Some drink champagne

Some drink champagne and some die of thirst. Better bubbles down your gullet than gall.

There is nothing wrong with monomania as long as it brings you joy. While I have not always been delighted by Boston, especially in winter and during prolonged rainy, summer weeks when the temperatures hover in the sixties instead of the more summery 80+plus degrees Fahrenheit, I am quite content to live in Dorchester. The details that unfold as I pass along the now familiar streets day after day continue to pique and satisfy my curiosity. I am glad to be neighbors with the people with whom I gratefully share this neighborhood, full of foibles and friendliness and honesty and hokum on all our parts. I've never had a bad day in Dorchester, though I've had my share of disappointments within the rest of Boston's city limits.

I haven't seen a lot of champagne bottles uncorked in the Dot. I've seen more pint glasses of Bud Light being hoisted in toasts and then drained. Better bubbles down your gullet than gall. I've seen some bitterness, but a swallowful of beer makes the medicine go down and all in all, life seems to be good for the people who spend theirs in Dorchester. Complaints? I've heard a few and they are enough to mention, but now is not the time. Coming home to Dorchester after the rat race through a dog-eat-dog day downtown doesn't put one in the mind for complaining. It is time to relax. Out of Dorchester endlessly rocking on the shores of Dorchester Bay, the surf laps the shore with a sussuruss that hushes frayed nerves and the Bay's breeze is a rum that is balm for an aching head.

Not every sourpuss will turn his or her frown upside down, but it's easier to do so in Dorchester. It's why people move here. It's why people stay. It's why I've stayed I don't regret it a lick. DBC is what they say around here: Dorchester By Choice. Some natives think that by birth is better. I can't really comment on that but I am glad I settled here.

Hope for the best, expect the worst. That worst hasn't come to Dorchester yet. I don't see any signs it will.

A tip of the fedora to Mel Brooks, James Lileks, Mary Poppins, Sinatra and Walt Whitman for providing all the phrases I've recalled and appropriated to write this essay.

History of the Dottoman Empire (part VI)

The Icelandic Dotland Saga (c. 1245) tells the story of Bjarni Blood-Axe Sturlnorlasson and his troop of intrepid adventurers who ventured to meet Leif Erikson in Vinland but were blown off course to a place Bjarni Blood-Axe called Dotland. They seem to have landed where the English did a few centuries later, at Savin Hill, which has always been a nice place for newcomers.

Bjarni and his band encountered some of the locals, whom they called skrylings rather than Massachusett and, hungry for fresh meat, they engaged in a little trading. They traded deer haunches for blocks of good Greenlandic cheese they had picked up en route. The Native Americans, being strangers to cows and dairy products, were lactose intolerant. They took their cheeses back to the village and feasted on this new food and woke up the next morning with aching bellies and other, unpleasant digestive symptoms.

After sharpening up their arrowheads and stocking their quivers they made their way to Malibu Beach where Bjarni had beached his long boat (named "Wave-biter" by the way) and drove the vikings from the shores of Dorchester. They were the only Europeans to visit Dorchester until the good ship Mary and John arrived a few centuries later, in 1630 on this very same shore.

What proof do we have that the Dotland Saga contains even a smidgeon of truth? In 1888 a shiny Icelandic dime was recovered from where it was wedged between some puddingstone boulders on Savin Hill. It is another crypto-artifact along the lines of the Dorchester Pot that can only be explained by having been put there by these travellers from a dimly remembered past.

The Dot's got your goat

A dead goat washed up on the shore of Savin Hill Beach and nobody noticed except a few beach combers and dog walkers. Savin Hill Beach, which isn't much more than a sandy boat launch off to the side of the northbound lanes of Morrissey Boulevard, doesn't attract a lot sunbathers or tourist traffic. Manicured and well maintained Malibu Beach on the opposite side of Morrissey's breakdown lanes, is another matter altogether.

Malibu Beach is connected to Dorchester Bay, and Savin Hill Beach, by a narrow inlet that lets yachts into the Dorchester Yacht Club through a drawbridge that is the bane of commuters. The bridge opens infrequently, but when it does, traffic backs up to Andrew Square to the north and Adams Street Village to the south while sporting types navigate their vessels through the narrow channel. The bridge is an arched one and only the area under the middle span has been dredged deeply enough to accommodate the draught of seagoing vessels. The spaces under the other, adjacent arches have silted in and at low tide you can walk from Malibu Beach to Savin Hill Beach without getting your feet wet if you ignore the signs telling you not to attempt it.

The dead goat, which had a brown and white spotted coat, horns about three inches long, and a lolling tongue swollen by being submerged in seawater for a long time, had landed on Savin Hill Beach close to the bridge. When the tide came in, it rushed under the bridge that connects one side of Morrisey Boulevard to the other and it carried the corpse along with it. A dead goat floated into Malibu Bay and eventually made its way to the opposite shore.

There is a ball field, a boardwalk and a playground at Malibu Beach. To reach there from points inland, you take Playstead Street. The beach and its surrounding parkland is a popular place for families to gather. Those families, naturally, contain children of various ages.

I was sitting on a bench along the boardwalk next to the bubbler that hits everyone who tries to drink from it in the crotch when I heard a tyke yell out, "A goat is swimming!" I looked up and it didn't appear that the goat was even trying to master a dog paddle. These were lackadasiacal strokes. This was a dead goat's float. A group of teenagers gathered on shore and started chanting, "Dead goat...dead goat..." and they pelted it with pebbles and dead periwinkles. It was a gloomy day to begin with but this wasn't the cheerless scene I expected when I decided to relax at Malibu Beach for the afternoon.

A man walking his schnauzer passed me and looked in the water's direction. "Yeah," he said to no one in particular, "That's the dead goat that was on the other side of Morrissey this morning." How long had this goat been drifting along the tides? Where did it come from? It's not every day a dead goat lands in Dorchester, Mass.

Police cars and firetrucks arrived, sirens blaring to clear the way to reach this emergency, and the body was bagged and tagged and hauled off to whatever animal mortuary Boston maintains for situations such as these. Once the commotion had died down, a little girl said, "That goat didn't look very happy. I wonder what his name was."

A teenager within earshot offered, "His name was Billy." I'm not so sure the goat was a he. She may have been named Nanny. I guess no one will know until the coroner makes a positive ID.

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.

Mothers' Rest

Is there any more poetically named park in all of Boston than Mothers' Rest? Located on Washington Street just north of Codman Square, a wrought iron archway frames the park's entrance with these promising words: "Mothers' Rest." How many mothers have parked their strollers a few moments while resting their calves and taking in the refreshing view?

No matter how tall the trees get, the view remains unobstructed. Dorchester Bay stretches out to the far horizon where ships disappear. The Corita gas tank displays its rainbow, the wind turbine on Freeport Street revolves at its regular, relaxed rhythm, the neighborhoods of Neponset Circle, Field's Corner and Savin Hill stretch out in all their tangled, peaceful jumble. Everything is quiet on top of the hill at Mothers' Rest.

There are benches, tables, a jungle gym, monkey bars, a slide, a few swings. There is everything a mother and tyke could want to pause on the trek homeways or store-ways to reinvigorate themselves for the march in either direction. It is one of those little niceties that make Dorchester so livable.

Plenty is Pretty

Never trust a newspaper to describe your surroundings. I have read the headlines about the strife and knife fights and gunfire that is supposedly ripping Dorchester apart. I live in Dorchester and it is not the war zone I read about. I have been all over the terrain and I have met friendly people minding their own business wherever I have gone. If a little rough around the core, this is no rotten apple.

I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I would rather go swimming at Malibu Beach or Tenean Beach. I stand at the summit of Meetinghouse Hill and survey the surroundings. Everything looks fine from where I stand.

I live in the Fourth Haven neighborhood, an oasis bounded by Upham’s Corner and Dorchester Bay east to west, and Columbia Road-Savin Hill Avenue north to south. This is a condensed, colorful microcosm of society, full of Vietnamese, Irish, Yankee, a little Polska, a little Italia, a little mandarin, a little West European right off the airplane and a little East Indian by way of Brooklyn. I’m from Connecticut, myself. I arrived on a motorcycle on I-95 during an August thunderstorm.

I live in neither a bubble nor a glass house. I live amongst my neighbors in a hurly-burly, jumbled borough chockablock with a polyglot griot of dialects, accents, pidgin and signs. Any stories about sorties that will make your hair stand on end are set in the past. Most of what happens nowadays is as humdrum and homely as a fresh loaf of bread. Hope springs eternal where people come together to make a good life. Dorchester is a place like that. It seems more than pretty good to me.

Dorchester is built on a solid foundation of Roxbury puddingstone. If this seems an oxymoron, remember, Dorchester is the biggest, most diverse part of Boston. Never trust a zip code to define your destination. A citizen of Dorchester is a citizen of the world, an inhabitant of one the greatest cities on the globe, spending time occupying one of the seats of civilization. When Boston boils over, the froth flows into Dorchester, lifting all boats in the process. In a game of musical chairs, the one left standing can be the winner. That person gets to go pursue his or her own passion.

All is well between Mattapan and Lower Mills and Andrew Square, through Upham’s Corner and South Bay to Newmarket, to Morton Street, in Codman Square, on Meetinghouse Hill, on Savin Hill, on Columbia Point, around Neponset Circle, in Adams Village and Ashmont and Peabody Square and Field’s Corner, along Norfolk Street and the whole length of Dot Ave itself.

Plenty is pretty in Dorchester, Mass., the best part of Boston. The streetscapes are picturesque and the plentiful people promenade at play with nary a care to spoil their toil. If building a community is work, many hands make it light as a feather in the breeze. Everyone and sundry contribute their airs to the pleasant perfume that blows off Dorchester Bay and ruffles the ripples of the placid Neponset. Ply the tides of Dorchester’s traffic long enough and you will walk with a spring in your step even in winter. You will smile that contented smile that everyone wears when they put their I on the Dot.