Life in Orange: Life in a Massachusetts Mill Town in the Early Twentieth Century

In 1985, a college student interviewed her grandmother Leona about life in Orange, Massachusetts during the 1920's and 1930's. Leona's accounts of school, work, family, and play in this quintessential New England mill town are entertaining tales from a vanished past. And Leona's wariness about the future-in regard to crime, the media, education, and the social fabric of the country-proves to be prescient. Of interest to students of American history, New England history, or simply human history. Enjoy a slice of life in Orange in the early 1900's, with its mills, trains, piazzas, Atwater Kent radios, sad irons, scrub boards, travis sleds, and Studebaker automobiles. "I was born in Orange and have lived practically all my life in Orange ... Back when I was a little girl, everybody knew everybody, and today, you hardly know anybody..." "...The standard of living, just, in some ways it went up, and in some ways it went down."