What I remember most clearly were the shops on Blue Hill Avenue. I lived on Havelock Street in a triple decker with my mom and grandparents while dad was away in the Marines. Many things we bought were delivered to the apartment. Groceries, for one, and ice for another. A man with a leather cape shouldering a block of ice held steady with huge steel ice tongs would climb the three flights of rickety wooden stairs to bring coolness to our ice box.

Coal for the furnace was deliver through a series of steel chutes that was rigged from a dump truck to our cellar coal bin whenever my grandma put a cardboard sign in our window that read COAL. What a racket the coal made as it crashed and rumbled down the chutes! (She had a different sign to use when she needed ice. The ice sign was white with black letters, the coal sign was just the opposite; black with white letters).

Getting the coal into the bin was just the beginning. Once the coal was inside, grandma would make her way down to the basement and tend the furnace. She shoveled fresh coal into the top steel door, fit a crank into the middle part and slam that crank left and right, left and right, until the ashes of the burned coal full through the grate and onto the furnace floor and then shovel them into the ash can. The contents of which were vital for sure footing when spread on icy walks and steps.

On the corner where Havelock street met the Blue hill Avenue was Twins Pharmacy. Everyone called it Twinies. It had everything a person could want- ace bandages, Carters Little Liver Pills, Bromo Seltzer and Geritol for the older folks; ice cream and comic books for us youngsters. Twinies in the late ‘40’s and early fifty’s had dark mahogany phone booths with heavy folding doors and a wooden seat so you could talk in comfort - - and privacy.

The pin ball machine was a nickel and the comic books (the great creepy kind with Tales from the Crypt) were a dime, and you could buy an ice cream cone for 7 cents and for 12 cents you could get a cone with 2 scoops; a double decker to take home to your triple decker. Twelve cents doesn’t seem like a lot now, but in those days who had that kind of money.

Twinies Milk shakes were made it from scratch; syrup from the fountain pump, milk from a bottle, a stainless steel cup was stuck up under the blender blades for a minute, then poured it into a big class and voila! You had a milk shake to beat all milk shakes. By the way, the stainless steel cup containing the left over milk shake that wouldn’t fit in the glass was set down on the counter in front of you for you to enjoy when your glass went empty.

One thing I don’t miss from Twinies are the drinking straws, which in those days were made of fragile waxed paper and tended to crimp and collapse in mid-sip. The plastic ones in use today are much better.

Next to Twinies was the shoe repair store, which we referred to as a Cobbler Shop. Signs on the widows were emblazoned with mysterious black cats, one paw raised in either a gesture of warning or greeting, I never figured out which. Inside, behind the high counter was the cobbler, a stooped fellow in an apron of tricking stained with brown and black shoe dyes, who, using only a glue pot, a sharp knife, and powerful sewing machine would make old shoes new.

He had rows of repaired footwear on a shelf against the wall. Each shoe had a ticket and if you lost your ticket stub there would be trouble. How could you prove to him that the shoes were yours with out a stub? After the arguing and haggling it seemed that the Cinderella method worked best. You may have heard the phrase before but it never was truer than in this old Dorchester cobbler shop – “If the shoe fits…”

We wore wear leather shoes which were bought a size or two too big so we could grow into them, and we wore those shoes until they hurt – really hurt! You could buy shoes on the avenue, but if you went downtown (to Boston) to buy shoes you could stick your feet into a Fluoroscope and see green x-ray images of your own feet in the new shoes your mother was contemplating to buy. None of this shoe business could ever work with Nikes.

The barber shop was next to the cobbler; it was the men’s club of the day. While you were squirming under the barbers vice-like head-hold as he tried to give you a Wiffle cut (Think: Buzz cut) with hand squeezed clippers, your dad could talk man talk with the guys, mostly in grown-up code, or yiddish, “…cause ya know, that’s my kid is in the chair over there and if his mother gets wind of this it’s curtains for me, if you know what I mean…”

There were no supermarkets in my neighborhood and no freezers at home, so you went from specialty store to specialty store to buy fresh what was needed for a day or two. The stores were lined up next to each other so getting your supplies was a snap. Into the poultry store for eggs, and chicken (live or freshly killed), the fish store for a carp or whitefish, the appetizer store for nuts and dried apricots and figs, the dairy store for butter and milk, and finally the bakery. This was the most magical store of all.

Long wood trimmed glass cases separated the customers from the workers, and inside those cases were cakes and Danish, and half moon cookies – huge round things frosted with a semicircle of chocolate and a contrasting one of white. They were supposed to look like a half moon, to me they just looked GOOD. On the wall behind the aproned clerks were shelves filled with fresh baked bread; rye, pumpernickel, challah, and the oh-so-exotic Black and White bread; a loaf made of pumpernickel and light rye dough twisted together before baking.

The baking was done right there at the far end of the store where sweating men in white t-shirts and pants shoved dough into the maw of the scorched white tiled oven using long wooden paddles, and retrieved the baked loaves on the return stroke. These bakers made sure that every loaf made there had a Bakery Workers Union paper stamp baked onto the crust.

The bread was sliced in a tall white machine with the name OLIVER stamped in bold letters at its top. The clerk put the loaf in on her side of the machine and retrieved it, sliced, on the customer’s side. Often, when bagging the bread, a small dollar (the coin) sized slice wouldn’t make it into the bag, and if you were quick you could swipe this heel of the loaf as a tasty treat. If you weren’t so quick there were angry words between my grandma and the bakery clerk about “boys who steal’ and “it was his anyway ‘cause it came from my loaf which I’m paying for”. Ahh, such was life on old Dorchester.

In passing through Milton from my sister's place in Dedham, I traveled up Blue Hill Ave, along Norfolk St., then Washington Street, to Columbia Rd. and down to Columbia Point on my way back to Maine. I took shots of a few missing buildings' sites. Rocco's on the corner of Woodrow Avenue, for example [technically Carol's Luncheonette after his daughter] was where we young men lived most of our waking hours. It seems like nothing is sacred anymore.

I took several shots of the general location of the Codman Sq. theatre. I had trouble deciding the exact spot. A block of stores between it and the library is now a health center. At eleven years old, I delivered false teeth to dentists Lasker in Hyde Park and Coan in Oak Square, Brighton. This was for the Century Dental Lab run by Irving Axelrod. I worked there several years. He gave me $.50 and my carfare per trip, usually 3 or 4 times a week. It was great, a real fortune for me. I think theirs was the missing building. It also housed a Dr. Brown, a podiatrist, and a dentist named Russo. He said I was as brave as a soldier once when he pulled out a tooth and I was able to stifle a scream. As I recall, the first floor housed a jewelry store and a restaurant known locally as the "Greasy Spoon."

Across from the library on the corner of Wash. St. and Talbot avenue, there was always a dairy bar under several names. It was United Farmers for many years. Now, it is a McDonalds. No big double arches outside, but a sign of the time nevertheless. I have only been back there now three times.

Twenty-five or 30 years ago I was so depressed I vowed never to return. So many places were burned down or boarded up. Then, my late wife, Bette, to whom I was married from 1984 to December, 1998, prevailed on me to show her where I grew up. So we went there in the late 1980's probably. I had to admit, things looked somewhat better then. This trip was really impressive. All along the route I saw evidence of recovery. Most houses had new siding and paint. There were many places with building permits in the windows and new lumber installed on porches and steps.

The Oriental Theatre is a business selling electrical parts now, I notice. I wish I had shots of its past glory. When I was about 11 or 12, I was out of school with pneumonia. During my recovery, I spent a lot of time there. My Uncle Matt was the assistant manager at the time. He took me up the back stairs to the attic so I could see the light bulbs above the openings in the ceiling for the stars. I would fold popcorn boxes for the girls and be rewarded with a cardboard box of popcorn for the show. I also obtained a three inch piece of 35mm film from the picture, "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves," when the film broke. Wasn't that a great treasure.

I have many memories of that area, the Mattapan Theatre, the trolley ride through the woods from Ashmont station, Franklin Field, Franklin Park, the Chez Vous skating rink, Cutler's pool room. He gave my friends and I exclusive rights to shine shoes there for a number of years. For a few years I worked as a helper for milk men. I worked for a man named Joe Wolf in delivering to the three decker lined streets off Talbot Ave. near Blue Hill Ave., across from Franklin Field. I enjoyed the introduction to another culture. I loved the different cooking smells. I remember the elderly Jewish ladies pointing to the the milk money which had been carefully placed on the kitchen table before Sabbath. If I had grown up in an exclusively Irish Catholic neighborhood I would have missed so much.