Middleborough Public Library in Snow, 1957

Illustration:
Middleborough Public Library in snow, photograph by Clint Clark, 1957.

Santa House, 1954

Certainly among the most fondly recalled memories for many adults are childhood visits to Santa, when with list in hand and nerves steeled we went with firm resolve to inform the jolly old man of all our Christmas wants and desires.

For a number of years in the early 1950s, the Middleborough Retail Merchants’ Association sponsored a Santa Claus who had an established “office” in one of the Center Street storefronts and “visiting hours” during which children could pay him a call with their list of wishes for the coming year. Each year, Santa’s arrival was announced in the local Gazette and he arrived courtesy of the Middleborough Fire Department upon one of their engines, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

Speaking directly to the community’s children in 1953 regarding the arrival of Santa Claus that year, the Gazette reported: “The Middleboro retail Merchants Association is very pleased to announce that a committee quite some time ago contacted the North Pole, and made arrangements to have St. Nick come to Middleboro …. We are very fortunate, children, to have Santa coming to Middleboro because he is extremely rushed at this time of year, and it is being done with the kind cooperation and needed assistance of many local people.” Santa arrived that year by means of Ladder No. 1 to a workshop decorated by Middleborough High School art students.

The popularity of this community Santa (and the lack of an available vacant store front the following year) prompted the proposal for a separate headquarters for the gentleman from the North Pole which ultimately led to the creation of the Santa House in 1954.

Under the direction of Alton Kramer, the Merchants Association in conjunction with the shop class of Middleborough High School constructed a small house on the grounds of the Middleborough Post Office at Center and Union Streets. “The proper artistic scenes for Santa’s stay here shortly after Thanksgiving for a two week period [were] arranged by students of Miss Sylvia Matheson’s art classes.”

To add to the festive atmosphere in the downtown district, colored overhead lights and decorations were strung across Center Street as a joint project between the merchants and the schools.

Santa arrived at his new home on Friday, December 10, 1954, and his appearance was described in the pages of the Gazette. “Santa Claus arrived here Friday afternoon at 3.30. Heralded by a police car with siren wailing, the old gentleman was seated in a chair atop Engine 1. He was dressed in the traditional red outfit trimmed with ermine. His luxuriant white beard hung down to his belt as he waved to the crowds of children dashing along the sidewalks trying to keep pace with the fire engine. The engine came down South Main street and turned up Center. It stopped in front of the Post Office lawn, where Santa’s holiday home had been completed several hours before his arrival. He jumped down very spryly for a chubby old timer, and waded through a mob of screaming children.” The initial line of children wishing to visit extended down Center Street “for some distance.”

The 1954 event proved enormously popular and was repeated for a number of years afterward, with the Santa House being set up on the first Sunday in December by members of the Merchants Association. Although the 1955 season curiously was to have featured Santa arriving at the Santa House by helicopter, these plans “were cancelled on orders from Washington” which no doubt wisely objected to a helicopter landing on its post office grounds. Instead Santa arrived in the local traditional manner of a fire engine, the delight of the children no less diminished by the absence of the helicopter.

Typically, hours at the Santa House throughout the era were set for Friday and Saturday afternoons as well as evenings for children to visit. Though the Santa House was a popular holiday tradition, it quickly lapsed. In 1971, Clint Clark eulogized that “the Santa Claus quarters, we remembered, was little more than a flimsy structure. But the path led to ‘Santa’ and that made it as magical and grand as a dream castle to the hundred of youngsters who came to confide their Christmas hopes.”

Better yet to remember the Santa House from its earliest days, from a time when Center Street was packed wall-to-wall (or store-to-store) with retailers, when residents would come to shop, to dine and simply to meet one another. The account from December, 1954, recalls an era when downtown Middleborough remained the heart of the community at Christmastime.

“Most of the lights strung across the streets by high school students had already been turned on. The trees along the sidewalk opposite Santa’s home were also lighted. Store windows were gay with holiday trimming and crowds of shoppers moved along the sidewalks. From one store a loudspeaker had been rigged and Christmas carols as old as time boomed out at the traffic-filled street.

“Overhead it was gray and a cold drizzle came down on the people, but no one seemed to mind or notice very much.

 “The Christmas season had arrived in Middleboro.”

Merry Christmas.

Illustration:
Santa, J. C. Leyendecker. 

Church of Our Saviour Christmas Parish Fair, 1930s

Central Baptist Church Christmas Sale and Play, 1931

The Glamor of Ice Fishing, 1893

Ice fishing is often criticized by non-afficianados as, to say the least, boring particularly as it involves waiting hopefully in the cold for the spring of the red flannel flag. In December 1893, ice fishing on the Lakeville ponds was in full swing and one local resident looked to circumvent the dreariness of the task with an ingenious device as reported by the Middleboro Gazette.

   Ice fishing at the lakes has been the popular sport with our fishermen during the past fortnight, and many large strings are reported. Speaking of this sport, S. L. Young, of the west end fruit store, has contrived about the slickest arrangement for angling through the ice that has been seen hereabout, simple in its construction, yet effective. A wooden arm is set up securely in the ice at an angle, just over the hole, and the line is attached to a steel point in a lever which works upward easily upon a pivot set through the upper part of the open space in the centre of the arm. The unwary fish takes hold of the bait, and up comes the lever, upon one end of which is affixed a bit of red flannel; he bites more strongly and then a bit of wood hung just above the lever drops down and is caught in a ratchet arrangement in the lever, which is thereby suspended horizontally, and the fish is hung up like Haman and securely caught.

Illustration:
"Ice Fishing" courtesy of Old-Picture.com.

Source:
Middleboro Gazette, December 22, 1893, p. 4.  

The Famous Trotting Ground

New Book Recalls Forgotten Aspect of Middleborough’s Sporting and Social History

 

Recollecting Nemasket, Middleborough’s local history press, is pleased to announce the publication of The Famous Trotting Ground: A History of the Fall Brook Driving Park.  Written by historian Michael J. Maddigan, the book richly documents the history of Victorian-era harness racing in Middleborough.

 

In 1878 a group of avid local sportsmen came together to establish a trotting park on Cherry Street in the Fall Brook section of Middleborough where they could race their fast horses. For thirty years harness racing would remain a noted pursuit at Fall Brook, drawing horsemen from throughout the region eager to show the abilities of their liveliest trotters and pacers. Though the Fall Brook track has now largely been forgotten, its story is one of the fascinating aspects of Middleborough’s sporting and social history, recalling a day when Middleborough was “one of the horsiest towns hereabouts.”

The Famous Trotting Ground: A History of the Fall Brook Driving Park takes the reader on a delightfully nostalgic trip back in time to an era before the automobile when speedy horses were the rage, when sleighs were raced on Main Street and when fast driving in Middleborough’s streets had to be prohibited.

 

Michael J. Maddigan is the author of several previous histories including Nemasket River Herring, South Middleborough, Images of America: Middleborough, Star Mill: History  & Architecture and Representatives of the Great Cause: Middleborough Servicemen & Their Letters from World War I.   His work regularly appears on-line and in local publications including the Middleboro Gazette.

Recollecting Nemasket is a local history press dedicated to the collection, preservation, interpretation, publication and promotion of the historical heritage of Middleborough and Lakeville. Its mission is to make local history more accessible by presenting it in a bold, exciting and professional way. 

Recollecting Nemasket wants the community to discover and be fully inspired by its past in order to realize a more meaningful and relevant future.

Recollecting Nemasket books are available at Maria’s in Middleborough as well as other local retailers and on-line at Amazon.com.