CJW: That’s the address.
JWW:
… as where you had lived but I wasn’t sure if that’s where you
were born? You were probably born in ______ .
CJW:
They did not live there when I was born.
JWW:
They did not … OK.
CJW:
I was born in Boston Lying-In Hospital, and at the time, my parents
lived in Roxbury, either on Vernon Street or Mount Vernon Street. And
I am told that it was – what in the Boston area we called a three
decker. Do you know what a three decker is?
JWW:
I have to say no.
CJW:
It’s a house with a flat top with three apartments [in] it. And
Roxbury now – in the ensuing years – has become no longer a safe
place to live, of course. I think Vernon, or Mount Vernon, is
probably in the heart of the … tough district, inner-city.
When
I was two, they moved to Everett. Not to 32 Oliver Street, but a
block away, a long block away, with a little turn around the corner,
was the corner of Ferry Street and Union Street. And there was a
two-family house at the corner of Ferry and Union, where we lived –
I think until I was about four or five. And then they bought that
house at 32 Oliver Street, and I’ve gone back, just to see the
outside. And it’s amazing how small it was. I knew it was small; I
didn’t realize how small it was.
JWW:
We’ll probably get into some of the other places you lived later,
but my question about them is whether or not you have … have you
thought about all the different addresses you’ve had, and can you
see in your mind something about the houses you’ve lived in, or are
some of them lost in time.
CJW:
Many of them yes, some of them lost. There are some that I have
distinctive memories of, others not.
JWW:
Part of my reason for asking is that I had taken my mother up to 88
Prospect Street in Boston one year …
CJW:
Did you?
JWW:
… maybe about three years ago, and I drove up, gosh, it may have
been Chestnut Street that climbed the hill up to Prospect Street, I’m
not sure about that … it was certainly … we lived sort of halfway
halfway between the Portuguese Church – Our Lady of Good Harbor or
…
CJW:
Good Voyage.
JWW:
… something like that, and the actual Universalist Church, but I
don’t remember the street that came up, and we drove up that street
and I pointed it out to her and I said – I’ll be brief, this is
not about her or me, this is about you, but …
CJW:
It’s alright.
JWW:
I said, “Well, do you remember it?” She said, “Remember what?”
I said, “Well, we lived there.” She said, “No, I don’t
remember that house.” I said, “Well, how about Mrs. Murphy and
her two daughters? You must remember Mrs. Murphy.” “Well, I don’t
remember Mrs. Murphy.” So for whatever reason, Gloucester wasn’t
a strong memory for her. And perhaps there’s other places in your
life ....
CJW:
It is a very strong memory for me. I have some notion about why your
mother may have blocked it out.
JWW:
Well, in any event, we did have a nice time that day, we were around
Wingaersheek Beach. Back to Roxbury if I might, and try to go back to
…. what might be of interest to your descendants, who may have the
most interest in this tape, but who knows, maybe St. Lawrence
University will want it someday, I don’t know …
CJW:
No way in the world!
JWW:
… is to maybe talk a little bit about your mother and your father
in terms of their people, and what you may know about where they came
from, and how they came to be in Massachusetts, and the kind(s) of
professions they held … for example, I remember you talking about –
when you mentioned Ferry Street – I remember you talking about
Uncle Andrew coming up Ferry Street at times … holiday times …
CJW:
from the streetcar.
JWW:
Right, yeah. And so I’d be very interested – and I think others
would be too – to hear you a little about … maybe start with you,
your mom or your dad, and talk a little bit about what you know about
their forebears.
CJW:
Let’s start with my mother, because I know more. On that little
sketch that you saw...
JWW:
She’s Elsie. No, no, she’s not Elsie, she’s Elizabeth.
CJW:
My mother is Elizabeth.
JWW:
Your mother is Elizabeth. Right. Your sister was Elsie.
CJW:
There was Oliver Street, and at right angles was George Street. Right
across from 32 Oliver Street, on the corner of George and Oliver, was
another two-family house, in which, for awhile, my uncle John
Granstrom and my mother’s sister Florence lived. And also on George
Street, you could easily throw a baseball from my house to the house
where my grandparents lived and owned – a two-family house, they
owned it, they lived in the upper floor ....
JWW:
These are the Wilsons?
CJW:
The Wilsons. John Wilson and my grandmother. Annette, who was called
Anna.
JWW:
I didn’t know where Marj’s middle name came from until just now.
I don’t know why I didn’t.
CJW:
That’s where it came from, just as your middle name came from my
grandfather.
I’d
have to say that, and maybe I’ve said this in some of my musings,
my grandfather John Wilson was just about the most wonderful man I
ever met. For one, he was unfailingly kind. One of the stories that
was told to me, when I was a little child, they would say “Who’s
grandpa?” and I would go like this [makes motion of flicking ear
with hand]. And the reason, or the cause, was he used to carry me
around on his shoulder, and in those days there were many, many
mosquitoes in the early evening. And so he would brush them away with
his hand, from his face. So when they asked me who grandpa was, I
would do this [motion again].
He
was a clearly skilled man in terms of crafts. He was a carpenter, of
course, but he also was a pattern-maker. A pattern-maker, for those
in the future who won’t understand what that is, when you are
pouring cast iron into a sand mold, you have to pour it into a hole.
And, to make that hole in the shape of a toy six-gun, or something
like that, you have to have a pattern. And it was then made of wood,
and the pattern was carved, so that the molder, who pressed the mold
into the sand, take it out carefully, put the top down, and there’s
a little vent to pour the molten iron. So obviously, if you don’t
have an accurate pattern, you’re not going to have a very good
product. And so that was one of his jobs, was a pattern maker.
JWW:
So he must have been, in a sense, a bit of a sculptor.
CJW:
Yeah. Or carver, if you want to put it that way. He also worked for a
piano factory. I’m not sure exactly what his job was. My guess is
it was building the cabinet, but I don’t know that.
JWW:
There’s a large iron casting in most modern pianos, and it is
possible he built the pattern for those castings.
CJW: Could be. And I well remember his – when my grandmother was still alive, she must have died when I was 5, 6, or 7 – I still remember ….
JWW:
This was Annette.
CJW:
Yes. And they lived on the second floor, and he would get home from
work, about 5 o’clock … no no, closer … he had to take the
streetcar, probably closer to 6 – the first thing he would do was
have a glass of hot water and whisky, and light his pipe. Unlike some
of the other men in the family like my father and my uncle, I never
saw him perceptively under influence of alcohol. That wasn’t true
of the others, but it was true of him. Whether he had a great
capacity, or if he was very sparing in what he drank, I don’t know.
Finally, after my grandmother died in a couple years, the aunts –
his daughters, my mother, aunt Florence, aunt Fanny, persuaded him to
sell the house, and come to live with them successively. Nowadays you
would say “well, that won’t work” and of course it didn’t,
but he would visit for occasions. But he sold the house to an Italian
family – Italian-American immigrants – their name was Digiloma,
and they just adored my grandfather. I don’t know why it was, that
they felt he was good in selling them a house, where they were the
first Italians on the street, or whether they just liked him, they
just thought the world of him. It was a large family.
JWW:
Maybe they liked everybody.
CJW:
Maybe they liked everybody. But I remember Angelo particularly,
because Angelo helped form some of my ideas about things. Angelo,
when I was 7 or 8, was probably in his mid or late 20s. He couldn’t
work because he had a badly crippled hand. He had been working in a
shoe factory in Everett, and it was caught in the machinery. He had a
pension – not a pension … whatever you call that, compensation.
JWW:
Disability.
CJW:
$6 a week.
JWW:
What did $6 buy in those days?
CJW:
That would buy a fairly large family food for a week.
JWW:
But it wouldn’t pay any rent or buy a car or anything like that.
CJW:
No. But he was a very nice guy, very affable, easy to get along with,
I think he might have been a little slow mentally, or else it was the
trauma of this thing ….
JWW:
I don’t know if you’ve been in factories like that in recent
years, but today to run machinery like this which opens and closes
like presses, both hands have to be outside of the work area and
press two safety buttons on the side, or the machine won’t run. So
many such accidents like that simply don’t happen today – not
that they don’t have accidents, but ….
CJW:
No I understand, well I think that’s a great thing.
JWW:
It’s kind of a long march from seeing that to today, when we talk
about the legitimate role that government plays, and some of these
safety standards have made a big difference in the lives of everyday
people.
CJW:
Exactly. Exactly. I remember, when I was in Plainfield, one of the
men I knew, worked for, it may not have been OSHA, but a predecessor
to OSHA, I’m not sure what it was called. Someone told me that OSHA
wasn’t formed until 1970, and I was gone from Plainfield by that
time. Maybe it was the state. He worked for either the state or the
nation. His job was to drop unexpectedly in on various manufacturing
plants and check them out for safety.
JWW:
This is less a discussion of me than it is your talking about some of
these things, but I might go back and re-direct you in … here we
have Angelo who is an Italian immigrant, disabled from working in a
shoe factory, and perhaps later we can get into why there are so many
shoe factories in Lowell, and Lawrence, and places like that.
CJW:
And Whitman?
JWW:
And Whitman. I didn’t remember that, but I’ve known people who
came from northeast Massachusetts who had worked in the shoe
factories, I’m not sure if it was the … some of the materials
were right at hand there, or it was simply that that kind of labor
was abundant and inexpensive, so it was natural for it to grow up
there.
CJW:
One of the things … Whitman, I think, was sort of an outpost from
Brockton, which was a large shoe center, with several
factories. Whitman had Bostonian and Regal. I’m not sure either
brand is in existence now, but if they are, they’re not made in the
U.S. I don’t know the reason – we certainly weren’t near cattle
country for hides.
JWW:
No, but there was a lot of water, and if you were going to tan hides,
you could use tannic acid, and you needed to wash these hides a lot,
there was a lot of water coming down through the Merrimack and
perhaps other rivers that flowed into Massachusetts Bay.
CJW:
Yeah, right. I remember some years ago, a friend of mine telling me,
that the reason there were so many mills all through New England, is
that almost anywhere you go, there’s water running downhill, and
there’s your power.
JWW:
So in what kind of ways might this Angelo have had an influence on
you, at this sort of pre-teenage ….
CJW:
It’s hard to say, it was somebody you could sit down with and talk.
He could talk the language of the kid. I was interested in some of
the things he told me about the shoe factory, and what they liked in
their household, such as pastas, spaghettis, and wine, which then was
called – it would be prejudiced to today, but then we called it
guinea red. I wouldn’t dare call [it] that today, publicly.
JWW:
I have to say that when I was growing up and first got exposed to
wine, the terminology was more or less the same, but it was referred
to as dago red.
CJW:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
JWW:
No one would call an Italian a dago today.
CJW:
No. Or a guinea. Sometime I’ll ask an expert on words, what’s the
origin of those two? I know guinea was a coin in some European
countries.
JWW:
And a hen.
CJW:
And a hen, and it was a country in Central America. Anyway, so there
we were, until my grandfather sold his house, there was the Wilsons,
the Westmans, and the Granstroms, all living in within almost the
size of a baseball infield.
[break]
JWW:
We’re back on camera this morning after a Mennonite meal last
night.
CJW:
I’m not sure that barbecued ribs is strictly Mennonite.
JWW:
Well, the broasted chicken was probably not Mennonite either, but I
don’t know how they roasted a chicken and made it taste like it was
fried. I know somebody who will know that.
CJW:
Maybe it was a snare [?] and a dilution.
JWW:
Renee will know the answer to that question. She will probably say,
“Well, they did fry it first.”
CJW:
That could be.
Oh yeah. My grandfather and his
brother Andrew, Uncle Andrew, came from a city on the Baltic – no,
the Gulf of Bothnia, which separates Sweden and Finland. Now, my
grandmother came from another city on the Bothnia. In other words, I
don’t know. There are two cities. One is Härnösand, or
Örnsköldsvik. Now the brothers came from one of those cities and my
grandmother came from the other. But I don’t know which was which.
According
the family story, and I have no way of proving whether these stories
are true, or whether some of these are imagination, or romantic
enhancement, but anyway the story was that Annette Brock was a ballet
dancer in Sweden, and even was in a company that had danced in
Russia. True? I don’t know. Uncle Andrew and my grandfather,
according to the family story, shipped as cabin boys to sea when they
were somewhere between 10 and 12 years old. My grandfather was the
older of the brothers by about three years, maybe.
JWW:
What year do you think he might have been born?
CJW:
I know when my grandfather was born: 1842.
JWW:
Oh, OK. Do you know what year he died?
CJW:
Well, if you take 1942 and subtract 7, 6 or 7 because he died at 93.
So that would make it ‘36.
JWW:
So he really lived beyond your father’s life.
CJW:
Oh yes. He lived for many years.
JWW:
Of course, we’re talking about you mother’s father, not your
father’s father. So your grandfather was alive after your father
died.
CJW:
Oh yes, for something like 12 to 14 years. Now, Uncle Andrew stayed
on the sea as a ship’s carpenter all of his working life. When my
grandfather quit the sea and married Annette Brock, and came to the
United States, I do not know. I do know that their daughters were
born in the United States. There was Anna, Elizabeth, Florence,
Fannie, Callie [Carrie?], and possibly one other, all girls.
JWW:
Amazing.
CJW:
So when they arrived in Boston – now, whether they came directly to
Boston or went to Ellis Island first and then to Boston, I have no
idea.
JWW: Was there an Ellis Island kind of place in Boston?
CJW:
I think there probably was. And of course, as I told you, he had many
skills, and another thing that they did, they were living in – for
those who know the Boston area – they were living in the Neponset
section of Dorchester.
JWW:
There’s a famous traffic circle there now which I think routinely
comes up in the morning news as a place where there are snarls of
cars and so forth – the Neponset Circle.
CJW:
I have no doubt. The Boston rotaries were great fun. It has been said
that if you learn to drive in Boston around their rotaries, you can
drive anywhere. Anywhere.
So
they came there and in addition (and again, this is a family story,
but I do think it is true), they opened … they had a house large
enough, so that they operated a boardinghouse. Not only did they have
a big bunch of girls, they took in as boarders young immigrants from
Sweden, among whom was my uncle John Granstrom, who married one of
the sisters (Florence), my father who married one of the sisters
(Elizabeth); I’m not sure that my uncle Karl Staal, who married
Anna, was a boarder or not.
One
of the things that came through to me, and I may be subjective about
this, but I had evidence or feeling that my family was quite
prejudiced against my uncle Karl Staal because he was a Finn, and
they were Swedes. Now, whether in the 19th century there
was prejudice between Sweden and Finland, I have no idea. But I think
so. Anyway, there was another element that I got the impression, I
think as a little boy with big ears, the sisters Florence, Fanny, and
Elizabeth, did not like Karl Staal because they blamed him, because
their older sister Anna, his wife, had at least 8 children and died
quite young. I never saw her. Now, of course it’s silly to do that,
because it takes two to tango.
JWW:
Where was Margaret Sanger when we needed her?
CJW:
Right! And so I never knew my aunt Anna, but inasmuch as cousin
Russell was a year older than I was, and cousin Ralph a year younger,
she must have died when I was about two.
JWW:
Does that suggest maybe that there was an expectation that abstinence
would be a normal part of family life, as far as sexual relations
were concerned at the turn of the century, as a way of birth control?
CJW:
The only thing I heard about that was in a few later years when it
was a recommended policy by Roman Catholics who were against various
artificial means of birth control.
JWW:
What – we’ll get to hopefully the church a little bit later in
this tape, but when all these Swedes arrived, and showed up at your
grandparent’s boardinghouse, what sort of religious affiliations,
convictions, beliefs did they bring with them, and what about your
grandparents?
CJW:
That’s one of the fascinating stories; I’ve told it many times.
Now, if one came from Sweden in those years, you could count on being
Lutheran. Not many of them were practicing Lutherans, but
technically. And thereby hangs a tale. One of the sisters, Carrie,
whether that was short for Caroline, I don’t know but I doubt it, I
think that was her name, she died of a disease which was feared to be
quite contagious. Spinal meningitis. And the Lutheran minister sent
word around to my grandparents that in view of his responsibility to
his congregation, and his family, he did not feel he should expose
himself to contagion by conducting the funeral. Then, as the story
goes, a few hours later or a day later, a knock came on the door, and
it was a man who introduced himself as the Unitarian minister, and
said, “It has come to me that you might need a minister to conduct
the funeral for your little girl.” And he said, “If I am
acceptable, I would be willing to do it.” So from that point on, my
grandparents and their children were Unitarian, but when they moved
to a city where there was no Unitarian church, Universalist. And that
is probably the reason for my long religious affiliation. Just think
if that hadn’t happened, maybe I’d be a Lutheran minister.
JWW:
How many years between your mom and Carrie?
CJW:
I have no idea. I have no idea. I don’t know where to place [her].
I do know that Anna was the oldest, and that my mother was the next
oldest, but in terms of Florence, Fanny, and Carrie, I’m not sure
where Carrie came in there. And at least two of the Swedish immigrant
boarders, as I said, married girls of the house.
JWW:
Your aunts.
CJW:
Right, and my mother. Now, whether they decided [on a] boardinghouse
for that reason or not, I don’t know, but if you have 5 or 6
daughters in the 19th century, I suppose you have to
think, where int the world are we going to find husbands for them?
JWW:
This might have made an interesting subject for sitcom like Upstairs,
Downstairs, if we had such things then. My mind runs to questions
like, I wonder how long it took for the girls to decide to marry and
settle down, as opposed to seeing who the next immigrant was going to
be!
CJW:
[Laughs] So that was how … why Florence married John Granstrom, and
my mother married my father. That was their introduction, anyway.
JWW:
Do you recall hearing whether or not meals were eaten as a community
or [whether] the family ate separately from the boarders, or.... ?
CJW:
I never heard that, I don’t know. They might have been just
roomers, rather than boarders. But in those days, because of so few
restaurants, I assume they were boarders. And then of course, when my
grandparents moved to Everett, and bought that house on George
Street, three of the daughters lived within a baseball throw – of
center field – Staals, Anna, and my mother and father, and the
Granstroms lived right across the street. Within, as I say, smaller
than a baseball diamond. Then … but it wasn’t long before Uncle
John and Aunt Florence moved to Roxbury, because that’s where he
had his garage. He had a garage where he rented out limousines (and
hearses) for funerals, and of course it had a repair shop, and
storage for automobiles, and a couple of gas pumps, which were the
filling station of the day.
JWW:
I wonder where these immigrants got the capital to start businesses
like that.
CJW:
I have no idea, but another family story, that may or may not be true
(but I think it is) [is] that Uncle John – John Granstrom – was a
professional wrestler. And I think then, as now, it wasn’t sport,
it was entertainment. Anyone who thinks of professional wrestling as
a sport is an idiot. But anyway, that’s beside the point. So he
might have accumulated a few bucks that way.
He
was very enterprising, obviously. I remember in the [19]20s, around
the time my father died, that he had 5 or 6 Cadillac limousines, one
Cunningham, which was a name then that made hearses and limousines;
he had, I think, 3 or 4 hearses (3 of them black, and one white,
because you used a white hearse for children’s funerals – and
there were many of them in those days). And I remember … he used to
have a bunch of freelance drivers. Sometimes all the Cadillacs would
be gone morning and afternoon: morning for a Catholic funeral,
afternoon for a Protestant funeral. I remember now that the drivers
got two dollars. If you drove in the morning you got two dollars; if
you drove in the afternoon you got two dollars more. So the most you
could make would be about $24-$26 a week. But there was no lack of
candidates to drive those things. So he had a very thriving business.
I
remember another little item that at that time the Cunningham hearses
were manufactured in Rochester, New York (or was it Buffalo –
Rochester, I think). I remember one time when he bought a new one, he
took a train up to the Cunningham works to drive the hearse back
himself. … After my father died, they sometimes would give me a job
working Saturdays, if I wasn’t working somewhere else. And I
remember they had a lot of what would now be collectible cars –
classics: Stearns-Knight, Stutz, of course, Pierce-Arrow. Many of
them very large cars. And then of course, when his son, my cousin
Henry (his first name was John, but they didn’t want to call him by
his father’s name, so they called him by his middle name, Henry).
When he grew up and went to college, and I think quit college in his
sophomore year, whether his father pressured him or he chose it, he
went to embalming school, and they set up a funeral home, which
lasted for many years.
JWW:
In business schools today they would refer to that kind of a strategy
of backward integration. They were already in the delivery business
as far as corpses were concerned, they could backward integrate into
corpse preparation.
CJW:
It was a good move apparently, as far as I know. My cousin, he died 2
or 3 years ago at the age of 88. He was 4 or 5 years older than I
was. So we were friends, but not close. One of the stories he told,
when he was at Harvard, where I think he lasted through his sophomore
year, he had a date for some dance at the university ([maybe] called
prom then, I don’t know). So he was kind of a big guy, so he said
“What kind of a car would you like to ride in? We could take my
Ford convertible, I can borrow one of my father’s Cadillacs …
what would you like?” “Oh, I don’t care, drive any car you
want.” So he picked her up in a hearse.
JWW:
[Laughs] Today one would question the motives for choosing such a
vehicle.
CJW:
It may have been [an im]proper motive then! As I say, although we
weren’t close, he was … we certainly weren’t hostile to each
other at all. I stayed many times – not many times, sometimes …
they had a big home in Roxbury, but they had a summer home at
Wollaston Beach, which is part of Quincy. So they had a cottage (it
was about 8 rooms) within walking distance to the beach. So many
summers I was there, 4 to 5 times a year, for overnights, swimming,
and so forth. They were very good to us.
I
think Uncle John felt responsibility of some kind that he survived
the boating accident, when the other two did not.
JWW:
He was in the boat, with your dad?
CJW:
[Nods] You see, there was Uncle John, his brother Andrew Granstrom …
JWW:
Another Andrew?
CJW:
Another Andrew, and my father. Now, the particular circumstances I do
not know. The story we got was that they were in the dory, a
motorboat, moored, and they were rowing to land at a place called
Hough’s Neck, where they had some source for getting some whisky –
booze. This was [during] Prohibition. And then a squall came up, and
the dory capsized. And Uncle John held on to the dory, but he said he
never did see the other two.
JWW:
I think of Homer Winslow and pictures showing dories to be very
seaworthy-type craft. And so this must have been quite a squall.
CJW:
It also raises questions that I’ve thought of as an adult. Were
they sober? It’s a hard question, and I don’t know the answer,
but it’s certainly a possibility, because I knew my father could
swim. I don’t know about Andrew Granstrom. Just to be capsized from
dory, it would seem strange never to be seen again.
JWW:
Unless you were struck on the head by the gunnel of the boat.
CJW:
That is what Uncle John thought. So it was a week before his body was
found. Found off Hingham, which was another place on the south shore
of Massachusetts. So when the funeral was held, it had to be what
they called closed-casket.
JWW:
Because of the length of time.
CJW:
Length of time in the water; and there were crabs, et cetera, who
would have had a feast, you see. I still remember the name of the
funeral home, because again, it was a Swede. And Uncle John, who
really took care of things, as far as the funeral was concerned, he
got this … he was in Cambridge Massachusetts, the man’s name –
I still remember – was Christian Berglund.
JWW:
Sounds pretty Scandihoovian.
CJW:
[Laughs] It is Scandihoovian! So … well, what else?
JWW:
Well, maybe we could go back … we talked a little bit about your
grandparents John and Andrew having slipped out of Sweden at a pretty
early age. I’m not sure we talked about where Annette came from.
And then it would also be interesting also to hear a little more bit
about what you know about your dad’s …
CJW:
This has always been perplexing to me, particularly as I grew up, and
starting thinking about questions after he was long gone. Why did he
leave Sweden? One story I heard was that the oldest brother got the
farm, and the younger ones had to find something else. He was in the
Swedish Army for a spell, because in Everett there was a large
picture on the wall, oh, larger than that [points to picture on wall]
of my father dressed in military uniform, holding a saber. But I
never heard him say a word about his army service.
JWW:
I think you’ve told us he was tall.
CJW:
No.
JWW:
Your father.
CJW:
My father was just a little short of six feet. It was my grandfather
and Uncle Andrew were tall. They were about 6 foot 4.
JWW:
I see. OK. Which is interesting because at least one of their
daughters, Elizabeth, was not very tall.
CJW: No. You see, my grandmother, Anna, was very short.
JWW:
Maybe a nice size for a ballerina.
CJW:
Yeah, I have a vague memory of it, as I was very young when she died,
but again, I think she was about 77. Her hair was black, and she was
short, rather plump, and kind. I remember that. But other than that,
other than the rumored story about her originally being a dancer, I
don’t know.
JWW:
Perhaps to move to a slightly different subject for a few minutes
here, I have had a little interest in what the European world was
like up to and during the First World War. And of course, those were
the first 5 to 7 years of your life. And I don’t know when you
would say today your memory goes back to in terms of the … of
course it was different for the American involvement than it would
have been for the Europeans, who were much more in it, but I’m
curious about the wartime, and any special memories you have of that,
the subsequent typhoid epidemic, and some of the things that were
part of everyday life in Boston Massachusetts.
CJW:
I don’t have many distinct memories of World War I. I still
remember they had big placards with the image of Uncle Sam, with his
finger pointing, “I Want You.” The clearest memory I have, I
think it was the second grade, and it was the day that the Armistice
was announced. November 11, 1918. And I still remember that second
grade teacher. Her name was Mrs. Sparrel. But of course we called her
Mrs. Sparrow. [Laughs]. And when she told us that the war was over,
the tears were streaming down her face. Very distinct memory of that.
It was in school that we were told. That’s the clearest memory I
have of World War I.
Oh,
I heard stories about the Yankee Division, which was a New England
division, and where they fought, and they didn’t register
particularly on me. After the war was over, of course, there were
many, many veterans, who were in various ways. My father’s best
friend was a veteran of World War I. His name was Joe Dostey. Other
than that, no, my memories are fairly vague.
My
father used to take me to Major League ballgames at Fenway Park when
he could. Outside of bowling, that was the only thing that I know of
that he was interested in. And he told me, I remember this, that he
took me one time when Babe Ruth pitched a shutout for the Boston Red
Sox. And he talked about a great pitcher who was called Smokey Joe
Wood.
And
one of the interesting things, that I don’t think is true of
baseball today, they by no means had the big crowds that they get
today, but at Fenway Park on the first base side, partially down the
right field line, around one of those great big iron pillars, there’d
be a whole cluster of fans, maybe 50 or 60, with all kinds of vacant
spaces around them. So one time I asked my father, when we were
sitting in the right field bleachers, “What are they doing?” And,
this was when I was old enough to remember, he said, “Those are the
gamblers.” He said, “They bet on every pitch, every out.” He
would say, “One fellow might say ‘Five dollars that the next
pitch is a strike.’ ‘Take you.’” And “(So much) that this
fellow strikes out.” “(So much) that they won’t score.” And
apparently it was tolerated, because it certainly couldn’t have
been a secret. It’s one of my distinct memories about baseball at
Fenway Park. Unlike today, where the field is flat going out to the
Green Monster, there was an embankment going up like this [motions
with hands, indicating a topographical contour on the field], so that
your great outfielders had to climb the embankment to make a
spectacular catch.
JWW:
There’s probably a good story somewhere as to why the park was
designed that way.
CJW:
I suspect it was designed that way because of the description of the
land they bought to put in that [park?], because that was not the
original site. I used to read that the Red Sox used to play at what
was called the Huntington Avenue grounds. I’m wandering, aren’t
I?
JWW:
That’s OK. I’m just checking our time. We’re doing good. Maybe
just to pull on that thread a little bit about the Red Sox. Maybe you
can recall some of the players that I first became aware of in the
late [19]40s. I found out in later years that one of the reasons why
pitchers like Ellis Kinder were so effective was that the opposing
batters were pretty sure the guy was badly hung over. There must have
been a lot of escapades by fellows like this that maybe the press
knew all about it, I just don’t recall reading about it.
CJW:
There were many stories like that. Not only Ellis Kinder, but there
was a pitcher, last name, Alexander … Grover Cleveland Alexander,
who came in in the 9th inning of the World Series between
the Yankees and the Dodgers in the early [19]20s, and I think he
struck out the side. And they said because he had pitched the day
before, he was drunker than a skunk. So that’s true? I think it is,
because it’s part of the baseball lore.
I
remember too, some of the players the Red Sox had, who are now
history, but I remember seeing. They had a right-fielder named Ike
Boone. Now Ike Boone was as fine left-handed hitter, and could hit
for distance. But he couldn’t field worth a damn. In fact – I
didn’t see it – but the newspapers reported it a couple times,
but instead of catching the fly, the ball hit him in the head. So I
remember Ike Boone.
Then
they had, there was a pitcher they brought after his prime, named
Lefty Grove, from the Philadelphia Athletics. He’s a Hall of Famer.
And I remember walking by the parking lot, where players parked their
cars, and happened to see him coming out to his car, which was an
enormous Pierce-Arrow. This was in the [19]30s. And then, see, a top
salary for a pretty good player was $5,000 a year.
JWW:
Yeah. Maybe it’s because it’s human nature to glorify that which
we’re most familiar with, but maybe it’s also true that Boston
had more than its share of madcap players. You know, in later years,
players like Bill Lee, and Luis Tiant, and Jimmy Piersall. Was there
a history of madcaps ending up in Boston?
CJW:
Yes, somewhat. I’m not sure it’s any different for anywhere else,
incidentally, but there is a story that when Casey Stengel was
playing for the Boston Braves, as a player, that he made some kind of
a catch and was applauded, and he lifted his cap, and a sparrow flew
away [from underneath the cap].
JWW:
[Laughs] Maybe that’s where “madcap” came from!
CJW:
Could be! But they also had some good, good players. They had a
second baseman named Bobby Doerr, who was just about the best. I
think he’s Hall of Fame too. Of course, they .. I can’t think of
the fellow’s name, but he hit about 15 home runs in July over that
left-field fence. Can’t think of his name now. They always had
outfielders who could hit, because of that left-field wall. It was
more important than fielding. I remember centerfielder named Ira
Flagstead. I remember him because he was very short. Probably about 5
foot 7. I remember him because I saw him one time coming out of the
clubhouse, and I was struck by how tan he was. It was a very deep
brown. I remember how tan he was. And of course I saw Babe Ruth play
with the Yankees. I remember one play he made: there was a runner on
second base, and somebody hit a single out into left field, where he
was playing that day. And of course the fellow from second base was
trying to score because it was fairly deep. And Ruth threw from deep
left field to the plate on a line, and he got the guy at the
plate.
JWW:
He still had that pitcher’s arm.
CJW:
[nods] He still had that pitcher’s arm. I still remember that play,
because he wasn’t that far from the wall when he got the bounce of
that single.
JWW:
Hard to see things like that in the statistics, isn’t it?
CJW:
No way to do it. Just remarkable. I remember another player for the
Cleveland Indians. Another Hall of Famer named Tris Speaker. One time
playing in Boston, runner trying to score from third base after a
fly, hit out to Speaker in center field, not deep center field, and
the threw to the plate to try to get him, and the throw went right
over the catcher’s head!
JWW:
[Laughs] [The] most famous Red Sox [player] was probably Ted
Williams, who came up in the late 30s … when did people start to
become aware that this was not going to be any ordinary ballplayer?
CJW:
Probably from the month he arrived. They brought him up from the AAA
farm team, which was at that time I think was Minneapolis.
JWW:
Not Louisville?
CJW:
No, I don’t think it was Louisville. And he had been hitting
something like .457. Very high numbers, so they brought him up. I was
in the right field one time when Ted Williams was playing. When was
it? It had to have been in the [19]40s, after he came back from World
War II. Not far from me was where he hit a line drive home run, and
it may be my imagination, but I swear, I didn’t hear the crack of
the bat until the ball had landed in the right field bleachers. If it
had hit somebody, it would have killed them.
JWW:
So it wasn’t one of these high drives, was it?
CJW:
No way. No way. Well, one of the reasons he was such a high average
hitter was that he didn’t hit fly balls.
JWW:
Couldn’t catch them?
CJW:
The ones he hit, they couldn’t catch. But otherwise he was a line
drive hitter. And if he had ... he had an odd personality. If he had decided to start hitting to left
field when they put the Ted Williams Shift on, he’d probably have
batted .500.
[End of Part 1]
[End of Part 1]
