THE END

Edith Victoria Holt McEvoy died on September 10, 2010, 5 days short of her 98th birthday. She will be missed by all who knew her and long remembered for her wonderful sense of humor and her infectious laugh.

WORKING IN THE LIBRARY

I worked at the Nashua Public Library for many years before I retired. I started out at the library on Library Hill. I think Joe Sakey hired me. I worked with Rachel Sanborn and Florence Shepherd. I loved working on the reference desk. We did not have any computers. We would go to the available reference materials that we had to find answers. There was a guide to magazine articles, newspapers were kept on microfilm and of course we had enclyclopedias. I remember only one question that had me stumped. Someone wanted to know what the initials BVD stood for (as in underwear) and I could not find the answer. I always walked to work at the "old" library and we took our coffee breaks at the diner across the street.

When we moved into the new library we put all the books in order in containers and they were physically moved to the new building where we shelved them. We practiced how we would pack and move the books so they would stay in order. I don't think we were closed for any amount of time while we made the move. In the new library we had much more space. It was much brighter and we had lots of stuffed furniture. We had a large group of homeless people who liked to come into the library to sleep in the soft chairs and use the nice bathrooms. Pages were typically high school students. It was considered a plush job for students. Both Ellen and Jean worked as pages.

SCHOOL DAYS

I never went to kindergarten, I started right in at first grade. I was living on Stevens Street so I went to Harbor School. My father did not want me to go to an "inner city" school. Can you imagine back then there would be an inner city school. A vaguely remember first grade I liked school very much. Sometime between the first and the fourth grade the music teacher told my mother that I could not sing. I simply could not make nice music with my voice. I was a good little student.

When we moved to Chester Street I went to Mt. Pleasant. The principal was an old classmate and friend of my mother which made a little difference in the attention I got. I was frequently called "the little Holt girl". In elementary school they would weigh and measure us and I would always get a blue card that would say I was underweight. Then my mother would have to take me to the doctor who would report that she can not grow two ways at once and right now she is growing tall. The principal lived in Hudson and came to school by horse and buggy. The horse would be tied up in the school yard all day. At that time the school yard was quite rural. On the last day of sixth grade I got to ring the bell for the last time and then they tore the school down and built a new one on the same site.

The next years are mixed up in my mind. I think I was sick quite a lot during those years so I missed a lot of school but I was bright enough so I didn't have to stay back. I had a teacher named Ola Dunlap who was a cousin of my father.

I liked high school, yet again there were teachers that knew my parents. I was a good student but nothing unusual. My favorite class was German. It was a very easy language for me to understand. I also enjoyed physics. I would take an advanced class after school. Partly for the physics and partly for the male teacher who taught it. In my senior year, the members of the senior class all wore purple and white capes for assemblies. I can remember going to football games at the stadium. I think my high school was on Spring Street but a lot of things have slipped my mind so I am not sure. I was a writer for the Tattler Magazine and I also helped write the class will. I can remember some sort of guidance counselor.

Most of the time I was in school, I went home for dinner. School got out at noon and we went back at two. I think towards the end of my education they started providing lunch at school for children who had no other means of getting food. I always walked to school except when I was in high school my father would sometimes let me drive the old Ford car. I would pick up some friends to ride with me. I would pick up the judges daughter and some other friends.

KEEPING COOL IN THE SUMMER

Field's Grove was a swimming spot in Nashua when I was growing up and when my children were young. It was occasionally condemned for swimming but I would go there when it wasn't condemned. My folks would bring us up to Silver Lake which would be a real treat on a hot, hot evening once in awhile. At other times we would go up to Baboosic Lake which was a favorite place. It was a real summer resort type of place where people had cottages and there was a dance hall at one end of the lake. It was quite popular back in those days. For a number of summers we rented a cottage on Baboosic Lake. My parents never went swimming but we kids did.

When it was really hot we would wear whatever we had that was the coolest and we had fans in the house. The fans would be scattered around where we would be. We had an icebox and loved to have the ice man come. We kids would run behind the ice truck and pick up the pieces that would fall off and suck on them. We wouldn't have ice cream at home but would go out in the evening to get some. I think we might have gone up Concord Street somewhere.

I don't think shorts as such had been invented so we wore bloomers which we could pull up above our knees if we got real daring. The bloomers were made out of a wool serge so they were not real cool. We wore midi blouses which looked like sailor's blouses with a wide collar. We wore sneakers on our feet with socks. It really wasn't a very cool outfit.

On several summers I was a camp counselor at Camp Sargeant. It was a day camp with a portion of it overnight. It was real exciting to be a counselor for a tent full of teenage girls. The sleeping arrangement was that the counselor had her bed in the middle of the floor and the girls slept in cots built around the edges. We did a lot of hiking and walking. The counselors had to come up with their own activities. We swam a lot, mornings and afternoons. The girls took lessons and learned the different strokes and how to dive. I remember one year they had horses. I had taken horseback riding before. We had to go into Nashua to pick up the horses and then ride them back at the end of the day. I took my girls to climb Mt. Monadnock. We slept at the foot of the mountain one night and then climbed the mountain in the morning.

Some years we would go to the beach for a week or two. Mostly when my father was leading the National Guard band he would have summer encampment somewhere around Rye so we would go along and have a cottage and see my Dad once in awhile.

Irish Jerry

Jerry was my Irish Setter when I was a girl living on Chester Street. I saw an ad in a Boston newspaper and I said to my Daddy this looks like a nice doggie and my daddy took me to Boston to buy my Irish Terrier. I guess I thought Jerry was a good Irish name for a dog. We built a brand new dog house for Jerry right next to the garage - my mother did not want him in the house. On the other hand I don't think she wanted me in the house either. Jerry did what came naturally. Strangely enough there was another Irish Terrier down the street every day the two dogs would get together for a little day of play and they would go down to the duck pond and they would manage to corner a duck once in awhile and bring it to my house to either play with it or it would get away. There were no houses behind us so there was a lot of space for the dogs to run around. I had Jerry for several years and when I was going to college in the fall my mother would not take care of him. One of my mother's old school friends who was a teacher by the last name of Campbell lived in Hudson and she took Jerry in to live with her when I went away. I think I probably saw him a couple of times after he went to live with her but he never came back to live with me. My sister had a dog and I had a dog but my brother had an old car (or lots of them).

In thunder, lighning or in rain (and a little bit of snow)

The sun is not shining but it doesn't look too bad I guess. Just waiting for the thunder and lightning to join the rain. I was brought up not to be scared of thunder storms. My mother originally was afraid of thunder storms but she put on a good front for her children so we would not grow up afraid of them. I think it must have been quite a trial for her because she was really afraid of thunder and lightning. On Stevens Street we would go upstairs to the second floor sun porch to watch storms. On Chester Street there was a real sun porch which had windows on three sides where I could sit and watch thunder storms. On Merrimack Street we would sit out on the front porch when it stormed. Sometimes I would sit in the white metal and wicker chair during a thunder storm - I guess I am lucky I never got hit by lightning.

I loved snow storms when I was little, what a foolish thing to do -yuck, yuck, yuck! I can remember going sledding on a traverse, which is an extra long sled which could carry about 6 people and higher off the ground, down long hill. We would also go to the country club grounds to go sledding. Sometimes my father would go with us and my mother would go to the country club but most of the time it would just be kids.

If I had to choose I would prefer snow coming down than rain coming down when I was a kid. I remember our wet mittens drying on the radiator, stinky wet woolly mittens. Wet wool does not smell good after it has been on small dirty children.

FAMILY NAMES

My father's name was Ralph Woodward Holt. His mother's last name was Woodward. My brother's name was Ralph Davis Holt and his mother's last name was Davis. My husband' name was Weston Ernest McEvoy and his father's name was Joseph Weston McEvoy so he was named after his father. I have great grandson named Weston after his great grandfather. My name is Edith Victoria Holt McEvoy and I am named for my grandmother Edith Florence Woodward and my aunt Victoria Davis. My mother's name was Gladys Evlyn Davis but I don't know who she was named for if anyone. I had a cousin Gladys and a daughter Mary Evelyn who are both named for my mother. Jean Elizabeth is named for my sister Ruth Elizabeth and Ellen Victoria is named for me. I have a niece named for me, Edith Louise. I have a daughter with the middle name Victoria, I have a gran daughter named Victoria and I have a great grand daughter who's middle name is Victoria. I have a grand daughter Laura Ellen who is named after her mother Ellen. Then of course there is Andrea Jean named for her aunt Jean. Nobody has used Mary or Evelyn. I don't think anybody has used Florence either. I guess we will have to wait for the next generation to use those names. Mary and I do like to pretend that Zoe's middle name Meredith if for us. We have a least 5 generations of Victorias. I think we just like to keep family names running which I think is nice.