StoryCorps: Rebecca Boothman and Jeffrey Parker (Web Extra)

Jeffrey: Can you describe what it was like growing up?

Rebecca: I had two sisters; Sally and Sue. I was the oldest. It was a very busy household. Our house was the heading for the trails that led to Mount Adams and Madison so people parked in our driveway constantly. We had to make almost all of our own fun. That was we did not live in town. We got to town once a week. We had stick horses that there were some stalls in the barn and we always wanted horses; never had any until we were teenagers. So we played with stick horses. We played outside all the time. One of the highlights of our life when we were little kids was to had the grader come in the driveway and make big snow piles that we could slide down. It was wonderful. We fished, we trapped. We just did all kinds of outside stuff. We made our own fun. One of my very vivid memories growing up is that when it came time for new shoes we all lined up in the kitchen and they put paper on the floor and our feet got drawn on the paper and who ever went to town came back with new shoes for everybody. So that’s the way we got new shoes.

Jeffrey: Can you describe your relationship with Papa when you were growing up, my grandfather?

Rebecca: Well, I think he was very disappointed because he wanted more than anything to have a son. And I turned into that son for him, in a way. I went everywhere with him. We fished together. We hunted together. I got my very first rifle at age ten. It was a .22. I remember being really impressed that he traded a double barrel shotgun so that I could have a .22 to go wonder in the woods and shoot squirrels. That was the best. He even gave me ammunition. I was way much more the outside…

Jeffrey: You were the tomboy versus the…

Rebecca: The tomboy versus the girl wearing a skirt. Although you know, our driveway, and you know how long our driveway was, and when we were going to school we were not allowed to wear pants. We had to wear skirts and in the winter with the west wind blowing through Randolph Valley, we had to walk from the house to the road with dresses on. That was challenging. My life growing up was different is as much as there weren’t that many other children in Randolph at that time. My mother tried to socialize me by taking me to Gorham and introducing me to girly-girls. I mean it was okay for a while, but I just wanted to be home and doing my own thing. I think that my growing up was quite different from, for instance, from other kids when I first started school.

We never had a television. If we were real good on Wednesday nights we could go up to [inaudible] house. He had the first television in Randolph and we could watch Walt Disney. And if we were really, really good we stay and watch the Reddy Kilowatt hour. And that was a kind of mystery sort of thing hosted by Reddy Kilowatt who was the electric icon with lightning bolt arms and legs. I can remember Dad took us fishing up to Leadmine Pond which meant that we had to walk up across the bridge and behind the power plant and he said as an aside, “You know, Reddy Kilowatt lives in there.” Well, you’re walking behind the plant; there’s all these windows and l couldn’t…I just spent all my time looking through the windows looking for Reddy Kilowatt. But, I didn’t see him.

Jeffrey: What was your mother like when you were growing up?

Rebecca: When my parents got married in ’43 they moved in with my Dad’s parents in Randolph and about a week’s time he was off to World War Two so Mom was there. She was a caring, understanding, very, very talented woman. I think she was fed a big challenge when she married Dad and had to move in with his parents, alone, basically. She basically took over his life, his responsibilities. Dad was the town appointed State Forest Fire Warden. She became the State Forest Fire Warden while he was in the service. She took on all of those responsibilities.

Jeffrey: So she was the Northern New England version of Rosy the Riveter.

Rebecca: Well I guess you might say that. She took on all of the sugaring issues. Dad’s father was not happy because she was boiling on an open pan over in the sugar orchard and he said, “No woman should be standing out in the weather boiling!” and so while she’s boiling he’s building the original part of the original sugarhouse, he built around her while she was boiling.