Excerpts - Steeples: Sketches of North Adams

From a 1996 interview with Tony Talarico and Tony Sacco:

Tony Talarico: My father had a tailor shop on Holden Street for about twenty years. He was a fine custom tailor. From a bolt of cloth he could make a suit to an individual’s measurements. He had a wonderful reputation. The owners of the woolen factories in town came to him to have their suits made. My mother did a fine hand sewing the inner linings and buttonholes. Famous people, including Cole Porter, came from around the country to have their suits custom made by him.

Once a customer brought in a bolt of cloth to have a suit made. Because my father was too busy to make it, he sent it to a factory in Philadelphia. The company returned the cloth with the statement that there was not enough cloth. My father measured it and sent it back again, because he felt there was enough cloth. They sent it back again. So he cut it up and sent it to them ready to be put together. In a few days, a representative of the company came to him and tried to get him to work for them, but that wasn’t for him.

I remember my mother singing Italian songs as she worked around the kitchen. She was a great cook. She baked her bread in the oven of a black coal stove. She also knitted, crocheted, and spun thread. She must have been some kind of a healer. Neighbors would come in with a sick child, and Ma would pray over them. Then the child would run out and play as if nothing was wrong. Our playground was the neighboring streets: Center Street, Marshall Street, Main Street, River Street, and the alleys between them. I smoked corn silk and cigarette butts under the Holden Street bridge. The river was colored with the dyes from the Windsor Prints Works. What a dirty mess that was.

Tony Sacco: Not far from West Main Street is what they call the Little Tunnel. It’s still there. We used to stand on top of the tunnel when the trains came and get the smoke in our face. That was a lot of fun. In those days, there was one train after another, maybe twenty passenger trains a day and lots of freights. It was the Boston & Maine. It went through the Hoosac Tunnel from Boston to Chicago.

In those days, everybody burned coal. As kids, we used to go down and pick up a box of coal that fell off the train and bring it home. It would keep us warm for a few days. We didn’t have any money. We used to light our house with kerosene lamps. This was in the ‘20’s. There was electricity in the town, but we didn’t have it till later. We had a galvanized can with a spout on it, and it held a gallon of kerosene. It was seven cents a gallon. We would go to the store that sold the kerosene, and they would fill the can from a fifty-gallon drum. When eight o’clock came, we’d all go to bed to save kerosene.

We had a lot of Italian stores. One of the stores was run by a man named Buda. He had a store on Center Street. All of the Italian people went there. You’d buy things from him, and he’d write it down in a little book, and then you’d settle up with him. My mother couldn’t read or write. Every now and then, she’d go over to Buda’s store, and she’d come back with a bit of news. We’d say to her, "Hey, how did you find out about that?" And she would say, "Joe Buda told me."

Tony Talarico: When we had the flood in 1927, my father had his tailor shop on Holden Street right near Main Street. My cousin was working over at the Arnold Print Works and came over about five o’clock in the afternoon. I was at the tailor shop, and my mother was there, too. My uncle couldn’t cross the Marshall Street bridge because the water was going over it. He told my father that we’d better go home. So we got in my father’s car, came up Center Street, and when we got on Eagle Street, the water was up above the hub caps. We crossed Union Street, and a big log came down and just missed the car. River Street was like a regular river.

We lived on Harris Street, which is off River Street. At the foot of Harris Street, there was a store. The water was so strong, that it took that store and turned it around and floated it down the river. There were about three tenement blocks right after Harris Street. The water began to eat away at the first tenement block. All the people in the houses put planks from one tenement block to the other and crossed over to the center of the middle tenement. The fire department came over and put a ladder across River Street, which was like a rushing torrent. People were screaming. I can still hear it.

From a 1996 interview with Lou Siciliano:

We were living in Clarksburg when the urban renewal started. I could see it, and then I couldn’t see it. They tore down all these beautiful buildings that were built, brick and mortar. The people that were in business on Main Street were doing good. People from the mountain towns like Readsboro would come down on a Saturday night to do their shopping. And some of them would come down on a Thursday or a Friday night with a horse and wagon, and there were places on Holden Street where they used to park their horses, so to speak. Of course, there were no beer parlors then because of Prohibition, so they all had a good time with what they brought down. It could have been made in the bathtub for all we know.

It was sickening to watch them tear down the buildings when they had the urban renewal. The whole south side of Main Street went kaput. There was three hotels: the Richmond, the Wellington, and the Sterling. There was very little blasting. It was all wrecking ball. It went on day after day, summer and winter. It took a couple of years, then everything was gone. People just stood out there and watched. Sometimes I’d leave my office and come home to grab a bite, just to see what they were doing on Main Street. I’d park the car and scoot over and take a look. "Holy Moses," I’d say, "that’s gone and this is gone." You’d feel it inside. It was tearing something apart. People had to go to Pittsfield to shop. Many people just left the area. The mayor thought urban renewal was a great thing at the time, that we would rebuild Main Street. For years, it was all empty.

From a 1996 interview with Theresa Aubin:

It was terrible here during the Depression. My mother had to go on WPA and get clothes, and we had to get those coupons to get butter, not butter really, but that oleo stuff. You mixed it with orange. She had to wait in a long line every two weeks to get it. Later on it got a little bit better. During the war, the guys were gone, so we had to make our own happiness, you know. I was a homebody. I never went out too much. I used to like to do jigsaw puzzles and help my mom with the cleaning. I enjoyed doing chores and errands for my neighbors. I used to do volunteer work for the elderly, get their medicine, or take their rubbish out for them. That was when it was a caring world.

We used to go out skating and sliding. They would fill up Noel Field for ice skating. I like singing, and I used to belong to the church choir. I used to like to listen to the radio. We’d listen to the Barn Dance show. We also went to vaudeville at the Richmond and the Paramount. I’d go window shopping on Sunday with my mother. Big treat, you know.