Mexellent

Martha's husband Paul was coming to Marshfield from George Washington D.C. this past April 18th to run Boston for the first time. The B.A.A. gives you a lot of STUFF in your goodie bag. One of the items is a very nice long-sleeved running tee shirt that says Boston Marathon on it. In my years of running, I found them kind of useless. Too warm for hot runs and not warm enough for colder runs. When you wear it as a layer, you hide all the text on it. But when you wear it out, people know that you "Ran Boston" and that is a good thing.

Sandy and I volunteered once. I still have a Boston Marathon volunteer jacket from 1990. It is yellow, very thin, and perhaps the only poor quality one that the Boston Athletic Association EVER gave out.



My friend Tom Donovan volunteers at Boston every year. Every year he gets a better job. This year he was responsible for getting the wheel chair racers/runners to Hopkinton, among other responsibilities. You can count on Tom. As my friend Roger says, if I am combat, I want Tom in my foxhole. He has access to B.A.A. memorabilia such as volunteer jackets. He gave me this one.



We both wore them on a crisp, 55-degree, sunny, September early morning at the start of the Kaibab Trail at the Grand Canyon. It is in Arizona. Tom came up with the idea of hiking down to the bottom to Phantom Ranch along the Kaibab, and then back up the Bright Angel Trail at 5AM the next morning. It was still 80 degrees on the river, even at that time of the day, when we headed back up. I have very fond memories of that day. Tom said it was the best day that he had in all of 2006. You can read all about it in my blog. I called it “Business Cards On The Kaibab.” Part of the story even made the Boston Globe.



I ran Boston 8 times because 8 is my favorite number and I was training for my second try at the Western States 100 mile Trail Run (Squaw Valley to Auburn, California) -- and especially because it was the historic 100th running of the Boston Marathon in 1996. I had my best marathon run ever that day, because I had lost 35 pounds and I was doing 150 mile week training runs, including 40-mile outings on Sundays in preparation for W.S. So the 100th for me was truly a lark and I enjoyed every minute of it. 38,708 official runners came for the 100th Boston – its largest field ever.

I was very attached to my 2006 volunteer jacket. It was a gift. You don't give away gifts, especially when they mean so much to you and a close friend gave it to you. But I thought that Paul should have it. I asked Martha about my idea and she was cool toward it, I thought. I asked father-in-law Flaco about it and he didn't really express an opinion either. So I asked Paul, and he was really laid back about it also. Also is what Dad called me especially when he was upset.

So I gave Paul the jacket the night before the marathon. He did REALLY well and came in 366th out of around 40,000. There is no telling how many bandits ran. The very next day he went to work wearing his Boston Marathon jacket and I knew that I had absolutely done the right thing and a good thing. It is truly better to give than to receive.


Paul crossing the finish line.

Tom Donovan totally understood my thinking on the matter, even though I was giving away a gift from him.

Epilogue: Last night Tom came to my house because we were attending the book signing by Nathaniel Philbrick at the historic 1699 Winslow House. He brought along Philbrick’s book "The Last Stand," which I had lent him -- and a shiny new/old Boston Marathon Volunteer Jacket. Not just any old jacket but the one from 1996, the 100th running of the Boston Marathon. The one that runners are willing to PAY $300 for.





My 8th, my best Boston Marathon run, and my last Boston. Tom also feels that it is better to give than receive, and am I ever happy about that.

MEXELLENT

Abuelo Tocino
May 17, 2011

Duke’s Pond

It seems to get swimming hot only in the month of July in the Hoosac Valley. The wind or breeze is blocked by Mount Greylock to the west and Savoy Mountain to the east, and the town of Adams Massachusetts bakes. If you live here you are 200 miles from the nearest ocean beach. But that’s OK because nestled just over Savoy Mountain is Duke’s Pond. Just drive up Orchard past the Polish cemetery, past where Danny Alibozek used to live. Stay straight through the Gulf past the dairy farms and through Savoy. You will go down a long decline and right there on your right you will see the sign. It’s in West Hawley, near the Windsor border.



It isn't a huge pond but it is warm. It is not freezing cold like Sand Springs in Williamstown or Anthony's in Adams. Here is where Dad took us one hot , steamy night after work to learn how to swim. He simply took my brother and I out over our heads and we had to swim back. Duke’s is also where I first canoed. The east end of the pond is where the dance pavilion and barroom were. Once you got off 116, the roads were just gravel.



White Birch was another area on the pond -- at the bottom of the hill and on the right. It was a very nice picnic area, with picnic tables and a stone fireplace at each site. It was first come, first served. Maybe you had to pay. You must have had to pay. Dad liked it because they had a small barroom nestled in the birches. You could get an ice cold beer, but you had to be 13.

The Bacon family would go up after church at Saint Stan's. My mom, Nora, would always buy the Polish rye bread at the Polish Bakery just across from the church. It is a pizza place now. I remember all of this mostly from old photos.

My mother and father would take their parents along. Much of the time Walter Lemanski (my mom’s dad) came along. His children referred to him as Pa.





His wife, Alexandra, had passed by then. They came from Poland, "the old country," they would say. Alexandra came first and alone. She was pregnant with her first of 9 children. She was 19, married to Walter who was drafted into the Russian Army. She walked for two days to get to the steamship that would take her first to Ellis Island. From there she traveled up to Adams Massachusetts where she had a sister living. What did she carry? How did she communicate? What was it like to see her sister in the United States of America? What type of transportation did she use to get to her sisters? Maybe the train? I don't know.

What did she think of Adams? If she stayed in the Polish section of town, she would have no problems. She would not have to learn the language and she never did. Sandy's Polish Grandmother never did either. You just didn't need to.

Alexandra was called Alice by her friends. There must have been a promise of employment. Hoosac Valley needed factory workers for the cotton and woolen mills. The Polish people filled that need.

Alice Lemanski 's favorite movie star was Buster Crabbe. In her heavy Polish accent, she called him Bustum Crap. You can't make up stuff like this.

My mother would dust our little squeeky clean house on Howland Avenue every Saturday. Part of her ritual was to take down her mothers photo, polish it in a circular motion, kiss it and put it back on the shelf. This is the photo of my Polish Grandmother in a wheel chair at Dukes Pond. I remember my mothers ritual clearly as if it happened yesterday.

It was March 19, 1944. The World War was raging. The five daughters and their mother were sitting at the kitchen table on Commercial Street, talking, when someone knocked on the front door. Oh my god, Billy was home from the war! But when my Aunt Steffie got to the door, no one was there. The very next day a letter came from Mr. Roosevelt. William Lemanski was missing in action over Italy. Rumor says it was over Austria. He was a tail gunner in a B-52 bomber airplane -- the one with all the glass, with the turret that swiveled. The next day, another letter. Billy was killed in action. Alexandra couldn't take the loss and had a stroke climbing the stairs.



It reads:

IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF

STAFF SERGEANT WILLIAM LEMANSKI, A.S. 31284582

WHO DIED IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY

IN THE NORTH AFRICA AREA , MARCH 19, 1944


HE STANDS IN THE UNBROKEN LINE OF PATRIOTS WHO HAVE DARED TO DIE
THAT FREEDOM MIGHT LIVE , AND GROW, AND INCREASE ITS BLESSINGS.
FREEDOM LIVES , AND THROUGH IT. HE LIVES-
IN A WAY THAT HUMBLES THE UNDERTAKINGS OF MOST MEN.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
President of the United States of America



Oh, you want to know why the name of this story is Duke’s Pond? Here at our house in Marshfield, we have almost no grass. I did that on purpose. We would spend all morning mowing the grass in Zylonite at Mom and Dad's. But I do have a strip between the old house and the pool fence. I would always advise my swimming pool customers to put some grass in their pool area for color. A landscaper told me I could never grow grass there but I did. It has been damaged periodically, with all the additions that we have done, plus house painting and new roofs. Finally the additions have ceased and I brought up beautiful thirty-nine year-old compost from behind the pool near the garden, and seeded, and the grass is finally coming back in -- very well, thank you.

Between the bar and the driveway is an area where you cannot grow grass for two reasons. It is too shady there, and the water from the long driveway swales right through there like a flood when it rains. We had pachysandra there for awhile, but it got trampled during my big fiesta. I decided to fill the area with round, smooth Rexame beach rocks. Then I dug a very crooked path through it for the water to flow. Abel and I named it Snake River.



Abel and Teddy, Abel' s best friend who lives across the street, love to play in Snake River. When it is not raining and dry, we run a garden hose at one end and the river comes alive. So much for all my water barrel and water pail conservation efforts. I enjoy washing the cars with rain water. Doesn't everyone?

There is a large rain barrel on the other side of the bar with a roof gutter running right into it. It is always full. Abel came up to me, covered in mud, with those big blue eyes, and said, "Grampa, would you mind if I turned on the spigot and made a pond, and then connect it across the lawn to Snake River?"

“Abel,” I said, “That is a great idea.”

Then he said, "We will call it Duke’s Pond."

I was kinda stunned. Sandy and I have been to Duke’s Pond only once in forty-four years. He's never been there.

Today he and Teddy found a dead chipmunk in a pail of rain water, and asked me what to do with it. I said, “We will bury it, but not right now.” Next thing I knew, they had dug a hole right in the middle of my new lawn! We had a little service, and bid the chipmunk -- and my new lawn -- farewell.

Your Friend,
Abuelo Tocino