December 24, 2024 • 41 mins
Morgan White Fills in on NightSide with Dan Rea:
Continued conversation with noted local historian and author Anthony Sammarco about the iconic Christmas Tree Shops that featured unique gifts and housewares for decades. As its owners Chuck and Doreen Bilezikian once said, “Together we grew a successful company and created many memories.”
Ask Alexa to play WBZ NewsRadio on #iHeartRadio and listen to NightSide with Dan Rea Weeknights From 8PM-12AM!
Continued conversation with noted local historian and author Anthony Sammarco about the iconic Christmas Tree Shops that featured unique gifts and housewares for decades. As its owners Chuck and Doreen Bilezikian once said, “Together we grew a successful company and created many memories.”
Ask Alexa to play WBZ NewsRadio on #iHeartRadio and listen to NightSide with Dan Rea Weeknights From 8PM-12AM!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's night Side with Ray. I'm w BZY, Boston's new radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Our number two of Nightside. I'll be here all the
rest of this week, Christmas, then Thursday and then Friday,
and next Monday and Tuesday again. My name Morgan White Junior.
My guest last hour in this hour Anthony San Marco
and are you ready for another phone called Anthony. Yeah,
(00:31):
let's go to West Roxbury and speak to Sandy, a
woman I know quite well. Welcome to night Side and
happy holidays.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Thank you the very same to both of you. Hi,
how are you good?
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Thank you good?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah. A couple of things I heard you mentioned. I
think you mentioned Anthony Matt Neddie from Nate commercial. Yeah, yeah,
did you know him lived in West Roxbury?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I did.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
He actually worked with one of my grandnephews who actually
was a court bailiff at the debt of courthouse and
he was somebody in a lot of ways. That was
just his name. I mean, people really didn't know him
as a person. They knew the name and the boy
running through the commercial, which I have to tell you
(01:23):
was fifty years ago, but.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
The whole thing was.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, he unfortunately died of a heart attack and it
was sorry, sad. But then a friend of mine, Bob Allison,
who teaches history at Suffolk, actually had his son as
actually a student, so it was really quite an interesting thing.
But no, I'm doing the.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Book on Prince Smarl about him, and I got so
many responses that I had readen really and everybody just
loved him. They said he was so sweet and so nice.
He would do anything for anybody, constantly did benefits, you know,
because people didn't well he actually had the same face
(02:04):
because he was much older. But everybody just you know,
hugs that commercial, you know, to themselves.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, it was so iconic it is.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
He doesn't say a word in the commercial. All he
does is run and can't. At the end of the thing.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
I think I would advanced on halfway through it, Paul
carries the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Paul carries that the North End location, then did another
location up Route one. I like the tagline because they
had Anthony in their commercial, and mister Bolcari turned to Anthony,
who's now in his teens, say Anthony, where were you
on Wednesday? And that was obviously the private get well.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
It also it hinged on this whole aspect of what
became Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day. And you know the
Pellegrinos who bought Prince Macaroni Company in nineteen forty one
from the original founders of nineteen twelve was somebody who
was not just a marketeer. His father in law had
(03:13):
had Roman Macaroni Company in New York had been destroyed
by fire, so he came to work at Prince. But
the whole thing is within two years he owned controlling
chairs and it was he who created that adage Wednesday
is Prince Spaghetti Day. And I don't think anyone on
the face of the earth, if they came from Boston,
(03:36):
hadn't heard that. And even though my mother was an Italian,
every Wednesday we had spaghetti and I loved it, I
thought in a lot of ways. But even to this day,
in the since then, this book on Prince Spaghetti is
going to be something like Christmas Tree Shops, Jordan marsh Sspears,
(03:56):
Howard Johnson, Spaker's Chocolate, something that as Yeah, and it's
important to realize that these things no longer really exist
as just Boston something survived. But you know, this is
a lot of fun about it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And this will be pardon me, this is going to
be Anthony's ninetieth book. I can imagine, right, I can't.
I've done a handful of trivia books, but good grief,
to write ninety books that would take me until my
(04:35):
two hundred and eightieth birthday.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Oh, it will.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Stuff so well that it just kind of pours out
of them.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I think, well, let's put it this way. I sit
at my desk, I write, the next morning, I edit.
But the funny thing is I write the way I speak,
so it's not too different. But I also write in
a way that I hope Bo engaged people in historical law,
(05:05):
because I think sometimes the way history is top is
something that will make people read it throughout their lives.
And I've had a lot of people true.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I mean, I hated history because I thought they in
real life, they were all statues who did heroic things.
And then you come to find out the human beings.
And that's when I began.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And you know what, Sandy and Anthemy, may I tell
you something. This has nothing to do with Christmas and
the subject matter that we are are in right now.
Two weeks ago my son said to me, and he
is the proud father of two children.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
They just have a bad grandfather.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well, thank you. And they just had a baby in September,
and a few years ago they adopted a child. So
my son said to me, Dad, you've had such an
interesting life, you should write your biography.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Oh, yeah, would be wonderful.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I played it off, but he said for only two reasons,
your grandsons, and that struck me.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Well, it's funny you say that, because, yeah, there are
a lot of people that have written these things that today,
fifty or one hundred years later are invaluable because it's
like a place of a time that it tells the
story not just of the person, but of Boston when
they were young.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And a wonderful when people do that.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
My history in Boston would be good grief at least
sixty to seventy percent of whatever I write. And I
am going to do it. I promised him I would.
So now I've written five books. There are all trivia books,
and I could just say, if they want to know
(07:02):
about me, they could read the trivia books. And he said, no,
that's not the story of your life. And I had
to I had to agree with him.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I could kick myself. When my grandparents were alive, I
didn't talk to them. I didn't, I mean about anything important,
you know, I was all wrapped up in myself, which
I think kids are. And you know, you write it
and they probably won't appreciate it until they're much older
than real life. Not only how wonderful you are and
what you gave, but what Boston was like, and they
(07:34):
missed all that.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I will, We'll do it. I will do it for them,
for my grandson James, my grandsident.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
We all want to read it, Okay, Well.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
You'll get work from the library, I would hope.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
So a lot of it's all your house.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Hard too.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
I think in a lot of ways, I've I've thought
of and I've toyed with the idea of doing my autobiography,
and I've actually come up with different chapters. But I
don't think anybody would ever realize some of the stuff
that's going on in my life.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well I.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Read it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Well, I think in a lot of.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Ways, you know, I I think it's a fun thing
to do, and everybody should do this. It's not just
people that normally write for you know, enjoyment and you know,
preserving history, but everyone should really write for their family
and the stories about the life I liked them, Sandy.
I sat down with my grandparents and you know, I
(08:40):
listened to them and I created a family tree on
the Italian side, and it was such fun. And I
still have my notes to this day.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So I gotta let you go, Sandy, because I'm in
a break.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
But thank you, Okay, thank you, and happy holidays to you.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
All right now for the people on hold, Jerry you'll
be next, then Gary. And there's an open line. Sandy
was on it. It's all yours for the taking. This
is Nightside. I am Morgan filling in for Dan. The
time and temperature here is nine fifteen, holding it thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Jerry and Beverly you are next on night Side. Happy
holidays to.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
You, Happy holidays, see you too.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Thank you, Jerry.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
It's Gary.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Oh it's Gary. Yeah, it's scary, it says Jerry.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Are you in Beverly allright?
Speaker 6 (09:52):
Right now? On TVD.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I can't win, you can't win, So what's up?
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Gary?
Speaker 6 (10:00):
I gotta, I just gotta, I got. I don't stand
on line too long. Tell your friend who Writes wrote
the ninety books. Right, I'm still ways my book.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
You're talking to him. His name is Anthony.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
Oh, Anthony, I'm still wait from for my book from
Uh what company was around for one hundred and eight
years in Salem? That just got asked in nineteen ninety three.
Remember what that company was?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Hmmm, I don't.
Speaker 6 (10:30):
You don't well, I could go directly to jail, do not? Pasco?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Oh so it must be Poker Brothers.
Speaker 6 (10:38):
Yep?
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Oh really yeah, Well, you know it's funny. I mean,
it's the type of a thing that normally I wrote
just Boston, I mean, the neighborhoods of the city and
things like that. But this thing with the Christmas tree
shops was something that fell into my lap during Bill
Ezeke and had a summer house in Austville, Mine, and
(11:01):
we chatted. I did it, but Parker House is a
fascinating company, and I didn't realize that it had lasted
that long. I thought it might have actually been something
that had expanded.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
My father. My father came from Nova Scotia, Canada, before
I was born, and he worked and he got he
got a job working as a space cutter, cutting them
inn upoly money. Really, he worked, he worked. He worked
there for thirty years before he retired, and he must
have cut over trillion packs of money. I think it was.
But I took over in nineteen eighty six and I
(11:36):
made it to nineteen ninety three before there was a
takeover between Mittellan hasbron At it, but hasbro Wow by
Milton Bradley. So they they bought him out and it
just came in and closed the whole plant down. They didn't
even care.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Yeah, it's sad when things like that happened. And it's
not only something I'm sure that was local, but it
it actually had local employees, and like yourself, you were
a second generation employee. That's so important. I mean, when
companies want to maintain not only there their ability to
(12:15):
market their company, but they also have employees that are
happy at stay. That's kind of sad. Great.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
The actually had eight hundred people there. It was like
one big family.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Wow, big family Gary. Let me get this straight. You
wound up being hired by Parker Brothers and you did
the same job your father did of having the money.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Wow, there you go.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
I was famous. I have my name in the in
the Boston Herald. I had my picture in the Boston Herald.
I did a lot of shows. People came in from
were all around the country to watch me cut the money,
you know, from China to the countries and come through
the plant and it's right to me.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I remember reading a trivia question that it was Poker
Brothers who printed more money than any other entity. I
think that's the word they used on the on the
face of the earth.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
That's what I was told.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
That's what I was told.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
No, it was a great company to work for, and
I wish it was still around. And you know, board
games picked up during the pandemic. But you know, the
one thing I couldn't do in my house when I
was a little kid is I couldn't have the Game
of Life in my house because it was builting Bradley.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Ah h.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
Bradley always wanted to always wanted the company, but they
were owned by Hasbro. So when when the opportunity came
up to buy Hals, buy Poker Bros. Oh, they just
brought us right out. So you know, yeah that one
of the Mattela won the bid, we would have still
been in sale because Mattelle wanted to keep us there.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
We Do you think see archives are located?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Do you think the records?
Speaker 6 (14:03):
I don't know. I have a ton of records in
my house, between my father and I and all the
different Oh really yeah, I get the last crinted edition
and Monopoly in Salem before to shut the plants down
and ill pres my dad.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Let me see if I can make magic here? Carry
if I have Dan who is the producer tonight, take
your phone number down and during the news hit which
is coming up in five minutes, give that to Anthony.
Do you mind if Anthony calls you to ask questions.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
About No, I don't know, Anthony. Very interesting, Yeah, I
mean who doesn't remember them?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
You know they existed as late as you're saying. I
use them a lot of times. I have used some
of the games, things like Thanksgiving traditions and also Halloween traditions.
They were so well known. But it's the type of
a thing. In a lot of ways, these things don't
always survive, you know, past one hundred years. But I'd
(15:14):
be more than willing to think about it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I remember the jingle from Life, the Game of Life,
The Game of Life, You can you learn when you
play the game of life. I could go on and stop,
DN do me a favorite, because I see Gary's phone
number on the computer, so I'm sure you see it.
(15:39):
Write that number down and when we go on the
news hit, give Anthony Gary's phone number.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
That'd be great.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Thank you, Okay, he can, thank you do that, Gary,
Thank you for the call.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
All right, first showing of your friends Eddie, take care,
thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
All right.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Now, let me ask you a quick question because we
heard during one of the news hits that Mayor Tom Andino,
who's been I'm in the Great White City Hall in
the sky. He's been going for ten years, but he
(16:21):
started something and they're still doing it. A Christmas giveaway
for the neighborhood and for kids. And I want to
know because I heard about some of the Christmas generosity
of Mayor James Michael Curly, and I remember some of
(16:43):
the generosity of Kevin White and obviously Mayor Menino. I
only have two minutes before the break, so I let
you start now, I'll take my break and then I'll
let you finish talking about Boston's mayors around the holidays.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Well, you know, James Michael Curly that you just mentioned
was kind of like Robin Hood. He gave to the
poor and a lot of people would actually show up
at not only his office at City Hall, but also
its home in Jamaica Plane And he was extraordinarily generous.
I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot, but I've
read how he would give a five dollar bill to somebody,
(17:28):
and five dollars in the nineteen twenties could actually fed
a family. It was it could feed a family and
pay for the heating doll and also sometimes even rent.
But there were a lot of times he did things
anonymously and he would have a load of coal delivered
to a widow, or he would have kerosene oil because
(17:52):
a stove sometimes was heated by kerosene. He'd have that
deliver it. A lot of times this was done through
his generosity. I don't know where the money came from,
but let's put it this way. He was pretty generous
to the people of Boston. And you haven't realized.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Driver his generosity because in the seventh and eighth grade
I attended the Mary E. Curley School. His daughter, Oh
and I can't remember in what if it was a
geography class, a history class, but It was in one
(18:33):
of my classes in seventh grade that the teacher told
us that we're in the school that's connected to the
lineage of a very famous Boston mayor from back in
the twenties and thirties. So that's how I knew that
he did acts of generosity.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Interesting, I'm surprised because there were many times that I backedly,
just cursonally ask somebody, oh, for who was the school named?
And children have no idea, and you know, in the past,
what I would do is I would have a picture
of somebody blown up and framed and given to a
(19:18):
local public school so that people might know who Lucy
Stone or John Marshall or Florence Nightingale was because they
were attending these schools, but they didn't always know. And
I think that's really a nice way to look at it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
But people did that. The teacher told me, not just me. Yeah, break,
let me take that break, and when we come back,
I'll let you talk more about Boston's mayors and their
generosity around the Christmas holiday. You are listening to Night's
(19:55):
Side here in WBZ. My name is Morgan. Dan Ring
normally sits in front of this microphone, but he's off
until next year. Figure that out time in temperature nine
to thirty thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
My name Morgan White Junior. I am here until midnight.
I'll be here tomorrow Christmas and Hankah Thursday, Friday, next
Monday and next Tuesday. Anthony Somarco is my guest. And
Anthony first, did you get the phone number of Gary?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
I did, Thank you very much, all right, n I.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Think some of that information will be helpful to you
in the future.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Well, I'm googling Parker Brothers right now, and I'm working
at a lot of the games. Yes, I do many
of them. Monopoly is quite well known, but they also
did we j board, Jackstraws, you know, careers and ladders.
I mean this is something in a lot of ways,
this was part of twentieth century America. But you know,
(21:07):
the thing is to do a book. There's a lot involved,
and it's collecting photographs and people photographs and the buildings
and things like that. But it might be something that
would actually work out quite well. And you know, these
are the type of things that I love to do.
I like to preserve things, that were once so integral
(21:30):
and well known in our community, because you know, fifty
years from now, some people aren't going to know what
these businesses were or how impact if they were on
the economy. You know, the employment situation, and you know
housing and things of that sort. So I love these
type of things. You never know. Who knows. I'll dedicated
(21:52):
to Morgan White Junior when I write it.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Oh no, no, no, no no. Speaking of your books,
tell people the company that puts out your books there,
well the.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
New book sure well. The new books are actually under
accompanied by the name of Fontill Media. Font Hill is
located in London. They've done many of the new books.
And the whole concept is this is something in some ways.
It's available not just at major bookstores but even Amazon
dot com. So if you google my name Anthony San Marco,
(22:30):
it will come up and it shows you know some
of them that are recent, but some of them that
are twenty thirty years ago. I hate to tell you
how long I've been writing, but it's something in some
ways that's been a lot of fun, a lot that
I've learned, and one doesn't realize how many people are
(22:52):
so impactive on this writing. You know, say this man
Gary from you know Parker Brothers. It sounds weird, but
there are so many people that contribute just a little
bit of information that then changes the whole aspect of
a book. And it's really something that I try to
(23:12):
thank everyone in the acknowledgments. And Facebook is something in
some ways that I use kind of to gauge you know,
what do people think about this? I mean, it's something
I've been doing about, you know, the Prince Macaroni Company.
You know, what do people think about it? Is it
something that you know people remember? Is it something that
(23:35):
you still have the adage of eating spaghetti on Wednesdays?
And what it is everyone says, and I see it, Anthony,
it's always something like drawn out on Facebook and I go, okay,
they do remember it, but is that.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Something that's your first name? So that's attention grabbing for you.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Tell me about it. When I was a child and
we would go to the North End on the first
Saturday of the month to have lunch with my Samarco
grandfather at the European it was something that I can remember,
this situation with Anthony Montietti and the name, you know,
and I'd say to myself, why am I calling my name?
(24:21):
And then I realized that probably one out of every
five boys and men at the North End we named Anthony.
But it was the type of a thing sometimes it was,
you know, a place and a time, and it was
something that I looked forward to. And when I go
back to the North End now I kind of see
(24:42):
the old haunts and see the things that were once
so important knowing to me but my family, my grandfather
and grandmother, but you know, the church where they were married,
and the church where my great grandparents worshiped, and things
of that sort. So everything is important. It's just we
(25:04):
have to realize in some ways, if you don't preserve it,
it becomes unimportant writing.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
How is it that a London book company is your
publisher writer in Boston?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I agree? Well, many many years ago when Alan Sutton
started a series called Arcadia Publications, which was a CPA
towne cover of every city, town, village, crossroads in America.
We had gotten together at Boston and you know, I
did many books Farm. Then he sold the company and
(25:43):
had to take a ten year hiatus. So when he
started up as new company Fon Hill, he asked me
to write Farm and I have gone NonStop. One of
the things that I like about it and I would
love to see it as a Boston public ana. But
I've never been asked by any Boston publishers to do
(26:05):
a book on Boston. But he kind of encourages me.
I spent three weeks in London in September and we
had lunch and dinners and a few drinks and kind
of ran by him when I was thinking for the
next three to five years, and he said, I will
publish anything you give me, because not only are they interesting,
(26:30):
but none of his editors have to edit the book.
There might be a word or two here or there,
but he says, you presented camera ready. Your photographs are beautiful,
the captions are great. And he said, I print the
book and they sell. I wish I got the royalties
(26:50):
people thought I got. But my little dog must.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Hear ipie dog.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Here Santa Claus. But I mean, yes, the publisher isn't London,
but it's something in some ways that I would be
more than happy it was to take ideas of a
Boston publisher as well.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Okay, what is her breed? Your dog?
Speaker 4 (27:19):
My little guy, he's a Tricolor king child, Spanto, and
he is the cutest little guy. We had him three
years last week, so he's he was born in October
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
For a dog, I'm sure he's the cutest dog you've
ever seen. But I own a cat, and I think
my cat is the best thing on four feet.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Well, we have a cat named Lena, and she is
a wonderful tiger. But she's in bed already. She's thirteen.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Well out. Speaking of London, my cat is a British
shot here Cole Gray. Why so once the day. That's
his name Gray?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Wow, very nice. Her name is Pasqualina. But no, I
think animals are important. We discussed over dinner at the
fact that the old adages the animals will talk on
Christmas Eve, and I think Danny's talking, but it's mowing
the bark right now. But it's something. In a lot
(28:23):
of ways, those are the things I remembered as a child.
Of course i'd always fall asleep, but you know, you
look at it and you think to yourself, well, it's
a nice tradition, it's a nice memory. But these things
in my books are so important to me to actually preserve,
(28:44):
you know, bits and pieces that I know. But also
the things that I listened to from the people who
might have been employed there, owned the company, or collected things.
And I think what it does is to make it
into something that those of us of a certain age
who might have remembered it, and also in some ways
(29:06):
we live it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
For these photographs the text, well, it's not only remembering it,
it's having an appreciation for it. The memory. Yes, I
know they used to have their offices behind the old
Boston Garden because I have written. Of the five books
(29:34):
I've written, three of them were for Quinland Press, and
the first book was the Boston Trivia Book. I wrote
that with Bernie Corbett. Do you know if they're still
around Quinland Press.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
The name is not familiar, but I will check it out.
I mean, it's just something I think in a lot
of it the name is familiar. But they were behind
North Station.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yes. I wrote the Boston Trivia Book, the Black Heritage
Book of Trivia, and Las Vegas Trivia for Quinland Press,
all of those in the eighties, and I self published
the TV Carto and Trivia Book. And the last book
(30:23):
I wrote was for bear Manor Media, the same company
Mel Simon's Rites for.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Called I just checked at Quinland Publishing is permanently closed.
Oh well, they had moved to dry Dock down at
the area of South Boston. But no, I think a
lot of times, you know, you look at many publishers
that you begin to realize not every publisher is going
(30:52):
to have a secession plan, succession plan. They don't always
have that. A lot of people spend their lives doing
this and then when they retire it ends. But I
think the funny thing is with the publisher I have,
you know, not only do I send him things, even
(31:13):
believe I send him everything by email, the cover wornage
they might change a little bit, and the photographs, but
you know, within two months usually I get everything back,
which is page proofs, so galleys, and I check them
out and send back anything that I've you know, even
(31:34):
though I've written the book, I still do research, so
I'm changing a little bit. So I'm waiting for my
galleys for a book on the history of the Milton Cemetery.
And you know, this is a cemetery that you know,
it's a town cemetery, but it had people that founded
kid Er Peabey both buried there. The founder of Fidelity investments,
(31:55):
Louis Tiant. You know, it goes to the gamut of
people that are locally famous and internationally famous. And it's
a beautiful operated cemetery.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So you've got a couple of books about to be released. Yeah,
that'll be out book.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
And I'm also writing the Freedom Trial book right.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Now about ninety correctly.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I know it sounds weird, but that'll be out this fall,
I hope.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Let me take my break, and when we come back,
I want to hear about your first book, what it
was in the backstory about that. We'll get into that.
Anyone else wants to call in. Anthony will only be
here for another ten twelve minutes, six one, seven, two, five, fourteen,
thirty eight eight, eight, ninety nine, ten thirty time and
(32:56):
temperature here on night Side ninety six thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Now back to Dan ray Mine from the Window World
Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Welcome back. So for all of you at home assembling something,
a bicycle or other toy that needs to be assembled,
thank you for having the radio on in the background,
and I wish you luck. I've been there. Answer. San
Marco is my guest, and Anthony tell me about your
(33:32):
first book.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Well, it's it's ironic. I want to say that. It's
probably thirty seven years ago. I was at a paper
show and I love to go to paper shows and
I had a very good friend, Jip Kiprianos, who's now deceased,
but we would go and we'd look for photographs and
postcards and things of Boston. So I was there and
(33:57):
a man was standing there and he looked at me
and he said, you know, I just finished a book
on Rye Beach, New Hampshire. And I looked at him
and I said really, And I'm thinking to myself, who
the hell will ever read a book on Rye Beach,
New Hampshire. So he said, you'd be perfect to do
one on Dorchester. So it turned out that I actually
(34:19):
knew the man. I thought I was just being spoken
to by a stranger. So I contact Arcadia and I
discuss it with them, and within the day I had
a contract. So I did a book on Dorchester and
it was my very first book. It made the best
sellers list of the Boston Globe in the Boston Herald.
(34:39):
I was shocked. It was fun. It chronicled in a
lot of ways the neighborhood of the city of Boston,
and I was born and raised in Dorchester's Common Square,
so I was very pleased. But you know, the funny
thing is, in retrospect, I look back at it now
so many years ago, and I say, naive I was,
(35:01):
and how juvenile the book really is. I've hopefully come
a long way writing and I have a style that
I've created. But I was very pleased at that, and
it would lead on to a second book, which was
South Boston, and a third book, which was Charles Down
and it just seemed to grow. And I had a
(35:25):
dear friend who's also deceased, Jack Renold, who I served
on a board with it. He would say to me,
oh my god, the Somaco Book of a Month Club,
because there was some years of the Seven Books, and
people would say to me, don't you have a life?
And I'd say, the surprising thing is I do have
(35:46):
a life, and I can write, but I also can
do things in a way that I don't have to
go back. And you know, staff from scratch, I have
a way of not only writing, but they have a
way of starting a book and distilling information and what
might be fascinating to me will not necessarily be fascinating
(36:09):
to the general public. So what I'm trying to do
in a lot of ways is to make local history Boston,
the neighborhoods, and the surrounding cities and towns interesting because
history is so impactive, not just on today but the future,
that what we've done in the past with our families
(36:31):
and friends, in a lot of ways, can be made
into something that chronicles the evolution and development of a
place that some of us call home. So recently I've
done books on Mission Hill and East Boston, Jamaica Plane.
These are books in a lot of ways that they're
(36:54):
not rehash of the original ones that I had done.
So I'm now looking at places like Readville and Roswell
and creating individual books for these neighborhoods because Reidville is
a part of Hyde Park, but I've split them apart
so that they can actually each have their own history.
(37:16):
My book of Mattapan was something that people were astonished over.
Nothing had ever been done on Matapan.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And when I decided, well I'm sorry, when you were
armed with me and we were talking about that book,
the lines never went dead. Well, you know, I'm to
go out and somebody would call in and everybody had
some sort of memory relationship attachment to Metapan.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
Well, it only really began in the eighteen eighties and
eighteen nineties, and it went from what was basically, you know,
a Yankee background to Jewish in a milange of different people.
And then after the nineteen seventies it has a middle
class of Jamaican, Hamian people from the Caribbean and the
(38:03):
Islands and African American. But it's again a neighborhood that's
in flux even today, and we're seeing new housing and
condominiums being built and the demographics are being affected that
it isn't necessarily Jewish, nor is it black. It's becoming
(38:25):
something because of the cost of housing, something totally different.
Fifty years after it's become a neighborhood of color. And
I'm doing a book right now for two Thoy twenty
six the Church of the Holy Spirit in Papan designed
by you know, a well known architect, author Roach great
(38:48):
stained glass windows by Frederick Crowned Shield. But it's something at.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
All always I know, as.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
You know, and it sounds weird, but they're all on
my computer and I do back them up. But the
idea is. I mean, I'll work on one and I'll
work on another, and then I can't do this until
I proceed on something else. But when I do these books,
I don't know why, but I feel like a sense
of accomplishment, a sense of pride that I've somehow captured
(39:23):
maybe a little nugget, a little segment of Bolton's history
that will you should engage, engage people in it.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
You're entitled to that feeling through all these years, simpcos
is still there.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I know.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
One last thing. Pronounce the community of your first book.
Pronounce that again. Dorchester No wrong, false, It's Notchester. You
got to get it right. You got to have swang
in there.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I lived on the wrong side of town. I perhaps
my rs I don't have Oh I hate that. I mean,
you know, I always maybe you know the way it looks
in some ways, I'd rather say it out loud and
the complete word. But now history is something a lot
(40:20):
of ways that I revel in, and I just hope
people can react to these books and give some of
my video YouTube and things of that sort. It's something
that is enjoyable.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
You know, they do, they know, and you know they
enjoy it. I've got to walk away for news. I
want to thank you for coming on. I wish you
a great holiday season and May twenty twenty five be
your best year ever.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Okay and yours as well. Thank you so much. More
than happy holidays to you and your listeners, but thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Bye bye all right time. Oh by the way, Jimmy
Mariams is going to be here after the news time
in temperature nine fifty eight thirty degrees
It's night Side with Ray. I'm w BZY, Boston's new radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Our number two of Nightside. I'll be here all the
rest of this week, Christmas, then Thursday and then Friday,
and next Monday and Tuesday again. My name Morgan White Junior.
My guest last hour in this hour Anthony San Marco
and are you ready for another phone called Anthony. Yeah,
(00:31):
let's go to West Roxbury and speak to Sandy, a
woman I know quite well. Welcome to night Side and
happy holidays.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Thank you the very same to both of you. Hi,
how are you good?
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Thank you good?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah. A couple of things I heard you mentioned. I
think you mentioned Anthony Matt Neddie from Nate commercial. Yeah, yeah,
did you know him lived in West Roxbury?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I did.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
He actually worked with one of my grandnephews who actually
was a court bailiff at the debt of courthouse and
he was somebody in a lot of ways. That was
just his name. I mean, people really didn't know him
as a person. They knew the name and the boy
running through the commercial, which I have to tell you
(01:23):
was fifty years ago, but.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
The whole thing was.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, he unfortunately died of a heart attack and it
was sorry, sad. But then a friend of mine, Bob Allison,
who teaches history at Suffolk, actually had his son as
actually a student, so it was really quite an interesting thing.
But no, I'm doing the.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Book on Prince Smarl about him, and I got so
many responses that I had readen really and everybody just
loved him. They said he was so sweet and so nice.
He would do anything for anybody, constantly did benefits, you know,
because people didn't well he actually had the same face
(02:04):
because he was much older. But everybody just you know,
hugs that commercial, you know, to themselves.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, it was so iconic it is.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
He doesn't say a word in the commercial. All he
does is run and can't. At the end of the thing.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
I think I would advanced on halfway through it, Paul
carries the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Paul carries that the North End location, then did another
location up Route one. I like the tagline because they
had Anthony in their commercial, and mister Bolcari turned to Anthony,
who's now in his teens, say Anthony, where were you
on Wednesday? And that was obviously the private get well.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
It also it hinged on this whole aspect of what
became Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day. And you know the
Pellegrinos who bought Prince Macaroni Company in nineteen forty one
from the original founders of nineteen twelve was somebody who
was not just a marketeer. His father in law had
(03:13):
had Roman Macaroni Company in New York had been destroyed
by fire, so he came to work at Prince. But
the whole thing is within two years he owned controlling
chairs and it was he who created that adage Wednesday
is Prince Spaghetti Day. And I don't think anyone on
the face of the earth, if they came from Boston,
(03:36):
hadn't heard that. And even though my mother was an Italian,
every Wednesday we had spaghetti and I loved it, I
thought in a lot of ways. But even to this day,
in the since then, this book on Prince Spaghetti is
going to be something like Christmas Tree Shops, Jordan marsh Sspears,
(03:56):
Howard Johnson, Spaker's Chocolate, something that as Yeah, and it's
important to realize that these things no longer really exist
as just Boston something survived. But you know, this is
a lot of fun about it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And this will be pardon me, this is going to
be Anthony's ninetieth book. I can imagine, right, I can't.
I've done a handful of trivia books, but good grief,
to write ninety books that would take me until my
(04:35):
two hundred and eightieth birthday.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Oh, it will.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Stuff so well that it just kind of pours out
of them.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I think, well, let's put it this way. I sit
at my desk, I write, the next morning, I edit.
But the funny thing is I write the way I speak,
so it's not too different. But I also write in
a way that I hope Bo engaged people in historical law,
(05:05):
because I think sometimes the way history is top is
something that will make people read it throughout their lives.
And I've had a lot of people true.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I mean, I hated history because I thought they in
real life, they were all statues who did heroic things.
And then you come to find out the human beings.
And that's when I began.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And you know what, Sandy and Anthemy, may I tell
you something. This has nothing to do with Christmas and
the subject matter that we are are in right now.
Two weeks ago my son said to me, and he
is the proud father of two children.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
They just have a bad grandfather.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well, thank you. And they just had a baby in September,
and a few years ago they adopted a child. So
my son said to me, Dad, you've had such an
interesting life, you should write your biography.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Oh, yeah, would be wonderful.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I played it off, but he said for only two reasons,
your grandsons, and that struck me.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Well, it's funny you say that, because, yeah, there are
a lot of people that have written these things that today,
fifty or one hundred years later are invaluable because it's
like a place of a time that it tells the
story not just of the person, but of Boston when
they were young.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And a wonderful when people do that.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
My history in Boston would be good grief at least
sixty to seventy percent of whatever I write. And I
am going to do it. I promised him I would.
So now I've written five books. There are all trivia books,
and I could just say, if they want to know
(07:02):
about me, they could read the trivia books. And he said, no,
that's not the story of your life. And I had
to I had to agree with him.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I could kick myself. When my grandparents were alive, I
didn't talk to them. I didn't, I mean about anything important,
you know, I was all wrapped up in myself, which
I think kids are. And you know, you write it
and they probably won't appreciate it until they're much older
than real life. Not only how wonderful you are and
what you gave, but what Boston was like, and they
(07:34):
missed all that.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I will, We'll do it. I will do it for them,
for my grandson James, my grandsident.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
We all want to read it, Okay, Well.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
You'll get work from the library, I would hope.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
So a lot of it's all your house.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Hard too.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
I think in a lot of ways, I've I've thought
of and I've toyed with the idea of doing my autobiography,
and I've actually come up with different chapters. But I
don't think anybody would ever realize some of the stuff
that's going on in my life.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well I.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Read it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Well, I think in a lot of.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Ways, you know, I I think it's a fun thing
to do, and everybody should do this. It's not just
people that normally write for you know, enjoyment and you know,
preserving history, but everyone should really write for their family
and the stories about the life I liked them, Sandy.
I sat down with my grandparents and you know, I
(08:40):
listened to them and I created a family tree on
the Italian side, and it was such fun. And I
still have my notes to this day.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So I gotta let you go, Sandy, because I'm in
a break.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
But thank you, Okay, thank you, and happy holidays to you.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
All right now for the people on hold, Jerry you'll
be next, then Gary. And there's an open line. Sandy
was on it. It's all yours for the taking. This
is Nightside. I am Morgan filling in for Dan. The
time and temperature here is nine fifteen, holding it thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Jerry and Beverly you are next on night Side. Happy
holidays to.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
You, Happy holidays, see you too.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Thank you, Jerry.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
It's Gary.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Oh it's Gary. Yeah, it's scary, it says Jerry.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Are you in Beverly allright?
Speaker 6 (09:52):
Right now? On TVD.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I can't win, you can't win, So what's up?
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Gary?
Speaker 6 (10:00):
I gotta, I just gotta, I got. I don't stand
on line too long. Tell your friend who Writes wrote
the ninety books. Right, I'm still ways my book.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
You're talking to him. His name is Anthony.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
Oh, Anthony, I'm still wait from for my book from
Uh what company was around for one hundred and eight
years in Salem? That just got asked in nineteen ninety three.
Remember what that company was?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Hmmm, I don't.
Speaker 6 (10:30):
You don't well, I could go directly to jail, do not? Pasco?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Oh so it must be Poker Brothers.
Speaker 6 (10:38):
Yep?
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Oh really yeah, Well, you know it's funny. I mean,
it's the type of a thing that normally I wrote
just Boston, I mean, the neighborhoods of the city and
things like that. But this thing with the Christmas tree
shops was something that fell into my lap during Bill
Ezeke and had a summer house in Austville, Mine, and
(11:01):
we chatted. I did it, but Parker House is a
fascinating company, and I didn't realize that it had lasted
that long. I thought it might have actually been something
that had expanded.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
My father. My father came from Nova Scotia, Canada, before
I was born, and he worked and he got he
got a job working as a space cutter, cutting them
inn upoly money. Really, he worked, he worked. He worked
there for thirty years before he retired, and he must
have cut over trillion packs of money. I think it was.
But I took over in nineteen eighty six and I
(11:36):
made it to nineteen ninety three before there was a
takeover between Mittellan hasbron At it, but hasbro Wow by
Milton Bradley. So they they bought him out and it
just came in and closed the whole plant down. They didn't
even care.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Yeah, it's sad when things like that happened. And it's
not only something I'm sure that was local, but it
it actually had local employees, and like yourself, you were
a second generation employee. That's so important. I mean, when
companies want to maintain not only there their ability to
(12:15):
market their company, but they also have employees that are
happy at stay. That's kind of sad. Great.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
The actually had eight hundred people there. It was like
one big family.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Wow, big family Gary. Let me get this straight. You
wound up being hired by Parker Brothers and you did
the same job your father did of having the money.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Wow, there you go.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
I was famous. I have my name in the in
the Boston Herald. I had my picture in the Boston Herald.
I did a lot of shows. People came in from
were all around the country to watch me cut the money,
you know, from China to the countries and come through
the plant and it's right to me.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I remember reading a trivia question that it was Poker
Brothers who printed more money than any other entity. I
think that's the word they used on the on the
face of the earth.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
That's what I was told.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
That's what I was told.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
No, it was a great company to work for, and
I wish it was still around. And you know, board
games picked up during the pandemic. But you know, the
one thing I couldn't do in my house when I
was a little kid is I couldn't have the Game
of Life in my house because it was builting Bradley.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Ah h.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
Bradley always wanted to always wanted the company, but they
were owned by Hasbro. So when when the opportunity came
up to buy Hals, buy Poker Bros. Oh, they just
brought us right out. So you know, yeah that one
of the Mattela won the bid, we would have still
been in sale because Mattelle wanted to keep us there.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
We Do you think see archives are located?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Do you think the records?
Speaker 6 (14:03):
I don't know. I have a ton of records in
my house, between my father and I and all the
different Oh really yeah, I get the last crinted edition
and Monopoly in Salem before to shut the plants down
and ill pres my dad.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Let me see if I can make magic here? Carry
if I have Dan who is the producer tonight, take
your phone number down and during the news hit which
is coming up in five minutes, give that to Anthony.
Do you mind if Anthony calls you to ask questions.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
About No, I don't know, Anthony. Very interesting, Yeah, I
mean who doesn't remember them?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
You know they existed as late as you're saying. I
use them a lot of times. I have used some
of the games, things like Thanksgiving traditions and also Halloween traditions.
They were so well known. But it's the type of
a thing. In a lot of ways, these things don't
always survive, you know, past one hundred years. But I'd
(15:14):
be more than willing to think about it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I remember the jingle from Life, the Game of Life,
The Game of Life, You can you learn when you
play the game of life. I could go on and stop,
DN do me a favorite, because I see Gary's phone
number on the computer, so I'm sure you see it.
(15:39):
Write that number down and when we go on the
news hit, give Anthony Gary's phone number.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
That'd be great.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Thank you, Okay, he can, thank you do that, Gary,
Thank you for the call.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
All right, first showing of your friends Eddie, take care,
thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
All right.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Now, let me ask you a quick question because we
heard during one of the news hits that Mayor Tom Andino,
who's been I'm in the Great White City Hall in
the sky. He's been going for ten years, but he
(16:21):
started something and they're still doing it. A Christmas giveaway
for the neighborhood and for kids. And I want to
know because I heard about some of the Christmas generosity
of Mayor James Michael Curly, and I remember some of
(16:43):
the generosity of Kevin White and obviously Mayor Menino. I
only have two minutes before the break, so I let
you start now, I'll take my break and then I'll
let you finish talking about Boston's mayors around the holidays.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Well, you know, James Michael Curly that you just mentioned
was kind of like Robin Hood. He gave to the
poor and a lot of people would actually show up
at not only his office at City Hall, but also
its home in Jamaica Plane And he was extraordinarily generous.
I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot, but I've
read how he would give a five dollar bill to somebody,
(17:28):
and five dollars in the nineteen twenties could actually fed
a family. It was it could feed a family and
pay for the heating doll and also sometimes even rent.
But there were a lot of times he did things
anonymously and he would have a load of coal delivered
to a widow, or he would have kerosene oil because
(17:52):
a stove sometimes was heated by kerosene. He'd have that
deliver it. A lot of times this was done through
his generosity. I don't know where the money came from,
but let's put it this way. He was pretty generous
to the people of Boston. And you haven't realized.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Driver his generosity because in the seventh and eighth grade
I attended the Mary E. Curley School. His daughter, Oh
and I can't remember in what if it was a
geography class, a history class, but It was in one
(18:33):
of my classes in seventh grade that the teacher told
us that we're in the school that's connected to the
lineage of a very famous Boston mayor from back in
the twenties and thirties. So that's how I knew that
he did acts of generosity.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Interesting, I'm surprised because there were many times that I backedly,
just cursonally ask somebody, oh, for who was the school named?
And children have no idea, and you know, in the past,
what I would do is I would have a picture
of somebody blown up and framed and given to a
(19:18):
local public school so that people might know who Lucy
Stone or John Marshall or Florence Nightingale was because they
were attending these schools, but they didn't always know. And
I think that's really a nice way to look at it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
But people did that. The teacher told me, not just me. Yeah, break,
let me take that break, and when we come back,
I'll let you talk more about Boston's mayors and their
generosity around the Christmas holiday. You are listening to Night's
(19:55):
Side here in WBZ. My name is Morgan. Dan Ring
normally sits in front of this microphone, but he's off
until next year. Figure that out time in temperature nine
to thirty thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
My name Morgan White Junior. I am here until midnight.
I'll be here tomorrow Christmas and Hankah Thursday, Friday, next
Monday and next Tuesday. Anthony Somarco is my guest. And
Anthony first, did you get the phone number of Gary?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
I did, Thank you very much, all right, n I.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Think some of that information will be helpful to you
in the future.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Well, I'm googling Parker Brothers right now, and I'm working
at a lot of the games. Yes, I do many
of them. Monopoly is quite well known, but they also
did we j board, Jackstraws, you know, careers and ladders.
I mean this is something in a lot of ways,
this was part of twentieth century America. But you know,
(21:07):
the thing is to do a book. There's a lot involved,
and it's collecting photographs and people photographs and the buildings
and things like that. But it might be something that
would actually work out quite well. And you know, these
are the type of things that I love to do.
I like to preserve things, that were once so integral
(21:30):
and well known in our community, because you know, fifty
years from now, some people aren't going to know what
these businesses were or how impact if they were on
the economy. You know, the employment situation, and you know
housing and things of that sort. So I love these
type of things. You never know. Who knows. I'll dedicated
(21:52):
to Morgan White Junior when I write it.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Oh no, no, no, no no. Speaking of your books,
tell people the company that puts out your books there,
well the.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
New book sure well. The new books are actually under
accompanied by the name of Fontill Media. Font Hill is
located in London. They've done many of the new books.
And the whole concept is this is something in some ways.
It's available not just at major bookstores but even Amazon
dot com. So if you google my name Anthony San Marco,
(22:30):
it will come up and it shows you know some
of them that are recent, but some of them that
are twenty thirty years ago. I hate to tell you
how long I've been writing, but it's something in some
ways that's been a lot of fun, a lot that
I've learned, and one doesn't realize how many people are
(22:52):
so impactive on this writing. You know, say this man
Gary from you know Parker Brothers. It sounds weird, but
there are so many people that contribute just a little
bit of information that then changes the whole aspect of
a book. And it's really something that I try to
(23:12):
thank everyone in the acknowledgments. And Facebook is something in
some ways that I use kind of to gauge you know,
what do people think about this? I mean, it's something
I've been doing about, you know, the Prince Macaroni Company.
You know, what do people think about it? Is it
something that you know people remember? Is it something that
(23:35):
you still have the adage of eating spaghetti on Wednesdays?
And what it is everyone says, and I see it, Anthony,
it's always something like drawn out on Facebook and I go, okay,
they do remember it, but is that.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Something that's your first name? So that's attention grabbing for you.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Tell me about it. When I was a child and
we would go to the North End on the first
Saturday of the month to have lunch with my Samarco
grandfather at the European it was something that I can remember,
this situation with Anthony Montietti and the name, you know,
and I'd say to myself, why am I calling my name?
(24:21):
And then I realized that probably one out of every
five boys and men at the North End we named Anthony.
But it was the type of a thing sometimes it was,
you know, a place and a time, and it was
something that I looked forward to. And when I go
back to the North End now I kind of see
(24:42):
the old haunts and see the things that were once
so important knowing to me but my family, my grandfather
and grandmother, but you know, the church where they were married,
and the church where my great grandparents worshiped, and things
of that sort. So everything is important. It's just we
(25:04):
have to realize in some ways, if you don't preserve it,
it becomes unimportant writing.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
How is it that a London book company is your
publisher writer in Boston?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I agree? Well, many many years ago when Alan Sutton
started a series called Arcadia Publications, which was a CPA
towne cover of every city, town, village, crossroads in America.
We had gotten together at Boston and you know, I
did many books Farm. Then he sold the company and
(25:43):
had to take a ten year hiatus. So when he
started up as new company Fon Hill, he asked me
to write Farm and I have gone NonStop. One of
the things that I like about it and I would
love to see it as a Boston public ana. But
I've never been asked by any Boston publishers to do
(26:05):
a book on Boston. But he kind of encourages me.
I spent three weeks in London in September and we
had lunch and dinners and a few drinks and kind
of ran by him when I was thinking for the
next three to five years, and he said, I will
publish anything you give me, because not only are they interesting,
(26:30):
but none of his editors have to edit the book.
There might be a word or two here or there,
but he says, you presented camera ready. Your photographs are beautiful,
the captions are great. And he said, I print the
book and they sell. I wish I got the royalties
(26:50):
people thought I got. But my little dog must.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Hear ipie dog.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Here Santa Claus. But I mean, yes, the publisher isn't London,
but it's something in some ways that I would be
more than happy it was to take ideas of a
Boston publisher as well.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Okay, what is her breed? Your dog?
Speaker 4 (27:19):
My little guy, he's a Tricolor king child, Spanto, and
he is the cutest little guy. We had him three
years last week, so he's he was born in October
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
For a dog, I'm sure he's the cutest dog you've
ever seen. But I own a cat, and I think
my cat is the best thing on four feet.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Well, we have a cat named Lena, and she is
a wonderful tiger. But she's in bed already. She's thirteen.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Well out. Speaking of London, my cat is a British
shot here Cole Gray. Why so once the day. That's
his name Gray?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Wow, very nice. Her name is Pasqualina. But no, I
think animals are important. We discussed over dinner at the
fact that the old adages the animals will talk on
Christmas Eve, and I think Danny's talking, but it's mowing
the bark right now. But it's something. In a lot
(28:23):
of ways, those are the things I remembered as a child.
Of course i'd always fall asleep, but you know, you
look at it and you think to yourself, well, it's
a nice tradition, it's a nice memory. But these things
in my books are so important to me to actually preserve,
(28:44):
you know, bits and pieces that I know. But also
the things that I listened to from the people who
might have been employed there, owned the company, or collected things.
And I think what it does is to make it
into something that those of us of a certain age
who might have remembered it, and also in some ways
(29:06):
we live it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
For these photographs the text, well, it's not only remembering it,
it's having an appreciation for it. The memory. Yes, I
know they used to have their offices behind the old
Boston Garden because I have written. Of the five books
(29:34):
I've written, three of them were for Quinland Press, and
the first book was the Boston Trivia Book. I wrote
that with Bernie Corbett. Do you know if they're still
around Quinland Press.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
The name is not familiar, but I will check it out.
I mean, it's just something I think in a lot
of it the name is familiar. But they were behind
North Station.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yes. I wrote the Boston Trivia Book, the Black Heritage
Book of Trivia, and Las Vegas Trivia for Quinland Press,
all of those in the eighties, and I self published
the TV Carto and Trivia Book. And the last book
(30:23):
I wrote was for bear Manor Media, the same company
Mel Simon's Rites for.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Called I just checked at Quinland Publishing is permanently closed.
Oh well, they had moved to dry Dock down at
the area of South Boston. But no, I think a
lot of times, you know, you look at many publishers
that you begin to realize not every publisher is going
(30:52):
to have a secession plan, succession plan. They don't always
have that. A lot of people spend their lives doing
this and then when they retire it ends. But I
think the funny thing is with the publisher I have,
you know, not only do I send him things, even
(31:13):
believe I send him everything by email, the cover wornage
they might change a little bit, and the photographs, but
you know, within two months usually I get everything back,
which is page proofs, so galleys, and I check them
out and send back anything that I've you know, even
(31:34):
though I've written the book, I still do research, so
I'm changing a little bit. So I'm waiting for my
galleys for a book on the history of the Milton Cemetery.
And you know, this is a cemetery that you know,
it's a town cemetery, but it had people that founded
kid Er Peabey both buried there. The founder of Fidelity investments,
(31:55):
Louis Tiant. You know, it goes to the gamut of
people that are locally famous and internationally famous. And it's
a beautiful operated cemetery.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So you've got a couple of books about to be released. Yeah,
that'll be out book.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
And I'm also writing the Freedom Trial book right.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Now about ninety correctly.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I know it sounds weird, but that'll be out this fall,
I hope.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Let me take my break, and when we come back,
I want to hear about your first book, what it
was in the backstory about that. We'll get into that.
Anyone else wants to call in. Anthony will only be
here for another ten twelve minutes, six one, seven, two, five, fourteen,
thirty eight eight, eight, ninety nine, ten thirty time and
(32:56):
temperature here on night Side ninety six thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Now back to Dan ray Mine from the Window World
Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Welcome back. So for all of you at home assembling something,
a bicycle or other toy that needs to be assembled,
thank you for having the radio on in the background,
and I wish you luck. I've been there. Answer. San
Marco is my guest, and Anthony tell me about your
(33:32):
first book.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Well, it's it's ironic. I want to say that. It's
probably thirty seven years ago. I was at a paper
show and I love to go to paper shows and
I had a very good friend, Jip Kiprianos, who's now deceased,
but we would go and we'd look for photographs and
postcards and things of Boston. So I was there and
(33:57):
a man was standing there and he looked at me
and he said, you know, I just finished a book
on Rye Beach, New Hampshire. And I looked at him
and I said really, And I'm thinking to myself, who
the hell will ever read a book on Rye Beach,
New Hampshire. So he said, you'd be perfect to do
one on Dorchester. So it turned out that I actually
(34:19):
knew the man. I thought I was just being spoken
to by a stranger. So I contact Arcadia and I
discuss it with them, and within the day I had
a contract. So I did a book on Dorchester and
it was my very first book. It made the best
sellers list of the Boston Globe in the Boston Herald.
(34:39):
I was shocked. It was fun. It chronicled in a
lot of ways the neighborhood of the city of Boston,
and I was born and raised in Dorchester's Common Square,
so I was very pleased. But you know, the funny
thing is, in retrospect, I look back at it now
so many years ago, and I say, naive I was,
(35:01):
and how juvenile the book really is. I've hopefully come
a long way writing and I have a style that
I've created. But I was very pleased at that, and
it would lead on to a second book, which was
South Boston, and a third book, which was Charles Down
and it just seemed to grow. And I had a
(35:25):
dear friend who's also deceased, Jack Renold, who I served
on a board with it. He would say to me,
oh my god, the Somaco Book of a Month Club,
because there was some years of the Seven Books, and
people would say to me, don't you have a life?
And I'd say, the surprising thing is I do have
(35:46):
a life, and I can write, but I also can
do things in a way that I don't have to
go back. And you know, staff from scratch, I have
a way of not only writing, but they have a
way of starting a book and distilling information and what
might be fascinating to me will not necessarily be fascinating
(36:09):
to the general public. So what I'm trying to do
in a lot of ways is to make local history Boston,
the neighborhoods, and the surrounding cities and towns interesting because
history is so impactive, not just on today but the future,
that what we've done in the past with our families
(36:31):
and friends, in a lot of ways, can be made
into something that chronicles the evolution and development of a
place that some of us call home. So recently I've
done books on Mission Hill and East Boston, Jamaica Plane.
These are books in a lot of ways that they're
(36:54):
not rehash of the original ones that I had done.
So I'm now looking at places like Readville and Roswell
and creating individual books for these neighborhoods because Reidville is
a part of Hyde Park, but I've split them apart
so that they can actually each have their own history.
(37:16):
My book of Mattapan was something that people were astonished over.
Nothing had ever been done on Matapan.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And when I decided, well I'm sorry, when you were
armed with me and we were talking about that book,
the lines never went dead. Well, you know, I'm to
go out and somebody would call in and everybody had
some sort of memory relationship attachment to Metapan.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
Well, it only really began in the eighteen eighties and
eighteen nineties, and it went from what was basically, you know,
a Yankee background to Jewish in a milange of different people.
And then after the nineteen seventies it has a middle
class of Jamaican, Hamian people from the Caribbean and the
(38:03):
Islands and African American. But it's again a neighborhood that's
in flux even today, and we're seeing new housing and
condominiums being built and the demographics are being affected that
it isn't necessarily Jewish, nor is it black. It's becoming
(38:25):
something because of the cost of housing, something totally different.
Fifty years after it's become a neighborhood of color. And
I'm doing a book right now for two Thoy twenty
six the Church of the Holy Spirit in Papan designed
by you know, a well known architect, author Roach great
(38:48):
stained glass windows by Frederick Crowned Shield. But it's something at.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
All always I know, as.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
You know, and it sounds weird, but they're all on
my computer and I do back them up. But the
idea is. I mean, I'll work on one and I'll
work on another, and then I can't do this until
I proceed on something else. But when I do these books,
I don't know why, but I feel like a sense
of accomplishment, a sense of pride that I've somehow captured
(39:23):
maybe a little nugget, a little segment of Bolton's history
that will you should engage, engage people in it.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
You're entitled to that feeling through all these years, simpcos
is still there.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I know.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
One last thing. Pronounce the community of your first book.
Pronounce that again. Dorchester No wrong, false, It's Notchester. You
got to get it right. You got to have swang
in there.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I lived on the wrong side of town. I perhaps
my rs I don't have Oh I hate that. I mean,
you know, I always maybe you know the way it looks
in some ways, I'd rather say it out loud and
the complete word. But now history is something a lot
(40:20):
of ways that I revel in, and I just hope
people can react to these books and give some of
my video YouTube and things of that sort. It's something
that is enjoyable.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
You know, they do, they know, and you know they
enjoy it. I've got to walk away for news. I
want to thank you for coming on. I wish you
a great holiday season and May twenty twenty five be
your best year ever.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Okay and yours as well. Thank you so much. More
than happy holidays to you and your listeners, but thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Bye bye all right time. Oh by the way, Jimmy
Mariams is going to be here after the news time
in temperature nine fifty eight thirty degrees
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