Powers Farm and Pond: Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s

    In 2021, the Town of Randolph, Massachusetts, purchased its second substantial portion of the former Powers Farm to preserve its natural beauty and create recreational opportunities for the community. Powers Farm Community Park and the adjoining Bertha Soule Memorial Park form a 26-acre conservation and community space, including the five-acre Norroway Pond. The park has multiple acres of successional meadows, marshland, an alfalfa field, and an Atlantic White Cedar Swamp. The project has proved to be a tremendous success, and generations to come will be able to enjoy the park. For older generations from the surrounding community, the farm and its pond are a treasure of memories.

Rev. Charles Ransom Powers
Ruth Almena (Dewey) Powers
1925

    Powers Farm (previously Bendall Farm, and officially operated as Sunnyworth Manor) consisted of 40-acres pieced together by Rev. Charles Ransom Powers and his wife Ruth. His Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and English ancestors settled in southern Vermont by the late 1700s and in western New York by 1825. His great-grandfather had come to Harmony, New York, from Middlebury, Vermont.

    Charles and Ruth migrated from western New   York to Massachusetts. He worked in various pastoral positions and eventually became the secretary of the Boston Baptist Union. An illness caused him to seek out a more country life in Randolph, Massachusetts.

    In 1898, Charles bought the former homestead of Charles Belcher (558 North Main Street in the present) just north of the town center, two other Belcher properties, and property belonging to the Wilde family. He continued to serve as a substitute minister, sometimes for lengthy periods in Dorchester, Bridgewater, and other communities.

    The Farm stretched from Grove Street in the south to the Boston School for the Deaf to the north (established in 1904 and consisting of a large brick school and about 50 acres of forest), from North Main Street to the east, and from lands to the west that are now part of Niles Road and Sloan Circle.

Etta Belle (Randall) Powers

    In 1934, Charles conveyed the property to one of his sons, Charles Ransom Powers, Jr. Young Charles was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, as the family slowly migrated from western New York. However, both Charles Sr. and his son passed away within months of each other in 1936. Etta Belle (Randall) Powers, Charles Jr.’s widow, then inherited the property and, in 1939, added her son, the fifth of her seven children, Hugh Winford “Win” Powers, when he was twenty-two.

    It was the depths of the Great Depression, and Win Powers told the Patriot Ledger in 1986 that they could not retain labor helpers. He had to work the farm himself. His brothers had no interest in it and were pursuing other directions. It was, as he said, “his by default.”

    In addition to heading her household on the farm, Etta Belle operated Bell’s Shoppe just opposite the farm. The building was part of a lot with another house at 547 Main Street, just across the street from the Powers home. Win Powers’ wife, Marion Christine (Wilbur) Powers grew up in the house. She would later marry Win and after Etta Powers died, she would operate the farmstand right across the street from her childhood home. This little shop would later become Minihan’s Handy Store.

    Win Powers died in 1989 at age 72. His wife Marion predeceased him in 1985. They are both buried at Central Cemetery in Randolph.

    Powers’ younger sister, Ethel, operated Ms. Powers’s Kindergarten at 25 Grove Street just off North Main Street behind the First Baptist Church. She operated the kindergarten in the lower level of the house her mother Etta had inherited from her parents. The house had ten-acres of land. Her sister, Ruth Eagles, helped with the kindergarten and had lived in the house since 1943 with her family. The kindergarten used a large side yard beyond the front stone retaining wall for the children’s play. It is a historic house originally owned by Daniel Wilde, who built it in 1810. Many children from the surrounding area attended the kindergarten and carry fond memories of the school. Around 1970, the kindergarten was moved to Holbrook.

Marion Powers (seated) and Etta Powers
 at their Corn Stand on a hot August afternoon
 in 1970.

   The Powers family raised milking cows, hay for fodder, and delicious summer corn, which in its heyday was more profitable than the dairy business. They kept about eight cows plus calves and a succession of large horses, one was Billy Boy and another, Roul. The farm was too small for heavy mechanization and had only an old 1949 Ford truck, tractor, and a 1939 Jeep pickup. Win relied on traditional methods, using horses to save on operating costs. He said a tractor then was about $3,000 at the time, while Roul was priced at $185, and instead of using diesel fuel, Roul lived off farm fodder. In the early 1980s, they gave up the dairy cows and switched to raising beef cattle, which demanded less time and attention.

    Children from the nearby neighborhoods would walk the wire fence along the Grove Street meadow, where the dairy cows would come to receive hand-held offerings of fresh grass. Some teenagers from the nearby neighborhoods worked on the farm shoveling manure, picking corn, or helping with raking or baling hay. The author recalls heaving rows of hay onto the ’49 Ford flatbed truck Win Powers drove. It would be hauled up to the barn area, baled, and stored in the barn for the winter. While hauling the hay to the barn, the author fell from atop the mound of hay on the truck bed to be run over by the rear wheels. Fortunately, his injuries were minor.

Win Powers, age 53 and his son Dana, age 14, herding the cows along the lane into the barn.  1970 Patriot Ledger

    Over the years the size of the farm diminished as parcels were sold off for development within a booming Randolph. Win Powers saw this coming. When he was young, there were six operating farms in Randolph. By 1970, it was only he and Adams Farm off High Street in North Randolph standing. He could see that the land value was rising and making its value so great it would inevitably be consumed by development.

    The first parcel to be sold was along Grove Street. In 1960, the Grove Street-adjacent land was subdivided, and ranch-style homes were built along the street, making the cows inaccessible except for a small, single parcel near Cross Street. This portion of the fence would be opened in the winter when Powers Pond had frozen over, and the community was allowed to skate on the pond.

Win and Dana Powers plow fields with Roul.

    In 1965, about ten acres were sold to J&V Construction to build homes on Nile Road and Sloan Circle on the west side of the property. This would complete the large Althea Park developed by Daly Construction  Company in the early 1960s. In 1986, an additional seven-acre parcel was sold abutting Grove Street to a  Milton developer that would become Powers Farm Road, Sunnyworth Lane, and Randall Way. Finally, in  2009 and 2021, the Town of Randolph purchased two lots totaling about 18 acres to create the modern-day Powers Farm Community Park.

The farm, and particularly its pond, played a significant role in the town and  surrounding neighborhoods in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

    Mothers dispatched their children to the farm on August afternoons with a dollar to buy a dozen (always a baker’s dozen) ears of corn for dinner. Anticipation would grow all summer – “Is the corn ready?” Dads would stop on their way home from work for milk and bread at Minihan’s Handy Store and run across North Main Street to buy corn at the farmstand. The proprietor, John Minihan, was known to extend credit until payday to dads short on cash, but only for family essentials, not cigarettes. 

Minihan’s Handy Store on North Main Street
 across from Powers Farm.

    Win Powers was a strong, quiet man of very few words who was a bit intimidating to children. Though he welcomed all to the pond for winter skating, in all other seasons, the farm property was off-limits. Of course, children will be children; some in the surrounding neighborhoods tested his rule. Some young boys would attempt to sneak onto the property to fish or launch a raft in the pond. They would scramble in fear when they saw Mr. Powers heading their way in his old gray truck or on his tractor.

    Norroway Pond (the official map name) is a significant feature of the Powers Farm property. The community always called it Powers Pond. In the past, it was commonly known as Great Pond or Peat Meadow, an apt description of a geological depression of bog with a stream passing through it. This pond did not exist as late as 1882. It was likely the desire to harvest ice that instigated digging out the peat (used for heat). The brook crossing Grove Street onto the Powers’s property was dammed, and levees were constructed on the north side, and the pond formed from which ice was cut and sold.

1882 map shows the depression and
 brook that existed before Powers Pond
was created through the construction
of dams, levees, and dikes.

    At one point, the pond had three ice houses along its shore. The Powers family originally owned the dike, dam, and pond, but they sold it to ice-making operators and the Soule Family, along with some adjoining land on the west and south sides of the pond. The Soule Family eventually donated the pond and adjacent land, totaling about eight acres, to the Town of Randolph in 1967. The pond and much of the surrounding shore is called the Bertha Soule Memorial Park.

    In the 1960s, remnants remained of one of the icehouses near the access path from Grove Lane. Before electricity and refrigeration arrived in the 1920s, ice was used to store food in cellars, insulated ice boxes, and railroad cars shipping freight across the country. Ice blocks were “harvested” in winter and preserved in buildings insulated with hay and sawdust throughout the year. Ice harvesting continued in some places as late as the 1930s. In later years, children skating at Powers Pond every winter explored the remnants of the decaying icehouse. A natural spring next to the icehouse gave many a refreshing drink.

  

Ice harvesting at Powers Pond. Ice sheets being cut
and transferred via an elevated ramp into the
 icehouse at the end of Grove Lane.

    Powers Pond was a tremendous resource for community fun in winter. The pond was accessible through a small section of fence Mr. Powers would temporarily open on Grove Street when skating began or from Grove Lane, where a peninsula jutted into the pond.  It is almost unimaginable today, in our litigious society, to think of someone doing this with their property or parents allowing their children to take the risks that were accepted as part of growing up in the Baby Boom generation.  Ice harvesting at Powers Pond. Ice sheets are being cut and transferred via an elevated ramp into the icehouse at the end of Grove Lane.

   Children came from all the surrounding neighborhoods, and some far beyond, to skate on the pond.  There were the Boothbys, Cunniffs, Derranes, Warners, Coburns, Lockes, Watsons, Woodses, and Krupnicks from Grove Street and Grove Lane and Althea Park. McDonalds, McGraths, Powers, and McLeods were on Main Street surrounding the farm. A little further away were children from Cross Street and Wales Avenue, the Gallaghers, Walls, Dillons, Walshes, Hartleys, Comeaus, Caulfields, Pelissiers, Fernalds, Dillises, and Whynots. Across Main Street in the area surrounding Jones Avenue were the McGrorys, Walshes, Murrays, Delanos, Bowens, Cavanaughs, Kellys, and McCarthys. The MacDonalds, Fredericksons, Tolsons, Levangies, and Holbrooks from Belcher Street and other neighborhoods beyond could also be regularly spotted at the pond.

    The children from Main Street were allowed to walk down the dirt lane from the hill on which the Powers house sat. There was some envy from the children heading to the pond from the neighborhoods south and west as they watched their friends descend from the barn area and walk along the fence line of the lane. There was something special about that view from the pond. Of course, it made it worse that they would also be walking right by Minihan’s Handy store on their way home. Occasionally, Mrs. Chatfield, a second-grade teacher and principal of the Belcher school, would take children on a field trip to the farm and pond, which included skating. They would all march down the lane.

    As generous as Mr. Powers was about promoting skating, he forbade anyone to access the property unless the pond was frozen to a safe thickness. Though the town did not officially declare the pond safe, a jeep or truck driving over it occasionally made a test. Even when declared safe, caution was necessary as areas near the control dike or where currents ran under the ice posed a danger. 

Win Powers cutting hay with a scythe.

    The period from 1955 to 1972 was one of the last cold snaps to provide adequate average winter temperatures to support the level of ice skating experienced at Powers Pond by the Baby Boom generation.  For most of that era, skating seemed to last non-stop from December to March. The average annual temperature of Massachusetts has been rising since 1900, when it was 45.9 Fahrenheit, to over 49 Fahrenheit today, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center. In the period discussed here (’55-’72), the temperature averaged about 46.5 Fahrenheit consistently, with no sharp peaks of warm weather in any season throughout those years. It was a period ideal for freezing ponds in winter.

    Children would remain at the pond after school on weekdays until dinner and all day on weekends. Sometimes the ice was so black and smooth it was like skating on glass. The spring located near the old icehouse provided the necessary drinking water, or some would suck ice chips.  Now and then, someone would break through the ice trying to get a drink from the spring or attempting to retrieve a puck too close to the dike, and everyone would assist in the rescue. The wet survivor would likely go home for dry clothes and return later. The ice expanded and contracted with temperature changes, and children occasionally heard a loud, thunder-like “crack.” At first, it seemed scary, but soon enough, it would be accepted as just a natural phenomenon of expansion and ignored.

    One night at the pond (a large flood light illuminated much of the pond and allowed us to skate after sundown), skaters were surprised to see elderly Papa Dillon from Wales Avenue arrive in a long dark winter coat and don figure skates. This intrigued the children as they rarely saw adults on the pond, and, of course, he was… “so old” (He was about 70.) He lit his pipe, placed it in his mouth, and, as if he had been doing it forever, sailed across the pond as smooth as silk, the very image of a Rockwell painting. 

    Nothing was more fun than skating at night when no snow covered the icy pond. If it was a moonlit night, skaters could go into the wetland areas by the brook running under Grove Street to play tag on skates.  The water had to be high to do this. The cows liked eating in this area in summer as the wetland provided greener grass. Their cow plops provided fertilizer to grow clumps of thick grass and moss that rose over the natural level of the landscape. Without high water, these small islands might be too many to maneuver

    The swampy areas between the pond and the Boston School for the Deaf were the same way when there was high water.

    Skates were an expensive item unaffordable to many large families in Randolph. Parents would often surprise older children at Christmas with new skates – hockey skates for the boys and figure skates for the girls. Their old skates would be handed down to the younger children or used to trade at the fire department skate swap. Each year, the Randolph Fire Department held the skate swap. They would empty the bays of trucks and set up racks. Families would arrive at the start of winter.  Each child would carry their skates from the previous year, deposit them for another child to choose from, and pick out a new (used) pair someone else had dropped off. Without this generous operation by the RFD, there would be no skating for many children in town.

    Skates were made of thin leather in the 1960s. Children used skates one or two sizes too small to make them as tight as possible. They used handmade lace tighteners crafted from a piece of wood with a bent spike nail driven through it to grasp the laces and pull them tight. Feet would swell as the day went on, making the fit even tighter. At times, on a cold, bitter day, if the cabins were closed, snow and ice might accumulate on skates, preventing the untying of laces. The author recalls that one day, unable to get the skates untied, he walked home with the skates on while facing a bitter wind, crying in pain and discomfort.

    Many sharpened skates with a hand file, but some fathers had wheel grinders in a basement or garage that were much more efficient. Harold Boothby on Grove Street was known to sharpen skates for children, and Al Barkhouse, also on Grove, would sharpen skates for one dollar. It was worth the dollar to improve performance. Paper routes, lawn mowing, and driveway snow shoveling supplied the funds.

    Hockey equipment often consisted of a puck and sticks. Protective equipment was a rarity for many. Shin pads and gloves might be given to teenagers for Christmas or passed down from an older sibling. Some families couldn’t afford the equipment. It was not uncommon for children to stuff old magazines in their pants and tape the bottoms tight with black electrical tape.

    The author remembers being twelve years old and asking the local Maple Leafs young men’s hockey club if he could play goalie during their practice on the pond’s official rink. Their goalie couldn’t make it, and they needed a substitute. They laughed at him because he didn’t have any equipment. Undeterred, he went home, grabbed his baseball glove, stuffed rags in his pants, put on his father’s heavy corduroy coat, and returned. They allowed him to play goalie for their practice and didn’t hold back on their slapshots.

H. Winford Powers 1986

    Most homes in the 1960s were heated with forced hot water radiators. Children returning home wet and cold from the pond, skates and feet frozen, lie on their backs on the floor and put their feet up directly on a radiator to thaw out. This was sometimes painful as blood circulation returned to the feet.

    Hockey was the dominant sport in our area because of the availability of ponds and the sensation of the phenomenal Bobby Orr, who joined the Boston Bruins in 1966. His defensive skill and incredible skating ability complemented a roster of icons like Phil Esposito and Johnny Bucyk, who combined to lead the Bruins to Stanley Cup championships in 1970 and 1972.

    Indoor ice rinks were rare and could only be found in Boston under the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) in the 1950s and early 1960s. The first indoor rink close by was the Ridge Arena in Braintree, which was built in 1965. The Bruins craze of the mid-late 1960s sparked a surge in the construction of ice rinks in Massachusetts. Randolph built the Randolph Ice Arena in 1972. The name would later be changed to Joseph J. Zapustas Arena after the former athletic director of Randolph High School. 

    Randolph High School formed its first hockey team in 1969. The team played at Ridge Arena, Walpole, and Cohasset Winter Gardens, but it was known to practice at the Powers Farm. At least three first-year team members, Steve Boothby, Jim Joy, and Kenny Clarke, were regulars at the Pond. 

    The opening of Randolph Ice Arena created more opportunities for Randolph High School to practice and play games at home. It also created opportunities for youth development programs such as Pee Wee and Bantam leagues. Die-hard pond players also used the rink in their off hours. Many who still wanted to play hockey in an extended season but could not qualify for the high school team or commit to it due to work obligations to help support their families would rent the rink ice on low-use days at two or three in the morning for pick-up games.

    Hockey at Powers Pond was a major self-organized sport for the boys. Younger players made rinks in the open pond using sticks and other materials. When it snowed, children brought shovels with them. They would clear a pathway to an open spot and push mounds of snow to the perimeter of “their” rink. If the snow was heavy and wet, it was much harder to clear and often left a rougher surface. It was rough-and-tumble pond hockey in the truest sense.

    Those who worked to clear the snow declared ownership rights to their rink. After removing it one day, they would return the next day, expecting it to be waiting for them. They would tell the intruding group to clear out if they found someone else using it. If the intruding group did not comply, there would be trouble.

    The pond was not just for hockey. The girls wore white figure skates, digging the serrated teeth on the front of the blade into the ice and sailing across the pond or navigating the many paths in the snow. Groups of girls could be seen competing, spinning and twirling, and mimicking movements they learned by watching stars like Peggy Fleming on television. Fleming was the only American to win a gold medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics. She returned as a hero and appeared at Boston Garden later in the year.  She inspired many girls of the Baby Boom generation to explore figure skating.

    The girls and boys would play many games together, such as tag, particularly at night when the pond was high and expanded into the wetland areas by Grove Lane. 

    Mr. Powers maintained two small cabins at the pond and a wood-and-equipment storage crib nearby. Each cabin had a wood stove, and Mr. Powers, or his son Dana “Powdy,” would stoke the stoves to warm the cabins for skaters in winter. The northernmost cabin was for general use; the other cabin, it was commonly understood, was reserved for hockey players. When you were old enough and a skilled enough player to receive permission from Mr. Powers to use one of the lockers for your hockey equipment, it was a great honor.

    Entering the cabins to remove skates on a cold winter day was a gift. Under extreme conditions, some would take a break from the cold and return to the ice. Entering the general cabin, one was hit by the heat of the wood stove, the smell of burning wood, the fragrance of the natural wood from the walls and ceiling, and the smell of wet wool. The hockey cabin tended to smell more like a locker room, with sweat and damp leather wafting through the air.

    These cabins seemed to have no purpose but to warm skaters (though they may have been initially built and used during the ice harvesting days). The Powers family provided the split wood. Maybe they filled their time this way with less work on the farm in winter. There is no reason to believe they were compensated in any way by the town, according to town records and the recollection of the Powers children. It appears the work it took to provide this invaluable resource was simply an act of generous community service. 

    A depression in the land adjacent to the cabins was dug out in the shape of a regulation-sized hockey rink by Louis Kmito in the late 1950s. He owned the town landfill and had a lot of heavy equipment. The telephone pole and lights over the rink were donated by the electric company. The local electric company installed wiring for the lights over the rink and for a flood light to cover the greater pond. The electricity came from a generator mounted near the woodshed. The Randolph High School Metal Shop fabricated the goals and made ice scrapers for cleaning the ice.

    A young men’s hockey club, the Randolph Maple Leafs, from the local neighborhoods, helped build boards, with donated wood, to enclose the rink. Each fall Win would lower the pond water level, lifting board from within the dike, so the hockey players and his children could weed the rink ground surface, anticipating winter ice. They would set the boards up and take them down with each season for many years. Many helped build the lockers in the hockey cabin.  Mr. Powers maintained the boards, netted goals, and lights for years.

    The Leafs practiced and played games against other regional clubs on the rink. They once played Catholic Memorial High School and defeated them 9-0. Club members would break a hole in the ice and use a hand pump to pump water and refresh the rink surface with new ice. The Randolph Fire Department would occasionally come down to the pond to add a fresh surface of water to freeze.

                    The Randolph Maple Leafs young men’s hockey club.
First Row (L-R) Al Young, Rich McCarthy, Kevin Delano, Steve Warner, Ricky Johnson, Neal McGrory, Joe Murry (88)
Top Row(L-R) Unknown, George Doherty, Rich Lyons, Jerry Flynn, Unknown, Fred Hutchinson, Jim Cavanaugh, Billy Batson, Andy Iskra

   One of the former Maple Leafs players said, and one of Win Powers’s daughters confirmed, that Win Powers and his brother Rupert loved hockey. They had both worked with ice harvesting, Rupert often spent time in a cabin at the icehouse. He and Win eventually had two cabins of their own near the rink. Win used the one that became the general use cabin used by skaters in later years. He would often sleep in the cabin on hot summer nights. Ruperts shed was torn down eventually, but another was built, the hockey cabin, soon after, in the 1950s. 

    Rupert was very involved early on with the hockey players, but eventually Win became much more involved. He was a good skater in his prime, and as his daughter said, “he had a mean slap shot!” The hockey players would sometimes talk him into playing with them. They worked to create and maintain the rink out of their love of hockey, and the entire community benefited immensely.

    Most children played hockey on the greater pond, but on occasion, when the Leafs weren’t scheduled to practice or play a game on the rink, Mr. Powers allowed them to use it. 

    Many pond skaters played hockey for Randolph High School, including Steve and Gary Boothby, Jimmy Joy, Kenny Clarke, Bob Warner, Bob and Tim Bowen, Paul Cunniff, Joe Derrane, Bud Coburn, and Mike Kelly.

    Rod Langway, a National Hockey League (NHL) Hall of Famer, grew up in Randolph, near the west end of the Powers Pond on High Street. He was a star player for Randolph High School from 1972- 1975. He would play for the Montreal Canadiens and win two Stanley Cup Playoffs with the Washington Capitals. He was also a two-time recipient of the Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the NHL. Rod learned to play on ponds in Randolph and on the tennis courts at North Junior High School. No doubt, he had some ice time on Powers Pond.

    Randolph was a town where families struggled, but children had opportunities to explore and develop skills and talents. The community supported the many families that struggled to get the most basic equipment for their children to participate in sports. A farmer who worked hard to scrape out a basic living standard for his own family made all that he had available to the community for the enjoyment of its children. They took that opportunity in abundance to make friends, develop skills, and learn the basics of group socialization and team building. They had fun doing it and, no doubt, are very grateful for what they experienced on Win Powers’ Pond.

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Written by: Dan Gallagher, formerly of Wales Ave, Randolph and RHS Class of 1975

Thank you to Joe Murray, number 88 of the Randolph Young Men’s Hockey Club, Nancy (Powers) Young, and Cindy (Powers) Quinn for their help with this project.

If you would like a printable version of this document click: HERE

My next project is a history of Belcher School. If you liked this paper and went to Belcher, please send me any photos you may have of the school at libertytakeseffort@gmail.com  Thank you.