Jack Tetrault

Born about six months before Pearl Harbor in 1941, Jack Tetrault grew up in the period right at the start and after World War Two. He grew up in Auburn, recalling a lot of the things that they used to do for fun back then before car traffic picked up like riding down Goff Hill on a bike to even going all the way to Taylor Pond. By the time he was 12 he started working in the Brickyards, starting out as a Sand Boy where he would have to cover the struck bricks with sand to make sure they didn’t crack, but by the following summer switched to working as a wheeler, transporting bricks from place to place where he also was working 50 hours a week. Jack continues to share a lot about the brick making process, detailing the differences between Oil-Fired and Wood-Fired bricks to how early you would be forced out of the brickyard, remembering describing people in their late 20s, early 30s as ‘old-timers’ because of the damage the brickyard would cause. Jack also details the stores that used to be located on Lisbon Street, recalling info about Pecks, Penneys and some of the theaters in the area like the Ritz, Strand and Empire theaters.