Edward J. Malloy

                                                                    Ed Malloy

Some of Ed’s memories are from Milford but since he worked at Patrick’s Store in Hopedale for about six months in 1924 and has lived in Hopedale since 1942 I decided to include all of it.

One of my first jobs was delivering milk for the O’Brien Farm in Milford.  I’d meet the horse-drawn wagon on Bear Hill.  Back then, milk customers would leave a container out on their porch or steps.  It could be a bowl or a jar or a pitcher.  We’d pour the milk from five gallon cans into smaller bottles and we’d empty these into the customer’s  container.  I wasn’t paid in cash for the job.  Instead, the family was supplied with milk.

When I was in high school, probably at about the age of 13 or 14, I worked as a shoeshine boy on Main Street in Milford.  Jim O’Brien (no relation to the O’Brien Farm family) ran the business which was located in an alley by Torosian’s Fruit Stand.  The Music Nook is there now.  My brother Peter worked there too, along with Dominic D’Alessandro and his brother, Al.  We’d work all day on Saturday, until eleven at night, and Sunday mornings.  Lots of people would get their shoes shined on their way to church.  I think we charged ten cents for a shine and most of the money we made came from tips.  We did pretty well at it.

I also worked for a salesman for Henry Patrick’s Store during the summer.  The salesmen would hire their own delivery boys so I wasn’t actually an employee of Patrick’s at that time.  People wouldn’t usually buy more than four or five items at a time.  We’d deliver the groceries in baskets that had big handles.  People who could afford it would buy things such as flour and potatoes in bulk.  They would be delivered separately.   

I went to work full time for Henry L. Patrick in 1924.  I was 15 at the time.  We were living at 35 Winter Street in Milford then and I would walk from there to Patrick’s in Hopedale every day.   Patrick’s salesmen would go around in the morning and take orders.  Someone would go out at mid-morning to pick up the list of what had been ordered to that point and return to the store with it so that the packing could begin.  In Hopedale the groceries were delivered by horse and wagon.  They had three or four Model T trucks that were used for Milford deliveries.  The horses were kept at the barn behind Patrick’s house which was across Hopedale Street from where the Griffin-Dennett Apartments are now.  Herb Irving took care of them.   The Irvings lived in a house behind the Patricks.  It was eventually moved over to Route 16.  The Taylors from Milford moved it.  It wasn’t taken out to Hopedale Street. They took it right across the field. I think it’s the house where the Costanzas live now.  Joe Calarese (brother of Rico) and I would take three horses from the barn over to the store. We’d take turns riding one and leading another. The delivery wagons were kept in a shed by the store.  

There were several routes in Hopedale.  Some mornings I’d see a salesman cross the Hope Street Bridge to take orders in the Bancroft Park and Cemetery Street neighborhood.  Another salesman would sometimes jump on the trolley if it was going by and go down to Route 16.  (He’d probably get a free ride since he was just going about a quarter of a mile.)  The intersection was called Patrick’s Corner at the time since it was the site of Patrick’s other store.  Then he’d walk up to White City and the other side streets in that area.  A third salesman would go up Dutcher Street.  I never delivered in Hopedale; I went with the trucks to Milford.  One day we’d do West and Water streets and the nearby side streets.  The next day we’d do Congress Street up past West Fountain followed by a day in the Winter and Sumner street area and then we’d start around again.

The first time I went into Patrick’s store I thought it was enormous.  The whole place would fit into a little corner of most stores nowadays.  There wasn’t the variety of products back then that you see now.

I didn’t see Henry L. Patrick at the store very often.  He’d just drop in for a short while about once a month, to check on the books I think.  He had a driver who would bring him over with a horse and carriage.  He had a bad stuttering problem and would bang his cane on the floor as he tried to get out a word.

My pay was $15 a week which I would turn over to my mother.  I was told when I started that when I had been there for six months I’d get a raise of fifty cents a week. When the time came I asked about it and was told that when the board met they would decide on it.  I found out when the meeting was and inquired about my raise the next morning. I was told that times were hard and they couldn’t afford it.  When I told my mother about it, she called the O’Connells down the street.  Eddie O’Connell was superintendent of the Hopedale Manufacturing Company which was a foundry located where Benjamin Moore is now. My mother asked if there were any jobs available and he said there were.  (The Hopedale Manufacturing Company was the result of a family feud with General Draper on one side, and his brothers, Eben and George Albert of the other. The general died in 1910, but the feud went on and the Hopedale Manufacturing Company was established a few years later by the general’s sons, Clare and George Otis Draper, along with Jonas Northrop and a few other local businessmen. The business manufactured looms in competition with the Draper Company. The situation continued into the late 1920s when the HMCo closed and Clare Draper was given a position with the Draper Corporation, as it was called by then. Click here for more on the Hopedale Manufacturing Company.)

I went to work there the next morning.  My job was to grind the rough parts off of the castings.  It wasn’t hard but it was a dirty job.  After work I could make some extra money by doing what was called cutting sand.  The sand from the molds would contain pieces of metal. In order to separate them so that the sand could be used again, you’d have to pick up a shovel full and throw it.  The iron, being heavier, would drop closer and the sand further away.  I also worked on Saturdays unloading iron from train cars.  The cars were open freight cars with sides about three or four feet high.  The blocks of iron were perhaps six by six by eighteen inches.  We’d put them onto a conveyor belt and they’d go into the foundry to be melted down and poured into the molds.

After several years I left the foundry and went to work for the Archer Rubber Company where I was an inspector of corset material.  Within a year of that, I went to the Milford Gas and Electric Company.  They had a job available because one of their men had been electrocuted on Exchange Street.