Our Hometown
Nashua | Old Time Downtown Nashua
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Deborah Bates speaks about visiting Downtown Nashua, back when she was young.
Deborah Bates speaks about visiting Downtown Nashua, back when she was young, and it was the "Big City".
Our Hometown is a local public television program presented by NHPBS
Our Hometown
Nashua | Old Time Downtown Nashua
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Deborah Bates speaks about visiting Downtown Nashua, back when she was young, and it was the "Big City".
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My story regarding Nashua starts way back in the forties.
There was a teacher named Mrs. Fizzette who had many students, including young men who volunteered to go into the military to fight in World War Two.
She also had a daughter named Dot and had the addresses of many of these young men and took them with her when she went to Plymouth Teachers College.
One of the young women that got an address was named Shirley, who was originally from Salem.
The young man whose address she got was named Mitt.
Really technically Milton, but went by Mitt was from Nashua.
After his discharge age, they met, fell in love, got married and helped to repopulate the earth, giving birth to six children between April 1951 and July 1963, all born at Memorial Hospital in Nashua.
I have number three of those six children.
Downtown Nashua was our big city.
Merrimack had very few people in it and very few services.
But we would come to downtown Nashua for pretty much everything.
The chiropractor, the dentist, the doctor, the eye doctor.
And I went a couple of years ago.
I was four years old the first time I had my eyes examined.
And I went a couple of years ago to Quimby, and thinking, Oh, it's the daughter of son, it can't.
It was the same doctor as when I was four years old.
He still practicing, Carl Quimby.
I was so excited and there was an optician that was connected to his office who I could walk in, be ready for a new pair of glasses, and he'd know just the right ones to fit my face, which was thrilling.
The library was a big, old, wonderful structure that's on the top of library hall, and there was this smell and a mystique about it.
And even years later, when I substitute taught, I had to apply.
It was the same building, and it still has that venerable quality.
But downtown.
Main Street had all the shops you could want.
There was Miller's where the staff was attentive and readily available, but not staulky, clingy, suspicious in your face.
Kind of personnel like some stores might have.
But they could look at, you know, what size you took, you know, what color was good and help you pick out just the right outfit.
And for the intimate apparel, you know, that lady stuff.
There was Lady Grace and there was a store.
I'm pretty sure, called Marsh Parsons, where they carried Girl Scout uniforms and things.
I washed out of that at a pretty young age.
But the coolest store was Spears.
It was on the corner of, I think, Temple or maybe East Pearl and Main, and it was where my brother's Boy Scout stuff came from.
And they had these things which were just a marvel.
They were pneumatic, I think is the term where they would.
The clerk would put your money & your slip of your purchase in it.
You took <whoosh noise> and thunk it onto a desk up in the balcony and then <whoosh noise> THUNK!
And there was your change and your receipt.
It was so amazing.
Of course, you know, kids today have no sense of wonder because you go to a drive up A.T.M.. That's what happens.
But back then, it was mind boggling.
It was just so cool.
But on the opposite end, the low tech.
If you went to Seminole Plaza, where there was a grocery store and a Bradleys, they had apparently not really filled in the wetlands that it was built on very effectively.
And if you could get away with it and get on the shopping cart and hang on at the front of the store, you could go on the undulating flooring all the way to the back until I got yelled out, whichever came first when I was a little kid.
Nashua was my big thing and I was an exciting big city.
And now that I'm a big kid, Nashua is an exciting little city in other ways.
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Our Hometown is a local public television program presented by NHPBS