Carol Mason-Taylor

316 South Street

I’m Carol Mason-Taylor and I grew up on, at 316 South Street where I’m standing right now. My grandfather who immigrated from England, built this house and raised my father and my aunt. I was also raised in this house that my grandfather built.

It was a fun place to grow up, we seemed to always have friends we didn’t communicate with phones, we all yelled outside of everybody’s house to see if they’re home.

What I remember about my childhood is that we had Lapowich’s Meat Market across the street. The street was full of children as we grew up and we would call each other outside the door of the houses and go to school and we had skating rinks in the backyard that our fathers would be standing out in the middle of the night freezing.

We used to have a guy that would drive up the street in a horse-drawn carriage with pot and pans and junk on the back of this wagon, and he would sharpen knives and things for the people, and all the kids would run out on the street and yell “Junk Junk Joe” when he came up the street.

After a good rainstorm, I guess the drains weren’t too good at the bottom of South Street. We would all put our bathing suits on in the summer and we would be swimming in the bottom of South Street, ‘cause we didn’t really have pools in those days.