Step Back in Time

Tue, May 13 2008

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Step Back in Time features community news from The Daily Star 25 and/or 50 years ago.

25 years ago

March 11, 1983

Members of the Davenport United Methodist Women are back in the egg business. They are planning to a make 4,500 decorated chocolate-covered eggs this year.

Among those involved in this sweet Easter project are Lois Sanford, Lorraine Reidy, Evelyn Sanford, Nella Reynolds and Irene Merwin. They were busily wrapping completed eggs.

Orders are being taken by Pauline Hebbard, Phyllis Butts and UMW President Reidy.

50 years ago

March 11, 1958

Albert R. Silliman can remember when the D&H depot was the front yard to the community, and his job was to make it attractive.

"Lawns and flower beds were all around the station," he said. "It was that way from Wilkes-Barre through to Mechanicville, and I gues even father."

Mr. Silliman, now a real estate man of 401 Main St., had charge of two greenhouses which Delaware and Hudson Railroad maintained at the foot of Cliff Street.

Sweet peas, geraniums and asters were grown there for the bouquets, which he distributed to patrons in the passenger train diners. He also transplanted flowers to the beds about the depot, and put flowers on the tables in the station dining room.

"We liked to keep the place looking nice," he recalled, "and there was nothing better than flowers."

Over time, shrubs replaced the flower beds, for motor cars lured passengers from the trains, and the depot became less and less a place of public visitation.