Lynnfield-Related Items On eBay, March 25

Most weeks, Lynnfield Patch takes a light-hearted look at the various items with a connection to the town that can be found on eBay. Here are some of the latest examples:

Pillings Pond, Fin du Siecle: One idyllic summer day a century or so ago, somebody snapped this photo of Pillings Pond as well as a house that may or may not still be there. You can zoom in and see some details of the house and the pond, which looks more like the scene from a vacation home in northern Maine than it does a pond that is now minutes away from Routes 1 and 128. This image captures something about the simplicity and peacefulness of another time, regardless of how accurate that perception is or isn't.

Paging Dr. Gonzo: This is an interesting shot from 1970 showing some sort of fishing derby that may or may not have happened in Lynnfield. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that instead of taking place at a Lynnfield landmark like Pillings Pond or Suntaug Lake, these guys are all actually fishing at Hawkes Pond, along Walnut Street on the way toward Lynn and Saugus. I was over there recently with the camera and have an outdoor photo gallery from that hike that will run in the coming weeks.

For Lack Of A Better Headline: If it wasn't way too long and clunky, a better headline for this could have been "Did Anyone Know This Was Kind Of Creepy Back Then Or Were They Just Too Polite To Say Anything?" Honestly, this is kind of a weird item. The object itself is called a QSL card, and it was used by amateur radio enthusiasts to see how far away their signals could be heard. But this family had custom-looking cards that had everybody’s name – and a bizarre (at least by today’s standards) image of two little kids sort of peering into their own diapers. But then again, it was the free-wheeling era of civil defense wardens and all that.

I don’t fully know how people would have used these cards but one idea is that this was a family of Lynnfielders who had a vacation home up in Center Barnstead, NH.  That town happened to be on the outer fringe of our coverage area when I was at the Laconia Citizen a few years back. It was considered kind of remote and out of the way shall we say back in 2006. I can only imagine what it was like back in the 50s or whenever this thing was made.

LHS Year Books: This is an interesting relic to find on eBay – it’s a Lynnfield High School yearbook from 1967. There also happens to be a 1970 LHS yearbook up for sale on eBay. This one’s actually got some images taken from the yearbook, but you can’t make out much. In fact, both of these listings give at least a couple of glimpses of life at LHS some forty years ago. On a side note - It took about six months of writing this column, but somehow these are the first two items that ever ended up getting the song "eBay" by Weird Al Yankovic stuck in my head as I wrote it. The folks in the pictures did look a bit different between the 1967 and 1970 yearbooks (Cues the song "All Along The Watchtower.") It's almost like comparing the pictures between those two Beatles greatest hits albums that came out back in the 80s.

Long-Ago Crash: Back in the 1960s, there was apparently a tanker truck crash on what may be the Route 1/128 Bridge that killed two and brought out fire personnel from Lynnfield, Everett , Saugus and Melrose. This is quite an image actually and it appears to have been taken by one of the fire personnel or by a journalist who got to the scene in a very timely fashion. Does anybody out there remember any details of this crash?