmas parties for the people on the estate, too. “Mrs. Parsons had a huge party the Sunday after Christmas. Each child could ask for one toy and for something to wear. The Sunday night, she would hold a dinner for the servants, and all of her nieces and nephews had to wait on them,” Peters said. “I’m sure there are people who are going to question these things because there are some people who didn’t feel as much at ease with the summer people as we did. They lived their lives and we lived ours. I never resented them. Some people did, because they had money. It never entered my head. I had a happy home and enough food.” Lenox had no industry then, she said. There were mills in Lenox Dale, and before that the glass factory and the iron works, but that was before her time. At one time, iron ore was mined in the center of Lenox and smelted in Lenox Dale, she said. On Ore Bed Road, near Tucker and Housatonic streets, a pond covered the old mine exit. The local children skated there in winter but never swam there in summer, because people said there was no bottom to it. The town filled in the pond and the mine entrance, when it widened the Pittsfield/Lenox Road, because they needed somewhere to put the soil, she said. They made the place into a playground. The mine tunnels themselves ran great distances, Peters said, and when the mines closed, they filled up with water. Where the post office stands now, there used to be an old garage with a hole in the floor leading straight to the mines. The owners could throw anything down it. The vein of ore went through between Glad Rags and The Gifted Child, she said; the houses along Church Street are built above the mineshafts. But, with estate taxes and the income tax, the estates began to fail. In the 1940s and ’50s, when the supermarkets came in, the small markets closed up. After World War II, General Electric Co. moved to Pittsfield. Young engineers came from all over the country, and a new era began for Lenox.
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Senior Golf Series Returns in September

Community submission
PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- The Berkshire County Fall Senior Golf series returns in September with events on five consecutive Wednesdays starting Sept. 18.
 
It is the 22nd year of the series, which is a fund-raiser for junior golf in the county, and it is open to players aged 50 and up.
 
The series will feature two divisions for each event based on the combined ages of the playing partners.
 
Golfers play from the white tees (or equivalent) with participants 70 and over or who have a handicap of more than 9 able to play from the forward tees.
 
Gross and net prices will be available in each division.
 
The cost is $55 per event and includes a round of golf, food and prizes. Carts are available for an additional fee.
 
Golfers should call the pro shop at the course for that week's event no sooner than two weeks before the event to register.
 
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