Click on either picture for more about the Hopedale Community House. The other municipal building built in the 1920s, referred to in the first sentence above, was the high school, which was originally named General Draper High School.
“My father was originally from Boston. He was one of seven. One of his brothers had moved to Worcester and had opened a Gulf gas station. My dad went up to live with him, and he started working at little spas and drug stores, etc. He came across a gentleman named George Holland who was from Hopedale. One day Holland said to him, ‘I’ve got a spot for you in Hopedale, a very prosperous little town. You’d do well there.'” Click on the picture to read Don’s memories of the Town Hall Spa, the first restaurant in the Hopedale Town Hall.
Thanks to Jane Lowell for David’s album of Hopedale postcards, which included these of Draper looms in Ecuador.
Click on the ad so see what the section of the Mill river where the mill was looks like now.
Here on the left is a branch of an Asian pear tree that I planted in my backyard in 2011. The entire tree is on the right.
Click on the picture to go to a page about the Blackstone Valley Railroad. Decades ago it was a popular attraction on Hartford Avenue in Bellingham. Thanks to Pat Fahey of Milford for the story and the pictures.
Nip bottle on bush – Williams Street
Thanks to Dave Noferi for sending this picture. Click on it to go to the Class of 1971 page to see the names.
The picture on the left was taken during a paddle on the Nashua River on September 14. The west side of the river there is Devens. The picture on the right was taken when my mother and I went to see my father, at what then was called Fort Devens, 80 years ago.
Pat Fahey has sent another article about a local railroad. This one is about what was locally known as the Pink Granite Line, which ran from Framingham through Ashland and Holliston into Milford. Click on the picture to go to the article, which includes pictures and maps.
We saw this eagle when we were on the Mystic River on September 23. I wish I had gotten better pictures, but it didn’t hang around for me to try.
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