Snapshot for Ruswa--Irisher's Perspectiv
Jeanne Khan
(caught with an old Kodak Brownie Camera)
Boston, comparmentalized, had separate havens
for ethinic enclaves--Italians lived in the North End
Polish: West End and Irish: North End to South End
to South Boston to South Shore, their Irish Riveria
in time. No East End as that's the Atlantic where radio's
renown Edgar Rowe Snowe reigned on islands giving tours
of haunted houses and telling fish stories when haddock
was the dish of choice from George's shoals and coves.
Jews lived west on Blue Hill Avenue in Upper Roxbury and Milton
near a few Irish headed to Roslindale, Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain.
African-Americans and those from French Guiana and the British
West Indies lived in its outskirts and and around the South End.
Immigrants arrived in waves from Europe, Asia and South America.
Each group displaced the other over time until they could afford to
buy or build their homes west, north and south of the city where
family farms made way for suburbia to absorb those who learned
English and rose through ranks of police, fire and civil works
departments to be captains of industry, clergymen, politicians,
naval officers and law clerks. Those left behind warred with the new
arrivals; many withered, some died without learning English or a trade.
Eventually urban renewal destroyed the West End--replaced crowded
Polish and Slavic tenements with Charles River Manor condominiums
and luxury apartments with uncluttered-by-poor views of Massachusetts
General Hospitial and Beacon Street to the Boston Public Garden--none
of which the former occupants could afford. They dispersed everywhere.
Until the sixties and after changes wrought by a radical pope's Vatican II,
wherein folk guitars replaced Latin liturgies in Catholic churches, life
seemed pre-ordained, predictable and premised on an American dream.
Friday was fish, Wednesday: spaghetti, Saturday: beans
and Sunday: pot roast with stew for some on Monday
after clothes washing and chops for others on Tuesday
and Thursday after folding, ironing and sewing occurred.
It was a simple and savage time where potato was a staple
and local markets specialized--Kennedy's for butter and eggs,
Perry's for seafood and Victory--named the meat and produce
place where folks could charge groceries and settle accounts
on pay days. Wise shoppers travelled to the fish piers and
the North End to buy from pushcarts. One dollar filled a paper
shopping bag with zucchini, onions and apples; two filled three
and added squash, parsnips, corn, peas, string beans, turnips,
cabbage, biscotti and a few cookies from all kinds to die for.
Bread was usually made at home from a dozen family
recipes, but sausage was sought in several locations
because each group made their own. Polish out-polled
Italian for the taste and sturdiness of its case--it seldom
split to spill the meat in curls and fat drippings. Smoked,
it made a snack a full-course meal. Then again, the Irish
preferred Polish anything to Italian anything when asked
their druthers out of hearing of either group.
Marriages of one's bread with another's sausage confirmed
ideals about the melting pot as did the sauces from each
community which travelled to stretch the pastas, pitas and rice
of strangers who understood how to be daring by going
into other neighborhoods. The exception being Back Bay
and North Shore where they went to labor for Black-Protestants,
the Cabots, Peabodys and Lodges who sailed and sent their
boys to Choate, Groton and Harvard--another world--far removed
from inner cities where hunger and hard work made prayer dessert.
Libraries took children away to other lands and introduced new points
of view. Fronted by huge stone lions and graced by columns with glass
orbs catching the sun and sending rainbows across granite facades,
they resembled cathedrals and courthouses, but their basements had
public showers for those living in boarding houses or in small rooms let
by the week to single gentlemen whose mothers died leaving them lost.
Libraries were warmer than most homes could afford to be.
Children who gathered coal bits from railroad tracks or wood and
cardboard boxes from the markets to help out at home loved the
libraries which had central heating systems, massive wood tables
oil paintings and carved chairs (donated by the rich, they heard)
near book stacks waiting to take them to Rome, Peking or Babylonia
without leaving their hard uncushioned seats except to pee when it hurt.
Sex was discovered in art works and humor among
the joke sections. Freedom rang in the giggles of
those taunting each other and feeling the stern eyes
of librarians so unlike their mothers and teachers
who married and drank beer and wine on holidays.
Ladies guarding the card catalogues seemed to be
from another planet--they commanded respect with a
raised eyebrow, caused silence to descend like
a black shade pulled down past the sunshine on
children tittering at fig leaves covering private parts.
Their frown could mean expulsion from the hallowed
halls of learning. Liberty after school would change to
chores at home, not the children's preferred way to play.
Liaisons occurred when children met those from other
neighborhoods while Saturday shopping occurred.
Therese Popkowicz of the West End met Sal Bracco
of the North End. Sarah Levine met Livingston Devine.
Both found they lived within a few blocks of each other
in South Boston--to their surprise--meaning they could
meet other days at their local libraries to touch or tussle.
Everybody went to Chinatown for lunch near Boston's
downtown--all oohed and aahed at the towering Chinese
Mercantile building. No child had a clue as to what they
knew to be stories told by Chinese grandmothers chatting
near shops selling herbs and spices their mothers did
not put into their soups, but they knew where to look it up.
Jeanne Khan
26 November 1998
Jeannekhan
>Snapshot for Ruswa--Irisher's Perspective
>(caught with an old Kodak Brownie Camera)
>
>Boston, compartmentalized, had separate havens
>for ethnic enclaves--Italians lived in the North End
>Polish: West End and Irish: North End to South End
>to South Boston to South Shore, their Irish Riveria
>in time. No East End as that's the Atlantic where radio's
>renown Edgar Rowe Snowe reigned on islands giving tours
>of haunted houses and telling fish stories when haddock
>was the dish of choice from George's shoals and coves.
>
>Jews lived west on Blue Hill Avenue in Upper Roxbury and Milton
>near a few Irish headed to Roslindale, Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain.
>African-Americans and those from French Guiana and the British
>West Indies lived in its outskirts and around the South End.
Ruswa
Jeanne Khan <jea...@delphi.com> wrote in article
<9811261724591.T...@delphi.com>...
> Snapshot for Ruswa--Irisher's Perspective
> (caught with an old Kodak Brownie Camera)
you remembered :)
obpoemette and observations will follow
--
R.
- I've got a little black book with my poems in -
- Pink Floyd -
Ruswa
Jeannekhan wrote
>Fixed some errors...sorry--haste, waste, etc.,
>
>>Snapshot for Ruswa--Irisher's Perspective
>>(caught with an old Kodak Brownie Camera)
>>
Oasis
The plaza, pristine
Where they're building my new flat
Looks down on the old East End
Of the rag trade and the restaurant
Behind our wrought iron gates
And newly laid beige bricks
We are reclaiming prime locations
Trying to make them home
snip
>>Liaisons occurred when children met those from other
>>neighborhoods while Saturday shopping occurred.
>>Therese Popkowicz of the West End met Sal Bracco
>>of the North End. Sarah Levine met Livingston Devine.
>>Both found they lived within a few blocks of each other
>>in South Boston--to their surprise--meaning they could
>>meet other days at their local libraries to touch or tussle.
I grew up in the Jewish part of town, I have a lingering weakness for the
pale, dark haired JPs, with their hair up and their guard down...
we'd leave our books in the local library and spend all day drinking coffee
and smoking exotic cigarettes in the bar around the corner.
R.