Mason’s
As I mentioned earlier this week I did not have much of a chance to capture photos over the weekend. The reason for this was because my daughter turned 8 years old. We had a birthday party at Mason's bowling alley.
Candle pin bowling is somewhat unique to this area and not found in all parts of our country. The more popular form of bowling is 10 pin where you have a much larger ball and shorter pins. At one point in time in my life I was very involved in candle pin bowling. I use to run a league that consited of 12 four person teams. We would bowl once a week paying a minimal fee. At the end of the season we would have a banquet with the fees collected and award prizes to the winners.
Growing up we had five candle pin bowling alleys between the towns of Leominster and Fitchburg. Two of them have closed down for good. Birthday parties and bowling leagues are about all that are keeping these open. Mason's in my opinion does a little better than the others. This is due to the fact that they also have arcade games and pool tables.
My generation would use a bowling alley as a place to hang out with friends. These days it seems that kids hang out at places such as facebook.com and world of warcraft. With sms you no longer need to go to a place such as a bowling alley to interact with your friends. With all the gaming console systems out there who needs a bowling alley with pool tables and pinball machines. I'm afraid that these bowling alleys are going to continue to be a dying breed.
Theme Day: Paths and Passages
For theme day I took a photo of this foot bridge built in 1949 that allows pedestrians to cross over a 4 lane divided highway. The interesting thing is the location of this bridge. On the far side is a residential area consisting of roughly 25 homes. On the near side there is a shopping plaza. What I'm baffled by is why the city or state would go to such expense to service a handful of people. The only reason I could think of is maybe it was built by the company Foster Grant which was near the area which is now a shopping mall. It is possible that these homes were Foster Grant employees.
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Tripple decker
Here is the house I lived in until the age of 8. This is a typical 3 decker found in the french hill neighborhood of Leominster. This particular one had 4 apartments, 2 small ones on the first floor and 1 each on the second and third floors. I often miss those days growing up on french hill. French hill ranged from first street to twelfth street and had Water, Spruce and Mechanic streets running the length of them as seen in the google map below. This whole area was our playground and we were outside from sunrise to sunset. I can't imagine how my parents handled it, knowing that we were safe but not knowing exactly where in the neighborhood we were. I can't imagine allowing my children that much free range in this day and age.
West side
The west side of Leominster has some great big homes. This one was built in 1910 and has 6700 square feet of living space and 15 rooms. A former co-worker owns this house and I remember him telling me that it was a money pit when he bought it back in 1998. Guess there was a leak in the roof that he had to take care of. The leak did damage to a lot of the walls which were built with horsehair plaster. Horsehair plaster is an inferior technique that never worked well.
On a side note....
We are in for a cold spell. Just looked at my thermometer and it is 3 degrees Fahrenheit, -16 Celsius outside. I will need to warm the car up before leaving for work today.
Monochrome Monday #2
Here is the view you see while driving out of the French Hill neighborhood out of Leominster. This area looks much as it did back in the 1950's.
Like black and white photography? If so visit other maniacs that participate in Monochrome Mondays at this site Monochrome Maniacs.