***Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Night- Memories Of 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 works, like lots of such sites, is that each classmate who logs in gets a profile page to tell his or her story of what has happened of interest in their lives over that previous 50 years, stuff at least that they 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 question asked was 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 such 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 themselves. 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  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” back in the 1950s (that is what everybody, residents and non-residents, 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. I estimated that the nearest shopping area is about four miles away, not easy when you like in my day we had no family car or, as likely, a junk box that ran erratically. That despite the fact that there were/are several hundred families living in those apartments (see photo) many somewhat dependent on public transportation, then the dreaded never-coming Eastern Mass bus which I spent half my youth waiting for, or I should say would have spent have my youth waiting for if I had not taken matters into my own hands and just walked to Adamsville Center or wherever I need to go. Now the MBTA has that route and I hope provides more regular service to those in need of such services.

Naturally if your household ran out of milk or bread-milk to salute the President or somebody when we walked home at noon 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 these days with a vengeance with weight programs, arcane and profuse medical advice, and sheer will-power but which fueled our fast brave 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 photo of the jetty when he and his father fished, my brothers and I built a raft to try to go out on the seven seas or our idea of that adventure, and the P&G factory across the channel that reeked of soap on warm summer nights when the wind was up. See also the photo of one of the beaches that we swam at, although not I think Red Beach, the beach where I almost drown when I was eight and was saved in just the nick of time as I was going down for the third time by the swimming instructor on the beach, now returned to its natural state. And a photo of one of the apartment complex units-four units to a complex with all the social pathologies of people, poor people living in small quarters too close together).

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 Adamsville 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 Junior High-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 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 so giggly and bothersome and then all of a sudden the next year had charms, and became, well, interesting. Interesting trying to figure out, no, not intellectually figure out but figure out how to kiss when they turned out the lights at some birthday party or “petting” party. The biggest crush I had over a girl, a girl all dewy, smelling of bath soap and wearing cashmere sweaters, is one who is a member of our NAHS class. Her initials are MG so you can scurry to the Manet [our class year book] and figure it out. And no I never spoke to her. Jesus, are you kidding she was not a “projects” girl but lived in one of the ranch houses for the up and coming middle class that were being build up the street outside the projects. So, no, no way did I talk 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 like Ronny, George and Slim who later wound up in jail, Cedar Junction for major felonies, or like Peter, face down in some dusty back alley in Mexico with two bullets in his skull after a busted drug deal. Unfortunately the lure of the easy life hit 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, daydream 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 into the library 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 out there were easier ways to survive in this wicked old world than that road. But it was a close thing, a very close thing.