Tag Archives: Green Island

“Ma” – FOREVER in fashion! … Happy International Women’s Day!❤!

March 8, 2017 admin

Text and photos by Rosalie Tirella

Here’s a photo, taken years ago, of my late mom – “Ma”💛💛💛💛 – and Polish immigrant granny – “Bapy”🎵💐🌻🌺🌹🎺 – in their tenement in “The Block,” on Bigelow Street in Green Island.

Here are my late mom’s polyester work vests – bought at the old White’s Five and Ten (and more!) on Millbury Street – decades ago – and worn by my mom, to work at the dry cleaners.

My grandmother never held a job outside the home – her husband, my grandfather, was the breadwinner toiling in a textile mill in Douglas. But my mother and her two sisters, my aunties, were, like all poor girls from poor families, work horses! From 14 1/2 years old to 65 years old they worked as maids, cashier girls at the late great Eden Restaurant on Franklin Street, cooks, counter girls at Oscar’s dry cleaners on Millbury Street. Typical jobs for daughters of typically poor immigrants – young women whose paychecks often helped support a big, struggling Irish-, Italian-, Eastern European- family.

As a kid watching Ma put on one or the other of her polyester work vests I knew she meant business. She was getting ready for a full day at the dry cleaners, where she worked for minimum wage, 60 hours a week. She walked to work (we didn’t own a car). She walked to work pulling a shopping wagon (also bought at White’s) behind her for light grocery shopping at the end of her work day. She carried a brown paper sack that contained her lunch: thermos of black coffee, a sandwich in a baggie and an apple or banana for dessert. Ma was the most disciplined person I have ever known – she never ate more than a sandwich at lunch or a bowl of cereal at breakfast. Never second helpings for her. She was anti-gluttony. She used to say to us kids: “Eat to live! Don’t live to eat!” And she meant it. She was a pillar to no-nonsense, fad-free good health.

She had to be! As a single mom, not on ANY government assistance (which she was eligible for but too proud to accept), it all rested on her small shoulders, the ones on which her little polyester work vests hung. She had our Lafayette Street tenement to pay rent on, utility bills to pay, her three little girls to feed and clothe, a tired old Mama (Bapy) to feed and care for and (usually) a gaggle of my pets to feed and love!: Belle the English Setter mix, Raj the tabby cat, Gigi the mouse, Tommy and Speedy the turtles, Joy the hamster, Horatio the Old English Sheep dog mix, Sally the salamander. Sometimes I had two dogs at once! It was crazy!!! And then there was Ma’s peripatetic husband, my father, “Daddy,” a wild, gorgeous hunk of a man with a red pompadour who swept Ma off her Keds and breezed in and out of her life for years. Looking to get laid by Ma, looking for mothering from Ma, the mother of all mothers!, looking for her pity, her understanding, her quiet, dependable love … We never really could figure him out. He yelled so much. He called Ma such horrible names! Fuck nut! Donkey! He made me cry. But he never made Ma cry – or she never showed us her tears.

Here’s Daddy holding my two kid sisters on his lap:

In short, Ma’s life was BIG, RICH, ROILING, SAD, STRUGGLING and old school CATHOLIC. Mostly, I now see, it was deeply meaningful and loving.

I didn’t always think so. In my early college years I was ashamed of Ma and my life with her – She was, we were, so poor in Green Island! We had no car, no clothes dryer even (as a college freshman a friend had to teach me how to use a dryer in the laundry room!), no vacations, no nice restaurants, no trips to museums outside of Worcester Public Schools field trips. Ma was “ignorant” – stuck in her dead-end job, never even finished 8th grade! A loser! She prayed too much – kow towed to silly Catholic saints on her small dime store prayer cards, like this one, which I have today and keep on my night-table at all times:

All writhing souls in purgatory, inextinguishable flames of a painless hell licking our faces, Jesus’s pierced heart and crown of thorns – King of pain! – blood drip drip dripping on us penitents, now dead, awaiting ever lasting life in a pit of fire … Ugh. Depressing. Guilt-inducing. The brutality of old school Catholicism, the way it KILLED your spirit, killed MY spirit, my need for God – FOREVER. Today I am a Godless Green Island girl! … a card-carrying atheist, if ever there was one!

For a few years (in my early 20s) I didn’t even speak to my mother! So angry was I at Ma for our poverty, her abusive husband – my abusive “Daddy.” I’d lie in the top bunk bed in my college dorm room and think to myself: This room is so much warmer than my bedroom on Lafayette Street ever was – ever could be!

Ma’s beauty slipped away from me …

Then, years after college, when I was helping Ma move into her last apartment, I came upon her work vests. She had retired from the dry cleaners a year ago. I asked her: Ma, can I have them? Maybe wear them around the house when I do chores… She said: Sure.

It’s funny: Next day, when I put on one of Ma’s drab little polyester vests, I felt POWERFUL – like I knightress in shining armor!!!! I could not believe the energy, the happiness … the LOVE I was feeling. I was wearing Ma’s coat of mail, the holy vest that she wore into battle against poverty each and every day. It had chinks in it and was blood-splattered and tear-stained! And here it was – all mine! So beautiful! Years ago I thought it was the ugliest piece of cloth I had ever seen! Its Whites Five and Ten polyester roughness! Its boring color! Its utilitarian un-fashion. No style statement was this vest! BUT IT WAS! All along! I remembered the contents of its pockets, years ago, as Ma readied herself for her work day: a few pens, pencils, a little scratch pad, roll of Life Savers, a scapula or two…

Here is one of Ma’s scapulas she’d take to work each day – in her vest pocket!
Also, she’d have a little dime store Novena prayer book held together with staples – Novena prayers for St. Francis, St. Jude … She would read it, pray her holy Novena prayers during her half hour lunch break at the dry cleaners, sitting in a metal folding chair by the counter, still on the look out and responsible for her customers. No break at all!!

To all the saints – Jude, Martin, Theresa, Anne, Joseph and Mary! – saints who Ma prayed to, average people who helped Ma get through her hard life – I now say THANK YOU to you! Ma’s faith in you was real, life-sustaining! She saw you transcend your pain and suffering – so she transcended hers!

Sometimes in her vest pocket Ma would have a five dollar bill too! – a little fun, a gift for her girls after school. As little kids my sisters and I visited Ma everyday at the dry cleaners, after Lamartine Street or St. Mary’s schools, to say hello! She’d dig into her vest pocket and give us her “pocket” money so we could run down to Pete’s Dairy Bar on Millbury Street to have some fun: buy a small order of french fries, a hamburger, hang with the other kids there after school before going home to do our homework. One of my kid sisters took a few quarters and played the Pete Dairy Bar pinball machines, while my other sister and I sat in our booth eating our french fries and burger – me reading my Tiger Beat magazine, in between greasy bites!

Maybe we heard a Beatles song play on Pete’s juke box. We’d laugh as owner Pete and his waitresses joked with all the kids – the place was always packed with kids after school! We were in kid heaven, thanks to our Ma!

Happy International Women’s Day to all the blue and pink collar moms out there who are making lives for themselves and their families each and every day! You rule!❤❤❤🎺👠💐🎵

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Aidan Kearney’s Turtle Boy blog – a hate-spewing blog that now has nothing to do with Worcester … and Worcester City Coucilor Michael Gaffney still supports $$$$ Turtle Boy (Shhhh! It’s supposed to be a secret!) …

March 5, 2017 admin

The same can be said for Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney – he is just as American-Democracy-hating and truth-twisting as Donald Trump. Gaffney is a lying, combative street fighter, just like his hero!

By Rosalie Tirella

So a few weeks ago we were on the telephone with the Holden police – Turtle Boy blogger Aidan Kearney now lives in the Jefferson part of Holden – and has become that Worcester suburb’s bete noire. I will not discuss why I called the good officers on the bad Turtle Boy, but I was surprised when the Holden copper told me he was familiar with Turtle Boy – that he had been getting phone calls about Turtle Boy-Kearney all week long!

I said: Well, hot damn! So you know how it spins with the Turtle! Worcester’s hater is now YOUR hater! Worcester’s community divider is now YOUR community divider! Worcester’s problem is now YOUR problem, officer!

Loathed in Worcester because of his loathesome Turtle Boy blog Kearney can now be loathed in Holden, a much smaller pond with a much larger collective memory. Like all small towns. We are hoping Holden will do to Turtle Boy Kearney what he has done to Worcester and its minority communities – box him in, marginalize him, stereotype him, laugh at him, accuse him of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors.

Karma’s a bitch, Aidan!

Turtle Boy-Aidan’s exodus from Worcester makes sense: with his son now almost old enough (or old enough) to be going to school – being part of a school system/community – bully boy Aidan Kearney-Turtle Boy did not want to see the pitch forks turned on his kid. And his growing family. Which would happen here. Because he has trashed an entire city! Made a million enemies with his abusive and stupid blog.

Turtle Boy Kearney, his wife, little boy and baby girl had to pack it all up and … run away.

Now Aidan Kearney belongs to Jefferson-Holden – a white, mostly upper-middle class town where he doesn’t come in contact with the “wangstas,” “hoodrats” and skanks that he writes about in his blog every day and sees EVERYWHERE in Worcester and places like Southbridge, Gardner, Brockton, Lawrence … you know, the state’s Gateway Cities, once great factory towns now struggling to reinvent themselves. Kick a city when she’s down – that’s Turtle Boy Kearney’s M.O.

The Turtle Boy has taken a huge dump on these places, Worcester included. Turned our people into cartoon characters that just sit around in Section 8 housing smoking weed, selling their food stamps, abusing their kids, growing more morbidly obese or scrawny by the second. Turtle Boy has taken poverty, mental illness and poor job prospects for uneducated American workers and turned it all into one big dystopian joke that all the haters in Worcester can laugh at, feel superior to.

And Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney supports it all – has for years and continues to do so by purchasing $$$ ads on the Turtle Boy blog.

Gaffney’s one of the few advertisers left – including a gun seller and a place where there had been a murder. Gaffney is in fitting company!

A peek today at the once porn-ad-choked Turtle Boy blog shows us a gray, square ad with a “click here for a free consultation” typed over it. You click on the ad and you see … Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney! It’s an ad for Gaffney’s ambulance-chasing lawyering business.

Typical Gaffney charade like this one which the media uncovered a few weeks ago …

……

…..

Up until a few weeks ago, for years, Gaffney had his decades-old photo and lawyer ad on the Turtle Boy blog, plainly visible, with the words “Attorney Gaffney” written for all to see.

Now the Gaffer is ashamed of being aligned with the Turtle (which he is) – now sees the Turtle-Boy-Gaffney-bond as a liability (which it is).

But not quite.

Gaffney still needs Turtle Boy Aidan Kearney and his followers/readers – many Worcester voters. Gaffney still needs his evil cheerleader and mouth piece. So maybe he can be Woo mayor some day!😱😱😱😱 So Gaffney creates and pays for $$$ a Secret Turtle Boy ad. Slippery as always!

So WHAT IS MICHAEL GAFFNEY – a city councilor who is so ravenous to be mayor that he will do or say anything, no matter how nefarious, to accomplish his political goal – REALLY SUPPORTING?

Besides the usual Turtle Boy hatred … this recent Turtle Boy blog post made me especially sad, reminded me of what Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney really stands for:

The recent Turtle Boy Aidan blog post I am writing about today was written by Turtle Boy a while ago. It’s about a little girl … around 7 years old who is identifying as a little boy. AG Maura Healey is supporting the little boy and his family – in the face of the Trump administration’s cruel roll back of transgender folks’ rights (kids will be physically hurt, bullied, deprived of expressing their true voices because of Trump!) Aidan-Kearney-Turtle-Boy, as in the dark on this issue as Donald Trump and his nightmare of a Cabinet are, just had to chime in on the news. The header of his recent post:

“Maura Healey Using This Confused 7 Year Old Who Thinks She’s Transgender As A Political Prop. Is The Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Seen A Politician Do”

Turtle Boy-Aidan’s evil post begins:

“If your 7 year old girl says she’s a boy, what do you do? Pump her up with hormones, feed into the delusion, and give yourself the SJW medal of honor. Tell her that boys have penises and they’re disgusting and then give her a popsicle.”

And more nuggets of ignorance from the Turtle Boy blog post:

” … Trump announced yesterday that he was rolling back President Obama’s executive order that forces schools across the country to allow any student to use any locker room, so long as they declare themselves a member of that gender beforehand. I know, the horror. But the fact of the matter is that in states like Massachusetts the bathroom and locker room rules will not be changed … .”

” … Seriously, this girl’s parents should be ARRESTED. This is sick and twisted.”

” …. disgusting political stunts I have ever seen, Maura Healey brought up an 8 year old girl to condemn Trump for coming after her 7 year old “brother” Jacob, who has a vagina and is in fact a girl. This is really the most vile thing I have EVER seen a politician do:”

“Seriously, this girl’s parents should be ARRESTED. This is sick and twisted. They allowed their eight year old daughter to be Maura Healey’s political prop.”

“Right now we’re here to talk about why it’s important for your sister to undergo dangerous hormone therapy so Mom and Dad can pat themselves on the back for being progressive. Because for you puberty will be a natural part of life, but for your sister puberty is a disease and the only way to prevent this disease is to load her up with puberty-blocking hormones, because science and biology are bad.”

InCity Times was the first newspaper in Worcester to support and write about transgender folks and their fight for civil/human rights – see our story on Jesse on this website. So we come to this issue with a special passion! Turtle Boy Kearney is WRONG ON SO MANY FRONTS here!!!: No one can force a human being to be a certain sex; most trans people ALWAYS felt who they were meant to be – from teenie tiny kidhood! No one forces transgender folks to take hormones! – parents do not inject hormones into their kids! Most trans folks CHOOSE to make hormone therapy a part of identifying. And their desire to be who God intended them to be can be made a living hell by family, community and society if people (like Turtle Boy) don’t understand the issue. Contrary to what Turtle Boy writes on his blog, a kid self-identifying is not pulling some gag to mess up society and invade the “wrong” restroom – it’s a real and true THIS-IS-WHO-I-AM moment. It’s the need to USE THE CORRECT RESTROOM! To be HONEST with society! This can be so difficult in today’s America that psychotherapy is often a big piece of the transgender person’s “coming out.”

The amazing thing for me is not Aidan-Turtle Boy’s usual bashing, cruel and totally stupid, misinformed, DANGEROUS and possibly hate-crime-inducing take on the issue but THAT A BLUE COLLAR GUY, a TURTLE BOY reader!!, actually brought the EVIL of this Turtle Boy post home to me months before Aidan even wrote it … . The guy is a TB rah rah reader but he’s also married to a wonderful woman – a school principal. A year or two ago the guy told me his wife, the school principal, had a boy in a kindergarten class in her school who was identifying as a girl. He was serious when he told me this. Trying to understand. Thinking of what that really meant – for the 5 year old, for her family, for her teachers, for her classmates. How could the girl be supported at school? How could everybody learn? Accept? Love? He was so serious as he told me all this. As a dad with young kids he may have never thought about the issue, but he knows little kids don’t – can’t – lie about something like gender. Now that his wife, an educator, a professional with college and post-college degrees and psychology courses galore under her belt, was grappling with the issue, he was, too. Trying to figure it out. In a real way. This blue collar rough around the edges guy. He made me proud!

The fact that this guy is not getting his “facts” from the fucked up Aidan Kearney-Turtle Boy but from his wife, a pretty wonderful person, a caring human being wanting to do the right thing, makes all the difference. We wish this could happen to all the Turtle riders – including Michael Gaffney!

But it won’t. Turtle Boy and Worcester City Councilor Gaffney exploit the crises, revelations, changes and growth in Worcester. No room for illumination here, folks! Screw a BETTER WORLD! These two guys, each having his own motives that overlap, always muddy the waters, create sadness, perpetuate ignorance and fan prejudice. We’re certain every multi-cultural, diverse American place – WHICH IS EVERY WHERE in the U.S. – has a Michael Gaffney and Turtle Boy to sow the hate. Just as America has Donald Trump and his evil mouth piece and cheer leader, Breitbart editor Steve Bannon. They exploit the fears and prejudices of folks who long for a white, straight Worcester and America …

photo: Worcester Historical Museum

… a place that never really existed.

They kill community.

They kill people!

I write this because … Years ago, when I was a little girl growing up in Green Island, there was a woman – big, vulgar, brassy, tough – who had two daughters in their late teens. I’ll call them “Betty” and “Jane.” Jane was movie star beautiful – long blond hair, lovely pink 1970s lip-stick-slathered lips, pearly white teeth and beautiful smile. When Jane walked down Lafayette Street in her tight, faded bell bottom blue jeans and pretty blouse tucked in HEADS TURNED. She was always polite to my mother and me and my two kid sisters – fans who ooohed and ahhed at her loveliness like everyone else in the neighborhood – when we passed her on the street walking home from school or from the dry cleaners where my mom worked 60 hours a week as a “counter girl.”

Then there was daughter Betty. Betty was tall and lanky. She wore no make up and had short hair – a boy’s hair cut. Her stride was loping and she wore boy jeans. As a little kid I wondered if Betty was a young man but I never asked Ma. I just kinda followed her lead, which was: She was always nice to Betty – treated Betty exactly the way she treated her sister Jane: with respect, politeness, the same “hello!” and beautiful Ma smile …

Rosalie’s mother had the prettiest smile!

… My mother never lectured us. And she never ever bad mouthed or made fun of anyone. She led by example. Taught us through her deeds. And when it came to people in our already diverse inner-city neighborhood Ma was the Statue of Liberty! A beacon of beauty and hope!

So we kids followed Ma’s lead! “Hi, Betty!” we’d chirp, if we saw Betty walking down a street in Green Island. “Hi, Jane!” we’d chirp if we saw her sister walking down to the park.

The girls always smiled and said “hi” back. Though Betty’s smile was never as wide as her sister’s. She always seemed serious. Day after day. Year after year.

One day, Betty kind of disappeared. We still saw Jane in the ‘hood, but never Betty. She was gone. Maybe I asked Ma about it, maybe I didn’t. But we did learn that Betty had hanged herself.

This shocked me and my sisters. Betty was a part of our world, always nice to us – polite in a rough neighorhood filled with bullies. Now she was gone!

In many ethnic urban neighborhoods different kinds of folks took their lives. We called them “ghosts.” A Polish immigrant who never “got” America, never adjusted to life here on any level, who was always in his apartment and always looking so unhappy. A street person who drank and drank and then collapsed dead drunk in the bushes by the PNI club on Lafayette Street to sleep it off every day. … One day I asked Ma if I could give the guy a blanket. She said “Yes” and gave me a nice clean full-sized baby blue blanket to give to him. I ran out of our flat and walked up to him – he was all tottering disshelved mess, his fly open – and gave him the blanket. From Ma and me. No words exchanged. Just the doing, the deed. He took the blue blanket and went to his bushes behind the PNI, by the fence, to collapse. The boys in the neighborhood saw the giving of the gift, walked over to him, stole his blanket … and stoned him. Threw rocks at him. I never saw the old guy again.

Aidan Kearney aka Turtle Boy and Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney are those Green Island boys today, here in Worcester, in the 21st century.

Haters. Bullies. Killers, the both of them.

*****

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Some thoughts on “Ma,” President Trump and his (my???!) America

January 23, 2017 admin

Rose and George. pics: R.T.

By Rosalie Tirella

Tonight I’m holding tight my late mom’s George Washington calendar from the 1940s (above). Like many young poor folks of the Great Depression and World War II – kids who knew they were lucky if they were eating a square meal a day – my mom was resourceful. For example, she collected her own “art” from the free or inexpensive advertising lit all around her: With trusty scissors in hand she cut out and saved grainy black and white photos or colored illustrations (often muted – not very colorful at all!) from school and church calendars, Hollywood movie fan magazines and sheet music cover pages, church prayer cards – even Polish Christmas wafer wrapping paper – anything that captured her young imagination. My mother loved music and drawing. She was very good at sketching! She used to draw pictures for me and my sisters when we were little kids. We’d sit and watch Ma as she quietly created her art for us with an old number 2 pencil: a little girl with pigtails, a little kitten with ball of yarn, a cherub perched on a cloud … the cliches of her day, beautifully rendered. I remember in our Lafayette Street flat, in a closet – now lost forever! – the huge poster Ma drew in pencil of one of her beloved Boston Red Sox batters in mid-swing! She was 12 – a total baseball freak! – when she drew it and it was a fine sketch! But I have none of my mom’s big sketches – usually made for a St. Mary’s School project – only lots of her “clipped art” – all in pretty ok shape for gussied up scraps of paper three quarters of a century old!

Ma made good use of her finds, like the sleek, smart crow who weaves bits of shiny gold ribbon into her cozy nest … She taped some of the art to her bedroom walls, used some pieces as book marks for her prayer books and sent some pictures to friends, instead of store-bought greeting cards. But mostly she saved her paper jewels – a poor girl’s dreams – in a small, wooden brown chest in her family’s Green Island Bigelow Street tenement and later in our Lafayette Street flat. The contents became mine when Ma died. I gave the small painted brown chest (painted by my grandfather) to one of my sisters.

The chest, I believe, was a kind of hope chest for Ma, a love song to America in which she kept all her American dreams. America was new to her family – her parents were Polish immigrants who experienced the promise – and ugliness – of America. My grandfather worked like a slave in a textile mill in Douglas and, to relax once he got home, played the harmonica and smoked the unfiltered cigarettes he rolled for himself using his own little white square smoking papers and little cig rolling machine, a funny looking little contraption that Ma used to work in the mornings, to roll her Dad’s cigs before he went off to work. Cigs he could smoke during break … My mother’s mother, my “Bapy,” raised five kids, cooked everything from scratch, prayed every hour on the hour, went to mass EVERY day, but outside her Catholic faith and family, was lost in America. If not attending church or friends and relatives’ Polish weddings she stayed home. Praying and cooking.

Ma was the baby of the family, and the apple of Bapy’s eye. So she grew up an optimist and focused on the bright spots: special memories from her Polish immigrant church by Kelley Square, like her First Holy Communion prayer book which I have! (below), …

A photo of Rose’s mom with her First Holy Communion children’s prayer book! (Cece got a hold of its back cover and Lilac ate it!)

… postcards, prayer booklets and stamps from her 10-year stint in Springfield as a housekeeper for the Bishop of Springield, pretty little gifts that her big brother – my Uncle Mark – brought back from Japan after he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. I especially love the calendar cover my Uncle Mark gave Ma (from his ship – probably taped above his bunk): a sexy Miss America hanging from a huge American flag. A gorgeous but stern Lady Liberty wearing an oooh la la blue diaphonous robe that showed her perky little breasts and “mound”! My uncle was pretty good looking and a bit of a ladies’ man. Ma teased him when he came home from the war with blond hair. She believed he dyed it – he said the tropical sun bleached it. This Lady Liberty was right up his alley! – worth fighting for! I ended up with the picture and crudely framed it a few years back. Saint Lady Liberty – the patriotic pinup gal proudly wearing her Virgin Mary-blue sheer gown over shaved pussy! AMERICA = #1!!!😄

But I digress! Back to GW! My mom was a huge George Washington fan because she was born on his birthday – February 22! And because he was America’s first President – perfect to her – America’s God, back in the days when the ideas of America and God were entwined in complex, beautiful, dangerous ways. My mom, true to her generation, and I, like all Baby Boomers, grew up hearing the George Washington grade school lessons/myths, almost Biblical: George Washington at Valley Forge in the winter, leading his troops …they wore torn boots, their frozen feet wrapped in cloth…The young George Washington chopped down the cherry tree when he wasn’t supposed to but said: I CANNOT TELL I LIE! IT WAS I WHO CHOPPED DOWN THE CHERRY TREE!

Ma and I were getting the boiled-down-for-the-plebs American history lesson: George Washington had a TON OF INTEGRITY. What we didn’t know: When some of the colonists clamored for him to be King of America for years and years – because he was such an outstanding military leader and first President and the times were so chaotic – Washington said: No way! That’s not what this country is going to be about! There are no kings here!

At the bottom of my mom’s George Washington calendar picture, it reads: “The love of my country will be the ruling influence of my conduct.” – Washington

Wow.

Can you imagine these words coming out of the mouth of our new President, Donald Trump? Can you imagine the IDEA even blooming in that narcissistic, almost insane brain of his? (Neither can I!) He is someone who wants to buy America’s love, on his terms only. LOVE DONALD – OR ELSE!

For me, Trump’s inaugural speech was Hitler-esque. Dark, foreboding, fist-pumping, military might-extolling, self-aggrandizing, self-idolizing … maniacal. I’d never read or heard an inaugural speech where America, the land of George Washington and Mrs. Tirella!, was painted in such ugly terms – “American carnage” and “tombstones” stretching from sea to shining sea! No wonder wife Melania chooses to live in NYC – and keep her little boy safe by her side. To live with such a sick man always peering into the abyss (or is it just a pose, a con so that Trump can trash America only to lay claim that he saved her? ), a husband with such a soul-shrivelling world view, dipped in Trump gold!, is too much! I predict Mrs. Donald Trump will be a sexed-up version of the late Mrs. Harry Truman: No thanks, White House, I pass! I’ll live somewhere else. Mrs. Truman was the epitome of post-WW II frumpiness; Mrs. Trump is the epitome of 21st century foxiness. But they’re cut from the same cloth: at heart, small town girls freaked out by the prospect of living in the hub of the world’s Super Power. War. Peace. Laws of the land. It all begins with the stroke of the Presidential pen. Scary, for some people.

Funny, but here on Ward Street these past couple of days, it felt like the kind of America Donald Trump painted in his inaugural speech. Very different from the Ward Street my mom walked down as a young girl with her Polish mother as they made their way to their Polish church, Our Lady of Czetchowa, a church that still stands and which I can see from my kitchen window …

These days Ward Street is Heroin/drug Central of Worcester. Last year I wrote about the big drug bust next door (complete with confiscated cash – 40K! – and weapons – machine gun!!!) But we’ve got the low-level drug runners, too, here in our ‘hood: Kids (usually boys) 15 and 16 years old who hop on to their beat up bikes to pedal to our inner-city backyards to do drug deals. In like 5 seconds! These kids don’t live in our houses, just use our backyards as office space! – out of the way, hidden places to sell packets of heroin. A quick sale. Money exchanged for smack. Then they put their ear buds back into their ears and hop on to their bikes and pedal away wicked fast! The deal goes down in seconds!

A few days ago I saw such a speedy transaction occur in the yard adjacent to ours. The kids, both boys, about 16 or 17 years old, were there during school hours. They had come on their bikes and I had come upon them! They looked and acted hard and business-like in a way many of our neighborhood kids don’t look and act. Lots of kids in my neighborhood are sweet, skinny, sad, fun loving. They’ll smile at you and tell you about their little adventures or pets. But these two kids? Uh uh. It was so easy to see.

One of the kids looked surprised and miffed to notice me at the periphery of his deal. The other kid, scrawny and tall, looked frightening in his hardness. When he saw me, he unzipped the front of his thin jacket and his hand went to a shirt pocket. I thought: He’s going to shoot me now.

So I chatted him up. Played the un-hip, oblivious middle-aged lady. The box that society puts you in.

“Don’t be afraid of my dogs! They’re friendly!” I said, smiling.

With a cold, dead-already face, making perfect eye contact with me, he said, direct and serious: “I’m not afraid.”

Chilling.

A day later I saw the same kid, his pale ghoulish face smiling as he rode away lickety split on his bike, being chased by a police cruiser in the middle of our downtown. The cruiser’s siren was off because it was the middle of the afternoon, but all its lights were pulsating.

The kid was in the middle of a gang of kids – 20 or more youths – all on bicycles! Three or four of them wore Halloween masks, pale, scowling ghost masks that covered their entire faces. Lurid and other worldy… Four or five of them wore cotton bandanas over their faces – right up to their eyes – so you couldn’t see their features. They looked like they had rolled straight out of some sci-fi Western! But they weren’t galloping through Dodge on horses – instead they were riding, herd-like and hard, on our Main Street, yards away from Worcester City Hall, on ramshackle bikes! Laughing! Free! Most likely – at least a few of them – armed!

I was mesmerized by this dystopian image coming straight at me (I was in my car driving by the Hanover Theatre), straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. I pulled over and the group of kids – they filled the entire street – rode past me. They were laughing and talking easily among themselves, as the police cruiser chased them. I saw and heard my ghoulish kid barking out something to the other youths. He was smiling. High on an adrenalin high. He felt safe – and cocky – in the herd.

Had they just robbed somebody? Mixed it up with another bandana-, mask-wearing group of kids? Or were the cops just pursuing one kid? – a definite challenge when he’s in a large pack of kids, all on bicycles. Bikes are the perfect getaway vehicle – they can easily go up and down one-way streets, go off and on sidewalks, sail through back yards and city parks, be carried up flights of stairs and stashed in apartments …

As I watched this wild little spectacle, I saw how these kids showed ZERO fear. They acted like outlaws! And like their Wild West counterparts, they were indeed misfits – unhealthy outsiders, bedraggled and maybe unloved – still riding to their next adventure. With a few firearms thrown in for good measure.

The herd sailed right by me, then the police cruiser.

I found myself rooting for the kids. Their nihilism was so honest! They were America … America’s underbelly. Her lack of love for her poor, especially her poor children. One in five kids go hungry in America! That means Worcester, too. … The Worcester factory jobs are gone for their un-skilled parents – men and women who read at the third or fourth grade level. Minimum wage jobs don’t begin to pay all the bills. Parents feel trapped, go MIA. Our public schools sometimes become holding pens for these kids, a safe place to eat govt funded, free breakfast and lunch and, sometimes, a place to rest or sleep, if there’s violence/drugs in the family.

Trump’s America! The one he says he wants to save! Here in Worcester! Here on our Ward Street and Main Street!

His solution to a deep, generation-spanning societal ill, often sealed with depression, PTSD or other mental illnesses? More police. Good paying jobs.

I don’t think two – or even three – Worcester police cruisers chasing the masked kids through our downtown would have changed the narrative. Saved the kids.

Maybe good paying, WPA type infrastructure jobs would help. Young people or their parents working on rebuilding our bridges and highways a la Franklin D. Roosevelt for good pay … Yes, that may make things better. So that our families, instead of developers or investors, can buy and live in the three deckers in our old blue collar neighborhoods. Like it used to be on Ward Street, Perry Ave, Endicott and Sterling streets – all over lower Veron Hill and Green Island! Homeownership 101. The rhythm in all our Gateway Cities for most of the 20th century. The American Dream!

Trump is right: The global economy has left behind thousands and thousands of neighborhoods like mine. Millions of working-age adults who live in them! I don’t believe in all the Moral Majority crap: poor families are Godless and gone to pot – that’s why their neighborhoods are “bad.” Most parents in my neighborhood try to love their kids – I see their love displayed daily, despite the harsh circumstances! – but the pressures keep mounting on them – from all sides… . Families implode.

Good paying jobs for our people will help. Tremendously, to use a Trumpian word!

Maybe the Donald is onto something. If only he’d drop all his nefarious baggage…

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Good bye, Tony ol’ pal!

December 8, 2016 admin

Tony Hmura in his bomber jacket, circa 2002. ICT file photo

By Rosalie Tirella

My old pal Tony Hmura died a few weeks ago at the very ripe old age of 93. To many InCity Times readers the Polish guy from Green Island and then Canterbury Street, where he ran his sign company Leader Signs for 50+ years, was a strange pal for me to hang with. He was a familiar – and controversial – face on these pages, too. He had wild opinions about EVERYTHING – mostly stemming from a horrific Green Island childhood and gleaned from horrific, politically right-wing-nut books that he sent away for and kept on shelves he built by his toilet in his bathroom in his Auburn home. Books that, in his early years, probably got him on some FBI watch lists.

Tony began his crusade for getting money from our private colleges. – PILOT – payment in lieu of taxes – on these pages. Fifteen years ago he got the PILOT ball rolling in ICT! Something, he said, he’d never get credit for. And he was right! Tony lashed out at all our private colleges, I think, because he was wicked smart and always hungry for all knowledge but his hardscrabble youth kept him from books, writing, drawing – the things he really loved. His immigrant family’s poverty kept him out of Holy Cross’s ivy-covered buildings studying Plato and Socrates – and selling earth worms from a little red wagon Tony pulled around the neighborhood to make money for his mother, whom he adored. Tony was also working full time (illegally) in a Worcester factory. He was an adolescent money making machine! Because he had to be! It was during the Great Depression and his father from Poland couldn’t handle life in America and had a nervous breakdown – useless to the family. Tony’s Pa was lost – stayed helpless in a back room in the Hmura Lamartine Street tenement – a kind of emotional invalid the family cared for and loved but on whom the clan couldn’t depend. For anything – even love. Tony, at 7, stepped into the breach. There was no welfare or Medicaid or Section 8 back then. So Tony had to hustle to keep his family afloat! He would go with his mother to the places where all the ragged people went to get cans of food; he would dig for mushrooms in the good Woo earth; he’d pick wild blueberries too and sell the earth worms he dug out of the dirt and threw all squiggly and entwined with each other into his red wagon, walking all over kingdom come, a runty, sad kid with the world on his skinny shoulders. He used to tell me that on cold winter nights he would wrap a hot brick with cloth and place it at the foot of his bed then get under his blankets to stay warm. In the morning he’d hit the Worcester streets and begin work.

Tony worked (pretty much to the day he died) with a feisty, jaunty attitude. He worked at break neck speed – unbelievably strong for a little guy. He hauled big signs, scaled walls, strutted on roofs, blew neon sign letters without masks or filters, inhaling chemicals and dust and dirt.

Even as a teen Tony kicked butt! Was full of himself! He used to like to tell me the story of how at the old Commerce High School he went up to his teacher and said: I MAKE MORE MONEY THEN YOU DO!

The teacher laughed at Tony’s boldness.

The next week Tony brought in his factory paycheck ( he asked his boss for overtime to fatten it up!) and his earth worm biz money and showed the wad to his teacher.

His teacher was stunned! The poor skinny kid from the Polish ghetto did infact make more money than he did! Tony was reported to the principal – a kid working like a man was not allowed. Plus he was missing lots of school days. Tony’s mom had to walk to Commerce to explain to the authorities that Tony missed classes because he supported the family. Tony’s teacher and principal didn’t say much. Didn’t do much for Tony or his Ma, either. Tony always claimed that if he had been born Irish instead of Polish in Worcester things would have been different – easier for him and his family. Culturally, the Hmuras were outsiders, even though his mom was a devout Catholic and went to Our Lady of Czetchowa church every Sunday, buxom and stout, her long hair braided and wrapped in a bun at the nape of her neck. Not enough, Tony believes, in an Irish immigrant (as well as WASP) city.

His go getter style and energy propelled Tony to blue collar heights in Worcester. His ambition … his eventual greed … got him tons of rental property (which he relinquished in time cuz he didn’t have the people skills to be a landlord); stocks and bonds, a cool Brady Bunch!! look alike home in Auburn; a little hole in the wall night club; trips all over America the land he loved with his whole body and soul; women, women, women; even solid bars of gold that he kept in his attic, which his wife wrapped in towels and dragged down the stairs and out of the house during their divorce. Tony never held the move against his ex – he almost admired her for the feat – she was so petite!, weighed 90 pounds! How the hell did she steal all his solid gold bars??!!

By reading ICT you all learned Tony was against fluoridation of Woo water. To me he railed against what he considered Congressman McGovern’s political machine, though he liked Jim immensely and pretty much everyone in the “machine,” making donations, putting their political signs on his biz property every election cycle. Sometimes Leader Signs would make the signs!

Tony was filled with contradictions. He was against government hand outs and called for the end of “sucking off the political teat” – whatever that meant – but every Monday morning he’d give 10 bucks to each lost soul – often hookers or junkies or alcoholics – who was lined up at the door of Leader Sign company. He felt sorry for them, but didn’t know the right way to help them. They needed money, asked him for money. So he gave it to them – knowing they’d spend it on booze or junk. He would dole out about 60 bucks. That was just on Monday. The rest of the week moms in need or old workers in need came to Leader Sign and Tony would give them 20 or 30 quid, bitching about it later but unable to turn his back on people who needed help. He once claimed their addictions were part of a liberal govt plot to destroy America. His America. Plus, Tony believed America was a tough place if you were poor and had zero resources. He ran a kind of nutty social service agency out of Leader Signs pretty much until the day he died.

I wonder how all his old friends are doing without Tony’s donations and goofy chit chat.

Tony walked with a hitch, from a wound he suffered when he was shot down out of his bomber plane during World War II. Tony was a little guy so Uncle Sam made him a gunner, put him in the small end of the plane and told him KEEP FIRING!!!! Tony was in a ton of fights, was shot down two or three times. Each time he thought he died to discover: FUCK! I’M STILL ALIVE! I believe Tony always felt guilty for surviving the war while most of his mates died in combat. I also believe he left WW II shell shocked – and stayed that way for the rest of his life. He didn’t believe in PTSD or psychotherapy or psychiatric meds. The old gunner just toughed it out – for 70+ years. He did go to a weekly WW II veterans support group, where he said nothing, but just hung out and listened. I always believed Tony loved this group of guys even though he whined about what he felt was their belly aching! I believe he ached too – right there with them.

For a little guy, Tony had an ego as big as the continental USA. So he loved to regale me with stories of his WW II heroics. There were plenty of Tony Hmura ads with photos of him during World War II looking so young and cute: Tony in his bomber uniform, Tony in his dress uniform and cap, Tony with his bomber mates, a fellow gunner with his arm draped over his shoulder, everyone smiling and proud! Of their country! Of themselves! They were all about 18 or 19. They were right along side their captain – actor JIMMY STEWART!! Yes! No lie! Stewart was Tony’s squad’s chief pilot. He hung out with his boys, gave them their orders and, according to Tony, “was a regular guy.”

Tony, too, was a regular guy. But like his hero, Jimmy Stewart, he was so much more! I know what you all are thinking – that Tony was a bad man: sexist, racist, a hater. And that I hung out with this kind of guy. But I never saw Tony that way. Yes, he said the evil shit that all men of his time said. But when you got to know him you realized he did the exact opposite. That he taught that Hispanic artist who used to visit Leader Sign how to blow neon glass – it’s an art and Tony took pride in passing on his knowledge to the next generation. That he charged that black church next to nothing for a sign he made for them. That during the war when a gay combat gunner was being harassed by his mates, Tony beat them up! “He was a good guy,” Tony said. Tony, when I first knew him, had classrooms of kids and their teachers visit the shop to learn about signs and sign making. He didn’t care if the classroom was majority-minority!

Tony Hmura was an American original. He was part of the violent, old, weird America that many of us are ashamed of but an America that we should never stop examining … to see … the good in it. A ghastly, beautiful mystery.

Good bye, Tony, my old friend!

InCity Yum Yums

An inner-city jewel! Green Island’s Crompton Park!

August 7, 2016 admin

Lorraine Laurie! Known to all as the “Mayor of Green Island,” Lorraine has worked tirelessly, advocated passionately, for the blue-collar Green Island! FOR DECADES! Thank you, “Sweet Lorraine”! pics:R.T.

By Lorraine Laurie

Crompton Park, the Green Island neighborhood’s jewel, is shining brighter than ever, thanks to major renovations started last year and continuing into this year!

The work on the Canton Street side of the park is made possible by a PARC
(Parkland Acquisitions and Renovation for Communities) state grant for
$400,000 and a City of Worcester match of $750,000. in funds including CDBG
(Community Development Block Grant) monies.

The current renovations complement the 6,500 squarefoot pool that was opened
on July 1, 2011. The ultra- modern complex which cost $2.7 million features a zero depth entry pool,a splash pad for toddlers,a slide, 3 lap lanes, outside showers, security and a family restroom and changing area.

Crompton Park’s new pool, splash pad, water sprays AND SLIDE! are enjoyed by hundreds of neighborhood folks every week!

The Canton Street side of Crompton Park is now more accessible and safer be-
cause of the ongoing renovations. The entrance driveway and parking area have been moved to the left side of the awimming pool complex. A green space, in turn, has been created between the playground and the swimming pool area. The new improvements enhance the modern playground area on the corner of Harding and Canton streets and tie it in more to the nearby pool complex.

A new tennis court has replaced the old
courts and will feature United States Tennis Association “Quick Start”markings for youth development. The “Tenacity” program is already using the court as part of this summer’s activities in the park. Also, the court is adaptable for use as an ice skating venue in the winter. Two handball courts, new to Crompton, have been built near
the corner of Canton Street and Quinsigamond Ave. (in case you wonder what the large wall is!) and have proven to be very popular in other parks such as South Worcester Playground on Cambridge and Camp Streets.

Renovations have kept in mind maintenanceissues so that the improved areas will be much easier to care for and keep in shape.

All these upgrades and additions were many years in the making. Like the saying goes, “Anything worth having is worth waiting for.” Three very well attended public planning sessions were held at the Green Island Neighborhood Center itself located on the Canton Street side of the park in late 2010 and early 2011. A Master Plan for the park based on input from residents and stakeholders was developed by the firm of Weston & Sampson, environmental/infrastructure consultants whose office is located at Harrington Corner in downtown Worcester.

The plan was presented in March 2011. It was approved publically by the Worcester Parks & Recreation Commission on March 31, 2011 and the Worcester City Council on February 28, 2012.

Crompton Park’s basketball court – a neighborhood icon – has been around for decades and drawn thousands of kids (and adults) looking to shoot hoop! Safer and more accessible renovations of this very popular and heavily used basketball court – “Cousy Court”! – are in the works!

What makes this planning session so special is that the master plan isavailable on the City Parks Department web site(www.worcesterma.gov – Parks/Rec/ Cemetery City Parks)!

A grant was submitted to the State but not funded. It was resubmitted the next
year. With the help of State Senator Michael Mooreand State Rep. Daniel Donahue, the PARC grant was successfully obtained; the City committed its match and the bidding process was undertaken.

This feature reporter is especially thrilled about having participated in the Master Plan process as Chairperson of the Green Island Residents Group, Inc.and is excited about the renovations that are taking place. She fondly recalls participating in the
previous Crompton Park Planning Group which met from 1981 – 1983. Thomas
“Tom” W.Taylor was the Parks Commissionerthen and James E.“Jef” Fasser was the parks Department Landscape Architect.

The top priority then was having the Green Island Neighborhood Center move from its rented Millbury Street store front to the old shower house on the Canton Street side of the park. With the help of grant and CDBG money,the deteriorated and vacant building was renovated to the needs of the Center. The building became “home” for the Center on September 27, 1984 and its new address became “50 Canton Street – Crompton Park.”

ICT editor Rosalie and her mom, many years ago … they’re relaxing on what used to be known as the little hill at Crompton Park!

Speaking of the Green Island Neighborhood Center, Rochelle Appiah, Site Manager at the Center, says she is “looking forward to the completion, to the City of Worcester, construction team, pavers and builders we all say a big THANK YOU for improving our park.”

The Center is very busy with 30 eager children participating in the summer program. They play soccer on Tuesday and Thursday mornings with Staff from the Worcester Youth Soccer GOALS program. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday its Tenacity program time on the tennis court.

These two programs are open to all children ages 6 -12.

The pool is quite busy from noon to 7 p.m. daily and according to Rochelle “It’s the highlight of the day.“ Rochelle adds “I don’t want to
forget the beautiful WRTA building, sure does make a difference. Every day I look out of my window and say this neighborhood is on the rise!”

What’s in the future for Crompton Park?

When asked what he would like to see
done next from the Master Plan, Assistant Commissioner “Rob” Antonelli named three areas – not in any particular order:

a rubber surface for the playground so it will be softer

safer and more accessible renovations of the very popular and heavily used
basketball court – “Cousy Court”

and renovations to the softball field which alone “will cost $1 million or $2 million.”

Ronald “Ron” Charette, Executive Director of the South Worcester Neighbor hood Improvement Corporation, which runs both the Green Island and South
Worcester Neighborhood Centers sums it all up nicely. He says: “For nearly four
decades, the Green Island Neighborhood Center has enjoyed a great partnership with the Worcester Parks Department, starting with former Commissioner Tom Taylor and continuing with Rob Antonelli. The transformation of Crompton Park, under the leadership of Rob Antonelli, continues to build on this great partnership, making our park a jewel for the entire community.”

At 128 years old, our Green Island “Jewel” shines brighter than ever!

InCity Yum Yums

A peach of a lady watering her tomatoes!

July 12, 2016 admin

Driving through the Oak Hill neighborhood today, I spied …

… “Sweet Lorraine” Laurie, “Mayor of Green Island,” friend to Vernon Hill senior citizens, Green Island history buff, proud parishoner of St. John’s church, gal pal to Sister Pat and her after-school program, a long-time advocate for inner-city neighborhoods – especially the blue collar side of Kelley Square!

Here she is in her urban garden, outside her three decker, watering her tomato plant, looking just peachy in her peach sun dress! pic: R.T.

Fashion

Green Island – always in style!

July 9, 2016 admin

Out of my neck of the Woo woods … but Bancroft Tower is still pretty cool! Classic Worcester quirkiness built by a Worcester big shot! A monument to his inflated ego – er, I mean, the city he loved so dearly!

I was here a few days ago, on the West Side, checking out BT. Missed my Green Island ‘hood, though, and drove home lickety split!

This makes me happier! The basketball court on Harding Street, two seconds away from my apartment!

Monumental basketball played here!

A monument to the spirit of inner-city folks!

Go, Green Island, go!!!!!

Text/pics: Rosalie Tirella

InCity Voices

Shopping – Green Island style!

April 9, 2016 admin

By Rosalie Tirella

When I was a little girl growing up in Green Island we were too poor to shop for kids clothing at Kiddy Castle/the Deb Shop, the upscale, beautiful kids/teens clothing shop right next door to the dry cleaners where my mom worked on Millbury Street. Though hidden in Green Island the store drew comfortably middle class families from Worcester’s West Side, not the immediate neighborhood. My mom – a single working mom – worked at the dry cleaners for minimum wage and didn’t have the money to buy the shop’s beautiful, well made children’s clothing and outerwear for her three little girls. The best we could do was enjoy the wonderful window displays that Sam, the owner of the Kiddy Castle (that’s what everyone called his shop), put up every winter, fall, spring and summer. For Christmas: Big, lifelike reindeers with sleigh bell-decorated belts on their backs and plastic flakes for snow sprinkled on their noses. And Santa’s elves (life-sized, too) standing next to them, about to load gaily wrapped Christmas gifts onto a wooden sleigh. Sometimes the elves twisted at the waist or raised an arm to say hello to you! In autumn: Big vinyl orange and red autumn leaves were pressed onto the big display windows. For spring: Pink and yellow plastic flowers bloomed among the pink and yellow Easter dresses the store maniquens wore – slim plexiglass girls painted a soothing beige and about the same height as me and my sisters. The store was a huge cottage with a sign that read DEB SHOP written in cursive on the top half (the Deb Shop was upstairs) and the KIDDY CASTLE sign, written in blocky, primary-colored letters, on the first level (the Castle was on the first floor). A sight to behold! A tease to the neighborhood’s poor kids and parents who walked, ran and trudged by it in all kinds of weather – but never entered, unless they were selling raffle tickets for a school field trip.

After a while the desire to enter this magical place faded for me and I was content to enjoy the creative window displays – just another cool facet of my densely packed, urban neighborhood that I treated like my own personal carnival ride because there were so many adults, kids, small businesses, institutions, dogs, cats, small biz owners, eateries, ideologies and feelings to experience!

Back to shopping! We Green Island families – the families who lived on Lafayette Street, Ellsworth Street, Sigel Street, Lodi Street, Grosvenor Street and Bigelow Street (we lived on Lafayette) – tuned out the Kiddy Castle and set our sights and change purses on the always bustling Mart, a kind of blue collar general store on Worcester’s Main Street, the gateway to the then-dicey Main South neighborhood. My mom shopped at the Mart for all our undies, play clothes and school clothes. For herself she bought: canvas tennis shoes, cotton aprons, bobby pins to curl her hair, cans of aerosol hair spray to hold her curled hair, pots, pans, cans of Ajax, dish towels and big white cotton panties that, when out of their package, looked as if they could hold two 5-pound bags of flour. My mother – about 43 at the time – wasn’t big – today I’d maybe even call her petite – but she wore big underwear. This puzzled me when I was a little girl: little lady, huge bloomers! Today I think Ma did this out of sadness and utilitarianism: Her husband, our father, was MIA AGAIN and we didn’t know when he’d come home again. Forget the sex – and a second paycheck! So Mom’s undies were the opposite of fun and seductive – they were no-nonsense, durable, easy to wear and care for – made of 100% cotton, a material which “breathes” as Ma reminded us, perfect for … working 60 hours a week at the dry cleaners (20 under the table), raising three little girls, cooking dinner, cleaning house and caring for her elderly, feisty, opinionated Polish immigrant mother – our grandmother, “Bapy,” who lived with us. You could’t live my mom’s life in thongs or even colorful bikini bottoms, the fashion back then.

Bapy, at the head of the kitchen table, holding baby Rosalie!

Bapy alone would have sent most women to bloomersville: she lived with us and was another full-time job for Ma. Bapy had to be bathed, her long, gray hair combed out each morning and braided and wrapped in a bun at the back of her head, held in place with bobby pins. She needed her cups of Sanka decaf coffee warmed up in pans of hot water we boiled for her on the stove every few hours. She needed to sit at the head of the kitchen table – the hub of our big three decker tenenent – and pontificate in Polish, with a few choice Polish swear words to underscore a point – my father’s uselessness being the main one. She had opinions on everything and never kept them to herself. She expounded on God, grapes, our aunties, our plumbing, the kitchen table, the beef stew on the kitchen table, the downstairs neighbors, the Gomer Pyle USMC tv show, geraniums, birthday cake, gold fish and my dolls, which she’d dress in her old, smelly knee socks.

Rosalie has owned this doll since she was 1! Bapy used to dress this doll up!

She’d take one of my dolls, often the one I was holding, take one of her socks, cut off the toe end with a pair of small old scissors and make a little crew hat, which she put on my doll’s head. Then she’d slip the doll’s plastic body into the rest of the old sock to make a long tube dress for the doll. Bapy made all my dolls look like mummies! I always watched her work, flattered she took an interest in me, annoyed that my dolls looked dead.

Sometimes Bapy would take one of her long socks and just make a cap for one of my dolls and put the rest of the sock – the tube end – on her arm, from her wrist to her elbow. That was to warm her arthritic bones. Often she layered the arm socks for extra relief. She’d walk around the tenement with both her arms covered in old socks of many hues – browns, navy blue, white, black. Bapy looked like a walking quilt with her decorated arms, flowered flannel night gown, flowered apron over the flowered night gown, three pairs of knit booties on her old feet … She smelled … fecund.

Bapy baby-sat us when our mother was working at the dry cleaners we’d tell everyone, but actually it was the other way around, with we kids heating her coffee on the stove and getting her the hardboiled egg sandwiches that she munched on from dawn to dusk.

In short, my mother’s life (and ours) was more Army Surplus than Victoria’s Secret, and Ma dressed appropriately for her tasks.

We never owned a car when I was growing up, so we walked pretty much everywhere – my mother, two kid sisters and I. We walked to the Mart often – a fun excursion for us that we’d cap off with a stop at Woolworth’s on Front Street – specifically the luncheonette section – hamburgers, french fries and Cokes for us kids, a cheese Western omelette and regular cup of coffee for Ma. While at the Mart, my mom would buy her wretched panties, my kids sisters and I would run off to the toy section where I always picked up the little package of REAL SEA MONKEYS to give to my mother so she could buy them for me. On the package there was an illustration of a happy cute Sea Monkey family sitting on their sofa watching TV. My mom would take one look at the package, frown and wave me off with: “They’re slimey!”

My favorite part of the walk to the Mart – just before you reached its front doors was the entrance to the Aurora Hotel, a flop house where various and sundry alcoholics and Worcester chatacters lived. The glossy granite entranceway always seemed so elegant to me! There, etched onto one of the smooth granite pillars that framed the entranceway to the flophouse, in exquisite deatail, floated “the mermaid lady” – a slender, lovely lady with long tresses and dressed in a long flowing toga. She was as tall as me and seemed to come straight out of my school book on Greek gods and goddesses. I never called her Aurora, after the hotel, or even tried to name her despite my family’s frequent walk-bys. The mermaid lady seemed too cold and distant for naming, her face turned to one side, in profile, as if always looking away from the gritty, gray, working class downtown she found herself floating in.

My mother bought our “slacks,” as she called them, socks, undies, shirts and short sets at the Mart. She never bought their kids shoes. She believed in good, quality sturdy leather kids shoes for her girls so we would not walk “pigeon toed” and our “arches didn’t drop.” This was all mysterious science to my kid sisters and me – ages 7 and 8 1/2 years old – but Ma must have done something right cuz I’ve logged thousands of miles on my footsies and to this day I have high arches that look ballerina-dancer cool when pointed!

Rosalie’s foot – 4/9/2016

So it was off to Lisbon’s Shoe Store on Millbury Street – just 10 or so stores down from the dry cleaners where my mom worked – to see Mr. Lisbon. Like many of the small business that lined Millbury Street years ago the owners usually “waited on” their customers. They were at their shops, very hands on. You got to know them and their families in a peripheral way. If you went to White’s Five and Ten down the street Mr. White was running the store and ringing out customers on their big beige cash register. Mrs. White, tall and elegant in her knock off Channel suits and high, sculpted jet-black bouffant and black high heels – her natural tallness and accessorizing made her about 6 feet tall! – neatened up the housecoat and cotton vests section. If you went to Commercial Fruit, a few stores down, the owners and later their kids, were the ones who bagged your produce and weighed it on their big porcelain scales. The tailor’s shop, also on Millbury Street, a few stores down from the drycleaners, was always home to the tailor and his 25 canaries who kept him company in a big cage that he kept on a stand by his sewing machine. They were in complete, stifling darkness except for the little goose neck lamp that shone on the clothes the little tailor was mending. When my mom and I visited I ran straight to his yellow and orange canaries, my heart swelling with love. I always hoped the little tailor would give me a bird to take home and keep near our sunny kitchen window. He never did.

Mr. Lisbon, the shoe store owner, was always so nice to my mom and my two kid sisters and me. He always made me and my sisters stand up and put our stockinged feet on his foot measuring machine and then he’d slide the measuring stick to get your exact perfect shoe size. He would put your shoes on, lace them up and have you walk around the store to get the feel of them, all the while explaining things to our mother, who listened carefully and nodded her head. She’d buy our no-nonsense shoes and make us put them on to walk home in.

We’d walk down Millbury Street, tired but content – we loved each other, we were together. At the corner of Millbury and Lafayette streets stood McGovern’s Package store. We kids knew before we took that right onto Lafayette Street Ma would go into McGoverns and buy each of us a little bag of salted cashews – a treat! I’d want to eat my little bag of cashews during the walk home but Ma always insisted that I wait until we got home. She was always right: It was more fun eating my cashews with my kid sisters and telling Bapy in broken Polish all about our shopping trip to Millbury Street!

Fashion

Lorraine’s in fashion! … Exciting things are happening in Crompton Park

February 17, 2016 admin

The “Mayor of Green Island” – Lorraine Laurie!

By Lorraine Laurie (photos:R.T.)

Exciting things are happening to Crompton Park in the Green Island Neighborhood! Just drive down Harding Street, south of Kelley Square, pass Endicott Street and take a right swing on to Canton Street. You can see the up-to-date playground equipment, the ultra modern pool complex and the Green Island Neighborhood Center.

According to Robert C. Antonelli, Jr. Assistant Commissioner of the City of Worcester- DPW & Parks – Parks, Recreation & Cemetery Division, the latest phase of work now in progress includes:

the relocation and expansion of the existing parking lot

the relocation of the two existing tennis courts

and the addition of two new handball courts.

This project will cost $1,020,000 and is made possible with City Tax Levy Capital, Community Development Block Grant money and State “PARC” – Parkland Acquisitions and Renovation for Communities Grant funding.

State Representative Dan Donahue (D) 16th Worcester District said recently that he was “happy to work with the City to obtain a PARC Grant to help with the renovations on the Canton Street side of Crompton Park.”

The existing parking lot will be relocated to the west side of the Pool Complex.

The present parking lot will be renovated to a lawn area and decrease the potential of vehicular and pedestrian conflict as people access the playground. Rochelle Appiah, Site Manager of the Green Island Neighborhood Center, is looking “forward to the new parking lot here at Crompton Park. It will be much safer for the children.”

Besides the parking lot improvements, the two existing tennis courts will be relocated to the west of the new parking lot and two new handball courts will be added to the west of the relocated tennis courts.

IThe sports court will be constructed with the concrete bases installed for future sports lighting; new lighting fixtures are included for the relocated parking lot. Assistant Commissioner Antonelli also points out that “the area between Community building [Green Island Neighborhood Center] and the pool complex will be renovated as a pedestrian friendly paved plaza but will provide accommodations for the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile. The parking lot and the plaza will be constructed of porous pavement and pavers. The work is scheduled to be competed by June 1 so as not to interfere with the pool schedule, the Tenacity program and the operations of the Green Island Neighborhood Center.

Ronald “Ron” Charette, Executive Director of the South Worcester Neighborhood Improvement Corporation, which runs the South Worcester Neighborhood Center on Camp Street and also the Green Island Neighborhood Center, sums it up beautifully. He says, “It is a great joy for the residents of the Green Island Neighborhood to watch their community jewel, Crompton Park, being rebuilt. The new improvements at Crompton Park signify the health and vitality of the Green Island Neighborhood.
A thriving park mirrors a happy place for families to live. The renovations to Green Island’s Crompton Park are one more step in re-building a fine neighborhood.”

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Green Island autumn memories

October 1, 2015 admin

Rosalie’s kid sisters around the time they (and Rose) were daily customers at Freddy’s penny candy store!

By Rosalie Tirella

A few days ago a pal saw me chomping away at something, all the while making funny faces… Laughing, he asked me: What are you eating?!

I said, my red-stained lips pursed: “A FIRE BALL! They used to sell them in the penny candy store across the street from the house I grew up in. This takes me straight back to my childhood on Lafayette Street!”

And I grinned un-self-consciously like a little kid, my mouth and lips and teeth stained fire-engine red – Fire Balls are always fire engine red!

Fire Balls! Sour Balls! Atomic Balls! Different name, same balls! They’ve been around since the 1950s and haven’t changed one wit: red, hot, marble hard spheres – each encased in its own clear cellophane wrapper. JFK had the Cuban Missile crisis to contend with, the free world teetered on the brink of nuclear annihilation!!, we kids chomped on our Atomic Balls. Today its wrapper is “adorned” with a yellow hydrogen atom burst around the name. Today, as America frets over Iran and its nuclear bomb, American kids chomp contentedly on their Atomic Balls.

This is the way it is: Lucky children living their childhoods, oblivious to the horrors adults inflict on pretty much everything – often children. ChildHOOD is better than ANY ‘hood because, when you’re in it, and you’re safe, your experience of the world – even the most mundane things, especially the most mundane things! – is Technicolor intense. For instance, as a 5 year old, I used to love hanging upside down from one of the old green wooden kitchen chairs in our Green Isand flat to stare at the old square patterned kitchen linoleum, the blood rushing to my head. Dizzy W-O-W! I could do this for 15 minutes!

Back with my pal, a few days ago, I enjoyed my Fire Ball and thought: hot, round, red, perfection … like the marbles we’d play at as kids in Green Island. Each kid had her/his own bag/pouch of marbles – the marbles were made of hard, unbreakable glass: cobalt blue glass, hazel “cat’s eyes,” swirly psychedelic colors. With a stick we’d draw a circle in the dirt in our Lafayette Street backyard that never EVER grew a lawn, then dig a little hole a few inches deep and three or four inches wide and snap our marbles into the hole. That’s why we called them “snappers” The more valuable snappers were bigger, like a Fire Ball. And the biggest ones – the ones everyone coveted and tried to win – seemed as great as golf balls to my young eyes.

I was a lousy marble player, so I never played for “keepsies.” I didn’t want to lose my marbles! Marbles, on Lafayette Street, was usually played by the savvy, shrewd neighborhood boys. The kinds of boys that were smart, lanky, cute – and sexually precocious.

Why did marble player Keith want to take me to his “fort” in the “big yard” next door, where the brambles grew as high as my waist?

My mother must have sensed something nefarious about Keith because she’d always say: DON’T GO WITH KEITH TO HIS FORT!

That was it. A stern warning from Ma, her face flat with seriousness. We got it. So I stayed away from Keith’s fort – but still played marbles with him – and always lost to him. Keith always gave me back my marbles because I never played for “keepsies,” which meant I always had the same batch of OK marbles that my mom had bought me at White’s Five and Ten on Millbury Street. I never owned the pure clear marbles, the ones you tried to see through, or the deep mysterious cobalt blue ones that reminded you of a planet turning in the deep black sky. You had to win those beauties and I never played to win.

Sometimes, after a game of marbles, I’d head across the street to Freddy’s Penny Candy store on Lafayette Street (yes! I lived ACROSS THE STREET FROM A PENNY CANDY STORE as a little kid!) to buy 10 Fire Balls from Freddy, a strange guy who liked to pop fire crackers at the neighborhood kids, had false teeth and epilepsy. He lived upstairs in the building with his old mother. Back then lots of Worcester’s working class neighborhoods had three deckers with little mom and pop stores on the first floor. We had Freddy’s on Lafayette and, at the corner of Lafayette and Grosvenor streets, Helen’s store, and somewhere (I forget where) Pandaroo’s. My mom adored Mr. Pandaroo, a little Polish guy who looked like the kind Gepeto in Disney’s Pinocchio movie. He was always wearing a big apron that went down to his ankles – maybe a butcher? – and he was always so nice to my mom. When she picked up a loaf of bread or soda pop at his store with me and my two kid sisters in tow, they’d chat in Polish so animatedly! for a solid 10 minutes! My sisters and I would grow restless waiting for Ma and walk the sawdust strewn aisles of his teeny grocery shop, looking at groceries (boring).

But Pandaroos didn’t have the amazing penny candy selection Freddy had: 30 or so cubbies in front by the store window, laid out flat, each one filled with 20 or so different kinds of candy pieces – each one costing exactly one copper penny. Tootsie Rolls. Bazaakoo Joe Bubble Gum pieces – always that lovely pink. Little chocolate malted balls, red licorice sticks, black licorice sticks, Squirrel nut caramel candy, Pez candies (he sold the Pez woody woodpecker and Popeye dispensers), Necco wafers, plastic animal shapes filled with purple sugar water … it was a treasure trove of yumminess!

Sometimes my kid sisters and I would cross our street to Freddy’s to buy some Fire Balls and we’d hear Freddy in the back of his dark little shop having a “fit,” as an epileptic episode was stupidly called back then. My sisters and I would whisper to each other: Freddy’s having a fit!!! and then quietly turn around and cross the street and go home, where we’d wait for his “fit” to pass. In about an hour we’d head straight back to Freddy’s to buy our penny candy, no questions asked. Eddy seemed ok again and would whip out a little brown paper bag and give it to us to fill with the pieces of candy we wanted, watching us the whole time in case we tried to cheat and steal an extra piece or two. He never EVER gave a kid a free penny candy. Ever. You could tell he didn’t really like kids even though he trafficked in the stuff that had us swarming his place. My sisters and I were always slightly afraid of him, even though my mom said he was ok, came from good family. Why his sister was a nun!

Sometimes after school, when my mom was home from working at the dry cleaners she’d send us out looking for autumn leaves so she could press them in her big old dictionary from her maid days in Springfield, where she and her sisters kept house for the Bishop of Springfield during the Great Depression and World War II (My Bapy farmed her three girls out to the Bishop at 14 1/2 years so they would have plenty of good food to eat and so they could send money back home to help keep the family afloat during hard times. Plus, it was an honor for her conservative Polish soul – a Bishop was a couple of rungs down from a saint!!)

Anyways, my mom left Springfield with some cool old books from the Bishop: The Lives of Saints, The Autobiography of Saint Theresa, the Holy Bible, the dictionary and some vintage-y furniture, including a huge stand-up mahogany stereo/radio/record player that never worked but stood looking gorgeous in our living room when I was a kid.

So it was: Rosalie! Get some pretty leaves! We’ll put them between two sheets of wax paper and press them in the middle of the Bishop’s dictionary!

HOORAY!! I’D BOUND OUT OF OUR THIRD FLOOR FLAT IN TWO SECONDS FLAT, SKIP STAIRS AS I leapt into the autumn sun speckled sidewalk outside our three decker. There were many huge trees on Lafayette, Grosvenor, Scott, Lunell, Bigelow and Lodi streets when I was growing up. Maple, chestnut, oak…the leaves were different shapes and colors…red, orange, gold … I’d walk beneath them and pick up different shaped and colored leaves – as perfect as I could find them. Sure, often times I was walking in the gutter, the leaves up to my ankles! (Did Woo have leaf pick up then?!), but I was on a mission! Ma wanted pretty autumn leaves! We were going to work on an art project together! She was home from work at the dry cleaners and had some time to have fun with me! She loved art and drawing and painting just like I did! When I got home, I’d sit at the kitchen table and she’d carefully tear out pieces of wax paper,then we’d dust the dirt off the leaves and I’d watch as Ma expertly placed each precious fall leaf between two sheets of wax paper and place each work of art between two pages of her big, 4 inch thick dictionary from the Bishop of Springfield. We never identified the leaves – maple, cedar, etc. I don’t think she knew their names. Neither did I – though I’m sure we were taught their correct names in school. It didn’t really matter. The intense colors of the leaves, the musty smelling almost antique dictionary, Ma quietly working her magic, after all her work at Oscar’s Cleaners, with Bapy yelling at Daddy in the background- again!, the cats wanting by the pantry door to be fed again and the supper cooking in the oven and it starting to feel cold in the flat because we just had one heater in the apartment – in the side of our gas kitchen stove and I would wear my navy blue knit sailors hat to bed these nights and maybe Ma would come into my bedroom before I fell asleep and throw one of those ugly olive green army surplus blankets we had over me and I would feel no warmer but not tell her … But now, now it was magic time! I was watching Ma silently (she never lectured us or talked very much to us) prepare the leaves, press them in her dictionary, sometimes hold a very beautiful one up to the light to examine more carefully. She did this in her usual workmanlike, serious style. She wanted it to be PERFECT. Perfection required concentration … quiet…It was like a ritual. Special. Sacred. A priestess preparing autumnal leaves like a priest would ready the communion wafer at St. Mary’s church, our little Polish church a few streets away.

In three or four days we would go to the dictionary and open it carefully, turning to the pages with the autumn leaves. Ma would carefully remove the leaves from their sheaves of wax paper and we would stare at their crisp loveliness, their colors not quite as intense as when they had just fallen from their trees. Not a word spoken between me and Ma. That was ok with me. At that moment my mother, at our kitchen table with the autumn leaves spread before her, seemed as mysterious as nature, as quietly beautiful as the autumn moon. But she was mine … Of course, she is gone, so is Freddy and his penny candy and playing marbles with the Green Island boys … “so leaf subsides to leaf/nothing gold can stay.”

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