Fishtown Local
There's one sure way to find out if anyone reads your columns in Gloucester.
Throw down the gauntlet to the Fishtown Faithful that 283-0390 is the oldest continuously billed phone number, ringing off the same desk to the same address since phones were installed in the opening decade of the last century.
I had a bunch of whacky responses from people with meandering stories of early hand-me-down numbers, but they were either after the number 0390, or not to the same address.
But Elie Spence had me beat as her aunt, Cyrilla McCinnis, worked for the phone company and handed down 0095 four times in the same house until it reached Elie.
Then Martha Oakes, a historically minded preservationist, advised me that 283-0180 has been ringing in the offices of Cape Pond Ice since phones were first put in, too. Ditto for Montgomery's Boat Yard on Ferry Street at 283-0262, and the same for the lighthouse at Eastern Point, along with Katherine Newell (now her son, Newell Flather) at the foot of Beach Road and at 0065.
But best of all, M.J. Boylan of East Gloucester relayed me this story:
"When I bought the Sibley house, I inherited Peggy's old number, 283-7358.
"I called the phone company to have it switched to my name, and the person on the other end said 'Wait a sec ... this can't be!'
"Me: 'What? What is it?'
"Phone guy: 'You have a party line.'
"Me: 'I do? Who's the other party?'
"Phone guy: 'There isn't one. Mrs. Sibley had had a party line since 1957, and she never gave it up. She just doesn't have to share it with anyone anymore. She's been paying about $4 a month for her service.'
"Me: 'How many party lines are there in Massachusetts?'
"Phone guy: 'One, I'm pretty sure it's you.'
She ended the story with this ducktail:
"When my dad was a kid," she recalled, "his phone number was '1'. My grandfather was president/COB of the telephone company. 'Boppa' had to give that one up eventually when automatic-dial long distance was invented."
Glostafarians will always regale you with colorful responses when prodded. It's part of the character around here. But it's also part of the landscape and I think one affects the other.
The harbor itself is a mirror of our colorful community mindset. Transiting the Inner Harbor is a study in reds and greens and blues, a dash of orange buoys here and a yellow hull there. Reflecting double, resplashing the colors from the wave mixture to your eager eye, the harborside is a painter's palate of color and activity.
Perhaps that's why the waterfront has earned the permanent adoration of painters everywhere. Through the ages, they have come to paint the harbor's life and fleet. Even today, they flock to capture the light, the aquatint and the fascinating reflections of our surrounding frontier with the sea.
I think that color is reflected in the people you meet and their sense of fulfillment and place that makes it certain they will stay to their dying day.
People who leave for more exotic climes always return to Gloucester. They can't stay away. There is something inside them that calls them back. Even from a faraway Hawaiian paradise, they return to the town that is in their bones.
We are a city of color, in our clothes, in our houses, in our language, our restaurants, our arts, our cars, boats, in our outlook. We are not a city of monochromes, of dark clothing or of dark expectations, even with dark forces that hang over our fleet and our finances.
When you stand and view the rocks that surround our Gloucester shores, it occurs that the color of these rocks is akin to the color of our all-too-human flesh. The ring of rose granite that leads down the western Magnolia shore from its Down East foundations is but a reflection of the human color that has kept its watch here in Gloucester.
We are but where we live, a colorful and expressive people, who will always step up and give you the what-for, the how-to and the why-not from telephone stories to charter schools. So if you need a wake-up call to the colors around you, just amble down to the waterside for a quick pick-me-up. I assure you, the trip will be well worth it.
Now excuse me, my phone is ringing — and in living color.
Gloucester resident Gordon Baird is co-founder of Billboard's Musician Magazine and producer of the "Gloucester Chicken Shack" TV show.
