Throwback Thursday - The Notebook

To clear up some confusion, the Notebook passages posted on Throwback Thursday were written by my father and found by me after he passed away. They were his attempt to tell the family history. He was in his late 80s or early 90s when he wrote them. Today's chapter:

At 14, in 1933, I met a man at the playground of my Daniel Webster schoolyard. [ed: This man, is Charlie Arnold who would become Dad's mentor] It never had been open for Summers. And closed whenever school was out, holidays and Saturday and Sundays.

So the only place we had [ed: to play] was the street and we would go over the fence and also be on the lookout for the police officer. He had a key to the Donald McKay School and wold go through the front and exit into the school yard. And we would run to scale the 8 foot chain-link fence and make our get away. At times this would be on the street where we would run into one of the building, go up the roof and jump from rooftop to rooftop and escape that way. And we knew which roof doors were open.

We also would go to the railroad yards and throw rocks at the train and the men in in the engine sector would throw coal at us. We wanted this because although it was soft coal and smelled gassy, we would go down a cellar for a picnic and light a fire. And due course we would be coughing and choking and get out of there when some woman would set up the alarm. And come down to chase us out of the cellar.

In fact, my best friend, Leonard Russcetti (Len Russ) when he mastered the violin and had an orchestra came to my house in Cambridge when he was in a theater ticket line and met up with my brother, Mario. He asked about me. And at that time I was studying to become a lawyer. Mario gave him my telephone and we set up a date. We had a nice time and he said "You know we had 10 family members and every time we heard that you had gotten in some episode, we would make bets as to what year, month, and date that the State would pull the switch on the electric chair at the State's prison on Cherry Hill in Charlestown. Time we would at midnight.

Anyway, we had a nice time playing all kind of games. As this Summer was coming to a close, he [ed: Charlie Arnold] said that he would be at Marginal St. in September and said that he would open a center and we should go. It would be fun.

I went along with other boys and the place was the old government building immigrants that came to America got off the ship at the landing across the street and were checked for passports etc. It was not used anymore and the Government turned that over to the Center Board Director, Charlie Arnold, or Skipper as he wanted to be called or Skip. He lived up the top floor with his wife and child. And in a sense I would sort of get a life at that time. I could also go to the big library and check out 4 books and I enjoyed every book I took out.

Photo from: 9 Sites Marking Boston's Immigrant Past, Mapped