Fleitman's Progress

Senator Scott Brown and Dr. Jay Fleitman

I'm pleased to see that there was a major article yesterday in the Hampshire Gazette about Dr. Jay Fleitman, one of two Republican challengers to longtime incumbent Congressman Richard E. Neal. I was happy because as near as I can remember it is the first time in over a decade that I've seen any local newspaper devote that much ink to anything political involving Neal. Perhaps that's not so surprising, considering that Neal has not had to defend his seat in an election since 1996.

Unfortunately, the article was biased against Fleitman, especially in a sidebar called Where Fleitman Stands in which Fleitman was allowed to comment directly on some of the issues. However, in an odd journalistic twist, commentaries were inserted after Fleitman's quotes to refute what he was saying. For example on the subject of the failed stimulus bill the first paragraph quotes Dr. Fleitman:

Fleitman opposed last year's $787 billion spending package, calling it "more of a laundry list of pork" that Democrats had been waiting to fund. "I would have done this in a much more limited fashion," he says. "I've been through a lot of recessions, and some have been much worse ... I'm convinced the economy would have bounced back on its own."

Then what follows in the very next paragraph are these Democrat Party talking points:

Democrats such as Neal have argued that drastic measures like the stimulus bill and the bank bailout were needed last year; some economists said an even bigger stimulus bill would have been better. President Obama recently said unemployment might be 20 percent today had the bill not passed, and he criticized some Republican legislators for opposing the bill but then attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies in their districts for construction projects funded by the legislation.

Lest anyone think that the Hampshire Gazette was merely trying to be balanced, on that very same day elsewhere in the paper, an interview with Congressman Neal features quotes by Neal on the issues in a similar format. These are presented with absolutely no rebuttal paragraphs inserted after Neal's comments, as was done in the Fleitman piece. Apparently the Hampshire Gazette feels that the Republican challenger should not be allowed to present his views unless tempered by the insertion of rebuttals, but the Democrat incumbent is allowed to make any comments he wishes completely unchallenged.

The interview with Neal is the longest interview I've seen in any local paper with him in over a decade. It is also interesting that Neal's interview appears the same day as the Fleitman profile. Is that a mere coincidence? Just last week an incident occurred where someone representing Neal contacted the Jim Polito radio show, which is heard in the Worcester branch of the district, and demanded to be allowed on the air because the other one of Neal's challengers, social conservative Tom Wesley, had been on earlier. Did the Neal camp catch wind of the Fleitman article and demand to appear in the Gazette just as they did to the Polito Show? Whatever the case may be, it is certainly intriguing that both articles appeared on the exact same day.

Yet despite the Fleitman article's generally biased tone, it is important simply because it treats the race as what it really is - the biggest and most important local contest coming up this election year in Western Mass. It would be advantageous to Neal to keep this race below the media radar screen, the better to help him just glide back into office by voter's force of habit. The Hampshire Gazette's willingness to print such a high-profile article on one of Neal's challengers shows that Neal's re-election bid will apparently not be helped this year by the media black-out that Neal usually gets.



On the Bus

Great news from the Pranksters! Ken Babbs novel based on his experiences as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, 48 years in the works, is finally finished and been sold to a publisher. Here's the Captain himself to tell you all about it, as well as a little anecdote about the time he and Ken Kesey took the bus to Las Vegas. 

 

My friend told me once that he could tell what kind of a person somebody was by what kind of car they drove. I scoffed at that theory, saying, "What about me? I don't even own a car!"

My friend looked at me with a sly grin and replied, "Actually, that tells me a great deal."

The bus came by....

....and I got on, that was how it all began. 

Yellow Hamp peace-house out the bus window.

For a Laugh

Abe Lincoln himself showed up at the Longmeadow Republican Town Committee the other night. Here is the president greeting Mary and Dean Rogeness. 

This is a local satire of Wednesday's non-snow event.

 

The only answer that I have found
Above the sky or below the ground
Is that there are no answers
There never were any answers
There will never be any answers
That's the answer.
Now go out and stuff the universe into your eyes. 

Pic - O - Rama

Random Shots

The best way to save your photographs for posterity is to digitalize them. While paper fades and gets lost or destroyed, once digtalized your photos become immortal. As an added bonus, everyone can copy them, further insuring their survival. Anyway, I decided to put a few up for your perusal, in no particular order and for no particular reason other than I thought they might be somewhat interesting or at least entertainingly weird.

My mother and her brother in 1944.

Me at the age of three with a bow tie predating both George Will,  Tucker Carlson and David Starr. 

My father smoking outside The Tavern in Westfield shortly before his death in 2007.

Me putting a magic spell on Monique's garden around 1999.

Boston Mayor Ray Flynn and Mitch Ogulewicz. 

Doyle the Twig Painter in 2002. 

Northampton's Packards in the year 2000.

Springfield art show with a portrait of Keith Sikes and a girl with a gun.

Shirtless, stoned and speechifying at my International Headquarters in Amherst in 2003. 

Jay Libardi in 1985. 

Wilted rose from Jay Libardi's casket, 1994.

 

Eulogy for Garcia
by Ken Kesey

Hey, Jerry - what's happening? I caught your funeral. Weird.

Big Steve was good. And Grisman. Sweet sounds.

But what really stood out - stands out - is the thundering silence,

the lack, the absence of that golden Garcia lead line,

of that familiar slick lick with the uptwist at the end,

that merry snake twining through the woodpile, flickering

in and out of the loosely stacked chords -

a wriggling mystery, bright and slick as fire - suddenly gone.

And the silence left in its wake was - is - positively ear-splitting.

I remember standing out in the pearly early dawn

after the Muir Beach Acid Test, leaning on the top rail

of a driftwood fence with you and Lesh and Babbs,

watching the world light up, talking about our glorious future.

The gig had been semi-successful,

and the air was full of exulted fantasies.

Babbs whacks Phil on the back. "Just like the big time, huh Phil?"

"It is! It is the big time! Why, we could cut

a chart-busting record to-fucking-morrow!"



"Yeah right," you said,(holding up that digitally challenged hand

the way you did when you wanted to call attention to the truth

or the lack thereof) "--and a year from tomorrow we'll be

recording a "Things Go Better With Coke" commercial!"

You could be a sharp-tongued popper-of-balloons

when you were so inclined, you know. A real bastard.

You were the sworn enemy of hot air and commercials,

however righteous the cause or lucrative the product.

Nobody ever heard you use that microphone as a pulpit.

No anti-war rants, no hymns to peace.

No odes to the trees and All Things Organic.

No ego-deaths or born-againnesses.

No devils denounced no gurus glorified.

No dogmatic howlings that I ever caught wind of.

In fact, your steadfast denial of dogma

was as close as you ever came to having a creed.

And to the very end, Old Timer, you were true to that creed.

No commercials. No trendy spins. No bayings of belief.

And if you did have any dogma you surely kept it tied up

under the back porch where a smelly old hound belongs.

I guess that's what I mean about a loud silence.

Like Michaelangelo said about sculpting,

"The statue exists inside the block of marble,

all you have to do is chip away the stone you don't need."

You were always chipping away at the superficial.

It was the false notes you didn't play

that kept that lead line so golden pure.

It was the words you didn't sing.

So this is what we are left with, Jerry:

This Golden Silence.

It rings on and on without any hint of let up - on and on.

And I expect it will still be ringing years from now.

Because you're still not playing falsely.

Because you're still not singing "Things Go Better With Coke."

HAVE A VERY JERRY CHRISTMAS!

Clownie

Earliest Memories

 



I began to read spontaneously at the age of three. No one taught me how, I just one day to the amazement of the adults around me began pointing at short words and saying what they were. I don't remember doing that, I only know it because my parents told me when I was older. Frankly I can't for certain say that I remember anything from my life at the age of three.

And certainly nothing before that. Or almost nothing, I think I remember falling out of my crib once and my parents making a big fuss about it. Probably landed on my head, which would explain a good deal. Anyway it is a blurry, barely coherent memory with no details.

Why do we have a hard time remembering the earliest years of our lives? Scientists have suggested that we can't remember those years because they were pre-verbal. Once we learn to talk we arrange our memories in terms of a narrative of words. However, that eliminates most of the pre-word memories we had that were based solely on feelings and sensations. So we can remember our first day of kindergarten, but not taking our first steps, even though learning to walk may be considered the more important of the two events. We were creating word-based memories by the time we went to school, but had no internal language with which to preserve our first steps.

I can remember some of my early toys. Over my crib were some cut-outs of Disney characters. When I was lying awake when I was supposed to be taking a nap I remember staring at them. They still appear to me in dreams. I also had a top that when you spun it had little multi-colored wheels inside that spun to create a psychedelic effect, like a preview of coming attractions.

I also had a cloth doll in the image of a clown. Showing great imagination, I called it Clownie. It slept with me every night. I didn't necessarily hold it in bed like a baby or a pet, but it had to be in the bed with me somewhere or I couldn't sleep. Clownie usually ended up unceremoniously knocked on the ground as I tossed and turned and might even end up kicked under the bed by the time the next bedtime rolled around. Sometimes Clownie would suddenly appear in my sisters' Barbie games, with Clownie playing the uninvited role of the monster that terrorized Ken and Barbie on their innocent picnics. My sisters would complain to my mother when this happened.

One day my father decided that a boy should not sleep with a doll. That is what he called Clownie - a doll. I tried to explain that he was a clown, and sometimes even a monster when my sisters deserved tormenting and Ken and Barbie needed a cheap thrill, but above all he was my night time friend and I simply could not sleep without him.

My mother took my side, but my father would hear none of it. Clownie would have to go. One night shortly afterwards without warning Clownie went missing. Neither my father nor my mother would tell me anything about what had become of him. "You don't need him anymore!" my father said in a tone I knew meant there could be no further discussion.

What I couldn't have explained to my parents at that age was that Clownie was in some ways my protector against things that bothered me in the night. My house was a popular place for adults to gather after dark, my relatives and the neighbors, they often came over with beer and whiskey and records and there would be loud singing of Irish ballads until really late. 

Or sometimes it would be just my parents, sitting alone at the kitchen table drinking and smoking cigarettes, and sometimes they would talk really loud and in a manner that scares a kid when he hears his parents yell at each other in that tone of voice. On the nights of the big parties or the big fights (or both in one night) that was when I needed to check to see if the smiling face of Clownie was in bed with me. But I couldn't tell my parents of such things.

So now Clownie was gone and there was simply nothing to be done about it. About some things my father could be closed to discussion, and I knew even then that this one of them. I remember it being hard to sleep for the first few nights, but children are resilient and adaptable and in a short time I didn't think about Clownie anymore.

After my mother died I was going through some of the things in the cellar of the house in ol' Pine Point and I opened an old box. There were a lot of things in it from when I and my siblings were in school, drawings and report cards and stuff. But under it all on the bottom of the box there was an old, mildewed and faded cloth doll. It was Clownie, where my mother must have placed him so many decades ago. He was in terrible shape. There must have been a flood in the cellar once, because he had brown water stains all over him. A mouse had nibbled a hole in his leg and pulled some of his stuffing out probably for a nest. Clownie's bright colors had gone pale.

In an automatic reaction I picked up Clownie and held him to my breast for a moment. Then a voice in my head that I always believe told me what to do. There were two piles on the floor as we cleaned out the cellar of our Pine Point homestead. One was for things to keep and one was for things to be thrown away. I put Clownie in the throw away pile and went back to sorting through my mother's things.

 

Today's Video



Tomorrow Jay Libardi would have been fifty years old. Because he personified youth to everyone who knew him, it is impossible to imagine what he would have been like at fifty. It's a shame we didn't get the chance to find out. Time pushes us on to other people, other places and other things. But even after all this time Jay I still steal a backward glance towards you. 

Smitty's

And Other Springfield Adventures

 

Today I took the bus to Springfield. At the holdover at Holyoke's Veteran's Park I saw that yesterday's torrential downpour had been too much for somebody's bumbershoot. 

In downtown Springfield I paused to look in the window of the former Luva restaurant, whose owner was a friend of my father.

What was weird was that looking in the window it looked like the place was untouched since the last night it was open, with booze behind the bar and everything. It was as if the door was locked on the last night it was open and no one has ever returned.

Not far off is the also defunct Cafe Manhattan. In the late 80's that place was one of the liveliest joints in Springfield.

Well at least good ol' Smitty's and Theodores are still open.

That reminds of an essay I wrote about Smitty's that needs to be transferred here from Geocities. 

 

I saw on one of our local TV News shows that Smitty's Pool Hall has turned one hundred years old. That doesn't particularly surprise me, although frankly it had never occurred to me to wonder just how old the place was. There is a timelessness about Smitty's that's sorta like a person whose age you can't guess, who never look young but never seem old. Smitty's is like that.

Then again maybe I don't know what I'm talking about since I haven't actually stepped foot in Smitty's in years. But from what I saw on TV, it looked pretty much the same. I'm not talking about the decor, which was dark the way pool halls should be, and therefore too dark for the TV camera lights to capture much. But it did show the customers, and they looked like the same sort of people I used to see there, so maybe it hasn't changed.

Back when I was a student at the noble High School of Commerce, back before Phil Sweeney retired and the Democrats ruined the school system, me and my friends used to skip school on occasion and go to Smitty's. The proper name for the place is Smith's Billiards, but I've never heard anyone actually call it that. It's on Worthington Street and was the place where we usually spent the afternoons when we played hooky. Does anyone even use that term anymore for skipping school?

Our illegal absences usually began elsewhere. The first stop was always the Seven Kettles in Baystate West (now called Tower Square). It was a glorified diner with cheap coffee and pastry, the kind of place that attracted a lot of bums. In other words it was a perfect place for truants to hang out. I think that's where I first got addicted to caffeine, hanging out in the Seven Kettles.

On our way downtown from Commerce we would walk without a pause right past the main branch of the City Library. Yet ironically the next stop on our itinerary after the Seven Kettles was usually a reading room of a different sort. I'm talking about the old Phoenix Newsroom near the Arch, which had an indifferent management that would allow you to peruse at your leisure their magazine section. Not just the front section, which featured dull publications like Time, Newsweek and U. S. News and World Report. I'm talking about the back section, which was out of view of the casual customer, and which featured easy reading material of the sort that had lots of pictorials featuring the mating habits of human beings.

After tiring of that educational environment, we would then cross the street to that infamous temple to misspent youth, the Playtown Arcade Gallery. We'd play pinball there, but usually only briefly, because that was not our real intent in going there. What we wanted was marijuana, and we all knew that the young black dope dealers that passed through Playtown at irregular intervals always had the best weed. 

You could even make back the day's expenses by rolling part of what you bought into joints and selling them singly at twice the price. This illicit teenage capitalism was as sophisticated as anything you could learn about supply and demand in Junior Achievement and many times more profitable. It was also pretty much risk free. The only authority in Playtown was a fat bald guy with a cigar and suspenders whose sleepy eyes saw nothing as long as you weren't mistreating the machines.

Once we scored the weed we would leave Playtown and go under the Arch, through the Peter Pan bus terminal (a good place to find customers for your joints) and then go behind the Springfield Newspapers and beneath the overpass, where there were some scattered woods that you could follow all the way down to the Connecticut River. There we would smoke joints, goof around on the riverbank, commune with nature and eventually wander back to Playtown. Once there we'd play games with names like Gorgon, Snow Devils and Aces Wild, whose colorful lights and carnival sounds were just perfect for when you were stoned.

But finally it would be time to go to Smitty's to play pool. All previous adventures were but a prelude to this phase of the day. At that time Smitty's was the only place I knew of that had a security camera in the stairwell so that the bartender could see in advance who was coming in. In those days such security measures were rare, and that Smitty's was a place that needed such equipment was part of its mystique. Whether they needed it to warn of the arrival of unwanted rowdy clientele or the arrival of unwanted law enforcement personnel was uncertain. From what I saw it was needed for both.

One time one of my friends dropped his pants and mooned the security camera, and we got mad at him because we thought that would mean the bartender wouldn't let us in. It was important not to offend the bartender, because if business was slow, and the coast was clear, we could send whoever was the oldest looking of us up for a pitcher of beer and the bartender would pretend not to notice that some of the guys at the table barely had their first shave yet. As it turned out he never said a word about the mooning.

Smitty's was the sort of place where nobody much noticed you and what you were doing as long as you didn't notice them. People went to a place like Smitty's not to be noticed, and lots of them had better reasons than being truants for not wanting to be. It was a very adult world, part of the side of life they don't teach you about at home or in school, a world which many might ignore or disapprove of, but one which we boys were drawn to like moths to a flame.

But maybe I'm romanticizing the place. Certainly I was disappointed the last time I went there with Jay Libardi. We couldn't believe how the joint had changed from our high school days. This was during the era when the yuppies discovered pool and transformed the game into some kind of high-class leisure activity, with players bringing their own pool sticks in velvet-lined cases and everything. They had even installed a no smoking section! Good grief, in our day had some wuss ever suggested anyone put out a cigarette they would have been beaten-up on the spot.

Some of those yuppies even had their wives and girlfriends with them. Women in Smitty's? Except for the occasional angry housewife who would storm in to drag her husband home by the ear, or the occasional prostitute who would sashay into the joint hooking her trade, women never went to Smitty's. We left disillusioned. It's true what Thomas Wolfe said - you can't go home again. It will only spoil your memories.

I've since heard that after the yuppies lost all their money or moved on to other things, that Smitty's slid back into its old self. I hope that's true. At least that's the way it looked from the dark images I could see on the TV screen in the piece about Smitty's centennial. There will always be a place like Smitty's. There will always need to be.

Happy 100th birthday, and may you rack 'em up for a hundred more.

I took the bus up to Pine Point where I went to see some friends and relatives at Saint Michael's Cemetery, whose shrubery calls on airplane passengers for prayers. 

By Duggan Middle School (forever a junior high to me) I saw that they have a new electronic sign across the street with the date and the time and temperature and everything. How many students do you think stare at that sign during classes?

It reminds me of my Duggan reading teacher Mr. O'Neil who once put a sign by the clock in his classroom that read, "Time will pass, will you?"

Heading down Riverton Road I saw that it actually has a sidewalk. Pine Point really has entered the modern age!

Heading up Denver Street, I passed the infamous Walker House where I lived during my twenties. Oh God, if those walls could talk!

I passed the house where Jay Libardi died. 

At last I arrived at beautiful downtown Pine Point!

Oh well, it's always good to visit the old stomping grounds. 

 

Ethics Matter

Voters need to do the right thing.

 



It's hard to know which is the more surprising, the unexpected outcome or that it's considered a surprise. Louisiana Representative William Jefferson was caught with $90,000 dollars in his freezer that he couldn't explain. Yet, it was universally thought that he would handily win re-election. From Politico:

Indicted Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) has lost his New Orleans-based Congressional seat to a little-known Republican attorney, Anh “Joseph” Cao.

With all precincts reporting, Cao has defeated Jefferson 50 to 47 percent. The AP has called the race for Cao.

Even with Jefferson’s ethical woes, his ouster comes as a huge shock. His New Orleans district is one of the most Democratic in the country, giving President Bush only 24 percent of the vote in 2004. And he hadn’t suffered at all politically since indicted for bribery in June 2007, comfortably defeating another Democrat in the Election Day primary.

The results are a welcome repudiation of a sad trend, the tendency of dishonest politicians from minority groups, particularly blacks, to be re-elected despite their ethical challenges. For example, here in Massachusetts, my former classmate State Senator Dianne Wilkerson was repeatedly re-elected despite numerous ethics scandals, and finally left office not because she was voted out, but because she was videotaped taking a bribe. Another example is Alcee Hastings of Florida, a judge who was impeached after being caught taking bribes, but who was elected a member of Congress anyway.

It's hard to explain this phenomenon. Some say a history of discrimination causes black voters not to take seriously ethics charges, dismissing such accusations as manifestations of white racism. A more plausible explanation is that turn out is often very low in areas with a high black population, allowing corrupt political machines to keep their puppets in power no matter what.

In any case, the dumping of Jefferson by his mostly black constituents is a welcome development, perhaps showing that in the Obama era where blacks have proven they can rise to any level of power, there is no longer any need for the black community to endure corrupt second-rate representation from an incumbent just because they have black skin. In fact what is also interesting about Jefferson's defeat is that he lost to an Asian, refuting the racist assumption that blacks will only allow themselves to be represented by other blacks. In fact black people, like all voters, know that good government comes in all colors. 

Springfield's Theodore's is not the only place reputed to be haunted. The New York City apartment where Heath Ledger was found dead of a drug overdose is supposedly spooking prospective tenants. Star magazine reports:

Potential renters are wary of moving into Heath Ledger's home.
The New York Post reports that the three-bedroom, 4,400-square-foot Manhattan apartment, where the Aussie actor died of an accidental drug overdose, has been taken off the market. It's been on the market since July — after Heath died there in January — and nobody has been willing to spring for the $26,000-a-month rent.

The paper claims that the reason the place is vacant most likely is because of "its spooky provenance" as well as the slowed rental market.

Heath moved into the apartment in September 2007 when he moved out of the Brooklyn brownstone he shared with Michelle Williams and their daughter Matilda.

Is it a ghost that's scaring away customers, or the outrageous fucking rent?

I recently came across this unused ticket someone gave me in the year 2000 to a local Republican event that had on it's front a picture of Bill Clinton, an example of what a unifying figure he was to the Republicans who hated him. The phenomenon in reverse of course is the way Democrats were united in their hatred of George W. Bush. 

Will Obama be as polarizing a figure as Clinton and Bush were? I think so.

Speaking of tickets, here's one from a yearly picnic me and the late great Jay Libardi used to put on every year in the 80's. Note the William Blake line about the road of excess leading to the palace of wisdom. 

Blake was right of course, but as Jay and I discovered the hard way, it can lead to learning things you never wanted to know.

In Amherst College's Frost Library is this electronic sign that shows poems by Valley poets. Here's an appropriate one.

We never know how high we are
by Emily Dickinson

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies—

The Heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King—

Did you know that Amherst writer Augusten Burroughs (above) has a blog (or "blob" as he prefers to call it?) Check it out here.

I looked out my window this morning and lo and behold while I slept it had snowed!



Not much of a snowfall, just enough to cover the ground. I love the way snow has the power to transform drab dead brown lawns like this one in Amherst into scenes of beauty.



Seasons change in meteorological and political ways, but the Amherst Sunday Peace Vigil never ends.



Finally, here is the local band Animental performing in a living room in Haydenville, Masachusetts.

 

Miller's Archives

The postcards.



Veteran reporter Mike Dobbs, the brains behind The Reminder publications, has a new book coming out about Springfield postcards. According to a review by Bill Dusty, the book is a treasure chest of images from Springfield's lost glory days.

Chapter One features images of Springfield’s historical landmarks, including vintage images of the Municipal Group (City Hall and Symphony Hall) and Court Square. Chapter Two delves into the city’s downtown, with photos of street cars trundling along Main Street and rare images of hotels and theaters - some lost to history, others still with us today. Chapter Three, “Around The Town,” takes readers on a trip around Springfield’s neighborhoods, while Chapter Four features images of the city’s manufacturing past. The final chapter, Five, treats readers to vintage shots of Forest Park, including images of the Barney Residence and the old Forest Park zoo.

“Springfield” will be on sale starting August 25, 2008, for $19.99, and can be purchased at local and online bookstores, as well as at Arcadia Publishing’s website (arcadiapublishing.com).

This valuable new book reminds me of the postcard collection of the infamous Attorney J. Wesley Miller, whose collection I once viewed. I even wrote a review and scanned a few of the cards. Dobbs new book gives me an excuse to reprint it. I'm not sure of the date, probably around 1997.

No one encountering local attorney J. Wesley Miller in full regalia will soon forget him. The 56 year old arts and copyright lawyer typically appears at public forums throughout the Valley in what might be called his uniform; a mohawk haircut, black leather jacket, combat boots and a "Public Enemy" t-shirt topped off with a metal chain link necklace.

The total effect is not just radical, it's disturbing, a kind of mental case chic that can be quite intimidating. The generally well-dressed, respectable activist and establishment types who attend public meetings usually don't know what to make of a person like Miller, and observing people's responses to him can be genuinely amusing.

The most interesting reaction to Miller's persona that I ever observed came from WGGB personality and consumer activist Pricilla Ress, who upon encountering Miller as I escorted him through the Channel 40 newsroom, responded with an expression of what appeared to be genuine fright. I had to laugh in spite of myself, having never before seen fear on the face of the generally unflappable Ms. Ress.

Yet Miller is more than just the subversive court jester of local politics. He is also believed to possess the largest single private library in the city of Springfield. Among the thousands of books and publications he possesses are a collection of artifacts and memorabilia relating to local history. His collection is so extensive and rare that local historians such as Richard Garvey and Francis Gagnon might weep with frustration over their inability to obtain access to it. In a manner maddening to local scholars, Miller is extremely choosy and idiosyncratic about whom he allows access to his multi-faceted collections.

Therefore I was somewhat surprised and flattered when Miller recently offered me the opportunity to examine his collection of Springfield related postcards, believed to be the most extensive of its kind in existence. Miller informed me that he was loaning me the collection so that I could see for myself "the glory that was once Springfield, but is no more."

Going through Miller's collection is indeed a sobering experience. While some of the collection consists of such rarities as the former Studebaker dealership in Pine Point or Lam's, a long forgotten pioneering Chinese restaurant on Bridge Street, most of the cards display the images of major structures that once stood where today's modern skyscrapers now stand. Were there really once such mobs of pedestrians on Main Street?

Priceless artifacts mysteriously disappeared in 1959 as the Everett Barney mansion was torn down in order to make way for a highway that many still argue never had to pass through the Barney estate in the first place. Many local historians consider the loss of the Barney mansion and the never explained disappearance of its artwork and antiques to be the true beginning of Springfield's downward spiral at the hands of its corrupt government. Even today one still hears the city's elders whisper, accurately or not, that the highway's destructive path was secretly insisted upon by political insiders precisely so that the Barney estate could be looted.

If so, that wouldn't be any more scandalous than what happened to the Unitarian Church. Once located directly across from the City Library, the church was so famous for its beauty that it was a regular destination of architectural classes from Harvard and Yale, who came to admire what was considered one of the state's premiere architectural marvels. Sadly, city planners and business insiders put together one of their infamous "public-private partnerships" and the church was razed in order to prepare for construction of a government subsidized high-rise. But the deal fell through and the skyscraper was never built. In a bitter irony, the red sandstone steps that once led to this now vanished architectural treasure remain to this day, only now those steps lead only to a parking lot.

The devastation of Springfield at the hands of economic planners is made all too real by an inspection of Miller's postcard collection. What one gets from looking at the Barney Mansion,

the Wesson Mansion,

or even the original entrance to Pine Point's Saint Michael's Cemetery, whose ornate marble gate tops were mysteriously stolen,

and the countless individual buildings and even city blocks that were destroyed in order to construct generic modern structures - none of which have half the class of the buildings they replaced - is not a feeling of nostalgia. Instead it inspires a feeling of anger over how the glory that was once Springfield was systematically sold-out over the years by dishonest politicians and the greedy contractors and business people who feed on public economic development funds. Everybody had the same goal, to do a dirty deal in Springfield and then run to the suburbs.

Perhaps it is best that Attorney Miller keeps so much of his collection out of public view. If the people of Springfield ever fully realized what was taken from them, there might be rioting in the streets.

So buy Dobbs' book, and I'll meet you at the riot!

A fixture on Boston Road in Pine Point since the early 1970's was Richard Doyle, better known as the The Twig Painter, who used to sit out on the sidewalk in the warm weather months painting. The first week he did so, around 1972, a cop gave him a hard time. Doyle went straight downtown and demanded to see then Mayor Frank Freedman. When he told the Mayor what had happened, Freedman told him to go back on the sidewalk and all would be taken care of. Doyle was never bothered again and stayed on the sidewalk every summer until he was forced into retirement a couple years ago by diabetic blindness.

However, the Twig Painter did have occasional problems, like in 1998 when they widened Boston Road. The plans called for a traffic light to be erected in the exact spot where Doyle always sat. He painted the following image of the traffic light passing through his body and sent it to all the local politicians.

The plans were soon changed to relocate the traffic light.

Doyle always feared that some out of control vehicle would swerve onto the sidewalk and strike him where he sat painting, but he couldn't convince the city to put a guardrail in front of where he worked. In frustration he came up with a great prank to illustrate what might happen.

He got Jay Libardi to pull his pick-up truck up on the sidewalk, while Doyle knocked everything over and splashed red paint on himself before lying down. As a final touch, he lit a smoke bomb. The result was this very realistic crash scene: (click to enlarge)

It worked a little too well. Cars screeched to a halt, creating a big traffic jam. People frantically called 911 and women screamed. However this prank did not result in Doyle getting his guardrail. What he did get was a citation for disturbing the peace and a stern warning that any further stunts of that sort would result in his arrest.

Speaking of Jay Libardi, here is a picture of me and him in 1984.