Come together and celebrate the Heights

By Keith Testa - Aug 20, 2013 | 0 comments

Sixth-grade Dame School students in 1966.

The Heights Webelos Cub Scout pack in 1967.

The Department of Transportation’s Heights parade entry for 1965.

The Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary cheerleaders in 1968.

A Heights family in 1962.

Nancy Chapman and friends march in the 1962 Heights Fourth of July parade.

A 1971 Monitor article highlights the business growth on the Heights.

Heights residents Tom Noonan and Pete Serard in 1966.

A 1970 Dame School calendar.

The Heights Rotary baseball team.

Bikes were the transportation of choice back in 1963.

The Little Miss Heights competition in 1964.

It’s easy to think of the Heights as a place to find little more than fast food and slow traffic. And you certainly can find those things there. Loudon Road and its circus of commerce is the place to go if you need to turn an old car title into cash and purchase $1 hamburgers, some jewelry and a Slurpee, all while listening to a choral car horn performance.

But hidden just beyond the boundaries and bustle of Loudon Road is a network of streets that make up a proud and populous neighborhood. Fear of Heights? Not if you’re from there.

And now it’s time to celebrate that Heights heritage, with the first Heights Community Old Home Day. The event will be held at the Heights Community Center and Keach Park on Aug. 25 from noon to 4 p.m. and will reunite friends and families and give longtime residents a chance to reminisce.

The event has been organized by a committee headed by Donna Noonan Robie, who first thought of the idea after her father – a longtime Heights resident and community presence – passed away this spring.

“He was very involved in the Heights community,” Robie said. “I always remember my father and mother instilling that community spirit in us.”

That spirit remains alive and well among the many families who have called the Heights home for several decades. Most can recall when Loudon Road was dominated by mom-and-pop shops instead of chain pharmacies and convenience stores. Robie, for instance, remembers when a bank and later a veterinarian occupied the spot currently filled by Meineke, and can recount a time when the sites for Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s were represented by family homes.

“We’ve enjoyed living out here. We’ve gotten to know many of the people around that are here, and some of them are still here,” said Oscar Serard, who has lived on the Heights since 1962. “We have a pretty good feeling of friendliness in our neighborhood.”

Serard’s neighborhood and all the others are invited to take part in the celebration, which should feature something for just about everybody. The docket includes family-friendly activities such as a wiffle ball game, a home run derby (with a prize to the winner), a face painting booth, sack races, a hula hoop contest, a beach ball relay, a balloon splat game and horseshoes.

There will also be a prize handed out in the best decorated lawn chair contest, as well as the best decorated bicycle contest, the latter of which is open to those 5 to 10 years old. There will also be a four-team, round-robin softball game featuring the Pembroke Roadsters, the East Side Drivers, the Airport Flyboys and the Loudon Road Vendors.

Food will be available from a variety of sources, including Arnie’s, Poison Pete’s Hot Dogs and Papa Gino’s, and entertainment will include singer/songwriter Andy Davis and fiddlers Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman.

An engraved cane will also be presented to the longest living Heights resident.

Though focused on the history of the area, the celebration is open to all current and former residents of the Heights, including those recent additions that Robie calls “newbies.”

“It’s just a fun, family thing,” Robie said. “When we were younger, we played things like kick the can. We weren’t on computers and all that stuff.”

A major theme of the event will be a glimpse into the past. To that end Robie is helping to provide a 6-foot penny candy bar and is compiling an historic photographic montage to be displayed in the community center. She had already collected more than 100 photos when nearly two weeks remained before the celebration.

One of the most discussed events was the July 4 parade that used to be a Heights tradition. Robie’s father was on the committee that organized the inaugural go-round, and many residents recalled a celebration that featured decorated bikes and floats and a Little Miss Heights competition. The hope with the Old Home Day celebration is to make it an annual event and move it closer to July 4 in order to tap in on some of that nostalgia.

“It was just a big, family gathering,” Robie said.

Much of the fun in planning the event has been collecting the many perse memories. Larry Kontos, a longtime Airport Road resident, referenced a time when the Heights was referred to as “Burglar’s Island.”

“It was from the river to this side, because in the early 1800s, when people did bad things downtown they would scurry themselves up over the river and hide here,” Kontos said.

Christine Prentiss recalled the ease with which children played outside when she was growing up.

“When I was little and lived on Pembroke Road, the area across from our house and behind our house was all woods. People didn’t worry about sending their kids out to play,” Prentiss said. “I had a whole imaginary house in the woods behind the house – living room, bedroom, kitchen. Had it all. Then my dad brought home an ice fishing shack and let me use that for a play house. Apparently friendships last a long time on the Heights. (Through Facebook), I connected with so many I had lost contact with. It has not been like decades have passed, only days.”

Other recollections include a siren that used to sound from Dame School every Saturday afternoon, or a patch of “some of the best wild blueberries” that used to grow where Home Depot currently stands.

The Heights community has used Facebook to spread the word (with a page for the upcoming event and a broader memories of the Heights page), and the throwbacks continue to flood in through those pages. There are pictures of a Dairy Queen restaurant where Arnie’s is now, photos of student performances at the Dame School and references to dozens of markets and small businesses where national chains now stand.

Numerous sports teams, comprised of students and adults, are immortalized in photos posted to the pages, including some baseball pictures added by Robie, who noted that her father “played for 22 different teams and pitched until his mid-’70s. He broke his hand and was rolling the ball to the plate when my mother had him removed from the game.”

There are mentions of businesses like Sprague’s and Deering Ice Cream and – perhaps’s most widely mentioned – Clark’s Store, which occupied the space where Pizza Hut is located. Some remember Betsy’s Bakery, Naults Heights Pharmacy or Foote’s Ice House.

Kontos’s family operated one such business, Louis’ Diner, for 42 years, just in front of the Concord Nissan property (on a plot that is now the road). He can recall Airport Road before it was paved, as well as a business opportunity gone by the boards.

“If you had $5,000 back then, you could have bought all of Airport Road and been rich,” Kontos said.

Plenty has been purchased in the years since, but Heights residents cling strongly to their neighborhood roots. No matter the perception to the rest of the city or anyone else, those who have spent their lives there can still look around and see things the way they once were. And that’s precisely what the upcoming celebration is all about.

“A lot of people in the rest of the city don’t think of this as a neighborhood. They think of it as the mall, or the strip,” Kathy Rogers said. “It’s very working class, but we’ve always been very close. The neighborhoods have always been close.”

“In these neighborhoods, so many people stayed here,” Robie added. “Some have lived here 40 or 50 years or longer. This is their home.”

Growing up on the Heights

Readers sent us some of their favorite Heights memories – check them out in their own words!

A fabulous place to grow up w/ my 6 siblings. A couple hootenannies with bands, stag party, horseshoes ’til the wee hours, dirt bikes, driving anything that would run, racing, huge ice hill, pool we dove into from a big ladder into a 4-foot pool, sliding off the roof, shoveling snow off roof, crazyness, bonfires, fun times at 175 Pembroke Rd. for many years.

Jerry Hatch

When I was little and lived on Pembroke Road, the area across from our house and behind our house was all woods. People didn’t worry about sending their kids out to play. No one would steal them in those days. I had a whole imaginary house in the woods behind the house. Living room, bedroom, kitchen. Had it all. Then Dad brought home an ice fishing shack and let me use that for a play house. What fun. 

At Chapman’s house we could climb the apple trees (Mom wouldn’t let us climb trees. Susan made us BLTs once for lunch. I couldn’t imagine why she was stirring the bacon in the pan. I think I remember some chocolate chips in there too. Who does that? 

Apparently friendships last a long time on the Heights. With this Facebook experience I connected with so many I had lost contact with. It has not been like decades have passed, only days.

Christine Prentiss Gifford

Most of us learned to drive out on Slaughter’s Trail.

Lennie Dupuis

My parents, Alta and Hollon Avery, purchased land on East Side Drive in the 1930s and built a home where they raised six children. I was the youngest; about 1952 they sold to George and Marge Russell and we built a ranch home around the corner on East Sugar Ball Road. The house was located about where I-393 intersects with East Side Drive and when 393 went in, the Russells moved it over to Portsmouth Street where it still exists. As part of a 4H project, my brothers planted a large number of white pine trees in rows in the back of the property; I remember playing amongst them as a child—it was like a maze. I think you can still see some of the trees, full-grown now, as you travel I-393.

Carole Avery Milliken

Remember back when you got to the top of Gulley Hill, and the roads did a three-way split? Loudon Road, Pembroke Road and Airport Road; and John Blodgett’s house was on the left, just as you started on Pembroke Road. He drove an old Nash-LaFayette.

Alan Jameson