MEMORIES PT16

I attended the Frank V Thompson School up through the 6th grade which
is memorable for me because of the constant battles between our male
teacher and two of the boys who were the class “tough guys. These were
physical confrontations, not verbal. My sister had started school at St.
Matthew’s Parochial School but there wasn’t a vacancy in my grade level
so for the first year we lived at Evans St I stayed at the Thompson.

Then I got lucky. There was a new Sister Superior at St Matthews, Sister
St. Paulinus, who’d known me at St. Joseph’s Parish in Malden. She’d
been my First Communion class instructor and had been the first person
that I could recall that told me “Go West, young man!” So I was accepted
for the 7th grade. Sister St Paulinus was a sweet little old lady, but my
new teacher was Sister Mary Roque who was one tough cookie. She was
not hesitant to knocking your head against the blackboard ti get your attention
fully engaged on the math problem you couldn’t solve. In the 8th grade I
had an older nun, Sister Mary Stephen but she was not a pushover, either.


The nuns of St Matthew’s were from the Order of the Sisters of St Joseph
and believed in the old “spare the rod, spol the child” adage, I believe. My
sister has good memories of her first grade teacher Sister William Patricia
but I once saw her grab one of the older boys by the ear and push him into
a snowbank when he used bad language.

The church itself was a huge brick building with a beautiful interior but on
Sundays my Dad really like going to the masses said by Father Beksha.who
said Mass so quickly Dad called it the “Beksha Express”.

Most of the kids in Evans St neighborhood attended St. Matthews as well,
and it was where my sister took First Communion and where I had my
Confirmation. I was sad to hear that the parish school was closed a few years
back and combine with one from a neighboring parish.

Cheryl & I on  my Confiimation Day

Years later, after we’d moved to Abington, Dad was pleased to find out that
Father Beksha had as well and the “Beksha Express” was now at St Bridget’s
church here!

((385 words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

GOOD NEWS

I wasn't feeling too well yesterday but I got two emails that made me feel better:

The first was from the NARA telling me that the Naturalization Records of
my maternal great great grandfather John McFarland had been mailed. I
expect to see them either tomorrow or Friday. What I learn from it I'll share
with my new found cousin living in New Zealand.

The second was a comment to my post of 5Jan 2010 Cousin Quest: The
Family of Vienna Ames West. It was from a wonderful lady who is one of
Vienna Ames West 's descendants and therefore my cousin. Vienna was the
sister of my great great grandfather Jonathan Phelps West. I'm swapping
information with this new found cousin and may have found the answer to who
were John Cutter West's parents!

So far, 2011 is shaping up to be a fun year genealogy wise with new cousins found
and new discoveries of information.

MEMORIES PT15

We moved from Capen St I think in 1959 or 1960. The new place was
a first floor apartment a few blocks away at 18 Evans St. Our landlords were
Phil & Alice Pais who lived on the second floor and Mr& Mrs Kenney and their
son Tom lived on the top floor. Evans St was a more of an Irish Catholic
neighborhood than Capen St; after all, St. Matthew’s Church was just down
one block on Stanton St.. There was no alleyway to play stickball in but there
was a big empty lot right across the street where the old school had burned
down so we played baseball there.

Of course there was a different bunch of kids to play with here, some with
some cool nicknames: Dewey, Hoagy, and Miser for example. I’m not quite
sure where kids like myself, Vern, and Gerard who were a bit quieter and
read a lot fit in with the others, but I don’t recall ever getting into any fights
with those guys.

What I do remember is Hoagy and I pretending to be knights with sticks
for swords and trash can lids for shields. There was also the times a
bunch of us would walk down to Milton Lower Mills and onto the trails next
to the Neponset River, tossing rocks at the boats and sneaking through
the back yards of some very large houses to a dense stretch of woods
with some very old, large trees where we’d play “Capture the Flag”.  

By now I’d been riding my bike for a year or so and there were things I
wanted, like comic books or a transistor radio, so I got my first job
as a paperboy. Over the course of the next few years I’d deliver the
Boston Herald, the Daily American and the Herald Traveler. One of my
paper routes was over a mile away in the VFW Parkway Projects and
at one point I was trying to collect my paper money from female
customers who wouldn’t open their doors all the way because it was
during the Boston Strangler’s reign of terror.

((353 Words))


Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

CIVIL WAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE AT ISLAND GROVE PARK, ABINGTON, MA.

The War Memorial Bridge at Island Grove Park here in Abington was
built and dedicated as part of the 1912 Bicentennial of the town's founding.
It was thought a fitting place for a Civil War memorial because Island
Grove had been favorite gathering place for the New England Abolitionist
movement to hold gatherings. William Lloyd Garrison often spoke here
and in fact if you watch some of the early episodes of the History Detectives
they show a flyer announcing an event at Island Grove Park that Garrison
appeared at that day.

Time and the elements are showing a bit on the arch but people still cross over
the pond to the park using the bridge!

I took these photos a few weeks ago over the course of two days. The figures
depict a soldier and a sailor, and the inscription reads:

"Abington to her sons who offered their lives for the Union 1861-1865."

We'll be celebrating Abington's 300th birthday next year! I'm wondering how
we'll be doing that?

MEMORIES PT14

Baby Boomers like myself came in at the end of one era in movies and at the
start of another. I can remember the Saturday Matinee where one admission
let you watch some cartoons and at least two movies, and maybe a Commander
Cody serial. (At least I think that was his name. He wore one of those cool jetpacks
on his back!) The movies weren’t exactly masterpieces but we were busy munching
our popcorn and Milk Duds to care.  

I lived within walking distance of three movie theaters when we first moved into
Dorchester. There was the Codman Theater in Codman Square, which had a
bowling alley above it so occasionally you could hear the pins fall. It closed not
long after our arrival. Then there was the Morton Theater. That was over on
Blue Hill Avenue and Barry Solomon and I and some of the other kids used to
walk there on Saturday mornings.

The third theater was my favorite, the Oriental Theater in Mattapan. It’s interior
was built to resemble a Chinese village, and the ceiling looked like a night sky with
projected clouds moving across them and tiny ceiling lights that looked like stars.
This was where that new era began for us, the era of Cinemascope and epic
films. I saw “Around the World In 80 Days” there which was loaded with stars
and was so long there was an intermission. And it was either there or at the Morton
where Boston area producer Joe Levine had the premiere of “Hercules Unchained”
with Steve Reeves, which started the “muscle man” historical action film. I was
hooked on those and Ray Harryhausen special effects films like “Jason and the
Argonauts”.

Both theaters are gone now. The Oriental building is now an electrical supply store.
Somebody told me a few years back that the interior was sold and moved to an other
theater in the Boston area. I hope that’s true, and that somewhere some kid is sitting
in his seat, his eyes up watching clouds moving across  the ceiling beneath the
“stars”!

((346 words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT13

It was while living on Capen St that I became infected with the disease that
strikes many New Englanders:I became a Red Sox fan. Now, it's true there are
some folks who by some strange quirk of human nature are fans of the New
York Yankees but these are mainly poor benighted souls who fall into two
categories: people who live in Connecticut or Western Massachusetts, or
college students from New York who come to Boston for the superior
colleges and who are beyond being helped to see the error of their ways.

In my case I had already known about Ted Williams before we moved to
Boston. Who didn’t know about the greatest hitter in baseball? I was
lucky enough to see him play in person at Fenway Park when Dad took me
and two of my friends to a game as my birthday present. We sat in the center
field bleachers close to the left field end and it was close enough to see his face
as he joked with someone in the bullpen between innings. I even drank Ted’s Root
Beer that was put out by the same folks who made Moxie!

After Ted retired Carl Yastrzemski took over in left field and Dick Stuart came along
to play first base. In those days there were games that didn’t sell out and Sox fans
who remained loyal suffered through some interesting and sometimes bizarre
seasons. I remember watching them on the old WHDH (which was Channel 5
back then) or listening to them on WHDH radio. Curt Gowdy was the Voice of the 
Red Sox, and Narragansett Beer was the main sponsor. (“Hi Neighbor! Have A
`Gansett!”)

Eventually the team’s fortune improved but by the 1967 Impossible Dream year we
had moved out of Boston to the southern suburb of Abington. By then it was too late;
I was a full fledged member of Red Sox Nation and remain so to this day.

In fact, the first sign of Spring for me is not a robin but the news that the equipment
van is on it’s way to the Sox Spring training camp in Florida!

((362 Words))


Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?" :TIM MCGRAW

I've put off commenting on last night's second episode of "Who Do You
Think You Are" because I couldn't quite put my finger on why it is probably
my least favorite episode in the entire series so far. I still can't say precisely
why that is after thinking about it over the course of today.

Perhaps it was how quickly they jumped 8 generations to get Tim McGraw's
lineage back to Jost Hite. Maybe it was that he didn't seem as involved in
the actual research as Vanessa Williams was last week. I also felt less of
an emotional reaction from Tim in some parts of the story. I thought the
details of his ancestor being killed by Indians seemed to give him pause
as if he wasn't quite sure how he should react on camera to that.

It's been interesting to see how those who've reviewed last night's show
have viewed how Tim reacted. Many of the female comments have been that
he's a guy and guys don't show their emotion as much as women do. But there
were other male viewers in the Geneablogger Radio chat last night who felt the
same disconnect that I did. Don't get me wrong. I don't feel a reaction too far
towards the other end of the scale is necessary (the preview of Rosie O'Donnell's
appearance next week had me wincing atg the montage of "WOW!"s),

Even though it's the least favorite episode for me I didn't hate it. The disappearance
of the recaps is most welcome and the show just flies by. Maybe we can get them to
lengthen the time to 90 minutes?

And despite the "Wowfest" I'm looking forward to Rosie's segment next Friday night!

MEMORIES PT12

Saturday in Dorchester was Shopping Day. Living on Capen St we were not
far away from the Stop & Shop on Gallivan Boulevard. Besides food the
Stop & Shop was also the source of other items, such as china, classical
music collections, and childrens' books. There was one offer of classic
books, .99 cents for the first book and  .59 cents for the others. I still have
the copy of King Arthur and His Knights  that my folks bought me.

Of course prices on food were the main reason to shop somewhere and
some Saturdays we’d drive from one place to another to take advantage of
some bargain or another. There was a place called Morse’s over on Blue
Hill Avenue where we’d go to buy meat and sometimes we’d go to the
Upham’s Corner district for some other item. Eventually we began ranging
further afield to the city of Quincy just south of Dorchester to shop at
Roxy’s once word got out about their prices on meat.

Quincy had another big draw:the Bargain Center store where Mom
prowled the store shopping for our clothes. “The Bargy”  was BORING
for us kids and eventually Mom would send us and Dad back out to the
car to sit and wait while she finished up.

There was one other important element to shopping back then: the stamps.
Stores gave out “trading stamps” with each purchase and you filled up
the stamp books with them . Then you redeemed the books for items
like toasters or irons or other items. If some store was giving out Double
Stamps that day, that’s where we shopped. Stop & Shop gave out Scott
Value Trading Stamps and First National was the S&H Green Stamps store.
I remember my Mom checking the catalog to see how many books of stamps
they needed to get some item or another.

I wonder if given the present economy we might see a return of those trading
stamps today?


((326 words))


Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT11

Back in the day there was the Dorchester Little League, which had real
uniforms and cleats. But that was a pretty expensive proposition for many
folks, and for us Catholic kids there was the St Matthews Parish Little
League. Our uniforms were teeshirts with the team name and a matching
cap. Most of us wore jeans for the pants, and sneakers instead of cleats.
I was on the Dodgers and our teeshirts were bright yellow with blue letters
and our caps were blue with a “D” on them.

When my Dad took me to the parish hall on Norfolk St to sign up he ended up
signing up himself as an assistant coach on my team. The manager was a great
guy named Mike Delorusso who lived one block down from us on Fuller Ave
which ran into Capen St. His wife was named Nettie and though they were older
than my parents my folks soon were friends with them. I think maybe Cheryl and
myself thought of them as sort of grandparents. Mike worked for the Boston
Public Library and gave me some old books that had been damaged and taken
out of circulation. One was a hardcover book on the history of the Pittsburgh
Pirates baseball team and the other was a Little Golden book Guide to Mammals.
Most importantly Mike gave me a small bookcase that I kept well into my 30’s.
(I know I gave it someone else eventually but I can’t remember who it was!)

Despite my Dad being the assistant coach and our being friends with Mike and
Nettie, neither of those connections could keep me from being cut from the
Dodgers and being sent down to the minor leagues until I learned how to
catch a fly ball with my glove instead of letting it hit me in the face!

((307 words))


Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT10

Growing up as we did in the 1950’s we were right in the middle of evolution of
rock and roll. When we were living in Malden my grandmother Aggie must have
heard the commercials for the Adventure Car Hop restaurant on WMEX, the
station that was THE rock and roll station back then. They had a DJ named
Arnie Ginberg who hosted the “Night Train Show” every weeknight and his
nickname was “Woo Woo” (as in a train’s whistle). So the deal was this:
if you went to Adventure Car Hop and ordered the “chicken in a basket” meal
and said “woo-woo” to the car-hop, you got a free 45 in the bottom of the
basket.

No, not a gun.

A 45 record.

Umm.  It was sort of like a cd but made out of vinyl and the hole in the
middle was much .larger.

Anyway, we rode over to Saugus to the restaurant, and Nannie would order
the “chicken in a basket’ and say “woo-woo”. Hey, a free record was a
free record!

By the time we’d moved to Boston there was something even bigger than
the Night Train Show: American Bandstand. We used to come home from
school and turn on the show to watch those kids in Philadelphia dance and
see the rock acts lipsynch their songs. Even more important was to see
how the kids were dressed and how they wore their hair. It was just as important
for guys to see what was cool as it was for the girls. One of the hot looks for a
while was a string tie with a sweater and as you can see, I managed to keep in
style with that one.

Life was so much simpler then for kids, wasn’t it?




((294 words))
Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE MY BIKE(REPOST)

Mom, Cheryl and I in the back yard on Capen St.

((This was first posted back in May of 2007. But I'm reprinting it now 
because it fits into the timeline of the Memories series I'm writing now for the
Family History Writing Challenge.))

There is a legend in my family. When my sister Cheryl read
my posts about our family trips up home she asked me if I
was going to post something about it.

It was shortly after we’d moved into the Capen St. triple decker
apartment in Dorchester and kids in the neighborhood noticied

that I still had one training wheel on my bike. Now confession here

: I’d seen an older kid thrown over the handlebars of his bike right
outside our house in Malden. I was in no hurry to have something
like that happen to me.

Ok, I was a chicken.

Dad was of course was working so it was Mom who ran me up and down
the street trying to get me to keep my balance while the other kids
watched and called out advice or laughed. Finally I just wouldn’t

get on the bike.

I should have known better.

A few weeks later we went uphome for vacation with the bike

strapped upright atop the car roof. How Dad did it, I don’t know.

This was pre-bikerack days. I do recall it involved a lot of rope and

open car windows. We got to Aunt Flossie’s house which was at

the end of a long downhill driveway at the bottom of which was a

garage or small barn. And the next day the lessons began.

Mom would start me off at the top of the driveway and push the

bike and down I’d go to either fall over or keep my balance until I

hit the garage door At some point they opened the door and put

something in there softer for me to hit. I’m not sure. I was busy

yelling like McCauley Culkin in “Home Alone” as I wobbled down

the hill. I just knew I’d fall and each time Mom would get me back

up and tell me to try it again.

Eventually I learned to stay on the bike. Hitting the brakes and

steering came a little later. When my kid brother Phil came along

and my sister’s kids after him, they heard about how I was taught

to ride a bike.

Mom was a tough cookie. She had to be, growing up when she did

and how she did. She had a temper you’d expect from a redhead

and she made us toe the line but she was ready to step in to defend

one of us if she felt we needed it.

She loved to sing and while untrained had a good voice. She used

to sing a duet of “God Bless America” to close the Saturday Night

Dances at the Abington VFW.

Mom liked parties and threw two Halloween Costume Parties I

vividly remember. For one she dressed up as the Underwood

Ham Red Devil and greeted guests on the front lawn, pitchfork in

hand. For another she went with her resemblance to Carol Burnett

and dressed up as The Washerwoman character.

She liked to watch the Boston sports teams, especially the Celtics

of the Larry Bird era and would often yell at the referees on the

tv. She also rooted for the Red Sox. When Pudge Fisk hit that home

run to win the game in the 1975 World Series everyone else but us

had gone to bed and we woke them up with all the cheering we did.

She adored her grandchildren and I wish she’d had more time to

spend with them all..

When Dad died she was heartbroken. Luckily some friends from

the Post took her in hand and eventually she met Joe with whom

she found laughter again. I think if they hadn’t met we’d have lost

Mom sooner than we did.

Mom died of cancer in 1999 and it’s hard to believe she’s been

gone for 12 years now. As with Dad’s passing there’s a lot of

things about those final days that are difficult to think about. But

there’s a lot of good things from the years before for us to remember

and laugh over.

Like how Mom taught me to ride my bike.

MEMORIES PT9

There were plenty of things to do growing up in Dorchester. I’d play stickball with
Barry Solomon and Arnie Black and other kids in the alleyway between the two
apartment building across the street. We’d either use half a “pinkie” rubber
ball or a “pimple” ball. Eventually those were replaced when the first “wiffle” balls
came out. We’d also play “Three Flies Out” off the cement front steps of a building
across from Barry’s house. If we didn’t have a rubber ball, we flip baseball cards
on the front porch.

Another game we played was “Buck, Buck” but you really needed a bunch of kids
to make up two teams. We played “Redlight” and Dodgeball, and of course “Hide
and Seek” which was best played around twilight on summer evenings. We didn’t
play much basketball when I lived on Capen St because the basketball courts
behind the Thompson School was where the older kids hung out.

Winters after a snow storm we’d go around the corner and sled down Selden
St.  Back then they seldom plowed the side streets down to bare pavement
on the side streets tight away, but then again, there weren’t quite as many
people driving cars as there are today. We played street hockey before they
came up with plastic pucks and stick blades, and we “skated” our shoes on
the icy streets.

And if there was a rainstorm or it was snowing out, then you read a library
book, or a comic book, or maybe watched some black & white tv if there
was something good on to watch, like one of the Tarzan movies Channel
7 showed on Sunday afternoons on ”Cinema 7”.(This was the age before
Sunday afternoons were taken over by the NFL)

These days I look at all the technology we have around to entertain ourselves
and our kids, but at one time people could do that with far less. All we needed
was a rubber ball, or a piece of chalk, or a favorite book.

((335 words))

Written for Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT8

My first school in Boston was the Frank V.Thompson School which had
originally been a high school and was massive. It’s front entrance was
on Maxwell Street and the back fence bordered on Selden St. Basically
the school was only one block from our home which was only one house
away from the corner of Capen and Selden Sts. The Thompson was
very different from the Linden School in Malden.  It was old with huge
windows and old radiators that creaked. The desks were the old fashioned
kind with wrought iron legs and inkwells. There was no cafeteria and we
brought milk money to pay for our milk.


My first teacher there was Miss May, who was the vice principal and third
grade teacher. I’ve never forgotten the first day in class there. In Malden
they had been teaching us math in a new fashion, teaching us the
multiplication tables and long division at the same time. My first day there
I came into class in the middle of the math lesson. Miss May introduced
me to the class. Then she asked what number I was up to on the tables.


“We were up to doing the 4’s, Miss May.” The other kids laughed.


“”Only 4’s? What number are we up to, class? “


“8’s, Miss May!”


Of course, none of them could divide by 4, but it didn’t matter. Miss May
told my mother I’d need to catch up, and Mom took that seriously.
Unfortunately, our kitchen table math sessions didn’t go very well and
from that point on Math was my worst subject in school.


Miss May also has the dubious distinction of being the first teacher to
give me the rattan, which was administered on my open palm with a
ruler. I don’t remember the reason why I got it, just that it hurt like
hell. I made it my business to not get another one and managed to
avoid them for the rest of my years at the Thompson.


I should mention that while I can remember Miss May vividly I can’t
recall the name of my fourth grade teacher although I can see her face.
I had Miss Montesari in the fifth but don’t remember much about her,
either, but I recall my sixth grade teacher Mr Mombardi for reasons
I’ll discuss later. 


((388 Words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge.

MEMORIES PT7

As I wrote earlier, my parents had originally planned to move someplace
where we'd be living on the ground floor so that my grandmother wouldn’t
have to climb stairs. Her death changed that and when we moved to 101
Capen Street in the Dorchester section of Boston it was into the third
floor apartment. Our landlords the Wittlesteins lived on the second floor and
their daughter Molly lived on the first floor with her husband Barney Blonder
and their three children.

Back at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century immigrants
who came to American cities lived in polyglot communities where people
from many countries lived side by side. But gradually they separated into
neighborhoods. East Boston and Somerville had heavy Italian populations,.
South Boston, Irish, and Dorchester had Irish and Jewish sections. When
we first moved to Capen St we were one of the few Catholic families in
that end of the street. It was interesting living there, where the Blonder kids
would come upstairs to help decorate our Christmas tree and we’d go
downstairs at Hanukah. To this day my vocabulary includes some of the
Yiddish phrases and words I heard in that neighborhood.  

Of course it wasn’t an easy process, moving into a new place and making
new friends and learning the rules of the neighborhood. This was where I
got into my first fistfights. I don’t remember what my very first fight was
about but I do know it was during the day while Dad was at work because
it was Mom who showed me how to make a fist while we were waiting for
Dad to come home and teach me more.

I do remember the next one. It was over the famous Blackfeet Indian story.
My Dad had told me we had Indian blood, and when I asked what tribe we
were, he told me we were Blackfeet. When I told one of the other kids this,
they called me a liar, and it ended with me getting a bloody nose. When
Dad came home I told him what had happened and asked if we were
really Blackfeet.  He said of course we were,.

My Mom made him tell me the truth. It was a joke. “We’re Bllackfeet
because we never wash our feet.”

It was my first encounter with a genealogical myth.

((395 words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge