Yankee Activist Supports Terrorism and a Blind Boy in Easton

Henry McArdle and several other Irish immigrants came to Easton in the late 1830s and lived in the new Ames Boarding House. He worked at the shovel shops into his seventies and his efforts gave him enough money to buy four houses and bonds in his boss' Union Pacific Railroad. In 1846 his son Henry Junior was born and shortly after 1850 the family moved into their new home at 50 Pond Street, only the second single family residence on that street.

An arrow struck and blinded little Henry when he was nine years old and here our story takes a turn. Luckily for the McArdles, Boston was home for what is now the Perkins School for the Blind, the most progressive institution in the world for educating blind children in the mid-nineteenth century. The name of the school comes from philanthropist Thomas Handasyd Perkins who donated his mansion in South Boston for the site of the original school. Perkins made his money owning ships that brought slaves from Africa and opium to China. The director of the new school was Samuel Gridley Howe who believed that handicapped people should be fully integrated into society, a radical idea at a time when many were often hidden away by their families.

Howe realized that a blind child could learn to play instruments and to sing so musical groups from the school toured the country in the 1830s and 1840s. People were amazed and the school's reputation grew. Little Henry would learn the complex trade of piano tuning during his seven years at the school.

Howe was full of reforming zeal and was an active supporter of abolition, somewhat ironically given his institution's origins. A year after Henry came to the school. Howe met a gentleman who was willing to do almost anything to free the slaves. That man was John Brown, and Howe became a strong financial backer of Brown's attacks on slave holders in Kansas. He and five other prominent Yankees became the secret supporters of Brown's attempt to start a slave revolt by arming them with weapons taken from a raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859. Brown was either completely nuts or uncertain of his success. It seems that he believed that a full scale civil war might be needed to free the slaves and what better way to do that than convince the South that the North supported Brown. Thus, Brown left documents incriminating the "Secret Six" including Howe in his headquarters.

John Brown was hanged. Howe survived the ensuing scandal, and the Civil War began about 18 months later. A group of Easton men in the Twelfth Massachusetts Infantry began to train at Fort Warren. While there they made up a song about John Brown which they sang wherever the Twelfth Massachusetts regiment went. The song was a good soldier's song which talked about "John Brown's body" and "hanging Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree." A refined lady was appalled by the lyrics, but liked the tune and rewrote the song as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." That lady was Julia Ward Howe, the wife of Samuel.

Some lose ends remain. Were the students at the school provided free education or did they have to pay? Could Henry McArdle afford to do this? How did he hear about this school and what made his son special enough to go there? Here's a tantalizing detail. The Secret Six had been radicalized by providing money for abolitionist settlers to go to Kansas and have it voted into the country as a free state. The Emigrant Aid Company was not quite the same thing as supporting a killer like Brown, but the group did provide guns for the settlers to protect themselves from slave owners. Who was another supporter of this group? Easton's very own Oakes Ames. Did Ames know Howe and speak up for the McArdle boy? It wouldn't be surprising to learn this given other stories about Oakes Ames.

Knights of the Air

For many years in the mid-1970s through the late 1980s my main hobby was re-enacting the Revolutionary and then the Civil War. There were lots of parades and lots of explaining to people that the Civil War wasn't the one where we beat the guys in the redcoats, but in between was an invaluable education in how soldiering was conducted in early America. What I learned was that the academic historians often didn't know what they were talking about because the stuff that turned battles around were little nitty-gritty things that didn't get written down in reports.

Naturally I was attracted to the many simulation games that were around in the '70s and '80s as well. I became Randolph High's simulation game club advisor. OK, I became the head of the Dungeons and Dragons Club. I learned important things like never approach an angry dragon from the front which is exactly the opposite of the way to approach horses in the real world (to the front and side).

Then along came computers and the age of simulation took off. A man named Sid Meier invented  Civilization and stuffy historians like me could test out various hypotheses on the processes that drive real events. Meier is now 59 and has a number of other famous games to his credit including a railroad game where you can see if you can build a transcontinental railroad without a variety of stock finangles. You'll quickly develop an appreciation for Oakes Ames with that one. Recently he has developed a game called Ace Patrol that is a simulation of World War I air combat.

Air combat games usually combine battle simulation with a flight simulator. You might not think so, but you live most of your life in a two dimensional world-left and right, backwards and forwards. Flight simulators add the dimension of up and down. That's OK if you are flying a 747 simulator and an air traffic controller is looking out for you. If other guys are flying around trying to shoot you the mechanics get complicated fast. Add in that an IPad has a built in gyroscope that actually allows you to twist and turn it to fly a plane and an old guy like me is not going to learn much about the war in the air in 1917-18 with a typical air combat game.

I really want to learn about this era because my great uncle Fred was one of the first Marine pilots and actually flew at least one combat mission over the Western Front in a DH4, the so-called "Flying Coffin." Enter Sid Meier whose new game combines some of the features of the old time board games with modern computing. You actually get to plot the flight of your plane step by step in a turn based system not in life or death real time. Planes have their own design limitations in climbing, diving, turning, and speed and pilots start with a very limited skill set of maneuvers-not everyone can do an Immelman turn, but they can learn one with experience. So what can a historian learn from a simulation like this? First, the saying that "there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots" is true. Hiding in a cloud bank while waiting for the perfect time to swoop in on a recon mission is much better than fighting your way through the enemy lines. You may never become an ace (five or more confirmed kills including balloons), but you get to do your job day after day. Second, no matter how good a pilot you are inferior aircraft will always do you in. There are certain points early in World War I where German planes are substantially better than those of the Allies, but by the end the tables are turned. The game really gave me something to meditate on as my single German plane took off against a squadron of superior American planes with no hope of victory late in 1918. Third, the simulation shows you that most of the missions performed by the Air Force today were developed in World War I including strategic bombing, strafing ground targets, tactical air superiority missions, and recon. It didn't take the "Knights of the Air" long to move from shooting at each other with shotguns to creating modern air combat. Fourth, the phrase "you can't get there from here" has special meaning in the air as there are many times when a pilot wants to maneuver into a certain position, but can't get the plane to do it. Finally, air combat in World War I was intensely personal. These "canvas falcons" came as close to birds in flight as any machines man has made. They twist and turn around each other, often only a few feet apart, in their attempt to get in position to fire. They are called "dogfights," but in World War I they look more like small birds attacking a crow in flight. Like dragons the best attack position is behind, actually behind and above.

So, a little imagination has gotten me thinking about the experiences of my Uncle Fred. An invaluable aid in updating the family story. Philosophically, I've argued against simulations ever being close enough to the real thing to be considered real. Chaos theory limits the accuracy of weather simulations, the Turing test still tricks computers trying to pass as people, but a good simulation game can stimulate good historical thinking. Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is such a simulation.

A Sad Bird Story

I had attended today's blog to be about the first public meeting of Envision Easton which took place on Wednesday. It was an interesting and very positive event attended by about 70 Eastoners. But a happy story is for another day.

I've been feeding suet to my birds all winter long and have attracted a large number of woodpeckers.
Besides our common Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, I've seem the wonderful Red-bellied Woodpeckers pictured above. My bird feeders are near my driveway and yesterday I pulled in just as the little red-head landed on the suet. Always more nervous than the littler woodpeckers, the bird quickly ate a few bites before flying off with a beak full of suet. Why so nervous? woodpeckers never seem to touch the ground where the loathsome neighborhood cat waits for the unwary and the feeder is pretty safe from the hawks. I didn't think about the obvious until this morning when I realized she must have a nest she needs to get back to.

This morning I came out to go to school and found a Red-bellied woodpecker dead on the street just outside my driveway. Was she somehow killed by that miserable, murderous cat or a force of nature like the hawk and then dropped on the street? Perhaps not. On an early morning food run it looked as if she flew too low and was hit by a car. A terrible sight all beautiful feathers on a crushed body. I stopped to bury her and wonder about her nestlings. Hopefully the other parent can persevere.

What am I becoming that I feel the death of this little bird more than the lives and deaths of men?

Saint Luke had Jesus say "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" Would that it is true although I suppose I'm too old to really believe it.

This Way to the Egress

The title of today's post comes from P. T. Barnum who fooled gullible New Yorkers to leave his often overcrowded museum of curiosities by installing a sign with that sentence. Among many other things New Yorkers apparently couldn't tell an Egress from an Egret. The visit of a Great Egret to Shovel Shop Pond made me think of old P. T. the other day. The Great Egret is an all white relative of the much more common Great Blue Heron.

I always think of pterodactyls when I see a Great Blue in flight, but the Great Egret was a thing of beauty as it took off from Shovel Shop and then flew a big circle over the property. Both the Heron and the Egret were saved by the MBTA. No not the MBTA that needs billion dollar bailouts for poor service and outdated technology. I'm talking about the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Around the turn of the century, the women of America decorated their hats with feathers from birds. The herons grow incredibly long and delicate feathers on their backs during the breeding season so they were shot by the tens of thousands. Dedicated birders fought to get a federal law passed only to see it get shot down by state's rights bird killers who, like our fisherman, believed it was their god given right to drive species into extinction.

The birder's didn't give up and got the Migratory Bird Treaty Act passed in 1918. This included a treaty with Great Britain (acting for Canada). When the enlightened state of Missouri sued to have this law thrown out, the Supreme Court was happy to point out that the treaty power of the federal government trumped the right of Missouri to kill birds. It was a precedent setting case on federal power. Massachusetts own Mr. Justice Holmes used the term "living Constitution" in his decision a view that is the basis for the "loose construction" philosophy of judicial decision making.

Thus, the Egret was protected, and so today it lives on as does the spirit of Barnum. Note that it is Shovel SHOP Pond, but the new development, no doubt to attract the Von Snootens to Easton, insist on calling it the Shovel WORKS.  Apparently Spade Verkstad, Pá Fabrica , or Shovel Mhonarcha, (Swedish, Portuguese, and Irish) were too reflective of the blue collar people who, you know, actually worked there. Let's go all the way and call it the Schaufelwerks from now on. After all we did steal the idea of the folding army shovel from the Germans.

Coming Soon Easton's Newest Restaurant

For those of you who did not make the trek to the fun (but frozen) event at Edwin Keach Park, you missed a great time. Many town groups and businesses were on hand and lots of free gifts were available. It was wonderful to see the park, a great community effort, in such great shape. Just a perfect down home day and a chance to catch up with a number of Edwin's classmates. I think there will be more special days at this site as well as its use as a multi-sport facility

Perhaps the biggest news was a table set up by the couple that will be opening The Farmer's Daughter restaurant on Main Street. This long awaited opening will take place next month. The restaurant will be open for breakfast and lunch. Closed Mondays, I believe they will open at 6 Tuesday through Saturday and 7 on Sunday. Sadly the only samples being handed out yesterday were sample menus, but it looks like we may be in for a real treat.

For example, for breakfast you could start with the Farmer's Choice which is two eggs any style, crispy smashed potatoes and either  bacon, onion and apple sausage or sweet potato turkey hash. Both Huevos Ranchero and Arroz con Huevos add an exotic bit to the menu while the Stonehill is a bagel sandwich with either fried or scrambled eggs and Vermont Cheddar (you can add on more) In the sweet section there are enough offerings to make my blood sugar go off the charts just reading them although I'm imagining the possibility of the Blue Corn Griddle Cakes and a long walk at the Governor Ames Estate. The sample breakfast menu ended with small plates that included smoked salmon with toasted brioche, creme fraiche, capers and fresh dill. There will also be a Quiche of the Day and a Cheese Plate. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Green Eggs and Ham All Grown Up-toasted croissant, fried egg, pesto, crispy prosciutto, slow roasted tomato and baby greens. Then there's the Skinny "Chick" Omelet, but you'll just have to wait for that one.

Lunch will run the gamut from good old fashioned cheeseburgers (from locally sourced beef), and turkey, ham, or veggie sandwiches to more exotic offerings like the Bangkok Wrap, Pulled Pork, and their take on the Cuban. Perhaps most intriguing for a guy who has hated the look and smell of tuna sandwiches there will be a Not Your Mom's Tuna Melt with imported oil preserved tuna, fontina cheese, roasted peppers and salsa verde on pressed sourdough. The salads look good too from the Thai Steak Salad to a Pan Asian Salad that features black quinoa, slaw, edamane, and your choice of several proteins. I have fond memories of a wonderful Salad Nicoise eaten many years ago in Quebec so I'm especially looking forward to the version at the The Farmer's Daughter. If all this wasn't enough, this is only the sample menu remember, more is promised, and the menu notes that you can ask for things off the menu too! Their motto is "if we can make it, we will."

Suddenly Easton is developing a very competitive restaurant scene for the early part of the day. The Farmer's Daughter has huge potential depending on three factors. First, like all restaurants it has to find its niche in the price structure. The other factors are location based. As we all know parking is a problem in North Easton and we will be digging up the streets very soon. If we enjoy the food there we'll have to make a special effort to stop by until foot traffic from the new apartments at Shovel Shop can provide a solid base of every day customers. The owners plan to put up an awning and have a few tables outside bistro fashion, but that may not be possible due to the onerous necessity of putting in a handicapped ramp, the third problem. Doug King has already removed the historic doors from the building to meet handicapped code, but, as the buildings on Main Street get renovated we will be stuck with more and more unsightly ramps unless a historic preservation waiver is granted or a creative alternative like the ones at 100 and 104 Main Street can be devised. So far no luck on a historic waiver which is very sad. Don't get me wrong-I wheeled my Mom around for a couple of years so I know how important access is-but some compromise is needed if our historic downtown is going to add to the "brand" that is Easton.

We also need to remember our excellent other lunch spots like Andrews Cafe. Recently added is the new Slice of Greek across from Stonehill (try their Greek specialties, yum! The Moussaka lunch special is excellent)  and the wonderful Not Just Thaboulle (try their Mid-East specialties, but don't forget their Angus Burger or Grilled Cheese!).  Finally, for those that cross the border for breakfast there is the good old extremely consistent and highly affordable Stonebridge and Back Bay Bagel. Take it from someone who worked in Randolph in the old days-Back Bay Bagel makes great bagels even if you have to have them hollowed out to reduce the carbs. I'd hate to lose any of these spots not to mention my dinner favorites. I'm going to do my part-does anyone want to buy a used stove?

Did Insomnia and a IPad Game Save My Life?

I often doze off in my recliner these days. Last weekend I woke up around 1 am to hear a lawyer informing me that if I took Januvia, a diabetic drug, I was at high risk for pancreatic cancer and getting ripped off by the aforesaid personal injury lawyer. Yipes! I've been on Januvia for several years. Luckily, I had my half year check up on Tuesday so I had a chance to ask my doctor about this. He said he had heard the rumors and had read up on the issue and made calls about it as well. To the best of his knowledge there had been no cases of pancreatic cancer associated with Januvia and that the concern was based on an animal study from a few years back. The problem is that all diabetics are at an increased risk of pancreatitis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the insulin producing gland, as well as pancreatic cancer. Diabetics are at increased risk for everything except getting hit by a bus. All drugs have some risk and Januvia might double your chance of getting pancreatitis from 3 in a 1000 to 6 in a 1000. I've played the horses all my life and never hit a 160 to 1 shot so my doctor and I decided to let things ride for the next six months. That was a particularly important decision because the combination of medicine I was on lowered my A1C score from  7.5 to 7.0 (5.8 is the top end of normal)

Fast forward to the next day. I was on my IPad playing a wonderful game called Stock Wars. The game pits me versus 135,000 other "investors" who buy and sell real stocks using real news stories and play money.  I follow the strategy recommended by Peter Lynch to invest in things you know so I'm heavily into Green Mountain Coffee. I learned that despite buy recommendations from some stock bloggers, an insider had just sold 95,000 shares causing the price to drop. I turned to another app called StockTouch to find an alternate investment. StockTouch follows the top 100 companies in 9 sectors and labels them green for going up and red for going down. We geezers are doing wonders for the Health Care Sector so I clicked on that day's winner Eli Lilly and discovered something very troubling.

StockTouch had included an article about Januvia and its sister drugs. A brand new study from the UCLA school of medicine had just been released this week in the medical journal Diabetes. The study showed how Januvia worked in the pancreas. It worked by stimulating the creation of abnormal cells in the pancreas. Besides that the pancreases of a number of people taking Januvia showed precanerous tumors while those diabetics not taking the pill and the non-diabetic control group showed none of these signs. I faxed this over to my doctor and 24 hours later I was off Januvia and given two months to see if I needed to replace it with insulin. Don't know if the doc was responding to my repeated concern or the new data, but I've been Januvia free for two days. Sadly, I'm also going to be beer and carbohydrate free from now on.

Now here's the thing. I hear it takes two miracles to make a saint. Me finding this article out of all the data on my IPad app is something like a miracle. IPad=Steve Jobs, America's most famous victim of pancreatic cancer. Saint Steve?

Big Event This Saturday

Congratulations to the energetic Meredith Keach and the whole Keach family for organizing a real hometown event for the Grand Opening of the Edwin Keach Memorial Park on Chestnut Street this Saturday starting at 9 am. There will be all sorts of features and activities for both adults and kids with a First Flag Flying Ceremony and Ribbon Cutting at noon. There will also be a number of Easton organizations on hand making this the biggest shindig in town since the Lion’s Club Holiday Festival of Lights.

The Agricultural Commission will have an informational booth for those of you who would like to get a plot at the new Community Gardens on Bay Road. Langwater Farms, Easton largest farm, will be hosting a special planting event for children. Don’t know if you can still purchase a CSA at Langwater, but they will soon be offering top quality organically grown produce at their own Farm Stand on Washington Street.

Information about the 15^th season of The Original Easton Farmers Market, Easton’s first outdoor summer market, will also be available. Oakdale Farms, a major supplier of the Farmers Market for all 15 seasons, will be on hand. Those of you who have missed Marie at the winter market the last couple of weeks will get a chance to talk to her, stock up on her quality home grown produce and purchase a summer CSA.

So Eastoners or is that Eastonites? Come to Edwin Keach Park this Saturday for a great event to kick off the Spring.

Easton Grange has a New Website

Just a few years ago, it looked as if the Easton Grange was about to go out of business. Today with a rapidly growing membership, the group has launched its own website thanks to the efforts of member Dottie Fulginiti.  The Grange blends an “old-timey” atmosphere with a modern commitment to the local agriculture and horticulture, the environment, and the preservation of its historic building.

The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry is the official name for one of the most important progressive organizations in American history. Organized in 1867 to heal the wounds of the Civil War by promoting the common interests of small farmers, North and South. The Grange went on to promote such important reforms as the Interstate Commerce Commission, modern farming practices, and RFD mail service. Perhaps most importantly in an age when women were just beginning to fight for their rights, the Grange was an organization open to both genders.

It’s hard to believe that an organization devoted to farm issues would have found fertile ground here in Shovel Town, but Easton has had a Grange since 1892. In fact, for a long time Easton had two Granges reflecting our own North/South split. Today’s revitalized Grange is focused on saving the old Grange Hall at the corner of Elm and Washington Street where the Lions’ Club has its thrift shop. Besides working to save the Hall, today’s Grange has donated funds to a variety of modern causes like the Easton Food Pantry and a group that provides seeds and training for third world farmers. This year, Grange members are participating in a series of lectures on home farming at the library, opening up a plot at the new Community Gardens at Wheaton Farm, and promoting an event to raise funds for the Cultural Council along with traditional Grange activities like a vegetable judging contest. The produce from the garden plot will be donated to the Easton Food Pantry. If you are interested in a group with a long tradition and modern goals, the Grange might be for you. Check out the new website.

Remembering Ali Hamilton

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My last year of teaching full time I had a U. S. History class that made me wish I was in it, not teaching it. As a teacher I had to maintain way too much decorum when the amazing cast of characters made me want to laugh out loud five times a day. Not a rocket scientist in the bunch, just memorable characters and decent people every one. It ranks near the top of my favorite classes in forty years of teaching.

Allie Hamilton was in that class. Front row, first seat. After her tragic death the other day, many people have noted her constant smile and daft sense of humor. I saw that for 180 classes along with the down moments that are part of being a 16 year old girl. Nothing kept that smile away for long, however. The papers have also noted that Ali was a great friend who always seemed to go out of her way to help her pals. In my class that meant getting herself and her friends into and out of the usual classroom mischief-the humorous gleam in her eye always gave away the fact that something was “up.”

What I remember most about Allie are baseball and the Junior Prom. Allie loved the

Red Sox more than anyone. But it wasn’t blind love, she knew stats and had strong opinions on who should be benched. She knew more about the Sox then the sports obsessed boys in the class and me too! I really loved talking Red Sox with her. 

Since time immemorial Freshmen girls have dressed to impress, but by the time they become Juniors only a major occasion like a sports team dress code will get them out of jeans and an old t-shirt. The girls in Allie’s class were no exception, Allie among them. When the Junior-Senior Prom rolled around in 2008, I was there to chaperone and take pictures for the class. Here’s my picture of the newly elegant Allie all dressed up at the Prom:

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Note the high heels in hand (elegance only lasts so long at 16) and the famous Allie smile.

Despite keeping in touch over the past few years while she worked at Stone Forge and planned her future, that is the way I’ll always remember Allie. Your friends will miss you!

The Animal List

It's Spring whether the weather knows it or not. I'm going to be presenting a "tracking your backyard" feature at the library in June and have been having a fun time learning the difference between tracking guides and the real world. I thought now might be appropriate to sum up a winter's investigation of the mammal life at the Governor Ames Estate.

One problem is that the guides all feature animal tracks and trackways, but the lawns and woods of the Trustees property is only good for tracking under the right snow conditions or in the rare muddy spots. Only in snow are you likely to find a trackway that will tell you about the direction and speed of an animal's travel. Sadly because people illegally let their dogs off leash at the Estate, most trackways are made by lumbering labs.

Here's the animal list and how they were identified
         White-tailed Deer-Visual sighting, tracks, scat
          Gray Squirrel-Sighting, tracks, food remains
          Red Squirrel-Sighting, food remains
          Muskrat-Sighting, tunnels, scat
          Voles-Probably Meadow voles-tunnels under snow
          Coyote-Scat, probable tracks
          Red Fox-Tracks, scent posts, hunting sign
          Domestic Cat-tracks
          Raccoon-tracks
          Weasel-probably Long-tailed-scat
          Skunk-Grub digs

Missing from the list but present are mice and flying squirrels. Possum, mink, and otter are possible visitors whose sign remains to be discovered. I saw no signs of Fishers, the area's largest weasel and increasingly common here, or bobcats, the elusive predator which is known to be breeding in town. We have two fox species in Easton, but other people have actually seen the red fox so we'll put the gray fox in the possible. but not yet category. Birds, butterflies, and dragonflies are very visible which makes them attractive subjects for naturalists. Mammals are part of an invisible world where behavior can only be worked out indirectly from hard to detect signs.


     

Defining Revitalization

Frothingham Hall is a great place to hold a meeting. One of these days I'll remember that's what people are talking about when they tell me the meeting is at the Hall! Last night the new revitalization plan for North Easton was discussed at a public meeting at Frothingham. I, of course, went to the Hall-Oakes Ames Memorial Hall! And then the Town Hall, and next the Library! Luckily for me the plan that was presented was the same 25% complete plan that was presented to the Historical Commission for comment a few months ago. The people who are doing the design work say they are seeking public input before they go forward to finish the plan for a football field length of Main Street. If you missed the meeting you can check out some of the information at the Town website. The rumors that changes are coming to the town website are getting stronger, and it may actually occur before global warming turns Eastondale into beachfront property, but until then there is no excuse for people not to use the plethora of information available there. We have Facebook and Twitter, too.

One of the more progressive members of the Little Peach crowd attended the meeting last night, and gave me a fair summary of the meeting-essentially the same presentation as before the Historical Commission. As a resident of Main Street and a long time Eastoner, he has been attending the many public meetings on North Easton so he is very well informed. I asked him his opinion of revitalization and he expressed some disappointment. "I guess I confused revitalization with restoration", he said. The proposed changes are all reasonable and not radical, but my first reaction to the design was essentially similar. It seems more Main Street USA than historic Easton. OK, to be fair my first comment was "could I be grand marshal of the parade every day at 5 pm?" But remember  I hate change in general.

The restoration/revitalization comment is a good one. Everyone involved with the changes in North Easton sees a restoration of the livelier street scenes of fifty years ago coming as a result of the Shovel Shop project. Perhaps not everyone, in my darker moments I see everyone hopping on the train to go elsewhere and I have heard negative comments about the "EBT card crowd" coming to town and recreating the mean streets of the big city. Things should work out reasonably well-the library and cultural council are doing their best to provide interesting events, the Village is surrounded by more or less attractive parks and walking areas, and we already have the first new business moving in.

The new Master Plan Steering Committee is underway, and there have been lots of talks about "branding." As most of us know Easton has been ranked highly as a livable community due to its open space and history. The developers of the Beacon Project understand this and have made every effort to build a historical brand at the Shovel Shops. Even I'm optimistic that the place will be amazing to look at. Even the signage should look cool-a unique blend of the modern and historic. To encourage other developers and even private homeowners to maximize the value of their buildings in the district the Historical Commission is proposing an expansion of the local historic district. More on that meeting which will be held at the Hall-Oakes Ames Memorial Hall next week in a later post.

I see two issues. One is how to make the revitalization look less generic. In their defense the designers have tried to find every old picture of Main Street possible. Still none of those old shots show the red brick featured all over the current proposal. I hope that as the design develops these issues, some of which are based on legitimate safety issues, can be resolved. Personally, I think they can be if we all make our desires known.

The second and perhaps fatal problem for North Easton is parking. Even improving the current lot, capable of holding 63 cars,  to the north of Main Street won't met the needs of new businesses on  and the increased visits to the cultural and recreational facilities of the village. And then there is the MBTA's myth of a "drop and go" station at the Shovel Shops. Maybe we do need a monorail from Tomorrowland to take care of bringing tourists and T-riders to North Easton.

These are not my usual sarcastic comments about the pretensions of North Easton. I use North Easton as a recreational facility every day whether it's the library, the Historical Society, Frothingham Park or the Governor Ames Estate. Town government is being very open about its plans for North Easton, and it would be a shame if we had to leave the final development of those plans to out-of-towners. Let's all get involved!

There once was a man from Nantucket…

And his name was Reuben Meader. Born in 1795 when Meader was a middle-aged man, he moved here and lived on Main Street. He was a prominent businessman and an ally of the Ames Family. Why anyone would move from Nantucket to Easton is a puzzle, Throw in the fact that future Governor Oliver Ames married a maid from Nantucket, Anna Coffin Ray, in 1860 and you have a mysterious connection between the island and the mainland. Here's a picture of old Reuben:

I was doing some genealogical work to see if there was a connection between Reuben and Anna recently, but that proved futile. It was a very small island and everyone was related to everyone else often with disastrous results. However, something interesting turned up, a "lost" painting of Anna C. Ames. Here's a photo of Anna from around the turn of the century when she opened the Ames Gymnasium (1902) and became the grandmother of our town's successful music and athletic programs

Oliver and Anna had six children including Borderland founder Oakes Ames.  Their third daughter, Susan Eveline married Thomas Taylor. In 1903 Taylor's parents were living or perhaps wintering in Columbia, South Carolina. Anna Ames came for a visit, and Tom Taylor arranged for William Merritt Chase, then probably the most distinguished painter in America, to come for a visit and paint everyone's portrait. A letter reveals that Anna was not happy with this idea and refused to sit for Chase. Undaunted the painter set up an easel in his room and painted her from memory. When nearly complete he showed the painting to Anna who was so charmed that she agreed to sit for the final touches. The painting now resides in a very well appointed museum in Columbia. Unfortunately, the Taylor's portraits are featured in the museum's online catalog so the following picture of Anna is not as large as it could be:
 

 I love the warmer expression of the painting.

Library Experiment This Thursday

The Ames Free Library sponsored over 700 programs last year, This year they are focusing a number of programs (including three of my own in the interests of full disclosure) on boomers. Those are folks born from 1945 to 1960 not jet pilots who have broken the sound barrier. Along with estate planning and how to find your keys (and remember what they're for), the library is trying some very exciting programming.

One of these great ideas is a series on the Philosophy of Film by Professor Ed McGushin of Stonehill. The first, to be held this Thursday at 6:30 in the Main Library, should appeal to film buffs and philosophers of all ages. Professor McGushin will be leading a discussion on the themes in Alfred Hitchcock's great movie, North by Northwest.

The flyer for the discussion mentions "identity, the context of the Cold War, and interrogation of modern life." We'll get back to those in a minute, but I want to let people know that they are NOT showing the movie. We showed this a few years ago at the Hockomock Film Club and it runs for 136 minutes which would leave little time for discussion. You can rush in and borrow the film from the library, which has multiple copies, but you can't get it streaming through Netflix. If you are like me you remember Eva Marie Saint, mistaken identity (again Hitch?), crop duster, Mt. Rushmore, and Eva Marie Saint. So I suggest going to Wikipedia and refreshing your memory about the plot and production. While you are there you might want to check out Hitchcock's 1942 film Saboteur

This one has Bob Cummings running in the opposite direction across the country and ending up on the Statue of Liberty instead of Mt. Rushmore. I'm one of the few who actually prefers the hokie patriotic dialogue of this wartime version to the sophisticated banter of the later film.  The mistaken identity stuff appears in a number of Hitchcock films including the early classic The 39 Steps.

The issue of identity-what makes you you and all its permutations has been a big deal in philosophy since the ancient Greeks argued about the Ship of Theseus, but with today's neuroscience issues of personal identity have come to the fore. You can check out a pretty readable entry on personal identity at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. If you want more you can follow one of the links in the entry to here.  It's always interesting to look at the influence of a time on its film and the Cold War certainly had a huge impact. Cary Grant's gray suit also typified the 1950s. As far as "interrogating modern life," I have no idea what that means; but my first question would be  "Why aren't their more women like Eva Marie Saint today?" And geez, Hitch, if you had made the darned film three years earlier you could have had Grace Kelly!

A Return and a Departure

I haven't posted since my 65th birthday on February 4th. Rather than an AARP eligibility induced depression, I came down with a big case of writer's block. That psychological condition comes from having too much to write and time pressure to do it. I've spent a month and a half doing everything to avoid serious writing although I've been able to spew out the usual job related boilerplate. To avoid writing I turned to basic research only to discover a new topic for a book!

My principal has two stories. One about starfish which I really like, and one about a mule down a well which has the punch line "shake it off and step up." I'm trying to do that by writing a SHORT blog everyday and 250-500 words on each of three projects. A thousand words a day, four pages. Let's see how this works.

I'd like to remember Bernie Lawson who passed away on March 1 in Hingham at age 87. Bernie was a retired Braintree teacher who was a modern day Thoreau. He loved hiking and birding. I met Bernie at Sheep Pasture where he walked several times a week into his early 80s. Some of you may remember Bernie as the man with the hiking poles. Bernie claimed he needed the poles for balance, but he was one of those people who seemed ageless. He was a serious observer of nature and a great steward of Sheep Pasture. Nothing in the natural world slipped by Bernie. I really loved talking about bird sightings with him or checking out his tips for unusual activities or problems. Whether it was tent caterpillars-"Watch the cherry saplings, they love cherry leaves" or the spring warblers Bernie was on top of everything. Bernie tramped the other open spaces in Easton and became a real townie. He was very sad when he finally needed to move into an assisted living facility and couldn't find what he needed here, but it will be OK, he told me, "they have a nature trail to walk in Hingham." Your friends will miss you, Bernie.

Big Doings at the Ames Estate

The recent windstorm took down a good sized white pine in the area to the west of the access road to the house, a reminder of just how much damage a really big storm might do there and in the rest of town. Luckily the tree missed smaller specimen trees in its fall. Not so lucky was a beech tree in the little hemlock beech forest which lost a large branch when hit by falling debris from another pine.

If you've walked the estate in recent days you may have seen a number of trees marked with red ribbon. These are red pine that have been marked for removal. Like many trees on the estate red pine is not native to Easton, but is found further north in Canada. When the 1938 hurricane blew through town, lots of white pine was knocked down. White pine is also susceptible to a bug that causes multiple trunks ruining its timber value. The Ames and probably other property owners in town responded by planting red pine which grows straight and is "self-trimming" meaning side branches tend to fall off quickly making for less knots in the wood. Unknown to anyone, the climate here is wrong for mature red pine which tends to die young. Good foresters are recommending its removal and the Trustees are following this recommendation for the very few red pines on the Governor Ames Estate. Ironically, trees from China are flourishing at the Estate while these visitors from a few hundred miles to the north are perishing.

While I was at the NRT I would always point out the "evergreen" by the pond. When it turned brown in the fall and the needles dropped off, it was a great lesson that nature wasn't always as simple as we'd like. The tree was an American Larch and the Governor Ames Estate has two large versions. You might know the tree as tamarack from the Algonquian "snowshoe tree." The skinny needles of pines, spruces, and hemlocks are adapted to preserve moisture and shed snow in winter conditions, but larches are able to survive in conditions down to -85 degrees Fahrenheit and basically trade off the energy needed to grow needles every year with the water savings of losing them in the fall. How specimen larches will survive in Easton with climate change remains to be seen.

Like everything else regarding trees, the Ames estate always has more. This time its two more species of conifers who loss their leaves annually. The first is a native of southern swamps which can grow here fairly well, the Bald Cypress. Don't know why this one drops its needles, but a bald cypress can live for over a thousand years making it one of the longest lived trees in the east. The other shedding conifer is the Dawn Redwood. There are a couple of them by the little pond behind the mansion. They have a reputation for being fast growing and their size on the Ames estate proves that since this living fossil was only rediscovered in a village in Sichuan, China in 1944. The smallest of the three families of redwoods it "only" grows to 200 feet. How did these trees get here? In 1948 the Arnold Arboretum sent an expedition to that Chinese village to gather seeds, and one can imagine Oakes Ames of Borderland getting a few of those seeds.

The Ames estate is not the wildlife paradise that the larger Sheep Pasture is. Maggie, the wonder dog, has discovered coyote and weasel scat only once each. Tracks in the snow have been mostly gray squirrels although both red squirrels and chipmunks have been seen on the estate. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the estate also has a fox. Yesterday Maggie stopped suddenly by the little pond and gave me her check this out look. A glance showed tracks in the snow on the icy pond. Leaning over to check out the tracks, I caught the skunky smell of fox urine. The fox had marked a tuft of grass with scent as she left the pond. I say she because my first tracking adventure found a mark in the snow where the fox had not lifted its leg. Turns out that both genders can pee in as many as twelve different positions depending on whether they want to leave a scent in a high or low position. Must mean something to the foxes and probably to Maggie who has managed to trick out the fox's hunting route on the property.

Moving to the other side of the pond, we found where the fox jumped onto the ice. On the same side of the pond, but not connected to the fox trail was a spot where someone's pet dog had jumped onto the pond and slid on the ice. We won't have foxes very long if people continue to believe that the all dogs must be leashed rule doesn't apply to them. In fact, I had someone tell we last week that their Lab running around off leash had chased the fox from its resting spot in the hollow of one of the dawn redwoods. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

An Easton Congregation and Its Award Winning Church

St. Marks Episcopal Church on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Center Street won the Easton Historical Commission‘s Clement Briggs Award last week. The award goes to the property owner who has done something out-of-the ordinary to preserve a historic property. Clement Briggs , our first English settler, built the first European style home in town along the banks of the Queset in Eastondale.

The historic church’s congregation has worked hard over many years to maintain this little gem, and in 2012 a particularly nice job of repainting their building in a two-toned Victorian style caught the eye of Historical Commissioners. What the Historical Commission discovered at its awards ceremony was an inspiring story of perseverance well worth sharing.

The story begins next door to the church lot on Center Street where sometime between 1889 and 1891 Samuel Judson Howe built “Sunnyside” the large house that is today 89 Center Street. Howe was born in Chatham in 1845. Like many Cape people, Samuel’s father mixed farming with the sea. The Howe family moved to Middleborough in the 1850s, and it was there that young Samuel met and married Susan Abby Sanford  in 1866. By 1870 both Samuel and his father were listed as sea captains in the census, and at some point Samuel became a captain in the United States Revenue Service, a precursor of the Coast Guard. Howe, a devout Baptist lived at Sunnyside until his death in July, 1917 and his wife continued there into the 1920s.

Next to Sunnyside were two small lots that were part of a subdivision set out by Lemuel K. Wilbur and Josiah Goward in 1890. Howe bought these lots in May,1892, and in June, 1893 donated them to the First Baptist Church of Easton.  The new church was completed by 1895 in the simple, but elegant late 19^th century  version of the Queen Anne style. A recent historical survey calls the church an “intact and distinctive example of late 19^th century church building in North Easton” and “an important architectural and cultural landmark in the town.”

The Howes were leading members of the new church, but unfortunately, as the original members of the church faded away, the younger generation couldn’t keep up its financial obligations. In 1909 the members deeded the church to the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society which continued to own the property until 1928.

Meanwhile, on February 13, 1916 a group of Episcopalians met in a private home in  North Easton to participate in a service led by Reverend W. W. Love. The service was so well received that the little group decided to establish themselves as St. Mark’s Mission and to rent Lake’s Hall, a small room above Lake’s Store on Main Street at the northwest corner of Mechanic Street. The group met there until October 1926 when it began to rent the Baptist Church on Center Street. The Baptist Society sold the church to three trustees who were to “hold and manage” the property for St. Marks. The church was consecrated in May, 1928 and the trustees soon transferred title to the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts with the condition that the building be used for “a church, chapel, or rectory” for Episcopalians.

Always a small congregation, the people of St. Marks have had to work hard to carry out the mission of their church and to preserve their beautiful building. All went well for fifteen years until Halloween night 1943 when around 9:30 P. M. a fire destroyed most of the interior of the building. Giving the date suspicion arose that the fire might have been caused by a prank gone awry, but close inspection pointed to defective electric switches as the cause of the disaster.

With damages of $9,000 in 1943 dollars a lesser congregation might have given up on the building, but the frame was sound and the people got to work. Five local churches offered help, and the congregation met at the Swedish Lutheran Church on Williams Street for eighteen months. Professionals restored the damaged structure while the men of the church cleaned and repainted the sanctuary. Services resumed in the spring of 1945. The beams in the roof still bear the scorch marks of the great fire.

With the building structurally sound and usable the next decade saw a complete renovation of the interior often through gifts and memorials. The sacristy was restored and a new organ added. A new altar, public lectern, chancel rail, prayer desks, vases, and altar hangings all were added during this time. The exterior required continued maintenance, of course, but the only major change was the replacement of old windows.  In 1952 Sunnyside was acquired as a rectory and parish hall. A decade later the barn on the property was converted into a parish center with Sunday school rooms in the basement.

Throughout the 1960s membership grew, and the congregation made many small improvements to the property. The decades of the ‘70s and ‘80s saw a decline in membership, but the congregation remained committed to maintaining its building. During this time Sunnyside was sold to create an endowment to maintain the church building.

The mid 1980s marked a positive turn for the little congregation. The undercroft of the church was renovated with a kitchen, bathroom, and meeting space added. The members then met in the undercroft while the sanctuary was restored and an office and sacristy added. Once again these changes did not affect the buildings lovely exterior.

An exterior change did occur in the new millennium.  A revived congregation used the undercroft for many charitable and community projects, but it only had a single exit making it dangerous in case of fire. Granted parish status for the first time by the annual Diocesan Convention in 2001, the congregation was able to receive a small loan from the diocese. With the loan and a lot of “sweat equity” from the members a second exit was added, and the building was brought up to code.

Still, the congregation is a small one with a strong commitment to charitable work including support for HUGS II and a program for providing backpacks filled with school supplies for kids in need so financing even general maintenance requires creative thinking. At one point prisoners on work release painted the church, but by 2012 the building needed a new scrapping and paint job. Money was again in short supply. In fact, the job was likely to be postponed until a call was placed to Painter’s Pride in Framingham, a painting company that specializes in churches and other large projects. The owner, Bud Killam, visited the church even though he was told it was unlikely the church could afford his services. Mr. Killam, a fellow Episcopalian, fell in love with the little building and decided to donate a painting crew for a week. Church women banded together to feed the crew who worked through Holy Week 2012. Mr. Killam had the idea to add the golden sunburst in the gable for a touch of Victorian splendor. That sunburst attracted the eyes of the Historical Commission, but it was the congregation’s dedication to preserving this little gem through decades of good times and bad that proved the choice for this year’s Briggs Award winner was one of the best ever.

Painter’s Pride provides free consultations for churches, senior centers, and other large painting jobs. Mr. Killam can be reached at 1-800-600-6472 or bkillam@painterspride.net.

Carne no Espeto

Carne no Espeto is known around these parts as meat on a stick, a direct translation. It is the Portuguese version of Shish Kebab, but the stick is about all the two dishes share in common. Portuguese cuisine is one of the great neglected cuisines of Europe. It first appeared in Massachusetts on the South Coast with Portuguese fisherman before the Revolution, and we are very lucky this is one of the few places in America where it is available.

A Manuel DaSilvia or DaSilva enlisted for Easton in the Revolution and was among our longest serving men. It's doubtful that he actually lived in town, however, since he never shows up on tax records after the war. For some reason Easton wasn't an attractive destination for Portuguese immigrants for a long time. The 1885 state census listed only a handful of Portuguese in Easton while Raynham and Stoughton had large numbers. Farms in Raynham and shoe shops in Stoughton may have been more attractive to these immigrants, but by and just after the turn-of-the 20th century the Portuguese joined the Irish and the Swedes as one of Easton's largest immigrant groups.

The families that came to Easton or perhaps just the males in those families brought with them an excellent marinade for barbecued Carne no Espeto. It became a specialty, a famous delicacy served at ethnic and family events throughout town. It was delicious and served with great pride and a degree of secrecy.

Now at Oliver Ames, the American History classes always did a "Your Immigrant Ancestor" project where students brought in traditional foods. Even warmed up meat on a stick was delicious, but the recipe was still a secret. Heck, in my classes I even added a rule that a recipe had to accompany each dish, you know in case someone had a nut allergy, wink, wink, but still meat on a stick was "oh it's just salt and pepper." Wrong there was more to that recipe, I could taste it.

I made it a crusade to get a real authentic Easton recipe without cheating and using the Internet. It was actually easier to find out who joined the KKK back in the 1920s than to get a recipe for meat on a stick. My attorney knows the damn recipe, but even under the strictures of attorney-client privilege I couldn't weasel the recipe out of him. Things looked grim for years, but I still wouldn't cheat and turn to the 'Net.

Then two weeks ago I was in the Stoughton Bakery, a bastion of wonderful Portuguese baked goods. While waiting for an order of shrimp cakes, I noticed a bag of salt on a shelf. Closer inspection revealed a Gonsalves product labelled "Carne no Espeto." The fine print noted it was for shish kebab Madiera style. Meat on a stick! It had an ingredient list. I bought the bag and marinated some steak tips. It was the real deal.

It actually is mostly "just salt and pepper." Two kinds of pepper: the everyday black stuff and red pepper flakes. I've learned since that most people use American red pepper flakes which is made from cayenne peppers, but that there is a Portuguese pepper (pimenta muida) that is traditional. Along with the salt and pepper, there was garlic powder. Homemade versions may use crushed fresh garlic, lots of garlic. The final and very surprising ingredient was crushed bay leaf. I never would have gotten that.

I happened to mention my find to a Portuguese immigrant who moved to Easton from Stoughton and who is apparently not bound by the secret death curse for talking about the marinade. She confirmed the ingredients on the bag and added that there is a wet and dry version of the marinade. You don't use it like an American style dry rub because the meat would be too salty. In the old days the meat was rubbed and then was brushed off before cooking. Today you can shake it with the meat in a plastic bag and brush off the excess before barbecuing. The homemade wet marinade contains red wine vinegar with all the dry ingredients mixed in.

How much marinade do you need? A wet version from the Internet (I finally looked) uses a quarter cup of red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of red pepper, and "liberal amounts" of the other ingredients for two pounds of beef tips. A dry version starts the base with 6 tablespoons of cayenne for five pounds of beef. All recommend an overnight marinade. This probably comes from the old days when the vinegar and salt would be needed to soften up tough cuts of beef. A few hours in the fridge seems to work as well flavorwise. No Internet recipe mentions the bay leaves-the secret ingredient or the one that makes the mix "Madiera Style?" Who knows, but if you don't want to mix it yourself, it's there on the shelf in a really wonderful ethnic bakery. Try the pastel de nata, the famous little custard tart that Portuguese mariners have spread to every corner of the world, while you're there.

Amazing New Idea at the Library!

Halftime of the Patriots game, and I had to go to a dinner at the Library. Not just any dinner, but a jacket and tie dinner. This was a very special special occasion because the library was announcing its plans for the Creative Commons at Queset House. Rumors of a new idea had been circulating for months but what was a Creative Commons?

As more folks are learning every day, the Library is the busiest place in Easton.  Various groups meet there weekly and hundreds of programs take place annually. Also, I’ve visited libraries in Stoughton, Raynham, Mansfield, and Norton recently and I can tell you that, while those are all excellent libraries, the friendliest and most helpful staff is located right here in Easton.

The new library makes use of the old space gloriously and the Italian Garden is becoming a must see destination with plans for more work this summer. Queset House, the other part of the library campus, has lagged a little behind the other developments, but now it is set to take off and lift our library even further beyond other small libraries in Massachusetts.

What is a Creative Commons? You’ll soon be seeing a trifold that explains it in detail soon, but the idea is to build a space where people of all ages can use new technology and old fashioned networking to spark a creative renaissance in Easton.  The slogan is “Classic Exterior, Savvy Interior.” One of the great thrills of the main library building is having modern library services in an extraordinary building that is a pleasure to visit. At the Creative Commons state-of-the-art media will be housed in a beautifully restored,  elegant 19^th century mansion.

Each room will be a module in a site designed to encourage creativity and collaboration. There will be a recording studio, a lab devoted to digital imaging, and a studio for video editing. Creativity needs more than media and the Creative Commons has set aside a room for craft activities, two meeting rooms with TV capability, and a quiet reading area. While I love the technological whiz bang, my favorite room concept is using the house’s original library as the quiet area with the books from the library’s original collection lining the shelves. The modular idea carries through into the old dining room that can easily be converted into a sophisticated new dining room or a high tech meeting area.

The point of this grand idea is to get you, dear reader, to be a media creator not just a consumer. You’ll be able to record family stories, convert old photos to digital ones and retouch the wear and tear of the ages, design a color poster or piece of original digital art, build a website, write an ebook, or simply host a meeting of your favorite group. Young people will be able to work on multimedia school projects. And, something dear to my historian’s heart, you’ll be able to add your reminiscences and photos to the library catalog making them available to future residents.  And, using excitedly bad sentence structure once more, this will be a collaboration, a sharing of ideas, concepts and skills between people of all ages. The Creative Commons at Queset is an opportunity to build a true “artist’s” colony right here in Easton, and you can be the artist!

Neighbors, don’t expect the landscaping at my house to improve, I’ve gone to the Creative Commons at Queset!

You can learn more and find out how to participate by contacting Uma Hiremath at uhiremath@easton.ma.us or Assistant Director Jason Bloom at jbloom@easton.ma.us.

Bread

I love all kinds of bread. I prefer it to potato, rice, or even pasta. I'd have bread at every meal, and so when the Easton area is full of good bread, I have to watch my carbs!

It's been a long time since I tasted the incredibly dull taste of Wonder Bread, but I ate a lot of peanut butter and fluff sandwiches or peanut butter and banana sandwiches when I was a kid. Today, the supermarkets are filled with much more healthy choices like the offerings of the "When Pigs Fly" bakery in Maine that bakes several hearty whole grain breads like Anadama Bread or Pumpernickel. The name Anadama alleged originated in New England when a husband came home to find that his wife was off gallivanting and hadn't made the bread-"Anna Damn her" bread was what the husband threw together.

Even regular bakers like Arnold put out solid healthy non-white choices. Sadly my "favorite" bread from Arnold are those flats that you can slap around a turkey burger and pretend you are eating a roll. At least they come in whole wheat and multigrain varieties.

Real bread lately has come from the Farmer's Market. This summer O'Brien's Bakery from Quincy, the long time Easton Farmer's Market champ had to duke it out with Bridgewater Village Bakery aka The Sourdough Lady. Despite O'Briens offering every bread variety under the sun, the artisanal sourdough was the hands down winner with the customers. At the indoor Winter Market at Simpson Springs there are often three bakers on site. The great breads and confections from Bridgewater come in their infinite variety, but Linda S. from Pond Street has found her niche with scones, cookies, and fudge. A new baker from Norton has also come in with non-sourdough artisan breads; the one loaf of rosemary cheese bread I tried was great!

The problem with artisanal breads is they often come in shapes that are not sandwich optimal. Easton has a solution for that at Andrews Cafe. One of my three New Year's resolutions was to eat at Andrews Cafe at least once a week.  I love their sandwiches-simple, healthy, excellent, with a great price and a cookie for dessert (if you can stay away from their amazing blondies). The bread is a highlight not a sidelight in Andrew's sandwiches. Anyway after my sandwich I bought a loaf of rye bread to take home. Their bread makes great toast whether its multigrain, Jewish rye, pumpernickel, or marble rye (my favorite).

I'm not going to forget two out of town places although I don't go to either one for bread. One is Back Bay Bay Bagel. Now I taught in Randolph when the population was heavily Jewish so I know my bagels as well as knishes, tsimmes and other fabulous food. My Randolph friends and I agree that Back Bay makes the best bagels in the area surpassing the late and somewhat lamented Zeppy's in Randolph.

In exotic Stoughton there is the Stoughton Bakery right next to the train station. I've discovered the back way to this place that avoids the Square, and it is becoming a weekend trip tradition. Recently reviewed in the Globe, it features all sorts of baked goods with a Portuguese flair. They make a linguica roll that is really great and a little fried "cake" that has shrimp in a white sauce inside. My favorite is a guilty pleasure for a diabetic-a sweet custard in a small pastry cup. While waiting for my shimp cake the other day I was looking around the shop when I discovered a bag of seasoning. Tune in tomorrow to discover how a decades long quest to get the secret recipe for Portuguese meat on a stick finally was realized. Take that you Freitas, Pires, and Gomes families!

Radio Sidekicks 2

 Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid both began life as rough characters in turn-of-the twentieth century short stories. Cassidy was a tough, but law abiding cowboy who got his name through an injury in his first story. The Cisco Kid was actually a villain in an O. Henry story. In the 1930's actor William Boyd began to star in a series of 66 B-westerns loosely based on the Cassidy character. "Loosely based" means the original author of the stories fainted at a showing of the first film! The hero Cassidy had two sidekicks in the films: a young headstrong and romantic cowboy and a bumbling older cowboy who provided comic relief. The job of the young sidekick was to initiate the plot by getting involved with a girl or some problem which the wiser, older (so old he had white hair!) Hopalong would solve. The older sidekick was a not-to-bright bumbler who sometimes got into trouble and had to be rescued or made some funny mistake that got Hoppy into trouble. For most of the films Andy Clyde, a Scottish character actor who specialized in rural American accents, played California Carlson,  the older sidekick.

When the market for B-movies faded, Boyd got the brilliant idea of buying up the rights to the films and cutting them down for use in the new medium of TV. Appearing in 1949 Hopalong Cassidy became the first TV western and a megahit. Interestingly, unlike the Lone Ranger which aired on radio for years before making the jump to TV, the Hopalong Cassidy radio show was a spin off of the TV series. Wonder if anyone saw the handwriting on the wall with that although radio westerns lasted another decade after the 1950 debut of Hopalong.

Going from a B-movie to an hour TV show to a half hour radio show meant something had to give and what gave was the young sidekick. California Carlson became the only sidekick. That left room for some character development for Clyde's character. We learn that the nickname came when he bought a gold mine in California that turned out to be in the middle of San Francisco Bay. We learn that a series of spinsters have tried to land the commitment phobic Carlson and that occasionally these become the basis for an episode. We also discover that Carlson is a bottomless pit that needs to be filled with steak, bacon, beans, and flapjacks. As the not-to-bright sidekick Carlson gets to hear Cassidy advance the plot with explanations, an ancient radio story device. Like Tonto Carlson is occasionally sent off with messages to deliver, but unlike the noble Indian Carlson is often made to look foolish or backwoodsy. Despite his bumbling, he always has Hoppy's back in a gunfight.

If you're looking for a storyline for a new TV show, you could do worse than a variation on Hoppy and California. Imagine two retired grandfathers roaming the country in an RV. One a retired middle management type with a famous reputation and the other his company's former janitor or better yet former company trucker with a girlfriend in every truck stop. Each week they roll into another crime scene or swindle or broken family relationship that they fix in the 46 minutes of a typical network show.

As the last of the radio westerns rolled out, they became grittier and more realistic just like the great hour long westerns that ended the era on TV. Gunsmoke is probably the best example. The radio show usually began with the Marshall Dillon character telling us about the lonely life of the frontier marshall, but, while Dillon often acted alone, he had Doc, Miss Kitty, and Chester as continuing characters. Chester, of course, was the bumbling California Carlson type, but in Gunsmoke his miscues had real consequences and were seldom used for comic relief in this grim series. In one instance, a mistake by Chester lets two killers escape, permanantly, with Marshall Dillon left totally exasperated.

 Sidekicks who never made it out of the third grade don't offend if they are All-American dimwits, but when they are ethnic characters things change at least for us today. The radio versions of the Cisco Kid and his sidekick Pancho were played by American not Latino actors. While Cisco is presented as very bright, charismatic, and capable, his sidekick is the dumbest on radio. Pancho is so dumb that he nearly gets Cisco killed on many occasions. One comes to mind where Pancho and Cisco were in disguise but Pancho can't learn to call Cisco anything but Cisco. The banditos, slightly less dumb than Pancho pick up, on this and capture the pair. Add in Pancho's stories about his fat and lazy Mexican relatives, and you have a very offensive mix. Interestingly, the radio show is still widely available while television versions of the equally offensive (this time to African Americans) Amos and Andy are hard to come by. The Amos and Andy radio show was not recorded so all but one or two episodes are thankfully lost to history. Even one of the last radio westerns recorded at the height of the early Civil Rights Movement, Have Gun, Will Travel, has stereotypical Asian sidekicks in Hey Boy and Miss Wong, two employees of the hotel where the mysterious hero Paladin makes his home.

For better and worse, radio westerns with their heroes and sidekicks reflect the time they were made. Despite their flaws, the best of them-the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gunsmoke among the ones we've discussed and Fort Laramie among the many we haven't still provide better entertainment than the repetitious  bickering of sports radio or the drug addled babbling of Feel the Rush Limbaugh.
Podcasts of many genres of old time radio are readily available at ITunes.

Sidekick 1

Now that Joe Biden has apparently pulled us back from the fiscal cliff perhaps its time to write an appreciation for the Wild West sidekick. You know the comic relief that occasionally bails out the gun toting hero. Here I have to confess my love of old time radio-those stories that filled the airwaves from the 1930s into the 1960s. My favorite genre is the Western where in the days before Brokeback Mountain every hero rode the range with a male sidekick without the hint of a bromance. Interestingly, many of the radio detectives also had sidekicks, but they were often dames. There's a limit to how dumb you can make a dame in a radio show (Gracie Allen excepted), but there is no limit to the stupidity of many western sidekicks.

Now before you send an ambulance to take me to the rest home, I want to let everyone know I'm a child of the dawn of TV, and I first met these "legends of the Old West" on TV not radio. That makes me old enough!

Long days and nights on the trail aside, the radio sidekick existed as a plot device. When Hoppy or Cisco or Marshall Dillon was planning something California, Pancho, or Chester was there to hear his ideas in our stead. The most iconic sidekick was, of course, the Lone Ranger's Tonto. Wikipedia informs us Tonto started working with the Ranger in the twelfth episode of the radio show back in 1933. Two origin stories emerged over the years. In the first the Ranger saved Tonto's life, in the Revised Standard Version (affirmed by TV) Tonto stumbled upon the wounded Ranger after the deadly ambush by Butch Cavendish that wiped out an entire squad of Texas Rangers. Just to keep the questions down it was duly noted that the Ranger had saved Tonto's life when he was a youth or a Ute, I'm not sure-you know about Tonto's difficulty with English.

Actually Tonto was supposed to be a member of the Potawatami tribe from Michigan. It just happens that the station owner where the Lone Ranger first aired was a Michigan native who claimed to have learned a little Potawatami back in the day. Rumor also has it that the show's first director's father-in-law owned a kids camp named Camp Kee Mo Sah Bee. Tonto supposedly meant "wild one" in Potawatami while Kee Mo Sah Bee meant "faithful scout."

After the end of the Ranger's run on TV, political correctness brought a microscope to these two terms. Tonto in Spanish means "dumb" while Kee Mo Sah Bee can be translated as "One who knows." When the Ranger was dubbed into Spanish Tonto became Toro ("bull"). In the TV series I don't remember the Ranger calling Tonto Kee Mo Sah Bee, but it happens in the radio show all the time. So Tonto is the "one who knows."  Finally, it's hard to believe that people running a radio station in Michigan in the 1930's would be cool enough to make jokes in Spanish when there were French Canadians nearby to make fun of.

Now General Phil Sheridan made that unfortunate statement about good dead Indians, but for most Easterners of the '30s good Indians were stoic, laconic people with great pride and a connection to nature. The radio writers couldn't show a laconic sidekick so they invented Tonto speak: "Him, no good, Kee Mo Sah Bee. Me go, now." Since throughout the radio show the character of Tonto was played by an English actor named John Todd, there is a certain irony in Tonto's speaking problems.

As a character Tonto is not the comic relief in the plot like many sidekicks. His role is to be the avatar for the Ranger in situations where that foolish mask might raise suspicions and the writers don't want to bother putting the hero into his old prospector disguise. Tonto goes to town, Tonto carries messages to the sheriff or the ranchers, or the nesters. Often Tonto's skills save the ranger or at least advance the plot. If only Todd had been allowed to speak in an English accent, Tonto would have an honored place as one of the first minority characters to be presented as a positive rather than a negative stereotype. Remember stereotypes have a long history in theater as "stock characters."

By the way, the furry friend at my feet looking for breakfast would like to point out that her favorite sidekick is Sergeant Preston's wonder dog King ("On King, On You Huskies"), and, as a bona fide wonder dog herself, she is deeply offended with King's often insightful barks and growls being dubbed by actors with terrible accents.

More about King, California, Pancho, and Chester in the next post.