HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
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Teri O'Brien, Reading and Book Signing
While I Danced Alone with the Moon Across the Front Yard

Date:
Author:
Location:
​Details:

Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 6:30 pm
Teri O"Brien, author of While I Danced Alone with the Moon Across the Front Yard
Historic Northampton, 46 Bridge Street, Northampton, MA 01060

This event is free and open to the public.  First come, first seated.

Picture
While I Danced Alone with the Moon Across the Front Yard
by Teri O'Brien

EAK-SLO PRESS, HAYDENVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS

While I Danced Alone with the Moon Across the Front Yard is Teri O’Brien’s new memoir of growing up in a large family in the small town of Haydenville in the 1950s and 60s.  Teri weaves stories of her daily life and those of her rambunctious seven brothers and sisters as they roam the village making their own fun and sometimes doing and seeing things they shouldn’t.  She recollects the telling details and notable quirks of the village personalities and relates the pleasures and anxieties of growing up in a financially pinched but loving family in a small New England town.  
Teri will read from her memoir and sign books.  Some of the people featured in the book may be present at this event.

Teri O'Brien has worked at Smith College for thirty years.  This memoir is her first book.

The book will be available for sale at the reading for $18.
​The author will donate $3 from each book sold to Historic Northampton.

Review of While I Danced Alone with the Moon Across the Front Yard by Steve Pfarrer
text from The Book Bag,  Daily Hampshire Gazette,  August 18, 2017

Picture
Teri O'Brien and her three brothers
Haydenville in the 1950s and 1960s was a busier place than it is today, though still pretty self-contained. As Teri O’Brien writes in her memoir of growing up there, the center of town had a bank, a post office, an apple storehouse, an American Legion hall, a grocery store and TV repair shop, and a building housing the fire department, a funeral parlor and the Grange Hall.

It was a “typical New England mill town” without any actual operating mills, writes O’Brien in “While I Danced Alone with the Moon Across the Yard.” There was only the ruined Brass Shop building, and, as she says: “Even I threw rocks at the windows.”

O’Brien, who works as a housekeeper at Smith College, describes what it was like to grow up with seven siblings: three brothers and four sisters. Her mother, she writes, had her hands full raising all these children but later got a job as a cook.

​Her father, a tool and die maker and machinist, was something of a disciplinarian: If you ran up and down the stairs, for instance, “he would make you walk up and down the stairs around 20 times … The worst part of the deal was you had to keep count … [and] if he did not like your answer you would have to start back at number one.”

In the end, her story is one of growing up with very little money but “a love of family … [My parents] gave us strength and showed us love through small doses of courage … I do not believe I could have accomplished what I have done in my life without my parents’ guidance and patience.”
Picture
Adair's store just before it closed
​Photo courtesy of the Williamsburg Historical Society

HISTORIC
​NORTHAMPTON
46 Bridge Street
Northampton
​Massachusetts 01060
[email protected]
​413-584-6011
Museum Hours

Historic Northampton is temporarily closed in May and June 2025. Next exhibit:
Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654 to 1783.


For upcoming events and programs, see the  Events Calendar.
​

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  • About
    • About Historic Northampton
    • Hours and Directions
    • Volunteer
    • Board-Staff
    • Legal/Financial
  • Programs
    • Upcoming Programs
    • Past Events at Historic Northampton >
      • Past Programs 2025
      • Past Programs 2024
      • Mill River Flood 150 Commemoration >
        • Mill River Flood 150 Commemoration Events
        • Mill River Flood Introduction
        • Mill River Flood Lives Lost
        • Mill River Flood Commemoration Markers >
          • \\\\\\\\Williamsburg Mill River Flood Markers
          • Skinnerville Mill River Flood Markers
          • Haydenville Mill River Flood Markers
          • Leeds Mill River Markers
          • Florence Mill River Markers
          • Northampton Mill River Markers
        • Mill River Flood Who Was Responsible
        • Mill River Flood Guided Walks to the Dam Ruins
        • Mill River Flood Memorial Tree Project
      • Past Programs 2023
      • Past Programs 2022
      • Past Programs 2021
      • Past Programs 2020
      • Past Programs 2019
    • MCC Card to Culture at Historic Northampton
    • Help I am not receiving email announcements
  • Explore
    • Collections & Research
    • History at Home >
      • Videos
      • Interactive Witch Trial
      • Paper Dolls
      • Hidden Histories
      • Scavenger Hunts
      • Coloring Pages
      • Brain Teasers
      • Peg Doll Hunts
      • Jonathan Edwards Prayer Requests
    • Properties >
      • Parsons House
      • Damon House
      • Shepherd House
      • Shepherd Barn 2020
      • The Bridge Street School Sprouts
    • Educational Websites
    • Historic Highlights
    • COVID-19 Stories >
      • Vaccination Photos
      • Submit Your COVID Story
      • Children React
      • Family and Neighborhood Fun
      • It's a New World
      • Hope and Togetherness
      • Images
      • How Illness Feels
      • Brings Forth Memory
      • Blessings and the New Busy
      • Fear and Worry
  • Indigenous Native History
    • Native Histories in Nonotuck
    • Nonotuck Histories Essay by Margaret M. Bruchac
    • Recovering Nonotuck Histories Photo Essay
    • Profiles of Native People
    • Extended Biographies of Native People
    • Nonotuck to Northampton Maps
    • Native LIves Bibliography
  • History of Slavery
    • About the Slavery Research Project
    • Black Enslaved People
    • Free Black People
    • Native Enslaved People
    • Enslavers of People
    • Relationship Map >
      • Relationship Map Family Groups
      • Relationship Map Enslavement
      • Relationship Map Indenture
      • Relationship Map Legal
      • Relationship Map Commerce
      • Relationship Map Foster or Guardian
      • Relationship Map Social Connections
    • Timeline of Slavery in Northampton
  • DONATE
    • Donate to the Spring Appeal
    • WAYS TO GIVE >
      • Monthly Donation
      • IRA Giving
      • Stock Giving
    • Join the Email List
    • Donate to the Collection