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.