***Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Night- Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-Snug Harbor Elementary School 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A while back I went on to the class website established for the 50^th Anniversary reunion of my North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 (that’s in Massachusetts) to check out a new addition to the list of those who have joined the site. Now the way this site, like lots of such sites, works is that each classmate who logs in gets a profile page to tell his or her story of what has happened of interest over that previous 50 years, stuff at least that you wanted classmates to know about.  Donna, the site administrator (and class Vice-President back in the day), had recently added a poll section to the homepage in which various questions were posed. The first one asked where class members went to elementary school and gave some choices from elementary schools that would have fed into North Adamsville High. I had gone to an “other” non-listed school, Snug Harbor Elementary,   on the other side of town that fed into cross-town rival Adamsville High and so I provided the following comments on the “Message Forum” page set up on the site to be used to make timely comments.

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Snug Harbor Elementary… Among The “Others”

[Snug Harbor was not listed by name on the survey so I made this comment on the “Message Forum” section.

 

Since “other” is the largest segment of the “What elementary school(s) did you attend?” poll those of us who went elsewhere should identify yourselves. Here’s my contribution.

I went to Snug Harbor Elementary School, 1952-1958 which I believe served both the Adamsville projects where I came of age of and the private homes up to Sea Street. I was in the first class to go from Grade 1 to 6 in that school. I know there are other NA64ers who went through the school although I am not sure how many went all six years. Identify yourselves. 

 

 

 

Snug Harbor Memories…

Recently I went down to the Adamsville projects

 in order to take some photos of Snug Harbor Elementary School to add to the elementary school attended list on our North Adamsville Class of 1964 site. I also took some other photos that I had not originally intended to put on the site. However since fellow ex-Snug Harbor students Johnny Terry and Danny Valentine in MF#31 and #33 have referenced various places there I have decided to place some photos here to give some context to what they/we are talking about.

Everybody who came out of “the projects” (that is what everybody called the Adamsville Housing Authority four-unit apartment complexes then, for good or evil) knows that there was that one little convenience store, then called Carter’s, to service the whole place if you needed some quick food purchases. The place is still there under a different name (see photo). Strangely there was not, and still is not, any large supermarket on the whole peninsula. That despite the fact that there were/are several hundred families living in those apartment (see photo) many somewhat dependent on public transportation, then the dreaded never-coming Eastern Mass bus now the MBTA.

Naturally if your household ran out of milk or bread-milk to salute the President or somebody when we walked home for lunch and watched Big Brother (no, not Orwell’s) Bob Emery on WBZ television and Jesus-white bread Wonder Bread for those endless peanut and jelly sandwiches-you walked down along the seawall on Palmer Street to the store to make your emergency purchases. But that was to placate the parents. The real draw for young kids then at Carter’s was the vast, vast to young eyes, display cases of penny candy (you know Mary Janes, no, not that Mary Jane, not then anyway, Bazooka bubble gum, Tootsie rolls, Milk Duds, root beer barrels, Necco wafers, etc.), soda (then called, ah, tonic by the civilized New England world now out of fashion, the word and the world) in a big ice-filled chest containing the Cokes and Pepsis of the day but also various flavored Nehis, Hires Root Beer, Robb’s, etc.), and Twinkies/Hostess cupcakes/Devil Dogs, Table Talk pies and I might as well add etc. here too. In short that sugar high we are all guarding against with a vengeance with weight programs, arcane and profuse medical advice, and sheer will-power these days but which fueled our fast young hearts then.

Astonishingly with a few minor changes and some upgrading of the units walking around “the projects” today is about the same as in the 1950s. Danny mentioned that he had lived at 115 Taffy Road so I know many of the spots that he referred to in his message. (See photos of the jetty and P&G and the beach that we swam at, although not I think Red Beach, now returned to its natural state, and a photo of one of the units). Our family, my parents and two brothers, Kevin (NAHS Class of 1966) and Paul (should have been in our class but dropped out in 10th grade) lived at 88 Taffy Road. We were the first family to live in our unit beginning in about 1950 and left in the winter of 1959 to return to North Adamsville where Paul and I attended North Adamsville Junior High, now Middle School (Kenny, the Quincy School and then NAJH). We missed the famous “long march” from North Adams High to the new junior high school that winter arriving just after that historic event. (I have heard, although, I consider it nothing but a nasty rumor that there are still five students missing who got lost on the way over and never reported to North Adamsville JH)-ah, such is the nature of long marches.)     

Danny and Johnny both mentioned Saint Joseph’s Church as the church that they attended since there was no church, no Catholic Church, in the Adamsville projects until 1956 or so. (Saint Boniface’s since de-consecrated, exorcised, or whatever that process is called to un-church the building.) There had been CC services held in the Snug Harbor school auditorium before that time. Sunday school too by stern unforgiving nuns who apparently believed that spare the rod, spoil the child was the way to go with unruly kids who did not know their Baltimore Catechism by heart, as I well know, was held in an adjoining area of the school. I confess that I do not remember where that Saint Joseph’s they mentioned is since I had my first communion (along with brother Paul) at Blessed Sacrament in Hough’s Point.  

The names that Danny mentioned as having attended Snug Harbor before North Adamsville High, Mickey Finn and Franny Lawrence from our storied NAHS football team especially, I recall as well. I would add Brad Badger the great cross country and track runner from our class who lived there until 4^th grade and who was my best friend back then (as well as later through high school). And Tommy McFarland, one of the guys from the NAS golf team. Forget all those guys though. Here is a real special remembrance. The projects is where I came of age (quaint, right?). Naturally I developed some “crushes” when I started being attracted to, ah, girls, those sticks that one year were some giggly bothersome and then all of a sudden the next year had charms, and became, well, interesting. The biggest one I had was only a girl who is a member of our NAHS class. Her initials are MG so you can scurry to the Manet and figure it out. And no I never spoke to her. Such are the ways of forlorn young puppy love.     

The most important place in the whole projects, and which probably saved my life, was the Thomas Crane Public Library branch that was then located in the basement of the Snug Harbor school (and is now located at Sea Street and Palmer). Probably saved me from the troubled fate of a lot of projects kids that I hung around with, some who later wound up in jail or face down in some dusty back alley, including unfortunately both my brothers. In fifth and sixth grade I was torn between a very alluring life of petty crime (you know “clipping” stuff from stores, mainly jewelry, a little jack-rolling, thoughts of big time armed robberies of gas stations and such) and books. I had always liked to read before but in the battle between books and satisfying a poor boy’s wanting habits the pull was toward the latter. In the summer after sixth grade immediately after school got out I just kind of wandered in one hot day to get out of the heat and read for the whole day and from then on I was hooked on books. As for the criminal life, well, it had its good points and I am simplifying this narrative too much to say that the romance of the bandit life stopped cold that hot summer day but I eventually figured there were easier ways to survive in this wicked old world than that road. But it was a close thing.