When I was in high school during the late 1940s and early '50s, I worked in Eaton's Drug Store at the corner of State and Pleasant streets. At that time many customers would drop off film to be developed. Charlie Eastman, who ran a photography shop on Charter Street, would drop in three or four nights a week, pick up the film and in a few nights would drop off the finished product.
However, if you had colored film, it was a different situation. Charlie had to send colored film to Rochester, N.Y., to be processed and this took at least eight weeks; at Christmas and graduation time, 10 or more weeks.
Well, at a swim meet in Beverly recently a nice lady took a photo on her cellphone of her daughter and my granddaughter, who are teammates on the Latitudes swim team. Within one or two minutes of taking the photo, she showed me the colored picture of the two smiling friends. How things have changed.
Television was in its infancy in those days. I bet everyone over 70 years of age remembers the first time they saw it. I stood in a large crowd on Pleasant Street in front of Knights Radio and TV shop for my first look. Today's babies see it in the first few days of life and will never know the difference. There were only four or five channels available compared to the unlimited number of today and they were in black and white only. If you wanted to change channels, you got off the couch and flipped the switch on the set. No remotes in those days.
Coca-Cola was a popular drink in those days, as it still is today. However, there is a big difference. If you went into Foggs Store on Prospect Street, you had only one choice — that was a 7-ounce green glass bottle, that was it. This was true of all stores, not just Foggs. Go into the big supermarket today and half the aisle is filled with numerous kinds of Coca-Cola in sizes ranging from small to big and tall and in containers made of various materials, none being glass. I believe Larry Twomey once told me that the first change Coca-Cola made was in the mid-'50s when it came out with a king-size bottle.
When I was in Newburyport Fire Department, we ran the ambulance service. Every morning the reporter from The Daily News came into the station and copied the ambulance and fire reports of the previous 24 hours. If we had given you a ride in the ambulance, your name would appear in that day's edition of the paper. Also, in that same paper you could read a daily column giving the names of all people admitted or discharged from the Anna Jaques Hospital. Because of today's privacy laws, you will not see those columns again.
On Sunday mornings, a familiar sound and sight in the neighborhoods was the paperboys delivering the Sunday newspapers. They used large wooden carts with iron wheels. The Sunday papers then, like today's, are heavy. Because of the iron wheels, you could hear them coming well before they reached your house. Mike Taranda, a long-time dedicated and hard worker at Fowle's News, tells me that this era ended about 1960 when parents started driving the routes with the boys in automobiles.
Another event that took place years ago and I wish it could be started again was the ringing of all the church bells on George Washington's birthday and Independence Day. They rang continuously for 15 minutes at 7 a.m., noontime and 5 p.m. I do not know why this patriotic happening ended, but it is unfortunate because it began in Newburyport sometime shortly after the Revolutionary War. This was greatly anticipated and appreciated by the citizenry.
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Joe Callahan is a former fire chief of Salisbury who is interested in historical accounts of the area.
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