A FINE DAY FOR SAILING by Peter Nolan Smith

My grandmother hailed from County Mayo in Ireland. Her last name was Walsh. At the age of fourteen Nana traveled to Boston by ship. Most of the other passengers were cattle.

"It was an awful crossing. Storms most of the way. We sailed in the Year of the Crow," she told her grandchildren in her lovely Gaelic accent.

"When was that?" I asked to pin down her age.

"That's my secret."

Women from the West of Ireland were experts at keeping secrets, however that ocean voyage was so traumatic that she had never returned to Ireland, even though every year my mother and her sisters offered to fly Nana to Shannon.

“I don’t want to see that ocean again.”

She was adamant with this decision and avoided any sight of the sea.

In the summer of 1958 my older brother and I regularly stayed at Nana's house in Jamaica Plains to give my parents a break from taking care of six children.

One weekend my parents proposed Nana to take the ferry and meet them for a family outing at Nantasket Beach. They were taking our younger siblings to a church event farther down the South Shore. Nana's other daughters were bringing her grandchildren and Nana loved us all.

"You'll save us a long ride back there."

"I'll not take the ferry. We'll take the bus."

"The bus will take hours," said my mother.

"The ferry is a short ride." My father had been born on the coast of Maine and like mother he loved swimming in ocean.

"Nana, can we go?" I pleaded with her. "I've never been on a ship."

"I don't like the sea.

"It's not the sea. It's a harbor."

"All the same to me, but I'll do it, because I love you." Nana shut her eyes, as if she were reliving a horror of that North Atlantic crossing from the Year of the Crow.

"Thank you," my mother hugged her youngest daughter and they left Nana's Jamaica Plains apartment with my brothers and sisters for our home under the Blue Hills.

The next day was a hot day and we looked forward to the swim in the cold green Atlantic. The three of us rode the train from Forest Hills to Haymarket and then walked to Lowe's Wharf. The pennants on the SS Nantasket flapped in the light breeze.

Not a single cloud marred on the sky above the calm harbor.

"Looks like a fine day for sailing," the purser said taking our tickets.

"I've heard that before and from another man staying on land."

Nana sat us inside the steamship. The ferry departed on time and the sea breeze cooled the hundreds of the passengers. A clown prowled the lower decks to entertain the children. He had a funny wig and big floppy feet. He scared my brother and me and we kept our distance.

The trip was scheduled to last about 30-40 minutes, however the wind picked up once we cleared Georges Island and the sea smashed over the bow. Nana clung to my brother and me, while the clown and scores of children slid across the tilting deck.

"Was your trip on the Atlantic this bad?' asked my brother.

"The waves were tall as buildings. The ship was awash water. Cows were swept overboard. They screamed moos in the ocean. I can hear them now."

She unleashed a mournful moo.

It sounded of death.

"And people were lost?" My brother gaped at the waves crashing over the hull.

"Cows only. Thank God," Nana muttered a prayer and pulled us close.

Several minutes later the storm ended faster than it began and we landed at Nantasket on schedule.

My mother stood outside the Waiting Station on the pier.

"Say nothing," Nana said walking down the gangplank.

Yes, Nana." The Irish knew how to hold their sand.

"How was the trip?" asked my mother, seeing the abating panic in the eyes of the other passengers.

"Grand."

"So what about a trip to Ireland?"

"Not a chance."

Nana spent the afternoon at the bandshell. Her feet didn't touch the beach. She was glad to leave Nantasket and even happier to arrive back to her house in Jamaica Plains. It was far from the wicked sea. She kissed us good-night.

"It was a fine day for sailing," I told her.

"That it was."

Nana had a way with words, but an even better one without words.

Her kiss was my ticket to dreamland and none of those dreams involved the ocean.

Maith á aithne agam uirthi.

I finally figured out the Year of the Crow. Nana's birth year was a mystery, until I looked at her marriage certificate from 1919. She married Peter Nolan from the Aran Isles. He was 34 and she was 26. Her date of birth was 1893, unless she lied about her age, as had my mother on her driver's license. She had been fourteen at the time of her crossing the Atlantic in 1907. Sent by her mother and father to help the family in Mayo. Five years before the Titanic.

Alone.

Coming down the gangway in Boston, she broke the heel on her shoe. Thankfully her Uncle Michael, a priest, was waiting on the dock. This wasn't a tourist trip and he took her right up to Salem to be a serving girl for the rich. Never to go to sea again, except with us. So long ago.

Foto - Nana Nolan and Me - 1953

Other Information The Mayflower provided passenger service between Boston and Nantasket Beach from the 1890s through the 1930s. In the 1940s she was taken out of service, grounded at Nantasket Beach, and converted into a nightclub called the the Showboat. The Showboat operated for many years, but by the 1970s, it had become a derelict and abandoned structure. In the autumn of 1979, it caught fire under unknown circumstances and burned to the ground.

The steamers of the Nantasket Beach Steamboat Line were a popular mode of transportation in the early 1900s. They provided quick and easy transportation between Boston and Nantasket Beach, and other destinations around Boston Harbor and the Massachusetts South Shore. On Thanksgiving Day in 1929 (November 28th), the company's six steamers were docked for the winter at Nantasket's Steamboat Wharf (Nantasket Pier). On that day, a large fire broke out and destroyed 5 of the steamers -- the Nantasket, Mary Chilton, Old Colony, Rose Standish and Betty Alden. Only the Mayflower was pulled to safety and survived the fire. For more information on the 1929 Steamboat Wharf fire.Other Information The Mayflower provided passenger service between Boston and Nantasket Beach from the 1890s through the 1930s. In the 1940s she was taken out of service, grounded at Nantasket Beach, and converted into a nightclub called the the Showboat. The Showboat operated for many years, but by the 1970s, it had become a derelict and abandoned structure. In the autumn of 1979, it caught fire under unknown circumstances and burned to the ground.

from wreckhunters.com

Nantasket Beach Forever

In 1981 I was working after-hour clubs for Arthur Weinstein. I needed a break from the hustle and fled north to the South Shore of Boston. No one called me. I slept and read. My mother greeted me at the breakfast table and apologized for the boredom of the suburbs and I recalled a line from Tallyrand, "One has to have loved a genius to appreciate the love of a fool."

I told my mother I couldn't be happier.

"Boredom is a blessing for those cursed by constant entertainment."

That afternoon we drove down to Nantasket Beach and watched slow waves crawl across the gray sand.

And that was not boring.

And it will be beautiful forever.

To view Nantasket, please go to this URL

https://youtu.be/2YV_Vjfln9E

The SS Showboat Mayflower Nantasket

Throughout the early part of the 20th Century a fleet of side wheel steamers plied the waters of Boston harbor. The flotilla was reduced to one by a fire in 1919, but the Mayflower ran to Nantasket Beach until 1948. After its decommission its new owner hauled the white-hulled ship to the shore and opened the Showboat for business as a nightclub. An extension to the club's parking lot landlocked the ship, which became an iconic greeting sight for thousands of family intent on spending a summer day on the long stand of sand, followed by a seafood dinner along Nantasket Avenue, and the amusement rides at Paragon Park.

My father gave a quarter to the first one of his six children to spot the Mayflower.

He was a Mayflower descendant and we joked that the Pilgrims came over in the Showboat.

We never stopped there.

Nightclubs were for adults.

As a teenager the Surf Nantasket superseded the attractions of Paragon Park and every Saturday night we sped down Route 228 to dance to the Techniques, the Mods, the Chosen Few, and the main band the Rockin' Ramrods, who scored a regional hit with BRIGHT LIGHTS BLUE SKIES and SHE LIED. Sometimes bigger groups like Steppenwolf and the Doors played special concerts for teenagers on the South Shore.

In the fall of 1969 I drove to the ballroom in a VW Beetle that I shared with my brother. He was in college and normally got first shot at the car, but Frunk chose Friday nights to date his girlfriend.

One evening I loaded the car with my sister, her friend, Chuckie Manzi, and a friend just back from Marine boot camp. We drank beers en route, since the Surf only served soft drinks. That evening we danced to the top hits spun by the DJ from WBZ and then watched the band, Shocking Pink. After the Surf closed, the five of us got back in the car for the ride home.

It was 11:30 and traffic was light on Route 228. I sped up to 50 around the curve by the roller coaster. The Mayflower was on the right. The parking lot was empty.

Passing the darkened ship I spotted oncoming headlights. Without any turn signal the big Olds crossed the four-lane state highway. I stamped on the brakes.

Too late.

Time was radically accelerated by the force of the head-on collision whipping the VW into a spin.

Glass shattered in my face.

The impact buckled my door and flung me onto the pavement. Car wheels rolled by my head and then the speed of the present returned to normal.

I sat up.

The steering wheel was in my hand.

The front of the VW had been crumpled by the accident. I ran to the door and peered inside. My sister, her friend, Chuckie, and the marine were cut by glass, but no one was badly injured.

I turned to the Olds. A disheveled woman sat behind the wheel. She was trying to start the engine. I walked over to the car and rapped on her window. She shouted at me to go away. Her drunken voice sounded strangely mannish.

Several cars stopped to help us.

A young man pulled open the door of the Olds and took away the woman's keys.

Rubberneckers stared out the window.

Sirens neared the scene of the crash.

"I need to go." She wobbled in high heels after the young man. They were too small for her feet.

"You're going nowhere."

"But I'm late." She was taller than the young man and me.

"There's no one in the Showboat. It's closed."

"Oh." Her voice was almost a baritone.

"So you almost killed us to meet someone who wasn't there."

"You're all alive." The young man pushed me away from the Olds. "That's the important thing."

"You're right." I looked back at my sister. She gave me a smile. We were alive. The ambulance took her and our friends to the South Shore hospital. The police drove me to the station. They wanted my statement.

"The woman drove into us head-on. No lights or nothing."

"She said that you drove into her." The officer was a veteran to teenage crashes on 228. Not a summer passed without a fatality on the road.

"She's lying."

"That's what another man said."

"Can I go to hospital now?" I wasn't saying anything more without a lawyer.

"Okay."

Everyone was okay, but later I told my father that there had been something strange about the woman.

"Strange how?"

"Like she was strange."

"How?"

"Like she could have been a man."

"A woman that could have been a man." My older brother laughed. "She must have been some kind of ugly."

"I guess she was."

Without a car the Surf was too far away from my hometown. That spring I graduated from high school and in the fall attended Boston College. In May my long-haired college friends and I visited Paragon Park for the seasonal opening. We rode the rides and saw the Techniques at the Surf. Both were fun on reefer. None of us went inside the SS Showboat and it burned down in 1979.

This year I searched for any information about the club on Google. There was just a few photos like the rest of my past, but I learned that the Showboat had been a tranny bar, which explained the Olds driver's strangeness, but she might have just been a mannish woman. Boston was a Navy town back in those days and those Marine nurses were very masculine.

"Strange, but the truth is always strange, when we revived the old memories of things gone by.

ON THE SOUTH SHORE: From Neponset to Nantasket - Kindle Edition

I was lucky enough to live through the 1960s as a teenager on the South Shore of Boston.

Home was still home to us.

My friends and I led charmed lives at the Quincy Quarries, Surf Nantasket, and Wollaston Beach

ON THE SOUTH SHORE recounts those lives.

The time was short, but retelling these tales brings back those years, if only for a moment.

They were good ones on the South Shore.

EXCERPT from GAY BOY

That next fall my parents were happy and my mother gained weight like she was storing fat for a harsh winter. As her belly grew beyond belief I wondered if she was ever going to stop eating, since Frank and I usually received any leftover cake.

The leaves changed color in October and in November JFK beat Richard Nixon to become the first Catholic president. The cold weather arrived in December and Pearl Harbor Day 1960 dawned with a hoary frost topping the fields south of the Neponset River.

During lunch my 3rd Grade class stared out the windows at sullen northern clouds. We ate our sandwiches in silence. The nuns believed that Jesus barely spoke during his Agony on the Cross and their students were expected to follow his example in thought and deed.

A shrill bell signaled recess and the classes boiled from the school into the sub-freezing temperature. Standing still on the icy asphalt meant frozen feet, so the girls skipped tattered ropes, while the boys kicked misshapen balls around the rear parking lot.

Right before the end of the play period our station wagon rolled down the school’s driveway and Chuckie joked, “Here comes the jail truck from Billerica Reform School.”

Having endured endless ribbing about the metal bars across the windows of the station wagon from family and friends, neither my brother nor I laughed with our classmates. Funny was for other people, but my father got out of the car with a broad smile.

Mother Superior demanded with a sense of command backed by the Church, “What are you doing here?”

In her mind a man’s place at this hour was at his job, because at this hour we belonged to her.

“I want to speak to my boys.” He waved for us to come closer.

“Impossible” Mother Superior expected obedience from adults as well as children. “No.” My father had been brought up in Maine and he confirmed that his authority superseded the Church by telling us, “You mother had a baby boy.”

“We have a baby brother?” Frunk was confused and so was I.

“You didn’t know your mother was having a baby?”

“I thought Mom was getting fat.” Any woman would have gained weight from her recent feeding frenzy.

“She was fat with your baby brother. We’re going to see him.”

“You can’t disrupt the school day like this.” Steam fumed from Mother Superior’s dragon beak.

“They’ll make it up at Church this Sunday.”

As a convert to the faith he was immune to the nun’s wrath, but my brother asked timidly, “What about our books?”

“No one does homework on Baby Day.” My father waved to my sisters and they ran over to us.

“They’re going to the hospital to see their mother.”

“Is Mom okay?” I asked with concern.

“She’s fine. Let’s go.”

We piled in the car and he drove to Beth Israel Hospital, humming IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK ALOT LIKE CHRISTMAS.

“This is not a playground,” my father said entering the hospital. The lobby smelled cleaner than our house.

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect you to be on your best behavior.”

“Yes, sir.” Our submission to our elders was complete.

We filed one by one into the private room in Richardson House.

My mother lay on a bed with a small baby on her chest. My Nana held our now second youngest brother, Padraic. A white uniformed nurse sat on a chair reading the Record-American. We stood around the bed. Our new brother was very pink.

“He weighs seven pounds.” My father touched the small body and his little fingers squirmed like spring worms rising from the earth. We were a bigger family by one and each of us smiled with a shared happiness.

My parents named their sixth child after my grandmother’s uncle. The young priest had met the fourteen year-old girl off the boat from Ireland and placed Nana in a Salem household staff. My grandmother had danced with our grandfather at a church outing in Marblehead.

In my mother’s mind our next two generations owed their existence to Uncle Mike and she prayed that at least one of us might take up the Cloth to return the favor. I didn’t have the heart to confess my atheism.

Those first months Michael was a miracle and I rushed home from school to feed, bathe, and rock the tiny creature in a cradle from my grandmother’s house in Maine. After having six kids in eight years my mother was grateful for my assistance, however this peaceful period ended with his first bout of infantile teething.

My mother and I sang him GOLDMINE IN THE SKY a thousand times. His bawling destroyed our attempts at harmony. One day Michael fell asleep and we sat on the bed in relief. The support struts creaked under our weight and his unearthly howl filled the bedroom. He seemed shocked for a second, then smiled before drifting into a blessed slumber.

That was as bad as it got.

Michael was very special.

To read more of ON THE SOUTH SHORE, please go to Kindle Direct at this URL

www.amazon.com/dp/B00CA51TA8

A time machine to the past.