To the Editor:

In 1930 I moved to Warwick with my newly widowed mother, Amelia Furey. She bought a cottage on Scandia Avenue. My aunt Annie and uncle Joe Lizotte shared the backyard with us. They ran a grocery store and lived in rooms at the rear of the store on Naushon Avenue. Their land was the property of the New England Land Company. Our land was owned by the Swedish Working Men’s Association. Although we owned our house, we had to pay rent to use the land. A young man, Phil Krantz, collected the rent four times a year, going from house to house. The rent was higher in the summer season – probably because we had access to the beach on Narragansett Bay. On my first day at the beach, my Swedish playmates were very surprised to learn that although I had reached the mature age of 7, I still didn’t know how to swim. I learned fast, even though it was a clumsy dog paddle.

I was enrolled at Pawtuxet School in grade 3. Our teacher was Miss Burdette Rafuse. Other teachers were Miss Sheldon, grade 1; Miss Brown, grade 2; and Miss Zinc, grade 4. Before I went to her class, I wondered what to call her. Surely no one had a name like Miss Ink! The boys were no help, as they ran through the halls shouting Mizzink – Mizzink – Mizzink!

Our principal was Frank Wright, who lived a few houses south of the school.

One happy memory was a graduation ceremony when the students sang “The Beautiful Danube.”

There was a large meadow at the rear of the school that slanted down to a small pond. Across the pond was a nice restaurant named Jim Smith’s Inn. It had rooms for rent, and many special events took place there.

I graduated from Nelson W. Aldrich High School in 1940. I was 17 years old. When I reached age 20, I enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and was stationed in upper New York state, Palm Beach, Fla. (in summer), Chicago, and Duluth, Minn., where their favorite saying was – “Wait ’til it gets to 40 below!”

Rosetta (Furey) Desrosiers

Warwick