Spring 2001 Charles River Review: Somerville, Center of the World

Corinthian Road
In the 1940s and '50s Somerville was one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Most of the families were Catholic and had at least four children apiece. The streets were crawling with kids and characters who would have fit into any circus, like Mr. Kiley who had a hole in his throat covered by a hanky. He talked as if he were submerged in water. His dog, a collie, went unescorted to the corner store every day and returned with either a newspaper or a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes held carefully between his fangs. The pouch attached to his collar contained a note and change for these items. There was an ice man, a rag man, and a knife-sharpening man, complete with monkey and hurdy-gurdy music. I used to feed grass to the horse pulling the milk wagon. Most houses had hedges then.

The streets were lined with trees, and the back yards and side yards had grass. Most of the houses were double- and triple-decker wood frame structures with porches. On my street there were only three single-family houses, one of which was occupied by the Cronins, who had 15 children. They somehow survived with only one bathroom.

Some crimes were settled out in the open. Once when a 15 year old was caught molesting his six-year-old niece, he was beaten to a pulp by the girl's older brother. The beating continued over a one mile stretch of city blocks, and finally the perpetrator's face could not be recognized. A 17-year-old cashier at The First National supermarket was made pregnant by the store manager. He was confronted by the girl's father and pummeled to a bloody pulp in the presence of shoppers. In each case there was no arrest nor any interference from the police or the many people who witnessed the beatings.

Blizzards were abundant, but the basketball courts were always shoveled clean, giving a clue to Somerville High School's preeminent presence at the top of New England basketball. Superb athletes lived everywhere. These were my earliest heroes. Just around the corner lived Joe O'Callaghan, the quarterback for Notre Dame. He could punt the ball a mile high and would demonstrate his extraordinary skill to his awestruck neighbors. As an eight year old, I loved to try to catch these monster kicks and would do so until Joe got tired. He always ended these sessions by passing the ball almost the entire length of Corinthian Road, with me running at full speed--unable to catch up to the ball. I was never sad when these sessions ended. I knew he would be back; and, besides, my skinny forearms were bruised and sore from catching the punts.

Gang wars were settled by 100-yard dashes, each gang putting forth its fastest runner. John O'Sullivan's gang always won. All summer long there were regional track meets, too, culminating in the grand annual meet each August at Trum Field. Great crowds of people turned out to cheer on their favorite teenage athletes. This was the ultimate reward for running fast and jumping high. The ice cream man and the slush man peddled their goodies, and music blared from loudspeakers overhead. Many Olympians would be spawned here.

John Thomas was an incredible high jumper whom I beat by one inch at age 13, only to lose to him by seven inches at 14 and one foot at 15. He went to the Rome Olympics as the best in the world but was humbled by Valerie Brunel, who received the silver medal, and another unknown Russian who took the gold. Phil Reavis was the most amazing high jumper because he was so small. At 5'8" he wowed the crowds, eventually jumping seven feet. I just can't imagine what all these guys would have done if they had had the benefit of the Fosbury flop. Charlie Jenkins would go on to win the gold in the 400 meters.

These future Olympians were all black and they all lived on Cameron Avenue at the edge of town. Although they totaled only 8 to 10 families, they were a dominant force at these junior Olympics. But like everyone else, they never beat John O'Sullivan, and O'Sullivan played all sports, excelling in baseball, basketball, and football. Today when I hear Paul Simon singing about Joe DiMaggio, I substitute these words in my head: "Where have you gone, John O'Sullivan? Jesus loves you more than you will know." Thirty years elapsed before I found out where he went. He descended into alcoholism, perhaps because he was gay, and gay was not possible in the '50s. Nothing was gay about homosexuality then, when it was termed queer and deemed a mortal sin by the all-powerful Catholic Church.

There were many squares in Somerville, and in every square there was a Catholic church. Catholicism was so prevalent that I remember feeling sorry for the rare Protestants, since they had no way to reach eternal salvation. Every square had at least four bars, which had a sort of class hierarchy. In Ball Square the hierarchy began with Hy's, a delicatessen that served beer and whose clientele were mostly from Tufts University. Although the drinking age was 21, many of my St. Clement's High School classmates were able to blend in with the crowd. Eventually, a drinker would be able to drink at The Willow, where one earned a sort of college degree. Then it was on to the Ball Square Grill (known as "The Greeks") where one received a master's degree. The epitome of drinking (the PhD) was when the drinker finally made it to O'Brien's. O'Brien's was a man's bar. Gambling of all sorts took place there: whist, poker, and whatever sporting event was on television. Many of my classmates never graduated from Hy's. In retrospect, they were the lucky ones. Their early descent into alcoholism was so ugly that they saw the light before they left their teens. Other classmates got stuck at The Willow, and many who didn't find AA somewhere along the road died prematurely. Still others got stuck at The Greeks or O'Brien's and paid a similar price. Drugs, even marijuana, were nonexistent then. Years later, when I visited Ennistymon, my mother's hometown in Ireland, I realized the origin of those Somerville pubs. My first thought as I strolled down the streets of Ennistymon in 1976 was that it too was infested with pubs. There were three or four in every block; and Somerville, especially Ball Square, was predominantly Irish at that time. Most pubs had bookies who were periodically arrested but were usually back on the job within days.

The paper boys (of which I was one for four years) covered the entire city's streets delivering two morning papers and three evening choices. Paper routes taught me early the meaning of cash flow and gave me the freedom to attend Celtics games (50¢) and Red Sox games (also 50¢), although it sometimes meant I had to collect the 32¢ weekly rate (of which 7¢ was mine) ahead of time. I especially enjoyed collecting on Cameron Avenue. There were a couple of cute black girls who would say to me, "Man, we wish we had your wheels," referring to my running speed, which they had observed at track meets.

The paper route also got me out of the occasional jackpot, such as when at age ten my buddy, George Cronin, and I were caught shoplifting our lunch at the A & P Supermarket in Magoun Square. It was not unusual for my playmates at that time to take a lunch break from our "stick ball" or baseball game and steal our lunch. One kid was assigned the mustard, another the bologna, and others the "tonic" and Wonder bread. The day Georgie and I were caught the manager, when hearing I had the wherewithal to pay for our food, decided to hold George hostage while I ran to Teele Square (one mile away) and collected enough cash to pay for the lunch. Georgie was angry that it took me so long, because all the while I was running at top speed he was being humiliated by the manager. He pointed Georgie out to all the shoppers as "the kid who steals."

The freight trains rumbling through Davis Square offered ample opportunity for trouble. The trains were often parked there overnight, being easy prey for us kids. After we snipped the federal seals and rolled back the heavy metal doors, great surprises appeared: booty such as Windex cleaner (Ugh!) or Lucky Strike cigarettes. These were like gold because they could easily be peddled for 50¢ a carton. The store price was $2. We knew even then that when your cost is zero you always make a profit. This activity was a closely guarded secret that we kept hidden, especially from our parents.

In fact, there were lots of secrets behind lots of closed doors in Somerville. But in my family there were no secrets because my father rarely drank in the house. His drinking was out in the open for everyone to see as he stumbled home. And when he was carted away by the police in the middle of the night after a fight, an eerie calmness would set in among my siblings. Since no one could possibly get back to sleep, Mama would invariably make tea for us. The discussions around the kitchen table were cathartic. They were a sort of therapeutic pow-wow with each sibling giving his account of what had taken place. Mama was the only quiet one, and I, a mere toddler, was strictly an observer. Everything was put right on the table and chewed over and over. I have often wondered how much these sessions contributed to my sociability.

I was the youngest of six children, three boys and three girls. Both my parents were born in County Clare, Ireland, in 1900. They married and emigrated to Somerville, where they bought a house in the 1920s. Prohibition was especially appealing to my mother, who had grown up in a town of pubs. When she was a young girl, her bedroom was on top of one of these pubs, and too often she was witness to drunken behavior and barroom brawls. Ironically, my mother's family didn't drink at all.

The Milk Bottle Incident
At my oldest sister Mary's 70th birthday party, my siblings reminisced about their childhood. Mary recalled how, while in the confessional one Saturday, she refused to apologize to Monsignor Barry for striking my drunken father over the head with an empty milk bottle. But we all knew the story and had heard it many times. This is one of my earliest memories, even though I was only three at the time.

On this day of reminiscing, I was startled to hear my sister exclaim that she was only 15 years old at the time. In my memory bank, I can clearly see my oldest brother Francis come hop scotching out of his bedroom as he put his chinos on at top speed. He proceeded to wrestle my bloodied father off my mother and successfully pin him down so that my father was completely disabled. But no sooner did Francis have things under control when up the stairs to our second floor Somerville apartment came five policemen, led by Uncle Tom, my father's oldest brother and also a cop. It seems that before Mary hit our father over the head, sister Kay had telephoned the cops. This was the usual MO. Nights like this would turn into real brawls. Even though my brother had "the old man" under control, the cops wailed away at my father. Suddenly, my mother and sisters were screaming that my father had one of the cop's pistols. The panic was extraordinary as the cops flailed away at my father, but they were unable to get the gun. I watched helplessly as my brother miraculously wrested the gun from my father, only to be pummeled himself by the now-panicky cops. Eventually, order was restored as my bloodied father was dragged down the stairs, his head squirting blood each step of the way. I am sure this was my initial indoctrination into a deep hatred of cops that lasted for 50 years.

Meanwhile, my mother was leaning over Francis and consoling him as only a mother can do. I had always believed my brother to be 17 years old or no less than 16 at the time of this incident, but Mary was emphatic and insisted that she was exactly 15, meaning that Francis was only 12 when he had to fight off our drunken father.

Years later, when the Somerville Journal published an article about Francis being the youngest Marine Drill Instructor in the history of Parris Island (at 19), no one on Corinthian Road was the least bit surprised. Forty years later, I would espouse a theory at an ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) meeting. I maintain there are two types of adult children of alcoholics: those who lived a secret because the outside world did not know of the alcoholic parent, and those (like us Corinthian Road Flanagans) whose "secret" was known to the entire neighborhood. When asked how everyone knew, I responded, "The neighbors could hear the sirens."

The neighbors' attitude toward me varied widely. Those who had children my age were often dumbstruck when they found out how well I could read at the age of five. I used to experience a sensation of power upon seeing the expressions of shock when I rattled off the headlines of the Record American lying on their kitchen tables. Mrs. Black once asked me to read on and immediately summoned Mr. Black to come and listen as I read in a rapid-fire manner, thinking that faster was more impressive. Meanwhile, their son Dickie, like all of my peers, was struggling with "See Dick. See Jane. See Spot run." They did not know that I had learned to read at age three when I traveled on the streetcar or the subway every day with my mother. To keep me still, she would play a game asking me to read the various advertisements that appeared above the windows. My indoctrination into the world of reading produced a very interesting vocabulary for a three year old: Lucky Strike, made from the finest tobacco, Old Gold, Chesterfield, the Army wants you. My closest sibling, Aileen, was four years older than I, so I had my mother's total attention and tutelage for some years before I started school. She had lots of energy and was never one to stay at home. So most mornings we left the house and took off to Boston. She had no idea that the reading game was teaching me, nor did I have any conscious awareness that I was learning to read. I can still see the look of amazement on her face when I announced one day that there were new advertisements on the streetcar, and I quickly rattled off slogans that I had never seen before. She couldn't wait to get home to tell my father. Brother Francis laughed hysterically when I pronounced mosquito "mos-quite-o."

On my first day of school the nun in charge of St. Clement's Elementary School escorted me by the hand to the top floor and had me read aloud to the sixth grade. As I was leaving I heard the sister admonish the class saying, "Here is a boy who has never set foot in a school, and he can read better than most of you." From that moment on, my learning regressed, probably because I was now in a class with 54 other kids and had lost my private teacher, my mother.

Eight years later I would finish dead last in my class and barely make "the cut" to enter St. Clement's High School. Sister Anna Carmel, my eighth grade nun, crumpled my graduation certificate in her hand and threw it on the floor. All I could do was bend over in front of the entire class and sheepishly pick it up.

With most neighbors I had a feeling of inferiority, clearly the result of my father's public drunkenness. When I was away from the neighborhood I put on a different air. Whenever I was asked which Flanagan family I belonged to I always responded that I was the son of the cop from Simpson Avenue. On the few occasions that this was not possible, I could feel the disdain, pity, or sympathy the adult held for me when I had to confess that I was one of the Flanagans from Corinthian Road.

The only family member I was proud of was brother Francis. Jamesy (seven years older than I) was often in some kind of trouble and got many rides home in police cars. My sisters, Mary and Kay, were 11 and 12 years older, and their personalities were like night and day. They took turns babysitting me. I much preferred Mary as a sitter, because I could get away with murder. With Kay I had to toe the line.

Francis, who would eventually be called Frank, was not a tough kid and never regarded as a bully. In fact, he was rather small and soft-spoken. In the Marines, he was 5'9" and never weighed more than 150 pounds. But I noticed growing up in Somerville that even the baddest of the bad from various neighborhoods always kept their distance from him. In all of the brawls that occurred during my childhood years, never once did I see Frank throw a punch at anyone. He always controlled melees in a judo-wrestling fashion. Once I saw him pick up a kid twice his size and heave him over his head like a sack of potatoes.

This was very different from my brother Jamesy, who would have been 10 years old at the time of the milk bottle incident. I can only gather that he and my sister Aileen, then 7, must have been great sleepers, which would explain why they were not present during this incident. Since Jamesy was the direct opposite of Frank, I remember my mother being very anxious to get Jamesy out of the house whenever my father, "the old man," would start to act up.

On one occasion, while Frank was in the Marines, there was an incident where Jamesy and the old man were alone in the house. My mother and sisters and I were returning from a day at the beach when, as Kay drove down the street, we observed my father, with a lump growing rapidly on his forehead, in an absolute rage. Jamesy had hit him over the head with a golf club and then had run for the hills. We later found out that Jamesy had come home and found my father drunk and alone in the house. As conversation developed, all hell broke loose, and Jamesy with his fiery temper reached for anything, and, unfortunately for Gus, he found a golf club. Brigid was worried about where Jamesy was and what had happened to him. I was ordered to jump on my bike and scout the different neighborhoods where Jamesy might be found. One of these stops was the McAveeney house. There were 10 kids in this household, and Johnny, one of the youngest, was a pal of Jamesy.

Although Jamesy was not to be found, I did meet a little girl who was there playing with her sister. She was nine years old, the same as I, and I was certain that she and her sister were Indians, because they had dark skin and black pigtails. Five years later I met Eileen Bradley (my future wife) at a dance and walked her home. When we arrived at her house I realized that she was the same little Indian girl I had met at nine years old. She was not Indian at all, just well tanned.

As it turned out, Jamesy was found safe and secure in the house of my Uncle Tom, the cop who lived in back of us on Simpson Avenue. Uncle Tom's wife Ann, who was our favorite aunt, had heard the commotion between Jamesy and Gus. She was able to convince Jamesy to climb the fence and seek refuge in her home.

Frank's personality was totally different from Jamsey's. I could always sense that all the kids in the neighborhood, especially my friends, were in awe of him. But they never saw the very gentle side that I was privy to. Most nights he would read stories to me to help me fall asleep, and I always would ask him, night after night, the same question: "Is there anyone who can beat you up?" I always felt good when he reassured me that there was only one person on earth who could beat him up, and his name was Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion of the world. As many times as I heard this, it was always soothing to my ears and I would sleep peacefully.

When the day finally arrived that my mother and I were to accompany Frank to South Station, where he boarded the train to Parris Island, it was indeed the saddest day of my life. Now, as a nine year old standing on the platform, I looked into my mother's eyes and hugged her legs and asked, "Who will take care of us now?" There was no reply but it was clear to me that she was as concerned as I was.

It wasn't long after, that Gus, my father, was put away in a place I only knew as "Westboro." I now know that Westboro was my father's "drying out" place. Soon after, a couple of policemen came to the house, and during the dialogue my mother's face became ashen. When the police left, she told me, "Your father has escaped from Westboro." Eventually he was caught, sent back, and then released. Despite the fear that ran through my body and the unanswered rosaries to take my father from this earth, somehow we did make it through the two years that Frank spent in the Marines. The fact of the matter is that my father was not a daily drinker. He would go for long periods without touching the stuff, but when he did, all hell broke loose.

On the day Frank came home from the Marines for good, there was a festive feeling throughout the neighborhood. He was now 21 and I was 12. All the brothers and sisters were waiting upstairs in the apartment of our two-family house, and two of my sisters had their fiancées there to celebrate the occasion. My sister Mary's future husband was totally unaware of the old man's problem, and I am not exactly sure just what led to what, but it wasn't long into the party that Mary's boyfriend stepped into a right cross thrown by my father that instantly blackened half his face.

On his first day home from the Marines, Frank was greeted with this atmosphere, and he immediately went out to the back porch and leaned over the railing, vomiting. My mother and I were holding onto the legs of his trousers to make sure he did not fall over. I had a vivid flashback to my nine-year-old self hugging my mother's legs on the railway platform the day Frank left for Parris Island. Both my mother and I knew what was going on in Frank's mind. There were no words spoken. He was simply sick to his stomach at what he had returned to.

Evidently the old man just walked out of the house, and I could hear Mary's boyfriend yelling in the background, "Your brother Frank is a coward." Of course he felt this way because Frank had not come to his aid. But my sisters knew better, and I certainly knew better than anyone that he was anything but a coward, and at this point in his life he was fit enough to take on single-handedly at least 20 people, or so my 12-year-old mind believed.

Shortly after this episode, my mother finally left my father. He was granted visitation rights to see me. Frank settled in at home and attended Boston College with the help of the GI Bill.