Story Court
Salem Historic Courthouse
October 8, 2022
A new program, Story Court, debuted at the Historic Salem Courthouse on October 8th. The details of daily life while growing up in Salem and the surrounding area, as told by two lifelong residents, Neil Adams, 88 and Dick McGuire, 100, were the focus of a casual evening of oral history.
According to Neil Adams, of Shushan, when he was a boy Saturday nights on Main St in Salem were so busy it was difficult to find a parking spot. Women came to the village for shopping, kids came for haircuts and movies and the men gathered on the sidewalk to share stories about their week. This tradition faded away when television became the standard of evening entertainment. In a sense, Story Court revives the convention of face-to-face sharing of news, experiences, everyday ups and downs and funny anecdotes.
Although it will not occur every Saturday night, the hope is to invite the public to the Courthouse quarterly to hear reminiscences from different friends and neighbors, ask questions and share perspectives on the past. All of the sessions will be videotaped and preserved.
The idea for Story Court came from Historic Salem Courthouse board member, Karen Sheldon. She was inspired by a “60 Minutes” episode about Holocaust victims telling their stories while being videotaped for future generations. Not long after that, she spent time with her neighbor, Neil Adams, while he entertained her with stories about his long life on his ninth generation farm in Salem. She thought, ”these stories have to be saved…everyone has a story”.
Former Salem Town Historian and current Deputy Town Historian, Al Cormier, co-hosted the event with Karen Sheldon. As the author of many articles and books about local history, he has a strong appreciation for the value of stories about the details of farm and village life, everyday struggles, and changing times. He believes that “hearing stories from the people who experienced them make them authentic”.
Adams and McGuire were perfect for the kick-off evening of Story Court. Their two lives, having spanned the last century, have seen more changes than most of us could ever imagine.
They recounted all sorts of memories about before and after electricity revolutionized their lives and when their dads got their first tractors. From the specifics of harvesting ice from Hedges Lake to keep milk cold through the summer, to where they went to dances as teens, the two regaled the audience with hometown stories not widely available to hear or read.
McGuire, who lives in the same house on Scotch Hill Rd in which he and his father were born, is a historian himself. He maintains about a dozen museums at his farm covering topics from antique tractors and farm equipment to art and music. His sense for the importance of history was evident when he shared a moving and important story about his bewilderment at the prejudice in the community. When his dad hired an African-American farmhand in 1935 his mother’s friends were outraged and the “church ladies” wouldn’t talk to her. They were shocked that Dick’s dad would house this man in their home and share their dinner table with him.
As Al Cormier says, the sort of stories told by Neil and Dick are “not often recorded” but are “invaluable to preserving Salem history…they reflect a life too often forgotten”. Where else would you hear Dick McGuire’s story about crossing the Battenkill through the covered bridge (formerly on Rte 22) during the flood in 1927 on his 5th birthday? Minutes after arriving home in their 1922 Model T Ford, the family learned that the entire bridge had washed away. Neil described a colorful event when a herd of cows was being driven through the Shushan covered bridge and a recalcitrant bull had to be towed through while hopping over the crossbeams in the floor.
Covered bridges are prominent landmarks and the source of pride in the community, but these personal stories are a great example of how their long histories can be brought to life.
A link to the video of the first Story Court, filmed and edited by Tom McMorris, is available on the Historic Salem Courthouse website, salemcourthouse.org. Please view it for many more stories from Dick and Neil, told in their own voices. Another Story Court, perhaps centered on long time local businesses, is in the works for January 2023.
