Janus – One Way

January 9, 1994

[The title is] “Janus - One Way” because I am writing about a look backward, but not looking ahead. (That’s for another occasion.) Janus, for whom January is named, is the two-faced God, but he has been slandered when “two-faced” is equated with deceit and hypocrisy.

In Latin mythology, Janus was a guardian of the household. One face checked out those who entered; the face watched visitors as they left the domicile. This monitoring of comings and goings by the household God led, as the centuries rolled by, to the interpretation of Janus as the symbol of looking back at the year that has passed and looking forward to the new year.

My Janus look at the past has been triggered by, 1) the death of Tip O’Neill, Jr; and 2) by an extended book review by George V. Higgins of a new biography by Jack Beatty, THE RASCAL KING; THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JAMES MICHAEL CURLEY (1874-1958).

Tip O’Neill; a consummate, winsome Irish Catholic politician, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1912, the year after I was born in Boston. Irish politicians in Boston and environs acquired wonderful nicknames. What other nickname could accrue to one whose first name and middle initial were Thomas P. = TP = “TIP.” There is another veteran Boston politician also named O’Neill (no relation to Tip): “Dapper” O'Neill (he was christened Albert).

Then there was “Knocko” McCormack, who owned a bar in South Boston (“Southey”). His more dignified brother, John, was majority leader in the House of Representatives in the Franklin D. Roosevelt years. In the early thirties, I heard it said more than once that if some political appointment, favor, license or permit was needed in Boston, it was much more likely to be a “done deal” if Knocko knew about it and approved. I can also hazard a guess how an Irish bar owner in Southey acquired the nickname, “Knocko.”

Can you top “Up Up” Kelley as a nickname? In the Higgins review, he quotes Dapper O’Neill: “We’d go to rallies and we’d have Up Up Kelley whose task it was to rise as Curley appeared in the hall and order: ‘Everybody up for the Governor....’”

Two Cardinal Archbishops of Boston were strong personalities whose abilities led organized Roman Catholicism in Massachusetts to new levels of membership, churches, schools, colleges, and influence. Although they seldom were candid and specific in political elections, inferences from their guarded statements could win or lose an election for an Irish politician. In one of the Boston mayoralty young Maurice (“MO”) Tobin beat Curley; many attributed the political upset to a remark by Cardinal O’Connell, somewhat ambiguous and naming no names, that voting for a grafter was a sin.

William Cardinal O’Connell and his successor, Richard Cardinal Cushing made the Boston Archdiocese a national, if not world power among Roman Catholics. Cardinal O’Connell was sometimes (not in his presence) called “Bull.”

Sometime in the 1950s on one of many trips to Boston, after a long meeting in connection with Unitarian Universalist merger plans, I was having a taste of the “creature” in the Parker House bar. I struck up a conversation with three newspaper men sitting at the next table. (The Parker House is about midway on the short walk from the State House to Boston City Hall.) The talk got around to the Cardinals. They told me that both had nicknames which were not published but commonly used in the editorial and press rooms.

William Cardinal O’Connell was “Gangplank Bill.” Why? Because so many newspaper pictures showed him\ boarding or coming back from the cruise ship to Bermuda.

Richard Cardinal Cushing: “Flashbulb Dick”, because almost every day on page 1 or page 3 of the Boston Globe there was a newsphoto of Cushing engaged in one of his many activities.

In fairness, however, I must add that these reporters used the nicknames affectionately because they admired the two Cardinals for their strong leadership, pastoral caring, and unquestioned integrity. And only one of the scribes was Roman Catholic.

John F. Kennedy’s maternal grandfather was “Honey Fitz” - John F. Fitzgerald, one of the early Irish Catholic mayors of Boston. I’m not sure it can be verified, so don’t sue me, but it’s possible that Honey Fitz got his label because in early days, the garbage wagons were also called “honey-wagons” for obvious satirical reasons. Fitzgerald may have had something to do with giving or getting a garbage contract.

There was something in Boston's political and cultural atmosphere that created such charming nicknames for its politicians and public figures. Is there any other city that can match such a history of delightful nicknames?

But I cannot end this trip of nostalgia without some paragraphs about James Michael Curley – the “Skeffington” of the book and movie, “The Last Hurrah.”

The review summarizes that Curley ran for political office:

Alderman
Five times for Congress
Ten times for Mayor of Boston
Three times for Governor
Once for the U. S. Senate

He was mayor four times, governor once, three times won a seat in U.S. Congress.

In the quote in Higgins’ review, Dapper O’Neill went on “...and Jack Murphy in the front row in this ragged coat, holes in the sleeves, and all, and after Curley begun to speak, you’d see Jack start to wave his right hand, you know? Just a little at first, but then he’d keep at it, and pretty soon he’d catch Curley’s eye, and and Curley’d stop and say, in his mighty Wurlitzer of a voice, ‘My good man, I’ll take your question when I’ve finished this.’ And Jack’d start to cry and whimper, and he’d say, ‘No, no, Mister Curley. I just want them all to know what you did for my poor mother.’ Well, after a while, however long it was that Jack was supposed to cry, somebody in the back’d holler to get back to the speech, and after a while you’d see Jack get up and head for door, going off to the next rally to do it all again.”

I have some personal memories of Jim Curley. During the campaigns, I sometimes tuned the radio to a Curley campaign speech. He had a magnificent speaking voice and that talent without doubt won him many votes. I haven’t the foggiest notion of anything he said, but but I do recall that in every radio speech I heard, Curley ended it with a poem dedicated to Mother or Motherhood. I once said to a friend, “Curley has the gall of a burglar.” My friend rejoined, “that’s because he IS a burglar.” Well, not technically in the criminal code sense, but he was a grafter. My Uncle John had personal experience of that. Curley was twice jailed (in the “sneezer” as we sometimes said in those days). Once in 1904, when he impersonated an illiterate friend in a civil service exam for a Post Office job; and in 1947 for financial shenanigans on a government contract. When he left office in 1949, Boston had more public employees than any comparable city in the country.

I do recall how the Yankee aristocracy resented Curley’s twenty-one room mansion on the Jamaicaway, with shamrocks carved into every window blind. I have wondered whether these starched-collared descendants of the Puritans hated more, that this Irish Catholic rascal politician had moved into their affluent neighborhood or that the mansion was built by city contractors for Curley at no cost to him.

Curley was no slouch at public relations. I clearly remember when living in Whitman that I saw him operate at first-hand. On a Saturday afternoon, just at the time the movie was letting out the hordes of children, suddenly the police appeared, shouting at the children, stopping them from crossing the street because a limousine with license plates S1 was approaching. Governor Curley was on his way to the nearby Toll House, where Kenneth and Ruth Wakefield had created one of the most famous eating places in New England, not to speak of her recipe for Toll House Cookies which became nationally famous.

Instead of motoring through as the children were held back, suddenly the limo stopped and out came Governor Curley. He stepped in front of the limo and with grand and graceful gestures motioned the children across in front of him. The “Gov” smilingly patted little heads and charmed the onlookers. When all the children had crossed, he re-entered the limo and went on his way, with applause erupting on the sidewalks. If you think that Curley did not pick up some votes from the mothers calling for their children, you just do not know politics, or at least Massachusetts politics. I was there.

That’s my “Janus One Way,” looking back at Boston days. As I have been writing this, there comes to mind other memories (some of which I may muse on – others I certainly will not):

The Elevated – although it dipped into the subway following the North Station stop, and did not emerge into light until the South End, it was still called the “Elevated.”

Braves Field – Rabbit Maranville, Wally Berger, Spahn and Sain and two days of rain, the Knothole Gang.

Fenway Park – Ira Flagstead, Ike Boone, Bobby Doerr, Walt Dropo, Tex Hughson, Mel Parnell, Ted Williams, Carl Yastremski.

The Old Howard – Lily St. Cyr, Ann Corio, Gypsy Rose Lee.

Cleo’s speakeasy on the back side of Beacon Hill. The Crawford House and Scollay Square.

The Silver Dollar Bar in the Combat Zone, and that good Chinese restaurant nearby, Hong Far Low (no kidding, cross my heart, that was its name.)

Symphony Hall

The Metropolitan Theater

Jake Worth’s

The Boston Marathon on Patriot’s Day

The band shell on the Charles with the great al fresco Pops concerts.

The Boston Garden

Hayes-Bickford restaurants where for 25 cents one could get a filling meal. Not gourmet – one counterman, if you ordered corn-beef hash, he’d yell to the kitchen, “sweep the floor.”

How could there have been a more fascinating and less boring place for the green years!!!

Ah me! Alas! Nostalgia is never going to be what is used to was. (that grammar is my last touch of the old days – at least for now.)