Edited interview with Steven Courtemanche (SC), grandson of Mildred Greenwood. Conducted by Joe Manning (JM), on January 15, 2009. Transcribed by Hilary Buxton and edited by Manning.

JM: Did you know that your grandmother worked as a child in the mill?

SC: Meme, that's what I called her, would talk sometimes about how little money she made, how many hours she worked, and about making only 12 cents a week.

JM: Did she tell you what she did in the mill, and what the work was like?

SC: No, she didn't.

JM: Did she continue to work in the mill when she was an adult?

SC: I believe she did. That was always a topic of conversation.

JM: It was the Springs Mill wasn't it?

SC: Right.

JM: I guess a lot of people worked there in those days.

SC: Yeah, the Whites (mill owners) owned everybody.

JM: Did she speak well of the Whites?

SC: Yes, she did. In fact, her mother and father ran the boarding house for the mill. That was on Mill Circle. It's gone now. It was torn down.

JM: Did she live at the boarding house?

SC: I think she did as a child.

JM: Your aunt told me that you actually lived with your grandmother for a while.

SC: She kind of brought me up.

JM: Why did that happen?

SC: Well, I come from a family that was kind of dysfunctional, so I spent most of my time with her. 

JM: What was she like, and was she like a mother to you?

SC: She was just like a mother. She was very nurturing, very gentle. She made you feel good when you felt bad. She used to talk to me a lot. She loved to cook.

JM: What year were you born?

SC: 1946.

JM: Could she read and write?

SC: Oh, yes.

JM: Did she speak French?

SC: Yes. When I was little, I always spoke French. I wasn't allowed otherwise; everybody spoke French. I didn't know how to speak English. I went into the first grade not knowing how to speak English. When I was about six years old, I had my teeth extracted and then went into respiratory arrest and was pronounced dead. But I recovered.

JM: What was it that almost killed you?

SC: Sodium pentothal. They gave me too much of it when they extracted my teeth. I woke up in the morgue, and there was no one there, just a big black room.

JM: Did you scream?

SC: You don't know what screaming is! I remember it very vividly. I needed to stay there for a couple of months. After that, I had forgotten how to speak French.

JM: So then you learned English?

SC: Yes, in the first grade. I had friends, and I just picked it up.

JM: Did your grandmother speak English to you after that?

SC: Oh, yes.

JM: What was your grandfather like?

SC: I never met him. He died fairly young in an accident. On the way home from work, he used to walk on the railroad tracks from the foundry, and he fell and hit his head on the rail and never recovered. That's all I know about him, except I heard that he used to make the best hooch in town.

JM: You mean whisky?

SC: No, beer.

JM: When did you stop living with your grandmother?

SC: In 1966.

JM: You were 20 years old then. Did you continue to live in Winchendon?

SC: Yes, until my wife and I moved to Maine a couple of years ago.

JM: So you continued to be close to your grandmother?

SC: Yes.

JM: What were the last few years of your grandmother's life like? She had lost her husband. Was she happy?

SC: She seemed to be happy all the time. She was really never blue. She was always smiling.

JM: Did she ever tell you anything about her family coming from Canada?

SC: She said her family came down in box cars or cattle cars to work in the mills. So that's how they got into the country, coming down with the cattle. They changed their names to an English name. A lot of families did.

JM: Did she ever revert to her original name?

SC: Actually, she never took the Greenwood name.

JM: But in the census, she's listed as Greenwood. Maybe her family was giving the name Greenwood.

SC: Probably.

JM: When your grandmother died, had she been sick for a while?

SC: No. She went into the hospital to have a physical. She had been in good health. And then that night she had an aneurism. A blood vessel popped in her brain. They had given her a complete bill of health earlier in the day.

JM: So she was healthy and happy up until the time she died.

SC: That's right. She used say the Rosary, and she prayed that she would die in her sleep. She was very religious. She never missed Mass.

JM: Did you ever know her parents, Fred and Agnes?

SC: No. They had long since died by the time I was born.

JM: What do you miss most about your meme?

SC: Just being near her. She was a fantastic grandmother.