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Hank Brandli grew up in Roslindale, MA and now lives in Melbourne, Fla. He will be sharing his memories of his hometown with Transcript readers over the next couple of months. He can be reached at Hank@HankBrandli.com

MASS TRANSIT AND ME *

By Hank Brandli (Melbourne,Fl.)

When I talk to friends or members of my family, it seems like someone is always “schleppin” their child to a soccer match, an athletic event, a movie theatre, etc. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a car. What we did have in Rozzie,a suburb of Boston, was the MTA (now called the MBTA). We could walk half a block in any direction and catch a bus, a trackless trolley, a streetcar or whatever the latest gas or electrical mass transit vehicles of the time were!

Going to Elementary school at the Mozart and Phineas Bates , I never got on a yellow school bus because there were none available to us. We didn’t live in the country! We walked to school and it was fun. Our parents did not have to walk with us. There was not the fear of molesters or kidnappers or any snipers walking the street. It was a very, very nice time!

The most fun we had was riding on the MTA.

The Kingston Trio had "MTA" as one of their hits and they sang the song:

"Charlie handed in his dime at the Kendall Square Station and he changed for Jamaica Plain".

My buddy Chucky and I at 10 years old and above used to go to the hallowed grounds of the old Boston Garden (capacity-13,909) to watch the Celtics, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Bruins or a track meet, whatever was happening at the time. One could also go down to the Boston Arena to watch the semi-pro hockey team the Olympics(Pics) or Boxing at Mechanics Hall on Huntington Ave.

I had one advantage in going to the Boston Garden. My aunt Mil who was the head of the school lunch program at the Mary E. Curly school on Huntington Ave. knew the head usher at the Boston Garden . His name was Tom Tweedy and he was a very good friend of hers. She would tell Tom that Chucky and I were coming to the Garden to watch a sporting event ( usually the Celtics) and he would treat us like royalty.

We’d walk to the corner of Beech and Washington Sts., get on the street car trolley put a nickel in the cash collector to go to Forest Hills train station. At Forest Hills, we’d go up the escalator .At the the top, we’d walk down the platform and get on one of the cars of the four car electric train. After all the doors were closed, the train would slowly depart on the tracks that were 30 feet above the street (Washington). After 5 station stops (Green, Egleston, Dudley, Northhampton, and Dover ) where passengers would get off and on, the train descended into an underground tunnel where it would make three more station stops (Essex, Summer, and State). How I remember those well lit station stops with white marble walls covered with 4x6 posters ads, graffiti, and gum machines on some of the pillars.

The cost of this splendid ride was one nickel. At North Station, we would go to the end of the platform , down the stairs up a wide slight slope ramp thru some two way turnstiles into the Boston Garden lobby. Around the oval ticket booths.we would find an usher and ask for Mr. Tweedy.

When we found him, Mr. Tweedy would say; “Where would you like to sit boys?” And

“ In the front box, on the floor or in the mezzanine area?”

“How about at the end of the press box in the first row of the first balcony?”

“Whatever you got,Mr.Tweedy” ,we would say.

As we walked on the first floor of this gigantic two balconied arena with shiny parquet basketball court and the glass backboards, we wondered where Mr. Tweedy would seat us. We always felt priviledged and special being ushered by this uniformed giant.

He had a kind face with a thin mustache. Every body knew him. He would sit us anywhere he could; even one time on foldup wooden seats next to the Celtics bench where “ Easy Ed “McCauley, Bob Cousy and Bob Brannum, ( the greats of that time) sat. Two of our favorite visiting teams were the Philadelphia 76er’s; with players like Paul Arizon, or the Minneapolis Lakers with George Mikan, Jim Pollard, Vern Mickelson and Slater Marten; or the Syracuse Nationals (i.e., which had an incredible rivalry with the Celtics). They had Dolph Shayes, Red Kerr,. Paul Seymour , who would harass Bob Cousy as our Bob Brannun did to Dolph Shayes a lot.

In those days, they did not have the 3-point shot. If they did Dolph Schayes would have had around 50 points a game. He had the most accurate two handed shot I have ever seen. Another visiting team was the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons with their star Bob Davies.

We would go to these games for 10 cents a round trip. To pay for the trips, we would gather up empty bottles for 2 cents a piece. Five empty bottles would get you there and back. And, five more would get you a hot dog and soda. Anyone could do this without the Tom Tweedy connection. The transportation system was available from any suburb in Boston.

In the seventh grade, I had to go quite a distance to school (Boston Latin school, or Boys Latin School ). I carried a green bookbag full of schoolbooks. The bag had an orange strap you could use like a golf bag. Some kids swung them around when in battle like “the hammer throw”.

I got on the streetcar at Washington and Beech Sts. that went on steel tracks embedded in the tar street and ended up at the Arborway station a short distance from Forest Hills. At Arborway, I took another two car attached trolley all the way down Huntington Ave. to Boston Latin. I did this everyday for six years except during summer vacation. It cost me a nickel one way.We used tickets like ration coupons from a little book that you bought at school.

Sometimes, I also carried my golf clubs on the other shoulder. How I got to the Franklin park golf course via Dudley St. and a bus up Blue Hill Ave. I’ll never know. I was dangerous !! It attracted a lot of attention on the MTA. But, It was a reliable, safe, and inexpensive mode of transportation.

On rainy Saturdays, my friend, Don, would take the Washington St. trolley at Mishaka St. and I would get on the same trolley when it stopped at Beech St. We were on our way to the Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Ave. for a day of education and fun. My mom would pack a lunch-a brown paper bag with two sandwiches,usually egg or tuna salad wrapped in Cut-rite that would often ooze and leak through the bag preventing its reuse.

It should be obvious from our many adventures riding the trolley, that time was not of the essence; or at least it was not as much of the essence as it is today, or so we think. We even had times to get into trouble. On one occasion I remember my buddy Don describing an incident that would have been worthy of at least a 30-minute detective story.

It seems he had accompanied a fine upstanding lad from Roslindale, no less, to the stately Boston Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Avenue, where one would expect to find wealthy grand dames in their fur coats, stepping out of their Mercedes, rather than two ragamuffins jumping off the trolley. It seems a sinister plot was brewing, a daring act of thievery which, if successful, would shake the Museum to its knees. It just so happened that Nebuchadnezzar, a former king of Babylon, (or one of his relatives) had taken up residence at the Museum, and had been resting comfortably and undisturbed, in his glass case, for the past couple of thousand years, sporting a diamond ring.

The Plan, cooked up by Don’s devious fellow trolley rider, Bill, was to have Don get the attention of the guard watching over Nebuchadnezzar’s case, by asking him inane questions like:

“Did the Red Sox win last night?”,

Or “Have you seen any good movies lately?”

While the guard’s attention was diverted, Bill was going to use a standard glasscutter to open a hand hole in the glass case, reach in and divest Nebuchadnezzar of his ring. Needless to say, as soon as the guard saw both of the suspicious characters, and before any stirring conversation could take place, or glass could be cut, he threw them out the door, the south door.

Being the great mummy robbers that they were, Don and Bill decided to walk around to the north door. They arrived at the north door a half hour later (it was a big museum), and as they mounted the imposing set of steps, who was there to greet them, with hands on hips, but the same guard who dumped them out the other door. (Where was Norman Rockwell when you needed him? It would have been a classic picture).

That ended the great mummy robbery attempt, and as far as is known, Nebuchadnezzar still sleeps comfortably, with all jewelry in tact, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

When my younger cousin, Maria, was accepted to Girls Latin School across the street from BLS, she was very worried about commuting on the Arborway trolley. That trolley route was the same one she used to get to Forsyth Medical/ Dental Clinic and that says it all. She'd been sick and had to get on the darn trolley so many times when she'd traveled with her mother to the docter/dentist that she absolutely dreaded the thought of having to use it on a daily basis to get to school. But as it happens there was no other way.

To her ,those trolleys were like boats in a raging sea with 10 foot swells. They swayed from side to side and with each movement, her stomach lurched. Also, somehow they ate up the fresh air and replaced it with smokestack bursts of stale, smelly, choking gas. Gross, but Maria was a survivor and determined. She wasn't going to mortify herself and be sick.

As the 11 year old sixie that she was, Maria spent many a trolley ride gulping for air and absolutely petrified.

But as the years went by, Maria really came to enjoy those rides. Eventually, she didn't notice the swaying and even developed the ability to read on the trolley, something I never expected to happen.... It's truly amazing how perspective can change. ..

As a freshman 4 th class, the after school rides came to be enjoyable to her. They were times for laughing and talking with friends who also lived in Roslindale/ West Roxbury about boys whom the girls discovered and dates and plans etc., of agonizing about what was going to be on tests, of wondering about teachers' lives...

She still, fifty years later, tells me that during one of those trolley rides from GLS to the Arborway, she was approached by a girl somewhat older, very nicely dressed and well spoken who called her Pat. She was a stranger, maybe 20 or so, and believed Maria was her girlfriend's younger sister. She insisted if she wasn't Pat, she had a double, a twin. She was initially very certain, then very puzzled and definitely not a kook.

It was a strangely unforgetable incident.

GLS moved to Dorchester in 1956 when Maria was a junior 2^nd class.

Boston Latin School became coeducational in 1972.

The main conveyance for getting into and around Boston was the overhead electric train. It was like a monorail. We used it to go shopping in town or a sporting event (either the Boston Garden or Arena). When I think of kids today going to professional hockey, football, baseball or basketball games; they have to hop into cars to go. We never had to do any of that auto stuff, because everything was accessible by the MTA.

The original American Football League team, the Boston Patriots started playing at Braves Field and continued at Fenway park. Of course, baseball was always at Fenway Park or Braves field. We could get on two different busses and/or trolleys get to those places very easily. Boston Garden,however, was the most fun.

When I ended my six years of school at Boston Latin, I went to college in Medford at Tufts University. I continued to ride the MTA.Only this time, four MTA conveyances were used.

New trackless trolley busses with overhead double wires got me to Forest Hills. I carried my books piled on a big ringed notebook holding them on my hip-no more book bags since ninth grade– 4^th class.

Up the escalator, then get on 4 car electric train which went on gleaming rails with third rail ”hot”. The train stopped at Green, Eagleston, Dudley, Northhamton, Dover and went down underground tunnel past 3 stops Essex, Summer, State and up into early morning light out of the tunnel, I got off at North Station. Then ,I walked past the Boston Garden entrance to a two orange trolley car stop with one overhead electric wire that took me to Lechmere station where I got on a trackless trolley bus that took me to Tufts University in Medford.

I would use this nearly 2 hour travel time on the MTA to study. Going and coming on the conveyances, you could see me many times with my drawing or drafting board, T-square, slide rule, the right angle, books and paper doing my homework . One of my favorite subjects was “Descriptive Geometry”.

While at Tufts, I was in USAF ROTC and wore my blue uniform on Tuesdays only on all these 4 MTA conveyances -8 different vehicles 5 or 6 days a week. I got a lot of stares from other MTA passengers trying to figure out what my uniform was all about.In my senior year , I acquired many ribbons and medals on my blue uniform as well as shoulder boards with a blue and gold aiguillette (shoulder cord). Looking back at my attire wjth the adornments, I’m reminded of the famous skit on Max Leibman’s ‘‘Your Show of Shows’” with Howard Morris and Sid Caesar as “’the doorman”.

Many times during or after a storm, the train and busses would be packed with wet steamy people and they swayed into one another at the stops and turns.

In my freshman year, I had class 6 days a week. One semester as a senior, I also had a Saturday morning 8 AM English class. For these early morning classes, I had to get up very early. Once in a while, my dad would let me use the 1951 Ford. What a treat that was!

Kids today don’t have these interesting transportation arteries . They can’t get to the resorts, boating facilities or downtown without their parents driving them. It was a great time in the 40s & 50’s and it’s a shame now. This kind of nostalgia has been great for me and other people my age. I wonder what our kids will remember?

* Maria, Don,and Wilk contributed to this piece.

THE END