New Haven Junction

Going to the milk plant every day with can milk at New Haven Junction was a big treat for us kids. It was the only time you left the farm except Saturday night we would get in the backend of the truck and cover up with horse blankets or a canvas to go to town to buy your stock of groceries and visit. We kids would go to the movies or bowl depending on how old we were.

Going down the hill on Route 7 was the small farm of Chet Briggs. The cow barn was on the south side of Route 7. He milked about 15 cows. He worked out a lot. He was a talented man with machinery, having made the equipment to cut and handle ice. Chet was the Plant Manager for the Milk Plant. On Christmas Eve of 1949, his barn burnt to the ground. He then put up a sawmill. The following year, November, 1950 the hurricane came through town and blew down a lot of timber. Chet and his son Shelley got in the lumber business. They used a 15-30 International tractor for power.

We had a bad hailstorm that came through here in 1959 and it blew the mill down. Warren Whitcomb and I were there sawing lumber for them. Chet had no help so he did this to help people. He was a very thoughtful man. At this time, year 2004, Kalma Briggs lives in the big brick house that was part of the farm.

Right below the Briggs farm was the Alice Conant Landon farm. This farm Real Bolduc brought in 1946 after he came home from World War II. Then he bought Charles and Clara Wright farm in the junction combining the two.

Charlie Wright was a very small fellow, but an all Vermont yankee. He always wore a first world war hat. He must have bought it at an army surplus store. He had only one son, Howard, who later in life ran the Texaco garage next to the farm. Howard married Chet Briggs' daughter, Genevieve. They moved to Maine.

Charlie had around 20 cows on this farm.. He also had a grain business at the farm. The company that he sold for was Bull Brand. The grain would come in on the railroad cars to the siding at the junction. Charlie also had the tenant house where the Lee's live now. He usually had a married man for hired help. Charlie farmed with horses until Oliver CleTrac came out. He bought the first crawler tractor around here in the last of the 1940's. Everything had to go up hill or down to his farm. He was the only one that used a drag saw around here to saw his wood pile up when I was a boy.

One night in 1945, Dad and I went down to the Junction at Bennett's garage. Stan Byington from Charlotte, where Dad and I were born, came in pretty well oiled. He was a real hard worker all his life doing carpenter work in the summers and going around town pressing hay in the winters to ship out of here to Boston to feed the horses. Stan plowed Route 7 from Charlotte to New Haven junction, at this time Route 7 was dirt. He would often stay over night at the Wright's. Charlie at that time would have a barrel of cider. This night Stan had a quart of whiskey and he decided that Charlie needed a drink. Charlie said "no" because Clara had just given him supper. Stan reached over and took him under his arm and removing his first world

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