While looking through my phone for another picture, I ran into one that I took in 2020 of a picture that was taken in 1973. It was taken in the living room of Beverley Gustitus, now 87, of Nashua. I thought about writing an article about her in the future, but after seeing the new Roper article on Vermont’s childcare issues, I took that as a sign to do it now because both the Dems and Kelly Ayotte are regularly champing at the bit over childcare. Let’s start with some details about Beverley, whom I called “Auntie,” even though she’s not my aunt.
Upon taking a picture of that 1973 picture, I asked my mother how she found Auntie and chose her as though the yellow pages were full of options to choose from! She said that a Sanders coworker whose 2 sons were in Auntie’s care during those after school hours made the recommendation. Those “big kids,” as I called them at the time, were about the same ages as Auntie’s 2 sons, and they all played hockey. I remember piling into Auntie’s big station wagon with the other non-family members in her care as she did daytime errands, which included hockey practice at a rink on Coliseum Ave. While the big boys played hockey, I took advantage of access to toys that were not mine, such as the Fisher Price farm and Ferris wheel, which belonged to a fellow preschooler. Auntie made lunch in her kitchen, usually peanut butter sandwiches or Spaghetti-Os.
In the summer, she sometimes took us to a pool in the Ward 6 neighborhood near the home of the 2 hockey boys she cared for. She had a dog named Chip, and her husband, Sam, often let me sit on his lap. She even spanked me when I was being naughty, something that’s a modern-day recipe for litigation! My parents were not sympathetic when I complained about that. About 50 years later, a Nurse Terese quote from her own dad became a well-known maxim. She said he said, “If you don’t want to be shamed, don’t do shameful things.”
My parents regularly said, back in the day, “If you don’t want Auntie to spank you, don’t do (insert Bad Behavior Du Jour here).” My mother left Sanders to be an at-home mom when I started kindergarten, and Auntie disappeared into irrelevancy, except for the occasional item of news, such as the death of her husband or my mother hearing something from an old Sanders coworker. Then I was recruited in 2020 to be an opponent of Mr. & Mrs. Newman in the NH House.
I knew Ward 2 included Watson Street, so I thought of old memories of Auntie shortly after filing my rep candidacy. She was not on the voter list, so I started casually asking around if people knew her. Then Sam Brest, former owner of Kind David Coffee, said she still lives in that same house on Watson Street as he recounted his own memories of hockey and the Nashua Roadrunners. Then the wife of one of the hockey boys sent me a private message that Auntie would love to hear from me and gave me her number, pointing out that her birthday was coming up, and such a surprise would make her day. Knowing that the chances of her spanking me, either at that time or in the rest of the future, were probably lower than that of winning the lottery, I decided to make the call.
We talked for about 45 minutes, and she brought me up to speed on various family members and answered questions I had about other kids in her care back in the day. She has since texted me her greetings on holidays, instructing me to give my family her regards. I have been texting her on her birthday or on other things that have a common tie. A few examples were when I spotted a vanity plate on a parked car that said AUNTIE, and went around the block just to take a picture of it and text her, and to ask her about the late Mayor Davidson. Davidson’s 2021 obituary said he was in the class of 1956, her class. As I said earlier, I was thinking about writing an article on Auntie because of all this childcare talk, but it wasn’t really front and center in my mind until the Roper article appeared.
Some things have stayed the same since 1973. Auntie still lives in her Watson Street home, and the pool I remember is still there at 37 Blanchard Street, looking just the way I remember it in real time on Google Earth. As for things that changed, the hockey rink across from the Nashua Mall closed, and the liquor store moved into that building. The mall stopped being a real mall, and I could go on about other nearby defunct or transformed places, like Montgomery Ward, Child World, and Almy’s, but what about the institution of childcare?
If you’re still reading this, I have an informal survey for you. Do you or someone you know have an early 70s memory that involves being cared for, day in and day out, by someone other than your parents? Do you have any cohorts that were in an after-school program? What about going from school dismissal time to a facility instead of home? I became a geography expert in Nashua long before I could read, and I certainly don’t remember any places like Small World in our state’s 2nd city.
The closest thing that comes to mind is the Y offering “day camp” in the summer when they were on Prospect St. That tells me that the supply and demand situation was not in crisis. What happened? That’s the question I’ve had, and the Roper article answers much of it. Though it’s a Vermont piece, I certainly don’t need to rewrite it. I’ll just leave a final thought instead. Defund the childcare industrial complex and get the government’s nose out of the business of raising kids. Go back to the cottage industry style model and let the free market take over in a decentralized manner.
