The Town Coffee Committee met last Wednesday as we do every week, though we have acquired a new moniker, the “ROMEOs” (Retired Old Men Eating Out). It was given to us by a group of the fairer sex who have observed our deliberations from time to time. Anyway, while we continue to solve the town’s and the world’s many problems, we mostly reminisce. Boy, do we reminisce! That may be because we are all so old that we can’t remember what we ate for breakfast yesterday morning, we can remember where we were and who we were with sixty years ago. However, one member remembers the name of every person he has ever met. I am sure you probably don’t care a whit, but I thought I would share a few of my favorite personal remembrances about growing up in our little hamlet while I can still remember them.
My father and I and my uncles would go up to Bill Apperson’s sawmill on Crystal Spring Road and collect pine slabs. We’d haul them to my grandmother’s house on what is now Driscall Lane. There was a rusty old gasoline powered saw with a blade about two feet in diameter set up behind her barn where the men would spend all day cutting the slabs up into stove length. My job was to stack the slabs up in rows inside the little barn near the house.
Grandma would burn the slabs all winter long in the giant pot-belly stove which sat in the middle of the “heater room” and use them in the cooking stove in the kitchen. When we were done the men would sit around and drink Dawson’s beer out of stubby glass bottles and I’d get to take a swig of beer.
Speaking of drinking, back in the 50’s state law prohibited the sale of retail liquor on Sundays. Dad would go up to Freddie Trocchi’s package store on Sunday afternoons, sneak into the back door to buy a fifth of Corby’s whiskey. Freddie would do brisk business on Sundays. Other Sundays we’d get up early and go to 5am mass at St. Anthony’s church. It lasted twenty minutes so the “fishermen” could get out early, then we’d go to the Pilot House diner for a real breakfast of bacon and eggs. Afterward he’d go to Seaport Pharmacy to get his liquor. Back then pharmacies had to hide their “medicinal” liquor behind a curtain on Sundays. Dad would sit at the soda fountain having a coffee and the pharmacist (who will remain nameless, lest the statute of limitations has not expired) would sneak out a bottle in a plain paper bag that dad would quickly put in his coat pocket, finish his coffee and scram out the back door, scamper across North St. to our back door. Then he and I would visit my uncles who lived up on Cathaway Lane near my grandmother. They’d drink shots until the bottle was empty and then we’d go home for lunch. I’d drive home. I guess I was the designated driver even at 13!
One Sunday old Father Damian, (who was rumored put a good bit of liquor away in his own right and once set the altar curtain on fire with a candle) told the parishioners that the church had no money and he didn’t want to hear a sound when the collection basket got passed. The basket passed up and down the aisle and when it arrived back at the altar it was empty!
Enough about the booze. When I was in the eighth grade, I recited the Gettysburg address in front of the library on Memorial Day. I was the only Explorer Scout in town, so I got to wear my uniform and march at the head of the parade with the veterans. Being the only Explorer wasn’t much fun. Once I camped overnight with the younger Boy Scouts at Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven. We had those old canvas army surplus tents. It poured rain the whole time. We woke up in the morning soaking wet. That was when I realized I wasn’t much of an outdoorsman.
If you are wondering why I wrote this column…I can’t remember.
Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
By Dick Morgado