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Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
Postcards from Falmouth Oral History Transcript
Recorded: August 19, 2021
Oral Historian: Mark Schmidt
Interviewer: Troy Clarkson
Topic: Falmouth Historical Society
Note: The right column references postcards by identifiers searchable in the Digital
Commonwealth online collection.
00:00
[Music]
00:45
Mark welcome thank you for having me so
00:47
we have the opportunity the honor really
00:50
today of discussing uh what has become
00:52
an entire campus of the Falmouth Museums
#falmouthhistoricalsociety
#falmouthmuseumsonthegreen
00:55
On the Green but your postcard is of um
00:59
an an old
01:00
historic home
01:02
that has had many names uh and the
01:05
beautiful gardens which have a rich
01:08
history so just tell us a little bit
01:10
about uh those postcards but also the
01:13
history of the Falmouth Museums On the
01:16
Green sure absolutely it's a pleasure to
01:17
be here today and thank you for having
01:19
me um the Falmouth Historical Society
01:23
and later the Museums On the Green
01:25
they're kind of one in the same
01:27
um
1
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
01:28
was founded in 1900 and there's two kind
01:30
of rather colorful individuals one named
01:33
Henry Herbert Smythe who was the rector
#henryherbertsmythe
01:35
of Saint Barnabas uh church
#saintbarnabaschurch
Gunning_Village_Bldg_0316
through 0343
01:38
in Falmouth and he had
01:40
a friend named Robinson Crocker Bodfish
01:44
and
01:44
these two started up what they called
01:46
the Falmouth Historical Society in 1900
#1900
01:49
and later incorporated it in 1904.
#1904
01:52
they started it because they wanted to
01:54
capture the stories of whaling families
01:57
while they were still relevant you know
01:59
and still around to um to to capture
02:02
them
02:03
so
02:04
um Smythe became the first president
02:06
Bodfish became the treasurer
02:08
they had their meetings
02:10
at the old town hall as well as the
02:13
library
02:16
they incorporated in 1904
02:20
later in 1932 one of the postcards that
02:23
you've got there is a house that was
02:25
owned by a woman named Julia Wood and it
#robinsonbodfish
Gunning_Village_Bldg_0451
through 454
2
#juliawood
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
02:27
was originally built in 1790 by a
#1790
02:30
gentleman named Dr. Francis Wicks
#franciswicks
02:34
Wicks was a leader in smallpox
02:37
research he was also
02:39
a privateer during the Revolutionary War
02:42
um the house was essentially the
02:46
most stately mansion on the town green
#americanrevolution
#falmouthvillagegreen
Gunning_Village_Sts_0053
through 0078
02:48
at the time and it was bequeathed to the
02:52
Historical Society in 1932 by a woman
02:54
named Julia Wood now interestingly with
02:57
the house it also came with a ten
02:58
thousand dollar mortgage which if you
03:00
think about it we're at the height of
03:02
the Depression so they you know it was
03:04
great to get the building but they it
03:05
took them a while to get out of debt
03:07
until 1942 but that's where they then
03:10
had their meetings and um
03:13
so for a
03:16
good deal of time it was referred to as
03:18
the Julia Wood house or the Wood House
03:20
but
03:21
people got a little confused well of
03:22
course there's a Wood House what else is
03:24
it going to be made of
03:26
so it
3
#1932
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
03:27
then
03:28
in about 2005 the Historical Society
03:31
said let's start calling it the Dr.
03:33
Francis Wicks house
03:34
to kind of delineate where it is
03:38
also in that not included in the
03:39
postcards but next to it was a house
03:42
that Julia Wood had also owned at one
03:44
time called the
03:45
the Conant House which was built in 1730
03:48
and then the campus now entails the two
03:51
houses
03:52
a rebuilt barn
03:54
called the Hallett Barn that was
03:56
on the grounds that had had been
03:59
infested with powder post beetles the uh
04:02
the Historical Society decided to tear
04:04
it down rebuild it
04:06
and
04:08
that's what's now used as the visitor
04:09
center on the campus and in 2012 the
04:12
Historical Society build a cultural
04:14
center so if you come to the grounds now
04:16
at 55 and 65 Palmer Avenue
04:18
that's entails the Museums On the Green
04:21
the name Museums On the Green
04:23
came into the lexicon right around 2000
#wickshouse
#conanthouse #1730
#hallettbarn
#2012
#palmeravenue
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
04:27
because basically when you heard the
04:28
words Historical Society it gave the
04:30
inference that it was a bunch of
04:32
blue-haired old ladies dust-covered
04:34
stuff it sounded rather non-dynamic
04:37
the Museums On the Green
04:39
said
04:40
what we do where we are and
04:43
kind of gives a better location for that
04:45
so that's a little backdrop to the
04:47
Historical Society
04:49
and the building which they've they've
04:51
had since 1932 and that's really the the
04:54
Wicks House the Julia Wood House
04:57
has really been the center of what has
05:00
happened um with the Historical Society
05:03
since the 30s um the first tours were
05:06
given I believe in 1938 it cost 15 cents
05:10
um the first
05:12
school tours were given to fourth
05:14
graders starting in 1950
05:16
um and another postcard that you've got
05:18
in there as well and jumping a little
05:20
bit ahead is also the gardens the the
05:22
the Historical Society started working
05:25
with the um
05:27
Falmouth Garden Club
#1938
#falmouthgardenclub
5
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
05:28
in the late 30s early 40s
05:31
and the there are two separate gardens
05:34
that's next to
05:36
the Wicks House in between the Wicks
05:38
House and the Conant House
05:40
one is called um
05:42
uh
05:43
Memorial Park which is closer to
#memorialpark
05:46
Katharine Lee Bates Road
#katharineleebatesroad
05:48
and the other one is called the Colonial
#colonialgardens
05:49
Gardens which has some original cuttings
05:51
from way back when and and from the
05:53
ground so it's a
05:55
it's really been
05:57
a snapshot of Falmouth's past being on
06:00
his on the grounds of 55 and 65 Palmer
06:03
Avenue where the Museums On the Green
06:04
line is now located
06:06
as to
06:07
why they're called what they're called
06:08
and uh what's gone into that so
06:11
the um the Wicks House has been the
06:14
center of our universe for you know
06:17
better part of
06:18
nearly 100 years
06:20
and
06:22
it's been something that the Historical
Hunt_Village_Bldg_029 &
Gunning_Village_Bldg_0455
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
06:23
Society has maintained it's gone through
06:25
a couple of iterations
06:27
among the things that are in the Wicks
06:30
House is some
06:32
18th century French wallpaper that was
06:34
originally brought back
06:37
by a whaling captain
06:39
in 1802 and set up in a different house
06:42
but brought over to the Wicks House in
06:44
the 1950s so it's not original to the
06:47
House but it's one of the own the Wicks
06:49
House is now one of the only three
06:50
buildings in the united states that
06:52
actually has 18th century French
06:54
wallpaper the other two are
06:57
located in Washington, D.C and in Boston
07:00
um uh it's also
07:03
walls have been removed um it used to be
07:06
uh
07:08
multiple walls and what's now the dining
07:10
room but the the uh
07:13
the Board at the time said let's try to
07:14
make a little more stately so they took
07:16
out different walls so it's a much
07:18
larger dining room
07:20
so it's gone through different
07:21
iterations but it's definitely been
7
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
07:25
the absolute
07:27
apex of what the Historical Society has
07:30
wanted to do and show off since they
07:31
acquired in 1932. so they were they're
07:34
rightfully proud of it and they've the
07:36
boards over over the years have done a
07:38
good job of maintaining
07:40
um its elegance
07:44
and thank you for that wonderful and
07:45
detailed intro and so
07:47
over the decades
07:49
the campus has really become
07:53
a cultural center for the community
07:55
where people come and gather and not
07:58
only have the ability to
08:01
see the artifacts that are on site in
08:03
the Wood slash Wicks house
08:06
but then
08:07
hear a living history of the town
08:10
through the
08:11
visitor center and the authors and the
08:13
speakers that you have there so it's
08:16
really grown from
08:18
a static display to a living
08:22
breathing example of our local history
08:25
and the people that have contributed to
08:26
it thank you for saying that that's
8
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
08:28
that's really our intention we we
08:30
realize that um we're right at the
08:32
beginning of uh the downtown area that
08:35
we we know that there are people who
08:37
uh come into town and want to learn more
08:40
about what's going on in Falmouth and we
08:42
try to provide that it's a bit of
08:45
education entertainment information
08:48
that we hope we can provide to people
08:50
through
08:52
guided tours of the Wicks House who are
08:53
walking towards the town through um
08:56
uh
08:58
lectures and talks
08:59
uh obviously through the through the
09:01
pandemic we've had to do things
09:02
virtually although the walking tours
09:04
remain in person and they've been very
09:05
popular with
09:07
because of the um
09:09
the pandemic we have to make sure that
09:11
people still wear masks when they go
09:13
into the Wicks House
09:15
because we don't want any docents any
09:16
volunteers any visitors to get sick but
09:18
then
09:20
but it's been
9
#pandemic
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
09:21
our way of kind of showing people how
09:23
the the town has changed how it's
09:26
progressed how things how things have
09:29
gone from
09:30
um
09:31
the Federal period in which the house
09:33
was built
09:34
through through whaling through
09:38
whaling captains and on through
09:42
tourism being the main
09:43
industry of the town so it's our way of
09:46
trying to give a doff of the cap to that
09:48
and inform people that this is what
09:50
happened
09:51
through the years
09:52
tell us a little bit about the the
09:54
whaling history and Falmouth it's not
09:57
something that's often discussed but in
09:58
the day was an important economic driver
10:02
for the community people forget that
10:03
that um that for about a 30-year period
10:06
this really was the business of Falmouth
10:09
and uh so from 1920 to 1820 1850
10:14
um Falmouth was
10:16
a major whaling port it was not
10:19
Nantucket it was not
10:21
New Bedford
#whaling
10
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
10:22
but
10:23
arguably it was third and
10:26
there there were famous whaling captains
10:27
that went all throughout the world
10:30
if you go up and down Locust Street
10:31
there are whaling um captain's homes in
10:34
fact
10:35
um
10:36
the
10:37
the aforementioned Wicks slash Wood House
10:40
was actually a whaling captain's house
10:41
for the better part of 86 years so it's
10:44
um
10:46
as much as we focus on Wicks
10:50
and end with Julia Wood in between were
10:52
some significant whaling families that
10:55
lived in that house as well as other
10:57
houses in the town and uh until oil is
11:01
discovered in Pennsylvania
11:03
um that was really
11:05
whale oil was really the driving force
11:07
for Falmouth's uh economy for a good 30
11:11
years
11:13
so as you've noted uh in
11:16
one of the portions of the museum uh
11:18
there are
11:20
displays of
#locuststreet
11
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
11:22
clothing and
11:24
different tools and artifacts from
11:26
Falmouth's history highlight a couple of
11:29
maybe your favorites or the the more
11:31
interesting items you have on display
11:34
well if you would walk into
11:37
the Wicks House
11:38
itself we want to give a guided tour so
11:41
you can go through everything and try to
11:43
see
11:44
uh furniture from the you know from the
11:47
18th and 19th centuries
11:49
china
11:51
paintings and portraits of of some
11:54
major luminaries from the town
11:56
um
11:57
if you go into
11:59
the Conant House right next to it you can
12:01
get a self-guided tour
12:04
of a timeline of Falmouth's past
12:06
I personally my favorite artifact in in
12:10
the whole collection is a 1939 jukebox
12:14
that was in the Falmouth Grange that
12:16
still plays
12:18
one of our
12:20
one of our members a long time had it in
12:22
his barn he passed away his widow asked
12
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
12:24
would we like it I
12:26
couldn't say yes fast enough
12:28
it took a couple years to get restored
12:31
but it plays beautifully and I think
12:33
it's
12:34
amazing to watch people of any age
12:37
understand appreciate and really
12:40
uh just glow when it plays so so you see
12:44
different things all throughout um
12:47
Falmouth's past we've got something from
12:49
the wreck of the Andrea Doria you know that uh
12:53
there are things that go back um
12:54
obviously there's a painting of the HMS
12:56
Nimrod which attacked
12:58
Falmouth in 1814
13:00
that you can
13:01
see an artist's rendition of that so
13:04
there's so many things we literally have
13:06
over a hundred thousand artifacts in our
13:08
collection much of it's paper and books
13:10
and
13:11
ship’s logs
13:12
but
13:14
we feel that we're the repository of
13:15
Falmouth's past and we try to do
13:19
a good job of protecting that past
13:23
in climate controlled environment and
#andreadoria
#hmsnimrod
#1814 #warof1812
13
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
13:25
making sure that what we have
13:28
is
13:29
protected and ultimately offered for the
13:31
public to see
13:33
one of the uh I think
13:36
critical roles that the Historical
13:38
Society uh and
13:40
and your leadership play is
13:44
creating
13:45
uh
13:47
capturing today's
13:49
history so that a generation or three
13:51
generations from now when people visit
13:54
the Museums On the Green they'll be able
13:56
to get a sense of what it was like to
13:58
live today
14:00
and
14:01
uh this is conjecture on my part but I
14:03
would venture to say that when people
14:05
from future generations look back on
14:06
this era in Falmouth uh from an artistic
14:09
standpoint because you mentioned
14:11
paintings that they will look back on
14:13
Karen Rinaldo as one of the the leading
14:16
artistic voices of our time uh and you
14:20
have on display
14:22
one of her most prominent paintings tell
14
#karenrinaldo
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
14:24
us a little bit about that yeah I mean
14:26
um
14:28
Karen painted uh something in 1995
14:31
called The First Thanksgiving 1621 and
14:33
she actually did it for
14:36
a church group out of Wisconsin they are
14:38
the actual owners of it
14:40
and it's the one painting
14:43
that
14:43
has all of 51 surviving members of the
14:46
Mayflower the 91 Wampanoag who came to
14:50
visit them
14:51
who were in attendance at the first the
14:53
first Thanksgiving in 1621 and she did
14:56
copious research on this and it's
14:59
it's the one
15:00
obviously there was nobody there with a
15:01
Polaroid or with it with an iPhone but
15:04
it's the one painting that's got all of
15:06
them there and we have it till the end
15:08
of the year
15:09
um
15:10
then our loan agreement I don't know
15:12
where it's going to go after that but
15:13
it's been a real honor to have that and
15:16
uh
15:17
um
#1995
15
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
15:18
so that's one of the things we have and
15:19
I’m really glad to mention that and
15:22
and thank you for saying two about the
15:23
future generations our research
15:25
librarian Meg Costello is second to none
15:28
and she does a great job of informing
15:30
people
15:31
of what has happened in days gone by and
15:34
and we we try to make sure that we tell
15:36
little interesting stories about
15:38
uh snippets of Falmouth's past we also
15:41
have tried to make it a point the
15:42
pandemic has kind of put
15:44
a little crimp on this and so we're
15:46
going to try to pick it up when things
15:47
get a little bit back to normal
15:50
as you mentioned one of the things that
15:51
we want to be able to do is to
15:54
acquire stories have oral histories of
15:57
people
15:59
from things that are not so in the
16:01
distant past that aren't necessarily
16:02
18th and 19th centuries that
16:07
if you stop and think about it and
16:09
not to make everyone feel old but uh
16:12
you know if you're in high school right
16:13
now you weren't alive at 9/11. you know
16
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
16:16
that that so that's
16:17
that's a story to you you weren't there
16:20
but we know that there's people in town
16:22
that might have attended Ted Williams’
16:24
last game or their they watched Bobby
16:26
Orr play they saw the Beatles in at
16:28
Boston Garden or um
16:31
they made a they might have been living
16:33
in Boston during bussing or they were
16:34
working in Washington during Watergate
16:37
it's those kind of stories that we'd
16:39
like to accumulate while people
16:41
are still around to talk about them
16:43
because
16:45
there are people that is
16:48
maybe not ancient history but it's
16:50
certainly history so it's um
16:52
it's one of the things that we want to
16:53
be able to focus on it's not just about
16:57
um
16:59
yesteryear it's about
17:01
days that haven't gone that aren't all
17:04
that far in the rearview mirror but
17:05
people are still lucid and and and
17:08
can tell stories that firsthand
17:10
experiences
17:12
that are really
17
#watergate
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
17:14
important
17:15
to catalog and and to have in the
17:17
database so that's
17:19
one of our real uh points of emphasis
17:22
that
17:23
we really hope to be able to pick up on
17:25
when we can get back to some air fingers
17:27
normalcy and uh in this world so that's
17:30
I’m thank you for bringing that up well
17:32
it I think it it's an important
17:35
perspective because from the beginning
17:36
of time
17:38
up until yesterday
17:40
right that entire span is our collective
17:42
history exactly and so to capture the
17:44
more recent history is important so that
17:48
people in the future look back on these
17:50
times it's funny you mentioned Watergate
17:52
and
17:53
as I’m sure you know right here in
17:54
Falmouth we have
17:57
the gentleman who actually drafted the
17:59
articles of impeachment against
18:00
President Nixon lives here in Falmouth
18:03
uh I actually did not know that so
18:04
there's a bit of our history that that
18:06
we can share in this interview and uh
#impeachment
18
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
18:08
and uh
18:10
he's actually a dear friend and a
18:12
volunteer at the Carousel of Light so uh
18:15
but I think that's the ongoing value
18:18
because I you raise an important point
18:20
Mark people when they think of history
18:22
they think of ancient history right yeah
18:24
and
18:25
to people of a certain age uh you know
18:28
that the 70s the 80s the 90s were part
18:32
of our lives but
18:34
to young people who were born after the
18:35
turn of the century that's
18:37
ancient history and so to capture
18:40
that's why these oral histories are so
18:42
important because it allows us to just
18:44
have a conversation about
18:46
our community and what
18:49
uh
18:49
all of that collective history has led
18:51
us to the to be the community we are
18:53
today I’m into that I mean it we we tend
18:56
to think that if it happened in our
18:58
lifetime it's quote not cool or just
19:00
it's not that important well we've gone
19:02
through some pretty
19:04
major things in our lifetime you know
19
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
19:05
that uh
19:07
um you know we just mentioned 9/11 which
19:09
is you know epic but you know
19:11
that
19:12
I’m sure that there were people in the
19:14
town that were at Woodstock you know
19:16
that that that uh or that protested
19:19
against the war or served in Vietnam or
19:21
served in Afghanistan or
19:23
um may not have anything to do with the
19:25
military but that they they were
19:28
they were at Fenway Park when the Red
19:30
Sox won you know that
19:32
you know look as I’m a lifelong Chicago
19:34
Cubs fan I finally got to live long
19:36
enough to see the Cubs win a World
19:37
Series I didn't think that was going to
19:38
happen
19:40
but it's those kind of memories it's
19:42
those kind of
19:44
pass-downs that we want to be able to
19:46
capture record and set and savor
19:50
for
19:52
current grade school high school kids
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and their kids you know that uh what was
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it like when
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you know people forget that we're going
#redsox
#chicagocubs
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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through this golden era of
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the Patriots
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what was it like when Vinatieri’s kick
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went through and you won it for the
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first time
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wow this is awesome that the that you
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finally got to see the Bruins win the
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Stanley Cup
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you know it's those kind of things that
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uh while they're fresh in your mind you
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want to be able to um to to detail and
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to record and say this is what it was
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like
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or how you felt when the ball went
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through Buckner’s legs
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so as a Cubs fan I’m sure that was not
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as crushing to you as it was to me I uh
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look I I I have no love for the Mets
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so for those watching who weren't alive
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in 1986 uh that was when the Red Sox
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lost game six of the World Series to the
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New York Mets for me it's 1984 watching
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the ball go through William Durham’s
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legs but yeah
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but all of that
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it is relevant to our discussion because
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it's part of our local history and so
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#1986
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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it's great to have you to be able to to
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share that with us and to catalog it for
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future generations
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what else would you like to share with
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us
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speak to a future generation of
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Falmouthites and and talk to them about
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what it's like to be in Falmouth in 2021
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well I think it's been it's been really
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interesting watching the world go by and
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how people have
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really had to
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retrench
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and
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re-prioritize things because of the
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pandemic I mean
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as a history major as somebody who used
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to teach history or something who's paid
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to to educate people in history it's
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it obviously hits me at my core
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when watching history getting
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devalued and de-emphasized in school
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curriculum that that that cuts and it
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hits me where I live
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so I want people to understand
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what it is that we went through and why
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history is important and that's why we
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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do as many of the
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the talks as we do and and doing them
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virtually
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um
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I can ask just about anyone from just
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about anywhere to talk about just about
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anything historically and the worst
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thing they can say is no that if they're
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doing it from their house
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that if Troy Clarkson is in Seattle and
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he's got a book about
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fill-in-the-blank historical topic
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I can ask you to talk about it and we
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can we can discuss things that might be
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of
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current interest
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be it what's going on in in the world of
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politically uh socially economically
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and put it into some kind of a
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historical context we don't have to get
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into it into any kind of
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take political positions but but we can
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sit there and kind of educate about
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why this is relevant and germane
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so for me
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I think that being in Falmouth in 2021
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and
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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what's been really gratifying for me and
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we're at the studios of FCTV for
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right now
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is knowing that
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people like Debbie Rogers at FCTV have
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been there
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all along to make sure other non-profits
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are still doing okay that
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um
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that we're making sure that
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restaurants are still surviving and that
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the the library is reopening to people
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and
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um that it's been difficult
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to watch businesses that had been
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thriving prior to all of this
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not
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or maybe go under it's it's been it's
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been heartbreaking and um
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I’m
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I’m very gratified for the fact that
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we've been able to endure this we've had
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some
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great supporters great members great
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donors
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who have made sure that we didn't
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suffer as much as we could have
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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but there's other businesses that can't
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necessarily say that so I
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I
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the pandemic has taught us lessons in
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business as to what we can do and
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prioritize and maybe do a little bit
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better
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but I don't wish this on anyone you know
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that this is
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this
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I can think of other ways to have fun
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and this this has not been one of them
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but I’m I’m very uh gratified for those
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who have
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banded together and
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tried to weather the storm you know that
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we are going to be doing something
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called the One Falmouth project there's
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14 non-profits
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that are going to do a a televised event
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we hope in the first quarter of 2022
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to try to show that we're still around
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and we still need support we're still
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going to be here and we and we want this
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to be the first of many iterations of
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that
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but
#onefalmouth
#2022
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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that's been a real
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um gratifying takeaway for me is that
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there's been
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we've been able to stand together and
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you know it you know it's that uh famous
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historic line about from uh from the
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Revolutionary War if we don't hang
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together all hang separately and uh I
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think that we've we've hung together
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that's a great way to wrap it up we are
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indeed one Falmouth and thank you for
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spending a little time with us here to
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be able to capture
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Some of Falmouth's history and and what
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it means uh to all of us moving forward
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so Mark Schmidt thank you very much and
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uh it's been great visiting with you
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thank you for having me it's been a real
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pleasure and honor
26
�
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Transcript of Mark Schmidt's Oral History on the Falmouth Historical Society
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1932
1938
1984
1986
1995
2012
2021
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american revolution
Andrea Doria
Boston Red Sox
Chicago Cubs
colonial gardens
Conant House
COVID-19
Falmouth Garden Club
Falmouth Historical Society
Falmouth Museums on the Green
Falmouth Village Green
Francis Wicks
Hallett Barn
Henry Herbert Smythe
HMS Nimrod
impeachment
julia wood
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katharine lee bates road
locust street
mark schmidt
memorial park
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oral history
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Postcards from Falmouth
robinson bodfish
saint barnabas church
transcript
troy clarkson
War of 1812
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whaling
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-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/32209/archive/files/a30d2a1e0689b12852205b232cf6e0c9.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=RXiH4fSHbScNP9YXuucF6MM0DK-%7EGtYiuYmjSYwtN8WmzuMal4N4o4MmkbQg7FniYz5wgrB5E9AUHgp9baRpgqmS8FHztxcuAYx-Dxk5s4djw%7E07c6KqmSKtQYKlRAN4%7EBro7rtXs62ND7G04TF%7Et8YhJ-VcVgr%7EUISfo%7EBDsZ97XtQXrgLKhP-AJxwgUda3p7G64jnz3yKIYpAJfujFKP-ySqu7WbboE6KXI918KWuDNZtZd0hXLIEWpCujyLrMlRVfKgQKeT8MREEhgw%7EQomGfPVoOjygeJ-LbeTKHVG9dd%7EjwJjs9EvMivu2SOCmVLoU7QY70W0gMFe%7EwRGHA%7Ew__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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Text
Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
Postcards from Falmouth Zoom Program Transcript
Recorded: September 23, 2020
Presenter: Tom Turkington
Host: Jill Erickson
Topic: Before I Forget: A Boyhood of Little Drama, by Tom Turkington
Available from Falmouth Public Library under 920.71 Turkington
Note: The right column references postcards by identifiers searchable in the Digital
Commonwealth online collection.
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[Music]
good morning everyone this is a big
adventure
for both uh Tom and I this is the first
time
that I’ve done such a large Zoom event
with
people that I don't necessarily know
we've been doing a lot of
Zoom staff meetings um but this is quite
of a different level
and um I’ve also been hoping that we
could have Tom Turkington
talk to us for some time and I’m glad
that this this
morning is finally the time that it can
happen
um it's really a delight uh to
to be here and I’m glad that you're all
here
so let me just tell you a little bit
about what
what was the beginnings of this program
and
that is uh Postcards from Falmouth which
was
which is a special local history project
of the Falmouth Public Library
#falmouthpubliclibrary
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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that is based upon our historical
postcard collection of noted buildings
landmarks
and locations within the town of
Falmouth
introduced in 1869 as a way of sending a
simple message
postcards quickly evolved beyond their
practical purpose
to become the universal souvenir that
brightens everyone's mailboxes
and I have to say one of the things we
did when we were closed we would send
a lot of our patrons postcards which was
people
were delighted with um however postcards
also provide us with rare glimpses into
the past
and serve as a way of documenting
history
that is why we jumped at the chance when
we saw the opportunity
for a grant to develop projects that use
historical documents
such as our historical postcard
collection to discover unknown facts and
stories about
Falmouth during days gone by after all
to collect preserve and share such
resources
is what the Falmouth Public Library has
been doing since 1792
Postcards from Falmouth has been made
possible through a Library Services
and Technology Act grant which is
administered through the Massachusetts
Board of Library Commissioners
this series of talks is also made
possible thanks to the Falmouth Public
Library Trustees
and of course FCTV and we hope by the
end of this series
that those of you listening will be
inspired to look at our postcard
collections
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#1869
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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and share your memories of Falmouth and
somebody who has
a lot of memories of Falmouth is Tom
Turkington
and I have to say I I have been
delighted um reading the book and I
think you will be
as well um Tom did write a memoir of his
childhood
in Falmouth which is a revelation in so
many ways for those of us
I’ve been here 30 years and I still
learn lots of things from his book
Before I Forget A Boyhood of Little
Drama
and there will be time for questions at
the end which you can type
into the chat so without further ado
although I will say I particularly Tom
liked
all the information about Panis
silversmiths I have a Panis ring right
here on my finger
and um uh Matt Pearson with whom I live
remembers this has many of the same
memories you have of Panis so
um a really uh a treat to read about
Panis and
and your relationship with Panis
silversmiths um
for those of you that don't know Panis
read the book if he doesn't mention it
this morning so I will now
give over the screen to Tom Turkington
thanks Jill for that nice introduction
after a long
awkward wait uh but that's Zoom for
you um
just myself I was born in Falmouth in
1949
and spent most of the first 18 years of
my life there
uh I was there for another 15 years as a
young adult I live in New Hampshire
now
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#panis
#1949
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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the book was my entry to this
program but you got to understand the
book
is not there was no research
everything in here um
just I drew it from my memory bank and
um
surprisingly enough people have looked
and said uh hey
there's a lot of details that how do you
remember those things
uh and so accurately and I guess I just
have a mind that that does that sort of
thing
it came about because I found as I was
I actually wrote it four or five years
ago I found as I was getting into my 50s
and 60s that
I sort of developed an interest in my
parents’
history my grandparents what were they
like when their kids
and what was the world like around them
what did they do with their time
and all that and of course they weren't
around to tell me
and it occurred to me that probably my
kids someday would get into their 50s
and 60s
and they would begin to develop the same
interest about me
and I wouldn't be around to tell them so
I put it down a book
and my own kids in
30 or 40 years can refer back and
know a little bit more about where they
came from
uh it is a memoir
so it's not about Falmouth per se
it's about me uh memoirs are like that
but of course because I was in Falmouth
people places events things that were
going on in Falmouth between
in the 50s and 60s are scattered
throughout the book
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this project as Jill was saying sort of
sprang forth from
postcards old postcards and uh
I don't have any postcards here as props
but the way I’m going to approach this
is to just sort of imagine what might be
on a postcard
and then ruminate a little bit about
that thing that could have been on a
postcard
and uh and do some readings from the
books that relate to it
one of the uh one of the most
photographed places in Falmouth
is probably Main Street and uh when I’m
#mainstreet
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back in Falmouth which I often am
uh it's kind of fun to go down Main
Street and
look and of course there's been massive
turnover
as there always always has been but in
some respects hasn't changed too much
Main Street when I was a kid yeah you
could
you could get auto parts there you could
get your photos developed at Ortin’s
photo shop
you could uh yeah you could go to a
movie
there were two movie theaters on main
street uh
okay none of those are there anymore but
pretty much what you have now
is places to eat and places to buy
clothes
and gifts and really 50 years ago
there were plenty of places to eat most
of them were lunch counters at J.J.
Newberry’s
and that at the Rexall Drugs
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#ortinsphotosupply
#jjnewberrys
#rexall
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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and at the Sandbar and you know all up
and down Main Street there were places
to eat but they were
fast food and it wasn't junk food it was
fast because you'd go in you sit down
Ralph Sullivan’d and come over say what do
you want
tell them a ham and cheese sandwich and
two minutes later there it was in front
of you
uh so now we have high-end restaurants
instead
okay that says something about the
economy
um and one of the uh
one of the other things that you used to
do on Main Street that you don't do
anymore is
you go shopping for your food
and there's a little something in my
book about
food shop
one indicator of the growth and
modernization of Falmouth has been the
evolution of the food stores
when I was little and we lived on Mill
#sandbar
#millroad
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Road the closest thing to a supermarket
in town was the A&P on Main Street
it was right next to Town Hall which was
razed in the 60s to make way for a
parking lot in a nice little park
that's Peg Noonan Park there were other
food stores besides the A&P
S.S. Pierce for example but the A&P was
about it for general food shops
it was a little bit larger though not
nearly as neat and clean as the standard
convenience store today
there were maybe four or five aisles
half the width and one-third the length
of what we're used to now
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#a&p
#townhall
#pegnoonanpark
#sspierce
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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if you were over by the butcher shop the
smell all around was
meat getting old by the checkout lines
they kept the coffee grinders
very large machines considering their
simple function
and that whole end of the store smelled
of ground up eight o'clock coffee which
never got swept up
my lingering impression of a trip to the
A&P with mom in my early years is one of
having to deal with inconvenience
no place to park hard walking on a badly
ruptured sidewalk
difficulty opening the door sticking
wheels on the shopping cart
traffic jams throughout the store piles
of merchandise stacked in the way
long waits in line but the reward was to
watch
hear and smell the coffee grinder at
work
oh this is more I’m talking about the
evolution of Falmouth I’m not just
reminiscing on going to the A&P when I
was a kid
now comes the evolution first National
Stores was the first chain to offer
shopping relief to the beleaguered
Falmouth housewife
they opened up a snazzy new supermarket
at the foot of Shore Street
#nationalstores
#shorestreet
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either just before just after we moved
back to town
it had a parking lot automatic doors
wide aisles new carts
and sales and promotions of course it
was an instant success
which was noted by the Stop and Shop
chain which acted quickly and
radically they got away from Main Street
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#stopandshop
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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and onto some vacant eight acreage of
Heights corner where they opened up the
store that was bigger yet
and had a modernistic arched roof and a
huge parking lot and a few other little
stores attached
and reachable by a covered walkway and
they called it Falmouth Plaza
trying not to be outdone but being
outdone nonetheless the A&P
put up a new store on a vacant lot just
off Main Street
it was a whole lot bigger cleaner and
more amenable than their outworn old
place which became a stationary store
but not as much as the new Stop and Shop
or even bigger supermarket that was
later to come to the Jones Road
intersection
and most disastrous of all the fools
built it on Scranton Avenue
there it remained for decades poorly
managed
lightly patronized constantly emblematic
of the decline of the great Atlantic and
Pacific Tea Company
well if you were to buy a modern day
postcard
you wouldn't have to look long to find
one of Falmouth Harbor
#falmouthheights
#falmouthplaza
#jonesroad
#scrantonavenue
#falmouthharbor
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now Falmouth Harbor was on
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understand it Deacon's Pond was not open
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it was land locked and if you were
driving down Clinton Avenue towards the
Heights
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#vineyardsound
#clintonavenue
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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you get to where the Clam Shack is now
and you just kept right on going
and the next thing you know you were
heading up into Falmouth Heights
uh of course this was pretty much before
automobiles existed
and I’m not sure exactly how it happened
but uh
I would say the town realized that there
were a lot of rich people now
starting to move into town during the
summer and they had
pleasure craft and the Old Stone Dock at
#oldstonedock
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the
foot of Shore Street was a was pretty
much a failure
and um so it's decided to
open up Deacon's Pond dredge it and make
a harbor out of it
at the time I lived there Scranton
Avenue was
practically a wasteland and I don't know
why it was very close to the center of
town
but Scranton Avenue which paralleled
right along the side of the harbor
uh there was nothing there there was if
you were heading up from Main Street
towards the mouth of the harbor
it was all field on your right there was
a carnival there every summer could have
had
the Barnstable County Fair there there
was that much open space
uh you got to Queen Street still nothing
still just feels
um and then
three quarters of the way down Scranton
Avenue it was bing bing bing bing there
were four or five
9
Gunning_Village_Har_0190
#barnstablecountyfair
#queenstreet
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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very modest kind of weather beaten homes
um
in a row and then again nothing until
you got to the mouth of the harbor
I’m not sure why Scranton Avenue was uh
such a pariah in town but
hardly anybody lived there um
but there was there was something
special about Scranton Avenue
I’m going to tell you about it
we moved there in
June of ‘58.
this was not the first time the
Turkingtons took up residence on
Scranton Avenue
the uninhabited wasteland between us and
Main Street
had been for one brief shining moment in
the late 40s
most densely populated neighborhood in
whole town whatever federal agency came
into being for the purpose of providing
cheap housing for returning veterans
built a colony of concrete blocked
road buildings dwellings
when Mom and Dad and baby Eric first
moved to town from upstate New York
that's where they lived we did not
coddle our young veterans
life here was rather spare and the
grateful residents moved out as soon as
they could find something better
which in our case was the house on
Fairview Avenue
just down the street my first home
the block dwellings were demolished when
the need for them passed but one
dominant structure remains until the
early 60s
it consisted of one very large room with
a couple of little ones at one end
I’m guessing now but it may have served
as a play and gathering place for the
residents
so here were rows of apartment-style
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#fairviewavenue
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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dwelling units
with a community recreation building
open space
all around and an unobstructed view of
the harbor
dig it a rock bottom low budget
disposable development for penniless
veterans
served as the model for the vacation
communities for the bourgeoisie that now
infests
practically every harborfront site in
New England
any pictures taken of Surf Drive
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um Surf Drive was my beach and um
I think was was the first widely used
public beach
in Falmouth the first beach that was
treated as such with
parking lot and bath house and
snack bar and lifeguards and all that
I lived about a mile away and I used to
go there quite regularly
during the summer time um that's where
the Old Stone Dock was
you look at the Old Stone Dock now and
it's it's just a
pile of rocks that have been gradually
settling into the into the sea but at
one time it was
um it was built to be kind of the
original
Falmouth Harbor um
people would unload there and come in in
little boats and unload on the dock and
then
ship the stuff down Shore Street to
center it down
and other stuff would get shipped back
uh
I I don't think it ever worked out very
well just to look at it you see it just
wasn't that big and uh certainly wasn't
#surfdrive #surfdrivebeach
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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that stable because it had to be rebuilt
a couple of times
but it was my beach and it was very
popular beach in those days
and one of its most popular features
and enjoyable ones was the raft
not there anymore hasn't been there in a
long time
I spent a lot of summer days hanging out
at Surf Drive Beach which was a public
beach a mile from home
the town had a multi-faceted raft about
50 yards offshore that offered all kinds
of opportunities for fun
it had a diving board just a few feet
above the water
a platform about six feet up and another
about 10 feet up
and it had a long slide with a shiny
metal surface that had a couple of burrs
on it that you had to watch out for
or you'd rip your bathing suit on the
way down if not your flesh
floated on two massive pontoons which as
long as they stayed watertight
kept the raft a foot above the water
this allowed daredevil boys to dive off
the raft swim under a pontoon
and come up for air under the raft we
played a lot of tag on that raft
there were all sorts of tricky extremely
hazardous ways to tag someone if you
were hit
one was to jump off the high platform
and tag a kid standing on the raft as
you went by
then swim under the pontoons and get
away
this meant that you'd be jumping from 10
feet up missing the edge of the raft by
inches
then going underwater and not being seen
again for a while
the beach committee provided this raft
for the amusement of their beachgoers
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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with never a thought for liability
accidents that's what lifeguards were
for
now I it's hard to photograph
Beebe’s Woods but Beebe’s Woods has uh
#beebewoods
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um become if anything ever more
important part of uh center of town
uh there were two mansions up there uh
there is one remaining and it's been uh
grandly and uh oh
beautifully overdone redone
fixed up made into its original state
that that would be Highfield
it was also Tanglewood and these were
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the mansions that were owned by the Beebes
who uh bought
really just about all the land between
the railroad tracks
the bike path and Sippewissett Road east to
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west
north to south pretty much Sippewissett Road
almost down to um
huge parcel of land uh
in my time as as a kid uh
some sections of that all Beebe’s Woods
were kind of
sold off I think uh Greengate became
one of them
uh one development and Marvin
Gardens Marvin Circle became another
uh there's still a huge parcel of land
out there that
as of late 60s was about to be developed
it was very close to being sold to
some people who were going to just build
more green gates
uh and then J. K. Lilly great
uh benefactor of Falmouth
bought the whole place and gave
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#highfieldhall
#tanglewood
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#beebe
#shiningseabikeway
#sippewissettroad
#greengate
#marvincircle
#lilly
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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most of it to the town the town has
since put in nice wide trails for
walking
and it's become a very popular place for
walkers hikers joggers people with dogs
uh it's a wonderful asset of course
and the crown jewel in Beebe’s Woods is the
Punch Bowl
which is a kettle hole a large pond kind
of way out and
you know back then it was out in the
middle of nowhere I think a lot of
uh most most
growing boys in town knew where to find
it could direct you to it but uh
you know they're just little beaten
paths i was very easy to get lost in
there
and uh but the Punch Bowl was um
was a real attraction and I had an
episode there I had many episodes there
there was one episode in particular that
stuck in my mind all these years later
Mark Denman and I hiked up into Beebe’s
Woods fairly often
not always with a trip to the Punch Bowl
in mind but we usually wound up there at
some point
our main activities were skinny dipping
smoking cigarettes when we could procure
them
catching and releasing bullfrogs
throwing rocks making funny sounds and
listening for the echoes
one fine June afternoon we were swimming
in the middle of the pond when we heard
shouts from the little rocky landing at
the foot of the trail
Denman Turkington
we looked over and saw Donnie Kudo and
Jimmy Carey
two kids a couple of years older than us
standing on the rocks
we've got your clothes and so they did
by the time we got out of the water they
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#punchbowl
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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had a long head start and all of our
duds
shoes included we had that empty feeling
that he falls all of us from time to
time
usually when we least expect it this
time I’m really screwed
walking on clothes through the woods
wasn't the problem we were unlikely to
encounter anybody there
the problem was what happened when the
woods end
getting to mark's house was our only
viable option as he lived pretty close
to the edge of the woods
trouble was once we were out in the open
we would have to cross the railroad
tracks
run down a short unoccupied dirt road
then get to the other side of palmer
avenue
which was route 28 which was the busiest
road in town however we got through
all that we then would have to cut
through a neighbor's yard to get to the
little wooded area surrounding the
Denmans’
and then what hi mom I’m home and I’m
stark naked
so is Tom well we had plenty of time to
think all this through
and what we came up with was we'd skulk
through the backyards of some of the
homes this side of Palmer Ave
#palmeravenue
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looking for laundry we could steal from
somebody's clothesline to cover
ourselves up with
we couldn't find any which we probably
wouldn't we'd crouch in the bushes
besides route 28
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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in broad daylight in a heavily populated
section of town
hoping to remain unseen until there was
a break in the traffic
then we'd streak across the road through
the neighbor's yard to Mark's house
get some clothes on and catch hell it
wasn't much of a plan but it was the
best we could do
then just a while before the end of the
trail we saw something up in the
branches a pair of underpants
and look over there a shirt and a pair
of sneakers in the middle of the trail
what good guys thanks Donnie thanks
Jimmy
sorry about all those awful things we
said about you hiking back
from the Punch Bowl it's truly amazing
how in a distressing situation appears
to be heading for the worst
and for some reason the worst doesn't
come to pass
we not only are grateful for whatever
prevented the worst from happening
but wholly unresentful of whoever
created the distressing situation in the
first place
relief is surely one of life's most
rewarding feelings
Falmouth managed to cluster all its
schools right in the center of the
village
first there was Lawrence Academy then
#lawrenceacademy
that became Lawrence High School
Gunning_Village_Bldg_236 & 237
#lawrencehighschool
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through 0257
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next to the library right on Main Street
and that got too big well right across
what is now Bates Road from from the
high school
was the village school
16
#katharineleebatesroad
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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elementary school now the Margaret A.
#mullenhallschool
Gunning_Village_Bldg_0232
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Mullen School right over there was a
Hall School which was for fifth and
sixth graders
and then when it came time to build a
new high school they just went across
Shivericks Pond
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built a really fine new high school I
think this was 1953.
and to my mind that building
now called the Lawrence School and
Junior High School uh it's the best
school building this town ever had
and I hope it's there forever uh I spent
six years there
I was in the last uh the last class
it was built as a 7 through 12
and of course within not very many years
after it was built
it was overcrowded and
so they built a middle school over on
Morse Pond
um so I was the last in the last class
that started in seventh grade and stayed
there
through twelfth grade
um it's a very functional building very
attractive building
and I probably didn't feel so at the
time but
now that I look back on it I realized
that
most of my teachers there were really
very good
um I had one
at least one real loser of a teacher and
and uh
that fellow is get some play in the in
my book here
um but uh most of them
were really good um Miss Buchanan I
#shiverickspond
Gunning_Village_Pnd_0145
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#1953
#lawrencejuniorhighschool
#morsepondschool
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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locked horns with her a lot but she was
a fine teacher
um Jim Kinney
Earl Mills through the athletic
department and phys ed
these are people I have a lot to say
about
and I can't help thinking back on Pat
Moorman
she was my sophomore year English
teacher
she was very much one of a kind craggy of
feature and lean of build she had an
outsized personality
she was the tallest woman nay even the
tallest person in the school
her nickname among the kids was Moose
she was close friends or perhaps shared
a home with
a secretarial teacher Miss Ogden who was
the shortest
together they looked like Mutt and Jeff
like most staff members in the English
department
Miss Moorman had an undisguised love of
the language in its greatest classic
works
her personal predilection was for
grammar and syntax
we spent quite a bit of time diagramming
sentences in the classroom
and if there was within a kid the
slightest potential interest in this
highly analytic activity
as there was in me Miss Moorman could
come to it
she could get very animated trying to
get across to us the subtleties of a
complicated sentence
what really distinguished Miss Moorman;s
class aside from the total immersion
and grammar was her readiness to put the
lesson aside and expound upon subjects
unrelated to our work
prejudice politics human foibles life's
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#earlmills
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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ironies
she didn't so much engendered discussion
as inform us of her views and passions
she did so with vigor and then it was
back to the lesson
she was a tough grader and not very
understanding of excuses
but after many years at LHS she still
got a kick out of the kids
didn't hide that fact like most of our
teachers
she had her moments of cluelessness
concerning the ways of fifteen-year-olds
I wonder if there are any teachers left
who still instruct a room full of silly
boys
that an abrupt exclamation is properly
termed
an ejaculation not many I bet
together with my parents and a few
others she was on the team that left me
with a great appreciation for proper
artful use of English
low tolerance for those who care not to
use it correctly
when I’m confronted with a
professionally butchered piece of
writing
as happens more and more frequently as I
age
I can't help thinking or saying this
person
just wasn't paying attention in English
class
it's Miss Moorman’s class I think of them
um another thing about Lawrence was
um
why was it Lawrence I mean it was
Falmouth it was
the public high school in Falmouth
Barnstable High School Bourne High School
Sandwich High School every time you go
to
town has a high school supports the high
school
19
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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high school is named after that town
except in Falmouth it was Lawrence and
um
I didn't really mind that but
uh I was on an athletic team
an athletic team that had an
extraordinary amount of success
go to big track meets and uh
a lot of us performed high and placed
very high in championship
events well one third of the people
watching
would think that we're from the city of
Lawrence oh no wonder they're good
they're
a big city they they got a lot of kids
to drop draw from
and about a third of the people thought
we were some hot shot prep school
downtown
ah no wonder they're good they uh they
can recruit from all over
and then the rest of people knew that we
were we were the public high school in
town
well we were we're proud of our town we
were
pleased to be from Falmouth and uh it
kind of irked us
that um most people thought we were
not what we actually were um
but this goes back to uh again correct
me if I’m wrong hey
nobody's out there to correct me so uh
1840s maybe 1850s there was a Mr.
Lawrence
had a lot of money big man in town
and uh offered the town a
substantial piece of money to um
build an academy uh sort of the first
secondary school and Falmouth
and um well thrifty Cape Cod is
only too happy to take him up on his
offer so
the only obligation was they had to name
20
#shubaellawrence
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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it after him
so that was the first Lawrence Academy
which I believe to be
now the building that is the Chamber of
Commerce
off of Main uh
town grew number of high school kids
kids going to
high school grew so they built a new
building but the name came with
that building was bursting at the seams
after a while so they built a new high
school and the name came with it
finally in I think it was 73
uh they built that new high school out
on Gifford Street
and decided to call it Falmouth High
School
any true history of Falmouth
any comprehensive history of Falmouth
especially mid-century families
would not be complete unless it had some
material
on the track teams
at the high school um
a little bit of self-interest here uh
I was involved with uh running sports in
two different ways
one as a runner in high school very
extremely dedicated and pretty
successful one
and then um as a coach I coached uh
cross-country at Falmouth for 13 years
later on
and was successful and also
lucky but
there was from the through the 60s 70s
80s um Falmouth
running sports at the high school were
were
known statewide for excellence
um it was Jim Kalperis
had the track teams in the 60s
John Carroll started up the girls track
and had
21
#falmouthchamberofcommerce
#giffordstreet
#falmouthhighschool
#jameskalperis
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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extraordinary success through the 70s I
was coaching cross country in the 80s
but it all started with Kalpe
and I’d like to tell you a little bit
about it
now about Kalpe some new kids
including myself at one time might call
him Mr. Kalperis
and there are a few ass kissers who'd
call him Coach but to everyone else he
was Kalpe
he bore considerable resemblance to
Groucho Marx
from the hustling gait bent slightly at
the waist
to the mischievous dancing eyebrows to
the ever-present cigar
to the offhand commentary from the
corner of the mouth
to the vague but usually accurate sense
you got when he talked to you
that you were being caught you knew not
he was an operator who saw more clearly
than most
that if everybody follows all the rules
to the letter all the time
nothing worthwhile will ever happen
of course he was not all things to all
people there were those who felt he came
up and might
in the teaching of science which was his
primary job description
he was probably an energetic
knowledgeable instructor but he could be
distracted with
any is the time I’d wander off from a
study hall or a lunch break or another
class with a teammate to drop in on Kalpe
seeing us at the door he would assign
someone to monitor the class while we
all went into the adjoining
audio visual storage room to screw
spikes into racing shoes or
discuss the day's workout plot strategy
for the Dartmouth meet
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there was a rare enlivening mix of humor
gravity
and intensity of purpose in dealing with
Kalpe and participating on his teams
he became a coach of runners a year
after the LHS cross country program was
successfully begun under Don Jocelyn
moved on after that inaugural 1960
season
the team was then made up largely of
underprivileged black kids who so often
went through four years of high school
without ever tasting success in
school-related endeavor
the principal Mr. Marshall wanted to see
the program continue after Jocelyn left
and presently recognized Kalpe as a good
man to take it over so he asked him if
he would
he did Kalpe knew nothing about distance
running when he took over the
cross-country team
and nothing about track events when he
subsequently took over the track teams
but he started winning state titles
right away
as a coach he did not take an
authoritarian stance to put it mildly
I don't believe he ever took attendance
why bother
attendance was not required he never
said he had to be there
he established an atmosphere that made
me want to do that
he never made athletes do the work he
made them want to do the work what a
difference
it wasn't possible to rebel against the
requirements of team membership or the
demands of the coach because there
weren't any
he gave people a whole lot of leeway and
encouraged an atmosphere in which every
kid
felt he could be himself and achieve
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respect for
first from the coach and by extension
from his teammates
he was a master at reading an individual
and figuring out what he was in it for
and this applied to the adult world as
well as the track team
in later years when he was dealing with
the broader spectrum than sports
people often came to him asking for
something
his first inclination was to see to it
that they got it
that couldn't be done he tried to
persuade them that they really didn't
want
that failed he convinced them that they
already had it
it didn't often need to go further than
just looking at my watch here and uh huh
I could go on by the way I ought to warn
you
if you have an interest in this book
I’ll tell you for one thing
it's not out there on the bookshelves at
the
at the bookstores which aren't open
anyway uh
I believe it's still available on Amazon
if you want to get a copy that's the
place to go
um most of the second half of the book
I enter high school I enter Lawrence
high school
as a freshman about midway through the
book
and to be honest with you from then on
the narrative is very heavy on the track
the book's about me and
track was very important to me all
through high school I was extremely
dedicated and
it was my main focus so of course the
book is
the second half the book is full of
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track stuff
um I find a lot of my
memories of track some some pathos
some sorrow some joys some
humor so you know the narrative
continues but
a lot of it's about traffic be warned
but I also cover mentioned
I mean Cuban Missile Crisis
uh assassination of JFK uh
you know just the
you know nuclear test bans
um all the cultural and
world world impact
events that were going on that I recall
a lot of them are in here because I’m
not just talking about because these
things
affected me these things gave me
something to think about
and to wonder about so it goes into my
book
there's one here that we can
finish up with it has nothing to do with
postcards
very little to do with Falmouth um I
have a pretty long
uh section here about being a paperboy
delivering the Falmouth Enterprise to my
customers
but I closed it off with there was a
curious little advertisement that
regularly appeared in the quiet corner
of the enterprise
it read as follows are you having a
problem with alcohol
do you want to do something about it
call KIA
ding ding ding ding that was it
I wasn't sure what to make of it and
apparently worldlier minds than mine
weren't even
the New Yorker frequently lifted
published items or quotations that were
considered so
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#falmouthenterprise
#newyorker
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peculiar or amusing that they merited
reprinting as space fillers at the end
of an article
in that venerable weekly
one day I ran across that familiar item
from the Enterprise
while leafing through the magazine in
search of humor
the notion of admitting to having a
problem with alcohol
and deciding to do something about it
was a laughing matter
to the editors of the New Yorker
it's it's funny we we talk about history
we talk about events of the past and
very often it's just little items like
that that you'd hardly
hardly ever think of that
really highlight major cultural changes
from one generation to another from one
decade to another
and here back in back in 1960
uh the idea of
wanting to do something about drinking
too much it was just
who would do that but there it was
so I’m going to call myself done here I
uh boy I could keep going through this
it's worth writing a book if for no
other reason than that
you'll love every word I can go back and
reread this
every month for the rest of my life and
still enjoy it
I wish I could do that with other books
but I can't I’m gonna
um close with a little bit of um
a little bit of an observation that was
originally uh it was past
passed to me by my brother Eric
um and I think this
might warm the cockles of the heart of
any librarian anywhere
long after the clown has been hacked to
death and our tweets and blogs and
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#ericturkington
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postings and e-titles have vanished in
obsolescence
we'll still have the books
thank you if you have any questions I
should have mentioned this earlier if
you have any
questions or comments you'd like to make
please I think you're in contact with
Jill
she will be in contact she is in contact
with me
and uh let her know
thanks for joining in thank you so much
tom that was
great and so many great so many really
delightful stories um if anybody does
have a question that they'd like to ask
Tom
right now or a comment you can just open
up your chat
and I will read him the question if you
have something
um I want to also mention that I loved
hearing the bit
again about Clinton Avenue because I
think about Clinton Avenue all the time
and how it just
ends and then picks up in Falmouth
heights and how I would love to have
like we should do something to make them
connect again
you know a bridge a bridge or we should
have little
boats to go across there or something
seems like it must have been such a
different town
when Clinton Ave went right through and
that the people who live downtown
had would have had such great access to
the Falmouth
Heights beaches so except they would
have had to go up Scranton Avenue and
nobody went upstairs
for any reason that too is really
fascinating that Scranton Avenue
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it was you know just not there was a
place that wasn't there
and the the stuff about the grocery
stores is great I mean
it's just so delightful to hear about
what the town was like at that moment in
time
um and we're actually the the fellow
that's going to be talking tomorrow as
part of this series
um Gus Widmayer um has written a book
called the Belvidere
Plain Revisited and he talks
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also about Clinton Ave and how things
again
sort of developed and it will be very
interesting I think to hear that talk
as well it does not look like anybody
has
any questions at this moment in time
but I am uh really delighted
to have had you finally come to the
library if only virtually
I hope next time in your when you're in
found with you stop by the library and
say hello
we reopened the public yesterday so feel
free
to stop by um it was a real pleasure
uh to have you talk about your memories
of Falmouth
and a great addition um to this series
of talks that we're doing
so and thank to all of you that um have
shown up today for this we really
appreciate it um
and thank you to FCTV for making this
all possible
um in terms of making this this
tv part the work the um
it is again our first time doing quite
something quite of this level so
28
Available from Falmouth Public
Library under REF LocHist 974.492
WID
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we really look forward to it a pleasure
tom
to uh hear you talk and I
hope that you all will take a look at
his book and which of course the library
has copies of
as well as um the postcard collections
so thanks so much well thank you thank
you Jill so sorry to have uh
put you on edge at 9 55 this morning
when I wasn't
down but uh I it worked out fine and uh
this is fun for me too that's great it
and it did indeed work out we're we're
delighted
thank you again and um we hope some of
us who
join you to that some of us some of you
here will be able to join tomorrow
for Gus Widmayer’s talk um and then
we have a third uh story third
one coming up um on Thursday which is
Mary L. Martin who is actually
the author and owner of the world's
largest postcard shop that has just come
out
with a new book about collecting
postcards in fact she's written many
many books about collecting postcards
so that will be sort of a different
angle of this week is the postcards
angle
um thank you so much for attending thank
you Tom
checking out thanks Jill
[Music]
29
�
Text
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Title
A name given to the resource
Transcript of Thomas Turkington's Zoom Presentation on Before I Forget: A Boyhood of Little Drama
1869
1949
1953
A&P
author talk
Barnstable County Fair
Beebe
Beebe Woods
Clinton Avenue
Deacon's Pond
Earl Mills
Eric Turkington
Fairview Avenue
Falmouth Chamber of Commerce
Falmouth Enterprise
Falmouth Harbor
Falmouth Heights
Falmouth High School
Falmouth Main Street
Falmouth Plaza
Falmouth Public Library
Falmouth Town Hall
Gifford Street
Greengate
Highfield Hall
James Kalperis
jj newberry's
jones road
katharine lee bates road
lawrence academy
lawrence high school
lawrence junior high school
lilly
marvin circle
mill road
morse pond school
mullen hall school
national stores
new yorker
Old Stone Dock
ortin's photo supply
palmer avenue
panis
peg noonan park
Postcards from Falmouth
punchbowl
queen street
rexall
sandbar
scranton avenue
shining sea bikeway
shiverick's pond
Shore Street
shubael lawrence
sippewissett road
ss pierce
stop and shop
Surf Drive
surf drive beach
tanglewood
tom turkington
transcript
vineyard sound
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/32209/archive/files/9eed404c3e53dfe8e404b58603e7521f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=gYY%7ENHoEws0wBkI98lkYnekZsIVPXO7HynHTL4QmIjipkfPhYrpZfncnYniWMUf33Jl1JgaQOXKNM2dG4FiIFqiPg9QVedYXZBsziSFyQuSpydqTktoVC2Xii0olZXDvvwWpjaJl1DbZmDKfCrGBAaolUcTKY574QZlr1fK5W0x9EH4qa2LJ99JSKhnB4aUafO3n0PETEMb%7EzWnB6bEhxbv9xy%7E6ASWbRdIqRXGwblELVwcB4SnpvJZBT2IDE%7EYpmGcykbA08FtebLFeM7sht4LDJ5fNZ9ZzI6e0-11kPQZJcKQchV2KIh%7ErVOg2LhAIcqjJ8Dgir5Av8qE7Sp-AaQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
a5f3c3b6d634299a3e6713b2304e7182
PDF Text
Text
Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
Postcards from Falmouth Zoom Program Transcript
Recorded: July 20, 2021
Presenter: Christopher Setterlund
Host: Sue Henken
Topic: Historic Restaurants of Cape Cod, by Christopher Setterlund
•
Available from CLAMS under CAPE COD 647.95 SET
• Also mentioned:
o Cape Cod Nights: Historic Bars, Clubs, and Drinks, by Christopher Setterlund,
available at Falmouth Public Library under 647.95 SET
o Iconic Hotels and Motels of Cape Cod, by Christopher Setterlund, available at
Falmouth Public Library under 647.95 SET
o Cape Cod Wampanoag Cookbook, by Earl Mills & Betty Breen, available from
CLAMS under 641.59 MIL
Note: The right column references postcards by identifiers searchable in the Digital
Commonwealth online collection.
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[Music]
and without further ado I wanted to
welcome Chris we're glad to have you
here
thank you so much I’m so glad to be here
and
yes like Sue said this is geared more
towards
Falmouth so it'll be
a lot of the places that are in my
restaurant's book are
here but in order to make this worth
your while for actually being
part of this Zoom presentation I added
some places that are not in the book
so what I’m going to do is I’m going to
pull my presentation
up so that you can see it
because it's more exciting to see the
actual presentation
and so I wrote this book
1
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Historic Restaurants of Cape Cod
this was in 2017.
and for those who don't know me I am a
12th generation Cape Codder
and I’ve written a total of six books my
most recent one is in the bottom right
corner that's Iconic Hotels and Motels
of Cape Cod
that one along with Cape Cod Nights
will be
featured next week and that one will
also be
a presentation that is Falmouth centric
so it'll be a lot of fun this one was a
lot of fun to put together too
because I wanted to I had to do more
research and find
places that you will hopefully remember
and if you don't then
I can bring them back to life for you
so in June of 2015 that's when I started
chronicling
the legendary Cape Cod restaurants it
was part of
Arcadia Publishing's History Press label
and the end result was Historic
Restaurants of Cape Cod so the book
itself
is 39 restaurants
all of them are since closed
but there's a 40th chapter that includes
recipes from many of the restaurants
that are
in the book and I was lucky because I’ve
done a lot of work for Cape Cod Life
magazine
and way back when they first started in
the late 70s early 80s they would have
recipes from restaurants in their
2
#2015
#capecodlife
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magazine
and they basically told me in exchange
for
mentioning that they're from the Cape
Cod Life magazine I could use any
recipes I wanted so it ended up being a
great
sort of win-win so that's at the last
chapter of the book
the rest so I covered the entirety of
Cape Cod in the book
I didn't want to show favoritism I grew
up in Yarmouth live in Yarmouth so
naturally
I could close my eyes and think of two
dozen restaurants from
near where I live from my lifetime
but what I did was hundreds and hundreds
of hours of research
to make sure that the entirety of the
Cape was represented
the basis of this book was a 2005 Ohio
State University study
that explained that 60 percent of
restaurants don't survive
their first season and eighty percent
go under within five years and I’m sure
a lot of you have seen
restaurants I mean COVID kind of
accelerated some
but before that that you would see
restaurants come in
have a big grand opening and fade away
within a year or two
what I focused on was those restaurants
that have
that had come and gone but they had a
huge impact
they came and made a big impact and
3
#yarmouth
#covid19
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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so this book is filled with a lot of
those
and for those of you that you know
beyond Falmouth I mean you probably have
heard of Thompson’s Clam Bar
Mildred’s Chowder House places like that
that's some examples of ones that are
outside of Falmouth but without further
ado
let's take a scroll down memory lane
places that you will
know and love and remember so
this one I put first because
uh it's very unique it was on the
top of my list as far as Falmouth
centric
restaurants now granted it's in Woods
Hole but it's so
close so The Dome Restaurant
#thompsonsclambar
#mildredschowderhouse
#thedome
Gunning_WoodsHole_Bldg_0607
and 0608
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the reason why I put this front and
center
first as far as places to talk about is
because it's being
worked on currently
so the plan is for the actual dome
itself to be
restored and possible
senior housing to be built around it in
the site of the former
Nautilus Motor Inn in 2016
the area was purchased for 2.9 million
dollars by a group called
Woods Hole Partners and that's who's
working on it right now
so The Dome Restaurant for those not
familiar with it it's down
#nautilusmotorinn #2016
#woodsholepartners
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right near the Steamship Authority so
I’ve told people if you're driving down
going towards the Steamship Authority
once you can see the water
you're basically passing by the Dome
it is an authentic geodesic dome
much like Epcot Center in Disney and
there's a reason why because they were
built by the same person
a man named R. Buckminster Fuller and he
built this 54-foot diameter
geodesic dome and the restaurant itself
opened in 1954
and it was 170 seats the Dome was the
dining room
the kitchen and the rest of the
facilities were attached to it
and obviously it's a very unique
restaurant you can see in that
image on the right it's a postcard from
the Falmouth Historical Society
#steamshipauthority
#geodesicdome
#buckminsterfuller
#1954
#falmouthhistoricalsociety
Hunt_Village_Bldg_029
Gunning_Village_Bldg_0451
through 0453,
Gunning_Village_Bldg_0455
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that eating in a geodesic dome is quite
unique and so
people would flock to it but the problem
was
the geodesic dome in the summer
especially
conducts itself like a greenhouse which
made it very hot
and if you're talking the 50s and 60s
air conditioning wasn't
as prevalent I mean it was but
what they had to do and you can see in
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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that picture on the right
on the left hand side of the postcard
there's that
white white thing hanging down it's a
tarp
the tarp was put over much of the dome
to shield it from the sun and keep it
from getting too hot
and so unfortunately you know it it got
to be
you wanted to eat at the Dome for the
view and then most of the view was
obstructed by a tarp
because it was too hot
the Dome closed in 2002 officially
it has been sitting there
basically decaying for the last nearly
20 years
there's been plans to at the very least
preserve it for history but now the idea
is to
refurbish the dome and create the senior
housing near it so
luckily this spot will seemingly be
around for a long time
however the Dome is far from the only
spot
in Falmouth that gained iconic
status so do you remember
Elsie’s also known as Elsie’s Lunch
so this spot was located on Palmer
#elsies
#palmeravenue
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Avenue
and this is also a postcard from the
Falmouth Historic Society
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�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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this restaurant was owned by a couple
Elsie and Henry Bowman
and they're very unique because they
fled
Germany ahead of World War II in the
late 1930s
and they actually settled up in Boston
and in 1955 Elsie and Henry
opened a sandwich shop in Harvard Square
that was also called
Elsie’s and it was very popular
they had sandwiches like fresher's dream
which was essentially you would consider
it a New York deli
sandwich or a Dagwood depending on what
you know it as
with ham turkey and corned beef they
also had the Elsie’s roast beef special
which was roast beef and onions German
mustard Russian dressing
and relish and Elsie worked hard
she worked hard at her restaurant in
Harvard Square
and what ended up happening was in 1965
she had a heart attack
so basically they told her you need to
retire
and what else he did was she retired to
Cape Cod moved to Falmouth
and stayed retired for about a year
before
she opened the second Elsie’s which was
on Palmer Avenue in 1966.
it stayed open through 1986 it was very
popular all the way through
before she eventually really retired in
1986
now the spot is a place called
Crabapples
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#elsiebowman #henrybowman
#germany #worldwartwo
#boston
#1955
#1966
#1986
#crabapples
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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which is still there that was Elsie’s
way back in the day
some of these legendary establishments
are still standing and
still open today and that's a neat thing
about
doing this being Falmouth centric was
the original Historic Restaurants
book every place in there was closed
and my publisher they dealt with that
one all right
they made it a point that for the Cape
Cod Nights book the nightlife
I needed to have at least a few places
that were still open in there
and the Iconic Hotels and Motels
they needed at least half of them to
still be open
so luckily a place like the Silver
Lounge restaurant which is still open
that's neat because you can see the
presentation and then go out to
Route 28a and check them out
they've been open since 1938
they've got a unique nautical theme
inside
where there's driftwood adorning some of
the walls in there from local beaches
they're known for seafood steaks
sandwiches
typical American fare the property was
once owned by a man named Manuel White
and it was bought by William Early and
he's the one
that opened it on May 28 1938
and early he was cross
promotion he came from a spot called the
Coonamessett Inn
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#silverlounge
#1938
#manuelwhite
#williamearly
#coonamessettinn
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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and they're still going strong there's
Uncle Bill's Country Store which is a
gift shop
right next to it so that's another
spot Route 28a that's kind of the nice
back roads but not back roads where
Route 28 I know out there is more of a
highway
but some of these places are a part of
recent Cape Cod history
and that talks to on the left the Nimrod
that just recently was torn down
it was on Dillingham Avenue
and it's mostly known for being
hit by a cannonball during the war of
1812
the restaurant itself was named for
the British ship the HMS Nimrod
uh before so this wasn't the original
location of the Nimrod
Dillingham Avenue it was actually
located
at a different spot in town and it was
known as the Boxwood Club
but then in the 1950s it was moved to
its spot
at Dillingham Avenue where it flourished
from there
the problem was that as it turned to the
21st century
the building was falling out of code
to the point where I guess if you had
the owners had
taken steps earlier it probably could
have been
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#unclebillscountrystore
#route28
#nimrod
#dillinghamavenue
#boxwoodclub
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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saved but it turned out that
when they went to the health department
and such to see
how much it would cost to bring the
building up to code it was 2 million
dollars
and this is more than 10 years ago
so they ended up closing the restaurant
officially in 2012
and it sat the building decayed people
came in looking to buy
but what ended up happening was they
bought it more for
the property and less for the
restaurant itself now it's an empty lot
unfortunately they tried to save it
to make it you know a part of the
register of historic places but it did
not happen
the Leeside Bar and Grill that much
like the Dome is with an eyesight of the
Steamship Authority
that was Luscombe Avenue right there
near Water Street
#leesidebarandgrill
#luscombeavenue
#waterstreet
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in Woods Hole they were open for
more than 60 years as
kind of a restaurant bar
and it's known for its odd shape because
it's where
two roads meet so it's got almost a
triangular
shape to it the building itself is still
there
in 2013 the Leeside closed
and it was quickly purchased and
reopened as Quick’s Hole
Tavern so that is still there
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#quicksholetavern
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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it's interesting to see these places and
know that you can
go back and you can see a place like the
Leeside even though it's in a different
it's a different name now
other spots that were in the book and
that I researched
for this presentation are part of a
bygone generation
The Bellows is an interesting one it was
#thebellows
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on
Falmouth Heights Road and from 1933 to
48
it was a restaurant it was started as
more of a tea room
which I’m not it's kind of
lighter fare lunch and obviously
tea but it was opened by a woman named
Thekla Hedlund and she was from Long
Island
and it was a tea room with lobster and
more
so it became it started as a tea room
but she had a connection
that could get her fresh lobster so she
decided she'd be crazy not to do that
so it became more of a breakfast and
lunch place
and it was very successful the problem
was that
Thekla Hedlund even though she had her
family helping her out it's a lot of
work
to run a successful restaurant even one
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#falmouthheightsroad #1933 #1948
#tearoom
#theklahedlund
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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that's only open during the summer
she would be down on the Cape for the
summer
spring summer and go back to Long Island
in the off season
in 1946 she had a massive
stroke and died shortly thereafter
what ended up happening was the family
sold The Bellows itself the restaurant
and a man came in and bought it ran it
for two more years as The Bellows but
when you buy an existing restaurant and
it's yours
you kind of you say you're gonna run it
as the previous owners did but then you
get your own ideas of what
you want to do with that property since
you own it
so what they did was change the name to
The Red Horse
Grill that only lasted for about
two years before it became known as the
Red Horse
Inn and the Red Horse Inn is still
standing
so unfortunately I couldn't get a better
photo with the postcard on the right
but it's the same building and if you
come for next week's presentation the
Red Horse Inn is front and center
so you may hear a little bit of this
similarity
but The Bellows was one of those hidden
gems that when doing my research
for the restaurants book it was
something I had never heard of and it
was a neat
unique story of a tea room that became a
successful
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#redhorsegrill
#redhorseinn
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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lunch breakfast lunch place with lobster
and Thekla Hedlund she was a unique
person to
run this spot
so also falling along those lines
of The Bellows was the Hangar Tea Room
and the reason why I put this I could
not find a photo of the Hangar Tea Room
so the Megansett Tea Room in North
#hangartearoom
#megansetttearoom
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#northfalmouth
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Falmouth it's the same kind of idea
where like I mentioned a tea room is
lighter fare sandwiches
drinks the Hangar Tea Room is an
interesting one and I wrote
a longer story about it for I have a
blog
called the In My Footsteps Podcast Blog
now and I do a lot of Cape Cod history
over there I used to write a lot for
capecod.com I did
Cape Cod Cape Cod history
articles I left there about two years
ago because
I wanted to basically write about things
I found interesting and not
have to run it by an editor so that's
what I ended up doing and the Hangar Tea
Room
is a pretty good story that's on that
blog
so it started off in 1923 as a tea room
called the Gray Gull
and then a woman named Mary Fellows she
bought it
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#inmyfootsteps
#1923
#graygull
#maryfellows
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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and ran it throughout much of the 1920s
and it had music and dancing this was
during Prohibition
so when you're running a place that has
entertainment during Prohibition you've
got to
make it good because there's no alcohol
to kind of keep people around
in 1930 it became known as the Hangar
Tea Room
and this is where the story gets
interesting
there was a man named William Wagner who
bought it and ran it the problem was
that it be there was a lot of complaints
about
noise cars parked all over the place
and also people drunk stumbling out into
the street
so during Prohibition when all these
things are happening
that kind of gets the antenna going of
the local police
and what ended up happening was on
November 3rd
1933 the police raided the Hangar Tea
Room
and they found alcohol they found
gambling equipment in there
and they essentially shut them down
briefly what happened was
William Wagner not too long after I mean
Prohibition
was overturned not too long after they
were raided so it was right on the cusp
so after Prohibition was overturned
William Wagner
tried to go and get an actual liquor
license for the Hangar Tea Room
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#prohibition
#wagner
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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and he was turned down he even though it
was so close to the end of Prohibition
the town didn't forget that he had his
speakeasy there
so he even had his wife Dorothy
running it trying to get her like all
right we're not associated with
William Wagner anymore but still his
wife
eventually they gave them a liquor
license but it was too late
they closed down before the end of the
1930s
and William Wagner he did not like
having his
liquor license application turned down
so he decided to run for selectmen in
the town
and unfortunately for him he ran for
selectmen
11 times and he lost 11 times
so he did not have much luck once he was
raided
by the police in 1933 kind of went
downhill from there
some of these spots were a short drive
away
and Quintal’s
was just over the Bourne Bridge today
it's
uh Dunkin’ Donuts in a Speedway I believe
right where the Bourne Rotary is that
leads you into Wareham or up onto Route
25 Quintal’s was open
from the mid-60s through 2005
and I’m actually working on an in-depth
article about the history of the
Quintals and the family Robert and
Gloria who
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#speakeasy
#quintals
#bournebridge
#bournerotary
#wareham
#route25
#2005
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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started it because I didn't realize how
how far their reach went I thought of
Quintal’s as
Bourne slash Buzzards Bay and this one
restaurant
but it turns out they had four
restaurants at once
so they had this one here they opened
one in Hyannis at the airport rotary
in the early 80s so it was
Red Coach Grill later it was Chili's
and in between it was Quintal's Red
Cabin
and it was brief they only had it there
for maybe three years
and it's interesting because they
expanded and all the expansions
didn't last that long because in
Yarmouth
they had Quintal Seafood was the name
of it
I believe they opened in 1979
and by 1983 they were closed and
replaced by
Oliver’s which is still there
the other one was actually
on the Cranberry Highway in Wareham
and it was called the Crack O Dawn
they actually weren't
weren't too long ago that they closed
down within the last
seven eight years and they were more of
a breakfast place Crack O Dawn with a
little rooster on the sign interesting
thing about Quintal’s was
they in 2005 after the
the parents Robert had passed away and
Gloria was
she was older she was retired they were
16
#bourne #buzzardsbay
#hyannis
#redcoachgrill #chilis
#quintalsredcabin
#quintalseafood
#1979
#1983
#oliversandplanckstavern
#cranberryhighway
#quintalscrackodawn
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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selling it and they planned on closing
it at the end of the 2005
season but a fire broke out
in June of 2005 and it they
took it as a sign basically that it was
they didn't have the money or the time
to repair
the restaurant to reopen for a few more
months so they just closed it down
and it was interesting they sold it to
Christy Mihos
who he put his Christy’s in there but
then he went out of business
and on the right The Flume
was located in Mashpee it's now
the Naukabout Brewery but it was
owned for 32 years by High Chief Earl
Mills
he was known as Flying Eagle of the
Wampanoag
Tribe and what he did was he
had his own recipes that he grew up with
from his
family his parents and he put that into
everything all of his meals the Flume
it was interesting I interviewed Earl
Mills
for the restaurant's book and it's just
a funny story because he
I had him come and speak at the book
launch event
for it and he basically he was telling a
lot of the same stories that he told me
on the phone
the only problem was on the phone his
stories were
very R-rated with a lot of swears
and as he's telling these stories about
working in a kitchen and
17
#christymihos
#christys
#flumerestaurant
#mashpee
#naukaboutbrewery
#earlmills
#flyingeagle
#wampanoag
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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being a chef I just was cringing like oh
god please don't
swear so much because I was trying to
keep it where people were recording it
but he didn't he was good about that
another interesting thing so there's a
recipe in the book
from the Flume it's his Indian pudding
and I spoke to him I said oh yeah I put
a recipe of yours in the book
from Cape Cod life magazine and he
quickly cut me off and he said oh yeah
that's not the right recipe
and I was like wait what do you mean and
he was he was writing a cookbook of his
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own at the time
and what he told me was why the hell
would I
give them the recipe for free when I
could put it in my book and make money
off
of it and Earl Mills he's a hoot he
definitely
he was worth the time to interview
and there were icons of the Falmouth
restaurant scene like Danny-Kay's
which is on Route 28 it was opened
from 1959 to 1977
classic Italian restaurant owned by the
Bartolomei
family the grandson
of the owners Jay Bartolomei he owns a
spot called the Villaggio
in Cotuit so if you
went to Danny-Kay’s and you enjoyed their
food
you can go and kind of get a taste of it
at the Villaggio
18
Cape Cod Wampanoag Cookbook,
by Earl Mills & Betty Breen
#danny-kays
#1959 #1977
#bartolomei
#villaggioristorante
#cotuit
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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I find it interesting that Danny-Kay’s was
an icon of
Falmouth restaurants and yet the place
the spot that replaced it
the Golden Sails Chinese restaurant has
been around for
more than twice as long as Danny-Kay’s
was there
and I don't know I’ve never eaten at the
Golden Sails I don't know how it is but
you know there they've been there for
more than 40 years
and there were also legends nearby the
Tin Man Diner
so it ended up being a part of Falmouth
restaurants but it got its start
far away from there so the diner car
itself so on the right
the original was called the Sterling
Steam Line
Streamliner diner car
the original was known as the Jimmy
Evans Flyer
and it was located in New Bedford and
opened in 1940.
Jimmy Evans was a vaudeville entertainer
and he didn't run it himself he had his
wife run it
but he put his name on it figuring that
Jimmy Evans people would know
him and come to eat there thinking you
know he's got his name on it
it must be good in 1960
the Jimmy Evans Flyer was purchased
and it was no
uh that's it um he just referenced
oops he just referenced
building quality [unintelligible]
[unintelligible] takes about eight to ten
19
#goldensails
#tinmandiner
#sterlingstreamliner
#jimmyevansflyer
#newbedford
#1940
#jimmyevans
#1960
�Falmouth Public Library – Postcards from Falmouth
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months
and I didn't exactly know what that
meant
not sure I follow that
so the Tin Man Diner was moved
to the Otis rotary where
stayed open as the oldest rotary diner
in the 1970s
then later on it was known as Mary
Muffins
but then it was leased to a woman named
Barbara Lind she's on the left
left-hand side of the left photo with
her daughter
and it was renamed My Tin Man Diner
it had a lot of military memorabilia
and Wizard of Oz memorabilia located in
there
unfortunately in 2000 it was
subject to arson the jealous boyfriend
of a waitress there
burned the building down and it was sad
because
a lot of the regular customers
would come to the charred remains in the
parking lot and sit there with their and
have coffee
where the building used to be
luckily there was a happy ending because
in 2008
it was resurrected in Falmouth and
that's the one that's on the left
it lasted for another three years
On County Road in North Falmouth before
eventually closing in 2011
but that was one interviewing Barbara
Lind
it spoke to the overall impact that
these
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#barbaralind
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#2000
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restaurants had Barbara Lind sent me
these photos of
the Tin Man Diner and she was so
overwhelmed
with happiness and almost like a
validation
that I had included her building her
restaurant in my book
and that's the way I found it with this
book that
I didn't put any spot in there that I
didn't think belonged
as a historic iconic Cape Cod location
and that's what I found that's why when
doing the research for
the Falmouth area I wanted to make sure
it was places that
stuck out that deserve to be mentioned
and remembered
and no matter what though these spots in
there
they deserve to be remembered and
celebrated for the good
more than the good food but the good
memories that they give to people
and that's kind of where I fall on this
that it's bringing back the memories and
how you felt
being there just as much as it is about
the restaurants themselves
and I finished it with a couple of
different shots of Main Street Falmouth
#mainstreet
Gunning_Village_Sts_0017
through 0041
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one looks like it's from the early 40s
and the others from the
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probably early 60s but that's where we
wrap things up
with my presentation on historic
restaurants of the Falmouth area
and if there are any questions I will do
my best to
answer them I’m going to
stop sharing the screen
so if Sue I don't know if you want to
open it up
oh okay yeah um we had one in the chat
and someone asked what about Lawrence’s
#lawrencessandwichdepot
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do you know anything about that one
that is one that I’ve heard of I think
Lawrence’s sandwich shop is that
because that's been on a I don't know
much about it myself
but it was on it was on my list for the
original book the idea is
some places had as I say more meat on
the bone
thankfully in the years since
I did this book there's been more in the
way of
research opportunities online newspaper
archives that have allowed me to
expand that's why a place like Quintal’s
or a place like the Hangar Tea Room that
I wasn't able to get in
the original book I can now research
because of these expanded I mean
Falmouth Library they've got the
newspaper archives they go up to
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1962 I believe so those
are fun to check out yeah we actually
have them we have microfilm too oh hold
on one second yeah we have microfilm of
those
um if you could turn your camera on if
you have a question and
just raise your hand and then we'll know
who's talking
does anyone
okay yeah I don't see any other
questions in the chat but if anyone
wants to ask a question or
mention anything about me these
restaurants just turn your camera on if
you can
or if you don't have a camera you can
unmute yourself too well I
see in the chat about the casino the
#casino
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casino
next week that's from my Cape Cod Nights
book
there were some places that
doubled as restaurants and nightclubs
there were some that doubled as
restaurants and hotels
so I had to pick and choose what went
where
now that's not to say that I didn't have
places that were
in multiple books a place like The
Columns that used to exist in West
Dennis
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#thecolumns
#westdennis
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was in the restaurant's book and in the
nightlife book because
it doubled as a jazz club so the casino
you will see
um can you tell us just a little bit
more about your research for these books
too like
how do you approach these books when you
write them
so first thing with this restaurant's
book
basically the publisher came to me and
said
you can have any anywhere from five to
forty restaurants
and that was basically the only
restriction I had
so what I did was I asked family
parents grandparents friends about Cape
cod what places do you remember going
that you liked
and I jotted all of them down I think I
ended up with
almost a hundred wow and
then what I did was pick the ones that I
knew were the big time ones
Thompson’s Clam Bar Mildred’s Chowder
House
and the like and then ones that I wasn't
as familiar with
like when I saw the Dome I said oh my
god this place is awesome
because you can still go see it I mean
it's kind of
decayed but hopefully they're fixing it
but you start to pick your definite ones
that go in there
and I had a plan to do 40 restaurants
it was a nice round number with 40,000
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words
was kind of the word count but it ended
up not happening so that's where the
recipes came from
oh yeah that's yeah that's Olde Surrey
#smithsoldesurreyroom
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Room is next week too
you're picking ones that see they fell
kind of in between
where believe me I’ve got photos of both
Smith’s Olde Surrey Room is is going to
be in the Cape Cod Nights
next week and the casino casino
Brothers Four it's interesting when I
did my
research for the Cape Cod Nights book I
didn't realize
that Terrace Gables which is it's next
#brothersfour
#terracegables
Gunning_Heights_Bldg_1169
through 1206
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week as well
a huge luxury hotel right on
uh Falmouth Heights right on the
Falmouth Road Race running route
I didn't realize that that became
Brothers Four
that it was basically they just put a
nightclub entertainment complex into
this hotel
and the same with the casino that that
they were
like neighbors and it's so interesting
that it got repurposed as that
but oh believe me that's that's coming
#falmouthroadrace
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too
cool yeah that'll be a great
presentation
especially yeah it'll cover a lot
because it's a hotel it's two different
books hotels and nightclubs so
yes and I’ve got a whole brand new
presentation for that as well
oh that's great no we appreciate that
because even your books
to begin with you know cover a lot so
the fact that you went and found even
more on Falmouth that's great
and I enjoyed I took it as kind of a
challenge
to make it where it was worth it for the
people that came to
check it out to make it where it wasn't
just
three or four places from the book that
it fleshed out to a full
presentation and Falmouth was easier
than if you
told me to do it for like Wellfleet
Wellfleet would be a lot harder
Truro I I don't think they were even
represented in the restaurant's book and
I tried
but Truro it was a needle in a haystack
yeah there aren't a lot of restaurants
there that's for sure well I couldn't
even I don't think I could name you
one currently let alone
back 40 50 years ago yeah
yeah maybe one okay does anyone have any
questions or does anyone have any
comments in any of these restaurants if
they had been there
yes did I do justice to because so the
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place
I could tell you the ones that I pulled
from the book that I have
you can tell the ones I have more
knowledge of the Dome
Elsies The Bellows The Flume
Tin Man Diner but places
like the Leeside and the Nimrod
those I weren't as familiar with so I
tried to do my best to
get information that I could share so
that it wasn't
just a photo and me skipping by
yeah I’m not from Falmouth myself so I
don't know any of these but I’m sure
some of these folks probably do
and someone typed that they had some
good memories I wonder if
who if anyone knew about Hangar Tea Room
room and the speakeasy because that was
fascinating
I did an article about it that goes way
more in depth
but I’ve started to become a big fan of
finding
speakeasies and writing about them there
was one I’m from Yarmouth and there's a
famous one called the Casa Madrid that's
down near the beaches
and it basically in 1933 it opened as
dinner and dancing and within six weeks
they had been raided and shut down
because they were speakeasy and they
didn't hide it very well
there were Boston-based politicians that
were supposedly
legend has it there when it got raided
and they jumped out the back window
to escape wow
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#casamadrid
#1933
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yeah that would be interesting well
maybe someone will come to us with some
of these stories at some point today
we can relay them yeah definitely if
anyone has any places they want me to
research and then do a future article on
I also do podcasts and I share a lot of
Cape Cod history there the podcast is
more New England-centric
but I have I did a stand-alone about the
Cape Cod Coliseum and things like that
yeah and I think
on your website is probably your email I
assume that people can contact you if
they have questions yes sir
I mean I have it too but I didn't I
think you have it posted on your website
too
and the website is good it's got so it
has my first
five books my sixth one hasn't been
uploaded yet but obviously you can get
it
pretty much anywhere and it's got
a link to my podcast and a link to I was
on
Chronicle two years ago this week so I
have that
embedded there so you can see it oh wow
that's great okay well
we'll definitely look forward to seeing
you next week and
hopefully you guys will all be back and
if you have anyone else that might be
interested in hearing about that that's
next week too
yeah yeah we do yeah and I’ll I’ll try
to get the link out to people who
attended this just so you'll have it too
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#capecodcoliseum
WCBV Chronicle
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and event we are recording this so
eventually we will
you know get it up and post on our
social media and again thanks to FCTV
for helping us out with this
and letting everything run smoothly and
thanks everybody for coming and
have a great rest of your night and
hopefully we'll see you next week or at
another presentation
and thank you thank you all so much for
coming and I hope to see you all next
week for another presentation
okay have a great night
[Music]
29
�
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Transcript of Christopher Setterlund's Zoom Presentation on Historic Restaurants of Cape Cod
1923
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2015
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author talk
Barbara Lind
Bartolomei
Boston
Bourne
Bourne Bridge
Bourne rotary
Boxwood Club
Brothers Four
Buckminster Fuller
Buzzards Bay
cape cod coliseum
Cape Cod Life
Casa Madrid
casino
Chilis
Christopher Setterlund
Christy Mihos
Christy's
Cotuit
County Road
COVID-19
Crabapples
Cranberry Highway
Danny-Kay's
Dillingham Avenue
Earl Mills
Elsie Bowman
Elsie's
Falmouth Heights Road
Falmouth Historical Society
Falmouth Main Street
Falmouth Road Race
Flume Restaurant
Flying Eagle
geodesic dome
Germany
Golden Sails
Gray Gull
Hangar Tearoom
Henry Bowman
Hyannis
In My Footsteps
jimmy evans
jimmy evans flyer
lawrence's sandwich depot
leeside bar and grill
luscombe avenue
manuel white
mary fellows
mary muffins
mashpee
megansett tearoom
mildred's chowder house
my tin man diner
naukabout brewery
nautilus motor inn
new bedford
nimrod
North Falmouth
oliver's and planck's tavern
palmer avenue
Postcards from Falmouth
prohibition
quicks hole tavern
quintal seafood
quintal's
quintal's crack-o-dawn
quintal's red cabin
red coach grill
red horse grill
red horse inn
route 25
route 28
silver lounge
smith's olde surrey room
speakeasy
steamship authority
sterling streamliner
tearoom
terrace gables
the bellows
the columns
the dome
thekla hedlund
thompson's clam bar
tin man diner
transcript
uncle bill's country store
villaggio ristorante
wagner
Wampanoag
wareham
water street
west dennis
william early
woods hole partners
world war 2
yarmouth