not quite but your own we used to call that junior high my family moved here then but i had been right next door in watertown and so was walking distance of both and my folks thought like many parents do to day very similar that the school system is very good and it might help you get into a good college yeah so what's your favorite memory of the one zero four and everything doing everything having a good time my children one time got a hold of my  journal or whatever that i'd had for my junior year at belmont high and they always thought i'm so academic you know i'd go forward cliff and no i must be given a real stick in the mud you know and they found it up in the attic and the two of my children were reading it and they were hysterical and they said we went through the whole thing in the wasn't one word about a course already intellectual it was how it was a friday night dance band and i meant to take it out of the refrigerator the little french horn and silver that i have set was the instrument i played with marching band and  and there were two or three other musical groups when they needed somebody who had a french artist we had one music director for everything not not ten or fifteen people on staff and he was very busy and i did acapella choir you know without instruments yeah and i did  and i did oh i did i love acting and so i was in every every player show that existed you know because i'm so terribly shy and  i think that was most of the fun stuff you notice i haven't mentioned softball or something like that i learned things in jam like basketball and all that but i didn't join those teams i prefer the ar were below the knee ok which was great in the cold winter and so forth so it was just the style and i mean if they had been short a boat in the forty's and now they were here they always change it so you go out and buy clothes you see it's not and blouse and target and the guys always wore a nice shirt they didn't wear just jerseys kind of thing unless they were real nice jersey or something so and it was sort of phasing out the shoes that were like that we didn't wear sneakers or anything like that except for jim in other words we looked quite dressed up very civilized and had lots of dances there so then you also got to see we have our prom there and so anybody could afford to go you know team of people students would fix the cafeteria so it was you would never know what had been a cafeteria we get things for make them all round tables and little sis step there where the orchestra was that came in and they'd always be a team of people that just made it absolutely gorgeous you know like bring in a tree and make it all gold or silver and have a fountain going and so forth so did you ever help out and i was also into volunteer singing groups that we for one with three of us a trio and we said at church sometimes and we sang for any time there was an assembly we were always having assemblies that were like sort of talent night things so yeah so that got everybody doing things and the teachers were never pushing us to do that sort of stuff but this was all very much a factor of what the kids wanted and the same in junior high we had singing and participated in those songs in the stuff and everything and two of my sunday school teachers there one was a assistant principal of the middle school which we called the junior high and the other one was the algebra teacher  which we started the junior high have you started out a little bit and little bit yeah what grade are you i mean seventh oh no this was because it went to grade seven eight nine and ninth grade they would get started on the things we would normally be doing in a high school they kept switching which had the most classes depending on where the most students were that was the it was nothing like a learning thing it was just that well a high school could hold three classes in that building could hold three age levels and so forth and then if it was not so many people in junior high then reformed for years  ninth grade get down to the high school that yeah so when i was there you didn't go down to the high school to tenth grade we were very sophisticated ok so as anything other than that changed about christian but they were being very christian because they didn't want anybody oh dear heaven sakes and should be jewish like jesus was he said but nobody thought that through at that time pardon me i did my grad work in theology so i'm kind of into it but it i wasn't so much so then and then there were the churches which packed all the churches there were more churches here than they've killed and some down and close them but the congregational had more churches the catholics had more churches the methodists had more churches i mean it was just everybody went and you could hardly get a seat in any one of them it wasn't one instead of the other and we had very active youth groups it whether you were at st joe's or belmont methodist you were at your age you would put on plays and you'd have a couple of hundred people coming to see your play once yeah it was terribly driven by the kids themselves that's that's my main memory we did the year book i don't think we even had an advisor you know we did the yearbook we did yeah yeah yeah but like we so say we had one man for doing all of the music junior high and high school oh mr nettleton i remember very well and so of course we had to be totally reliable the more elite things like the acapella choir you had to come forty five minutes early three money was a week and do it for class to start and as i already mentioned religious said planning community sponsored activities divorce which rare never heard about that nobody was invented yet we weren't loners i watched the kids coming down from school and sometimes nobody speaking to anybody but it was so exciting to be out and talk and you'd go home with a couple of friends and you might go climb treaty you might investigate something that was being built because she shouldn't have been investigating and if you would if they were when weren't there at the time you'd want to go up and see what the hell is how it's being built and across from me live on washington street near new houses across the street but it used to be there at there was a pocket across the street that not houses that's why my folks chose that house because it would see more out in the country oh and there was no belong on the lower side of school street there were no houses it was all farmland yeah how much longer be think we're going to have well write it down so yes i just saw so you go ahead with your silence i think that's all the questions i have so thank you for coming much more ecumenical and much less division between girls and boys on what sport you know girls weren't in sports as much as you know and now it's more equal oh yeah oh that was so many things that are better now it was just different for me adjusted as we went through this decades afterwards so thank you so much for having me thank you for coming it was fun hi my name is sophie today i will be interviewing larry  when i moved here i was i just got married i get out of the service and i needed living quarters and i my parents used to cover to watertown and i like the area so we moved and at belmont live was taken into military service from watertown i was snow and it was still partially lift live separate life from the people in watertown proper but they decided we don't want to belong to watertown and new longer so so mean what what war did you have to do hoop sorry you didn't hear me correctly what i said is what why did you have to do military i had to do military because we were drafted in those a woman taught me how to drive a tank and i wondered why because i believe i wanted to join the air force so do you have so when you were doing the service did you have to leave behind any family members or pets or anybody that your friend or anybody you cared about all my so i have two cats named jingles and midnight they're both very mischievous called causing the little kitten to shift trouble like knocking over a plant oh yeah drinking from the toilet stuff have you ever had anyone worries about the war like any worries about things in the war like getting caught or something no i had no problem so did you hear about any special projects or things going on like for the military kind of a thing like any things that had to be invented  stuff amazing things like when and when i i was so did you participate in making any of these things during the war or did you just put in making any sort of been vention like what is it that no i didn't invent and oh i did work with the man that invented the microwave oven and we we worked together and we finally you ever boy scout yes i was i only got as far as second class but i had two sons that went on to be eagle scouts  me live in belmont all except for the time was in the service so what made you want to move to belmore well i started off here i didn't have any choice when my parents brought me home from the hospital that's where they put me was in belmont and i've been here ever since so did you like growing up here i didn't realize it at the time it took me years to you know when i was thinking back this was a great place to live i really enjoyed it what made it a great place where you know that is a good question when i grew up here there was no there's no trouble there's no problems that was we didn't have any kids didn't fight that much was just a good place we didn't have to worry about things being stolen or you could leave your bicycles while i'm a little bit older now so i don't know what it's like to be you know to be someone growing up in belmont i think it's still pretty nice place to be that's great so what kind of technology did you have growing up did oh we had a telephone well but a telephone you know it was just it was what was called a candle stick phone it was a the number it was just like the belmont exchange and we used to have quite a few party lines and so your telephone number would be like three four six six m you know seven two four five w and that was the number that you'd be calling into your thing so when you're a kid what were the schools like horrible oh yeah i hated them maybe  because i acted up you know i had a i had a sister a year ahead of me in school and she was very smart and well behaved so everybody said to be gay why can't you be like your sister jane and i wasn't going to be like my sister jane so i acted up and possibly on the verge of being in trouble most of the time did you did you ever feel like jealous of your sister that she was so much smarter than you i guess i still am you know she was she was very very smart and very prim and proper and she was nice and that was not going to be me  and your family still live in belmont well one of my sons is the fire chief in belmont and he just moved out a few years back and i have another son mark who still lives in the house with me over here and they are old and  that's all i have living in belmont just so when you're a kid what did you do in your spare time because i know you obviously probably didn't watch t v or anything well we didn't even have t i finished high school without seeing t v it is kind i had to believe you know shoot me there was one girl who whose parents had t v and they used to  have test patterns during the day and then all the shows were live nothing was taped so they were all just live shows and they were on in the evenings and then friday night was the big night and that was the  gillette cavalcade of sports on friday night which was boxing or something like that but there was only there's only actually was only two stations i two channels so i didn't really participate in sports i'm sorry when i was it was it was good i didn't i didn't mind it it was things were everybody accepted everybody for the way that they were and so even though i was a cripple kid didn't big a difference they just went on to vote yeah but your daily life i still got in trouble well school it was in the high school was part of it was part of the high school and they had the auto shop and machine shop sheet metal electrical and cap and very and you went to school for half the day doing the shop in the other half the day was it was your academic subjects and the teachers that were in the shops yeah they were kind of tough yeah well that they had to be because the kids that were in the vocational school were the kind of wild maybe had to be retrained every day  some of us came out alright oh yeah so despite the tough teachers did you have any dreams of what you want to be when you grow up when you were a kid know i think i wanted to be in construction i ended up was in construction for a while i drove drunk to trailer cross country in fact i still drive and drive to trailer today and then i did one of my desires as a as a as a young boy who was going to fight a pop and you know when i was able to do it i did and they did thirty years on the fire department are know so well how did belmont really change did anything like change drastically did one thing start out this way and then and another well i'd say probably the biggest part of the changes that i saw in belmont was there was many eras of belmont that were just fines when i was growing up they still had the of school street and down the wynn brooks section and even up on belmont hill and we could go out and play ball on the street there wasn't that much traffic that you go out and you could have a whole ballgame in the street you know would come by a lot of people didn't didn't drive cars and like i lived on edge more road which is across from the high school and that was one of the coasting streets good entertainment we entertain ourselves yeah so what were your friends like did you have a lot of friends yeah yeah and i think that a lot of us stayed friends for years you know it was still friendly today's with you know some of the kids but i went to school with doing they were pretty good kids i wasn't but they were well thank you very much for your time and i really enjoyed talking with you thank you it was joyful talking with you