Rememberances of David Mittell of his time at the Agassiz School.
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The coal was in the cellar, a barrel of flour in the pantry, preserves and piccalilli stored away, plenty of beans for baking, a good supply of winter vegetables and you were all set for the winter. Then one morning you would be awakened by the joyous sound of bells. To children this meant one thing - IT SNOWED!
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My name is Frank Norton and I was born in Jamaica Plain on May 7, 1943. We lived on the second floor of a three decker at the corner of 51 Custer Street and Goldsmith Street.
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The streetcar tracks were still there, winding down from Dudley Station, following Roxbury Street to Columbus Avenue and under what we called “The Bridge,” the dividing line between Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. The railroad bridge carried the old coal-burning steam trains over Centre Street and along Lamartine Street out to New York or some faraway place that a pre-teen couldn’t comprehend.
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Jamaica Plain really hadn’t changed much from the 1880s until after the Korean War in the 1950s. Times weren’t stable for those seventy-some-odd years.
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Curtis Hall was still there; we used to go swimming in the pool in the basement. We called it “the tank.” No bathing suit for the guys, but the girls wore city-issued one-piece suits.
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In the section of Jamaica Plain on the Roxbury line bounded by the train tracks and Centre, Heath and Bickford Streets, lived some of my friends that had fathers and uncles that were a little left of center with the law.
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Back in the 1940s, the city and the schools kept us kids pretty occupied during school vacation. While the parents were planting Victory Gardens such as the big one on the Jamaicaway at Daisy Field, the city provided small plots for kids, and supplied the seeds, tools, and the teachers to show us how to grow vegetables. They had about an acre of land on Paul Gore Street for us to plant. Everything we grew we took home.
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