Selected from the pages of the Windsor Locks Journal and lightly annotated by Wendy Taylor, Kent Memorial Library.
June 1
Memorial Day was observed here with appropriate exercises, the program of the day being under the direction of the local post of the American Legion.
The grammar schools of the town will have a field day on the park at the Center… This field day brings to a head the physical training of the year.
Tobacco plants are being transplanted from the seed beds this week.
The many friends of O. Ray Bugbee are gratified at the favorable turn in his condition. A second operation was performed…at which time the left limb was removed just below the knee. His condition was critical for many days, but at this writing there is a decided improvement.
June 8
Archie Falkowski, employed at Elmsmere Farm in Boston Neck, was injured…in a runaway… He was hitching a pair of horses to a tobacco setter and was behind the pair hooking the traces when they became frightened by a truck and started to run. Falkowski’s feet became entangled in the dragging reins and he was thrown heavily across the wheel of the setter, suffering severe bruises.
June 15
The class of 1893 had its thirtieth annual reunion at the alumni dinner. Seven out of the ten members were present and enjoyed a very pleasant time, and letters were read from the three unable to be present.
The Third Baptist church celebrated annual Children’s Day exercises last Sunday evening with recitations and dialogues by the children on the primary and junior departments. Two very interesting plays were given by the intermediate and advanced pupils, “The Lesson the Dandelion Taught” and “God’s Nature Children.” There was a large attendance.
June 22
“Brownie” Karpinski was arrested…on complaint of his neighbors for beating up his twelve-years’ old daughter because she objected to setting cabbage plants when she ought to be in school. When she returned from school Karpinski gave her an unmerciful beating with a harness strap and might have killed the child if the neighbors had not interfered. A physician was summoned and found the child’s back badly lacerated and bleeding from the cuts made by the strap. Karpinski was brought before Justice Leonard L. Grotta of Warehouse Point, in Union Hall… and after hearing the testimony of the neighbors, the physician and his wife he was fined $25 and costs for assault, $25 and costs for breach of the peace, and given a total of sixty days in jail…
Karpinski…has been arrested several times for abusing his wife, and farm animals…He is said to be a good worker but has periodic spells of ugliness.
The gray mallard duck, belonging to Philip Schwartz, has been setting on eight eggs in a nest at the west end of the trolley trestle at the Boston Neck bridge at Brookside for about a month, and the eggs began to hatch yesterday. The nest was built in the grass at the end of the trestle about eight inches from the track and the running board of the open cars have passed over the duck and nest about forty times a day during the period of incubation. As the trolley car approached, the duck would put on her most ferocious look in an effort to stop the car, but as it rolled along, she would snuggle close to the ground and the running board would pass about two inches above her.
June 29
On July 25 there will be a general meeting of all the growers with their families at Riverside Park [now Six Flags].