Tony Petruzzi

Anthony (Tony) Petruzzi was born at home, on Lewis Street in Everett, Massachusetts, in 1918, the year of the end of the "War to End All Wars." If you're calculating, Tony will be 93 in 2012. This is his story.

I graduated from Everett Grammar School. My high school had a good mechanical arts course that consisted of sheet metal work, drafting and auto mechanics. It brought out my mechanical talents.  

After graduation, my father bought me a truck. Everett Street Cars dumped railroad ties and I picked them up and hauled them to a bakery--$3 for 30 ties. They burned them for their oven. It stank, but the baking oven was sealed off from the fumes. You couldn't do that today.

We lived on the other end of town from Monsanto Chemical, where piles of sulfur were left to blow in the wind. Colonial Beacon had a catalytic plant there, too; twice there were explosions and my mother took in and sheltered people from that side of town. She often put people "on the cuff"; when she died there were a lot of people at her wake, paying their respects for her good works. The area was dotted with gasoline storage plants. They also made gas from coke and had huge natural gas storage tanks that would fold down as they were emptied.  

We had gangs when we were kids, but not like today; no rough stuff. My parents had a grocery store with living quarters in the rear. Neighborhood kids would try to steal candy, so I had to be there to watch out. The door to the store had a clicker so we knew when it opened. I never got to play sports much. Kids were talking baseball; I thought they were talking Greek! But my childhood wasn't hard. My parents were from the old country, but they spoke English pretty well. After prohibition was repealed, they turned the grocery store into a cafe and when I turned 21, I went behind the bar.

Tony enlisted in the Army Air Corps on  January 8, 1942, just a month after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

We heard about Pearl Harbor on the radio in our living room. I enlisted on January 8, 1942, trying the Coast Guard first. They required a six-year commitment, so I went to the old Flatiron Building in Boston and enlisted in the Army Air Corps instead. Their term was "for the duration of the war plus six months." I was sent to airplane mechanics school at Chanute Field, Illinois. From there I was shipped to Fort Devens, Massachusetts and then to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri for basic training and then back to Chanute Field for mechanics training.

One weekend I went to Chicago on a pass with two buddies from Dorchester. While we were there our group was shipped to Wright's Field, Ohio and we got left behind. A week later I got the mumps and my buddies were shipped to East Boston without me. Later, they went to Italy, but I spent the war all over the States.

After I graduated from mechanics school, I went to Indiana State Teachers College where I was trained in Harrison Engines. Several transfers later I was sent to Michigan where my job, believe it or not, was to clean the ice on the skating rink for the commanding officer's children! In my last year in the service was spent at Westover Field, a flight training base, where I serviced B-17s and B-24s.

After 47 months, I was discharged on December 7, 1945. I received a $200 bonus and was eligible for the "52-20 Club" a program that gave vets $20 for up to 52 weeks or until they had a job. After a week I was so bored I went out and bought a truck, started a transportation company and went to work. I trucked for First National Stores until 1955, then for International Paper in Somerville.

Margaret Monteforte and I were married on October 12, 1946. We had two girls, Christine and Carol, and in 1957 we moved to a nice friendly neighborhood in Stoneham where most everyone had moved in around the same time. I helped to organize the Stoneham Elks Lodge and served on the Board of Trustees; I'm now a 65-year, Life Member Elk.

Tony and Margaret Monteforte married in 1946 and raised a family of two daughters, Christine and Carol.

International Paper offered me a job when they moved to Connecticut in 1975 but I didn't want to move to Connecticut. However, I did have a yen to move to the Cape. A group of friends and neighbors from Stoneham, and myself, had bought an old telephone building and used it as a clubhouse, a social place. We went to the Cape regularly on weekends.

Margaret and I bought a cottage in Popponesset in 1973. We demolished most of it and rebuilt it and moved into it in 1975. I became a volunteer fireman and incorporated the local firemen's association. I drove our first ambulance, an old hearse donated by Civil Defense at Otis Field.  A friend who was the greens keeper at New Seabury got me a job there as a handyman in the maintenance department.

The maintenance department boss resented the way I had gotten my job and made things tough at first. He gave me an outsized door to mount, something I had never done before, but I sweated and worked at it until I had it hung square and had drilled and mounted the locks. Then he told me to paint it and when I finished that he wanted the panels outlined. Then he was satisfied that I could do the job.

I took every opportunity to learn new skills. At the end of the season, the boss sent me with an experienced worker to shut off the water to cottages that were rented to fishermen; the following season I did it myself. I watched the gasman calibrating thermocouples for the ovens; the next year I did it. An electrician was hired to change a 400-volt fuse--as big as my arm--for the Popponesset Inn, and charged a hundred bucks. From then on I did that. I saved them thousands of dollars, and they were good to me.

Our office was in what is now the Bobbie Byrne's dining room at Mashpee Commons. There were only a few stores back then: a florist, a hardware store, a convenience market and a theater where Williams-Sonoma is now. The water was so rusty and sandy that we had to change the filters twice a day. Regal Theaters was so grateful for my help that they gave me a movie pass to all their houses in the state.

I retired as head of the maintenance department in 1983 but I couldn't sit still, so a buddy and I did yard work and even roofing until I was 81. When I moved to Southport I put in iron railings and garage door openers here until I was 90.

"Are you retired now?"

Tony lost his wife, Margaret, just a year after they moved to Southport in 2002. "She was a good woman," he says, "She took care of us for 56 years." Photo: 1942

Yes I am (he laughs), but people still call me and I help them with garage door openers that aren't working. I don't charge them. Don't worry, I say, "You have perpetual care."

Popponesset was beautiful, but hard in the winter, forever with electrical outages. I put in a gas stove just to make coffee.

We moved to Southport in 2002. Margaret died suddenly in Florida the following year. She was a good woman. Took care of us for 56 years. Here I have the "Life of Riley." I do the men's coffee, volunteer at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop and play cribbage, gin rummy, bocce and poker. Until three months ago I was an usher at Christ the King. And I just became a great grandfather! I have no regrets about coming to Southport.

"Do you ever think of learning to play golf?"

(Pauses and laughs) I got a hole in one with a 3 wood in 1975 on the 195-yard 8th hole of the New Seabury Championship Course, but I don't have the patience for it anymore.

Cycling the Back Roads of Tuscany 

 Karlyn Curran Interviews Diane & Roy Roberts    

Roy Roberts had been a runner for most of his life but when an injury forced him to give it up about 20 years ago he turned to bicycling. By the time he met Diane Goeldner on Match.com in 2008 he had already gone on several trips with Vermont Bicycle Tours. He and Diane had both lost their spouses. They found that they shared many interests, but riding a bicycle was not a priority for Diane. She was only a casual rider. As their relationship grew, eventually leading to marriage, so did Diane's bicycling skills and endurance. Before long they were taking long rides together. When they moved from Long Island to Southport two years ago they joined three different bicycle clubs on the Cape and continued to ride.

Diane & Roy Roberts Medieval town of Capalbio in the background

Roy had talked to Diane about how much he had enjoyed his vacations with VBT (Vermont Bicycle Tours) and they decided that Diane had to experience one, too. So last September they flew to Rome and then transferred to Orvieto, a historic Etruscan center in Tuscany about an hour and a half north of Rome, where they spent the rest of the day relaxing and exploring the city.

The next morning they met their two trip leaders and the rest of their 20-member cycling group. They were transported by bus to their hotel in La Parrina, two and a half hours away, on the west coast of Italy. There they were outfitted with bicycles and gear, given some rudimentary instructions and went for a short warm-up ride on nearby roads. So

began their "Tuscany by the Sea" bicycling adventure!  

They spent the next five days bicycling the back roads of Tuscany. Their group included riders from all walks of life, among them two female pediatricians, an airline pilot and a mother-daughter duo. Diane and Roy were the senior members of the group and the only retired couple. During the course of the week, however, they crossed paths with another VBT group that consisted mainly of retirees. They bicycled 15 to 30 leisurely miles a day, stopped for lunch and sightseeing in pretty little hilltop villages, many of which overlooked that part of the Mediterranean known as the Tyrrhenian Sea, and slept in agro-tourism hotels on scenic working farms.

The 20 members of the bike riding group included people from all walks of life. They cycled 15 to 30 miles each day, stopping for lunch and sightseeing in picturesque hilltop villages.

For the first three nights they stayed at Antica Fattoria La Parrina, a four-star country resort featured in Condé Nast Traveler magazine. The owners of this property produce their own wine, cheese, yogurt, vegetables, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and flowers--and operate a farmers market on the side.

After a day of cycling you are entitled to eat as much pasta as you wish.

For their first ride the group cycled north to Talamone, a medieval hilltop village dominated by a fortress built between the 15th and 16th centuries. They stopped for a picnic lunch along the way and looked out over the sea to the islands of Montecristo and Elba. Alexander Dumas's novel, The Count of Montecristo, is set on the first island, and Elba is famous as the site of Napoleon's exile. After cycling back to the hotel, Diane and Roy relaxed at the pool before enjoying a sunset cruise on a lagoon and dinner at a nearby fish restaurant.

The next day they rode south and inland to Capalbio, a medieval village that overlooks the Tuscany landscape. After lunch they returned to the coast to the white sand beach at Ansedonia where beachgoers had made artistic arrangements of driftwood. After a refreshing swim they rode four miles through a thick pine forest to Orbetello where they sat in the main square and enjoyed a gelato before they were shuttled back to their hotel. That night Diane took a cooking class and learned how to make almond biscotti while Roy took pictures!

Diane learned how to make almond biscotti.

The following morning the group left their bicycles behind and took a bus to Porto Santo Stefano where they embarked on a one-hour ferry ride to Giglio Island (recently in the news as the site of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster). From the harbor they took a taxi/van to Giglio Castello, an ancient walled hilltop city that they explored with the help of a local guide.

On a side street, some cute little boys caught the attention of the group, and while they were interacting with the boys a man, who appeared to be their grandfather, attempted to pick their pockets. Thankfully, he got nothing!

Giglio Island Harbor

Later, they shuttled back down to the

bay and the beach at Campese, where Roy and Diane ate lunch and swam before going back to Giglio Porto to catch the ferry to the mainland. They agreed that this day was the highlight of

their trip because of the stunning beauty of the island and also because of the friendliness and expertise of their guide.

The group then moved to their second base, the Fattoria di Magliano, an agro/hotel located on a farm where several varieties of wine are produced. The farm sat atop a very steep hill, so steep that they had to walk their bikes in and out of the entrance. Diane and Roy liked this hotel even better than the first because the view from their window was spectacular. They looked out over vineyards all the way down to the sea. From here they took two daylong cycling excursions.

A typical street in the village of Magliano

The first ride took them on the "wine roads" past vineyards that sloped down to the sea. They ate a picnic lunch at a family-owned olive oil mill and learned how the fruit is crushed and made into high quality virgin olive oil. Then they bicycled through the town of Magliano, another inland walled city. Finally, they continued on to the villages of Pereta and Scansano. Back at the hotel, the group toured the wine cellars and tasted some of the wines that are produced on the property.

The last day's trip was also a highlight. They bicycled to Pitigliano, a city built on a high cliff surrounded on three sides by huge gorges (pictured at the top of this article). A guide gave them a tour

through the medieval district while she narrated the history of the Etruscans, the

early settlers of Tuscany, after whom the area is named. Lunch followed at a restaurant built into the side of a cave. Later they were shuttled back to their hotel. That night the group gathered together to watch the sunset and enjoy a delicious farewell dinner at a local farm where organic produce is grown for use in the kitchen. 

A country road in Tuscany

The following morning they left their

bicycles behind, packed their suitcases and were transferred back to Rome, where Diane and Roy opted to stay for a post-trip extension. But that's a story for another time!

PHOTOS: Roy & Diane Roberts

  LOCAL HISTORY 

Women Build Family Homes in Mashpee

Then & Now  

by Frank Lord   

The roles of men and women were clearly defined in Wampanoag culture. Men provided food by hunting and fishing and ensured the safety of their family against attacks by animals or other Indians. Women tended the family garden and prepared meals. They also had a very significant role in building the family's summerhouse, the wetu.  

Indian women building a wetu.

Wampanoags relocated their dwellings according to the change of seasons and the availability of food sources. In winter they moved inland to the shelter of the forest where edible animals were plentiful. They lived with several related families in long lodges covered with large pieces of bark stripped from trees. In the spring they moved closer to the shore to individual family plots to plant gardens, catch fish and gather shellfish.

If their previous summer wetu had been destroyed by winter storms, they were able to build a new home in a relatively short time and with a minimal labor force. Wampanoag men would cut and bend saplings, lashing them together to frame the wetu, which the women covered with mats they had woven from rushes.

Pilgrim men building a post & beam house

Contrast that simple technique with the way Pilgrims built post and beam framed houses, requiring a long time to cut and shape large trees into timbers and many men to erect the heavy framework, Some Pilgrims stated that in comparison to their own homes the Wampanoag winter lodges were less drafty and warmer and the summer wetus were cooler; both had fewer leaks.

Let's jump ahead several hundred years to spring 2012 when Habitat for Humanity will start to build three new affordable houses for qualified families in Mashpee. Cape Cod Habitat was founded 24 years ago and has since housed 74 families, 11 of them in Mashpee. Several of the homes on the Cape have been designated as "Women's Build" houses, built by women volunteers only.  

Mashpee women building a Cape Cod Habitat house

In 2010 I conducted a daily "Morning Devotion" at a Mashpee Habitat "Women's Build" house and shared information about the Wampanoag women building wetus. We discussed how appropriate it was that a group of 21st century women were building a family home in Mashpee just as Wampanoag women had done for thousands of years before the Pilgrims arrived.

I

Non Compos Mendes 

• I was going to write about procrastination this month but so many things have come up lately that I'm afraid it will have to wait 'til next month.   
• I must've missed something. When did it become OK for men to keep their hats on in restaurants and other public places?    
• Writers of advice columns really annoy me. Their position almost always agrees with the writer's point of view. Doesn't it ever occur to them that they're only hearing one side of the issue?    
• Guys: Remember baseball cards? Remember how we used to trade, flip and span them to increase our store of those extremely valuable possessions? Now kids can (and do) buy them by the bucketful. They don't trade them. They don't play games with them. They just have them. Too bad, they're missing a lot of fun.  
• And while I'm in Nostalgiaville... I wonder how our kids ever survived using the primitive car seats that we stuck them in. A piece of canvas hung between a couple of plastic riggings and, if we could afford the deluxe model, maybe its own flimsy steering wheel with a horn to honk.    
• Why does David Greenfield keep telling people I moved to Peabody? Must be wishful thinking.   
• We're getting royally screwed by advertising agencies. Not that a lot of people care. An ad's purpose is to sell a product or service, not to entertain its audience.I spent my working career in the advertising and marketing field and I'm not sure when ad agencies decided they were in the entertainment business but, apparently, somewhere along the line they did. (I do have a point here.) The cost of advertising is reflected in the price you pay for a product. When advertising is effective, it brings the price of a product down because of the high volume of sales the advertising generates. When ads are ineffective they still cost as much as good ads, but there's no offsetting price reduction due to the volume of sales. Maybe some day advertising agencies will get back to selling product, not entertainment.
• Speaking of advertising. That commercial for Cheerios showing a man and his son in a supermarket gets my vote for the advertising hall of fame. It shows the product numerous times. It mentions the product in audio a number of times and it gives a very strong message regarding product benefits. And it's not heavy-handed. It's just a beautiful, effective commercial.   
• I envy writers whose books are so compelling that they suck you in and actually make you feel the pain, the joy, the misery and the happiness of the characters. One book even made me hungry. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron, includes a scene with such passion where the protagonist (Sophie) is so starved and unable to find food for herself and her baby that it actually made me feel like I had to have something to eat. It's too bad no one reads Theodore Dreiser anymore; read Sister Carrie if you want to feel misery and poverty.    
• A word to the wise: The wearing of Spandex is a privilege, not a right.    
• This month's Unsung Heroes: Woody Young, Sr. and his merry band of coffee makers. Every Tuesday morning they provide a bottomless cup of coffee, a comfortable quantity of donuts and other pastries, and a forum for guys to gossip, offer a kind word, a gripe, a tribute, an accolade, or just plain hang out. Southport is a better place because of these guys.

IN THE BEGINNING Alexander Graham Bell made the first cordless telephone call in 1880. Before the age of electrical networks and lasers it utilized an impractical modulated beam of light for communication. Today, a patient can swallow a TV transmitter no larger than a small pill to permit a doctor to obtain information about your internal organs without using a colonoscopy tube. In a recent cover story (November 28, 2011), Time magazine described a "Hummingbird" drone weighing less then an AA battery, which can go to places where humans can't and report back. At $4 million each, it should be able to do that, but let's look at some other 21st century examples of wireless connections of a more practical nature.

THE CORDLESS TELEPHONE in its modern form was first conceived in the 1960s. It became commercially available in the early 1980s. It usually consists of a base station connected to the power grid and also to the standard wired telephone network, which communicates with one or more handsets. Today you can purchase a single telephone-connected base station that communicates with other cordless phone bases within a short distance. Each base station is designed to recharge a single cordless handset.

Because cordless phones depend on the electrical power grid, they do not work when the power goes off. Even today, the sound quality of many cordless phones does not compare well to most corded devices.

THE CORDLESS HEADSET is an extension of the corded headset, which was invented in 1910 but initially found only a limited market. Consisting of one or two earphones and a microphone, it found application in World War I for aviation use. Today there are wireless music device applications plus many styles of Bluetooth devices.

WI-FI is a mechanism that allows electronic devices to exchange data wirelessly over a computer network such as the Internet. It began in 1985 when the US Federal Communications Commission released a band of frequencies for unlicensed use. In 1999, the WI-Fi Alliance was formed to hold the WI-Fi trademark under which most products are sold. The term WI-FI suggests wireless fidelity, resembling the well established term Hi-Fi (used since 1950) or High Fidelity (in use since the 1930s). The Alliance determined that the name was "a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence,'" the standard that all Wi-Fi certified devices must meet.

Today there are city-wide Wi-Fi hotspots, campus-wide hot spots and direct computer-to-computer communications such as in the multiplayer hand-held game console application. Here at Southport, building-wide WI-Fi communication is available at the Village Center and many residents have established Wi-Fi communication within their own homes.

THE CELLULAR PHONE is a device that can make and receive phone calls over a radio link while moving within a wide geographical area. Automobile phone service was demonstrated in 1946 and became commercially available in 1956. The first handheld mobile phone call in a non-vehicle setting was made by a Motorola executive in 1973 to his Bell Labs rival.

The first cellular phone service was launched in 1979 in Japan. The first generation (1G) network appeared in the United States in 1983. In 1991, the second generation (2G) technology was launched in Sweden. 2001 saw the beginning of the 3G standard from Japan. By early 2011, 85% of the South Korea population was covered by a high speed wireless broadband network (4G), followed by 70% in Japan and 36% in the USA.

Broadband 4G networks are just emerging; the first 4G phones were released in early 2011. Each generation of networks and cell phones is faster and smarter than the previous one. Smart phones now can combine Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G technologies, not to mention Bluetooth linking, TV and photography all in one device.  But the real impact is not improved capabilities but the impact of widespread distribution.

From 1990 to 2010, worldwide mobile phone use grew from 12.4 million to 4.6 billion subscriptions, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid. Can you think of any other device that has had more impact on how the world works?

SOURCE Wikipedia