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02/26/2020 07:37 AMRock and Roll. Television. Civil Rights. Home ownership.
All four come to mind when thinking about the 1950s.
But what was this time period like for residents of Chester?
To explore Chester in the ’50s, the Chester Historical Society will host a cracker-barrel discussion on Sunday, March 1 at 3 p.m. in the Chester Town Hall Community Room. (The cracker barrel term isn’t from the ’50s—it comes from the late 1800s and is used to describe the casual conversations people would have around a cracker barrel in country stores.)
“It’s very informal and a chance for others to chime in,” said Eileen Sypher, a member of the society who spearheads the event.
“In the long winters people would tell stories to each other. We have so few opportunities to tell our stories to each other…It’s a great way of bringing the community together and making people realize their own history is important,” she says.
The program is an open forum for individuals to ask questions or present stories about the town, welcoming longtime residents and newcomers.
“It’s a living history…and it’s a history that brings out stories they might not even know they had,” said Sypher. “It’s a great get together.”
A collection of photographs presented by PowerPoint will serve to spark participants’ recollections.
“I was able to find some [photographs] that were in that time period…a few family photos from my aunt and uncle,” said Bob Blair, III, a trustee of the Chester Historical Society. “These are serving more as conversation starters.”
Images assembled by Blair and Society Curator Diane Lindsay include those of the town’s Memorial Day parade, the school, stores, Cedar Lake, and Camp Hazen, among others.
“The town seemed to revolve…around the center, rather than today, we practically go all over the state…to go shopping,” said Blair. “Everything that you needed was in town back then and if you couldn’t find it in town, you went without it…The main theme [involves] people being more self-sufficient.”
Sypher, a native of Chester, agreed and gave examples.
“I was a child then. How did we spend our play time? We didn’t have televisions…So, what were we doing? What about things like shopping? We never went shopping in my family. We sewed our clothes and knitted. We never went to restaurants…We cooked at home…We had family parties…a lot of us gardened,” she says.
The shops along Main Street were also quite different.
“A lot of the stores and shops were more like hardware stores, meat markets…grocery stores,” said Blair.
The restaurants and art galleries of today were an uncommon sight.
“There were a lot of factories in town…a lot of people worked in town,” said Blair.
These details, along with other anecdotes from event participants, will help forge connections among residents.
The talk will also provide the society an opportunity to document oral accounts by videotaping and sharing them through the online video sharing platform, YouTube, to reach a greater audience.
“So 10, 20 years from now somebody can look back on [the cracker-barrel conversation] and remember it as well,” said Blair.
This type of programming is held by the society once a year, with prior cracker-barrel discussions touching on local chefs and memories of Chester center.
The Chester Historical Society’s cracker-barrel discussion, Preview of Chester in the ’50s, is free and open to the public. For more information, call 860-558-4701 or visit chesterhistoricalsociety.org. In case of inclement weather, the talk will be held on Sunday, March 8.