Forty-Six Maple Street: Recollections of a Stoneham Lad

By Norman S. Reed

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462868544

Norman S. Reed

Norman S. Reed was born on July 18, 1923 in Newton Upper Falls, MA. The family, two boys and two girls, lived in Woburn and West Medford for a short time before moving to Stoneham, he considered his home town. He volunteered for the United States Army Air Force June 25, 1942, served 16 months overseas in Great Britain and received his discharge September 28, 1945, returning home. After a few odd jobs, he moved to California, then Flint, Michigan, where he worked for General Motors, Buick Division for three years, then suddenly left and returned to Boston, MA, signing up through the VA to attend Boston University for four years under P.L. 16, graduating in 1956 with a degree in Geography. He went to work for the U.S. Geological Survey for seventeen years, then retired and moved to N. Carolina where he bought a house, then sold it some years later and moved to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, where he resides in the house he bought for his parents about 1953. Mr. Reed has traveled the world over, using up 3-1/2 passports, but now relaxes on the Vineyard where he spends his time reading non-fiction, metal detecting and pursuing his favorite hobby: water coloring.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

LIFE BEGINS IN WEST MEDFORD

‘It appears of record’ is the way my birth certificate begins, but I find it much more enjoyable to say, and in a more illustrative sense, that according to my dear mother and her ‘record’, I came into this world about two-thirty of a hot July afternoon, the eighteenth of July to be exact, in this midst of a terrible thunderstorm that she remembers to this day.

In the family album there are a few snapshots of me in a light brown, what appears to be a hand-knitted suit, or so it seems, standing with my father near a stroller, and another one of me looking into a fishbowl. According to my mother, I couldn’t keep my hands out of it!

It was about this tender age of a few months, that I disappeared one day from my usual romping on the floor in the hallway. After a brief moment of looking around, hearing a noise at the top of the stairs, she glanced up, and there I was. I had managed to drag myself to the very top, my mother considering this not a small feat at the time.

We lived in several small towns for varying lengths of time before arriving at seventy-two Clewley Road, Medford. Each time we packed up, we left some precious bits of furniture behind us, not wanting to, but because we couldn’t afford to move it to our new home.

Money was quite dear in those times, in the late twenties, and as we left for a new abode, we left a little bit of us behind to disappear in the dust of time, in the shape of something too heavy to accompany us due to the cost of transporting the goods.

The few antiques, and they would be considered as such today, that were abandoned, be it a lamp, vase or umbrella-stand, would bring a pretty penny today on the auction block.

However, God was with us, and luck was on our side, as we were a family able to stay together through much adversity, separated only for a few brief times when mother was called home to England for a visit or some sickness in the family.

On those occasions, my brother and I would be boarded out with some kind neighbour, and never found ourselves wanting of the simple necessities of life such as a warm bed and meals, and in the company of the most congenial of folks. Always, there was a kind and understanding hand on our shoulder, be it neighbour or parent, keeping us on a true and righteous path.

I say life begins in West Medford due to my not being fortunate enough to remember some of my earliest days of youth elsewhere in the surrounding area of Boston.

This pitiful feeling of days lost had been brought home to me quite forcefully during my youth by my brother Bob. Sitting in the parlour on a Sunday afternoon, listening to the radio, or reading the funnies, we would play this little game of trying to see how far back we could reach in our memory to recall certain trivial events, and he would suddenly stiffen up a bit, and giving me a slightly disgusted look, good-naturedly of course, as he was always known to be, he would blurt out, ‘For Pete’s sake, don’t you remember the time we used to play in the hen-house at Mrs. Farr’s in Woburn?!’ I could do no more than just sit there shaking my head, and muttering ‘no’ in a voice a little upset with myself. He would continue: ‘Whenever Mom wanted to know where you were, she would hesitate for a moment, then go straight to the chicken-yard!’

Even at that early age, I apparently had an interest in fowl, their feathers of various hues and colours fascinated me then as they do now. I have always associated a small band of chickens in the backyard of a home, pecking at the scraps of garbage thrown into the pen from the table, and letting them out to partake of the fresh grass and to run about a bit, as a feeling of serenity, and being a bit closer to nature. No, I don’t remember that chicken-yard, and it leaves an empty feeling in my heart to this day.

The only friendships that I recall were two brothers, John and James, who lived not too far from us. In visiting with them one day, the lady of the house gave me a large doughnut filled with jelly. It was the most delicious thing to me at the time, and to this day I can recall biting into it, and the jelly oozing out all over my fingers!

Such tender remembrances of tiny, supposedly unimportant happenings in one’s life, tucked in the back of the mind, seemingly forgotten, will come back with a sudden force, though a tender one, and you find yourself wondering about everything else that happened in the neighbourhood of those care-free days.

Across the street lived an Italian family, the DeBiases, who were in the tailoring business, and occasionally my father would stop by for a sip of homemade wine with them, and before we left the neighbourhood, Mr. DeBiase made my father a suit of tweed material that my mother had brought back from England, and it must have been a magnificent one, as he would remark about it from time to time, and how it ‘fitted him like a glove!’ My father would put his ash-cans out for collection in the wee hours of the morning, and this apparently was the way that Mr. DeBiase tried to show his appreciation. I cannot recall the suit, but I remember the respect and admiration that shone in my father’s eyes whenever someone years later would mention the DeBiases.

We lived in a two-story wooden frame house with a staircase in the back to the second floor; just above us lived a tall thin girl named Frances. To this day, I can hear her mother shouting ‘Frances’ in a voice loud enough to be heard several blocks away, and then some. She used to take the flowers from our garden, and absolutely deny it. Her mother said that she never lied, and our poor mother had some very unpleasant times over this.

Over the years I have searched my mind, trying to recall some little happening prior to our leaving West Medford, but aside from what I have put down, the only other event that seems to loom in front of me as thrilling and quite dangerous was the time that two work-horses, apparently frightened by something, escaped from their stable and raced down the street. The sight was quite awesome to a young lad, and with the clatter of the hooves, and seeing the power that their huge bodies conveyed to me with their muscles rippling under their coats of hair as they passed by so closely, sent a shudder through me and the impression was made that there was no force great enough to stop those large beasts racing at break-neck speed.

One day, while sitting on the front porch, my sister Priscilla was bitten by a dog passing by, and the police were quickly summoned, and shot the dog’s head off, and so could not be examined for rabies. Poor Priscilla had to be taken to the doctor’s for the necessary shots. This terrible episode in my sister’s life is a bit vague in my memory, but my mother remembers it very clearly to this day.

It wasn’t long after this that we said goodbye to seventy-two Clewley Road, West Medford.

CHAPTER II

WE ARRIVE IN STONEHAM

My first glimpse of our new home was a joyous one. Bounded by three streets: Park, Maple and Ledge, our little gray-shingled bungalow sat on the corner of Maple and Ledge, with the largest pine tree that I can recall as a youth, just to the right of the wide front steps leading down to a small path that continued to the opening in the thick fieldstone wall covered with large granite blocks, several inches thick.

This wall began at the corner of Park and Maple, and continued the entire length of the large lot, then made a turn up to the very top of Ledge Street, and a short distance beyond.

In later years, on a bright Sunday morning, I recall one of our neighbours, a Mr. Bowser, having taken a short stroll, found himself walking along the side of this wall, and in taking a close look at the large chunks of concrete that jutted out from between the fieldstones, remarked quite loudly: ‘My God—look at the thickness of that concrete!’ it was quite apparent that little had been spared to keep the fieldstones in their proper places. How strange. It was just a little remark, but so true!

As we entered from the back, there were three steps to a small wooden landing with two rickety railings made of two by fours. An old battered screen door opened onto a porch with the kitchen door to its right. To this day I can see that door as vividly, as it had a small window perched just above it with four small panes of glass. This could be opened by means of a latch for ventilation. It was a simple task for one of us to take a kitchen chair and step up to look out to see what mischief might be taking place.

The breakfast nook was off to the left. This was the scene of an unhappy event one evening in later years when I made the mistake of reaching for a slice of bread before Grace had been said. My mother, being rather quick in her movements, reacted without thinking for the moment, and tapped me with a bread knife on my right wrist, opening a little diagonal wound that bled profusely, but soon healed. The look in her eyes was that of one deeply hurt, but she went about her duties of setting food on the table as though nothing had happened, trying to let us know that we must behave ourselves, and all the time quite put out with herself, trying to conceal her feelings and hold back the tears. Whenever someone in the family became upset, it was easy to see the lump in their throats begin to rise, and the emotion seemed to spread over us in one giant wave. As we wrestled with our emotions, one of us would attempt to laugh it off, and the meal would proceed as if nothing had taken place.

Next, came the dining room with the windows overlooking Ledge Street and Mrs. Clough’s house across the way, with Woburn just beyond. It was here in the corner that we had a wonderful old oak sideboard with three small mirrors, that held our silver napkins and tablecloth for the marvelous Sunday meals.

The table was of oak also, and came with two leaves in case we had to entertain company. So much pleasant conversation ensued over the years, while gathered around this table, partaking of my mother’s culinary delights.

To the right, before entering the living room, or parlour as we chose to call it, was a bookcase built into the wall, and it was here for the longest time, that my mother had tried, quite unsuccessfully, to conceal an old crock filled with ginger. From time to time, while perusing the various novels there on the shelves, I would notice that ginger jar, and as the months went by, the contents slowly decreased to a rather minute amount at the bottom. I’m sure that everyone in the family made a visit to it when a craving for ginger popped into their heads!

The living room came next, with windows facing both Ledge and Maple Streets. Facing Maple, there was this wonderful porch that ran the full length of that side of the house, and seemed as spacious to us as children. Between the two windows fronting the porch, was placed a lovely English gaming table with bits of inlaid wood, that my mother had brought back with her from one of her trips to England. Sitting in the middle of it was a very unusual lamp of slag glass in the copper shade. In later years when