No. 15438
Dorchester Historical Society Oral History Project
Interviewee
Frederick MacDonald (Alan Frederick Malcolm MacDonald)
1071 South Artery
Quincy, MA 02169
Interviewer
Marcia Sewall
243 Boston Street
Dorchester, MA 02125
Date: February 23, 2001
MS: Fred, you have so much information, I really don’t know where to begin, but I thought of this oral history as being about Dorchester villages…I wonder if that is appropriate.
FM: People stayed in their own neighborhoods. They didn’t go other places. You didn’t go to the other end of the street! There were no cars. When you did go any place, you walked. You walked to school. My sisters walked to the Jeremiah Burke High School. That would be the Grove Hall section of Dorchester, on the Roxbury line. So they thought nothing of walking….so, I took a trolley, I took a subway then a trolley because I was way out in Latin School in the Back Bay. I had to get to school on time, so that’s why I went out on the subway, then the trolley_ I’d take the subway at Savin Hill. I’d walk down to Savin Hill and take the subway, then at Park Street I’d take the train out to the Back Bay not far from the Museum of Fine Arts.
MS: (It really wasn’t a neighborhood, was it?)
FM:You all kind of stuck together and everything you did was in that area alone. Like a cocoon. MS: Your own neighborhood.
FM: Along Dot Ave or any of the main streets, every so often there would be a shopping center at the end of the street, So you shopped in the neighborhood.; First National Stores, A&P Stores, Economy Stores,and United Stores; they were the four big chain stores but they were small store front stores., and you did what little shopping you did…cause your mother made everything, It isn’t like today. You go to Roche’s over here an d get a meal and bring it home. And then there were butcher shops all aloud Dot Ave., the main streets, so people would go to the butcher shops and get bones to make soup (we did) Other people even got meat!
MS: So maybe what this should be called is “Dorchester Neighborhoods” not “Dorchester Villages”. FM: You didn’t leave the neighborhood…if you left it was a major reason, you were going to play touch football on the next two streets away. It might be in another neighborhood. Where it began (the neighborhood)and where it ended, nobody ever really knew. In Glover’s Corner where I grew up, we never paid much attention . Where does Codman Square begin? … (The neighborhoods) were about the same, all three deckers. We never called them triple deckers. That’s a New York symbol. The people who stole Babe Ruth from us, they tried to make us say triple deckers instead of three deckers. Oh, ya, we had three deckers and a lot of the neighborhoods had three deckers and didn’t have furnaces in them.. So you had cold water flats. And that’s what we lived in. Only the kitchen was warm. That’s where you studied, ate, and all the entertainment, was in the kitchen. Even when you had a house party they called it a “Kitchen Racket”, because the fiddles would be in the kitchen blaring away, and you’d clear out the furniture from the dining room floor and there’d be dancing in the dining room_ Of course the people downstairs and upstairs had to be invited to it . They’d be stomping their feet on the floor, they’d be step-dancing and everything. So the kitchen was the center, and we had no refrigeration so we had ice boxes in the hallway.
MS: And an ice man came once a week with chunks of ice…
FM: More than once a week, maybe twice a week, then there was always an ice pan under the box that you filled with water, the melted water. You had to bend way down to pull it out and keep it empty. We never had any method of solving that problem.
MS: Listen, Fred, I think we should begin somewhere at the beginning…when were you born?
FM: I was born in St. Elisabeth’s Hospital in Brighton. My folks lived …right near the Brighton Marine Hospital…trying to think of the name of the street…it’s a different name now. We lived in two places in Brighton, one in Allston, one in Brighton. Then they moved to Belmont
MS: I want you to talk up so we’re sure to hear you.
FM: The reason for us moving so often, it’s where my father got a job. And, ah, he was a drug clerk . Now while he was a drug clerk he was studying to be a pharmacist. And he was hired down at Upham’s Corner in a drug store to clean up around the soda fountain. Course my father never saw a soda fountain in his life where he came from. But he could clean up…and this place here would be a lot cleaner if he hadn’t passed away, He wouldn’t allow it. I can see a little dust over there …
MS: I don’t see a bit of dust, but I see piles of interesting stuff …
FM:… underneath the television. That wouldn’t happen if he was here. He was very meticulous! The windows would be washed, cause he was always washing windows in the drug store .
MS: He was known as a “neato”!
FM: Ya, well, that’s what he started out doing and he did it for the rest of his life. He became an apprentice to a druggist who was allowed to teach somebody to become a druggist. Every so often he’d have to take a test in Middlesex College, I think they called it, in Belmont to pass a (certaining?) on how to make a suppository or how to make an emulsion. That’s how they learned.
MS: As an apprentice.
FM: So after he,…I don’t remember living in Belmnt, but I used to get stories about it. First place I remember living in…when they left Belmont they came to Quincy behind the North Quincy High School on Hunt Street . I remember that, although I didn’t go to school, yet, I was maybe five years old, I remember the lady upstairs, her name was Audrey, and it was the custom of mothers to open the windows and call for their children and everyone had a different call. It was like a dog having a different bark! She’d go “AUDREY !” “AUDREY!” and of course we’d all mimic her in the house, you know, and, ah, so 1 remember that so well. And I remember going fishing down in North Quincy , my father took me fishing, near the bridge in North Quincy, and, ah, where all the development is now, it was the railroad bridge on Hancock Street and we went fishing there, I remember that fishing. Then we left Quincy and we moved to Danvers. I went to my first grade in Danvers. And we lived on the corner of Maple and Cherry Streets . Years and years later, I was working at a job in music, along route #1 in Danvers. At three o’clock in the morning I decided to see if I could find the old house … and I found it. So I drove down the street to the school where I started, it was about two or three miles away. The old wooden building was still there.
MS: It must have been a nice feeling
FM: When I came home and told Mumma , she said “How come you’re home so late?” She wouldn’t believe where I was, I was at the old house in Danvers. It was right near the insane asylum and, so, anyhow, we were in Danvers maybe a year. Then we moved from Danvers to one of the six places in Dorchester , Taft Street.
MS: How old were you then?
FM: First grade in Danvers, so when I came to Tafts Street , off Dot Ave, between Dot Ave and Pleasant Street , number 20 Taft, where we lived with my grandmother, while my father was getting another job, to work as a drug clerk in a drug store, And I went to the Willow Street School. Willow Street is off of Pleasant Street right near Edward Everett Square.
MS: Okay.
FM: The walls of that school are still there. There’s a Senior Citizen housing in it now. I drive down there every so often, cause there was something strange happened to me in that school. They used to say prayers every morning in school. They did that in those days. They always said prayers. And they always said the “Our Father” in a peculiar way and I came home and said to my grandmother one time “Gee, they always say “Our Father” in an awful funny way “, cause I’d grown up as a Roman Catholic …my grandfather was a Presbyterian, Charles (DeWolf?) MacKenzie, so then I found out that they added “for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory” and they do that now in the Catholic Church…
MS: But they didn’t then?
FM: They didn’t do that then, see. So that’s the only thing I remember about the Willow Street School was how they said the “Our Father”. Then we left there, because my sister was going to be born, and we left and went to Bay Street , 26 Bay Street I think it was, and we were on the corner of Auckland, and, uh, in the Savin Hill area, and I went to the Savin Hill School, so I was in three first grades in the first year I went to school.
MS: It didn’t hurt you in any way, that’s for sure!
FM: Well, I was used to it, moving around. The the only thing I remember about the Savin Hill school, it was on the corner of Auckland Street and Savin Hill Avenue, was there was a kid in my room named Malcolm Dowd. Now I’d never heard anyone called Malcom before cause that was my father’s name . We became good friends. He lived on the corner of DeWolf Street and Hancock Street in Kane’s Square. We were good friends at that time. And then we left..on account of cockroaches we left,. My sister was born with a tooth! It was news in the Record American and all the newspapers. So the newspaper men wanted to come and take a picture of her. So, Mumma was lying in bed and she had Ginny Ann, my sister in her left arm and she had her finger opening up the mouth of Ginny Ann showing the tooth when she was born, and they took a picture of it …well, we couldn’t wait to get the paper, naturally. Downstairs in our house was Mrs. Shaw’s grocery store, a mom and pop store. Well Mrs. Shaw, had a, they didn’t have refrigeration in those days, the ice man would come in and chop up ice and put it on the milk and things like that. On account of that she had cockroaches and we didn’t know it. Well, when the newspaper man took a picture of my mother in the bed, and the white pillow case and my sister Ginny Ann lying there, and my mother holding the mouth open with her forefinger. When it got in the newspaper we were all excited. Then we noticed a little spot on the white pillow case in the picture.. What’s that, you know, What’s that? Well, we didn’t know, so Mumma got a magnifying glass and what was it but a cockroach on the pillow case (laughter) so, needless to say we didn’t stay in that house too long! (laughter) But I stayed there long enough to finish the Savin Hill School in the first grade. So then she used to… Mumma used to shop down at Maguire’s Market right near St. William’s Church. It was a butcher shop and a store. And Mrs. Maguire had another store up at the corner of East Street and, uh, across from Freeport Street on Dot Ave. and, uh, so they have two stores, two brothers and each one ran the store. Mrs. Maguire also was a real estate person. So, Mumma was into Maguire Market there at St. William’s , and she was complaining about the cockroaches on account of this incident, so Mrs. Maguire got her a flat in a three decker she owned on Highland Street , 27 Highland, right behind the Mather School. The street is now called Church Street. It’s an extension of old Church Street. In those days, most of the streets were dirt. Now, of course, it’s paved. And, so, we lived on Highland Street for a couple of years and I went to the Mather School in the second grade and the third grade. So then, ah, we stayed on Highland Street. One of my sisters got scarlet fever and she, ah, she became deaf on account of it. She got mastoids. And she went through…she was in the hospital for a year, and, so, in the South Department of the Boston City Hospital. So, she was telling me years later she thought Mumma and Dad just got rid of her , she didn’t know, because they were quarantined and people couldn’t go in and out all the time…
MS: How heartbreaking!
FM: And we used to walk into the City Hospital and stand way off. They used to have a big concrete platform. They’d wheel the patients out and we could wave to her about a half a mile away. And that was worse, I guess, she told me, because she’d be crying all the time. She couldn’t see us.
MS: How old was she?
FM: She was seven years old. So anyhow, that was our big excitement on, ah,…but the big excitement was they put signs all over the house “Quarantine”, big yellow signs. Everybody was afraid of us.
MS: Good Lord! Could you go to school? Were you allowed to go to school?
FM: Oh, ya, I went to school, ya, I went to Mather School. And I can’t remember the… the first teacher I remember at the Mather was Miss Pearlmutter in the third grade.
MS: That’s a famous name.
FM: And I remember Miss Pearlmutter in the third grade because I was so dumb, I couldn’t subtract 15 from 11. I couldn’t understand how you could subtract 15, ah, 15 pennies from 11 pennies, and I’d get a minus answer and I had no idea what it was and she kept me after school for months, it seemed, trying to teach me that. But anyhow…the third grade, so, so we moved…that was in the old Mather School , now called the Edward Southworth. It was called the Edward Southworth School years later. Then in the new Mather School we went to the fourth grade. And by that time had moved to … we had moved from … well, when we left Highland Street , which was the extension of Church Street, we moved to Juliette Street and I had changed schools again.
MS: Boy, these are street names I don’t even recognize. Is Juliette still…
FM: Juliette is still there. It’s a big yuppie street now. The, ah, the three deckers overlook the harbor. So if your on the right side of the street, the proper side of the street, you can see all the harbor islands and everything So now they made condominiums out of the flats in the three deckers.
MS: Is that going up toward Gallivan Blvd. or down toward …
FM: No, this is near Fox Street, do you know where Fox Street is?
MS: No.
FM: Now you know where the white church is? Now you start down Adams Street towards Fields Corner, and the first street on the right hand side is Fox Street. You go up that street and it brings you to the area around Ronan Park
MS: I should know it but I don’t know that area.
FM: The area used to be called Mt. Ida. One family lived up there on Mt. Ida. And, ah, so they called the area Mt. Ida. But, ah, it is named for Father Ronan who was the founder of St. Peter’s Church. “Ronan Park”. In 1872 they founded St. Peter’s Church. But the Fox Street runs off Adams Street up the hill, all the way to Mt. Ida Road. But anyhow, it goes past Percival Street and up to Mt. Ida Road. These are streets that go up to Ronan Park. Now, we, ah, we lived on Juliette Street so I had to go to school on the Robinson Street School . And I think it was called the Benjamin Cushing School. We always called it the Robinson Street School. I went to the..I must have been in the fourth grade there. I made a lot of acquaintances and friends . A fellow named Jimmy Gavin who lived on Robinson Street…we became very close friends, one of my closest.
MS: A lifetime friend.
FM: One of my first close friends, yuh. And then we moved from, from…my great aunt owned…her name was Cassie Cameron, she lived at number 51 Linden Street and we moved after a year residing on 20 Juliet behind her, there was a store behind us, we used to climb the fence sometimes and go down to the store on errands for Mumma. But, anyhow, we moved to Linden Street, 51 Linden. It seemed as though we were always one step ahead of the landlord. That’s what they used to say in those days if you moved a lot. Course if the rent was a dollar cheaper, you’ll move. Rents were something like seventeen dollars in those days. So we moved down to…my grandmother MacDonald was taking care of her sister. My grandmother, we called her Gramma Donald ..was on the second floor taking care of Cassie Cameron. “Cassie John A.” they called her. John A. Cameron was her husband’s, deceased husband’s name. So, ah, naturally when I was down there I was doing a lot of errands. I was that age, then, I was getting to be around ten or eleven years old, and, ah, they spoke Gaelic all the time and amongst themselves, so I picked up a lot of the Gaelic language. Especially the orders. “Sit down! , “Shut up!”, ” Come over here!” , ” Do this! “, “Do that!”.Just like a dog,. You know you teach a dog or a baby, you know. (laughter)”Be quiet”, you know. So I learned all the words like (Gaelic……. “Sit down!” (Gaelic…………………… ? “Shut your mouth!”) (Gaelic………………… “Shut your eyes!”) When you’re going to bed…sometimes I’d sleep up there. But anyhow, so, my great aunt was blind and bed ridden and she was the nicest person in the world, just a lovely person. You’d go to visit her and she’d put her hands on your face and she immediately knew who it was. And they had something peculiar..They had a telephone! A telephone! Imagine that! ? bell influenced our family alot. MS: The year being?
FM: 1935-36.
MS: It was one an early, early telephone, one of those dial telephones you hold in your hands…
MS: On the wall?
FM: No, it wasn’t on the wall , it was a tube-like with a mouthpiece at the top of the tube and a dial at the bottom . And the reason we had it is that her son worked at the telephone company .
MS: Sure.
FM: John K. Campbell was her son, and so I knew all my Campbell cousins. They used to come to visit Aunt Cassie. But it was interesting because my first job, when I was ten years old, close to eleven, in 1935, in the summer the horse and wagon used to come around with the milk. And they had bread companies and bread deliveries, course we didn’t have bread deliveries cause Mumma made bread, and my aunt and my grandmother made bread. We never had to worry about bread. We’d have homemade bread every Friday night, you know you could smell the yeast, you know, along with the beans, the homemade beans. So anyhow, on Linden Street where I made a lot of friends, Robert Noble , who is now a. photographer for the Quincy television station, we see his name on Quincy television every so often, Robert Noble, I saw him the other day down at the Presidents Church here in Quincy. He was taking pictures of Jim Cook, and he came over and made a big deal over me, “Hello, Fred,” you know .. They were the first people to have radios here on Linden Street_ Now we used to over there to a big old house. His father had been a mover, and they had a big garage for moving trucks,. Now the big old house…they got a radio , it was in the front room. It was a stand up with a cabinet…like a piece of furniture …like a bookcase kind of furniture. And what he would do, is he would open up the window and put the ball games on and we’d lie out on the grass outside and listen to the ball games.
MS: I can see it now.
FM: That was our first radio. We listened to the Boston Braves. We were big Braves fans! So, pretty soon Daddy got a radio. Oh, boy, that was something else! He got the radio on Linden Street.
MS: Give us the date again.
FM: That would be 1935. So, what happened that summer, the horse and wagon would come around with the milk, course we had no refrigerators, you had iceboxes…and the ice would, ah, and most of the people from the Maritimes became ice men when they came here. They had a horse and wagon. There was Gillis , he was a relative of ours,. There was McIntyre, Johnny McIntyre, Danny Gillis , there was McNamara . Different fellers that were ice men. They’d come around , give you fifteen cents…
MS: Where’d they get the chunks of ice?
FM; The ice company was down on Dot Ave., Roche Street,. Right near the, ah, what’s the name of that hamburger place down near Freeport Street? Oh, what do you call it? The hamburger place right near Bay Street…between Bay and Freeport.
MS: I should know, Fred. I don’t.
FM: There was a bar room there. See, in those days , in the old days, we always identified things by bar rooms (laughter) and funeral homes (laughter), once in a while, churches . But. ah., the bar room was called ” Peter and Dicks”. And it’s on the corner of Bay Street and Dot Ave.. Now we had lived on Bay Street…we had lived on six streets in Dorchester. But the longest we lived…
MS: In ten years?
FM: In about…a year for each street except the last one, Hecla Street, we lived about forty years.
MS: Forty years! Wow!
FM: We had a great landlord, Lithuanian fellow, Mr. and he was so kind and he was always fixing around the house and when Mumma went. to work during Warld War II , every time she would get. a pay raise she would up the rent. That’s how you did things in those days, you didn’t wait for someone to tell you the rent was going up,
MS: You just got a pay raise. You knew it would go up.
FM : Well, it was the right thing to do. Cause he was a good landlord. But anyhow, he let us do the wallpaper and the fixing
MS: So you were his good tenants, too.
FM: Well, everybody was a good tenant in those days. You didn’t have this problem. Today, you have a problem with tenants because , and landlords because they … landlords keep putting up the rent!. They’re greedy.
MS: Yes. greed, that’s a big thing today!
FM: So, anyhow, we were on Heck Street for forty years, and we left there in 1979 after we had a fire. Somebody set the house on fire.
MS: Good Lord!
FM: My mother was dead by then but my father was getting up in age , he was up in his eighties, he weighed 220 lbs. and I couldn’t see me trying to carry him down the stairs in a fire „ so I decided to move, and I moved to Canton where I taught school . But I always loved Dorchester, and I loved Hecla Street and I have a lot of fond memories .
MS : Fred, you mentioned , and this was in another conversation, about the water front and the fishing shacks built along what would be Freeport Street.
FM: Ya, Freeport Street was a commercial area. Freeport Street had shipyards , small ships you know, small boats,
MS: It’s hard to believe, really.
FM: Ya, they built P.T.boats during the war.
MS: Isn’t it shallow there?
FM: Well, no it wasn’t, not for P.T. boats. But even after the war they brought destroyers and bigger ships in through the bridge to H Shipyard where he tore them down and made scrap metal out of
them. That was by the bridge on Freeport Street.
MS: Because, as I look out my mind’s eye at that area it seems to me there’s a big marina over there to the right or what used to be the Sealtest Ice Cream place or something like…
FM: Ya, well that’s over where they call Commercial Point.
MS: But all of that area..,the water in there is deep enough for these…
FM: Oh, ya, well, this was along the Savin Hill Bay… This is where it was, Savin Hill Bay. You’d look from Freeport Street, you could look over to Savin Hill.
MS: This is before Morrisey Blvd. went through there?
FM: Morrisey Blvd was only a dirt two lane highway when I first remember it.
MS: But they must have filled in…
FM: It was a causeway. In other words, a whole slew of causeways went across Savin Hill Bay.
MS: You mean at high tide they were water and at low tide they were…
FM: That’s right, well, what they would do is they would build it up so high so that the water very seldom would cover the road.
MS: Do you remember Dorchester Pottery, then, when it had its heydey down in that area?
FM: I remember where it was. I don’t remember being in the place.
MS: Don’t remember anything particular about it.
FM: Only what I heard years later. I knew it was famous.
MS: It seems strange to think train tracks went along there. Didn’t they?
FM: Well, the Old Colony Railroad came in 1840. What opened up the South Shore to Boston was the Old Colony Railroad. It went all the way to Fall River, places like that. But it went down through Plymouth. Of course they had different lines. And it came over Neponset, where the Neponset Bridge is now, and it came over what is now Morrisey Blvd. through Neponset. There was a station at Pope’s Hill.
MS: Pope’s Hill?
FM: Ya, Pope’s Hill. At the foot of Pope’s Hill was the station. Now, “Pope” was named for a lumberman from Maine, the state of Maine, from that northeast section of Maine right near New Brunswick. I’m trying to think what they call it.
MS: Calais? Machais? Eastport?
FM: Near Calais. Machais. And they started out when the three deckers were being built , a lot of wood was coming down from that area. So, the three deckers started to be built in the late 1890’s. 1898 like.
Before that they were building mansions in Dorchester. Melville Avenue, and up in Ashmont and Cadman Hill, So, the railroad…
MS: In the 1880’s?
FM: 1870’s, right after the Civil War, the railroads became very important.. So, the, ah, what happened was the Popes came down from Maine and they had ships coming down and they’d unload at Commercial Point.
MS: Right there in the Freeport Street area?
FM: It’s right where the Seymour’s Ice Cream is. but then they had to move to a larger area because they used more lumber as they built more and more three deckers, so the three decker period was only about a thirty five or forty year period.
MS: 1880…?
FM: No, about 1898-193 L It’s amazing, that whole area was open farmland area.
MS: So you remember? Do you remember? No, you were too young?
FM: I remember going to Coulter’s Beach, which was down at the, er, where Freeport and Morrissey Blvd. come together now. It was Aberdeen Street across the way and they have a little variety store there . Once in a great while we might have a penny and sometimes we’d go in there and spend that penny for gum or something. You could take the gum and put it on, stick it. on the steps of the bath house, the wooden steps and then you could go in swimming and then you could come out and get it again (laughter). Course you’d never know how many bare feet stepped on it! (laughter).
MS: So, Coulter Beach is where you would go for a swim?
FM: Coulters (spelling) , Coulters Beach .
MS: So is that ..is that now where that lovely little park down there , it’s called Victory Road Park, do you know that area?
FM: No. This is this was where the entrance to the expressway is now.
MS: Okay, opposite Lambert’s. Sort of down in that area?
FM: Well it would be…it would be opposite Aberdeen Street. And Aberdeen, of course one time it had a. little variety store but now there are some people living in it. It’s a place they made the store into living quarters. But it was a..I think the only other thing down there is a union , a building..I don’t know what it was..an electrician’s or something , right on the corner across the street.. Course they filled it in so much it’s hard
MS: Do you have a sense of what is filled in? I mean, do you remember when some things were filled in?
FM: You know on ? we used to go swimming every day. Walk down from .from Linden Street when we lived on Linden , then later on when we lived on Hecla Street . Course we walked down Freeport to Coulters Beach . We never went over to the rich people in Savin Hill . Rich people lived over in Savin Hill.
MS: That was always rich people , that area?
FM: Well, we always thought they were rich.
MS: Well, that’s a beautiful area.
FM: Well, they had heat in every room! They had three deckers that had furnaces. You know.
MS: But there are a lot of house there that aren’t three deckers . There are beautiful houses!
FM: Oh, there are beautiful mansions there.
MS: When were they built, Fred?
FM: We were making fun of it. We called it the rich area. Of course it was richer than ours, I guess.
MS: It might have been a rich area because those were elegant buildings.
FM: Well, if you want to see an elegant building, you go down Freeport Street and take your right on Aberdeen Street, and go down in back there in the Clam Point area and you will not believe the mansions that. are in there. That are still there! These are mansions…I’ve read …there’s a history of Clam Point…I’ve read Boston, and the history of Clam Point is that it was a summer place for Mississippi landlords. And they used to come there before the Civil War. They’d come in their boats, into Tennean Creek . Then, ah, these mansions…like the Bushes go to Kennebunkport, they came to Dorchester
MS: Yup, they came North to cool Dorchester.
FM: And, so, they built these beautiful homes. Well, after the Civi1 War’s over, there’s the end of the traveling North, no more slaves and …well, they had cotton plantations but, anyhow, Boston merchants took the area over. But in 1840 a railroad station was put in there for the rich people.
MS: Right. Is that why that was put in there?
FM: It was called Harrison Square. Harrison had just died. Tippecanoe and Harrison, too? Tyler, too? Tippicenoe and Tyler, too. Yuh. Tyler, too. Harrison was the president who died giving his opening speech at the White House when he was elected. He got pneumonia. Well, anyhow,so they started naming …
MS: His long speech. Wasn’t it a very, very long speech!
FM: Well, all speeches were long in those days..
MS: But I think his was supposed to be the longest ever given?
FM: Probably. Well, it was the shortest for his life. But, they started naming all kinds of things for Harrison after that. They named Harrison Avenue down in the South End and, I’m trying to think…
MS: So the station was Harrison?
FM: Harrison Station… Harrison Square Station.
MS: And that was probably right in front of…was that in front of the, ah, pottery?
FM: It wasn’t far from the pottery. It was right behind Pollacks. Pollacks is on Freeport Street , the brick building by the bridge. If you go down Freeport. Street , going toward the water, on the right hand side of Pollack street. You go down to the right, there, and Harrison Square was the conjunction of Park Street and a couple of other streets in the back there. And the railroad, that Harrison Square Railroad Station…I mean the…what did I call it…the Old Colony Railroad Station came over through Neponset and it would come down to, I’m trying to think of the name of the street there, but they had like a grocery store…a guy named Field s had a grocery store there, later on they called it Field’s Corner…Harrison Square in those days.
MS: Harrison Square became Field’s Corner?
FM: It became Fields Corner. When Fields moved his store from the corner of Adams Street and Dot Ave.
MS: The date being about when?
FM: I’m not sure of the date…
MS: Before your day…
FM: It was after the Civil War.
MS: Oh, way back then..
FM: Right. But the Harison Square…the reason why I know that they called Fields Corner Harrison Square is that they were talking about Dorchester Avenue being a turnpike, and in the history of the turnpike, they started building it from Lower Mills, instead of following Adams Street which twisted and turned back and forth, back and forth to Neponset. Dot Ave. was made driven straight through the farmland area. And it was driven down to Harrison Square. And then from Harrison Square it was driven to …
MS: Fields Corner, as we know it today.
FM: It is now Fields Corner. Then it was driven through Glovers Corner and then Savin Hill, and then finally driven down to what is now Columbia Road and a causeway was built between Columbia Road and Andrews Square. They’d already had a causeway called Boston Street. They wanted to straighten it out. Because it was a toll road and they could charge tolls.
MS: Boston Street was?
FM: No, no, not Boston Street.
MS: The turnpike?
FM: Dorchester Turnpike was a toll road.
MS: My gosh!
FM: You had to pay to go on it. But the old Yankees wouldn’t pay to go on it! (laughter) You see, it was driven straight through at the foot of all the hills. The foot of Popes Hill…no, no, Popes Hill was Neponset, that was also…Neponset Ave. was also a turnpike at first…and that was at the foot of Popes Hill. But Dot Ave. was at the foot of Ashmont, Codman Hill, between Codman Hill and Ashmont, and Ashmont itself would be a hill. That’s where Carruth Street is. That’s where all the railroad people lived. The executives. Now Dot Ave. goes all the way down into what is now Fields Corner., called Harrison Square then. At the Dot Ave area they had the Dorchester High … Dorchester Central School, which became the Dorchester High School. Later on when I remember it, it was an American Legion Post. Then the Town Field was there.
MS: Is that still there? I can’t even recall that.
FM: It would be behind Nanina’s Restaurant, is it?
MS: Okay, I know where that is. As you go up its on the left hand side.
FM: It’s on the left hand side. Gibson Street is on the left. It’s up where the old police station is., at Fields Corner. So, then Dot Ave was driven further down North toward Glovers Corner. Now, Glovers Corner was a big business intersection. Because Hancock Street and Pleasant Street. and Dot Ave and East Street all met at the same place., Freeport Street. It was also a seaport. And they had ships coming in where the Adelphia used to be and now called Ned Kelleys. And then the Hoyt Block was a three decker big block that had two bar rooms in it . When I was growing up, Sullivans was one of them. I remember. So Dot Ave was driven first down North to Savin Hill and when it got to what is now Columbia Road, there was no Columbia Road then, they made a causeway to parallel Boston Street, which in itself was a causeway. Cause that came from Edward Everett Square, one of the original settlements.
MS: Was that…that wasn’t filled land …Boston Street, it was behind it was
FM: An awful lot of it was filled land because at full moon and high tide Boston Street would be filled with water.
MS: Is that right? At what date, Fred?
FM:Every month they had a full moon and high tides…
MS: No, I mean what year.. _I mean when did that stop being so?
FM: They started modernizing it when the…course the Clapp family was responsible for that cause they had pears and they had…
MS: So that was the 1800″s…late 1800’s?
FM: That would be about 1800…that would be after the Civil War . No, it was 1805 that Dot Ave was built.
MS: 1805.
FM: That was when it was started.
MS: Fred, all that area between Boston Street and City Hospital… a lot of that is filled_
FM: It’s all filled in land_
MS: Right, but I didn’t know that Boston Street was…I thought it was land that ran…
FM: What they used to do …all the marsh land along Dorchester was this sea marsh…that they used to use sometime for cow feed…and they’d use it for different things, I remember if you had seaweed in it you could use it for making pudding. Mumma used to make pudding out of the white seaweed which we called Irish Moss, But anyhow…along that water front, every so often there’d be a. knoll sticking out of the water . _a knoll was like a hump of land, and people would walk between the knolls and they started making paths.. it was a short cut along the water front. You didn’t want to walk like you’d walk on Adams Street, back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. Adams Street was a…I had a relative who remembered when the cows used to come down there, She was telling me about the…she was an original parishioner of St. Peters Parish in 1872. So I asked her” what was it like” and she said “Oh, it was all open farmland area. The cows used to come from the South Shore over to Adams Street through Milton in to Adams Street and Neponset, and it was a cow path. You always hear that cow paths were always back and forth…the easiest for the cow.
MS: Sure.
FM: Well, the people did the same things in the swamps, when they were going from one knoll to another. So, pretty soon there was a trodden down pathway between each knoll. So when they started building roads it was a simple thing just to connect them.
MS: Fill in a little bit.
FM: Fill in land here and there. And that’s how they crossed Savin Hill Bay. They had two railroad tracks run across _ course Dot Ave went down through that area near Bay Street…see the bay came in Dot Ave. ..The bay came in as far as the bottom of the hills…Jones Hill. So, Pleasant Street was the original major street cause it went along the water front.
MS: And that was sort of the original area of the old settlers, wasn’t it? Right there?
FM: Yes it was. They settled right there, right near the water. Naturally, especially the settlers of Savin Hill, for they had a roadway coming down from Savin Hill … the mountain … Rocky Hill they called it in those days…to Pleasant Street…and Savin Hill Ave still comes to that area. The Stoughtons lived there. .
Governor Stoughton, lived on that. corner. And so we had Stoughton Street as a result.
MS: Now listen, Fred. I remember one time you told me as a child, you took the train, it seems to me, out of the city. That train, you used to go on an outing … Am I thinking of you? Where did you go? Where was that going?
FM: Before we finish this stuff, I think I’ll talk about my experience with the horse and wagon
MS: O.K.
FM: when I was eleven years old. The Hoods Milkman would come in and he would say, was always around the horse. I loved the horse. So, I seemed crazy to them . Just before I went down home to Nova Scotia to be around horses, it was the year before. Well, or, two years before. So, he says to my mother ” Do you think Freddie would like a. job driving the horse?” Oh, geez, that was right up my alley, Now that was something. “He can help me deliver.” So, what did he do, he would , ah … he and I `when the milkman would come to our place, fifty cents a week ..I think it was five or six days, six days maybe . .
MS: What would that be equivalent to today?
FM: Fifty cents? That would be about ten cents a day.
MS: Now, I don’t know, Fred. Fifty cents was big money then, wasn’t it?
FM: Well, it was big money because a lot of men only made seven, or eight or ten dollars a week.
MS: Right, so that wasn’t too bad.
FM: Well, it wasn’t too bad. Well, gees that was big for us, you know.
MS: Sure.
FM: So, I was around the horse, and that’s what I liked. So, we’d go up Linden Street to Adams Street, then we’d go down the different street s along Adams Street and go up to Juliette Street and Fox Street on the hill. And where ever the three deckers were on the hill, I would deliver the milk up the three stories to the top floor. to the ice box which was always in the back hall. So, mean while he’d drive the horse and wagon. Now, when he’d get down on a place like Highland Street where I used to live where they had a lot of one story buildings, like bungalow type of houses, he would deliver the
MS: (Laughter) And he sent you up on the three deckers.
FM: Well, I didn’t mind, for this was great, now I could drive the horse (laughter) on the streets that had the one story buildings. So, I didn’t realize it. I thought. .1 was driving the horse! The horse was smarter than I was. He’d stop at each house. I didn’t know he’d stopped. He just stopped. I thought I did it, you know. The horse knew where every house was where it was going to be delivered. When I once started on my first job, it was after about two weeks, I was on Highland Street and I fell in sort of a fit, between the horse and the wagon, and the horse stopped just like that! And, ah, I don’t know if he was stopping because there was a delivery there, or because I fell. Whatever it is, the wagon didn’t run over me anyhow.
MS: I think those animals know much more that we give them credit for.
FM: These horses were so smart, they’d get …down home, they could tell when you were going to church. They knew how far they were going to go, then, cause you were dressed up. You’d be always dressed up for church.
MS: Isn’t that amazing. I have a little cat that’s so smart, just like that. (Laughter)
FM: My sister has five of them that are smart like that.
MS: ht fact, talking on the phone, I look over and Mikey’s looking…I’m sure he knows exactly what the conversation’s about.
FM: Well, anyhow, I went in the hospital and , ah, I don’t know how I got back to my house,but I ended up in the hospital, and the Emergency Room at the Boston City. And a Mr. Lydon was working there. He told me years later when I met him what it was like. They were going to put a needle in my spine to draw fluid from the brain. The back of the brain_ Well, I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it. They had this big …
MS: You weren’t here because of the fall…that fall . This isn’t because of the fall, is it?
FM: No, this is because I got infantile paralysis. No, I took a. fit, or something with the infantile paralysis.. I was barking like a dog. AARRFF! AARRFF! AARRFF!
MS: Are you serious, Fred?
FM: That’s what they told me, you know. I didn’t know I was.
FM: But anyhow, so I’m in the hospital and I’m lying on a. litter and they bring this huge machine, something from outer space, with a little tiny needle at the end of it. They were going to drive it into my spine and draw the fluid off the spine which would come all the way down from the back of your neck. I didn’t know it at the time. So, ah, they were saying…there were four or five big brutes getting ready to hold me on the thing, and I said, “Look it, if you didn’t hold me, let you put that thing in me.” “No, no, we’ll hold you.” So Leydon said to them, “All right, he said he’d hold onto the sides”. So I held on to the sides of the gurney. I gripped it with my fists. And when they put the neddle in the bottom of my spine, it felt like my legs were being sucked up into the machine. You know, I had given my word that I wouldn’t move, so I didn’t move. So, years later when I was running for office, for political office, I was knocking on a door and a guy named Leydon came to the door. “Freddie MacDonald!” he said, “You’re not the Freddie MacMacdonald that had polio, infantile paralysis?” “Yuh.” Then he told me the story about me being in the city hospital.
MS: How old were you, Fred, at that time?
FM: I was eleven.
MS: My gosh, did it work? Did this thing that they did to you work?
FM: Well, it worked till about two years ago when I got post polio syndrome, now. That’s why my l legs are so bad. But it worked all those years. I was a runner. I was a swimmer.
MS: My gosh. So, it was a legitimate thing they did to you. I mean, it was a thing that had to be done.
FM: Well, what happened, they didn’t find out till about ten years ago what polio was. It was a virus. And it comes from your brain and damages your back, things along your backbone. And those things that are damaged along the backbone affect your toes, your knees, your fingers._
MS: But when you say it comes from your brain…it’s a virus that’s in the air…and affects your brain.
FM: It gets into the back of your head, way in the back of your head where your backbone reaches your brain.
MS: But, this taking the fluid was the right thing to do.
End of Side #1, Tape #1
Side #2, Tape #1
FM: During the depression, which was the 1930’s to World War II, we all lived in horse and wagon stage. They had peddlers on the street selling fruits and vegetables. They had rubbish men, rags and bottles. They’d be hollering, “Rags and Botts”. And you could always save the newspapers, well, we didn’t save them so much, cause we didn’t have toilet paper until World War II. Newspapers, so we used newspapers. Two cents in the morning and two cents in the afternoon. So, and, we had a throw-away paper called ” the shopping News”. Free paper. So, we had plenty of paper for toilet paper. I had a friend of mine that owned the Adelphia and he was telling me that his father used to cut the paper in squares and put them in a box. He was so neat. We didn’t. We just had the papers in the bath tub and tore off a piece. And we had pull chain toilets.
MS: I remember that.
FM: The water closet was up near the ceiling and you pulled the chain and the water would come flushing down.
MS: Yup. It worked.
FM: When Mumma got a job in World War II, one of the first improvements in our house was toilet paper. I think it cost 2 cents a roll then.
MS: Fred, churches, we haven’t talked about churches and I know they were very important and still are very important.
FM: Well, it’s very interesting because in those days people didn’t mix in their religions. If a person were a protestant he wouldn’t associate with you, and a catholic wouldn’t associate with a protestant. Now, in the Mather School, of course we met Protestants. You know we associated, but an awful lot of kids went to Sister school. And it was the “in” thing, you’d stay by yourself. . The big problem was, the protestant churches had youth activities. They had boy scouts. They had YMCAs. They even had the first basketball, which we didn’t know, we’d never heard of basketball. We never had it because we had 300,000 people in Dorchester until 1960 , and we had one gym for 300,000 people. And there was the Uphams Corner Municipal Building. And the gym was as big as your front room. If you wanted to run around the track up near the ceiling, they had a little track, you had to run around about twenty five times to get a mile. So, that’s how important it was. But some of the protestant churches would have halls and they would have baskets. But we couldn’t go to thin. We weren’t supposed to go. Course I was … most of us didn’t pay much attention. It was the old people that worried about those things. But, anyhow, later on, the catholic churches started Boy Scouts. And I got involved with the Boy Scouts at the, ah…. what was the name of the house? The name of the Dorchester House before it was the Dorchester House. What was that? (Break) Now when I was growing up, I was a member of St. Peter’s Parish. but we were down on the Dot Ave end and there was kind of a social distinction between those that lived on the hill and those that lived at the bottom of the hill. It had been fostered by the White Church people years and years before, when they called Glovers Corner “Sodom and Gomorra”, cause there were sailors that had rooming houses and girl friends down at the corner of Hancock Street and Dot. Ave. so, there was still that attitude of the people who lived on the hill toward the Dorchester Ave crowd. Well, we didn’t know it at the time, but we seldom went up on the hill just, we only went to go to church, to go to mass. And then, the…so…where I lived there were three parishes came together. There was St. Ambrose, St. Williams, and St. Peters. So, we were like on the outskirts of the whole three. So, lots of times we were involved in things either at St. Williams or St. Ambrose , And at St. Ambrose I got involved in the Fife and Drum Corp. That was the big thing.
MS: I bet that was a pile of fun!
FM: I still have my old fife. Its down east at the old cottage on the old farm. I go down to the beach sometimes by myself and play it and I feel like… I used to tell people down at the cape, when I played music on Cape Cod, they would go out clam digging , I’d say now, “I’ll play the flute and you guys can dig…that will draw the clams to the surface and you can dig them.” And of course I’d have to do less work., see. (laughter).
MS: They loved it. It beats clamming.
FM: Yah, so anyhow, I was in the Fife and Drum Corp for about a year till I got the polio. I was living on Linden Street then. And that was on the border of St. Peters and St. Williams. St. Ambrose Church. But, ah, we went to church every Sunday , went to mass every Sunday. It. was the in thing to do, we had to do it, and, ah, we went to Sunday School. And Sunday School was in the Sister School. We didn’t call it a parochial school, we called it a Sister School. So, up on top of the hill across from St. Peters was St. Peters Sister School. Well, I commited my first mortal sins there. Now, what happened, I finally..I think I’ve made up for it since. Did I tell you that story about …
MS: No. (laughter)
FM: Well, it seems that we had a sister …but this time I’m in about the tenth grade. And, ah, so…next door to the sister school was Mr. Barker, an old Armenian had a “Mom and Pop” store , grocery store. Well, Sister Joseph Gertrude used to, ah … it was all boys in the school,. All schools had either all boys or all girls. You never saw a girl, see. So we were … I think it was three o’clock in the afternoon when we went to Sunday School, we called it,. Sister Joseph Gertrude would bring out a box that. would say on it “Buy a Chinese Baby”. And you’d have to put pennies in it. They were buying Chinese babies then. So, ah, Mumma got the word about it and she used to give me two pennies to put in the box. But, being the sinful person that I was, or came to be, it was in the depression and everything, and pennies were a great deal of money. You could buy candy with them. And especially in the summer when that smell from the chocolate mill would come out over Meeting House Hill, well, jeez, you’d be smelling chocolate all the time, and you had nothing to buy it with. Well, anyhow, course in the summer we didn’t go to Sunday School. But, anyhow, I had the pennies and a bunch of the guys and I would go into Mr. Barker’s Store and we’d be starring at the candy, the chocolate, they always seemed to have chocolates in the counter, our nose stuck up against the counter looking at it. We used to do it at Mr. Green’s store down on East Street (laughter) . We did it at Charlie Maguire’s store on Dot Ave. We’re looking at the candy all the time that we couldn’t have. The candy we couldn’t have…so, anyhow. But, next thing you know, some of the guys started buying penny candy. and the’d only put a penny in the box that Sister Joseph Gertrude would have for the buying.. saving the Chinese babies. Well, naturally I got involved. So, in the course of the year I figured I stole about 25cents. Now, I couldn’t go to confession at St. Peters because I was scared to death. Sometimes you’d hear the priest inside the confessional would be hollering loud, “Why did you do that for?” and this and that. It was scary, so, I went to St. Ambrose , the sneak that I was, and I was used to being around there because I played the fife in the Fife and Drum Corp, and I ? functions there…I even went to mass sometimes … so, I, ah, dodged my way out of that. That was in the course of about a year … 25cents. Well, I think I made up for it and I maybe told this story before. When I was in the navy, in October … no November … and December … December, I guess it was, of 1945, we went to China. I was on a destroyer, the U.S.S. Doyle which had become a mine sweeper by then , destroyer/mine sweeper. The DMS 34. Well, we went into Shanghai , we were the first people to go into Shanghai from the United States . So, it was kind of a big deal. But Shanghai, a lot of people in Shanghai could speak English, cause the English had control of it for so long. It was like Hong Kong. A lot of Chinese could speak English. Well, jeez, we were in there having a great old time,. We used to go down onto the docks and we’d ah, we’d have a …they used to…we used to get rides in the rickshaw s. Did you ever hear of a rickshaw?
MS: Sure.
FM: Yuh. So the rickshaws…and then the guys developed a game, . You’d get pebbles, and you’d hire a rickshaws and you’d have a race. The waterfront was a big cobble stoned area called the “bund” b u n d. And they’d line up about eight or ten of these rickshaws and have a race. And you’d throw pebbles at the man who is dragging you. And you’d hit him on the back of the shoulder or back of the rear end… MS: Make him go faster?
FM: Make him go faster. But I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t do that. I was throwing them at…! never won, because I wasn’t…but they didn’t mind because they’d get paid, they’d get more money. This was a way to make money. So, we had races on the bund, you know, that’s how primitive things were, you know. Well, there weren’t any automobiles or trolley cars or anything at that time, so, think they
had trolley cars in some parts of Shanghai but we didn’t see them. But the interesting thing that happened in Shanghai…I went to a Chinese synagogue…I hung around with two guys, one guy became a Dominican monk. Irwin , he was from Michigan, near Detroit. He became a monk. I think the other was Herman , but I think he became a Lutheran pastor … type of people I hung around with. We didn’t go to bar rooms or anything (laughter) so, anyhow. Sometimes, after that race, the rickshaw drivers would lake you to a house of ill repute, thinking you wanted to go Mere. I didn’t want to go to it. I was scared to death, you know. So, this was the difference in some of the kids that were on tne ship. So, ah, anyhow, we weren’t the wild types like everybody thought, I suppose. But anyhow, so, we found out they were selling babies on the dock.
MS: My gosh!
PM: It was an old hag with no teeth there, and she could speak English. She’d say –“Buy baby, buy baby.” They had something wrapped in a. little blanket. What the heck’s going on here? so we found out from a marine who was on duty Mal they were selling baby girls that had been disposed of by their mothers they, what they said, when the baby was born if it were a girl, they would take it to a dry well and drop it down the dry well.
MS: Ohhh, Fred!
FM: And there was always somebody there to buy it for a quarter. Like the equivalent of a quarter. And then they’d bring it down the waterfront trying to find somebody to buy it.
MS: Imagine!
FM: Well, you know it was kind of sad. Well, we couldn’t believe it, so the marine was going to take us out to one of these dry wells . It wasn’t very far away.
MS: Oh, Fred, I cannot believe it!
FM: So, now, I’ve always wanted to meet somebody who was on the ship with me that remembers that.
Because this has actually happened. We found out, Irwin found out, that there was an Episcopalian orphanage on the waterfront, and it was, ah, run by the grey nuns. That’s what they call them. They have grey uniforms. They were Chinese girls, women. So, we went down to check and see what was going on. But they’d take the babies. Well, you know they were rescuing them, Just like Sister Joseph Liertrude was in Dorchester, you know. Alright, so, in the course of three weeks in Shanghai, I bought three babies.
MS: good for you!
FM: They were three bucks apiece.
MS: My gosh!
FM: So the girl, the old lady that had them probably got them for a quarter at the well. She came down and we gave her three bucks. Jeez, that was like a thousand dollars to them. So, that was alright, but of course we couldn’t bring them on board ship. So we’d go with them and make sure they went to the nursery and didn’t do the same thing over again, So, we’d go down to the nursery, and the nuns were there, they didn’t speak English,and they were nice, and they would take the babies in. And we’d end up giving them ten dollars. And ten dollars would take care of them for the year. So, they were happy to get them, you know.
MS: Sure.
FM: And, so ah, now, so I figure it was thirty-nine dollars, three dollars apiece, that’s nine, and then thirty dollars for the nuns. Thirty nine dollars made up for the twenty five cents that I stole .
MS: You bet it did!
FM: So, I hope it did anyhow. .1 hope when I get to St. Peters…
MS: I wish those girls could meet you. (laughter)
FM: So, anyhow, then I found out, in Time magazine in 1948, the communists took over Shanghai. And didn’t they kill all those nuns.
MS: No
FM: They put them on trial . They claimed they were killing the babies. They weren’t killing them, they were dying anyhow because they hadn’t been fed. ‘There must have been a high mortality rate. So, it was so sad!
MS: A horror story!
FM: Now, carrying the story a little further, when 1 was in the legislature up in the State House, every so often you’d see priests or nuns and other people coining in to look at the historical things in the State
House. Well, down behind us in the State House were the Cowley? Fathers. Now, they were the high Episcopalian priests. They weren’t on Joy Street, l think, but they had a church and there was a convent near them , at least the grey nuns used to be with them. And every so often they’d come in the State House. I thought they were priests and I’d be talking to them . By that time I never had any feeling one way or another about a person being a Protestant or a Jew or a … some people q. d in those days. But anyhow, so the Cowley? Fathers come in, every so often a nun would come in , so I asked them, “Do you remember ever having a house, an orphanage in Shanghai? ” “Oh, yes.” So I told them my story. Next thing you know, they’d be bringing their friends in to my office up in the state house to have me tell the story of my buying the three babies for thirty-nine bucks, you know. (laughter) I never thought it was a big deal but it sounds now, that I’m seventy-six years old , it sounds like a big deal now that I get closer to the judgment day.
MS: So, you were in your twenties when you did that?
FM: I was about nineteen.
MS: Pretty nice.
FM: And, but see, 1 didn’t go to the bar rooms. I didn’t drink until I was about twenty seven. I’d drink a dime beer at the PXs in the…where ever the navy yards were…but that would be it…one dime beer.
MS: Fred, speaking of bar rooms and back to Dorchester, you probably have thoughts on that. It seems to me you told me one tale about one of them and a character lady who was there.
FM: Well, we had, ah … almost every corner on a main street had a bar room on Dot Ave. See, the shopping centers were on the end of your street, on Dot Ave. There was a First National Store. There was a butcher shop. There was a…I even had a green grocer , I had a fruit and vegetable market I used to peddle on the streets for a year.
MS: You did, yourself
FM: On the hills, Jones Hill and Meeting House Hill. I had a horse and wagon at first. Then I got rich and I got a pick-up truck. An, so, ah, we got to know everybody.
MS: Your vegetables came from where?
FM: From the market. Go in by the South End
MS: Hay Market?
FM: Oh, no, we didn’t go to the Hay Market, we went down to the South End near where, ah, Clarendon Street and Tremont Street come together. Near the Police Station in the South End.
MS: All right
FM: And, ah, there was a fruit and vegetable market. Sometimes we would go into the Hay Market and , ah, sometimes we’d even go over to Charlestown. And, ah, they had mostly city goods there. or they had potatoes there, meat and potatoes (laughter) and turnip. We started getting all kinds of fruits and vegetables in the store that I never heard of like eggplant and things like that. But Mumma was working down at Pollacks and she’d ask the Italians and the Polish how to cook them and we ended up eating a lot of the stuff we never ate before. She’d make…my mother was an excellent cook ..so, anyhow, the ah…So, every corner had a bar room , and sometimes two or three. When my grandfather came to this country in 1899, Charles Dewolf MacKenzie came from Antigonish, Nova Scotia , he was young. He was born in 1883. so…
MS: This was your mother’s father?
FM: My mother’s father. And he was living with his…his mother died when he was young and he lived with his older sister. They were Murrays. That’s my middle name. That’s how I got my middle name. So, the ah…the Murrays had a barber shop in Antigonish and he became a barber. He came to this country in 1889 and he stayed over in Roxbury with his brother, Murdock. His brother Murdock was married and all the family was there. They were over in the” leaky roof’ section of Roxbury (laughter). Which, for people who don’t know Roxbury, if they know where St. Francis de Sayles Church is, see, this is another instance where you name churches to identify areas, it’s near Ruggles Street. They called the area” leaky roof’ for obvious reasons. The Muddy River used to come in all the way, almost to Dudley Street, and the homes were old cottages that the rich people in Roxbury Highlands had. … their boats. So, they ah, would rent them out to the maritimers who were glad to get a roof over them even if it was leaky. Even if it were leaky_ Excuse me, Latin School. My conditional tense, there. So, anyhow ah, …so he had to move to rooming houses and he came to Dorchester. …to Hancock Street and Dot Ave. Glovers Corner it’s called, because that’s where the seaport was and they had sailors there, and they had rooming houses. So, ah, so…when he came there he couldn’t get a job cause he was a bather. And there was no reason to have a job, but he said he could go in the bar rooms…he had a choice of bar rooms so he wouldn’t overdue it and he could get free hot dogs , free sausages and free eggs, which they gave their people who liked to drink. My grandfather didn’t drink, see. So, anyhow, he was a Presbyterian so he couldn’t drink. So, he grew up around not drinking. But, anyhow, later on he became a Catholic. He was buried from St. Kevins Church. And, I remember going to The Cathedral when he was confirmed and baptized.
MS: You had a funny story about a lady who had a bar
FM: Oh, ya, a bar room. Every bar room had its characters. There was one bar room on our corner called Finnegans, Mark Finnegans. The Elitesville Cafe ? Now, all the old time Irishmen would go in there and they’d pipe, they had this pipe, they were always smoking pipes. And they’d talk so slow and they had the brogue (Fred imitates the brogue here!) and they talked. They were very kind old men. They were mostly old men some of them retired. And they’d sit around over a warm beer for two hours. You know, cause that’s what they did in the old country. Bar rooms were social centers in the old country. You’d see nuns, I’ve been in Galway. I saw nuns, priests, children in bar rooms. Children working on the bar, on the bar itself. And, because it wasn’t considered a negative thing. It only became a negative thing when the first Irish that. came over were only men. And they’d be in places like Canton and they’d live in the outskirts of town. They’d get drunk out there making their own stuff. So, they got kind of a bad reputation at first. Usually the local ministers would get together and have a priest sent out and start a. catholic church, see, straighten out the bad habits of some of the men. (laughter) , just some of the of them, of course. So, anyhow, the ah..so .the ah …Ma Finnegan , she was quite a character. You could eat off the floor in that place, it was so clean. She tolerated no vulgar language. Any bad word and you were barred for life! And she had a memory you wouldn’t believe! And her poor husband was a little mousey guy, an awful nice guy and he did what he was told. You could eat off the…the toilet was even clean! Now, bar rooms didn’t have clean toilets in those days. It was so clean it was shiny. She was always that type. They lived upstairs over the…over the bar. Well, anyhow, Ma Finnegan, she had… Every night Cardinal Cushing would be on saying the rosary at quarter of seven. Well, by that time when I was getting older I was playing music in some clubs. And I’d be on my way out to work at quarter of seven. And I’d stop in Finnegans to get a beer on the way to work playing music, And every night, quarter of seven, nobody could talk in the bar because the rosary was on. And the old timers loved that, they didn’t mind it, you know, the old time fellows, And, you know it seems strange…most people have negative impressions of bar rooms you know, so, but…she had a peculiar one. So… and so if you swore once you were banned for life! Now, after World War II, in the 1950’s, a lot of young guys were coining from Galway. They called them turkeys, cause they (Fred imitates the wobble of a. turkey, here). They talked like that. They sound like turkeys. (laughter)Because they came from a gaelic speaking area. It’s like our people on Cape Breton. Well, my father could never pronounce the “t h ” . It was always a “t”or a “d”. I go trough da door. I go trough the door. And I tink about that ting. Now, the “th became a “t”and the “t” became a “th”. You went trough… trough the door. So, they had peculiar sounds, just like the Cape Bretoners had. Well, these Irish guys, every one of them, an awful lot of them that came into her place they were working along Dot Ave to …laboring work, young guys and every other word was the “f’ word. Oh, jeez, they said it once they were barred for life. She’d come down “OUT”. And they didn’t know why they were thrown out. They were so used to saying it. If you grow up in another language, you can use a so called dirty word and it doesn’t sound dirty. Like my grandmother used to use the word “shit”. I didn’t know it was an adverb in Gaelic. Come over here, shit. You know? I was saying to my mother, how come gramma swears like that? It wasn’t that at all, it was just a word that sounded…it’s like Lipschitz, you know, a German word. The kid that sat behind me in Latin School whose name was Lipschitz . So, he was the was the last of the ” L’s” and I was the beginning of the Mac, “M’s. So, we were good friends, naturally. Although you seldom turned around in Latin School. If you were, it was a sign that you were cheating. Well, we became good friends. So, we had a reunion about. twenty years later. So, I said to one of the guys, “I wonder whatever happened to Lipschitz? Does anybody ever see him?” “Oh,” he said, “he changed his name.” “Oh,” I said “he did! Well, no wonder .1… we don’t see him.” “Oh no, ” He said, “he changed his name from…” his first name was Solomon, he didn’t like the name Solomon so he changed his name to Daniel …became Daniel Lipschitz. So…so… but the word “schitz” sounded , you know, kind of negative so I thought he had changed his name because of that , you know_ But, anyhow…so, she would bar them for life. And she had a memory. They couldn’t understand why they were being thrown out, because they were using words…it’s like us using Italian swear words and we use them and sometime we use them and we didn’t know they were bad!
MS: That was an unusual bar, wasn’t it, that she ran…a special place
FM: It was very unusual, ya, it was so clean, that’s why I went in there cause I knew the beer was clean.
MS: Now, listen Fred, after World War II , I mean you told me some wonderful stories about that. (World War II). I wonder if we have time to get that in …but, you went to B.U., anything you want to tell us anything about that…and I want to hear about the jazz band…and your teaching. ..and as a Representative. FM: When I came home, course I went to Latin School, so…1 was supposed to go to Harvard. Harvard was set. up for Latin School. Ah, Latin School was founded in 1635, Boys Latin School. It was set up to make ministers for the various parishes of Dorchester and any place around Boston. And, in 1639 they set up Harvard to take care of the Latin School boys. Like John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Johin Hancock, they all went to Latin School. So, it was like a preparatory school for Harvard. So, Harvard was set up so you automatically got in if you got out of Latin School. Well, anyhow, I kind of cheated a little. When 1 was grad… last year of Latin School you could have your draft date moved up. We had to go down to Fields Corner, there, to the draft board. There was a. store on the corner of Adams Street. and Dot Ave. There was a Morgan Bros. ice cream creamery in there and a dairy store . incidentally, we very seldom had ice cream. We didn’t know what it was. It was quite a delight. Once in a while Mumma would buy half a pint. But, anyhow, ah…up above was a hall and there were a lot of…1 think the old Dorchester paper, newspaper was up there too, in that building. So, that’s where the draft board was. So, if you were eighteen and you were in you last couple of months of high school you could have your draft date moved up. So, everybody was doing it… we were very…you know…all the other guys had gone in the service and you missed them . Course, I was behind a year because I had infantile paralysis in the Mather School., in the sixth grade. So it took two years for me to get through the sixth and seventh grades. Sixth grade…I got through the sixth grade cause I had a home tutor. Mrs. Hickey from, ah…she lived across from the White Church on Adams Street. She worked in the Lyceum Hall. She was a teacher. But she was a tutor and she came to my house and she was very nice to me and she suggested that I go to Latin School. Course that was great! So, when I went to Latin School I was in the seventh grade for two years. So, I was a year behind, so, I was eighteen years old when I become graduated from Latin School. So, I had my date moved up to three…the three months and it was a big deal. Jeez, most of the guys in my room were seventeen. Oh, they thought that was wonderful. They wished they were eighteen. Everybody wanted to…nobody wanted to be a “4Fer”. They called it “4F’s”. Everybody wanted to gb in the war. Well, anyway, we were all patriotic. So, I went in. We had to all go over to Commonwealth Avenue to the automobile companies, Commonwealth Avenue had about twenty five automobile …one place after another. Packard, Cadillac
MS: Up near B.U.
FM; Up near B.U., Packard, Cadillac, Chevrolet…So they used those buildings for induction centers. Course thousands of people would go in. So, I went over and I…you get your clothes off and you stand naked with ten thousand other guys, you have papers in your hand and they give you your different tests. And as you go along they ask you questions and they test things and this and that, and they write on the paper. Well noticed every time they would have you do something with your left leg or your left arm, which had been crippled, mine had been crippled with polio, they’d write something down. So, I’d sneak up in the crowd and look at some other guys paper , and grab the pencil and write it in on mine. Write the same thing, whatever it was on his. So, pretty soon I was getting in the service , you know, in an illegal way. I didn’t realize, well, 1 didn’t care anyhow, you know, I wanted to get in. So, they shipped me down to Newport,R.1. They put me in the navy. Shipped me down to Newport, R.I. for boot camp. Every morning you’d have to run five miles. Well, I was just getting over the polio. So, I’d make sure…I was short enough anyhow, I’d get up in the front of the line. By the end of the five miles I’d be at the end of the line! So, you know, I faked my way through that. So, because of the Latin School background and they took tests and everything, they put me in the Naval Air Corp. in Jacksonville, Fla. to become a radio man gunner. Well, I got down there, I was all right. in the radio, cause I learned the Morse Code in the Boy Scouts when at the Dot House. Gordon House, that was the name of the place …Gordon Place was off Leonard Street behind St. Ambrose Church. They called it The Gordon House. It wasn’t called the Dot House until later. When it moved down on Dot Ave. it was originally called the Haydn Center because the Haydn Fund paid for it. And Mr. Robertson and Mr. Strong were the two big shots …wonderful, wonderful people. Really, I think so highly of those people, working with us kids, you know. Well, anyhow, so I get down to the Naval Air Corp , I was near the tops of my class, cause I knew the Morse Code! I could take forty words… I learned how to type. Because you couldn’t read you’d print it , but, ah when you started taking 50-60 words a minute you had to type. Well, then they were sending us to Naval Gunnery School to be a radioman gunner in an airplane. Well, you had to jump off things and, ah, jump when you had parachutes . I’d sneak around the obstacle courses . I thought I was getting away with it. Pretty soon they got rid of me. They sent me to sea. I thought I … I didn’t know why I was being sent to sea, but they sent me to Bayone, N.J. by train to pick up the U.S.S. Doyle. Now, the only time I was ever seasick was going from Bayone, N.J. to Portland, ME , Casco Bay, when we went through the Cape Cod Canal , I got seasick! (laughter) I was in the navy three years and never was seasick. But anyhow, so I got away with it for a while, .faking it, but they weren’t going to waste their radio man skills they had given me . So, I became a Radioman Second Class in the navy . That’s the highest rank I had. But., we were in the invasion of Normandy . I went to Harvard, finally, for three days to learn how to work…we were in Brooklyn Navy Yard and they sent myself and a guy named Max Wheeler to Harvard. I think they sent me cause I lived in Dorchester and 1 could be near home. At least giving me a chance to get home. So, we went to Harvard for three days to learn how to operate certain radio equipment to jam V-2 rockets. We didn’t know what they were doing. We’d never heard of V-2 rockets then. So, my job during the invasion of Normandy was to jam V-2 rockets. And there weren’t any! So, I didn’t have any job to do! So, I saw the whole invasion for nothing.
MS: Good to be on that side of things!
FM: But it was, ah…poor Max Wheeler, he was in … he had been in Pearl Harbor and he was one of…out of sixty radiomen on his battleship, fifty eight were killed.
MS: And he was one?
FM: No, he survived. The next ships they built were destroyers cause they could build them quicker. So he ended up on our ship. He was a. First Class Radioman. But he was scared to death of Normandy. He was throwing up and he had diarrhea. And he literally turned yellowish looking, you know.
MS: Having been through that other experience. Oh!
FM: I don’t blame him, you know. I’m not making fun of him.
MS: Cause he knew what it was about.
FM: I didn’t know enough to be afraid. (laughter) So, ah… so the result is they opened the door of the temporary radio shack we were in with this temporary equipment and it was right on the deck, so I could see the whole invasion. The smell was so bad I opened the door. Next thing you know I put an extension
cord on my once I found out there weren’t any signals , and I was helping pull the guys out of the
water that were injured. I really wasn’t helping, I was holding the stretchers for them, the other guys that
were pulling them out of the water. Well, 1 was part of the group, you know.
MS: Well, that was a great contribution I would say, too!
FM: The stretchers were form fitting stretchers. If you lay down on it, your anus would fit into a certain section and your legs, your rear end and all that.
MS: Fred, then when you came home you went to B.U., you had a jazz…anything important about that? I
know you started a jazz band, didn’t you? A radio station? I remember some things like that.
FM: Yuh, when I was at Latin School my father gave me a fiddle, the family fiddle, to learn how to play. They had a string orchestra at Latin School. It was very famous. Leonard Bernstein had been there ten
years before.
MS: Is that right?
FM: Many of the guys became professional musicians.
MS: Wow! He ran the music department , or he was a student ?
FM: No, he was a student and…he lived down on Dudley Street , right near Dudley St. Station. Then when he moved to Brookline he stayed at Latin School. They could get permission to stay at Latin
School. But he had come from the Dudley Street area.
MS: Now, he would be about ninety or so today , wouldn’t he?
FM: That’s right, He’d be about ninety.
MS: This is well before your day.
FM: Yuh, He was eleven or twelve years older than I was. But we used to hear about him because he was quite famous, then. Well, anyhow, the maestro looked at me and I was a sad looking creature.
MS: I can’t believe it!
FM: I was cross-eyed, and glasses and a bad case of acne. (laughter) I used to tell my students down at
Canton High School, “You think you got a chip on your shoulder? Let me tell you when I was in high
School, I was cross-eyed. I had a bad case of acne…the second worse case of acne in the school. I had a brace on my left leg and I was in bad shape, plus, I had to carry a school bag…a purple school bag! Bad enough being a school bag. Most of them are green! It was purple because of the color of Latin School. (laughter) And, ah, with books in it, and I had to go through Andrew Square Station carrying a fiddler Jeez, you were a sissy if you played music in those days. So, I had to learn how to fight I went to the Dot House and joined the boxing team. So, anyhow, as long as I could catch somebody I was all right, I guess, or kick them probably. When the maestro saw me at Latin School, he was an old Italian from World War I …a moustache on him and he’d twist his moustache all the time …looked like something out of Italy (laughter), he said, ah, “Sit down! How long you been studying the fiddle? ” The violin he’d call the fiddle. “Well, I’m going to start now, seventh grade.” “Oh.” All the Jews and Italians have been studying since they were three years old. So, he went in the back room and he brought out a cello. I never saw a cello in my life. But you could sit down and play it. He could see that I needed to sit down. So, I started practicing at Latin School in the Book Room. In those days the W.P.A. was the…Roosevelt had a lot of programs for people who were on the welfare. We were on the welly when my father got infantile paralysis. We were on the welly for a couple of years.
MS: He had it, too!
FM: all, he had it too. So, he was in bad shape, cause he couldn’t be a druggist and make pills…he couldn’t use his hands. And in those days druggist made pills, emulsions, suppositories . And he couldn’t use his fingers, so…So, when he came out of the hospital he went on the W.P.A. … pick and shovel up at Ronan Park I used to bring his lunch up to him. I remember it well. But, anyhow, so all that grass and that beautiful area that’s up on the hill in Ronan Park was done by them. So, I used to hide the cello in the Book Store , it wasn’t a store, Book Room. Sometimes we’d repair books for the school . I was on what they called the N.Y.A. (National Youth Administration) and you got five dollars a month. That was good. Every money you made went into the household. You didn’t have it yourself. So, I’d practice up there on the cello . Well, I only lasted less than a year. But I learned enough of the fingering and everything . So, when I got into college, all the class officers , sophomore and freshmen in my building..at .General College … happened to be musicians! Except myself. Well, they were good musicians. I just had the background of the cello_ Well, next thing you know they got a string bass for me, and it was the same fingering , so I ended up in the…we’d make money for the school. We’d run class parties and ..the, ah, one of the guys , Wally Gold, became the arranger for Elvis Presley! He became a … millionaire. He lives down in N.J. now. There was another guy named Golden, who is now a, who became a psychologist …psychiatrist for the Corrections Department in Massachusetts. There’s Franny Mahoney was my pal, he played the fiddle.
MS: What fun that must have been!
FM: We had a great time. We used to go into all the jazz places in Copley Square. There were a lot of them in Copley Square. Of course we were around the jazz musicians. So, when I was a B.U. I started a jazz club. And, ah, George Weem didn’t like it. He was running a jazz thing at one of the hotels at Kenmore Square , and of course I’d be getting the people over at B.U. to…I’d go into the jazz places like the Big M on Massachusetts Avenue and, ah, not Tremont Street…Columbus Ave. . That was the jazz area. So we got to know a lot of the…. especially the colored musicians, the black musicians. Got to know a lot of them. Henry” Red” Allen came over one time. He was an outstanding trumpet player. Bob Wilbur came over. For nothing! They came over to talk about jazz, you know. They came over to B.U.. They thought it was a big deal to go to a college. We’d be in ther laboratory, sitting on bleachers, you know, and they’d be down below where the …on the platform where ordinarily they’d be having experiments. Science experiments. And they’d be talking about jazz…the old days. Course I was a big shot running it. So, at B.U., I was the head of the Newman Club, the catholic club, and I was in plays. And I was in the B.U. Drarna Club. And was always the old guy cause when we came out of the service we were three years older than the other guys. So, I always played old parts. One of the plays was “Professor, How Could You!” And the opposite, the woman who was opposite me, played all the old parts, was a girl named Olympia Dukakis . So, when l met her brother when I was in politics up at the State House, her brother… I mean her cousin was state rep from Brookline. I asked him, “Do you have a sister named Olympia?” “No, that’s my cousin.” “Well”, I said, “1 used to be in plays. I used to be in a number of plays with her at B.U., you know,” And I went looking for my old play books, you know, naturally I couldn’t find them, Both of us played old parts. (laughter)
MS: Fred, you told me a cute story of teaching first day of school, your students, how you treated your students the first day of school. I just think that ‘s a story that should be recorded! About looking up…research.
FM: Oh, ya, I used to say to them, Now, when you get to…i went to Boys Latin School . I went to, ah…I mentioned the places I went to.. I went to …Boston University I went to Brookline Hebrew College…Hebrew College of Brookline, Tufts College_ I took courses at Harvard. I took courses at Si Francis Xavier University in Antigonish (I studied Gaelic up there…down there!) You never say “up there” in Nova Scotia, you say “down there”. So, I said, so… I’m used to doing research and you’re going to be doing research . 1 was teaching Ancient and Medieval History. Well, I wanted them to do research on the Near East. Not the Middle East, the Near East. For the Middle East, that would be a little further over. That would be Persia and Mesopotamia., Iraq. But any of the Near and Middle East cause I
included Greece. So I said, now what didn’t tell them that at first. I say “Your homework, due in two
weeks….” “Homework, on the first day! !” “You’re a pupil, I’m a teacher, this is a classroom…the building’s a school. You” homework…due in two weeks.” ” Ohhhhh! Two weeks!!! (groan) “You’re to write a ten page paper.” “Ten pages!” “And you’re to write a paper and I want you to get used to doing research. Everybody has a name that means something. Now, names can be from nicknames, they can be from occupation names, they can be from place names…whatever it is. I said, “Now you’re to go to the library and find out what your name means.And you write a paper on, and speculate in that paper why you got that name. So, it will give you a chance to do a little bull, you know. Do the same thing for your mother and your father. And most of you have three names. In our culture you have three names. Then said finish it up. If somebody has an unusual name in your family, like I mentioned “Joe Shortsleeve,” in later years on television, he is a newscaster, and there are other people with very unusual names, and I mentioned those unusual names…figure that one out…and then your mother’s mother. They didn’t know she had a name! They’d stare at me! All they knew about was “Grammy-Give-A- Gift” and “Nana-Give-A-Gift”! Oh, she has a name. Her mother’s mother. So, I’d get these very interesting papers. Every so often I’d notice kids with French names would have trouble. They could get part of the assignment but I found out there were no books on French names. Now, I have books on English names, Irish names, Scotch names., German names, Italian names, Dutch names. There are books written on American names…which would include some French names. Like, Boudreau means an armed courier. And, all, Boudreau is a. French name but you find that in an American book cause a lot of Huguenots settled in the United States. They had French names. Paul Revere would be another one_ Peter Fannie in Huguenot French means a hay dealer. So, it’s interesting that he built a business in Haymarket Square. But what was he…he was the equivalent of a filling station. The farmers would come in every morning with their horses and wagons, so, he’d sell the hay for the horses to get back to the farm. So they could eat to get back to the farm.
MS: Is that really how Haymarket go its name?
FM: Sure, that’s how it got it. Then he would set up these little stalls along the Hay Market area. Course people would rent the stalls. And the word in gaelic for a shop is a” booth’, b u t h, but it’s pronounced bu, so it means booth, it’s booth., so. So, a, uh, that’s in gaelic . Now, they don’t say “shop”, they say “bu” they don’t pronounce the “th”, but anyhow…But these people would rent these booths, like a bazaar. It’s like they do today at a garage sale. Somebody would come down and rent a spot, you know.
MS: Flea Market, you mean.
FM: Flea Market, they’d sell certain things. So, naturally, you’d have all these stores on the bottom around his Hay Market Square. _because there were so many people coining in all the time, he set up a hall upstairs. good place where they could drink ruin , awesome (?) drink, black rum in those days, so it became sort of a social center, too. And a political center.
MS: Fred, I’d love to have you talk a little bit about your deep roots in Nova Scotia and Scotland. Give us a little Gaelic, a. little bit about your folks if you’d like. What ever you’d like.
FM: Well, my mother didn’t have the Gaelic so, the MacKenzie side long lost it. See, they grew up in the English speaking area of Nova Scotia. MacKenzie’s grew up in Pictou County. And it was the protestant area of Nova Scotia.
Tape #2 Side #1 of 1
We were never really politically minded, but the Canadian Club in Boston, my father belonged to it. It used to meet. down on Dudley St. And they used to get involved in campaigns like for James Michael Curley and people like that. Because they’d get favors done for immigrants that came to this country. So, from 1936 on, my first political thing was a fellow named Albert P. McCullough, owned a machine shop over on Old Colony Blvd. in South Boston. And he was quite successful at it . And, ah, in the 1930’s he ran for School Committee in Boston and of course all the down east people would back him because he came from New Brunswick. Well, I used to be hearing about this new Albert P. McCullough. Well, in 1936 there was a big controversy in politics . There was a priest named Father Coughlin. Do you remember him? He came from Royal Oak, Michigan and he was very anti-communist. All Jews were communist, according to him. He had a paper called ” The Social Justice”. I used to sell it out in front of the church for a. nickel. Now, that was a lot for a paper then. Newspapers were two cents. So, you didn’t sell too many of them. But, you got your percentage, maybe twenty five cents on a Sunday afternoon. Well anyhow, Father Coughlin was very anti-Jewish. They used to call it anti-Semite, but that’s an incorrect word, cause the Arabs are Semites, too. So, you don’t say anti-Semitic. And I don’t know if Father Coughlin was anti-Arab. But anyhow, the, ah, that was the in thing in 1936. The Hitler influence here. Jews were all bankers and they owned all the money and they owned this and that.. That’s what they said. So, anyhow, course I never felt that way, because I had a lot of Jewish friends at Latin School. I had Lipschitz sitting in back of me and Silverstein sitting to the right of me and they were all my pals. And Silverstein got killed in World War II. He was an awful nice guy. He came from Brighton. So never bad any…I was never anti-Protestant or anti anything, you know. Mumma wouldn’t let us, anyhow. If we used any words like ” guinea”or ” kike”or anything, we’d get chastised for it. We never used “nigger”. We never used any of those pejorative terms.Yup. We just grew up that way. That’s how people…if they grow up with those things they use those words. And Mumma. was just like that. We did what we were told. Well anyhow, the, politics. Father Coughlin had a political party called the Social Justice party. And they ran a fellow for governor in Massachusetts, I think his name was O’Brian. Most of the guys who were involved were Irish ushers at the church, in the various churches, in the Social Justice party. And they ran Albert P. McCullough against John W. McCormack. So, I started going down to Uphams Corner over The Dublin House. They had their headquarters there. It was the first time I ever saw coffee. We never had coffee at home. We had doughnuts but these are fancy doughnuts . These are doughnuts with a.. you know, .very fancy looking doughnuts…. and coffee and doughnuts . And of course I’d go down and I’d write envelopes if they were sending out mail. And I was around these local politicians that were all for Albert P. McCullough. Surprising, because I met John W. McCormack years later. Most wonder ful person I had ever met in my life. And I often regretted having been involved in any campaign against him. He helped us get the Dorchester House; John W. McCormack and Eliot Richardson . Eliot Richardson’s sister was at the White Church. And between the two…Eliot Richardson was down in the cabinet in Washington, Eisenhower’s cabinet, and, ah, I remember the night I got the call from McCorinack’s office with the million dollar grant for the…I was chairman of the building committee for the Dot House. So, anyhow, John W. wa.s just the nicest person . But anyhow, we were out for this guy, the anti-Jewish guy .. So, my experience was going down to Uphams Corner and going into headquarters and having coffee for the first time. After that, Mumma would start making coffee at home, Bokar Coffee or something. She’d get ground coffee. Mumma didn’t go down cause she wouldn’t get involved in something that was anti something. She’d go to Bingos and help other politicians…like Timothy Murphy or somebody who came from our neighborhood. Well, anyhow. So, after the war was over, when you came back home, I started getting involved in the young Democrats in Boston University. I was chairman of the Boston University chapter. I was an awful, impossible type of guy for joining organizations. Like I told you about joining the Drama Club and the Catholic Club and all that. So, in the young Democrats, we used to start meeting over in Brookline . It was when the New Yorkers first came to Boston They came to school here and they didn’t go home. They came to school here and of course they had no use for us especially if you were Irish Catholic or any kind of a Catholic. They had no use for us. In Brookline guys like… they were like Barney Frank types. Barney was a nice guy, I liked Barney, but that’s the type they were. They came to school here and they wouldn’t go back home. They stayed here. They had a good deal. And of course they went to places like Harvard. They went to good schools., B.U., B.C..,Tufts, Northeastern. So got to meet them. I belonged to what they called the … I think it was called the S.D. A., or something,
MS: Student Democratic
FM: Student Democratic Action Committee or something. When I’d ask them to come to Dorchester for something, they wouldn’t come over! They had kind of a negative opinion about Dorchester. We were all just “ward-healers” and low-class people. Well anyhow, that was all right. So after a while I kind of drew … I got a kind of negative opinion about them so I stopped going there. But , because I was involved in the Young Democrats I became…I’d go to the conventions, the state conventions, and I became the Vice President in charge of college chapters. Now I’m kind of a big shot! When Adlai Stevenson was running for president, his secretary, Dick Nelson, was running for president of the United States’ Young Democrats. And they had a convention in St. Louis. So, now we elect delegates from Massachusetts to their convention. This is where I got my start, 1951. So, ah, we go out to, ah,…it was early in 1951, maybe it was 1950, but, I will never forget, we took the five dollar train out of New York…out of Boston to New York . Then took a train from New York to, ah…it was sort of a cheap train. It stopped at every stop all the way to Cleveland or something, then took a bus …that’s how much money we had (laughter)…to St. Louis. So we got out to the convention there… we had thirty seven or thirty eight delegate votes for whoever we wanted for president of the Young Democrats. Well, Dick Nelson was running from Illinois, secretary to Adlai Stevenson. He’s running against Basil Whitnaeur (?) of N.C.. We got a telegram from McCormack asking us to vote for Basil Whitnaeur of N.C.. Well, at that time we were still kind of anti-McCormack. Aw, the heck with him for ordering us like that! We’ll vote for whoever we want! We were planning on voting for Dick Nelson , I don’t know why, we just seemed to like him. He was kind of a classy guy. Not that Basil Whitnaeur wasn’t, but we liked Dick Nelson, we had met him. So, we’re out in the hotel in St.Louis and we found out we had the turning votes for whoever was going to be president. So, I don’t know how may thousand…hundred votes there were, hundreds of votes… we had the thirty seven … there were only two of us. In other words we had these votes, what do you call it? there’s some word for it…you could cast your 37 votes. Just two fo us. They were like convention votes. Well, now, the southerners found out about us . So one of them come up and called me a dirty old something-or-other from South Boston and he started to fight. And he hit met So I hit him back! Naturally I’m not going to stand there ! By that time I’d had a little practice up at the ring up at the Gordon House (or the Dorchester House). I thought I knew something about boxing. Well, the guy hit me hard! I went down! Next thing you know a whole bunch of guys grab me and are dragging me out of the hall. Oh, jeez, into…1 thought it was a taxi …or what, and we were driving off and I was fighting back at them! Who were they but the Chicago crowd trying to save me for their thirty two…thirty seven votes! (laughter) I didn’t know it! I didn’t know it! I’m fighting back at them! Here, quiet down, quiet down, Mac! Quiet down! Your Irish temper is this and that, you know, so they explained in the taxi going over to this new hotel_ “We need your votes” and they explained how we were the deciding votes. ” And you stay here and whenever we need somebody to get up and speak for something, we’ll come and get you and you get up and say, “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts casts thirty two votes for such and such.” Or what ever the rules were. Well, we went back and forth from that hotel. Well, who was the convention speaker but Adlai Stevenson! Well, where was he but in the next room to us in St. Louis! So, we’re brought in to meet Adlai… Buddy Hamilton (Charlie Hamilton) and myself ( Charlie Hamilton now runs the kareokes in the Common Market Restaurant in East Milton Square at West Quincy every Thursday night) . Charlie Hamilton was President of the Young Democrats. I was Vice-President… of Massachusetts. So, we go in and we have breakfast with Adlai Stevenson! Oh, jeez, it was the most wonderful experience, you know! Because of my Latin School background, classical background and everything, I was able to talk with these guys. I didn’t realize it, you know. That’s why Bulger got along so great with all the Republicans. He went to B.C.. He’s a”Three Ber.” B.C, Boston College High , Boston College Law School. And he’s got all the classical background. He knows Greek inside out and Latin and… And these people that went to Groton and St.Marks and all that were very impressed by that. So, I was talking to Stevenson like I am talking to you. He was the nicest person you ever met in your life! So, anyhow, we got to know him. And he found out…in those days they didn’t have televisions in the room … you could order one…and this Democratic Convention was on St. Louis local television…black and white…so…what did he do, he had one of his men send up a television to us so we could watch it.
We didn’t have to wait for orders to go over to the Convention Hall. Well, of course when we cast the thirty seven votes Dick Nelson became President. of the Young Democrats. Now, as a result, they had organizations in every state of the union to work for Adlai Stevenson for President. So, we got back to Boston. It was quite an experience! I found out how crooked the newspapers were then. They still are. I used to tell my students about it. We had headquarters in the Copley.. in the… what’s the place up on Tremont Street? Parker House Hotel. The newspaper row was down below on Washington Street. So, I used to bring down daily reports of what we were doing, as I was Chairman of the Adlai Stevenson Committee in Massachusetts. I’d walk into the newspapers and pass out these things we did the night before. I thought they really wanted news. I didn’t know that newspapers didn’t want news! So, I went by the editor’s office one night. “Hey, kid, come in here.” Of course I was a kid. I was still in B.U. then. “Yes, sir.” He was the editor. He’s waving the paper. “What’s this thing?” “It’s a news report, sir. A news release, sir.” “Where’s the money?” “What do you mean, money? This is a news release.” I didn’t know you had to buy advertising first, to get these things in the paper. I was dumb. So, then he introduces me to Andrew Dazzle (sp?) from Newton. The head of the advertising department. Then I found out you’re supposed to buy advertisement in order to get news. You can write any news you want if you get advertisement. Then I found out it happened in the local daily…the weekly papers., you know. So, your news was controlled. And I found out they want…they don’t want corruption. But my advertisement in the “Globe” Wedding Section one time for my orchestra was $75.00. The same size add for a politician was 750.00. Now, who’s crooked? The newspapers, naturally! You watch T.V. and you see these newspaper editors on, complaining about the politicians. They’re the most hypocritical, crooked people you ever saw in you life! You have to be involved in it to find out. So, anyhow, I was never too happy with the “Globe” after that. Well, now, there used to be a program on television called “Starring the Editors.” And there was a guy named Billy Mullins from the “Herald” was one of the editors. Fresh little snappy guy. He was all rignt. So, when Stevenson came to Massachusetts the night before 1952 election, we held the first nation wide television broadcast of a presidential election at the Mechanics Hall in Back Bay. Did tell you this one before?
MS: No.
FM: So, anyhow, who were the people I was dealing with in setting up the stage (course I was in charge of it) but Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall! They knew all about staging and all of that. I didn’t realize he’s only about five foot tall. Humphrey Bogart.. She was taller than he was. But they were nice people. Now, we were given orders to…all the travelling people were the famous correspondents from World War II. They were given seats in the front row. Of course there were a lot of big shots there. Eric Severide and all these guys. Now, Boston people were in the second row. So, we got a bunch of guys from the Adelphia, they were dead end guys and longshoremen, and the first time they ever dressed up. They had broken noses and they looked kind of rough! But when they dressed up and they made good…there was no such thing as a body guard for the President, the presidential candidate. So, I had them standing all around the stage. And they’d be standing with their arms folded, you know, acting like big shots…course the first time they ever dressed up! White shirts and ties and of course they were supposed to guard the stage. Now, this guy comes up and says, “Who’s in charge here?” ” Mr. MacDonald.” “Where is he? What’s his name?” “Frederick MacDonald.” Mullin says to me, “Are you Frederick MacDonald?” “Yessir, I am, ya, um. “He said, “You ever plan on running for office?” “Well, I don’t know, sir.” “Well, you better never plan on running for office or you’re a dead man.” What? Jeeza! He was mad because the Boston newspaper men had been put in the second rows. So, how they ignore you if you’re running for office , you know what they do to you? They ignore you. You know, as James Michael Curley said, “I don’t care what they say about me as long as they spell the name right. Now, I gave a talk the following….I was running a couple of years later for city council city wide. They were just starting that. I ended up with about 50,000 votes, but I lost by a couple of thousand. But I won the primary. But, I give a talk in the South End. All the candidates, they’d be in the newspaper about what they said, this and that, and they never mentioned me. That’s how they get back at you.
MS: That took care of you.
FM: They’re so crooked! I used to tell my students about how crooked the courts were and my experiences in the courts.
MS: I think there should be a course in school..”Awareness”, “Things to Watch Out For”, or”Getting Through”. You know?
FM: Well, I used to bring it in my classes automatic. You know, as I’d be teaching about politics we might be talking about the, ah, newspapers of the Revolutionary period. Now, not many students, er, teachers would bring that up , they wouldn’t have time. 1 added a hundred times more stuff to the course than was in the book. And I did it just by talking, and the kids remembered it. And you know they didn’t know they were getting all this stuff. They had a college education before they got out of my room. MS: I think they did! Fred, the last two things I have are…
FM: Well, anyway, I ran for City Council three times and I was successfully defeated each time. MS: (laughter) Oh! Boo!
FM: So anyhow, then I ran for State Rep. I lost the first time, so that’s the fourth one. Then the, ah, next time I one! Meeting House Hill. Ward 15. And the fellow who had been in before, Norton O”Brien, he was a C.Y.O. director up at Ronan Park. So, he had a lot of popularity. Nice fellow. Nice fellow. He was a retired postman. Very nice fellow. But, it wasn’t a very nice campaign. They attack you, you know. Cause then I found out, you know, campaigns can be kind of vicious. I, I put an ad in the paper….he used to hang around the cleaners up on Bowdoin Street, right next to Eddie’s Tavern. And I’d say, “Is your State Rep. taking you to the cleaners?” And I thought it was comical. Worse thing I ever did! When you get personal like that, you end up with enemies for life!
MS: I bet!
FM: And so, when I ran for re-election, naturally, they were waiting for me. And so, it was my fault because I shouldn’t have done that.
MS: So, you were a rep. for four years?
FM: Two years. It was fun. When I got up there, one of the most memorable things that I did, I was on the Public Administration Committee. Now, that’s the real estate committee for the state. You own all the buildings the colleges are in, prisons, you name it. So, if a kid wanted to go to college, and he wanted a dormitory in some place, I’d call the President of the college, you know, down here in Lowell or up in Fitchburg , or something. And they’d tend to get him into the dormitory. They had trouble getting in, there were so many kids. And then the prisons were the same way.
MS: So, the representatives really do have power.
FM: Well, they do. Because, you see…it was very close! The Republicans …there were a lot of Republicans then. There was a balance. So, your vote was very important. And one of my most memorable things …did I tell you about putting the prison in Dover?
MS: No.
FM: Well, Dover, back in 1948, a group of monks bought an old estate to put up a monastery. Big headlines in the “Boston Post”. The Dover people were appalled to think that Catholics would be in Dover, especially monks! Those are the days of the prejudice, you know! What could the monks do? The couldn’t do any damage to Dover. They fought and it was headlines. It was a matter of about a year of headlines. Well, they lost out because people started to become more liberal and the monks ended up there. After so many years, by the time I was in office, 1973, the monks had moved to northern New York. They consolidated some of their monastaries and the property was now available. So, it seems that ah, Beth Israel Hospital, over in the Back Bay near Latin School, had a, ah….next door to it was Mass College of Art. And we had control of that building as Public Administration. So, the overseers of Beth Israel came in and they were very important people and they asked if they could buy it. They were going to make a garage for the hospital. Well, it was all right… but where would we put the artists? Well, I said I know a good place to put them. Dover, where the old monastery used to be, there are trees and ponds and brooks and everything. They could paint!
MS: This was not too long ago.
FM: That was 1972 …”73. So, jeez, I didn’t know it at the time, the local paper out there went beserk. It was bad enough having the monks, but imagine artists! The queer artists with their queer habits.
MS: The artists didn’t want to go, either, too much. They liked being in the city near the museum I remember all that.
FM: Bartley (?) came to me, he was Speaker, and he said, you know we’ll kind of quiet this thing down, he said, I think we’re pushing that too much. Course he was getting influence from the Jewish people that ran the hospital. They wanted to get rid of the building and he wanted to get it into…he wanted to get it to them. And put the building into some other thing beside…move the artists out to some other place than Dover. Well, I had been out to Scout Land in Dover and I imagine they didn’t like that either. But, when I was a kid it’s where we used to go camping, Westwood-Dover line. And I liked Dover. It was nice. That’s why I thought of the artists. I was used to the ponds and the trees. Stupid me. Well, the worst thing … while I was in there, there was a riot up at the new prison in Walpole. Millions of dollars of kitchen equipment smashed by the prisoners. Jeez. What are we going to do now? It comes to our committee cause we have to pay out money to repair it. I said, “Why don’t we do what they did in ancient history. The Romans did it. The Mongols did it. You take your enemies and cut them up into small groups and put one little small group here and you put one little small group over there. Divide and conquer.” So, it’s over crowded in the prison. There are 800 people in a place for 500. Take the top 100…the interesting thing was that I said that there … take the top hundred trouble makers, cause it’s usually only a few of them, divide them into like groups of twenty five or thirty each and put them in different parts of the state with the maximum security. In other words, don’t have them all in one place where they can cause trouble. You divide and conquer. It’s worth the money to have many maximum security prisons in each place. There’s one place I can think of. It’s the old monastery in Dover where they didn’t want the artists and they didn’t want the monks. I said, well, put a mini-security prison there. Now„ I still didn’t know I’d be subject of headlines in the local weekly paper. Well, that’s all right. Jeez, they went out of their minds and the representative from there, Charlie Long, came to me and he was from Brighton, originally. He was a Republican but he was a real nice guy. I found out Republicans were nice people. I got to know William. Saltonstall and people like that. They were super people. People with two last names like Norris-Harris or Harris-Norris. (laughter) So, you could do favors for your neighborhood through them. The guys from New York who lived in Brookine you couldn’t do much with. Well anyhow, Charlie Long said “Get off this monastery business and all this. People are really giving me a. hard time.” So, I talked to Bartley and he agreed to it. First he was for it … Bartley, he was the Speaker of the House. So, that was all right. Oh, about ten years later my cousin died. He was buried from Dover. His son had married one of the Taylor family of the “Globe”. The Taylors were from Dover. This was my cousin’s husand, so she had worked for the “Globe” and. that’s how their daughter got to meet Taylor. Well, of course they loved that marrying into a nice family like the Taylors. .so, I go out to the…i was wondering, my cousin was the photographer at the atom bomb thing out in Nevada or where ever it was. He was quite a famous photographer and I didn’t know it. He was a photographer during World War II and. he was also a musician. He played in nice fancy clubs. He played piano and everything. He was quite a character. His name was Patrick. So, I was wondering why…it was in the paper what a famous. That’s how I found out. he was famous! It was in the “Globe”. “Former atom bomb photographer…” and all this business was saying gee isn’t this funny, none of the relatives have called me to go to the wake. So, I found out that the funeral was in Dover. So, there was no wake. So, I go out to the white church, the Universalist church in Dover thinking sometime in the morning they would have the funeral. I didn’t know that they weren’t inviting any of our relatives, so…Now, they had already left, and they were digging the grave and they had the coffin in the grave. So, I asked the grave digger, “Where do they goo afterwards, do you know?” “Oh, down to…” such and such. He gave me an address. So, dumb old me, I drive down the beautiful lanes of Dover and came down to the big mansions and there was one fairly big place. It’s where my cousins lived. You know, because she married one of the Taylors. I didn’t know it. So, I go in, My cousins Kitting…my female cousin’s sitting at the kitchen table Florence McGilvery, Patrick Oh, they get all excited about seeing me. I said “How come nobody knows anything about this? What’s going on?” She starts bragging about me being a state representative. So she brings the Taylors over, one of the Taylors over. “I want you to meet my cousin. He was State Representative, His name is Fred MacDonald. “Are you the Fred MacDonald who wanted TIM prison out here? Are you the Fred MacDonad sho wanted to put the artists out here?” (laughter) I had to say yes. I didn’t know I was famous out there_ Jeez, what a cold reception I got! That’s how I found out I was famous in Dover. Well, anyhow, that was one of my experiences with polities.
MS: Fred, the last things that I have are .family … you’ve told us some about family. I don’t you’re your roots. I put houses interesting things, anything roots in Nova Scotia, I think that might be a nice way to end.
FM: There’s one thing about politics, one more thing. I brought it up. We had a reunion of the guys who were elected the same year I was, recently. An d the only thing…I. got up and said “the only thing I did that was famous in politics , I got the ladybug made the state bug. Did I tell you that story?
MS: No! (laughter) I love it!
FM: it seems that in Franklin, Massachusetts, the kids from the third and fourth grade were getting
lessons on state representatives and state legislature. So, they decided to make a petition to the state house to have the ladybug made a state bug. Well, that’s all right, We started getting letters through the mail, “Please vote for the ladybug. It is a good bug.” Everybody had the same line. They were going to be lobbying. So, I’m on the committee, the Public Administration Committee decides the state animal, the state fish, the state bird, all this stuff … besides the state prisons and the state colleges. So anyhow, we got this thing through the mail. Now, they’re going to go through the regular process. The petition goes into a committee … it goes into the Speaker’s House. He puts I before a committee, namely our committee to decide whatever the people want. That is, to make the ladybug the state bug (laughter). So we have a meeting on it, and it gets a number. They call it House Bill such and such and then they have a hearing. You always have a public hearing. Now, we’re all solemnly gathered up on a platform, sitting in our chairs. The kids come in from Franklin grammar school. They’re all dressed as lady bugs. They’ve got antennae sticking out of their hair, they’ve got spots over their faces and it made a sensation in the state house. Everybody wondered what’s going on, you know. So everybody gathered into the state gallery, the North Gallery where they had the hearing. So, each kid would get up say “Dear Mr. Chairman, please vote for the ladybug. It is a good bug.” And they’d give their name.
MS: Their name?
FM: Each one would give his name. ” Mv name is Harry Faversham. from Foxboro. I’m in Grade 3
‘whatever the name of the school was. And then they’d say. “Please vote for the ladybug. It is a good bug.” Well. the whole place is breaking up. They were so cute, you know.
MS: And these were dressed un as ladybugs?” (laughter)
FM: They were dressed up as ladybugs. There must have been about fifty of them, you know. They came on a school bus. Of course when they got off the school bus outside, people wondered what the hell was going on! So now, I’m sifting no there and the chairman says to me. “Representative MacDonald,” he says, “You’ll carry the bill.” Now that meant you will carry the bill through the hearing in favor of the bill.
MS: flow do you do that? I mean how do you “carry it….?”
FM: “You carry it” means you are in favor of the bill and you speak in in favor of it. You speak to your own legislators on the committee . You get up on the platform
MS: Do you go back to the legislators in a meeting?
FM: No, you go before your own committee first to get a vote. Then the vote might be, let’s say. fifteen to two.
MS: Why would anybody vote against that? Or they didn’t!
FM: Well, no, well there would be a couple of guys there …well let me tell you what happened. Everybody got up and gave a speech. Now, meanwhile the other legislators are coming in. So, Barney Frank is sitting there. After all these “Vote for the lady bug”, Barney Frank got up and he said …and of course he used big language, and the kids didn’t know what he was…”I am opposed to this bill for the ladybug. They didn’t know what the word ‘opposed” meant. So, I said, “He means he is against…” you know … I had to explain what it was. The kids were downhearted! He said, “I grew up in New York City,”he said, “and we used to have games with bugs,” he said, “that occupied us for many hours at a time,” he said, “We’d turn the lights on, and the cockroaches were running all over the place, So I propose that we amend this bill by substituting the word “cockroach” for ‘ladybug”. (laughter) Of course the kids were practically crying! (Laughter) So, anyhow, this Lamont from …
MS: Barney Frank was doing this with a very straight face?
FM: Oh yes. he was just having fun with them.
MS: I knew it!
FM: He’s an awful comical guy anyhow! Course I knew him well cause he was the Secretary to the the Mayor….who was the Mayor….Hynes. He’d be around the neighborhood districts. But anyhow, he says …So, this Gaudet gets up from New Bedford …
MS: Who is Gaudet?
FM: He’s the state rep from New Bedford. “Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to the amendment to this bill and I propose that we substitute the word “ladybug” … he said,” I come from a place called Fall River,” and he said “we’re all Frenchmen down there. And we have a lot of children,” he said. “Everybody has eight to ten” and he starts describing the population, the French population. So, I propose we substitute the word “ladybug” with “bedbug. Well, the whole place broke up in an uproar. (Laughter) It was nationwide news, after a while/ So, anyhow, the poor kids (laughter) well we ended. up voting for the ladybug, anyhow. But not before we had a lot of fun with it! Now, a couple of years later…many years later
MS: Did that all happen in front of the kids? The vote was taken?
FM: The vote was taken…well, Barney couldn’t vote, he wasn’t on the committee.
MS: So, it was determined by the committee?
FM: It was determined by the committee, so they knew right away that the lady bug was made. Now, it has to go to the Governor for a signature. So we have to depend on the …the Governor was Sargent at the time. Of course, Frank Sargent. was a good sport. He was an awful nice guy. He came from around Dover, that area. So the funny part was we had the lady bug made the state bug. Some years later, Franklin High School was playing basketball against Canton High School, girls basketball, and I was sitting right next to the Franklin girls. So I said to one of them, I said, now this a few years later. I said, “Tell me something.” “Yes,” the girl said. “Can you tell me, do you like ladybugs?” She’s staring at me, you know, what a question to ask. Then all of a sudden. “Oh! Oh! Ladybugs!” and all of the others joined in. “You know, we had the ladybug made the state bug?” So I said. “I’m the guy that carried that bill and got that bill for you in the state house. Jeez, they all came around and started hugging me and kissing me (laughter)
MS: These were the girls grown up.
FM: Yeah, they’d grown into teenagers.
MS:How many years later? Ten years later?
FM: Ten years later, they were like, sixteen and seventeen years old.
MS: Fred, that’s a. cute … a very cute story!!
FM: I told this at the meeting that we had of the guys we had the other night … the other day. There were sixty-five new legislators elected the year I was elected. And I ran for President of the Freshman Class, they call it, and I didn’t know enough to go to Republicans. There were ten Republicans. And the guy who ran against me was Tip O’Neill’s son. Well, he was a nice guy … I didn’t know him at all. So, he beat me, by I think it was three votes. I had called all the .Democrats in the state, you know, that were new at that time and they said they would vote for me, like Delahunt here in Quincy and different guys. So they were in the same class. And so, Connolly, the secretary of State now … there was a whole bunch of them. Well, I didn’t know enough to call the Republicans. What did Tip O’Neill do down in Washington, he called the ten Republicans from Washington. He got a call from the speaker of the House. This guy was a pilot in World War II. He was the state rep from. Newburvport, and, ah, he told me years later … he said” Jeez, I wish I had known you before, I would .have voted for you.” I said ”What do you mean?” He said, “Well, we got a call, all the Republicans got a call from Tip O’Neill and we all voted for his son. That’s how he beat you by three votes.”
MS: That was tough opposition, wasnt it?
FM: He was the Sneaker of the House. I wouldn’t mind, but I was a good friend of Tip 0’Neill’s, you know before … he always was, he was a nice guy anyhow, he was a real nice person.. I think he got a big kick out of it, you know. Cause he used to come to Dorchester and play poker with Representative
Tom Reilly. And sometimes they’d need a fourth, and they’d call us up. We’d go up. Each had a wife named “Millie”. They’d be making tea or something. We’d play poker. They liked to play cards. Tom Reilly was the state rep in ward 15 then, before me, before I was. But anyhow, those are my political stories. And then, did you ever hear of Bert Parks?
MS: Oh, of course.
FM: Well, when I was down in Washington, at the Mayflower Hotel … I like to drop names (laughter) … We went down there … I was Chairman of the Stevenson Committee , and Stevenson was going to appear on meet the press, which was a nationwide thing, nationwide television. And it was right after … we went down for Truman to announce he wasn’t going to run for office, we went to the dinner … Democratic dinner and the Young Democrats put up up in the Mayflower Hotel. Who’s next door to us but a guy named James A. Farley. He was Postmaster General, and in those days postmasters general used to give out all the patronage. Well, we were next door to him. Young Democrats bring me in to meet him. Oh, we bad a great chat. When I told him I was just starting to teach in North Quincy High School and I was using his autobiography, “Behind the Ballots”, in my classroom. Well, Farley was very impressed. And he’s supposed to have never forgotten a name. Well, I thought that was the end of it. The Mayor of Keene, New Hampshire was there and he wanted to meet Farley, so I brought him in, you know. Jeez, this was a. big thing for a Keene, New Hampshire kid, get some patronage. Well, that was all right. The Democratic Convention happens in Chicago. We go out there, course we’re with Adlai Stevenson so we get passes to get into the convention and we sat with the Massachusetts delegation. The next delegation to us was Michigan. All the Michigan guys had green bow polka dot ties. So you didn’t know one from another. Guy sitting next to me was called “Soapy”. So, Soapy says, “You need some coffee?” And he’d go get coffee for me and he’d be getting coffee . Sometimes he’d bring a hot dog. “You want a hot dog? ” Come to find out he was the Governor of Michigan! I didn’t know it. G. Mennan Williams
MS: Wow!
FM: They called him Soapy cause he owned the shaving crème … So, I didn’t know it. An awful nice guy. And met the senator from there and he had a sister living in Weymouth. Oh, we were really in. So, the guys in Massachusetts were wondering who are these two guys down there. Buddy Hamilton (Charlie Hamilton) and myself … and they were wondering … they got to know us after a while. But, jeez, who comes through the crowd pushing people aside but James A. Farley. Who does he come to but … Frederick MacDonald … and Charles Hamilton.
MS: He never forgot you!
FM: And he said “Come over here. Hello, Representative …,”he said “Hello!” (I wasn’t a representative) …he said “Hello, Fred!” or Mac, Fred.? “I want you to meet somebody here.” and he brings Bert Park s and he introduces him to me. Bert Parks was on” Miss America”, that show…
MS: Sure.
FM: So all the guys in the Mass. delegation…”How come those two guys know everybody?” (laughter) So, so naturally everybody was impressed.
MS: Why not!
FM: But, those are my politics stories, anyhow. When I got back I was promised, oh, then we have a meeting with Jacob Arvi in Illinois, the national committeeman. He had a big nose, that if it ever rained out his cigar would never go out! He sat behind a big glass desk top desk. Very important looking fellow. Jacob Arvi. He was the National Committeeman from Chicago or Illinois. So, we’re ushered in to see Jacob Arvi. We went out to Chicago and were ushered in …I guess it was for patronage reasons … we didn’t know it. We were so dumb, you know. So, he said, “What are you looking for, son?” I was still involved in … I was doing my practice teaching in North Quincy High. So, “What are you looking for, son?” “Well, I’m looking for good government, sir.” Imagine saying that to a Chicago politician! (laughter) He looked up and Buddy Hamilton whispers to me…”Tell him you’re looking
for…” what do you call, what’s the head sheriff of the district. Federal District Marshal, marshal Federal Marshall.” I’m looking for the Federal Marshall, sir.” He writes it down in his book. Now, if Stevenson had won, I would have become the Federal Marshall for New England and Puerto Rico. I could have gone to Puerto Rico for a month or two of vacation and been the marshall there. I went into the Business Library of the Boston Public Library to find out what a marshall did. They get $10,000. a year and they could appoint all the friends they wanted for deputies. They get money, too.
MS: You wouldn’t have been very happy with that, Fred.
FM: No, so I went back to teaching. (Laughter) But anyhow, that was my closest I ever came to being … And then the guy who won under Eisenhower was twenty seven years old. That was my age. So,
he was ah, from. he had a French name…he was from out in the western part of the state. He was
Federal Marshall during the Prince (?) trial.
MS: it was an interesting job.
FM: I almost became famous. (laughter)
MS: Fred, I think we should end with just a bit about Nova Scotia. I don’t know what. A little bit of Gaelic, a little bit of anything…what you can tell us… of the roots going back to the Hebrides?
FM: I’m fifth generation from the Hebrides Islands. Hebrides are islands between…off the west coast of the Scotch Highlands . And there are Timer Hebrides and Outer Hebrides. The outer are closer to Ireland.They are Gaelic speaking areas. We say “Galic”, we don’t say “Gaelic”. And, ah, my grandmother’s people came from a place called South Uist. One of the southern most in the Outer Hebrides. My grandfather MacDonald, see, a MacDonald married a. MacDonald. My grandmother was Mary MacDonald ( Mary Ann MacDonald)and her father was Alexander MacDonald. They were from South Uist, and my grandfather’s people were from Eigg in the Inner Hebrides. I saw Eigg when I was over there and I didn’t realize, at that time, they were so close to my very beginnings. But they were a fifth generation, so, when we identify ourselves in Cape Breton, if you’re in a village or a community, you identify yourself by your father’s first names all the way back…So, I say in Gaelic… , it means “I am, Angus Frederick, Malcolm Allen(that’s my father’s name), son of Anish, the pioneer. Now, it means Angus, Angus, Donald, son of Angus the pioneer. So, the pioneer had a son named Angus. He had a grandson named Angus , he had a great-grandson named Donald and then he had a great-great grandson named Angus, that would be my grandfather.
MS: Listen, Fred, end with something in Gaelic for us.
FM: Let’s see. now ah … (Fred sings in Gaelic then in English)
“I asked her if she loved me.
She said she was above me
And out the door she shoved me
And said I was a fool.”
(Gaelic)
means “That’s good”, it doesn’t mean”Hi. Mumma”, (Gaelic), “that’s good.” (laughter)
MS: Thanks, Fred!
FM: Just say (Gaelic) when you meet somebody. It means. “How are you?” And they usually say to you (Gaelic) ” ” It doesn’t mean you have a pain, it mean “How are you, yourself’?”
MS: And how do you say, “Farewell. Thanks.” ?
FM: You say, “Tapalait” is “thanks” (and he spells) tapal a. i t . “Tapalait, Tapalait”.
MS: Now listen, thanks, Fred. I can’t say it in Gaelic.
FM: ” Farewell” would be… (Gaelic) “” means “Take it easy.”