Windham in the '60s: Back to the old hometown

By Max Millard
Special to The Windham Eagle

In September 2025, I returned from my adopted city of San Francisco to revisit my boyhood terrain of Windham Center.

The Bennett Family at their home in Windham in 1959.
SUBMITTED PHOTO

I grew up with the Hawkses, Quimbys, and Bennetts, all of whom had children about the same age as my family. It was a tight neighborhood, in which we attended school together and would drop into each other's homes without calling.

But in the last year and a half, two stalwarts of that era – Florence Hawkes and Jim Quimby – passed on, along with our more recent neighbor, Bill Diamond.

Florence, who died in March 2024 at age 99, liked to tell me how the town had changed since the early 1960s. She said that Windham kids no longer went trick-or-treating from house to house but instead would organize Halloween parties in their own homes. This saddened me, for I remembered the thrill of Halloween night, when a group of us in costume would prowl Windham Center Road and its tributaries, walking until we had hit every house within range.

One Halloween, Lloyd Bennett wanted to join us, but his mother Nellie had a stiff-necked belief that trick-or-treating was begging and forbid her children from indulging. Lloyd came with us anyway, but at the first house, the matron denied him a treat because he had no costume. So, he dashed home and returned with a nylon stocking stretched over his face. It mashed his nose and distorted his features enough so that this "costume" sufficed for the rest of the night.

A few families in the area maintained their privacy, maybe because they had no children of our generation. At the corner of Windham Center Road and Nash Road lived Phil Tubbs, the town plumber. He was a consummate professional, but otherwise a stranger to us. Although his house was the closest to us geographically, our only interaction with him was when he was lying on our kitchen floor, fixing a leaking pipe under the sink.

Mrs. Tubbs was an equal mystery. My only encounter with her was on Halloween night, when she held out a large bowl of wrapped half-penny candies, and when I tried to grab a handful, she gently slapped my hand and said, "Take only one."

Jim Quimby, who left us in June 2025, was a popular local figure who for decades co-owned and operated Thayer's Store on River Road with his wife Judy. His funeral in Windham drew hundreds of people.

The last time I saw Jim was about 10 years ago, when I stopped by his store during a visit to Maine to buy a couple of Italian sandwiches. Jim was behind the counter. He greeted me warmly, and we chatted while he prepared the Italians.

Almost the first words he spoke were a slightly discomfited apology for something he'd done 50 years before. It happened on a summer day when I'd just returned from camping in Canada with my family. I had brought back a paper bag filled with fireworks of every variety. They were illegal in Maine, and I probably bragged about them. Suddenly Jim pulled a matchbook out of his pocket, lit a match and dropped it into the bag. Within seconds, the contents were reduced to a smoldering ruin.

I had never forgotten the incident, but it surprised me to learn that it might have troubled him for all those years. He gave me the sandwiches for free and sheepishly admitted that he no longer drenched them with olive oil but had switched to cottonseed oil.

Just one more reminder that some things were better in the old days. <