We lived on Howland Avenue. It is also Route 8. “Root,” we said, not “route.” Maybe that is why 8 is my favorite number.
Tractor trailers would use this route to get to New York City, and to this day I can fall asleep in minutes to the whine of large rubber tires and noisy smokestacks, red at the top, pumping out all that good carbon pollution.
“Well the I.C.C. is a-checkin’ on down the line.
I'm a little overweight and my log book’s way behind.”
That was from an album entitled “Six Days on The Road.”
Mom was a waitress at a truck stop called Eileen's and knew all the truckers. Mom also was the local bookie and she sold Victor Volpe's Italian Grappa from our little house. The stairs to the second floor were built special to hide the contraband. Saturday and Sunday were busy days at the Bacons’. No one would leave on Sunday morning without a Coffee Royal, which was a cup of hot coffee with a shot of grappa in it.
I sold cigarettes to the Adams people – well, Dad did all the selling from Burke’s Inn. At the Naval Base were I was stationed, you could buy a carton then for $2.00 and sell them for $6.00. Hey that is only a 3% markup! Thursday was dividend day, and if a sailor went to the store on the base for me and got two cartons I would give him $1. Hey! You only got $4.00 for standing someone’s midwatch from 12 to 4 a.m. A beer at the enlisted men’s club cost a dime. One thin dime.
On weekends I would drive or hitchhike, always in uniform to ensure getting a ride. I would have one or two sea bags full of Marlboros , Camels and Mom's Pall Malls. People would always ask where I was coming from and I would always tell them of some exotic port or place so as to not disappoint them. The guy could go home and tell his wife, "Hey Honey I gave a sailor who just spent a year in American Samoa a ride." I lied to them but I would never lie to you, Mi Amor. Sandy said, "I wonder where you got that idea from.”
I was in a gang called The Zylonite Smashers. Zylonite was a plastic product that was manufactured in this Italian section of Adams. I already had a membership tattoo and was heading for trouble. So when I turned 13, Mom got me a job with Rene Comeau Trucking. My very first job was walking around a visiting carnival or circus with a large stuffed animal that I pretended I had won. For that I got $5 cold cash for only one night’s work. Rene was a tall, good-looking man. He had snow-white hair and always had a good word for everyone. He always drove the newest Cadillac and his clothes were always clean and he didn't have dirt under his fingernails. His tractor trailers would haul 100-pound bags of lime to New York City. For $15 dollars cash money, I would ride shotgun for the 6 to 7 hour ride to the piers in New York.
The first time I went down, the driver said, “Sit back and relax," and I said, "I am okay leaning forward like this." His reply was, " You are in the way. I can't see behind us in the mirror." Whoops!
The first trip was unbelievable. We saw a cop on a horse get run over at a Brooklyn dock, and some girl came up to my window and asked me "If I would like to change my luck?" Change my luck? I was skipping school 2 to 3 times a week and clearing up to $45. Things were good. Gasoline was 35 cents then and a couple of years later, still driving to New York, I could tool around in my car forever on that much money.
My dark blue 1953 Studebaker, way ahead of the style of the time:
The actual work only took about an hour, but the job took 15 hours round trip. We would handcart the 100-pound bags to the end of the box and restack the bags on pallets, then the tow motor would take them away to some ship’s hold. One day the black tow motor guy said, "What you boys got in them bags, ceeement?”
Looking back, Mom and Dad held very loose reins on Mike and I. We didn't have a dog, but Coco who lived at the farm behind us would come over every single day and stay with us for the whole day. We never fed him and at night he would go back home. He was very territorial and protective of my brother and I.
In the summer, Mom and Dad would let us hike up the mountain past Georgia Marble Company toward Mt. Greylock, past split rock and the spring. Oh, the water in Adams is all spring water and it tastes like a beverage. That might be reason enough to live there year-round. We would pitch a pup tent, start a fire with potatoes dug down underneath the coals, and in the morning have baked potatoes for breakfast. How did we know how to do that? Coco would bark some time during the night, keeping us safe from whatever was out there in the pitch black. Can you imagine letting your 10 year old do that today?
Mount Greylock from our house. That's the limestone quarry in the foreground.
Some other views of Greylock:
Fall is beautiful here.
One day I hitchhiked upstreet to Adams, went to Swartz Sporting Goods Store and bought a rifle, and hitchhiked back home with it. Adams is big with hunting and fishing and no one ever questioned me on it. Not the police, not Mom, not my grandmother Hattie, not the person I got the ride with.
Dad built an L-shaped porch with a lot of screens and windows and I would sit out there at night in the summer and read “Two Years Before The Mast” and “Last of The Mohicans” and wonder what life was like outside of the valley. I think I was the only one in my family who read books. Well, Mom loved the Record American from Boston. It came in the same size as today's Herald. That is strange, now that I think of it, because all our news came from Albany. Even today people say to me, " You’re not from here, are you?" No, in Adams we had the upper New York State accent. Hard R's for sure Aye! We didn't hate the Red Sox, we simply loved the Yankees. Who wouldn't back then, with guys like Pee Wee Reese, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle?
Jack Paar gave me my first incite to the outside world. Married, stuck in Adams, limestone employees would take me aside and say, "Get out of this valley; don't get stuck here." Then Johnny Carson, Lawrence Welk and The Ed Sullivan show, Ozzie and Harriet, Lucy and Desi would make me think, "Maybe life is better outside of this valley.”
Gramma Hattie Bacon (she ruled the roost as people used to say) and my sweet Grandfather Frank lived next door in the big house. Some relative always lived upstairs on the second floor. On Friday nights we would watch The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports -- boxing. Archie Moore and Rocky Graciano and Carmen Basilio and Kid Gavilan and Jersey Joe Walcott. We would go to Gramma’s to watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday night at 8. She always had M & M's. At nine o’clock we would go home and go to bed. I hope families still get together to do that sort of thing.
Nora Bacon, Hattie Bacon, and Francis "Joe" Bacon at my parents' 25th Anniversary party.
Grampa would always say, "You boys are more trouble than all my money." He didn't have any. He also said, "If you keep acting like that I will put a tin ear on you." What does that mean? I know the farmers would put tin ears on their cows.
Adams had many dairy farms back then. Milk in bottles was delivered by Reno Delmolino. Wow! What a beautiful name. It rings. Reno Delmolino. He used to say, "Drink Village Dairy Milk and you will ride the range all night." Mr. Kissel would come to our house on Saturday mornings to sell boys’ clothes out of his salesman’s suitcase. Mom (Nora Lemanski) always bought us nice shirts. “Here comes Mr. Kissel, faster than a whistle,” we would all say. Simple times, good times.
Mom had a skablunka. In Polish that meant a kitty or a slush fund. It was cash always set aside, hidden, to be used in an emergency. Mom kept it full with the grappa money. In the movie “I Remember Mama,” the Norwegian mother had a kind of skablunka, only it never had much money in it -- but it gave the rest of the family a feeling of security. We have a skablunka in our house but I am not going to say where it is. Not that I don't trust you.
“Big Shot” is a phrase used in mill town Adams, Massachusetts. Dad never wore a tie at supper as Ozzie Nelson did, and if you wore one at Chicks Bar and Grill you were likely to get your lights punched out. Mr. Big Shot. I took friends to Adams and we went to Burke’s Inn. It was the local Zylonite bar. It didn't matter how old you were, you could drink at Burke’s Inn. My Father said, "Work like a man, drink like a man." Dad and Mike took it to heart. Dad should have added, "Die like a man." Mike only made it to 36. You would have liked him. Everyone did.
Here's Mike with his truck:
From Mom's house you could see Burke’s side door, through the Moncheccis’, the Lawsons’ and the Bucceris’ back yards. On a visit from Boston, everyone was happy I was at Burke’s because I had escaped the valley and was a sort of celebrity that night. If you lived somewhere else, Adams people assumed you were doing well. One of my Dad’s friends offered to buy one of my city friends a drink, and my city friend said, "I would rather have the money." So the hayseed from Adams gave the city slicker the money without even thinking about it. My city friend chased him around the rest of the night trying to even things out. So who was the hayseed?
You knew when it was deer season. When Mike and I looked out our window looking north there were deer hanging off the Lawsons’ clothes poles. If you bagged one, you would tie it to the front of your car and parade it through town -- mostly through the center of town at Park Street. The only other section was the Polish section on Summer Street and the only thing they killed was a shot of rye followed with a beer chaser.
Hey, don't get me wrong. Adams was a terrific place to grow up. After school in the winter, which lasted from November to May, we would cut through Gamache's pastures and pull our sleds and jumpers up to the original quarry. At best you could only get in two slides down the abandoned, long, steep, curvy, limestone, snow-covered road of the old Georgia Marble Company, before it got dark. We always came back in the dark. We all just met after school for sliding and it was never planned. The Cichetti, Bongiolatti, Malione, Tomasini, Volpi, Dellagalpha, Sondrini, Smachetti and Bianchi kids. All of their grandparents came from north of Pisa and Lucca to work the limestone quarries here.
My younger brother Mike and me, ready for sledding.
New England Lime Company just south of there became really big and was eventually bought out by Pfizer. You may have heard of it -- the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Maybe not. Dad worked there as well as Mike and my Great Grandfather. When I was a kid and working summers there, they said there was 50 years more drilling and blasting to do to get to all the limestone. That was in 1960 and they are still drilling and blasting today in 2008. The ocean was here and deposited all this calcium.That is when I started to believe in the evolution thing.
Mom died, Mike died, Dad died. In that order.
Sandy and I had a gathering here in Marshfield years later. We had Ms. Kitt over. Ms. Kitt was a psychic. There were three couples over that night. I was the first one to see her. She knew nothing about any us. We had to go and pick her up. She was elderly and could not see well. She blurted out to me, "He had all the blacksmith tools but he wasn't a blacksmith. Who am I talking about?'”
I answered, "My Father."
She said, “There is a cross in this house and it is hidden away. Where is it, and why is it hidden away?"
I replied, "My wife did not want the image of a man nailed to a wooden cross out so our young daughters could see it."
She asked again, “Where is it? Your Father wants it out."
I said, "It is in my walk-in closet."
She said, "Your Father wants it out."
It is the same cross that hung in me and my brother’s room. And yes, it is out now. I still do what my Father wants me to do.
1 comment:
Hello. My name is Ali Stevens, daughter of Barbara Delmolino (now, Lengemann). Reno Delmolino was my grandfather and one of my biggest inspirations. Thank you for your stories! I enjoyed reading about your life in Adams.
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