Yuletide

 

This is Park Square in Westfield. 

 

 

It's nice, but I liked it better before they cut down all the trees. 

 

Directly across the street is the former Westfield Post Office, now a restaurant called the Tavern, which was previously located in Springfield.

 

 

The historic features and old marble of the former post office have been preserved. 

 

 

The elaborate Christmas decorations really enhance the ambience of the joint.

 

 

Why will there never be restaurants on the moon? 

It has no atmosphere.

 

The alleyway next to the Tavern is named after a guy named John who founded the dining establishment. 

 Most people who go to the Tavern know my sister Beverly. 

 

 

Here are the recent lunch specials. 

The fish and chips were awesome. I was skeptical of the chicken macaroni and cheese soup, but it was strangely delicious. Why don't you check it out for yourself by stopping by the Westfield Tavern this holiday season?

 

A Pine Point Christmas from 1988. 

 

 

Here is what the people of Massachusetts would like for Christmas. 

The largest Christmas tree in New England is in Boston. 

 

 The much more modest UMass Christmas tree. 

Funeral for a Twig Painter

  

Here's a flashback to a post first published in Tumblr on October 3, 2015.

 

 Richard James Doyle of Pine Point, better known as The Twig Painter, was buried earlier this week in the Veteran’s cemetery in Agawam after dying September 23rd at age 72. Doyle hated funerals, and his parent’s were the only two funerals I believe he ever attended. He made a drunken appearance in the parking lot of the funeral of Jay Libardi, but I don’t recall that he ever actually went inside.

Here is Doyle the Twig Painter arriving Wednesday at a funeral he couldn’t avoid.

 

 

Doyle served in various places in Southeast Asia at the peak of the Vietnam War and was buried with full military honors. He was an Army Illustrator, which means he did artwork for military publications. That also meant that he never came within a hundred miles of the battlefield. I’m not saying that to take anything away from Doyle’s service to his country, as every war is a team effort which without the people working behind the lines, the heroes at the front couldn’t succeed.

However, because he served during the peak years of the war, people sometimes used to ask him if he saw any action. “I saw plenty of action,” Doyle used to reply, “I just can’t remember her name.”

Because he was such a humorous person, people didn’t always appreciate how serious he was about his art and how hard he worked. It involved a lot of long hours of scratching away to make those beautiful paintings using a twig. I first realized just how hard he labored over those paintings when I was working at Eastern Container, a cardboard box factory in the 16 Acres section of Springfield.

I worked third shift, and on many mornings when we got off work at 7am, we used to go out for a drink or two or ten. That may sound odd, but think about it. When someone who works 9 to 5 gets off work, do they rush home to bed by 6pm? No, they stay awake for hours and may enjoy some adult beverages just as we did, only our hours were reversed.

Anyway, there are not many bars open at 7am, but one that opened at 8am was the infamous Pine Point Cafe. So one summer morning while Jay Libardi and I were sitting in the parking lot of the Cafe waiting for Jackie the bartender to come open the joint up, I looked across the street and saw Doyle the Twig Painter sitting outside his gallery painting away with a twig. I went over and asked him why he had gotten up so early to paint. He informed me that he didn’t wake up to paint - the fact was he hadn’t been to bed yet! Doyle had been sitting out there on Boston Road painting all night long.

When someone dies, people sometimes like to speculate that friends and relatives meet them when they arrive on that other shore. I hope that’s true, and if it is, then Doyle had quite a welcoming committee. The scene surrounding Doyle the Twig Painter was very colorful, but it had a body count. When I try to imagine who would greet The Twig Painter at the pearly gates, I think I see Yvonne Gordon. I think I see Crystal. I think I see Debbie Dog. I think I see Marc Walker. I think I see Gordy, I think I see Tom Chatterton and his son. I think I see Eric Lerch. I think I see Bodie Chesbro. I think I see J. Wesley Miller. I think I see Jay Libardi. 

I first met Doyle when I was a boy. The Pine Point section of Springfield has its charms, but culturally it was something of a desert, or at least that’s how it looked to a sensitive, artistically and culturally inclined kid like me. Fortunately, Doyle’s art gallery was, as Tom Shea of the Springfield Republican once described it, “a touch of bohemia in old Pine Point.”

It isn’t easy to do what you want in this life. All the most powerful forces in society conspire against it with constant messages to copy others, to fit in and admonishments to be an obedient member of the herd. Richard Doyle showed me by example that you could pretty much do what you wanted with your life, just as he had done with an artistic technique he had invented himself. 

It was not a sugar-coated example, he made it plain that to do what you want requires hard work and a lot of courage. Hard work, so that you can move forward with little help from others, and a lot of courage of your own because you will get little encouragement from anyone else. In fact, you have to be brave enough to resist the people who will aggressively try to discourage you. What a wonderful example of the possibilities for a personalized success he gave me at the dawn of my adult life, when it mattered most.

But I think the greatest lesson in courage Doyle gave me had nothing to do with doing your own thing. It had to do with the last years of his life, when he was forced to give up Twig Painting because of blindness. I think if you asked any practitioner of the visual arts what their worst nightmare was, they would reply that the thing that terrifies them most would be to lose their sight.

Doyle the Twig Painter was forced to live that nightmare. I remember when I went to see him in the hospital for the first time after the doctors had given him their conclusion that his loss of sight was irreversible and that he would never paint again. I was anxious about our meeting, as I feared I would find my friend in a black depression, a broken man whose whole life had been shattered by the doctor’s terrible verdict. Instead, when I entered his hospital room he cried out, “Tommy! Let me tell you the dirty joke the nurse told me this morning!” Then I knew that he was going to be alright.

No one who knew Doyle the Twig Painter ever expects to meet another person quite like him in this world.  Right now, he and his welcoming committee are having a big old party on some cloud floating a little apart from everyone else in heaven. Someday, I will join that party, but hopefully not any time soon.

Doyle the Twig Painter - Rest easy, wild spirit.

 

 

 David Doyle accepting the flag from his brother's casket.

                                    

The Haymarket

 

Ice is starting to form on the UMass campus pond. 

 

 

This is Northampton's Woodstar Cafe. 

 

The view out the back window of the Woodstar Cafe on the first snowfall of the season. 

I like the Woodstar and go there often, especially since the closing of the much mourned Haymarket Cafe, seen here in 2008. 

I (and thousands of other Valley residents) used to go there a lot over the past three decades. In fact, scattered over hundreds of posts on this blog is probably the most extensive photographic history of the joint online. 

But alas, today the site of the cafe is an abandoned ruin. Adding to the tragic vibe, some of the old pictures are still hanging on the walls. 

 

The Haymarket closed permanently earlier this year after a long, drama filled decline. Sometimes it was open, sometimes it wasn't, finally one day patrons found it all locked up never to open again. It remains a mystery how the most popular coffee shop in Northampton somehow had to close, but part of the problem seems to have been the decrepit condition of the historic building in which the Haymarket was located, which now appears condemned. 

 

 

The closing of the Haymarket broke more hearts than any downtown closing since Fire & Water stunned the Hamp scene with its closure in 2003. 

 

 

In fact, the Haymarket was a contemporary of Fire & Water, among the last ones still standing. Perhaps the old Haymarket building can be restored to safe use. 

Then maybe someone will reopen the Haymarket. 

Or maybe not. 

Nothing lasts.

 

 

 Recently I stumbled online upon this 1905 pic of Springfield's Buckingham Junior High. 

 

 

For some reason Junior Highs are now called "Middle Schools." I wanted to look up the history of Buckingham, and got this alleged historic summary from Google's AI sources. 

 

 

Huh? That's not the history of Buckingham, it is a mash-up of the histories of Buckingham and Technical High School, which was indeed turned into a data center. It was Tech that closed in 1986, not Buckingham, which closed in the 70's as a result of the forced busing controversy, but that's a story for another day. In the meantime, let this search result be a warning to you not to trust Artificial Intelligence, which for all the big who-ha going on over it, isn't really ready for prime time. 

Not too much ball being played at Fenway this time of year, but it least it has its Christmas decorations up.

 

 

 College journalism student Tucker Carlson with Jerry Garcia in 1987.

 

"I was thrilled. It was like – incredible, everything about him just radiated good vibes. I have no pictures in my office. I've met a lot of people, just because that's what I do. But I have no pictures on my wall other than that one of me and Jerry." - Tucker Carlson

Thanking

 

The UMass Minuteman overlooking the campus pond. 

 

 

 Whole lotta geese on the pond the other morning. 

 

 

The flock are merely pausing at the pond while heading south for the winter. This late in the migration season they probably come from pretty far north. Lots of geese live in the arctic circle, so a few weeks ago these birds may have been flying past glaciers. 

 

Learning, not killing is advocated in chalk outside the UMass library. 

 

It may be just before Thanksgiving, but outside Gombo restaurant in downtown Northampton Saturday night it looked like a weird combination of Christmas and Halloween. 

 

 

 The Halloween vibe continues a few doors down in the window of Shop Therapy.

 

 

At the other end of Main Street the vibe is more cosmic. 

 

There must be an interesting story behind why someone in Amherst felt compelled to stick this up. 

 

 Is that what an employee said to a customer?

 

Deep in the city of Springfield. 

 

 

Deep in Springfield's past. 

 

It's nice that somebody from Massachusetts is in the Trump inner-circle. However, is this a meal that future Secretary of Health Bobby Kennedy should be eating?

Why not? There is nothing unhealthy about occasionally indulging in junk food. Just don't make it a regular part of your diet. 

I am changing lives by eating brownies. 

 

 

 

 

The happy ending to come. 

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!