Our Town (1940)

Frank Craven: Mr. Morgan

Quotes 

• Mr. Morgan : [Opening]  The name of our town is Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. It's just cross the line from Massachusetts. Latitude is 42 degrees, 40 minutes. Longitude is 70 degrees, 37 minutes. Running right through the middle of the town is Main Street. Cutting across Main Street on the left is the railroad tracks. Beyond the railroad tracks is Polish Town. You know, foreign folks who come here to work in the mills or a couple of Canuck families, and the Catholic church. You can see the steeple on the Congregational church. Presbyterian is just across the street. The Methodist and the Unitarian are up a block.The Baptist church is down in the holla'

  [Coughs] 

  Mr. Morgan : by the river. Next to the post office is the town hall; Jail's in the basement. Bryan once made a speech right from those very steps. It's a nice town, y'know what I mean? Nobody very wonderful ever come out of it, so far as we know. The earliest dates on the tombstones up in the cemetery say 1670. They're Grovers and Cartwrights and Gibbses and Herseys. Same names as you find around here now. First, we'll show you a day in our town. Not as it is today in the year 1940, but as it used to be in the year 1901. All right, Operator, let's start. Yes sir, that's the way our town looked back in the year 1901. Along Main Street is a row of stores with hitching posts and blocks in front of them. The first automobile is going to come along in about five years. The date is June 7, 1901. It's just before dawn.

  [Rooster crows] 

  Mr. Morgan : Yeah, just about. The sky's already beginning to show some streaks of light over there in the east, back of our mountain. The morning star gets wonderful bright the moment before it has to go. The only lights on in the town are in a cottage over in Polish Town where a mother is just giving birth to twins and down in the depot where Johnny Hawkins is just getting ready to flag the 5:45 to Boston.

  [Train Whistle] 

  Mr. Morgan : There she is now. Of course, naturally, out in the country and around they've been up for some time, what with milking and so on. But town folks sleep late.