Leaves And Candles Give Merchants A Hectic Time-November 17, 1926

NORWOOD, Nov 17—The wind, like some giant hand, gathered all the leaves along the main street into one huge pile in the heart of the business district yesterday afternoon and made the pile so large that shoppers could not get into four or five shops unless they waded through the mound.

An emergency call was sent for the town employees, who responded with rakes, shovels and two-horse dump-carts. The wind was most perverse, however, for as soon as one man got a large-sized shovelful, a puff of wind would scatter it in all directions. Consequently it took the greater part of the afternoon to collect the leaves and cart them away.

In the meantime, the shopkeepers were alternately amused and dismayed. The merchants on the opposite side of the street from the leaves would amusedly watch the antics of the men trying to cart the leaves away, when along would come a change of wind which would catch the swirling leaves and hurl them across the strets into the stores of the merchants who were enjoying the situation.

Then the other side shopkeepers would enjoy the performance for a brief spell, until the wind changed again, and so the game continued all the afternoon.

At 5:30 o’clock the five-and-10-cent stores had their great rush of the season, for the lights all over town went out. Candles were in great demand and no bargain called forth such verbal hair-pulling as did the last two candles on sale. Most of the shopkeepers closed their stores and went home, as the housewives had beaten them to it in the mad rush for candles.

The light service was crippled until about 10 o’clock in the evening. The telephone system in many districts in town was also out of order.

Archival Note: This article has been dynamically reconstructed from the original public record print archives of the Boston Globe