There was a time many years ago, a time when I was just a small child with my days far ahead of me. A time when youthfulness presented me with a very special gift, a gift that sometimes fades as the years pass. The gift of an active imagination, an imagination that allowed me to travel around the world, venture into space, sail upon the deck of the Titanic and of course, live in the past.

As a young child, our family would venture to a small town in southern New England each month to visit my maternal grandparents. Mom would spend time with her mom and dad would spend time in discussion with his father-in-law. I would venture to the quaint tree-lined street with nothing but my imagination, spending time on the elegant front porch coloring in my book with my new crayons, swinging on the front porch swing and sliding down the ornately granite carved front steps onto the sidewalk below.

Once landed I would walk up and down the street stepping upon the old granite carriage blocks, blocks of carved granite placed in front of each residence a century before to allow the ladies to step out of their horse drawn carriages onto this ornate step as they safely navigated to the sidewalk.

I would count each and every horse hitching post set with a round iron ring on top, the many posts were varied with many different designs. This was my routine and it entertained me for many hours to the satisfaction of both my parents and grandparents.

As our visit concluded and we traveled north back to Concord, New Hampshire, I would once again become lost in my routines, especially during the summer. The White Park swimming pool, catching and releasing turtles in the pond and rolling down King Hill to the field below. I would keep score for the Sunset League Baseball games or serve as the team “Batboy” in exchange for a snow cone with the syrup of my choice. But it was that boyhood imagination that would once again return and chase away my practicality and sensibility again.

I would find myself walking around the north end of Concord in search of stagecoach steps and hitching posts that so carefully tethered horses in place. My love of horses brought me to the Old North Cemetery many times in search of the people who had made the Concord Coaches so long ago. I could picture the horses and the carriages traveling about the cobbled streets of Concord with colorfully dressed women and men with stovetop hats in place.

As the years passed and my youthfulness gave way to my teen years practicality did return with a vengeance. School, my paper route delivering the Concord Monitor, raking leaves and mowing lawns. My grade point average was important to me, social interaction and Boy Scouts too.

My years of youthfulness concluded and I settled into my young family, children, career and more. But I still walked the streets around Concord searching for our past, desiring to know about my strong roots dating back well over a century in this community. I researched, collected historical photographs and I ventured time and again.

It was recently that I walked about Concord and the memories of my visits with my grandparents returned, those early days on the tree-lined streets. The grand front porch and the ornate granite steps. The horse hitching post especially intrigued me for one reason in particular…. we really didn’t have many hitching posts here in Concord.

If you visit similar New England towns you will see a collection of hitches, granite, marble or perhaps cast iron. You will see the carriage steps where people would board their carriage to embark on a journey over a century ago. Where had all the hitching posts gone? I was intrigued so I spoke to some of our oldest residents, I researched old records and consulted some of my old photographs.

My vintage photograph collection did indeed document the fact that we had many horse-hitching posts, granite carriage steps and assorted ornate fixtures scattered about Concord. The mystery of the missing granite horse hitching posts kept me quite curious for a period of months until I stumbled upon the answer. It was an answer to this mystery that dates back to April, 1948 in fact and relates to our cold New England winters.

When the horse drawn carriages traveled the cobbled streets of Concord in the 1800s and before the deep snow was a deterrent the carriages and the horses would both succumb to. The deep snow, slippery and a hazard to navigate. Concord would actually close the streets that included steep hills and not plow them for the entire winter, allowing children to gleefully sled upon them without interruption from horse and carriages.

Rumford Street hill, School Street hill and Center Street hill were some of the streets closed to traffic each winter a century ago. The city of Concord owned a “Snow Roller” that would compact the snow-laden streets allowing the horses and carriages to pass on top of the compacted snow.

The advent of the automobile changed this rather efficient tradition. More cars were arriving and the preferred means of transportation put the horses out to pasture. Carriages were replaced with automobiles, automobiles that could not travel on top of compressed snow because it was indeed a hazard. Heavy commercial trucks were purchased and snow plows were welded to the frames to allow the city of Concord to plow the streets, a very good experience until the plow operators started hitting the many horse-hitching posts, damaging the plows to a great degree.

The winters continued to come and go, the plow operators employed by the city of Concord continued to file complaints about the granite carriage steps and granite hitching posts located all around our city. For the most part the city of Concord allowed the hitching posts to remain in place and worked winter after winter to simply repair the broken snow plows.

It was at the conclusion of the winter of 1948 that the city of Concord could no longer avoid the concerns from the public works division. Something needed to be done. So it was that in April of 1948 the Concord Aldermen gathered in their chambers to discuss the issue to great length. Unlike our cold and snowy winters the discussion was quite heated.

The Aldermen deferred the concern to the Concord Board of Public Works for a resolution. A vote was taken and the Board of Public Works established a new ordinance to remove all sidewalk and street obstructions. Especially the obstructions that were hidden below the snowbanks and damaging snow plows relentlessly.

The ordinance back in 1948 read “No person shall make, erect or maintain any stepping stone, hitching post, doorstep, portico, porch, entrance, or passageway to any cellar or basement, or any other structure, in or upon any street, lane, alley or sidewalk in the city, without permission in writing from the Board of Public Works.”

I can still see the horse drawn carriages traveling over the cobbled streets of Concord. My youthful imagination now provides a nostalgic view of what we once had, the stepping stones and horse-hitching post of long ago. Sadly, we no longer have a horse to hitch.