My name is Alan Goudreau and I am a former 42 year resident of the town of Rehoboth. I would like to recall a time when the cliché “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” was commonly heard in our society. This is a phrase that I believe should not only be preached, but practiced in these trying times. 

The $13,500 House on Tremont Street

     I was born in November, 1964 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.  My parents worked very hard to support our family of five. However they soon realized that raising us in a small Pawtucket apartment was not the best option.  Instead they invested in a small piece of land in Rehoboth and built a home on Tremont Street for what was then the “enormous” cost of 13,500 dollars.  My family moved into the new house in October of 1965, one month prior to my first birthday.

     When I think back to the late 60’s and early 70’s when I was very young, I remember the favorite toy my older brother and I played with was our own imaginations.  Even though we had very little money, we made the best of being outside. And we always seemed to have fun.

   We created houses out of discarded cardboard boxes and when we got bored, we’d cut up the cardboard and place it end-to-end down the hill in our back yard.  Then we used another piece of cardboard to slide down our makeshift ramp.  I can’t recall how many times during the winter we spent the day sledding on our Radio Flyers down the hill and onto our frozen pond. Waxing the runners, with old candle stubs mother was going to throw away, always made for a better ride.  I still own those sleds to this day.

    Our pond, 40 feet wide by 80 feet long, was the center of attention during the cold, snowy winters.  It wasn’t very deep and therefore parents felt safe when all the kids from the neighborhood would make their way to our house to play ice hockey. My brother and his friend established the “NHL,” or  “Neighborhood Hockey League” and we spent many hours clearing snow off the pond using only shovels and old plywood boards pushed from behind while we were wearing our ice skates. 

   We even found a use for the snow that accumulated at the edges of the pond after clearing off the ice. We would build snow forts and at night, we would make a campfire and skate under the moonlight and the stars.

    I recall feeling the rumble of 18-wheelers passing by on Tremont street heading to Taunton and Cape Cod. In those days, Route 495 was only a proposed extension between Route 95 in Foxboro and the Cape.

    When Saturday mornings came, my father would load up the station wagon with our accumulation of household trash and head to the Rehoboth “landfill”. He would back the car up to the base of what we called “Mount Trashmore” and I would climb in through the back door and push the contents out the back and right onto the ground.  Almost every time we went to there, I would see a couple of old men standing near by, eagerly looking for “discarded treasures”. 

     My mother always liked having a cat around the house. As a result, our yard was always devoid of mice and chipmunks. But one day in 1971, our cat caught a baby chipmunk and we somehow managed to rescue it before becoming kitty cuisine.

    My grandfather found an old birdcage we converted to a “habitrail” cage of sorts by covering it with wire mesh. That chipmunk became a beloved pet and managed to outlive my grandfather and the cat, surviving a total of six years in that cage! 

    I have come to realize that the best things in life really were free. The cat ended up paying me back for that chipmunk by giving birth on my bed at around midnight.  I was only eight years old and my mother, who worked second shift at TI back then, came home at that very moment. I yelled out to her as she passed by my room. “Hey Ma, Boots is laying her kittens on my bed”. My mother and I always laugh about that. 

   Our family was always blessed with harmony and countless gatherings at my Uncle’s house just down the road.  He saved my grandmother, my mother, and her siblings from a life of hardship in Pawtucket by building a house, by himself, in Rehoboth in the late 40‘s and taking them all in. He ended up building large chicken coops out in the back and raised chickens for many years.

   When he gave up the chicken business around 1970, he left behind some of the old buildings that would eventually become the gathering place for our family for many years to come. The coops were actually big enough to be renovated into small cottages. My grandmother lived in one during the summers and even spent an entire winter once using a wood stove for heat.

   Our entire family gathered for every Christmas and New Years out there. It was the happiest time of my childhood. 

I remember the years I spent in the Rehoboth school system.  I entered the first grade in September of 1970, attending the Palmer River school at the young age of five years old.  In those days, recess meant heading to the leather saddled swings that gripped us like the seats of a low-budget airline, jumping off two “huge” rocks in the back field, studying the US map written in chalk on the blacktop, and riding the wooden merry-go-round until you were too dizzy to stand up.  Teachers stood by and watched without worrying about a parent suing if one of us fell off that thing or got a splinter from the old wooden seats. We had to be careful to avoid the large puddle at the bottom of the slide after a rainstorm. 

    In the fourth grade we were able to go on a week long field trip to camp at Potter place in Andover, New Hampshire.  We spent the week away from our parents experiencing nature, hiking on Mount Kearsage, canoeing, and visiting a working saw mill.  I recall the large “A” frame gymnasium at the top of the hill which still stands today.  I recently returned to that camp in order to share my recollections with the owners.

     I recall certain teachers that influenced my life in each of the three Rehoboth schools I attended. I learned multiplication from Mrs. Rogala in third grade.  I was taught the basics of writing a report by Mrs. Warish in the fouth grade.  I experienced a nice blend of discipline and levity from Mr. Lania, Mr Clark, and Mr. Curt during my years at Beckwith.  Perhaps the most influential teacher was Mr. Holmes who taught Political Ideology during my sophomore year at D-R in 1980. He taught us that although we are individuals, human nature prevails and we all generally think alike. He called us “ignorant” and explained this was not an insult, just a general statement that we were without knowledge - probably because we yet hadn’t passed his class!

     The pinnacle of my life in Rehoboth occurred when I was 13 years old.  As a result of  the blizzard of ’78,  we were stranded at home and school was closed for over a week. We built snow “condos” from the mountains of snow formed by the plows.  The initial plowing required a giant bulldozer.  The walls of snow on both sides of the road towered over my father’s station wagon.

     I was first introduced to computer technology in 1982.  During my senior year at D-R, I learned how to write computer programs using “basic.”  Back then there wasn’t a choice.  The computers in those days powered up to a green “C” prompt on the black screen.  It was at this time that Bill Gates was still in college partying and windows were simply objects you opened to let in fresh air.

     I graduated high school and moved away to Lexington for a couple of years to attend a technical trade school. I returned back to Rehoboth because I missed the surroundings of the town where I grew up. After my father passed away in 1985, I was able to purchase the family house and continued to live there until August 2007.

    During the 80’s and 90’s, I witnessed many distressing changes in Rehoboth.  Most notably was the housing boom that turned many of the town’s old farms and wooded areas into nothing short of subdivisions. The housing boom continued through 2005, encompassing the woodland area that surrounded my neighborhood, changing the solitude and memories of my childhood. It is more difficult to remember the days when the back yard in our quiet Rehoboth neighborhood was our whole world.  Unlike modern times, in those days we chose to go outside and play.  We did not have computers, cable TV, and video games to keep us bound and locked indoors.

     As the years passed, I became more troubled by these changes. The long commutes to work with endless amounts of traffic, high oil prices, and the general high cost of living  added up to a stressful lifestyle.  My wife and I both concluded that complaining wasn’t going to change a thing.  We arrived at a decision that I thought would never come. I gave up a good paying job and my life-long Rehoboth home for residency in extreme northern New Hampshire, not far from the Canadian border.  We now live at and manage a small gift & bait shop far away from the hectic lifestyle we recently had had to put up with.  

     Some people feel more at ease when they attain higher salary jobs and make more money.  Many feel that they can’t leave well paying jobs and the familiarity of their home towns.  People seek financial security and choose to remain in their “comfort zone.”  But at what cost?  Do both parents have to work to make ends meet?  How much quality time with our children is lost in exchange for bringing more money into the household?  I have found that relocating to a place where the cost of living is much lower is essentially the same as making more money at a job which occupies nearly all of our quality time with our families.

    Despite the peaceful lifestyle and scenic views I am currently surrounded with, I will always miss Rehoboth and the memories that were created there during the first 42 years of my life.