Source: Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: RICHARD NADOLSKI
CHESTERFIELD, MA – No missing Dead Sea Scrolls. No hill town equivalent of the treasure of the Sierra Madre. However, there was a license to conduct Beano, circa 1972, and an increasingly familiar photograph.
The selectmen met for the third time since the beginning of the month in the basement of the town library last night for their third public attempt at unlocking the mystery of exactly what was inside a 5-by-4-foot safe that had not been opened for two decades. They had tried unsuccessfully to open the safe on two previous occasions, creating more interest in exactly what was inside.
What they discovered last night is often the fate of the treasure seeker – someone had gotten there first.
Having a practiced hand and a heightened air of confidence, Selectman Edwin Lawler wasted little time spinning the safe’s dial to the correct combination. As the tumblers clicked into place, he and Selectman Donald Houghton pulled back the heavy metal doors revealing a much smaller safe along with several smaller drawers.
They rummaged for a key from one of the drawers and unlocked the safe to the inner sanctum only to find what Houghton had jokingly predicted they would find at a selectmen’s meeting Oct. 1 – a picture of Chesterfield Fire Chief Winston Bancroft.
“You think the Goshen folks got in here?” someone remarked.
Bancroft’s picture has been a popular prop in the good-natured banter taking place these days between the Goshen and Chesterfield fire departments. During a competition to create the best scarecrow last month, Goshen adorned theirs with Bancroft’s face and a reprint of that same picture was pulled from the safe.
Having all the markings of an inside job, Lawler revealed that, indeed, yesterday’s grand opening had a rehearsal last Thursday when, outside the gaze of the public focus, he and locksmith Dale Sabin of Sabin Locksmiths of Northampton had successfully opened the safe. But no one stepped forth last night to explain – or perhaps, confess – how Bancroft’s picture came to find its way inside.
Instead, Lawler held up a single, bent paper clip that he said had been jammed between one of the doors and the body of the safe foiling the previous efforts at unlocking it.
“You wouldn’t believe it. A paper clip,” he said, showing it off.
The Beano license was not the only record protected in the bosom of the library basement vault these many years. A series of accounting books entitled the Department of Corporations and Taxation vied for space with a Northampton National Bank savings book dated from 1905 and showing a balance of $505.58 Nov. 13, 1926.
Somewhere nearby, there was an official rubber stamp with the commonwealth seal stating, “Official police pass for war emergencies” and 1943 fuel oil ration permits.
Selectman David Kielson found a Nov. 18, 1950, letter certifying that the undersigned members of the Board of Selectmen had “perambulated” the town boundaries.
“That’s really a coincidence,” remarked Kielson, his interest piqued. Kielson said that while he did not know the last time selectmen from the town perambulated the boundaries with selectmen from adjacent towns, he received a call yesterday morning from Huntington inquiring whether Chesterfield selectmen would be prepared to do that very activity in the near future.
“I don’t even know how they do that,” Kielson said as they closed the vault door and made their way to the town office to continue their weekly meeting and other town business.