Merreiam-Webster's list of new
    words in its dictionary for 1970.

    Above - Sacred Heart Church

    Below - The original Hopedale High School, which
    became Sacred Heart Church in 1935. Click here to
    go to more pictures and a history of the church.

Hopedale - January 2020

 January ezine - Hopedale in 1920, Part 1   

Hopedale in December 2019

Hopedale in January 2019

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    Early on the evening of January 3, DJ told me
    there  were lights blinking high up in the maple
    in our front yard. I took the picture on the left
    and above showing them. In the morning we
    could see that it was a drone.. See below.

    Below - Site on Elmwood Avenue where the
    Italian Club was located. Click here for more
    about it, and also about the Bright Oak Club.

    Printed in the Hopedale High paper,
    The Blue Flame, in the 1930s.

    Back to the story of the drone. After spending five days
    up in the tree, and being soaked by some rain, I'm not
    sure it will ever fly again. Nevertheless, I had an idea
    about getting it down, and wanted to see if I could. I have
    some pieces of PVC tubing in 10-foot sections. I put two
    together (different diameters) with the smaller one
    about a foot into the larger one. I got up as far up as I
    could on a step ladder, with DJ and the mailman, who
    had just come by, making sure the ladder didn't go over.
    I found it rather awkward trying to maneuver a 19-foot
    pole while holding it as high overhead as I could, and
    standing on the ladder, but after a few pokes it came
    down. I'll get it back to the kid it belongs to.

    Another update- I found out who the drone belonged to,
    and brought it to his house. His mother came to the
    door, and told me it had been caught it a tree behind
    their house once, and was up there for about a year. I
    presume, in that case, the few days it spent in my tree
    didn't do much harm. The next day the boy came to my
    house to thank me for it

The corner of Hopedale and Freedom streets,

    The Chilson house at 54 Freedom Street is for sale. It has the distinction
    of being the first home in the Hopedale and Milford vicinity where a
    television was seen. Click here to see a Milford News article about that.
    Click here to see the house, inside and outside, about 120 years ago.

    With the temperature on the weekend of January 11 and 12, being in the
    low to mid-60s, all the walking trails in the area were very busy. This
    picture shows the Blackstone Canal and  towpath in Uxbridge. Although no
    one can be seen in this picture, we were seldom out of sight of other
    walkers. Other places we saw that were in use by large numbers of people
    included the Hopedale Parklands, the Milford rail trails, the West Hill Dam
    area, and the path from Hartford Avenue, Uxbridge to Lookout Rock.

Hopedale Pond - January 17

From a Boston Globe article about reusable coffee cups.

    A skim of ice formed on the pond on January 18. That evening a few
    inches of snow fell. The picture above was taken on January 19.

    Two of Mendon's most prominent people, Police Chief
    Matthew Mantoni, and Lowell's Dairy owner, Harold
    Lowell, were murdered some decades ago. To read the
    stories about these tragedies, click on the pictures.

Thanks to Don Howes, who posted this on Facebook.

Hopedale Pond, January 23.

    I've known for a long time that during World War II, Draper produced
    howitzers and a few other  products for the war, but here are a couple
    of items they made it the foundry that I hadn't known about.  I saw them
    when visiting Bob Anderson for more information about the 200+
    Draper photos he passed on to me a few months ago. The grenade
    doesn't have the typical hand grenade appearance, but Bob said that's
    the way they came out of the foundry. He didn't know if more work was
    done on them after that.

    The picture above, from the Bancroft Library, is from a small photo showing houses and the
    Draper plant along Hopedale Street, with the Hope Street bridge in the background. Those
    of us who are less than 120 years old have no memory of it looking like that, with a vacant
    section along the street. I'm thinking this picture might have been taken from the tower at
    the fire station. The station was built in 1916. Here's a page with drawings that show the
    expansion of the shop from 1890 to 1913. Looks like it was a busy day in the foundry.

    Here's the footprint of the Draper plant in 1913, a few
    years before the probable year the picture above was
    taken. The "store house"  was the only building that was
    right at the edge of the west side of  Hopedale Street at
    that time. The Main Office had just been built.

    At some point after the new Main Office (now Atria-Draper
    Place) was built, the old one on the west side of
    Hopedale Street was razed. The vacant area in the
    picture above is probably where it had been.