Memories

They Lived a Sweet Life on Sugar Hill

Longtime residents can recall that all of the areas in Eastbrook had a more descriptive name of their own. Families lived on Sugar Hill, at the Neck, at the Ridge and at the Mill, among other places.

Raymond Bragdon, now 82, grew up on the Neck before marrying and moving to Sugar Hill at age 24. And those were the days, he says.

“I am an Eastbrooker,” is how he starts out his stories.

Then he notes that his wife, the former Evelyn Googins, passed away last October. She was one of Eastbrook’s older residents who best knew how life used to be there, so long ago.

 “My wife kept diaries all her life,” Bragdon said.

But his own mind is clear, and even with Evelyn gone, he is considered one of Eastbrook’s best storytellers today.

As children living on the Neck, Bragdon and his two brothers had to walk up Sugar Hill to fetch the mail, for that’s as far as the mailman carried it.

He notes that he graduated from Franklin High School in 1939. And for some time there, he was the only student who owned an automobile.

It was nine miles from Sugar Hill to Franklin for school, but only three miles into Eastbrook for church or the grange. For those outings, he and the others walked.

“Kids today don’t appreciate how easy they have it,” he said. “They don’t want to walk anywhere. But we did, because we didn’t have a choice.”