We are all poised to pounce into 2023. But with 2022 with us for another couple of days, let’s drop back 70 years in time to 1952, courtesy of The Daily Evening Item’s 75th anniversary edition.
This 72-page special publication loaded with praise for the newspaper also included a snapshot of life in the early 1950s, when mostly white people could be found in Item photographs, including one of the paper’s newsroom entirely populated by guys who resembled me.
To the extent women appear in The Item, it was under headlines about “women’s societies” and this mildly concessionary one: “Females had to beat down prejudices of men.”
But if you’re willing to look past the gender and racial realities of Lynn and America in 1952, you can journey through a society where your family, friends and neighbors worked for local businesses like the former John Boyd Company at 162 Boston St.
Boyd’s advertisements proudly extolled the company as the “World’s oldest producer of potato chips.”
Burrows & Sanborn occupied a big corner at Union Street and Silsbee Street around the corner and a couple of blocks from Des Roberts Electric Supply on Mount Vernon Street.
Harrison Dispatch on Broad Street praised the trucking industry in its Item anniversary edition ad, proclaiming, “If you’ve got it — a truck brought it.”
Broad Street and Lewis Street were a veritable “auto mile” in 1952 with Marvin Oldsmobile at 461 Broad; Steeves Motor Co. selling Chryslers at 142-150 Lewis St; and J.W. Rose Motor Co. at 976 Broad St., where you could buy a Chrysler or a DeSoto.
In 1952, a Philco Model 1824 television set with a 17-inch screen cost $199.50, which sounds like a lot of money to me. A big Frigidaire costs about the same.
Cushman Bakery ran delivery trucks out of Sanderson Avenue; Haines-CeBrook Ice Cream operated at 50 Western Ave.; and Whiting Milk Company catered, according to its ad, to Marblehead (“phone Daisy Meadows at Marblehead 1900 for home deliveries”).
A few Lynn businesses from 1952 made it to 2022, notably General Electric and Durkee-Mower, Inc., where venerable Marshmallow Fluff continues to be manufactured and where, in 1952, Sweeco instant milk cocoa was produced.
Lydia E. Pinkham sold “vegetable compound” in 1952 and, undoubtedly, for decades earlier. The company’s ad extolled the compound’s value “for relieving hot flashes and certain other symptoms associated with ‘Change of Life.'”
According to the box label, the compound contained 13.5 percent alcohol, dandelion and “True and False Unicorn.”
Compared to ordering online in 2022 and having a box appear on your doorstep, shopping must have been a time-consuming ordeal in 1952. But it’s not hard to imagine a fun-filled day spent buying goods from people who know your name and appreciate your business.
The Item’s 75th anniversary publication is not without its ironies. A full-page ad announces the almost-completed Union Hospital. A story celebrates Veterans Memorial Auditorium, dedicated three years earlier, as a “magnificent symphony in marble and limestone.”
An article featuring people making predictions in 1929 about what life in Lynn will be like in 2029 included this prognostication: Electrification of the diesel railroad line running through the city will eventually occur — “at least by 2029 there ought to be no smoke.”
The downtown car dealerships, bakeries and dairies are long gone. But artist Ira Haskell’s 1952 description of Lynn rings as true today as it did in 1952 when he referred to ” … the legend that Lynners never get together on anything. My experience is just the opposite,” he declared.
