7 June 2026
I went to the Dorchester Day Parade, or at least I went to Dorchester Avenue to enjoy the street while it was closed to vehicle traffic. I carefully packed my bag with skates and water et cetera. I walked over Ashmont Hill thinking of various people I knew in various houses. New walls added here, another floor added at one two story.
At Ashmont Street and Dorchester Avenue the police had road blocks and people being waved up side streets. I could see the convenience store that used to be my dentist, and the traffic island that used to have a great stone horse trough watering place.
The brick building with black rough iron gates and offices at the corner of Ashmont and Dorchester Ave. was were I went with my mother to visit a doctor for inoculations. I had announced I was not going to get a shot and stood behind a stuffed chair as I remember my six-year-old self, but I was persuaded to come out and was inoculated. Against what, I do not know. There was a great fear of polio then.
Across Dorchester Ave was a building that had my insurance company four decades ago, and before that the same dentist. Next door was a pharmacy once and that’s where I bought the model of the Clearmont steam engine that I got again a year or so ago, for old time's sake.
I sat down at Ashmont Station and put on my skates and happened to overhear a pretty young woman with shoulder length brown hair and sunglasses explain to a black man with a fedora that a parade was going to happen, but first there was a 5k road race that would go down the road toward Saint Greg’s and the beginning of the parade at Lower Mills. So, I took to the street.
Years ago I remember some teens and youth climbed on the old station entrance to the north and when indicted school committee pol came by they chanted "Elison's a Crook, Ellison's a Crook!"
There was a scattering of people all around, but no large crowds. No buses came in and out of the Ashmont Station roadway and bus terminals. There is a row of free newspaper boxes at the street exit of the station were I have put leaflets in the plastic windows or sides or leftist news papers to display for.... whoever comes along and looks.
Alex and Jeannie lived above the O'Brien's liquor store and I spent many evenings visiting with them in my twenties. We had much to talk about then. We do not talk now. Nothing to say.
I gazed up at the house were the red haired Quinn sisters lived next to Sandy MacDonald all those years ago. Sandy MacDonald’s old house, a three decker, was at 1956 Dorchester Avenue, I think. There is a new three floor built there, but it is weathering faster than the buildings next to it. Cheap paint? Inexpensive wood? Quickie construction? I know not.
The area that was once a parking lot in front of the old version of Ashmont Station is now a series of high rise condos and on the ground floor "white table cloth" restaurants and a few shops. Across the street the old tire and car service work shop has also been knocked down for tower construction and bigger buildings.
Past Nishan’s Meat Market where I worked for four years every Saturday while I was in high school. When I go in the supermarket now, I always step over to the newspaper rack to scan the headlines. During the four years in high school, I can not remember ever once stepping over to look at the headlines of the news back then. As a teen, I just wasn’t interested.
Past my parent's old house, I lived there from 1954 to 1968. My parents stayed at the house till about 1991.
So, I have a history there. Once a large crowd gathered there for Dorchester Day and the parade that would pass by. But now, I sang to myself, “What if you went by two thousand two Dorchester Avenue and there was nobody there, just a grey first floor, and a gray second story.” Those words may have a date with Songer to make an AI song. Acoustic please, dance-able.
I skated past the big lawns of whatever the institution was that I found a lost squirrel in and brought home to live in my room without a cage. Across the street was the home of Peter Walachuck, and his sister Rosmary. They were the only Ukrainians I knew back then. Peter went on to become the press spokesperson for the Boston Police Department, somehow. I'd see him in my local supermarket every once in a while.
I looked towards Mr. Barnett’s house near Gallivan Boulevard. He was one of the leaders in my scout troop and I remember him criticizing Frank McNamara for saying he'd pitch a tent under a tree. "What if it rains, you'll be getting raindrops all night!"
At the corner of Gallivan Boulevard and Dorchester Ave I skated past a house were a young twenty-something woman had jumped out a high window and killed herself landing on the pavement. Her boyfriend or partner went down to the bank in Adams Village with a gun and got shot dead by an off-duty cop who halted his robbery. I think that was 1974.
There were helicopters in the sky over the neighborhood, and I went out with my camera and took pictures of local girls while the cops combed through Cedar Grove Cemetery looking for one of the robbers or something.
Three state police officers with bright vests and blocking police street furniture talked and joked with each other in the center of Gallivan Boulevard.
The crossing islands are gone. I remember having valentines under my hat crossing the street when I was about eight years old. My hat blew off, and my Saint Valentine’s religiously themed cards scattered on the street. The ones with imitation lace paper cost a nickel. Others, the more common variety cost three cents. The class made the cards from cut up Christmas card illustrations and paper cut in to hearts.
I looked quick to ‘wiggles’ house across from the Civil War graveyard. She was in high school and had a young woman’s body that little kids like Billy MacDonald mocked as she walked home from the high school with us behind. I remember going to deliver at her house years later. Oops, I thought, it’s wiggles.
I looked over to the very old small graveyard and thought of stories of some kid taking a bone out of a broken tomb. There are some Civil War graves there I believe I remember. When I was ten, eleven, twelve, there were lots of stories about kids doing daring, irrational, things to prove…. I don’t know what. I was never sure if a boast or story was true. What did I know.
Then, Carney Hospital. I looked to my left and thought of the ‘Carney Fair’ held each year as a fund raiser for the hospital and events I had experienced at that summer nights festival I cherished as a child. There were mechanical rides, games of chance, cotton candy, the smell of popcorn. I bought my first Superman comic book on the way home from the Carney Fair with funds I had wisely not spent. Superman lost his powers in that episode, too near kryptonite. I remember he had to walk. I have that episode in another edition on my bookshelf today.
Looks like the darkened windows of the hospital and the empty parking lot signal that someone could not make money in medicine. Imagine that? How many times have I been in that hospital over the decades? Dozens of times I am sure.
The stone wall of the hospital matches the height of contiguous Dorchester Park, but was of a white and brown color, not the granite grey of the parks large stones. I can picture Stevie Crispo about age eight telling me that his nun said, "Watching too many Westerns was bad for you," as he was near the brown and white stone wall. I was surprised and thought that every Western tv show I had seen emphasized moral conduct, of course, not in that kind of language.
I looked across the street and remembered a kid who had moved from Beale Street to across from the Carney Hospital and he had a Viking ship model that I was fascinated by. He got in trouble burning a car years later. In order to help a friend collect insurance money the Viking ship owner took the vehicle in a mock theft and pour gasoline on the vehicle and threw in a match. The fire exploded with the fumes and burned off the arsonist's eyebrows. The firebug fled the scene, but cops stopped him a few streets over with a gasoline can and burned off eyebrows. One can not make this stuff up. What a Viking.
Labore Nursing school, where my daughter learned her trade. Must be closed, if the hospital is gone. How can they not make money?
Dorchester Park now has a handicap access ramp at the north end, and I saw a few people along the walls of the park. The old stone walls that were put in by Fredrick Law Olmstead who designed parks and public gardens a hundred and fifty years ago.
I looked up to the large grey granite rock visible from the street. I have climbed that rock, and probably every other large rock in the park. As a boy of ten watching Davey Crockett on the Wonderful World of Disney I wanted to explore the woods, and Dorchester Park had what looked like woods to me at age ten. Still looks like woods from Dorchester Avenue on in-line skates. No skates in the woods, at least not for today. I have seen some off track rollerblades.
I think I was on that rock with Frank McNamara when the first revived post WW2 Dorchester Day Parade happened in 1963. I thought it was later than that, but…. Perhaps Frank and I did not want to be in the parade with our Troop 99 because we did not want to march down the street with the little cub scouts. I was still in the Boy Scouts in February 1964 because I can remember going winter camping and singing Beatles songs that were new. I think we quit in the summer of 1964. I can’t quite remember marching in past parades, although, perhaps that’s when the Den Mother criticized the motley crew “We look like Joe’s Army.” Or was I up on the wall in the park behind bushes?
A man was sitting in a lounge chair and listening to a song by America on a sound system. I stopped to listen leaning against the old stone walls I had walked on as a child coming home from Saint Greg’s elementary school. Half a dozen police vans with blue lights lined up to move north.
But, what was the song? I looked up the band America, one song title “Nothing So Far Away as Yesterday” - The song came from Toto with the line “I stopped an old man along the way
Hopin' to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies He turned to me as if to say
"Hurry, boy, it's waitin' there for you"
And now, I’m the Old Man. But, I am on the high inline skates. One hundred and twenty-five centimeters. That has to count for something, and it does. A higher center of gravity. Cuidado! I had to be careful on the street with bumps and unsmooth spots. Life, or death, on skates.
At the front entrance to Dorchester Park there is a new narrower entrance than when I was a child marching by each day to school. The officials, lord preserves of fishes and loaves, must block the entrance to stop vehicles of youthful miscreants. Or the wayward of any age, I guess. The park was the wilderness of my ten-year-old youth. But, I had no car then, and I have no car now. But, I have wheels, on my feet.
I thought of hearing Robert Ransom singing “Hey there, you with your nose in the air, you’ve got me dancing on a swing…” in parody of the Rosemary Cluny song of the 1950’s.
Then I gazed up at Saint Gregory’s Church. Gold letters. A story of a bombing and rebuilding. I received my First Communion in that church. I was Confirmed in the Catholic faith in that church. I was married in that church in December 1968.
Then over to Saint Gregory School. I looked up to the Virgin Mary statue and the flagpole and thought of the pleasure of getting out of class for five minutes to take down the flag at the end of the school day.
A bunch of young girls were on the lawn in front of the school, perhaps waiting to get in the parade. I was in front of the room were I began first grade in September 1955. I remember distinctly learning the letter “d” which the nun introduced with a ‘drum’ association. Also I remember the letter “x” which the nun introduced with a story about a girl running from a snake as her brother kicked sand at the snake with a sound of “x.”
I leaned against the wall and gripped the stones jutting up and looked to the back were I could see the auditorium. I guess I went to my first dance there with my sister when I was in, what, sixth grade, maybe she was in the eighth grade. I was the only boy from my grade there, but there were a dozen or so girls and they came running and fighting to dance with me. I think I remember the song "Soldier Boy" being popular. Four years later I was the singer in the rock band "The Poor Boys" and we were the band playing at the Reunion dance. I sang songs like "We Gotta Get Out of This Place." Quite cheery. I still haven't gotten out.
A line of trucks with blue lights were ready to go down the street to announce the parade’s beginning.
As the police trucks and big vehicles moved forward a little I had the front of Saint Gregory’s Church to myself.
I skated in lazy circles looking up at the gold letters. I noted the rebuilding marking after a bombing by presumed Protestant opponents of Catholics back just after the Civil War. But, the Catholics re-built, and survived, and thrived. I saw that as a comfort when I was a child and saw my parents and sister had escaped from Northern Ireland were the British and Protestants ruled with a cruel tyranny. And, there I was, in a better place.
I didn't want to skate further south towards the Neponset River and the bridge into Milton, or the business district and shops just past Saint Greg's school. The bands and floats and drill teams were assembling and I did not want to risk skating through and tripping up. I had gone miles without a fall, so far.
Marching bands were assembling in the old supermarket parking lot next to the priests rectory. Just past that I could see the site of the old Gilbert Stuart Boston Public school building that was set on fire by 'gangster' Whitey Bulger who was an associate on the streets of FBI agent John Walsh. I've known a few Walshes in Dorchester myself. But, that's another tale. Bulger was using the arson of a Boston Public School as a protest against "Forced Busing" as some labelled the integration program of the 1970's. The city re-built the public library on the spot.
I could see the corner store that was a drug store in the past and then a restaurant with a Christian cult staff, and now.... I don't know. I could not see that far down Dorchester Avenue. I remember being with my mother and holding a Revell model airplane kit in my hand in the store on that corner about 1960 or so, I asked my mother if I could start getting an allowance of thirty-five cents a week. She said okay. I asked if I could have this weeks allowance and an advance on the next week so I could buy the 69 cents World War One bi-plane model. I was planning to collect them all. Both sides. I got a few of them.
Across the street, on the second floor, was my third grade classroom. I had a mural of a wagon train that I drew in large strokes on a long sheet of wallpaper my father provided during the 'Art Fair' back in that grade. I also remember looking out those windows at an airplane wiggling across the sky and realizing that there was some kind of distortion in the glass.
One thing I noted as I skated back to the north towards my starting point at Ashmont Station was the slight decline of the road. I could relax and just coast downhill past the old Carney Hospital. At the bus shelter at the hospital entrance a woman called out, "Now, that's the way to do it."
"Minimum effort!" I responded keeping my eyes on the road ahead.
"Yes," she responded.
"We invented the wheel," I shouted back.
"Exactly!"
I almost wanted to stop to speak to the talkative police I passed again on Gallivan Boulevard. I could have pointed out the problem with removing traffic islands from the route, probably to get some federal funding. But, I decided to keep my distance and skated north, toward home.
Again I noted a slight dip as I coasted north. I had never ever thought about these inclines and declines in all the years I walked back and forth up and down that street. Never occurred to me.
Frank Connlon lived on the corner of Van Winkel Street and Dorchester Ave. He worked for the transit system and had a uniform. One day, when I was about six and we were standing near the mailbox in front of Frank's house one of my friends asked him as he walked up in his uniform, "Are you a policeman?" I can remember scanning his uniform to look for signs of what he was. I don't think I could read then.
On the other side of the street is Hurlcroft Street. I remember going to a party in the eight grade at the last house on the left as a girl in my class at Saint Greg's had move in there. It was the night that JFK was shot in Dallas in 1963, and I was worried the adults wouldn't let us have our little twenty kid gathering to listen to records for a couple of hours. Wisely, the parents let us go on. What did we know at age 13?
I can see the window on the side of my parents house were I used to look out as I listened to albums after school in the middle room. I would get out of high school at 2:00 pm and rush outside to the buses and be home listening to music by 2:10 pm some days. My sisters and brothers were still at school and my mother was in the kitchen nearby and I had the front of the house to myself. I picture sun coming in through the windows as I listen to the Beatles. A paradise lost.... or a remembrance of things past and passed.... I am no longer allowed in that house. I do not know who owns it.
When my mother was sitting on the front porch and chatting with neighborhood women who passed by, I thought she was wasting time. Little did I know how much I benefitted, or was just entertained, by the quiet little events in the neighborhood around us. Now, I skate through like a ghost who knows no one, although I know the streets and houses and some of the trees. The ones that have not been chopped down.
The first year I moved in Hurricane Carole came through and I remember seeing trees blown down and crushing porch roofs on Beale Street. A different kind of hurricane has come through. Time and tide and people and feet and changes along the streets.
The street where I first tried to skate is the little side street of Beale Street. My older sister put just one skate on one foot to learn. That is not a good idea. I remember the old fashioned all metal skates that clipped on the shoe.
Frank McNamara lived on Beale Street for a while but they knocked down the big brick apartment building he lived in to make room for the subway station. Frank had the nicest white shirts to wear to Saint Greg's because his shirts were cleaned at a Chinese laundry across the street. The immigrant who ran the shop was found dead one day. That was sixty years ago. Does anyone think of that lost soul now. Did he fail to pay the money he owed for coming to the US, the American Paradise? A story without an ending, other than a decades old death.
On the other side of the avenue there is Mercier Avenue a side street, that Jimmy O'Hara lived on. He was a friend of mine starting in junior high school and then through high school and into our twenties. I was in a rock and roll band with him in high school. He was the bass player. Jimmy's father had been a police officer and then switched into being a wheeling dealing real estate salesman with an office further down Dorchester Avenue. He had a big Impala convertible car that we would sit in as young teens in the driveway.
One of my delights when I was little was pizza on a Friday night from the shop across from Ashmont Station, Johnny's Pizza. Still a shop with that name at that location. Probably a dozen owners since I was a child all those decades ago.
At last I was back at my starting point. In a way. I decided to go home after my miles up and down the avenue. I sat down to take off my skates at the little plaza at Ashmont Station. A black plastic bag blew out of my back pack and I chased it to the curb. A young woman bent down and handed it back to me with a smile. "My errant bag," I said.
I put my skates away and walked back over Ashmont Hill. I had not seen any of the actual parade, but, I had done what I set out to do. One more time up and down Dorchester Avenue.
