DR. YOUNG: We’re happy to say we’ve had some folks take us up on the request to share memories of the Bradford of old.

Dr. Frederick J. Young wrote us a lengthy letter, which will be sharing intermittently in RTS about his memories of Bradford. They rented a house on Jefferson Street in 1936, and lived there for about a year. “I stayed at home because there was no kindergarten then.”

His parents bought a house at 8 Kane St. in 1937, and young Fred went to the new Second Ward Elementary School, walking a half mile to and from school for lunch, too, no matter the weather.

His favorite part of the trips was the snowball fights. “Once in a while the sidewalks would be covered with ice making it very hard to climb the Kane Street hill to my house. I had to crawl on my hands and knees and wore holes in my knickers. In those days most boys wore knickers and heavy socks reaching almost to the knees.”

Later on, his parents bought a house on Congress Street, closer to the school. He missed the snowball fights.

“Usually each grade had a home room and one teacher who taught all subjects. In some grades there were not enough students so that two grades would be taught in the same room. We would have recess a couple of times each day to play outside behind the school. School was fun and I had some good friends to play with after school.”

Although there were millionaire families in the Second Ward, many were impoverished, too. Many had difficulty learning, but Young was a very good student, so much so that his teachers wanted him to skip grades, but his father said no.

More to come.