Hey... That's Me!

Bromley, 1924 (BPL)

The picture on top was taken around 1959-60. I'm in the middle, and I think one of the Schatz boys - Jacky or Ricky - is on the left. I can't place the boy on the right yet. We are posed between the end of Spalding street and the railroad embankment. You can see the embankment sloping up in the back right, with the top of one of the oil tanks that still sit on Washington street opposite the Arborway MBTA yard just showing itself. I suspect the tree we are standing in front of was a crab apple. They seemed to thrive along the embankment going towards McBride street, and I distinctly remember being unable to resist temptation and eating a few. And becoming sick as a dog, exactly as I had been warned.

To the right and out of view was the Hood Milk distribution plant, where big trucks brought in product from the dairy and smaller trucks departed deliver it.[Note: the map above (added 7/2008) shows the facility much as I remember it, at the end of Anson st. Below the "ST" of "ANSON ST" there's a long wood frame building with an "X" through it that may have been a stable for the horses and wagons]. It's hard - no, impossible - to imagine the truck traffic coming and going on little one-way Anson street today. I've read that the trucks were made by Divco, and were tricky to drive. The delivery trucks were kept in a brick garage that is still there, on South street, directly opposite Anson. This map from 1924 shows that Hood was already at the location at the time, and also shows the empty lot where the picture was taken. That lot, always overgrown with weeds, is where I caught bees and grasshoppers in jars - classic boy stuff. The map also shows a Percy street, which disappeared into a turn-around lot for Hoods. The park that runs through the area is certainly much more attractive than the patchwork asphalt and broken glass that once filled the area, and the railroad embankment was nothing to look at either. Still, I'm sure it was a playground for generations of kids from Anson, Spalding, Rosemary and Hall streets.

Other families on Spalding street? The Schatz kids lived in the same house as us at 17, The Perrin family was next door - probably 15, and the Hoyts lived across from us - I remember Raymond and Elaine Hoyt, and there was a baby as well. My father used to go hunting with Leon Perrin, and one of the older girls was my babysitter. Years later, long after we had moved away. I met Mary Ann Perrin while we were in high school. My mother stayed friendly with the Hoyts, exchanging Christmas cards and occasional visits over the years. The only other family I remember is the Bariskys (spelling?). Bobby was near my age, and I think they were Ukranian. That's my Spalding street brain dump - 47 years is just too much to do any better.

Agassiz School - And The Old Homestead

Brewer street, 1960s


Taking a break from Franklin Park entries...

OK, so it's a picture of my old house, with the "new" Agassiz school in the background. I just found the picture in a box, and I figured I'd make it available to anyone who wanted to see the school again. I believe the address of the school was Burroughs street, but the main entrance was on Brewer. Go figure. I believe our house was at least the second on the property. Maps show a building with a different footprint on the property from 1874 to 1905, and then this building shows up in 1914. In the back hall on the second floor there was an ice box on the platform and a gas lamp in the wall. In the living room there was a faux fireplace with a cast metal "log" gas fixture that was not connected. By the time I was waking up for school, the earliest children would already be in the schoolyard outside my window. The schoolyard beside the house was our "ballfield", and my mother always had to get after us to use rubber balls to protect the windows.

Christmas On Brewer Street - 1961

(Copyright 2007)


There I sit in my new red wagon on Christmas day, 1961. That red wagon made me a part of a Jamaica Plain tradition. My first job in this world was as an order boy at the First National supermarket on Centre street opposite Greenough avenue. With other boys, we lined up on either side of the entrance of the store. As people came out, we offered to carry their "orders" home in our wagons. Most of our "clients" were older people, who would have difficulty carrying their groceries home. We pulled our bag-laden wagons from the brick building directly opposite the store to Orchard street. Twenty-five cents was a good take, and paid for a bottle of tonic and a comic book. Both the Jamaicaplain.com message board - "Remember the "order boys" with their little red wagons, who hauled our parents' grocery orders home on Saturdays from the First National?" - and the Jamaica Plain Historical Society web site tell stories of boys who did the same thing - some of them 10-15 years before I did. My mother still comments on how useful that little red wagon was.

Begging for Stuff - A Holiday Tradition

(Copyright 2007)


Yours truly, sitting on Santa's lap in downtown Boston. I'm guessing that it was at Jordan Marsh some time before 1960. You see, children, back in the old days, people from Jamaica Plain would get on the streetcar and go in to Boston to do all their Christmas shopping. There was Filene's and Jordan's and Raymonds; all the big stores were along Washington street, kind of like a plaza or mall, only in the city. Then you'd walk over to the Boston Common to see the lights and decorations, and hear carollers or bands playing Christmas music. Pretty neat.

Seaverns Avenue - 1949-1951

Lill and Bill Bulger, in front of Fraternity Hall on the day of my uncle and aunt's wedding. You can just see my brother Jim's head in my father's right hand. The sign in the background says that it was officially the Odd Fellows hall. I believe that that last time I drove through it was being rebuilt for... wait for it.... condos.



My father, William Bulger, brother Jim, and the granddaughter of the lady next door. The building on the left is Capen Hall, at the back of the Central Congregational church.

Thanksgiving 1949 at 92 Seaverns avenue. From right to left, My uncle Chris, my father, grandmother, brother, mother and my uncle's girl friend.




My mother, Lillian Olander Bulger, her mother, Esther Olander, and Esther's brother Ernie, standing beside Central Congregational church. The houses in the background are still there, across from the church and Capen Hall. My grandmother lived in one of the three mansard-roof houses, and my parents lived in another (84 and 92?). My Mother tells me that those quaint-looking mansard roofs with the slate shingles heated up the second-floor apartment above 100 degrees in the summer in the days before air conditioning.



My grandmother, her brother Ernie, and my uncle Chris. Chris was Arvid Christopher Olander, and was known as Yaco, for his initials; ACO. Chris was 21 in this picture, and would be dead in ten years, killed by a sudden heart attack while being treated for ulcers.

My grandmother and some of her brothers and sisters came to this country from Sweden. She came in 1904, and worked as a domestic for much of her life, cooking, cleaning and taking in laundry. Ironically, she left home because she didn't want to work as a domestic for a farmer in Sweden, and she ended up scrubbing floors on her hands and knees in the land of opportunity.

Both pictures Copyright, 2007.

Patrolman William F. Bulger

Class of 1941 - Jamaica Plain High School


(Copyright 2007. All rights reserved)


Patrolman William F. Bulger, (the father of your writer), some time around 1950. He is standing in front of Central Congregational Church. The photographer was facing towards the corner of Seaverns avenue and Elm street.


(Copyright 2007. All rights reserved)

Here is similar view in November, 2007. Notice the dormer windows on the third floor and the chimney. The tree on the left hides the single-floor extention the back that appears in the older picture. The building to the right in the older picture was down on the corner of Green and Elm streets, and is no longer there. The phone pole in both pictures may be the same.

My parents were married in 1947, and lived in on of the little mansard roof houses that are opposite Capen Hall and the church on Seaverns ave. Judging by how skinny my father looks in this picture, it could have been taken any time between when he went on the police force and when we moved away from Seaverns avenue in the mid-1950s.

I've looked through the family snapshots, and unfortunately most of the pictures from Jamaica Plain show very little of the building on the streets. They are mostly close-ups that just show the sides of houses or yards. I like this one because I think it shows the pride that my father had in his uniform.

You'll often see it said that the Irish became policemen because Irish politicians got control of patronage and took care of their people. That's a small part of the story, and paints a misleading picture. The Irish became policemen because no one else wanted the job. My father went on the job when he came back from the war. At that time, the men who swept out streetcars at the end of each run were paid more than a Boston police patrolman. There was no union at the time. My father worked the graveyard shift. If they came up a man short, he would have to stay through the next shift for no extra pay. On election day, he would have to work his shift, then go to a polling place for the day. When voting ended, he would have to bring the box into City Hall on a streetcar. And then it was time for his next shift. It took unionization and many years before a job on the police force became an attractive one.

I found the top picture online this year - I had never seen my father's yearbook before. I was surprised to see "Policeman" listed as his ambition. By the end of the year, Pearl Harbor had happened, and he had enlisted, so the police job had to wait for several years.

Life's Little Surprises

Jim Bulger (almost six) and little brother Mark (17 months) . Marlou Terrace, 1956 (Copyright 2007)


When I found the Jamaica Plain Historical Society web site, I was amazed to find out that I had lived at the site of a former baseball factory (read the article here). Marlou Terrace, which is off Lamartine street just a few houses up from Green street, is one of those little dead-end private ways that you can pass by for years without ever noticing My only dim memory of the location is as a slightly older child, returning with my mother for vistits with our former landlady. We lived in the house on the left foreground on the first floor.

Jamaica Plain High School Track Team - 1941

I have no idea where this was taken, but it must have been around 1940.





Front row, second from right. My late Dad, William F. Bulger, bless his soul.