Land Of The Bean And The Cod

August 30, 2000

This is an expanded comment on an E-mail sent to John and Renee about a year ago.

In a citation some years ago, I was described as a “Son of Massachusetts.” That I am, born in Boston in 1911. As the odds are that I am not likely set foot in the Bay State again, I feel nostalgic every once in a while. Were it not for New England winters, I would have been seriously tempted to make my retirement “digs” there.

Growing up as a child of a Swedish immigrant father and a mother who was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, I was not a “Yankee” - immigrants and their children were not eligible for that title. For us, the boys in my neighborhood, Yankees were our opponents. We would sometimes gather in a gang, walk to better neighborhoods and seek trouble with “Yankee boys”. For the most part, just call each other names, although on rare occasions, some fisticuffs.

For years I did not question the romantic bosh which was taught in school or emphasized in the press, particularly at holiday times. The Pilgrims and Puritans were very much romanticized, I later found out. The Puritans around Boston were characterized as hypocrites by visitors. They executed Mary Dyer on Boston Common because she was a religious heretic. They banished Roger Williams and others, again, because their religions differed from the Puritan (Calvinistic) way. In Salem, twenty women and one man were executed because they were alleged to be witches.

The Pilgrims, settled in Plymouth were, maybe, a little better but many of their myths are unfounded. The book, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, by George Willison (which I own) describes some of their ways. Mayflower descendants tried to get the book banned. But the Pilgrims were not all saints. They stole the seed corn the Indians had stored for the next year’s planting. The landing on Plymouth Rock is a questionable legend, in spite of the canopy covering a rock in Plymouth Harbor. The rock was assembled from several pieces, late in the 19th century. Myles Standish led a group of armed Pilgrims to Wollaston to attack Roger Morton and his group because they did not like Morton’s “paganistic” practices such as dancing around the Maypole.

There’s more I could cite, including their justification for wiping out Native Americans by referring to the Biblical precedent of the conquest of Canaan, including Jericho, where all the inhabitants, men, women (except one), and children were slaughtered by the invading Israelite tribes. Other instances in Scripture were used as justification.

My old friend, the late Carl Seaburg, in his book, BOSTON WAYS, quoted a limerick:

“Here’s to the town of Boston
And the turf that the Puritans trod,
In the rest of mankind
Little virtue they find,
But they feel quite chummy with God.”

However, there is much of value in New England, past and present. One enduring memory is how impressed I was as youngster by the statue by Cyrus Dallin outside the Museum of Fine Arts, “The End of the Trail”, figure of an American Indian on his horse, slumped over, totally discouraged. The sculpture signified the unstoppable conquest by Europeans.

There were poems learned in school, fragments of which I still remember – Emerson’s “Concord Bridge” for example.

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled.
Here the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.”

There is the poem which started collections in schools around the nation to preserve the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,”

“Aye, tear her tattered ensign down,
Long has she waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
Her banner in the sky,”

The Boston area has a superb complex of first-class universities and colleges: Harvard, M.I.T., Tufts, Wellesley, Brandeis, Radcliffe, Boston University, Boston College, Bentley, Emerson, Lowell Textile. Northeastern. Where in the world, in such a small geographical area, can that array of educational facilities be matched?

The historian, Drummond, noted, “In 1860, of the 321 high schools in the United States, half were in Massachusetts.”

For years, Boston had the “Watch and Ward Society”, which took upon itself the censoring of books and the monitoring of public entertainment, condemning what these self-appointed judges deemed immoral. For years and years, however, in spite of such censoring, the Old Howard burlesque theater, just off Scollay Square, was an enduring institution. There were countless of us teen-agers and young men who received first lessons in the revealed beauties of female bodies as the strippers strutted, pouted, teased, and took their time in removing their flashy gowns, and then all the rest of their garments. A guy I knew, around the early 1930s, who played saxophone in the pit orchestra of the Old Howard (the best view) took unrestricted delight in fully detailing the anatomical charms and oddities of the most private parts of the “star of the week.” There are many of my generation who have fond memories of Ann Corio, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lily St. Cyr (“sincere” - get it?) They were the most glamorous stars of the Circuit.

The Old Howard is gone and Scollay Square is tamed – now Government Center, but the “Combat Zone” is probably still there for bawdy entertainment and education.

I have mentioned before how Fenway Park is a shrine for the loyal, frustrated fans who may never behold the Red Sox win the World Series (The Curse of the Babe). But good memories are somewhat compensating: Smoky Joe, Joe, Tom, Bobby, Ted, Walt, Dom, Ellis, Yaz, Tex, Lefty, Jim, Jimmy, Jimmy, Johnny, Dwight, Carlton. If you need last names, forget it.

Massachusetts brings memories other than Boston. In western Massachusetts on the Mohawk Trail there is, or was, the Hairpin Turn, a difficult loop for the autos of the 20s and 30s. Near the Hairpin Turn was the town of Florida (who named that one?) Also in the western part of the State, there were those who praised the drinking water from the Cobble Mountain Reservoir. “Cobble Mountain Gin” it was affectionately called.

Then there is picturesque Cape Ann, not as well known as Cape Cod. I was never more impressed with Nature’s FORCE as when I witnessed a violent storm breaking over Bass Rocks, near Gloucester.

That’s enough nostalgia. However, if you like to eat well and are in Boston, don’t overlook the many fine restaurants, the Durgin Park, the Union Oyster House, Jimmy’s Pier 4, or Jake Worth’s. When I was growing up not so many people “ate out”. Saturday night supper at home for many, if not most, families was Handschumacher’s franks and Friend’s Beans. I met Victor Friend as he was a member and staunch supporter of the Melrose Universalist Church.

I could go on and on. Another time I’ll comment on Boston religions – note the plural. In a prior Musing I recalled the Boston Marathon. I have not written about the swan boats in the Public Garden, cranberry bogs, Provincetown, or Revere Beach. But enough already.