If you have been reading my Blogs you have probably noticed by now that I quite often mention a neighborhood that I call “Greasy Village”.
This “Place” was located in Cambridge-Port (Cambridge Mass) in the vicinity of “Fort Washington” and our main gathering place was the “Village Spa” located at the corner of Putnam Avenue and Brookline Streets.
The “Village” is now, “no more”, the streets remain, many of the old houses remain and many of the memories remain in the heads of a few, I am one of them.
Most all of the people that lived there in my time are now gone, I am trying with my own little story’s to keep this great old place alive for a few more years, maybe someone will read one of these story’s and say, “I know that place, I have heard my Grandfather mention it”, or, maybe YOUR Grandmother had her first Kiss in Fort Washington, as I did, maybe it was your Grandmother that I shared that "first kiss" with, could be!
The Dog Days Of Summer 1940:
This is a true story, these things cannot be dreamed up: “No Sir”
Fictitious names, to protect the privacy of old dearly departed friends:
One of our favorite pastimes during the last days of the “Great Depression” in “Greasy Village” was to sit on a curbstone with friends eating fresh Ears Of Corn that our Mothers had just purchased from a Horse Drawn Vegetable Wagon.
During the following summers of my life, as year after year went by and I turned into a “Senior Citizen” I have dined in some fine restaurants and also in many of my families and friends homes and at hundreds of “cookouts” but corn has never tasted as good as it did sitting on a curbstone when you are 15 years old during the third week in August with old boyhood pals.
I would love to return to Cambridge and “Greasy Village” someday, then boil up some corn and try to re-live that fond memory; there is a problem though, if I sat down on a City Curbstone today I wouldn’t be able to get up, my old friends couldn’t help me get up because they are all Dead.
The Kitchen Table:
On such a glorious boyhood day, there were maybe ten or fifteen of us sitting around, swearing, chewing corn and of course, telling lies.
As we were sitting on our private curbstone this day, directly behind us there were two big three-decker apartment buildings, there was a family living in one of them that I will call the “Hennigans” this is also a fictitious name, I don’t want to use the real name because of the nature of this tale, as you will soon understand.
This was a “Family Of Nuts”, if you have ever watched the movie “Deliverance” or read about “inbreeding” you can start to make a connection; the “Hennigans” made the Deliverance families look like the “Walton’s”.
Well on this certain summer day Mrs Hennigan appeared at her living room window, she had been drunk for three days, she was naked from the waist up, she leaned out of the window and her breasts nearly hung to the ground below, they lived on the second floor, one breast was longer than the other and it had “hair” on it.
This women had only two teeth, “one up, one down”, she hadn’t combed her hair for two weeks, all her daughters looked just like her, she had five of them, if you met one of them in a dark backyard at 11:00 PM they would literally scare the living shit out of you. There was a rumor around the neighborhood that she was part Mongolian, though it could never be confirmed.
As we were enjoying our corn we could clearly hear her cackling cough, then she spit, she hacked and wheezed, then she yelled down to us and said, “we had to get rid of our kitchen table, it broke”. One of us yelled back up at her, “who gives a shit” somebody else hollered, “f-ck you”, then it started, “f-ck your table too”, she was laughing her ass off she loved that stuff.
After all the yelling and laughing she said, “if one of you guys can get me a kitchen table I’ll take care of you” (this meant she was willing to exchange bodily fluids with one of us) Jesus Christ, I would rather of had sex with “Yassar Arafat” or a “dead water buffalo”.
We all yelled, hooted and gave her the finger, she told us all to go f-ck ourselves, she then pulled her breasts back up over the window sill and disappeared into the apartment, we continued with our “corn chomping”.
Most all of us quickly forgot this little incident, we were used to “The Hennigans” every one of them was a “whacko” and they were known throughout the city. Yes, we all forgot, that is, all but one of us.
One of our friends, whose nickname was “Donk” short for “Donald”, had filed this little “Breast Exhibition” that the Lovely Mrs Hennigan had just put on away in his head, “Donk” didn’t forget.
About a week later we were all sitting on our “milk cases” in front of the “Village Spa” and one of the guys came walking up Putnam Ave laughing and said to us, “guess what I just saw” we all said “what”, he said “Donk was just running up Peter St with his Mothers Kitchen Table on his head”.
Donk never lived this down, when his mother had gone out shopping, Donk put his families Kitchen Table on his head, he then ran up Allston St and down Peter St where he thought no one would spot him, he then “donated” the table to the “Hennigan Family”.
Donk thought we never would know, but one of us saw him, (we knew everything). Over the years when we were all married and raising families at least two or three times a year many of us would all get together with our wives and girl friends and go “In Town” (Boston) to have a fancy meal and then maybe go to Blinstrubs Night Club in “Southie” to see Nat King Cole, Liberace or Louis Armstrong, Donk and his wife were always with us.
As we were having drinks, laughing and just enjoying our old longtime friendships sooner or later someone would say, “I need a kitchen table”, Donk would be the first one to start laughing, as we were all giggling and and enjoying this moment one of our wives would say, “what’s so funny”, Donk would be the first to yell out, “NOTHING”, Donk knew we would never tell.
The year is now 2005; there are only three of us now left that know this little story “firsthand”,
I never did know what became of the “Hennigans”, we never forgot them though.
“Donk” passed away in 1989, at the age of 62; his wife died two years later, “Donk” was a great guy and a lot of fun, so was his wife. “I bet he never told her”, “I wonder if he ever smiled to himself as he sat down to have some corn flakes and bananas, at the Kitchen Table”?
R.I.P. Donk.
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself:
"What a wonderful world!" (Louis Armstong)
Author: Red Burtt
