Long ago in 1933, my parents lost their home on Meridian Street and my brother Edward, my parents and myself moved to an apartment located at 19 Shattuck St. We all lived there two years before moving to 76 High St., which was and still is a two-apartment building.
I have been told that this address used to face east on High Street. It was moved to the back, facing north, to make room for two beautiful apartment buildings that were built on its site. They were called the Merriam Apartments and their numbers were called 72 and 74 High St.
Our apartment at 76 had two furnaces to keep the building warm. Both were wood and coal and ours had steam heat radiators. Many a cold morning I would get up, grab my clothes and dash out to my parents’ wood and coal cast-iron stove in the kitchen that was always going to help me get warm and dressed for school.
In the cellar of this house there are large logs of wood that help to support the weight of the building. The bark has been removed from them, and no 2-by-10 or 2-by-8s were ever used to build it. This house must be over a hundred years in age at this time. In front of the house was a very large barn that had car stalls for people to store and pay rent for their cars to use. That barn is no longer there.
Down the street was the Weldon Hotel. Tourists most likely chose that one for it was the classiest of the others that were in business in downtown Greenfield at that timeframe. The Weldon did it all with their large ballroom dances, meetings, weddings, proms — you name it, they did it.
Across the street on the corner of George Street was and still is a beautiful home that was lived in by ministers of the Second Congregational Church, who wished to live in it with their families. My first wedding ceremony took place in that home. The minister in 1948 was Rev. Kenneth Henley, a great one.
I have a lot of memories about living on High Street with my parents and brother; this story tells of some of them. I am hoping you will enjoy reading this, one of my last stories that I will be writing. I am now 95 years old and running out of stories to write about.
Robert Bitzer, an Erving resident, is a frequent contributor to the Recorder. He writes: “Looking back over the last four years, I think I have written over 60 stories for the Times Past column and looking back part of Saturday’s issues, I am so grateful to the editorial staff for printing every one of them. All of them have been so helpful to me.”