USA > Vermont > Windham County > Rockingham > History of the town of Rockingham, Vermont, including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957 with family genealogies > Part 24
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In 1919 it was still circus time. Sells-Floto arrived on the B. & M. tracks, unloaded as usual in the dim morning hours, watched by half the sleepy youngsters in town and a good share of their fathers and put up its tents in North Walpole as it couldn't find a field large enough on this side of the river. That was the year that Jack Dempsey, the new heavyweight cham- pion, joined that circus. They advertised a "bully spectacle," with daring young men and women on the flying trapeze, aerial acts and three rings full of clowns. (Back in 1853, P. T. Barnum is said to have brought Jenny Lind to town.) The next year
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this same company advertised a "grand free exhibition on the show ground immediately after the parade. Congress of wonders, of two continents, the seven seas and the blue skies, free to all; marvels of the Orient and Occident assembled at a staggering cost of life and limb. Carlos, the two-headed Mexi- can, Zanzibar pinheads, Honduras joined-together twins, 80 of earth's weirdest creatures." Once a seal got away from the parade and started for the river.
Then there was always Uncle Tom's Cabin about once a year for a thriller-diller (no matter what J. C. Furnas says about the misrepresentation and pitifulness of the old "Tom- shows" in his book GOODBYE TO UNCLE TOM!) and if any mother missed her son that day, he was usually to be dis- cerned in the parade, marching proudly if wearily in a costume which dragged at his heels and hauling a pseudo-bloodhound whose nose dragged on the ground and from which no Eliza would ever have run. This show came to town on various occasion and when it arrived in December of 1910, there were 900 tickets sold but, possibly due to the season, the parade was canceled. It was held in the Opera House instead of tents and as the populace packed themselves inside, someone was heard to re- mark "you'd think it never came here before!" In 1915 a popular weekly trip was the excursion to Lake George via the Rutland Railroad, leaving Bellows Falls at 7:15 a. m. and arriv- ing home the same evening, for $1.50 the round trip. There was once roller skating on "the Island" and in the old Island House which burned in 1908. It was run by John Brosnahan and often the youthful pianist was Flora Lovell. Every organi- zation held its own dances and at the close of World War I the popular steps included the bunny hug, the hooche-kooche, the shimmy and the turkey trot. Soon the trustees, firmly prodded by the Woman's Club, decided that things had gone far enough and fined each organization permitting such exhibitions, from five to twenty dollars.
Theatricals and operettas were greatly in demand on a large scale years ago, many being balls for charity, the hospital or the library. When the new Masonic Temple was opened, it was with a musical extravaganza for the benefit of the Eastern Star and called the Crystal Ball. Dr. R. S. Elmer was king, Mrs. A. C. Liston queen and Will Bowtell the royal escort. Two years later the Temple set a new standard for masquerade dances with its New Year Ball when nearly 200 people attended in costumes ranging from the sublime to the comic and a hun- dred masked dancers whirled to Exner's Orchestra. They included Fred Perry disguised as an organ grinder complete with monkey and a phonograph hidden under green baize. There were the four famous Yama Yama Boys otherwise known as Duane Aldrich, Harold Stillwell, Raymond Griswold and Walter Taylor; Harold Gordon as a bathing girl; Byron Robin-
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son in a harem skirt; Lucy Barker as the Merry Widow and Mrs. J. H. Williams as a French doll. It was the highlight of the season and of all the balls in late years at the Temple.
In July, 1915, the Chamber of Commerce instigated a new entertainment, one which was bringing the best in literature and music to the American people. It was the popular Chautau- qua which included traveling companies of lecturers, musicians and actors who went on the road each summer to bring communi- ties a repertoire of the nation's best culture. The program in- cluded matinees and evening performances each day for four days and was guaranteed to please everyone from portions of The Mikado to lectures by the grandson of General Booth, late of the Salvation Army; Swiss yodelers, Vitale's Italian Band with readers and vocalists in between. But it was not always a financial success and the first year there was a big deficit, the sponsors making it up from their own pockets; 1916 saw a sur- plus of sixty dollars, 1917 a small deficit and 1918 broke almost even. Perhaps local audiences preferred Lorne Elwyn at the Park Theater to Shakespeare! The tents were erected at the Playground at first but in 1920 were behind the Armory but with a big loss. The popularity of Chautauqua had declined to the zero point. But it was an interesting and rewarding part of the summer once when "the lyceums of the city came to the country."
WINTER SPORTS
Fifty years ago the term "winter sports" meant small boys bumping down hills or jumpers or "scooters," a stick of firewood with a barrel stave nailed to one end and a billet of wood to the other for a seat. It was guaranteed to hand you bottom side up at the bottom of the hill. There were sleds and traverses, those long wooden seats with two sleds beneath which took the winter roads at breakneck speed. Many a traverse party flew down Oak or Pine Hill on a moonlight night, in imminent danger of colliding with the trolley at the foot. There was the spinning descent of dish pans on the icy crust and clamp skates screwed to shoes, leaving the feet and legs to slowly congeal so that only the hardy few lasted long enough to perform figure eights on the pond on Morgan's Field.
Some folks snowshoed, a sage and sober method of travel, like walking along the road instead of whizzing over the ground in a car. Snowshoeing shows you a lot more of nature than sky-rocketing on a pair of hickory boards. (Probably that is a theory deduced by an older generation.) Small boys began to strap barrel staves to their feet with their mothers' fruit jar rubbers as the first ski interest arrived and in the '30's, Ed Plantier used to marshal a flock of snowshoers, young AND old, across winter fields of a Sunday afternoon.
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Then the picture changed. Today Vermont, in one good weekend alone, with good weather conditions at the ski resorts scattered over the state, considers the snow worth from $50,000 to $100,000 to her. Snow is no longer simply something to be shoveled and reviled but the "white stuff" which brings thou- sands of people and dollars into the state each winter. In January of 1954, Gov. Emerson unveiled a marker on Gilbert Hill in Woodstock to celebrate where, in January, 1934, the first tow rope in the nation was operated. And at Brattleboro, Vt. was the first ski jumping in the entire country.
All this began when James P. Taylor organized the art of skiing in 1909 when he was assistant principal of Vermont Academy, the same year that Dartmouth College organized the first collegiate outing club anywhere. (White Mt. Echoes, Winter, 1953, page 16). One of Taylor's pupils was Fred Harris of Brattleboro who initiated the sport at Dartmouth. (Ver- mont Historical NEWS AND NOTES, March, 1954). Jim Taylor called his Saxtons River Club the Green Mountain Club of Vermont Academy and held the first winter sports carnival on snow in New England. He left the Academy two years later and went to Burlington where he organized the Greater Vermont Development Assn. (in 1951 Frederick Vogel of Bel- lows Falls was elected President of this organization), which has done so much for the state including recreational activities. Jim, as he was affectionately called, spent the rest of his life advertising and working for his state, probably the best apostle of goodwill which Vermont has ever had.
In Bellows Falls the idea of winter sports was quickly picked up and the local Outing Club began to function in 1922, follow- ing Brattleboro's example. They called themselves the Polar Bears and the next year held their first winter carnival with ski and snowshoe races and ski jumping and 700 people dancing in the Armory at night. Although rain and sleet dampened spirits on the Saturday of the big meet, the sun came out at noon, everything went off on schedule and the Dartmouth team was a winner. A ski dash was won by Glen Lawrence of Bellows Falls and the ladies' events were won mainly by Frances Hazel- ton. In 1924 the biggest ski meet ever held up to that time took place at the Playground with world champions taking part in the program. It was officially named at that time the Annual Winter Carnival and the Vermont State Championship Ski Meet.
That was a tremendous weekend, a three-day affair with Gov. Redfield Proctor a guest on Saturday and met at the train by the Turner's Falls Fife and Drum Corps and the town no- tables, "Mayor" C. C. Collins, George Kent, President of the Merchant's Association and Judge Warner Graham. Big- name skiers were present from Dartmouth and Detroit as well as members of nearby clubs. Paul C. Belknap, President of
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the Outing Club, officiated and many of the local club competed including Donald Thomas, Roland Belknap, Lawrence Blan- chard, C. S. Bressor, Richard Bragg and R. E. Caskins. Ski- joring took place behind motorcycles through the village streets and Friday saw inter-club events with junior ski jumping and Junior Cross-Country Championships. The skating rink was crowded all day where on Saturday night a hockey match was played between Vermont Academy and Polar Bears with Russ Jones from the New York Hippodrome doing exhibition skat- ing between the halves. Another outstanding skier from Bel- lows Falls was Kenneth Kent who also, that same year, won the silver medal for placing second in the Junior Jumping at the International Dog Sled Club of Quebec.
The famous meet opened in the Opera House on Thursday night with a concert by Marjorie Winnewisser Lowe, soprano, accompanied by Robert Braun, both coming from Philadelphia, in a vocal and piano concert. Friday night the social climax of the winter jubilee took place at the Armory with 800 people on the dance floor at the Mah Jong Ball. Miss Madeline Cray was voted Queen of the Carnival which used Chinese decorations and the orchestra played in a Chinese junk. It was the biggest affair of its kind that Bellows Falls had ever had. The same year the club, one hundred strong, mostly older members, traveled by sleigh barges to the Country Club in February since they could not persuade the two o'clock Rutland train to stop at the Rockingham Station. Many that day tried skiing with varying results, including C. L. Erwin, E. J. Plantier and Mr. and Mrs. George Kent.
In 1926, the Polar Bear Outing Club, flushed with success, put on a four-day carnival and Tri-State Championship Meet which featured, besides the usual events, toboggan races, coast- ing and even a sleigh ride. The sixth winter carnival was held in 1929 and another in 1931 with more than 200 at the Ice Palace Ball where a contest for the most popular girl rolled up a total of two million votes and stirred up more excitement than a political campaign, It resulted in the choosing of Miss Kath- arine Griffin as winner. Fourteen high schools and academies participated this year. But by 1934 the Polar Bears were in a bad way, Austin Chandler reporting the sum of four cents in the treasury. Four years later the Ski Bowl opened at the
Hogarth farm on the Saxtons River Road with warming houses and much enthusiasm. This was the year that the Bellows Falls Hockey Team won the state championship. The Ski Bowl was improved in 1939 with two new trails making four in all and Lester Parkhurst running his bus from the foot of the hill up to the Bowl where Robert Hogarth was manager. Honored guests at the Bowl included, in 1940, a junior skiing champion from Switzerland and 90 year old Guilford Ellison who had lived on the Hogarth farm as a boy and who remem-
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bered standing in the road at the foot of the hill, where the trolleys later ran, to watch the Boys in Blue come home.
The club still continued to have its ups and downs. In- terest slacked up to be revived again in 1947 when the Bellows Falls Ski Club with forty members met in the high school and voted to meet November through April with Kenneth Heming- way, President. They would feature skating and skiing and anyone over sixteen was eligible to belong. Gordon Jacobs was the new Manager of the Bowl and ran a jeep up the hill for passenger service. The club figured that it could at least break even with five or six bad weekends to put up with during the season. But interest lagged again and members finally dis- banded as a club. In the fall of 1953 the young people in town anxious for a ski run, began work on a new ski tow at the Play- ground, cutting brush and trees. The first snow was late but the first work-out netted $14 for the treasury. It was a town project and Manager Bissonnette was usually around to help. Among others who worked hard to get this project started were Nat Morrison and Thelma and Jack Bronk. A four-man ski patrol supervised during the winter aided by the village trustees. Skiing had started up exactly where it originated thirty years before. Sometimes people wonder, these days, if Bellows Falls has not, in some mysterious way, slipped out of the snow area. Although the season of 1954-1955 saw immense returns at ski areas in the state, the municipal tow in Bellows Falls was able to operate only a couple of weekends.
At least one celebrity rose from local ranks to shine in national ski circles and reflect glory on his town. Dr. R. S. Elmer was elected President, in 1928, having previously acted as Vice President, of the Eastern Amateur Ski Association which honor he held until his retirement in 1946 because of ill health. At the same time Miss Margaret Neyland was Secretary and Assistant Treasurer of the association whose headquarters were in Bellows Falls. Dr. Elmer was picked as one of two men in the United States best qualified to give advice on skiing prob- lems and was asked to be an active member of the Third Olympic Winter Games Company with Fred Harris of Brattleboro, an interesting fact as the two men lived within 24 miles of each other. At this time the association had 33 clubs with a mem- bership of 4,200. Dr. Elmer died in 1947 at the age of 67.
In 1948 another local man stood high also in the skiing world, this time at the University of Vermont where he headed the expanded ski school. John Howard helped provide University men and women with top flight instruction over a seven-week period. He was a certified USEASA professional ski intructor and Director of the University Ski School, having studied under some of the world's best skiers including Sepp Ruschp, Toni Matt and Jack Durance and worked with Schroll at Donner Pass, California. He was a member of the National Ski Patrol
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and helped organize and lead the patrol at the Ski Bowl in Bellows Falls. He was an instructor under Ruschp at the latter's ski school at Stowe, Vermont.
MOVING PICTURES IN BELLOWS FALLS
Once upon a time there were no such things as movies in Bellows Falls; they were called the "flickers" which aptly de- scribes them. One of the first of these was housed in a tiny cubicle about where Whelan's Drug Store is today, near the foot of the stairs into the Square. It cost a nickel to see Charlie Chaplin shuffle around in over-size shoes and get custard pies thrown at him. There was a tin-panny piano somewhere in the dark. They called it a nickelodeon.
In 1914 the Opera House began its long tenure of screen pictures when it was leased for moving pictures at $100 a month by the Sunshine Theater Company, Charles Buchanan, manager. But its run was brief and it failed up the next year and was leased to H. DeMotte Perry who had come to town two years before and leased the building above the Hotel Rockingham which housed the Standard Theater whose name he changed to the Grand. This was built by Fred "Skid" Kimball and his uncle. This burned in 1920 and Mr. Perry opened Dream- land across the street where Theda Bara exploited The Tiger Woman, Salome and Cleopatra.
Mr. Perry was here only six years but perhaps he had more influence on the morals of the town than any other manager for he had strong convictions about what he considered good and bad pictures. He was only a little ahead of his time for the Hayes Code of Censorship went into effect in 1922. Mr. Perry, on the spur of the moment, would cancel anything which he considered detrimental to local morals, sometimes right in the middle of an exciting installment, to the ire of the enthusiasts. One of his pet peeves was a thriller called The Mysteries of Myra in 1916 and probably many mothers have since wished that Mr. Perry was back with the courage of his convictions. (I do not remember anyone's canceling Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline when she was left, each Saturday night, in some precarious situation such as being suspended over boiling oil or tied to the railroad track before the oncoming flyer!). He may have been aided and abetted by the Woman's Club who instigated an all-out campaign against indecent pictures in 1919 and found, after a careful check-up over a certain period, only 71 safe to be viewed by local patrons. During the years of Mr. Perry's regime, Miss Blanche Dionne was at the ticket window followed by Miss Maude Boyle.
But in 1920 the Bellows Falls Amusement Company. Henry D. Sparrow, incorporator, leased the Town Hall or Opera House, for movies which gave Mr. Perry such stiff competition
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that he sold his Dreamland rights and left town, leaving Bellows Falls to the uncertain scruples of the big movie concerns. Be- fore that, however, there were movies in Union Hall, now owned by the Elks, run by Lewis C. Lovell and Will Kiniry where Jim Pickett was manager and Earl Chandler led the singing after school as words of such famous lyrics as Sing Me the Rosary and When You Wore a Tulip, were flashed on the screen along with the usual suggestion that anyone who as a lady would remove her hat. And how Mr. Belknap of the TIMES, hated what he called those "gable-ended affairs with which women cover their heads," when he attended the "pictures." Here Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart," was the star in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm in 1916. The preceding year probably the biggest picture yet put on the screen, The Birth of a Nation, by David Wark Griffith, was at the Opera House.
T. F. Kiniry ran some early movies on Rockingham Street where Bertha Swift started her long career in 1909 by doing the solo work for popular songs. She says they ran two shows a day with two reels each plus a song, all for five cents and "Swifty" had a wonderful time. Once there was even a screen in the old Commercial House, a second-class hostelry on the site of the First National Store. Mrs. Swift was always as much a part of the silent film as the box office which, without her, would probably have had to shut up shop. Until the sad day when the talkies took over, she was always in front of a piano in front of the screen with such stock themes as In the Gloaming and Napoleon's Last Charge to denote changes in theme on the screen. She was also "the music" at the theater at Barber Park for many years. In 1912 she went to Dreamland Theater which had been enlarged in 1910, later burned and re-opened in 1925 after extensive repairs. But it closed its doors the next year and remained dusty and deserted until 1936 when the new talkies arrived and seating capacities were provided there for a stupendous crowd of 350 people.
Theaters came and went for some years, competing with each other, burning down and failing up with such names as the Park (formerly Dreamland), State and Grand. Today there is only the Opera House where a marquee was erected in 1931 costing over $4,000 with 632 lights. In 1924 the new Star Theater was opened by S. J. Cray on the stairs in the new Cray building. There had been some trouble since the projec- tion booth jutted out over the Baptist Church property behind: it to the extent of about a foot on one corner and Mr. Cray had generously offered to either come to terms with the church or saw off a corner of his booth. There had also been trouble concerning Mr. Cray's rights in encroaching on town property between his land and the stairs but both problems were settled satisfactorily for all and Assistant Fire Inspector Preble of Montpelier said that Bellows Falls now had one of the best
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theaters in Vermont, both as to strength and fire hazards with five exits, a fireproof entrance and projection booth, the latter separated from the main building. It seated about 700 people, opened in 1924 and ran until the block burned in 1931 with a $100,000 loss, The theater was never replaced and the new block now houses the Crayco Hotel. In 1926 Mr. Cray and his sons, Eugene and Charles, opened another Star Theater in St. Johnsbury with a seating capacity of 1,074, the largest in the state.
In April of '24 Peter Latchis, operating theaters in Keene, N. H. and Brattleboro, Vt., leased the Opera House, buying out the Bellows Falls Amusement Company and promising vaude- ville and an orchestra as added attractions. But that burned down along with the town hall building the next year and there was no local theater until Raymond Kiniry, son of T. F. Kiniry, came to the rescue and opened the old Dreamland again with Mrs. Swift back at the piano. And it was in the new Opera House, 24 years ago, that Mr. Kiniry opened a movie theater again with Charlie Gillis as operator and he has managed this same theater every since, once as district manager for Inter- state Theater and now under the Rockingham Operating Com- pany which, after two years of legal battles, now controls also the State Theater on Rockingham Street and the Park until it became the American Legion home.
With the advent of the talkies in 1929, the whole set-up changed, the impossible happened and silent films became something to be snickered at by today's youth. However, sound effects and music had actually been used successfully in 1926, Al Jolson had used dialect in 1927 and technicolor first appeared in 1932. As the first sound pictures made their appearance and proved the big magnates wrong, the familiar Victrola was used to furnish the sound record and usually some of the old "stills" made up most of the program with a "talkie" as the feature attraction. Now much innovations as 3-D films have arrived to make you wonder what happened to grand- mother's phonograph and His Master's Voice. Although it is a fact that similar pictures, viewed through colored lenses pro- vided by the management, scared the wits out of people in 1936 in the Opera House. To complete the picture, in 1950, Stocker Bros. leased land north of town for the Belmont Drive-In Theater and now mother does not need a babysitter for she takes the whole family and baby sleeps in the back seat. Cine- mascopes on an outdoor screen are something to make the old nickelodeon turn over in its dusty grave.
BARBER PARK
For almost 25 years the local recreation center was Barber Park, a beautiful pine grove above the Saxtons River on the old
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Barber farm, about three miles from Bellows Falls as the trolley went. But what a wonderful three miles that was for the chil- dren of that day! The Park depended upon the trolley cars for its existence and when automobiles began to get the upper hand (and financial difficulties mounted) the cars went out and the Park with them. An attempt was made in 1919 to prevent autos from usurping the right of way of the electric cars and a petition to close the road from "Osgood's Bridge to Barber Park" was accepted by the selectmen. Thereafter a charge of twenty- five cents was made for each car and ten cents for each occupant using this "private property." (Somewhat reminiscent of the old toll gate days also of the installation today of new parking meters wherever people find a meterless zone to leave their cars.)
The Park was operated by the B. F. & S. R. Railroad as long as it continued as a Park when it reverted back to the Barber estate, E. L. Walker, executor. It was the job of Ned Pierce for many years to get the Park opened up and in readi- ness for the Memorial Day opening. It always opened on that day with a ball game in the afternoon and a favorite stock company putting on a matinee and evening performance in the Rustic Theater. You could buy a ticket for the show at Shaw's Drug Store in the Square or get off at the carbarn in Gageville- now the home of Gay's Express-and buy a strip of tickets, ten for a dollar, from Miss Ora Young or Miss Leona Grignon at the window.
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