Chapter 5: The long way around
We moved back to Weston when I was about ten years old. I had finished fourth grade in Maine, and Guy and I started fifth grade in the Weston schools. School had already started when we arrived.
I cannot remember exactly the date when we moved. The old schoolhouse was on Alphabet Lane, where the Weston Public Schools are now. It was a different world from the one-room building near Rob Swain’s mill, but by then Guy and I had already been through that particular adjustment once, in the other direction.
We lived at 49 Golden Ball Road — a boxy square house with three bedrooms and a sewing room that we used as a bedroom. There were built-in stairs to the attic. Dad went to work on the Winsor estate through the influence of a good friend, Mr. Fred Walker.[1] He used a tractor and did greens work on the golf course. Later he was asked to be second driver for the estate, so he got off the course and drove a Moon — a dark-colored car that I thought was very handsome.
We returned to the First Baptist Church of Weston. Mother taught in the Sunday School, in the little people’s area. She had not taught in a regular school since before my brother was born, and when she quit teaching she quit teaching. But the Sunday School was different. She never stopped that.
We had a garden at the house that was hand-dug with a spade. Dad would have loved to have all flowers and no vegetables, but my mother knew that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. We even grew potatoes. It was a good garden.
My dad was a call fireman for the Weston Volunteer Fire Department. He and my Uncle John worked together on John’s farm — the old Smith Farm on Sudbury Road, where John’s wife Sylvia had been raised. They raised chickens, cows, and turkeys.
Every summer we went back to Maine. The grandparents were there, the camp was there, and the rivers and the woods were there. Guy and I fished the Black Brook and the Ellis River branches for big fish — ten inches was big fish to us — and we helped where we were needed on the farm. It was one of the good things about the way our family worked. We lived in Massachusetts but we had not left Maine behind.
Guy and I walked to school together, about a mile and a half, and probably never said a word to each other on the way. There were open-back barges that were the forerunners of today’s school buses, but we did not like to be cooped up in them and always chose to walk. We took a bag lunch to school but ate in the cafeteria.
I liked the science and math classes. I had a hard time at first understanding math, but when I finally figured it out I liked it very much. We had a considerable amount of homework. My mother insisted that we do it well and was a good help.
I studied French, and only through the goodness of one of the teachers did I get a passing grade. I had heard French spoken in Canada and had a difficult time getting textbook French to work with my Canuck French. The two did not sound like the same language to me.
There was a course of music recognition that the other students had already taken. I couldn’t do it at all. I could not read music and I cannot carry a tune. I did not do well, but I have never regretted it either.
I played four years of high school football and my brother Guy played three. One year Russ Lawry was the quarterback. We were undefeated and unscored on that year. Guy was on that team with me.
My brother and I both got sick during one season and the coach brought us all sorts of medicine, as he could not get along without his two Akers players.
I went hunting the first time all by myself at about the age of fifteen. We were visiting in Maine. It was during potato harvesting time. I got down to the field where I saw a deer standing at the other end. I couldn’t tell if it was a buck or a doe, but in those days it didn’t matter. I carried a gun that held six shells.
I fired five off in quick succession and all five missed. Then I decided that this was a waste of shells and I had better think about it. I waited for the deer to jump. He was going away from me when I shot the last shot, and I got him right in the — use your imagination.
This was in the summertime and not in hunting season. I knew there was a deer there and he was digging the potatoes, so I went down there and got him.
I never shot a moose. In fact I never saw a moose in the woods until I went up to a Howard reunion at Uncle Henry’s camp. We saw several during the day, which was unusual.
My senior yearbook had this to say:
“Bob comes from Andover, Maine. He started school with us in the first grade, went back to Maine for four years, and then rejoined us in the fifth grade. Since then his sincerity of manner and willingness to help have won for him a warm spot in the hearts of his many friends. In his senior year he performed the duty of school treasurer with vigor and efficiency. Bob has always applied his time to the best ends and during the last four years he worked about the school in his spare time. This however did not entirely prevent him from participating in sports, for he managed to make the football team, and for three years he smashed opposing line with an effectiveness that is history. He was also a guard on the basketball team in his senior year.”
They were generous.
For graduation I wore a blue blazer and white pants. I had saved money for college, but in 1934 the banks closed and I lost most of it. About ten years later I got some of the lost money back.
I did a post-graduate year at Weston High School, from 1934 to 1935, taking the additional classes I needed for college — two math courses, French, and advanced physics. I also worked as a janitor in the primary school building. There were three school buildings at that time: one for the primary grades, one for grades five through eight, and the high school. I cleaned the primary building and studied for the classes that would get me out of it.
The property was Chestnut Farm, the 472-acre estate of Robert Winsor in Weston, Massachusetts, parts of which were developed as a golf course. (National Park Service, “Chestnut Farm,” Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, https://www.nps.gov/places/chestnut-farm.htm; accessed February 2026.) ↩︎