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.A Story about Mary Rice Jewett
as told to Wendy Pirsig by Marie Donahue
December 2002Marie did tell me a good story. As a kid she and her sisters had to visit a dentist who was upstairs in the brick block (over what later became Flynn's market, then the Yankee Cupboard, and later the Pepperland Restaurant). Marie recalls sitting in the chair with her mouth wide open, looking out the window -- and there would be Mary Jewett, sitting in her window across the street. And she'd smile and wave encouragement to kids undergoing their ordeal in the dentist's chair! Marie remembers Mary as warm and outgoing and generally involved in people's lives (Marie herself was an Irish factory worker's daughter). "Even more than Sarah," Marie adds -- as though recalling a personal acquaintance.