When We Were Your Age

A Peek at New England Childhoods of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s

Meet twenty-five former children who have shared their stories of growing up in New England: Ellie, who hated breakfast; Sonny, who liked to skip school; Lucy, who had an abusive stepmother; Shirl, who soaped store windows on Halloween; Helen, who proved her whole town wrong; Butch, who posed for Norman Rockwell; Pumpie and Bella, who wore dresses made from flour sacks, just like all their friends; Edith, who won a bottle of cod liver oil in a radio contest; Walt, whose teacher saved him from a life of crime; and Rosanna, who gave up dancing, smoking, and boyfriends because she . . . (you can find out in chapter 10). Aged eighty through ninety-nine when interviewed, they were economically diverse and represented many of New England’s major immigrant groups of the period. Some did not speak any English before they started school. Most of them took a bath only once a week. Hardly any went to kindergarten. And almost all of them ate beans and franks for supper every Saturday night.