This week’s “Humans of Chapelboro” features George and Ruth Ann Groh of Chapel Hill, NC. 

RA: I loved the last day of the school year. We had a song that we sang- “no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks!” I can remember the delicious feeling of that last day of school and the whole summer ahead to do as we pleased. We didn’t go to summer camp in those days. My parents were both teachers, and we went to Vermont in the summer. I had the freedom to walk in the woods, and play in the stream behind our house. I didn’t have many playmates, but I had a lot of freedom to roam and play in the brook, play in the water, learn about flowing water, learn about plants and animals.

G: Boston had a lot of pride, going back to even before the Revolution. The city nicknamed itself the hub, as in “the hub of the universe.” My father’s parents had emigrated from Germany, and they met each other in Boston in the late 19th century. And they were peasants, from Bavaria. I didn’t know my father’s father because he died of disease when my father was 14 or 15 years old. My father had to leave school to get a job–there was no social security, there was nothing like that. He left to work in a grocery store.

G: I didn’t have a horse, I had a bicycle. I’m sure my folks were pretty apprehensive when I was riding my bicycle around. There were no such things as bicycle lanes or anything like that. You were out there in the crowded streets of Boston. I would go up on Bellevue Hill where the water tower was, and you could get a nice view of the sea, and you could look down over the whole city of Boston.

G: From Boston, you could go literally anywhere in the world. You would start out on foot with your suitcase and walk down the end of Cornell Street and get on the streetcar, to Forest Hills. Then you could take the train into downtown Boston and walk down to the wharves and get on a steamship there, and go to Europe, or Japan through the Panama Canal.

Stay tuned for more “Humans of Chapelboro” next week. Read part 2 of Ruth Ann and George’s story here.

Photos taken by Aleta Donald.