REMEMBERING

Remembering:

Just the other day I was reminded of what a community is and how one remembers it. 

My father built the house I was born in. It was located in  in Newtonville, a section of Newton and it is close to several other cities namely, Watertown and Waltham. And, as a teen and young adult I lived in Weston located just on the outskirts of Waltham.

So what was so wonderful about Newton you may think. It isn’t like it's a city. But, it is a city, the "City of Newton." But, you of course mean the City of Boston and all its little cities around it.  

Some of the cities around Boston, East Boston, Haverhill, Leominster, Lowell, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham are all immigrant cities.  These cities housed mills where French Canadians came to work long before the Irish or the Italian influx.  The French Canadians came down to work in these mills mostly in the winter after their crops had been harvested. 

How do I know this you wonder? I have done my homework.  I belong to a genealogy society where we have traced our ancestors back to the 1740 and earlier to the Acadians of Annapolis Valley, NS and the original Quebec settlers. We have many documents of these travels and travelers. And, in the genealogy group I met many people from Newton, Waltham, Weston, and we, of course, shared stories about growing up in these towns.

When I grew up in the 40s, 50s and 60s it wasn’t much different than the description given by a classmate.  We had our church festivals, Italian-Irish Catholic, parades three or four times a year, Greek and Armenian Tavernas in Watertown, and holiday parades, Easter, Forth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas, in Waltham.  We had two movie houses close buy, one in Watertown and one in Newton Corner where we went to see the latest films on rainy days. (Continued)