Back in New Orleans

I haven't lived in New Orleans long enough to be considered an antique.  I've probably moved to late to gain that cachet.

I've been back for a few hours, thank Heaven.  I took the Airport Shuttle, cheaper than a cab, to Lee Circle.    Unfortunately, the driver decided to go to the other end of the French Quarter for his first stop so I knew I would be last.  I was hoping to be first.  I didn't mind much.  I don't visit the Quarter often at night and certainly not from the viewpoint of people getting their first impressions.  Everyone in the van was excited and marveling at the scenery.  New Orleans is infectious.

When the driver found out my plan to be dropped off in Lee Circle rather than at Hotel Le Cirque, he just took me to my street instead so I wouldn't have to walk so far.  We discussed recent news in the Times-Picayune.  He brought me up to speed since I've only been reading hotel copies of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.  I love to read the WSJ, which I milked for information every day this past week.  USA Today takes about ten minutes to finish for anything of interest.

I spoke with a professional body painter who is in town for a workshop.  I was polite enough not to ask if that is a real career.  We talked about the recent body painting work at the last White Linen Night, which she knew all about.  New Orleans: where body painters come to perfect their craft.  Who knew?  We do now.

She had never been here and she said she had dreamed about a visit for years.  Me too.  She is coming down in March for three weeks with her husband to celebrate her birthday.  He is originally from Slidell.

When the van driver learned I have lived here for a little over three months (!) he welcomed me and said everyone appreciates having new citizens in the city.  I promised to be the best citizen I can be.  I don't know how I am going to accomplish this yet, but it has always been my intention.  The road to New Orleans is paved with good intentions.  I arrived here by motorcycle on all back roads from Boston.  I think I am qualified to comment on the road to New Orleans.

There are many ways to the same nirvana.

Another 24 hour business

I haven't checked this one out in person but I noticed the billboard while running an errand.  I checked out the web site and it all seems like legitimate advertising.  We can add another business to our tally of things to do after the bars close and respectable citizens are snug in their beds with dreams of cod and baked beans dancing in their heads.

Dorchester is still coming out on top of the list for variety.  After all, with bowling and billiards on the menu, that's a hard mix to top at 3:00 AM.  Name another neighborhood that's got that.  Are there any other 24-hour car washes?  Neponset Circle Car Wash (815 Gallivan Blvd) is open 'round the clock.  Just ask their mascot, Herbie.

The open part of the business seems to be the self service bays.  That's why I haven't checked it out in person at 3:00 AM.  I don't have any urge to hose down my motorcycle in the middle of the night in January.  I don't have any urge to take my motorcycle to Neponset Circle in the middle of the night for any reason, especially if the only action is car washing. I doubt it's much like a movie.



I doubt Neponset Circle really warrants a sound track at 3:00 AM.

If I had a car to wash though, I would do it in Neponset Circle.  It's a place where they know about S.I.N.

Two Dorchesters

I've been thinking about a statistic I read in the Globe recently.  I'm not going to look it up or link to it because it's a stat that's already been stuck in my mind.  How accurate it may be, I haven't researched, but some variation is part of common, ingrained perception and, quite likely, part of common reality in this part of Boston.

The average household income in Dorchester is $28,000 a year.

Whether that sounds like a lot or a little depends on where you begin to measure.  For our regular readers who live in Hinton, West Virginia, it's a little for the Boston area.  Very little.

Living where I do, by the JFK/UMASS MBTA station (that's the subway to you Hintonites), I don't see any abject poverty.  Believe me: $28,000 will not support a nuclear family in Boston.  The rent on a two bedroom apartment will consume half that and more, not including utilities.  This may explain the lack of nuclear families in Dorchester, but again...I don't see a lot of single parent households where I live, not that I'm taking a detailed census or spying on my neighbors.

Some parts of Dorchester are like the part I live in.  Adams Village, Neponset, Pope's Hill, Ashmont Hill, Jones Hills, Mount Bowdoin, the Polish Triangle, Point Norfolk, Lower Mills; they are all fairly stable, middle class, whatever middle class means.  Let's say the people I pass on the street don't seem to be going without.  They are also primarily located near train stations and they are also predominantly white.

I do not like to dwell on racial differences on the Matrix.  I usually make it a point to avoid discussing them, but they exist.  Different parts of Dorchester have different ethnicities, to be sure,  The same differences in skin color and income that demark other places also occur in the Dot.  It isn't pretty, but it is true.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes not.  Again, it depends on where you start to measure.

If I looked at the tax records for my neighborhood, I suspect the average income isn't dragging the neighborhood average downwards.  This part of Dot is full of college students working part time jobs, but they are paying market rate rents and living, as some scholars do, at the local bars soaking up cheap food and suds.  Just eyeballing the lay of the land, I suspect what lowers Dorchester's median income figures are the neighborhoods roughly west or northeasterly of Washington Street: Four Corners, Codman Square, Talbot Avenue, Norfolk Avenue, Columbia Road, Blue Hill Avenue, East Cottage Street, Bowdoin/Geneva, and other terrain that doesn't have names for its neighborhoods, just a collection of pins on a police station map.

There are two Dorchesters.  Both of them are equally welcoming and equally convivial. I've never witnessed a crime being committed in Dorchester and I have been down most streets and I am out most hours of the day and night.  I have never been uncomfortable.

There is a different culture to the west than there is to the east of Dot Ave, which is an approximate, handy boundary line.  The east is whiter and more asian (whether Vietnamese or Chinese it's hard to say).  The west is darker and more hispanic (or Haitian or Cape Verdean).  You can't really say one side is old Dot stock and the other side is new.  African Americans have been a majority in some parts of Dorchester for more than half a century.  They aren't immigrants.  They are Dorchesterites.

East plus West equals the middle ground, which is somewhere near Field's Corner.

I've been thinking about this over the past few months and, unlike my usual folderol, I thought I would work through more serious musings in public.  I'm trying to develop a Dot-view that is more panoramic than the one I have now.  As I say, I have been almost everywhere, but as a transplant, I have been almost everywhere as someone passing through, or as someone from Savin Hill,  rather than as a native.  A fellow citizen, perhaps.  Some people live in a Dot microcosm.  I am  one of them.  I want to take in more of the macro view.

I don't usually solicit comments but I invite you to add your observations and thoughts.  Let's discuss.

The hippoDOTamus!

Do you remember when Clarabelle the Hippo escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo in the early 70s?  I wasn't living in Boston then and, obviously, I was much younger, but I vaguely remember Walter Cronkite reporting it on the nightly news.  Some people remember it much better than I do.  They are keeping the memory alive.

I was reminded of this event while taking an after dinner stroll this evening through Pope John Paul II Park,  on the banks of the placid Neponset estuary.  At one of the turns in the river, a small group had gathered shining flashlights and laser pointers over the gently lapping waves.  "She's over there!" someone whispered loudly.

It was hard to tell with just flashlight beams, with all the reflected lights of the Quincy Inn and the bridge catching the gentle ripples in the river, but the crowd had gathered to gawk at what appeared to be a bobbing oil drum in mid river.  "Sure," someone else said, "That's her."

One of the onlookers brought me up to speed.  "She usually comes out on frigid nights when there's no moon," she told me.  "We're not sure why but we are sure this is why no one has seen her directly for thirty years.  It's a survival strategy: don't go out when people are around.   She has to come out sometime though so she comes out when it's hardest to see her."  Pope John Paul II Park is officially closed to after dinner strollers at sundown.

Someone coughed.  "Shhhh!" a girl scolded, "You'll scare Clarabelle!"  That's when I realized what we were supposed to be looking at.  It really did look like a floating, abandoned oil drum to me.

That was before a snort echoed over the river's breast and there was a splash where the flashlights were pointed.  After repeated tracking back and forth, the object afloat in the river couldn't be found.  The girl turned and chided the person who coughed,  "You did it, Mister!  You scared Clarabelle!  Now I'll never see her again!"  She started whimpering and her mother tried to comfort her.

A hippopotamus can live 40-50 years, so Clarabelle's survival is within the realm of the possible.  As an animal native to Africa, her chances in New England winters seem somewhat slim, but sometimes life is stranger than art.  Another example of Dorchester cryptozoology.  It's the people like I encountered tonight who keep these legends alive and make Dorchester history so interesting. 

Early Christmas on time

It's beginning to look a bit like Christmas at Neponset Circle. Though it's only mid-November and temperatures haven't yet hit the freezing point, a pine tree is standing tall in anticipation in one of Boston's more convoluted intersections. Dorcehster ends and Quincy begins at one point: Neponset. It is the only way to get directly there from here. It's also a mishmash of dedicated lanes, overpasses, blind turns, mixed signals and general confusion. Drivers navigate Neposet Circle's meanderings like rodents sniffing out Limburger. They can sense their goal but they can't see how to reach it beyond trial and error.

Little is pretty at Neponset Circle besides the cast iron clock. Now there is another cheerful feature. A Christmas tree has been set in the city's standard cast concrete, conical base, painted forest green with a spangle of gold stars stencilled on. Today is November 15. Will this pine tree last, evergreen, until December 25th? Will it last till Epiphany? There is no sign (surprisingly) giving credit to the mastermind who decided mid-November is time to start decking Boston's further flung neighborhoods with Yuletide trimmings. Anyone familiar with how the city is run has no doubt that the greenery has been set up under the aegis of the mayor, the history-making Thomas Menino. Long may he reign as the people's choice.

Perhaps someone mentioned during the recent mayoral campaign that they would like Christmas to come early to Neponset. The incumbent, comfortable at pulling the levers of power, replied, "I can make that happen." After Election Day, the word went down the chain of command and voila: a Christmas tree sits at the foot of Neponset Avenue. Better early than never.

The City of Boston wishes everyone en route to Quincy happy holidays, Thanksgiving included! Office pools have already started to pick the day a placard will be planted next to this tannenbaum. What will the sign say? That is subject for another pool but most bets rest on variations of "Season's Greetings from Mayor Thomas M. Menino." Those are words that warm the heart like cocoa heated a few degrees above tepid. Season's Greetings!

The guy with the Spanish Fly

A black market haunts Dorchester. Illicit substances are being offered up for sale on street corners in Field's Corner and Codman Square by shady characters who don't have pharmacist licenses. Potential customers looking to spice up their love lives or attract someone of the opposite gender, or the same gender, are warned not to trust street vendors offering love potions. What you think you are buying may not be what you are getting.

I was riding my bicycle along Freeport Street last evening and one such suspicious character waved and hissed, "Psssssssst!" I slowed down. "I think I've got something you might want,"he said and he held out a vial, cupping his hand so that only I could see its contents. "Pure Spanish Fly, the best kind," he said. "Guaranteed," he added, flashing the USP label promising 10mg of powdered lytta vesicatoria per tablet.

I demurred, "I don't think I'll have much use for that. I rely on my natural animal magnetism." The pusher wasn't so easily dissuaded. "This is a hot ticket," he said, "It's the real deal. Look, bub, all the real players are buying off of me and scoring like Madoff if he were a gigolo. I have so much repeat business, I'm running out of stock." I said I'd think about it. I told him I was headed up to Codman Square and if I changed my mind between here and there I'd be back. "No need for a return trip, my friend," he said. "I've a partner in Codman and his merchandise is just as good. Go to the corner of Washington and Melville. Ask for Squinty. He'll set you up."

As often happens, I got distracted and ended up in Neponset rather than Codman so I never met Squinty, not that I ever intended to. When I got home though, I did a little due diligence. It turns out that Spanish Fly is illegal in the United States and, labeling notwithstanding, most preparations don't contain what they promise.

Today's lesson: don't buy drugs off the street. There's another lesson too: don't buy illegal drugs, but that isn't demonstrated very well by this story. Dorchester is a neighborhood of many temptations.

The Pope's nose on Pope's Hill

What do you call the butt end of roasted chicken? If you are Catholic you call it the tail, that bit of savory, skin-encased fat that held the rooster's feathers while he was alive. It was the part that kept eggs from rolling out of the nest from under the mother hen's hindquarters. If you are an Anabaptist, Mennonite, Jehovah's Witness or Puritan, though, you call this protuberance off the butt end of a chicken carcass the Pope's nose.

What do you call the most picturesque, hillside neighborhood in Dorchester, Boston's biggest and most beautiful neighborhood? The people who live there call it a good place to raise a family. They call it a good place to rest their heads at night, a peaceable place, a place where children play in the streets and the parks and their parents don't worry what they are up to. People who live here call it the best part of Boston.

If you live on Beacon Hill, you call this hill Pope's Hill and you wrinkle your nose and furrow your brow when you say it. You can pinch your nostrils when you do it. "Pope's Hill," the dowagers say, "I'd rather eat the Pope's nose than go there." The money managers who reside in waterfront condominiums around Fort Point Channel have a similar opinion. I was at Aqua the other night, excusing my departure by saying I was making a Silver Line connection to take the Red Line to Field's Corner to visit a sick friend off King Square. A boozy barfly sporting suspenders and spats shouted for all to hear, "The unwashed proletariat is in the house." Nice move wise guy. I don't know what they call a horse's tail meat in France but you sure looked like the Pope's nose after that.

A Dorchester katzenjammer

Heads are hurting on the Monday after Dorchester Day. It's not from overindulgence, can anyone imbibe too much Dot magic? It's from the concussive booms and brass that accompanied yesterday's Dorchester Day Parade, a miles-long extravaganza that tried the tympani of eardrums more used to the sounds of the wind's whisper off the harbor.

The parade was led by a phalanx of emergency vehicles with their sirens blaring, announcing the main feature. The main feature was made up of marching bands, stereo speakers on flat beds, dancers, revellers and police motorcycle escorts. The BPD drives Harleys, which aren't the quietest bikes on the road. Perhaps they should enlist a Vespa patrol to sneak up on the perps.

The crowd lining Dot Ave was enthusiastic and vocal. They cheered when appropriate and cheered for no other reason than unabashed Dot Pride at the drop of a hat. Normal conversation measures 60 decibels. The sidewalks along Dot Ave regularly exceeded three hundred, such was the verve of the crowd. The seismograph atop the Hancock Tower registered 1.2 on the Richter Scale yesterday afternoon at 2:21 PM. Scientists attribute it to Dorchester Day.

If the collective pride of Dorchester can vibrate the foundations of one of Boston's most well engineered landmarks on a whim, think of what it could do if this energy were harnessed. You wouldn't be living in Longfellow's Boston anymore. Bars would be open around the clock, and the T would keep the same hours. Hammers would be hitting nails every hour of everyday as everyone worked hard to earn a paycheck building this city better.

After so much excitement, you would think Dorchester would be sleeping off its bender the following day, but no. Dorchesterites reported this morning with their usual gusto. They know a city doesn't just run on pride. It takes hard work and stamina.

Victory Park

It's an island that's a park that commands exceptional views of Dorchester Bay on one side and Interstate 93 on the other. It's accessible from the butt end of Victory Road off Morrisey Boulevard, a forlorn neighborhood that consists of an overpass, an exit ramp, a yacht club, a natural gas storage tank, and all the flotsam and jetsam one would expect to be washed up onto breakwater rocks. It is a park popular with people who keep dogs, much to the consternation of picnickers.

Victory Park is an island spotted with benches and overgrown with flora. The grass is high except where it is worn short by dog runs and gathering places. It's idyllic. The surf laps the shore and you feel like you are far removed from the thick of the Dot's hurly-burly when you relax in Victory Park. Cross the short bridge and you enter an atmosphere of unfettered, benign, green nature, toothless and clawless. The only canines are domesticated. There are no vampires or thugs, just smiling folk apologizing that Fido is intruding on your idyll.

We ate cheese and bagels and slices of apple, a cucumber, some radishes and a tin of kippers in Victory Park. We were in Boston, we were in Dorchester, but we seemed far removed from all the big city's swirl. Jellyfish expanded and contracted placidly under the tideline. Our bicycles were parked next to a shrub and nothing was disturbed. We lay on a carved block of granite, absorbing the sunshine into our skins. Pit bulls and setters intruded on our space but they didn't stay long. Just long enough to disrupt the temporary reverie.

I'll take Victory Park for a picnic over the Fenway. The Fenway has a channeled drainage ditch. Victory Park has a vista of Port Norfolk, Tenean Beach, Quincy, Shawmut, and the stretch of Massachusetts Bay beyond before it merges with the expansive Atlantic that ties Boston to the rest of the globe. Why are jellyfish, that most placid animal, drawn to the shores of Dorchester? Probably for the same reason I am in the reverse direction. It is nice here.

What's in a name?

I ran into an old acquaintance the other day. She was married when I first met her and her name hasn't changed so I assumed she was still bound by the ties of matrimony. She set me straight in short order.

"You're last name is King, you'll never see any need to change it,"she said. I admitted the idea has never entered my mind. She continued, "Imagine going through the first half of your life as Jennifer Tukus? When I got married I clung to my new last name like a life raft. The best thing my ex-husband gave me, the only good thing he ever gave me aside from our daughter, is my new name. Until something better comes along, I'm going to keep calling myself Jennifer Winner." She had a winning point.

Why is Dorchester called Dorchester, besides the usual accidents of history? What does Dorchester, Mass., a part of Boston, have to do with Dorchester, England? Very little if anything at all anymore. Savin Hill, Neponset, Lower Mills, Codman Square...all these neighborhoods have an organic reason for their designations, but Dorchester? Why? Because Englishmen from British Dorchester settled here four centuries ago? I can walk down every street in the Dot swinging a broom and I won't hit one limey.

I'm not in favor of changing Dorchester's nom-de-guerre for marketing reasons. I'm not in favor of Shadyvale or Pleasantville. Quite the contrary. If Dorchester elects a new name, I think it should reflect the facts on the ground. Palookaville springs to mind. So does Affordabletown, Work Acres, Hope Flats, or Meltingpot. If we want to keep the ties to history, just Dot works fine.

As we have pointed out again and again, Dot is not an disparaging name and the label puts a pointillist focus on a self-contained orb that spins according to rules of its own making. Dorchester is a bull's eye to be aimed at. On Boston's canvas, it is like a spatter of paint that didn't get laid on a Jackson Pollack canvas, one that held all the creator's intended meaning but will never be seen because it's on a potato barn floor somewhere out of sight. It is on the edge of the main show, forgotten and neglected. Only the artist saw its worth but once the paint had dried it was too late to change the picture. The final picture sold for a trillion bucks at auction decades after completion. Dorchester is a work in progress.

I guess it doesn't matter what you call yourself. Dorchester is Dorchester when the day is done. It is full of palookas and hope and affordable rents and the hurly-burly, hurdy-gurdy, sing-song grunt and weft and sweat and chance and happenstance that close company breeds. Dorchester is a Dot, but a name means little on the streets. What is the moon except the thing you see in the sky? Is there a man there looking down? Wave hello. That is the Dorchester way.

The road to Dorchester

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope made a series of seven movies together between 1940 and 1962. They started with "Road to Singapore" and ended with "Road to Hong Kong." In 1977 they were planning another sequel entitled "Road to the Fountain of Youth" but Der Bingle died that year. An unannounced sequel seems to have been in the works and abandoned between 1966 and 1968, at least according to a handwritten script recently discovered in a dusty footlocker in a basement on Chickatawbut Street in Neponset.

Long time Dorchester resident Charles McMurphy was an acquaintance of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, the writers behind Crosby & Hope's 1946 vehicle "Road to Utopia." Mr. McMurphy was a bricklayer by trade but he kept up a correspondence with the two screenwriters. His pen pals encouraged him to try his hand at their craft and the result was this neglected script for "Road to Dorchester." Mr. McMurphy obviously believed in that old writers' adage, "Write what you know."

In the proposed film, Crosby and Hope play two a Codman Square-based swells. Crosby spends his time at the Wonderland dog track while Hope is a hapless operative in Mayor Curley's political machine. Dorothy Lamour is an innocent seamstress in the Dainty Dot hosiery factory in the Leather District who is lured away from an honest life of toil by a chocolate factory owner played by an improbably cast Anthony Quinn. The plot is sketchy as befits a 'Road' movie and the dialogue is a bit leaden. Mr. McMurphy seems better employed laying bricks than cracking jokes. He obviously expected his stars to ad lib and put the polish on his script.

"Road to Dorchester," as any filmography will show, was never made. The pages of the script were locked in Mr. McMurphy's WWII foot locker and stowed in his basement until this year. The house is slated to be converted to condominiums and the new owner was cleaning out the debris that had gathered in odd nooks for the past hundred years. Tucked in with the manuscript is a note from Bob Hope himself. It reads: "Hey Charlie! Mel and Norm showed me your treatment and I think it's just swell. If you can get Bing's character to play the ponies rather than the puppies, I think we make a go of this." Mr. McMurphy seems to have taken this advice to heart since the script has several passages where Wonderland is crossed out with blue pencil and Suffolk Downs is written in over it. Why this film was never shot is unknown.

The property's new owner has hired an agent to shop the prospect around Hollywood. Should it fail to make it to the big screen with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, expect this historical curiosity to be auctioned by Christie's.

The film Mr. McMurphy's friends wrote....

To see them all the Crosby & Hope ouevre...

Where our humble narrator will probably end up...

Smart people live in Dorchester

I was at the Mud House in Neponset this morning and I saw something that made me rework this theme once again. It does bear repeating.....

Smart boys live in Dorchester, Mass. Smart girls do too. They grow up into capable men and women who earn their way in the world. Dorchester is the biggest and best part of the city of Boston. Its common sense is its strength. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes the collected effort of all citizens to make a neighborhood worth living in. Dorchester is like that. Its values are common: Life. Liberty. Happiness. Equality.

All sorts of people live in Dorchester. Some are the type you’d like to share a cup of coffee with. Others are the kind you’d like to avoid. You can learn something from everyone who calls Dorchester home. If home is where the heart is, Dorchester’s pulse is strong. From one end of Dot Ave to the other, from the shores of Dorchester Bay to the furthest edge of Mattapan, a fresh wind blows through Dorchester. It is the kind of breeze that scatters cobwebs and invigorates clear thinking. Dorchester gets by, one day at a time in one way or another, usually in the best way available.

Some people hold Dorchester in low esteem. The good people of Dorchester don’t care a fig for other people’s negative verdicts. The people of Dorchester have their own eyes to judge their surroundings. Dorchester is very good. Even when it’s bad, it’s better than most places. I can’t think of anywhere better. There is room for improvement, but isn’t that always the case? Dorchester has its weaknesses but they are more than outweighed by the neighborhood’s strong points. The people who live here carry more weight than the people who don’t. Local opinion is on record for being Dot-centric. You mean there’s a Boston beyond Dorchester? I’ve read about it, but I really haven’t noticed.

All life’s needs can be met in Dorchester. From Lower Mills to Ashmont, to Neponset, to Norfolk, to Codman, to Bowdoin, to Fields Corner to Savin Hill, to Columbia, to Uphams Corner and to Four Corners, lives are lived contentedly with little fuss. Few feathers are ruffled. The views from Pope’s Hill and Meetinghouse Hill are remarkably clear. Given a problem, the smart people of Dorchester can solve it. They always have before. There is no reason to think they can’t do it again.

Cabo Dorchester

How many Cape Verdeans can fit in neighborhood? If it's Dorchester around Uphams Corner and down Dudley Street, the answer is still up for discussion. It is like asking how many Poles you can fit in a triangle or how many Vietnamese immigrants can stand shoulder to shoulder the length of Dot Ave between Columbia Road and Park Street. How many souls can Dorchester hold? The number is the same as the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin.

Philosophers and city planners wonder at the miracles close living begets in Dorchester, Mass. A dense neighborhood can always benefit from a little more density, a little more diversity, a little more common wealth and a little more elbow-bending, elbow-rubbing, and elbow-grease. What is the tipping point where community becomes calamity? Dorchester hasn't reached its limits yet. There is a critical mass of people of all complexions and backgrounds, but they all get along. Tall fences may make good neighbors but so do busy sidewalks. This is city living.

Cape Verde's influence is felt in Uphams Corner and along Dudley Street. It is also on Hancock Street and Bowdoin Street and along all the short, side streets that knit this neighborhood's infrastructure together. Old Irish households still prevail on dead end byways where Spanish is the tongue most often heard in the breeze off Dorchester Bay. Few complain. Dorchester, a neighborhood of sub-neighborhoods and clans and myriad ethnicities, is made up Dorchesterites, Bostonians all, no matter from what roots they've sprouted. Shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, head to head and nut to butt, the people of Dorchester live close together, work together and co-exist to make this the best part of Boston....Amen. Anyone who disagrees is talking up their shirtsleeve and hasn't been here.

Tomatoes and clams

We hesitate to use the word Clamato in the title since this word is trademarked by the Mott's company, currently a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. Food historians have long stated on the record that clamato, in lower-case, untrademarked, generic parlance, was invented by two Mott's food scientists in 1966 in Hamlin, NY. Yes, this is the same Mott's that makes the wonderful. triple-purified apple juice children love so much.

Local lore doesn't discount that Mott's was the first company to commercially market clamato, but the idea that a mixture of clam juice and tomato juice had to be invented by white-coated eggheads in a corporate laboratory rankles the sensibilities of long standing Dorchesterites. Farragut McWhistler, who has lived in Port Norfolk all his life, and I were discussing this at the Mud House in Neponset the other morning. "My dear, sweet mother used to muddle clams in a mash of tomatoes and put it in my bottle," he said.

He said his mother had gotten the recipe from her mother-in-law, who's maiden name was Everett, and who had inherited this bit of baby-rearing wisdom from that side of the family living at Port Norfolk for generations. "Dorchester Bay little necks make the best broth for a baby," he continued, "I believe I have lived as long as I have because I was weaned from my sweet mother's teat with a nip of the sea by way of the garden." I asked him what he thought of bottled clamato available in the Stop & Shop on Morrisey Boulevard.

"I don't care for it much," he said. "I make my clamato myself, with no extra ingredients, the way my family always has. I know I'm not supposed to go shell fishing in the Bay, the Commonwealth forbids it, but I've got a clam rake and I wake up early before the sun comes up. I'm not bothering anyone and I know most of the fellows in the harbor patrol. We leave each other alone, just wave, ask how things are in general, and no sir, I haven't seen anything illegal going on in the Bay."

Mr. McWhistler cleared his throat. "The way I see it, I've been eating Dorchester clams all my seventy-three years. I don't see a reason to stop now. I don't muddle them with mortar and pestle the way my mother did. I use a food processor and I make my clamato year-round. I can buy store-bought tomatoes any time of year in the supermarket. They aren't as good as the garden variety, but winter leads to lean times and you take what you can get."

I asked Mr. McWhistler if he ever sold his clamato. "No, I don't. It's illegal to go shell fishing for yourself let alone to pawn the clams off on a buyer. I figure I'm not hurting anything but my own robust constitution (he pounded his chest) and the law knows this so they leave me alone. If I sold the clams and somebody got food poisoning, the cops would be all over me in a minute. I like to keep my nose, as well as my arteries and gut, clean."

I asked Mr. McWhistler if I could taste his product. He replied, "Sorry, sonny. That's against the rules. I only make this tonic for myself. It's a shame I can't share it but the rules are the rules. If you want some genuine Dorchester clamato you'll have to make it yourself. Be advised, though, Boston Harbor Management regulations forbid it."

Our coffee finished, I walked Farragut McWhistler to his car parked on Neponset Avenue. "It's too late in the morning to go clamming now. Too many people can see you. If you want to rake up a mess of clams off Tenean or Malibu Beach, the sky has to be pitch. I'm going across Neponset Circle to Ups and Downs and then I'm going home. I always drink my clamato before I go to sleep and then when I wake up in the early hours. It keeps me young, I tell you, but you have to make it yourself to get the full effect."

I don't own a clam rake but Mr. McWhislter's constitution seems to be resilient enough that there may be some truth in his testimony of the rejuvenating powers of Dorchester Bay clam meat, especially when mixed with tomatoes grown in Dorchester soil. As he says, he has been supping on this since he was in the cradle. I have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe I'll just take my vitamins.

The Dotusi

The Widow O'Malley's basement on Chickatawbut Street in Neponset is full of the mingled sounds of house music and boot heels. Her nightclubbing grandchildren and their neighborhood colleagues are intent on choreographing the next dance craze they expect to sweep Boston and then the nation. Who knows? At the 2012 Democratic convention we may be watching the delegates do the Dotusi on broadcast television.

Charlie O'Malley explains: "I was watching a Batman marathon on cable one night and I saw Batman dancing the Batusi. I could relate to Adam West. This is how we dance at block parties around Neponset Circle. The hand gestures and the hip shake...they're pure Dorchester. I thought about how to make it more local and express the spirit of the Dot and I got to thinking that, really, at all the clubs downtown, Dorchesterites are lords and ladies of the dance floor. By combining the Batusi with some Riverdance moves, I think we've come up with something that combines the best elements of Dorchester in a way everyone can get on board and strut their stuff."

He and his friends went through some steps for my benefit. They made their fingers into peace signs and pulled their hands over their eyes. They shook their arms like they were holding a cape. They shook their booties for at least five seconds. The whole time they were high-stepping with their feet rat-a-tat-tat on the Widow O'Malley's cement basement floor.

"Come Spring we're thinking of renting the Party Trolley to introduce this new dance to Boston," Charlie continued. "We'll start here in Neponset and then head inbound tying up traffic all the way with strobe lights, disco balls and fresh moves. We're planning on hitting Felt and Machine and then Utopia in Fenway. We'll probably stop at other places along the way. We want to spread the Dotusi wherever it will take. I think this dance has it all: blue collar, camp, highbrow, Irish, and most importantly...fun."

Kissing Cousins

This morning I accused the Tedeschi mascot of making time with the people over at UFood Grill. I stopped by the Tedeschi in Neponset later in the day to investigate and I stand corrected. The two personalities are not the same, only closely related. It turns out they are cousins.

The resemblance is striking and each is often mistaken for the other in dark alleyways.

I selected a bag of assorted fish that the Tedeschi pixie was peddling. The bag contained one kippered herring, five dried anchovies and a sprinkling of crunchy, freeze-dried, brine shrimp cured in garlic salt. Tedeschi may be an Italian name but it seems the chain is diversifying its snack options to cater to its East Asian clientele.

North-South is obsolete

Dorchester is traditionally divided into North Dorchester and South Dorchester. This may have made sense when the neighborhood added density during the years of streetcar expansion just after annexation. The more populated areas were located closer to Boston proper and the more rural and suburban parts, with the exception of the factory hamlet of Lower Mills, were farther away. Dorchester in the 21st century looks much the same if you cross it on a north-south axis.

From a demographic point-of-view, Dorchester should be split east-to-west, though the demarcations are a bit hazy. Like time zones, the boundaries between East Dorchester and West Dorchester zig zag between each other. Demographically speaking, the neighborhoods closer to Dorchester Bay are a world apart from those further inland. It is a matter of income brackets, ethnicity, and urban culture. I'm not telling any secrets when I say that most of the crime headlines in the daily papers are generated in the western half of Dorchester while most of the heart-warming, human interest stories, such as they happen to appear, are set in the eastern half of this great part of Boston.

Columbia Point, Savin Hill, Neponset Circle, Pope's Hill, and Adams Village are very different from Morton Village, Codman Square, Geneva-Bowdoin and Upham's Corner. But the two opposing poles intermix and intersect. There is a big difference between the areas surrounding Field's Corner and Ashmont Stations, and the one around Shawmut Station which sits between them like a rose between two thorns. Despite the real estate hyperbole about new developments around Peabody Square (Ashmont Station), this neighborhood isn't gentrifying. That said, Ashmont Hill contains some of the most beautiful mansions in Boston. The Kennedys hail from there originally; and Melville Avenue between Codman Sq. and Fields Corner is home to what I think is the most perfect house in all of Boston. That's saying something in a city rich with beautiful domestic architechture, the Back Bay included.

There are other examples in Dorchester of pockets of affluence amid rot just as there are examples of acres of ruins surrounded by tidy , working-class burghers minding their own business and tending their gardens. Dorchester is larger than the imagination, neither wholly black nor white but all the shades of a polyglot palette. Currents cross and mix in Dorchester. It is called the Dot for a reason, but it isn't flat. It is well-rounded but more an orb, a point where gravity coheres a collection of citizens around a common goal: making thier surroundings as livable and good as they can.

Smooth Sounds of the New Dorchester

Top forty and hip-hop have their places in Dorchester. This is a neighborhood of middle-aged, middle class, working folks out to dance like it's 1999. It is also a neighborhood that pulses with the fresh and angry sounds of disaffected, disenfranchised, urban youth. Between these two extremes there is another demographic that is a little more suave, a little more laid back, a little more je ne c'est quoi, if you know what I mean. They're cocktail people.

D Bar caters to these clientele. So does C.F. Donovan's. So does the Blarney Stone and the Ashmont Grill. Other joints have upped their sophistication to lesser degrees but there's a new beat in Dorchester and it's measured in 3:4 time. To be or not to be? I would tell you after last call, but by then I've forgotten the question. There's no such thing as too much lounging. It is good for the soul, if a little soggy on the gray matter.

We were in the Twelve Bens on Adams Street when some joker played Herb Alpert and His Tijuana Brass's classic "A Taste of Honey" on the jukebox. The patrons were a bit riled as this album has never been played in the Twelve Bens and they didn't know what to make of it. There was a vote to pull the juke box's plug and it was done unceremoniously.

A younger guy sitting in the corner stood up and said, "Hold on a minute. If you don't like that, I think you'll like this. It's the same thing, only better." He pulled out his ipod and plugged it into the house stereo. The John King and Dust Bros. remix of "A Taste of Honey" came through the overhead speakers and peace settled over the bar. It wasn't an Irish lullaby but everyone got swept up with the refrain and the back beats. Everyone agreed this is the sound of the new Dot.

This is your father's Herb Alpert:


This is the new, re-whipped cream:

Sin in Neponset

S.I.N. is a bit of graffito that gets scrawled around Neponset Circle and Pope's Hill. Graffiti in this vein usually reads "KEEP OUT," or marks gang turf. Not in this part of Boston though. This is friendly terrain that welcomes visitors. S.I.N. stands for "Stay In Neponset." It's like a welcome mat laid out for all to step on. At big neighborhood gatherings the master-of-ceremonies will offer a traditional toast to everyone gathered, "Let's SIN and enjoy it!" People nudge each other and wink and guffaw.

Some people take the acronym more seriously and actually do sin. Nothing mortal; all the sins committed in Neponset are the venial kind: wedgies, whoopie cushions, white lies...it's a community of cut-ups made up of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

Neponset's best

There is truth in advertising, especially where people talk as straight and honestly as they do around Neponset Circle. Sometimes you can believe what you read (just scroll through these archives). Customers voted the Tedeschi Food Shop on Neponset Avenue the cleanest in Dorchester and that's something to brag about in Boston's tidiest neighborhood.

Dorchester is famous for its store clerks who break out the Brasso and apply more than a dollop of elbow grease. Dorchester has the highest mop consumption in the greater Boston metropolitan area. It's not in just the grocery stores either. From Mattapan to Columbia Point, the clothing outlets, the gas stations, the dollar stores, the Vietnamese gift shops, the bakeries and fish markets, the computer repair offices, the package stores, the tire vendors and mechanics, the used appliance retailers, the restaurants and bars, from the seediest to the most swanky, the jewelers, the antiques dealers, the second hand roses and the chic boutiques; they are all known far and wide as being spic and span.

Dorchester's streets are clean, its gardens are manicured and its stately homes are well maintained. Dorchester is spiffy and tended with an artist's eye toward perfection. Stray leaves don't blow willy-nilly down Dorchester's streets. They are intended to add a bit of autumnal charm. Come winter, roads are plowed and walks are shoveled with the aim of making everything look invitingly wintry. Summer is the season in which Dorchester shows off all its splendor but no matter what the time of year, you will be guaranteed the inside of any shop front will be clean and hygienic.