Early 1900s Photos of Stockbridge (Where I Grew Up)

This is where I grew up in the 1950s-1960s. Historic old buildings – almost all of them the original ones from the late 1800s and early 1900s – still stood downtown, hanging onto that old atmosphere of Stockbridge’s growing days.

We still had an old general store smack downtown, run by Lacy Watson. A few doors down was Wilde’s Supermarket, later becoming Howlett Hardware when Wilde built his new supermarket just south of town (later Felpausch in the 60s, then Ransom’s in the 1970s). The former Wilde’s/Howlett store has recently been housing the 'Deli on Main' and 'Country Petals flowers'.

Spadafore's Sweet Shop had a soda counter (facing north) where you could get a shake or pop. They sold all the best candy, comic books, rock ‘n roll records, Nehi pop, and teen magazines.

Brown’s Drug Store also had record albums, but not the cool rock albums Spadafore’s had. But Brown’s record rack did include novelty albums that Spadafore’s didn’t. I remember seeing stacks of “monster” albums by “Frankie Stein & The Ghouls” among others.

Another downtown grocery store was Bradshaw’s, on North Clinton. It’s now an empty parking lot next to the post office.

Stanfield’s Grocery was next to Spadafore’s. It was a small grocery that I enjoyed walking through because it always smelled like fresh-ground hamburger.

In 1956, the Smith Elementary school had just been built, covering kindergarten thru sixth garde, and our class was the first to begin in K and go all the way thru 6th. There used to be a cool strip of woods on the border of the eastern school grounds where my neighborhood buddies and I would build underground huts and tree houses. It was a sad day when they tore those woods down.

Behind the elementary school was a hill; every winter, the janitor would go out there and flood the hill with water. This made an excellent hill to slide down when the water froze! Can’t do that now, can we? Too bad...

Farther behind the school was another patch of woods where wild cucumbers grew. We would go there and have battles; it was fun because these little plants would ‘pop’ whenever they hit you. Even further to the south was MacArthur’s Woods, where we would pitch tents and camp overnight.....and fry up bacon in the morning.

The library used to be in the lower right of the basement of the town hall. The current library stands where a vacant lot used to be. On that lot were a slew of old junked cars from the 1940s that we would play in.

We had our local legends, too: The Old Hermit and Screaming Bitch a few miles away down Worden Road. Then there was Nichols Lake to the northeast; rumors stated the bottom was all quicksand and there was even an old Civil War cannon sunk in there somewhere.

While growing up, I had my share of bouts with bullies; in fact, there’s still one of ‘em living in town that I would enjoy finding and punching his head...

The kids would choose up teams and play “Capture the Flag” on the neighborhood block, much to the dismay of the neighbors. We would play after dark and cut through backyards, trying to sneak up to the opponents’ side to ‘capture the flag’ and win the game. But I don’t remember anyone actually winning. All it did was piss off the adults.

There is more – so much more – that I enjoyed about growing up in Stockbridge.
I’m grateful for that experience.

Scroll down a way to see some very old photos of Stockbridge, going back over 100 years...