Night Crawlers

By John Michele

Do you know what night crawlers are? They make great bait for fishermen who are not squeamish about dirty hands.

This story begins when two boys, age thirteen, decide to earn a little money selling worms to a bait shop and are once again together on the thirtieth anniversary of a life-changing discovery. Wakefield, their town and its people, are a part of who they are, especially for young Dolf, who has two important reasons for his trips from New York City to his boyhood home.

You see, he was an orphan and was adopted into an Italian American family who live on the wrong side of the tracks in an area known as the Gulch. His friend, Jay, comes from one of the towns oldest Yankee families, dating way back to the 1600. What do they have in common? Is it just the murders that took place back in August 1958?

Have you ever had the opportunity to return to your hometown for more than a few days? Was it as you remember, did anyone recognize you as you walked its wide main street? Are the folks different from people in the big apple? Every time he returns, Dolf has the same questions, who am I and who killed my old neighbors from the Gulch?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662486432

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Night Crawlers

John Michele

Copyright © 2022 John Michele

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8641-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8643-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Author's Acknowledgment

Notes for Night Crawlers

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Author

Author's Acknowledgment

This story, Night Crawlers, takes place in the town where I lived my early years. Wakefield and especially, my old neighborhood, the Gulch, will always be my rose garden.

Notes for Night Crawlers

Wakefield's Bandstand

In 1885, Wakefield's bandstand was built for $2,500. The construction was following a national trend. Small-town brass bands had become popular after the civil war, and with the growth of the middle class, there was a demand for leisure activities that were healthy and cultural. With its signature location overlooking Lake Quannapowitt, it has become a symbol of the town of Wakefield and many community groups, including the famous and colorful Red Men's Band, of Wakefield Mass. Wahpatuck Tribe No. 54, Improved Order of Red Men, played there often, especially during Fourth of July celebrations.

Walsh's Diner

Opened in the fall of 1936 at the corner of Main Street and West Water Street and served Wakefield residence for a bite that's right, day and night, for many years. During the 1960s, it was moved to the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Cyrus Wakefield

The Rattan Works, which made wicker furniture, was established in 1856 by Cyrus Wakefield. It later grew into the Wakefield Rattan Company and at one time, had a thousand employees. In 1868, Cyrus Wakefield donated the land and money for a new town hall, and in thanks, the town voted to change its name from South Reading to Wakefield.

Wakefield Daily Item

The Wakefield Daily is Wakefield's main newspaper and has been published continuously since its founding by Fred W. Young on May 7, 1894. It was purchased by Harris M. Dolbeare in 1900, who established the Wakefield Item Company on April 1, 1900. The Lucius Beebe Memorial Library maintains a complete archive of the item on Microfilm from 1894 to the present.

Boston and Maine Railroad

The railroad was chartered and built in 1844 between Wilmington and Boston Mass. This became the main line, through the center of Wakefield along North Avenue for the Boston and Maine railroad. Much of its cargo during winter months was the ice cut from Lake Quannapowitt starting in 1851.

Lucius Beebe Memorial Library

In 1856, the South Reading Public Library, later became, in 1923, the Beebe town Library. Lucius M. Beebe, born on December 9, 1902, passed on February 4, 1966, was an American author, gourmand, photographer, railroad historian, journalist, and syndicated columnist. He was employed by the New York Herald Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, The New Yorker, Playboy, and many other newspapers and publishers.

He proudly noted that he had the sole distinction of having been expelled from both Harvard and Yale, at the insistence, respectively, of the president and dean. Beebe earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1926, only to be expelled during graduate school.

Wakefield's Old Burying Ground

Along the southern end of Lake Quannapowitt are testaments to the early settlers, hundreds of their gravestones, which are an outdoor museum of the town's early Puritan past. The very first graveyard was actually adjacent to and probably under the town bandstand. The gravestones nearest the Congregational Church are probably in their original location. Some of the stones date back to 1644. That is where your author's Mr. Underwood was first discovered, encompassed into the bark of an old maple tree, which completely covers his first name.

Introduction

Visiting the town where I was born, not in a hospital, but at home in a part of town nicknamed the Gulch, brings back many good memories. I spent the first thirty-two years in Wakefield, a town I continue to appreciate and love. And love is just how I remember those wonderful years. Each of the places in this story do exist or may have changed some with time, and each one brings back stories from my younger days.

The places described in Night Crawlers are all real. The many characters are all products of my imagination, except for one, the long ago passed away Mister Underwood, whose first name is covered by an ancient, hopefully still growing maple tree, located in the old cemetery, off Church Street, close to the First Parish Congregational Church. I know that fact because I worked one summer during my college years, digging graves by hand in the towns' cemeteries and help build the boat-launching ramp at Veterans Field, close by, just off North Avenue.

Today, reality seems to cloud unpleasant comparisons of a name, place, or situation. However, one cannot be held responsible for the roll of dice, better described as chance. This story, Night Crawlers, is all fiction. John F. Kennedy did march in the Fourth of July Parade. What political person can resist being visible and close to three hundred thousand voters.

As youngster, I did make a little money shoveling snow for the B and M Railroad on North Avenue and selling night crawlers to a local bait shop. And my future father-in-law did work for the Wakefield Municipal Light Department. I married his daughter, Catherine.

Enjoy my old town, Wakefield. I most certainly did.

Chapter 1

Night Crawlers

It Begins

Our eyes locked on as I entered his office. There was no need to utter one word. Our souls and minds were connected reading each other's thoughts. Jay knew I would show today just as I did two years ago and at other times over the past thirty or so years. I could see in his green eyes as he inspected my face. I was doing the same. So far, the years have been physically good for both of us, but long-ago concerns were showing some on each of us—around our eyes. Those thirty years ago murders will always be a part of our stories.

We became friends in our early teens, did lots of young boy things, played baseball and football, and competed for the best-looking girls in Wakefield high school, and now here we are in our fifties, only just trying to play some good golf. Maybe today, if I lived here, we would be competing for attractive women. Jay, I think, still is—never married. That's not me! Why he and I hit it off has always been a puzzle to me, but we are like brothers, probably always will be.

That day, the thirteenth of August, nineteen fifty-eight, a little over a month after Wakefield's Fourth of July celebration is when we found the body with a big part of its head blown off floating in Lake Quannapowitt. It changed both our lives and not always for the better.

I came from the Gulch, the mostly Italian section of town, where people usually didn't have two quarters to rub together. We were all short of cash, but not spirit, nor were my neighbors, because we believed America gave us the chance to prove we belonged—we were going to make it for ourselves and those who came after us. Our gardens, chickens, and animals, even some pigs provided just about all the food we needed, even unpasteurized goats' milk. My grandparents owned their own home down the street, nothing fancy, but warm and safe. Looking back, the journey toward security and some wealth was worth everyone's grinding efforts. And so much enjoyable fun in my big extended family who lived in my Gulch neighborhood. It was my rose garden.

Now my life is so different—New York City and the advertising game, living on the upper east side, close to Central Park, an interesting part of town where a guy must be aggressive and pushy in a friendly sort of way. How did I go from big fishing worms, night crawlers, to advertising on Lexington Avenue across from the Chrysler building in what at one time was the biggest office building in the world, the Graybar? Maybe it was the Northeastern University coop job that jump-started my business career.

Jay's family went way back to probably the sixteen thirties. One of his early relatives, a guy named Underwood, is buried in Wakefield's old burying ground behind today's Congregational Church—right near the church is where Jay's ancestor is buried, in the oldest section. That buried Underwood's first name is