Memoir

North Fairhaven Girl

I get nostalgic for my hometown of Fairhaven, Mass., when I read Chris Richards’ posts on Substack in his series Long Ago & Close By. Fairhaven is located in Buzzards Bay and across the Acushnet River from New Bedford. It has a rich history, including the first man to sail solo around the world, whaling, the first Japanese person to live in the U.S., generous gifts by a local who got rich from oil, and much more.

But I am writing about North Fairhaven where I grew up, and to be specific, Jesse Street, a modestly sized road that links Main Street with Alden Road. Like this part of town, Jesse Street was a bit of a melting pot with Polish, French Canadian, and Portuguese families, many of them immigrants like my grandparents — and mostly, Catholic. My neighbors’ last names were Potkay, Bissonette, Tenczar, Lyonaise, Fauteux, Beaumont, Correia, and Silveira.

None still live there, but I remember which houses used to be theirs. There were five older ones, all with front porches. During my childhood and afterward, homes, mostly affordable ranches, were constructed in the spaces between them, including the land my grandfather once farmed. Their yards were always well-kept.

But let me back up. My family’s name is Medeiros. My grandparents, Manuel and Maria Medeiros, emigrated from the Azores Islands in the early part of the 20th century, part of the large influx from those islands and Madeira to the New Bedford area. Their land, which extended to Main Street, was large enough to have barns filled with chickens, grapevines, and fields to grow corn and other vegetables, strawberries, and gladiolas my grandfather sold in his farmstand.

They had many children, including my father, Antone. I lived with them for the first few years of my life before my parents built their own home on a piece of my grandparents’ land. An aunt did the same next door.

My dad told us he paid a kid who went to the local vocational school $20 a week to help him build the house. My mother, Algerina was proud she laid the floors herself. That’s Mom holding onto me while I stand on a stack of lumber. The cinderblocks they used for the cellar are in a pile.

Over the years, they made improvements like finishing the attic and building stone walls on two borders. Like his father, my father kept a large garden. Here they raised their family of three daughters and one son.

(My father, known locally as “Hawk,” was heavily involved in local sports. My mother was always on the sidelines. They were involved in town events and performed in St. Mary’s benefit shows.)

Dad holds me when I was a baby in front of my grandparents’ home on Jesse Street. The land to right is where he and his sister built homes.

I loved visiting my grandmother, who always seemed to have a rosary in one hand. After school, she served me tea with milk and lots of sugar. Sometimes my aunts sewed clothes for my dolls. Dad’s siblings and their families gathered on weekends. The cousins played in the backyard and under the grape vine’s trellis.

The grounds for the Our Lady of Angels Feast, which is held on Labor Day weekend, is located at the bottom of Jesse Street. On the third day, a hand-carved statue of Mary — brought to this country by immigrants from the Azores who were grateful they had made it here safely — is carried in a parade along Main Street by a team of men. My father did it, and now, my brother, Tony does. The statue is kept at St. Mary’s Church, located opposite the end of Jesse Street. I look forward to a post by Chris about the transformation of that church’s building, which was initially a basement.

The feast grounds were lit up with lights strung on long wooden poles, painted blue and white that were installed weeks before. I recall standing in line at the feast to buy malassadas, a fry bread rolled in sugar. A group of women, mostly dressed in black, kept guard as the dough rose in a vat. We kids attended the auction because there was the chance someone would win the bid for a large sweet bread and announce, “Cut it up for the children.” The feast had band music and games of chance. My father worked in the beer stand, and at night, we kids sat on the cases in the back. When we were older, my sister and I volunteered in the concession stand.

Then there was the Holy Ghost Feast, where people were treated to free sopa or soup in the hall’s basement. The best part was the chunks of bread you could dip in the broth.

The rest of the time, Jesse Street was a quiet spot. In the warmer months, we rode our bikes. My sisters and I played whiffleball in the yard — a ball hit over the fence was an out — and other games like croquet, jump rope, and hop scotch. We ate pears and butternuts from trees on the street.

In the winter, we slid on the snowy surface of Jesse Street, which had enough of a hill to make it a decent ride. My father stretched out on his belly on the sled and we kids would do the same in a stack on top of him. Our names were painted on its wooden slats. I smile thinking of that.

Here’s one memory: a neighbor across the street used to play drums in a strip club. When I was a teenager, I recall walking home to hear him practice with a recording of that oh-so-familiar ‘ti-da-da-da, ti-da-da-da” through the open windows of his house. It was a bit embarrassing.

I remember wishing as a child my family would move to the southern part of town, where the houses and buildings are grander. But, of course, that didn’t happen. That’s okay. Jesse Street was a good place for this girl to grow up.

A final note: I want to thank all the new subscribers who have come via Chris Richards’ recommendation. I post about a variety of topics, including my experiences and the books I write.

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Hilltown Postcards

Hilltown Postcard: Following the Plow

When I worked as an editor for a daily newspaper in Western Mass., I drove a good country road, Route 143, from the small hilltown where we lived through two others to a valley city. Most of the year, it was a pleasant 45-minute commute with long views, deep forests, occasional wildlife, and very few vehicles. A traffic jam typically involved three cars stuck behind a logging truck on one of the route’s steep hills.

But then, there was winter.

I dreaded November. Rain that month meant black ice. And that was just the start of a long season of digging ourselves out of deep snow. I constantly kept tabs on the weather.

Prior to working as an editor for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I was its correspondent for the town of Worthington where we lived, being paid by the inch, and after several years, I was on staff covering two more hilltowns — Chesterfield and Cummington — plus regional news. Today, so many people work remotely, but Jim Foudy, who was the editor-in-chief then, said it didn’t make sense for me to cover those towns in the newsroom. I called a corner of our bedroom, where I kept my desk, the Hilltown Bureau.

I was frequently put in charge of any bad weather coverage. Typically, I would call a few of the highway superintendents for an update on road conditions and how their crews were handling them. Here’s a memorable example: during one ice storm, the highway trucks had to be driven backwards to spread sand on the road to give their wheels traction, and sometimes, the conditions were so dangerous, they were called back to the garage.

The highway supers didn’t mind taking a break to chat with a reporter. Sometimes I felt they were expecting me to call. I also called people who might have driven in the storm or worked outside or had an interesting perspective. Of course, Donald Ives, who kept daily weather records in Worthington for decades, was on my list.

But that changed when I became an editor, and I assigned those stories to reporters. Also, I had to commute to Northampton.

I left for the newsroom at 6:10 in the morning. I knew by then the plow trucks were out on the roads. I had faith when I reached the town line, the Chesterfield crew had taken care of a steep hill my car would climb. I kept going until I reached the Williamsburg aka Burgy line. Here was another hill, this time down to Route 9, a state highway that took me to Northampton. As I approached each town line, I asked myself “Did they make it? Did they make it?” It was extremely rare they didn’t.

When freezing rain or snow fell, the highway crews hit the steep hills first so they wouldn’t lose them. That included the one in front our house in Worthington. When I saw a truck’s strobing yellow lights move down that slope I knew for sure a storm had arrived.

One time, the police were on top of Burgy Hill telling people to take it slow since the road was icy. But as I did just that, the town’s highway truck was spreading salted sand on its way up.

Lucky for me and other drivers, those little towns spend a good chunk of their money roads. And the men who maintained the roads — yes, there were no women — took their jobs seriously. In Worthington, three men took care of 57 miles of roads in the winter.

The worst snow storms of the season were the first and last. During the first, it seemed people forgot how to drive on snowy roads. On the last, everybody, including the highway crews, was sick of snow.

Often I met the plow and gratefully followed it uphill all the way to the next town. Or its driver deservedly got a wave and toot of my Subaru’s horn when we passed in the opposite direction. At the end of winter, I sent a thank you card to the highway department in the three towns.

Sometimes we got hit with a storm when I was at work and my boss let me leave early. I recall one April 1 watching serious snow falling outside the newsroom’s windows. It was obvious this wasn’t going to be the flurries that had been forecast. In fact, it was such a fast-falling wet snow that when I turned left on Route 143, a tractor trailer was jackknifed on the road. But my all-wheel-drive Subaru managed to get around it.

After depending on these crews for so many years, I also got to know their work habits. For instance, I learned I shouldn’t drive home at noon. No matter the weather the guys took their lunch break then. If I waited until 1, they were back on the roads.

The crews also inspired characters in my Isabel Long Mystery Series, including one guy, Cary Moore, who worked on a town’s highway department and wrote poetry good enough for a famous poet to steal. That was in Checking the Traps.And in case you’re wondering, that character is not based on anyone real.

Here’s a poem Cary — well, I, actually — wrote about his highway super called The Peerless Plowman:

Night and day the Peerless Plowman sees the road ahead.

He drives alone

Pushing snow aside with his truck’s long blade.

No harm will come to those who follow.

The Peerless Plowman watches the weather.

Hey, guys, a storm front’s moving in, he tells us,

Get the trucks ready before it does.

We can’t let the people down.

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Christmas

Ho Ho Ho

It started the day after Thanksgiving when my father would answer the phone with “Ho, ho, ho.” Up to that holiday, it was “Gobble, gobble, gobble.” As you can see my father got into the spirit of things.

My father Antone Medeiros, known in my hometown of Fairhaven, Massachusetts as “Hawk,” has been gone nine years now. But his spirit, his joy for the simple celebrations of life continue.

I can see him wearing his homemade holiday vest, and even a Santa hat, well, when he wasn’t wearing one of those cowboy hats he was known for.

Dad didn’t grow up with much. His parents, immigrants from the Azores, had a large family. They had chickens and large fields to grow vegetables my grandfather sold in a farmstand on the edge of their property. There were children who didn’t make it to adulthood after falling ill.

Unlike his father, mine never drank. I recall him telling me how he had to walk to the corner bar to fetch my grandfather, loading him onto a sled, and dragging him home in the snow. 

But Dad enjoyed being the center of attention, telling jokes and singing. In that photo above, my father did a belly flop in the snow as my mother took his photo. That’s my sister Christine on the left and me on the right. (He did that in pools, also.)

I honestly feel Dad could have been a movie star or a comedian, but he wasn’t an ambitious person. He supported his family — I have three siblings — as an autobody repairman, or tin knocker as it was called then.

Later, when St. Mary’s Church had an annual variety show for many years, he had an outlet for that kind of showmanship. My mother was there on stage with him, and later, my brother. Mom made him outrageous costumes, including for Halloween and town events.

Whenever Dad went somewhere and left our mother and us to wait in the car, we knew he wouldn’t be back any time soon because he would end up gabbing with people he knew. “Oh, he’s coming,” one of us would say as we watched the large window at Trippy’s Variety in North Fairhaven. “Oh, no, he’s not.”

For a few years, during the holidays, my parents along with their friends showed up late at people’s homes to sing, including one song in Portuguese, at their door, and they would be let in to schmooze. (My younger sister and I came along when we were little.) And I knew my Dad pretended to be Santa for holiday parties for kids in need.

Dad was a coach for youth sports in Fairhaven for many years: football, softball, basketball. He used to give the players on the peewee football team name funny nicknames like “Crazy Legs.” Many of his former players came to his wake. As they went through the receiving line, I asked each one what my father called him. They smiled and told me.

Perhaps, if you knew my father, you have a memory to share as well.

So, now, that it is Christmastime, I think of how much he enjoyed this time of year. It wasn’t about presents. It was about making other people feel good, making them laugh. Thank you, Dad. I haven’t forgotten.

And for those who do celebrate Christmas, ho, ho, ho.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Listening to My Mistakes

When I was a kid, reading aloud meant an adult with a good voice repeated the words of a book to me, sometimes with voices to make it interesting. I did the same for my own. But as a writer, the term reading aloud has a different meaning. It’s how I listen to the mistakes I made in the book I wrote.

I reserve the Read Aloud function of Word for the last round of edits of the books I write. That’s what I did recently for Finding the Source, the eighth in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. I want it to be as clean as I can possible before I submit it to my publisher Bloodhound Books. And that’s where Samantha, one of the voice options available for Read Aloud, helped me out.

Read Aloud offers a variety of voices but I chose her since the book is a first-person narrative by a woman. Plus, hers was the least weird to me. (When I had an earlier version of Word, the narrator was a man I called Frank.)

Here she is reading the novel’s opening words.

Samantha’s voice has zero emotion and some of her pronunciations are a bit odd. But she’s been so useful bringing to my attention missing words, typos, repeated words, and parts of sentences that just don’t cut it. Frankly, Samantha helped me find a lot of them. 

I had gone over this novel many times, half-way through, and then when I reached ta-da the end. But as I did with other books, I’ve found it so effective to hear Finding the Source being read by somebody else, and that’s where Samantha helps out. I follow along, reading the words on my computer screen as she says them. I interrupt her to make any changes.

Yes, I tried reading my books aloud myself but Samantha does a much better job.

It is a time-consuming process. Finding the Source is almost 76,000 words, so I spread the task over four days to keep things fresh. Of course, another set of eyes and a fresh mind will likely find more. That’s what real editors are for. But right now, I am pleased with the work Samantha did.

And, yes, I did use Read Aloud for the first three books in my Isabel Long Mystery Series, recently republished by Bloodhound Books: to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: This is a scene from the village where I live. Certainly, one of the most unusual ways to fix that problem.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Transferable Skills

Isabel Long, the protagonist of my mystery series, was a long-time journalist before she became a private investigator. So was I, but I don’t plan to become a P.I. Instead, I will continue writing about one.

The series is set in the small, rural hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, where I got my start in the newspaper biz. I was hired as a correspondent — paid by the inch — to cover the hilltown where I lived, Worthington, population 1,200, for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. I had no previous experience, except for reading neswpapers, but that didn’t seem to matter to the editor who hired me.

That experience grew into a 35-year career working for newspapers. including as editor-in-chief for The Taos News in Taos, New Mexico — an immensely interesting experience. My most recent gig was an editor-in-chief overseeing three daily newspapers in Western Mass. — Greenfield Recorder, Daily Hampshire Gazette and Athol Daily News.

But back to the start, I reported first on Worthington as I learned the ropes and eventually covered several towns, plus did regional stories. I loved breaking a news story and getting to know what people did. I went to town meetings and reported what interested the community from truck pulls to school events to country fairs. I covered fires and what little crime there was. I did profiles. A few of my stories went national. I even went to the White House.

One of the greatest benefits was listening to the way people talked and writing it down. I believe it has paid off with realistic dialogue in my fiction.

It also gave me insight into how people behave, and certainly I had a total immersion into the hilltowns of Western Mass., which I use as a setting for much of my fiction.

And as an aside, working as reporter broke a 25-year writer’s block.

Back to Isabel, who also covered the hilltowns of Western Mass. until, like me, she moved up to being the top editor. She lost her job managing a newspaper when it went corporate. (To set the record straight, that didn’t happen to me.) In Chasing the Case, no. 1 in the series, Isabel decides to revisit her first big story as a rookie reporter — when a woman went missing 28 years earlier from the fictional town of Conwell.

She relies on the skills she used as a journalist for that case and the ones after. The first three in the series were recently re-released by Bloodhound Books: Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

By the way, since Isabel snagged a bunch of cold case files from her newspaper, it was an opportunity for me to write news stories again — although for made-up subjects. Here’s the start of one with the headline: Conwell woman missing.

CONWELL — Police are investigating the disappearance of Adela Snow Collins, 38, a Conwell native, who was reported missing Tuesday, Sept. 15 by her family when she failed to show up for work at the town’s only store.

State Police, who were called to assist the Conwell Police Department, issued a statement they are treating her disappearance as a missing persons case and at this time, do not suspect any criminal activity.

Her father, Andrew Snow, said in an interview he became concerned when Collins wasn’t on time because she was always prompt even during bad weather. “She only lives three hundred yards from the store,” he said.

Snow said he walked to his daughter’s house on Booker Road when she didn’t answer the telephone despite calling several times. He said he thought maybe she was ill although she seemed fine the day before.

But Snow said he couldn’t find his daughter or her car in the garage. Her purse was on the kitchen table and her dog was inside the house.

“That’s when I called the police,” Snow said. “This isn’t like my daughter at all. The last time I saw her, I was locking up the store. She always tells us where she’s going especially if she’s leaving town, and she didn’t say anything. We’re all so worried for her. Please, if anyone knows anything, call the State Police.”

Customers at the Conwell General Store also expressed concern for Collins, who has worked in the family’s business since she was a teenager. She grew up in Conwell and attended local schools. She has one son, Dale, 10, who was staying overnight at his grandparents’ house, according to police.

“You couldn’t ask for a sweeter person,” said Thomas MacIntyre, who works on the town’s highway crew. “We‘ve known each other since we were kids. I hope she’s okay.”

Franny Goodwin, who was Collins’s first-grade teacher, says she can’t recall anything like the woman’s disappearance happening in the small town.

“We only have a thousand people living here,” she said. “How can a woman just up and disappear? You tell me.”

State Police say anyone who may have information about Collins should call the barracks in Vincent.

So what skills would Isabel find transferable? Certainly, breaking down the elements of a story and figuring who to contact. Good interview skills are a must. Developing a network of sources for tips is another. And she’s got to be good kind of nosy.

And there are times when a journalist has to be a bit brave. For Isabel, that means talking with somebody who has something to hide — like maybe murdering another person. By the way, she’s really good at that.

IMAGE ABOVE: That’s my first press pass. By the way, I only had to use it twice to prove I was a journalist: at the White House and Cummington Fair.

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