Interviewed May 5, 1986
Age 62
Concord Oral History Program
Renee Garrelick, Interviewer.
Click here for audio in .mp3 format
My mother's family goes back quite far in Concord history, in
fact supposedly it goes all the way back to Peter Bulkeley. My
grandmother was Bessie Brooks, Caroline Elizabeth Brooks known as
Bessie, and her adoptive sister was Mary Brooks known as Madie and
we always called her Aunt Madie. That was the family of Judge
Brooks sometimes called Squire Brooks and they lived on Hubbard
Street and later on in the home now occupied by Harry Lang on
Sudbury Road, I believe it's One Sudbury Road.
She was quite wealthy and had a home up on Liberty Street -
it's a big yellow farm house formerly the Derby farm. You can see
the well cover and a path to her front door with a "D" on it for
Derby farm. And we used to go up there at Christmas time, the
whole family, and those Christmases are very precious to my memory
believe me.
My mother was Elizabeth Brooks Cutter and she had two
sisters, Rosemary Cutter and Gretchen Cutter. Gretchen died in
childbirth in 1929 and my Aunt Rosemary was a constant part of our
family all my life. My mother was a very socially conscious
person. I don't think my aunt cared a hoot about it and I know my
dad didn't. My dad's family all came from Newburyport. My
father's name was John Wheeler Clarkson. As a matter of fact,
where I'm living now in Rockport is where my parents met. They
met at the Rockport Country Club my mother used to say on the
tennis court. That's where they got to know each other.
My family went to the Unitarian Church. That and the Congregational Church and the Episcopal Church were the three most
important churches in town when I was growing up. I was told
early on particularly when I began to go to public school in
second grade that it would be nice if I would ask the boys before
I brought them home what church they went to and tell her. If
they went to the Catholic Church she wasn't too much in favor of
my associating with them although she later on modified that a bit
when she got to know one of my dear friends, Paul Dee. She liked
Paul very much and that kind of changed her mind, I think.
Concord was divided in many ways. Certainly there were
perhaps four or five different levels. You had at the bottom of
the heap the Italians who arrived last and lived down on Bedford
Court, mostly the Rizzitanos. There were twenty children in that
family and they were kind of rough and ready and others were up
behind the depot, "the other side of the tracks". Then next in
line were the Irish who at this point in the '30s were beginning
to be assimilated into the middle levels of Concord living.
If you lived in West Concord as far as my mother was
concerned you were beyond the pale. There were so many fine
families up there, people like the Damons, who I got to know later
on. My mother knew my friend Dick Damon's father and his uncles
but there was no social life between them.
The high powered families at that time and the one at the top
of my list was the Brooks Stevens family. They represented pretty
much the top of the heap and they lived on Lowell Road. Brooks
Stevens has since died. I hardly knew him. But there were others
as time went on, the prominent ones were people like the Shaws,
the Edgartons, and I knew Henry Edgarton very well. A finer young
man you'd never want to meet. I call him a good friend of mine.
And the Lunts, certainly Dr. Lunt, and the Emerson family,
although there again, Billy Emerson, we knew each other and we
could greet and talk. Those I think were the high powered ones
and later came along families like the Moores and the Kidders were
all part of that group. They either lived on Nashawtuc Hill or in
the "park" as we called the area of Crescent Road.
My closest friends as time went on became such people as
Walter Borden Jr., Donald Ferber, my own cousin John Wood and
various others, Henry Thurlow, Teddy Daniels. Teddy and Henry
were ministers' children. We had a group that kind of stuck
together in high school and we had members of the other areas too,
for instance John Antinone came from Elsinore Street was a part of
group sometimes. He eventually married into the Andy Boy broccoli
family and died, he had some bad troubles.
Initially there were struggles with my mother who would
rather have me socialize with, well, the Foss children or the
Kidders. I knew these people, we would meet and talk but we were
just not good friends. I felt I didn't want to compete socially.
I wanted very much to choose my own friends which I finally did.
She finally gave up on it after a while.
My parents did belong to the Concord Country Club for many
years. After a certain point they dropped their membership as
they got older but my dad loved to play golf and he and Walter
Borden constantly played golf through the '30s. My dad would come
home from work and without even having supper would grab his golf
clubs and go up to the country club. He worked for the Hood-
Goodrich Rubber Company in Watertown for well over forty years.
On committees you had the hard workers like Burleigh Pratt or
D. Ripley Gage. The Concord Players was a fine organization in
town at the time. It's only within the last twenty or twenty-five
years that they've become really democratic. I used to go to the
Concord Players presentations every year when it was deemed a
suitable play and it always was. I think the most risque' one
they ever put on was The Petrified Forest and there was a lot of
cussing in the first scene and they had to modify it in the later
performances after the first night.
But there were always the leaders, the Wheeler family, Lesley
Anderson, the same names appeared again and again. The Keyes were
a socially prominent family and of course the Robbs. Nobody in
this town will ever know how many young people Mrs. Russell Robb
Sr., that is the current Rusty Robb's grandmother, sent to college
and paid for herself.
Even today the fund for the less fortunate members of the
Unitarian Church is called the Fund for the Silent Poor and
nothing is ever said about this kind of thing. It's all done very
quietly and it was so in those days too.
As far as the Keyes, I knew Danny Keyes and I knew the girl
he married, Barbara Richardson, who was very much a part of our
small group. And her dad Laurie had been an old beau of my
mothers way back. In fact I have a beautiful picture of my mother
and Laurie Richardson dancing at my daughter's wedding back a few
years ago. They were quite a steady thing for while I guess.
At seventh or eighth grade, that was the time of the junior
sociables. If you were on the right list, you got an invitation.
I remember we had a fellow in my class whose mother had a great
deal to do with making up that list so if you felt someone that
wasn't on there should be, you might slip a word and get him put
on the list.
That was sort of the beginning of, I suppose you would call
it, true social consciousness. The junior sociables were held I
believe four times a winter at the scout house and it was the
first brush we had with formal social behavior. The boys wore
tuxedos and the girls wore long dresses. There were dinners given
before the dances and of course there was a certain amount of
prestige as to whose dinner you got asked to. I kind of enjoyed
the junior sociables. We had a gentleman who ran them by the name
of Joseph Champagne and he would always start things off with
"One, two, three, are you ready, let's go!" The music would start
and off we would go. He would teach a little bit of dancing each
time too.
Then later when you were about 16 or 17 years old you got
invited to the senior sociables. They seemed to be mostly
comprised of private school boys, that is people from Middlesex,
Browne & Nichols, Milton Academy, some of whom I knew and some of
whom I did not know. They were usually held at the Concord
Country Club. I went to one and found it so distasteful in its
stiff formality that I pulled out halfway through the evening and
that was the end of that. I know I never went to another one.
The division between private and public schools became marked
as you got older. You see we had the three private schools here
in Concord. You had the Fenn School where I taught English for
two years, for the younger boys, you had the Academy for girls,
and you had Middlesex for the boys and some of the boys later on
went further afield. Some of the boys I knew went all through the
Fenn School, Billy Emerson and Larry Lunt and some others like Don
Ferber went to a certain level and then came to the public school
and then went away again. He and Walter Borden went to Exeter,
and some went to Andover and other places. I myself left after my
junior year from the high school and went to Stanton Military
Academy down in Virginia.
Going to private school was prestigous. It was done not only
for the welfare of the child but for the social welfare of the
parents I always felt.
My paragons among the group of Irish was the Dee family. Of
course, Charlie Dee's family was the funeral director. His
greatgrandfather established that firm and there was a tremendous
respect in this town for Charlie Dee and his family. The father
of my friend Paul was a postman and his name was Bill Dee. As
time went on and particularly with the influence of the war,
several of Paul's brothers went into the service and they were
officers. Now the prestige of being an officer did something for
them you see as far as the town went and as far as their own
feeling about themselves I'm sure. I was not an officer, but many
of my friends were. If the kid from the other side of the track
can come out of the war wearing oak leaves or an eagle, he's done
something. That's a big accomplishment and that's exactly what it
was. I think since World War II Concord has been a much more
democratic sort of town than it was beforehand. This has been my
experience.
There was one Jewish family in town that had children. There
were two Jewish gentlemen, they were brothers and their name was
Arkin. They were both tailors. Sam and Max had shops on the
opposite sides of Main Street and the rumor was they didn't speak
to each other for years and years. I don't know why and I don't
know if that is even true or not. Natie Arkin was my contemporary
and I was friendly with Natie, I knew him quite well. My mother
had occasionally served on committees with Mrs. Arkin and
everybody who ever met Sam loved him. He was a fine, fine fellow.
He had a tremendous sense of humor. Lenny Arkin who was my
brother's contemporary is one of my brother's oldest and closest
friends even though they no longer live in Concord. Those were
the only Jewish families I knew when I was growing up in Concord.
I was influenced by antisemitism from some of my relatives and
when I got down to Stanton I knew Jewish boys and I always got
along with them fine. Later on in life, well I've been to so many
parties where my wife and I were the only Christians in the whole
room.
There was one black girl in the high school when I went
there. She came from Lincoln. She was a lovely little girl and I
know all the kids liked her and all that but she was the petunia
in the onion patch, I'd say to turn around an old saying. It
wasn't helped by certain teachers who would kid her a little bit
about being black, referring to her as "miss sunset" or "miss
nightshade" or something like that. I think it was a common thing
at the time particularly where you had a minority of one. I'm
sure if 90% of those kids were black, people would have kept their
mouths shut. They certainly would keep their mouths shut today.
The other kids responded to it to some degree but I think even
then they felt this particular faculty member was going a little
far.
I well remember prohibition days. I remember when prohibition was declared null and void and in fact that was one of the
factors in town that helped divide the social groups. Many
friends of my parents did not drink. My parents did and the crowd
they went with did. There were drinks at all their parties and
there was always liquor in our house but naturally if somebody was
a teetotaler, you realize that he might be uncomfortable at your
house or party so you didn't invite him and he understood why and
you understood why you weren't invited to their parties. Several
of my parents friends were just nondrinkers and each sort of
respected the other person's feelings and that was all there was
to it. But it did provide some kind of a division socially you
see. It was there.
And people did have liquor around during prohibition. There
were bootleggers around but I was far too young. After all I was
born in 1923, I was far too young to be so sophisticated in my
knowledge but I knew what a bootlegger was and I knew what a
speakeasy was. As far as I was concerned all the bootleggers
lived in Boston or Cambridge, there weren't any bootleggers in
Concord but I'm very sure I'm wrong on that.