Joseph Dee
350 Bedford Street
Interviewed February 14, 1978
Age 82
Concord Oral History Program
Renee Garrelick, Interviewer.
Click here for audio in .mp3 format
All these houses were here when I was growing up. These were
asparagus farmers. They produced a big part of the asparagus that
was raised in Concord at the time. It was taken in by horse and
wagon to the market. It was a big industry here, very thriving and
flourishing industry. They had to work hard and they were well
rewarded for it.
Over on Old Bedford Road there were all farmers. There was Mr.
George Clark on Lexington Road, Mr. Thomas Burke on Old Bedford Road,
Peter Dalton, and across the street from him was Mr. Frank Peterson,
and the Magurns were all highly successful farmers. But as time went
on they passed on.
As young boys we were taught how to cut asparagus. We started
cutting early and if they were looking for help we were available.
We had to cut it and pick it up and put into the bag, but we were
young in those days.
Horses pulled the asparagus cultivator, there was no such thing
as a tractor then, and many a time I walked up and down there behind
the cultivator and I wasn't much higher than the handle but my
grandfather introduced it to me and that's how I got my start. The
farmers all had two horses, some of them had four but as soon as the
season started it was time to cultivate to keep the weeds down in the
fields and the cultivator was just as essential as the air you were
breathing back in those days. Those horses knew just what to do.
They didn't need any reins, they'd get up at the end of the row and
that horse would swing right around and get into the next row and go
and back forth all day, never a rein on him. The horse knew as much
as the driver. The cultivator now sits out in front of my house a
sign of days long past.
My grandfather bought this house here. He came over here from
Ireland during the Civil War in 1864, I think it was. Back in those
days, the federal government had a draft system but it wasn't exactly like in past wars. You were drafted but if you could get somebody to
replace you, you were exempt. Irish immigrants were just beginning
to come over in big numbers and drafters would be down at the dock
here in Boston waiting for these fellows to get somebody to serve for
them and make them legally exempt. A lot of these young fellows were
called "greenhorns", that was the standard name for any nationality
coming over. But my grandfather wasn't interested in that and he got
off the boat and walked out to Lincoln. He saw a man up in the field
with a pair of horses plowing, so he climbed over the wall and went
over and asked if he could use some help. It was the spring of the
year so he took him on. My grandfather worked for him for a few
years then he bought this house here which was standing at the time.
My grandfather died in 1921, I believe and my father took the house
over from my grandfolks and later on I bought it from my father and
have been here ever since.
My grandfather was a caretaker, he took care of Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery up here. It wasn't as big then as it is now but he had two
or three men with him and he was there until he died. He was 82
years old when he died. His oldest son, my uncle John was a
probation officer up at the court. The court was on the second floor
of the building where the insurance company is facing the town
square. When the insurance company grew and needed the space, they
moved to the second floor of the town hall. They were there for a
number of years and then the town grew and the new court house was
built on Walden Street. Another uncle when he died in 1946 was
superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory. That was the same
year my father died, the two of them died in the same week. Another
uncle, Bill was a mail carrier here in Concord for years. He lived
up the street here, he worked until he was 70. The post office was
right around the corner from Richardson's store. Mr. Tower was the
postmaster there for years.
My father worked for Willard T. Farrar who was the undertaker,
that's what they called them back in those days, today they call them
funeral directors. The town was small and Mr. Farrar used to also
take care of the court house as a janitor or maintenance man and also
the bank downtown, where the Harvard Trust is now. In my time in the one building where the bank is now there was The Middlesex Savings on
the left side of the building and the Concord National Bank on the
right half of the building. There was an elderly lady that lived
next to the bank between the bank and the old cemetery named Mrs.
Holland. When she died, Middlesex Bank bought the house and tore it
down and the Savings Bank sits there today.
My oldest brother, who was a year ahead of me in school went in
the funeral business with my father. He was there all his life and
when he died, his son Charlie stepped in and carried the business on
and he's carrying it on today.
When I got out of the service, I worked at the armory. I didn't
know what I wanted to do when I got out of the service and this
fellow, an officer from the armory asked me if I wanted to interview
for a job. Back in those days very few went to college. About one
out of ten young fellows my age went to college when they got through
with high school. So I went to the armory in 1921 and I retired from
there in 1966. The armory on Everett Street was built in 1915 and
used for quite a few occasions and organizations and the school used
it for a gymnasium.
When I went into World War I, the armory was the old veterans
building which is now 51 Walden Street. I enlisted there on December
16, 1914. The old Company I was the Concord company from that
building and it still means a lot to me. When I graduated from high
school in 1913, I was working in Boston until I was called up in
1917. Company I was in the 6th regiment and when the war came along,
all the different outfits were put into the 26th division.
My World War I experiences resulted in the naming of a street.
I was sent up to Nancy, France which is about the size of Boston. It
had been pretty banged up by German artillery fire because is wasn't
too far from the German border. The nearer they were to the border,
the harder they got hit. The streetcars were still running on a
limited scale. Right outside the railroad station in Nancy which was
like South Station in Boston they had a shelter built of concrete.
I lived in a French barracks there and there were some French
soldiers. I was given some money and I would eat in the local
restaurant. We were detached service. I had to go down to city hall with a woman I met because she didn't have any food or ration money
and she asked me to go with her. I would get paid in American money
and the banker would turn it into French money and I would give her
some money. But Nancy made a tremendous impression on me.
In the winter of 1918 I was sent to Rouceux near Alsace Lorraine
and lived with a French family. It was the practice of the army to
make arrangements with French families to provide shelter for a small
number of soldiers. I stayed in the hayloft. The mother of the
family was like a mother to me. There was many an evening I spent in
the family kitchen. I learned considerable French and she asked
questions about this country. We agreed to write and before the war
ended, I got a letter asking me to be godfather to the new baby of
the family. I was able to get a pass to visit them the following
year. The family had the baptism and I signed the baptismal
certificate.
When World War II began, I lost contact with the family until
one day a letter came to Concord from my godchild explaining that her
mother had died during the war from lack of medical treatment and
asked me to continue the correspondence with her. I hoped to get
back to France one day and in 1967 I did and arranged to meet my
godchild in the hotel lobby of the town where she was born. It was
quite a moment for me. I had only seen her once, the day she was
baptized. I remember that moment when she walked up to me and asked,
"Are you Joseph?"
When I got home and later on started developing this land, there
was going to be two roads and I wanted to call one of the roads Nancy
Road. It was about 1953. Being in Nancy really showed me what war
was like. In school we had a choice of taking either French or
German so I took French. I liked French, it just came easy to me and
then about three years later when I got over to France, I found I had
a pretty solid start on French. I was there six months and I could
speak with the French just like you and I are now.
I was working at the armory at the time of the 1925 celebration.
Golly, there was a terrific snowstorm. They waited 25 years for it and they couldn't have had a worse day. The armory was headquarters.
On many of the April 19th celebrations I couldn't participate because
the armory was usually parade headquarters and I had to be on duty
there.
I've lived the transition from the horsedrawn wagon to the
automobile. Back in my days when I was a kid, the streetcars would
go. You could ride from here to Lexington for a nickel. The
streetcar tracks ran along Bedford Street and another streetcar line,
The Concord-Maynard-Hudson met downtown at what they called the
turnout, and people would transfer from one line to the other. And
that was a very thriving, flourishing industry for quite some few
years. Then Ford showed up and he kind of revolutionized things and
the streetcar line faded out and just gave up.
The people knew the motorman and conductor because they were
very friendly. They ran on a schedule, every hour or three-quarters
of an hour whatever it was. If you wanted something downtown, you
waited until they came along and ask maybe for a loaf of bread or a
newspaper and they would drop it off maybe 15 or 20 minutes later on
their way back. They would walk in here and maybe chat for a few
minutes, the passengers would sit out there just as calm as could be.
That's the way life was then. They weren't in a big rush in those
days. Or if you didn't need anything downtown, you would just give
them a wave.
The roads back in those days were just gravel. There was no
such thing as hardtop then. It was mud in the spring of the year
after the snow melted. There were big ruts you couldn't get out of
them, you just had to keep going. The conditions of the road were
poor and then they got macadam which was a fairly hard surface and
better than the mud. The Department of Roads and Bridges was on
Bedford Street for years. Most of the equipment was pulled by
horses, there was no such thing as a truck then.
The Macone brothers were the first automobile agency in Concord
in the early days. They grew just like the automobile industry grew.
They were highly successful and sold quite a few cars as the years
went on. They were fine fellows and they were all natural mechanics.
If anything went wrong, my God, they could fix it. They were highly thought of in Concord. Nick could fix anything. No matter what it
was, my God, Nick could get it right.
Judge Keyes had a Stanley Steamer. It was made in Newton. He
had that all the years he was living. He was the judge of the court
here and he was a powerful influence in the town all the years he
lived.
I've been in the color guard of parades for many years. I
started during the fall of 1919, and I carried the colors until 1975.
In the Virginia Road area the farmers were the Kenney farm, the
Wheeler farm, Carlson farm and the McCaffrey farm on the Concord-
Lincoln line. Mr. Fred Carlson had made several attempts to get the
town to improve Virginia Road which was a side road off a side road
and by the time they got there, there was never much done to it.
Anyway he tried for several years to get the road improved and then
the following year they had a committee to decide on buying the first
motor vehicle for the fire department which had been using horsedrawn
equipment. So they had all these facts and figures turned in before the town voted on it and Mr. Carlson stood up and said with all these
glowing reports he would like to see it go down Virginia Road in the
springtime. With that remark on the floor of town meeting, he got
the road fixed.
When I was a kid, everybody burned wood in the old kitchen
stove, and these fellows that we used to call hobos would come along
and see the pile of wood in the backyard and they would come up to
the door and say they were hungry and ask if they could split some
wood, if you would compensate them by giving them a meal. My mother
and others on the street would give them a meal. And they gave good
value, they wouldn't be out there twenty minutes, they would be out
there a couple of hours. My mother would call them in and sit them
down and give them a meal. They never knew when their next meal
would be or what it would be. They'd appreciate the meal and thank
you and be on their way. That would be quite common. If they came
along the next year, which they probably did they knew where the soft
spots were. But that is something that is no longer.
