As a child Laurestine went to Massachusetts for a year and stayed with the Cates and their adopted daughter Marjorie. They went to the Cape for the summer and Mrs. Cates gave her piano lessons. Laurestine and Marjorie got into a lot of mischief. Laurestine got appendicitis while in the Cape and my mother had a lot of problems with her when she got back home. She stole some of Ma’s money and bought us girls a bunch of candy. She used to scare us being a boogieman.
She moved to Dixfield when she was a freshman and lived with the Cushing family. We worked together in Biddeford for the summer at a restaurant and a cabin. She was a waitress and I was a cabin worker. We did this for two years.
Laurestine did not like to sew. I would sew and she would cook. We always had a lot of fun in the winter skiing. We asked to get our work done on Saturday then Carolyn, Laurestine, Ken and I used to ski over in back of Collins. We played tag on a big beech tree on a hill we called Rabbit Mountain. In the spring we would slide on the crust.
In the summer we used to swim down in the local brook. We would also fish and roam all around the woods. One year, she and I went hunting down back of Collins. We scared up a deer and she said don’t shoot it, it’s a girls with a white bandage. We both got lost on the way back as I went one way and she went the other way. I came out about one mile above roy Merrill’s and she came out on the other side of Roy’s.
We did a lot of skating up at the Academy Rink. We would find broken hockey sticks and play hockey with the boys. In the fall we would skate on the frog ponds.
In the spring we would play in the frog ponds and jump from island to island. One time I fell in with our heavy clothes on. We always had to wear long stockings with garter belts. We also had to wear long johns; it was hard getting the wrinkles our under our stockings.
We did May baskets in may. We would do a different family every week and all the town kids were involved. The people we hung the baskets on had to try to catch us. When we hung one on Mildred and Donald Bowman, the girls were all afraid of Donald. He had a mental condition and low mentality. He would run away from home pretending that he was a horse, running with slaves down the road and he would sometimes run through the woods with a wheelbarrow.
After we were in high school we saw each other on holidays and in the summer. Carolyn and I worked in Waterford for two summers. It was then that Laurestine got married to Warren. Later when I got married we moved to West Peru. Laurestine and I used to do various things with all her kids and mine. She did not have a car to get around in. Later we moved to New Hampshire.
One year after she was married, she and Warren came to Hebron. Carolyn and I were home and I think it was Christmas. We went down in back of Collisn and skated on the swamp down there. We took Warren, Laurestine and Ken down the next day. We told Warren to be careful because the ice might not be safe as it had warmed up. He went charging our there through the cattails and fell in, We all laughed at him and told him that the sewer ran into it. He took off his skates and walked all the way home in his stocking feet. Later after dinner we went to the academy rink and Warren stayed home.