Scollay Square

It's more than just a line in a song. But you used the MTA to get there, just like the song said. Afraid that I don't remember  Sally Rand or Gypsy Rose Lee performing there, before my time. Maybe you can here whisps of "bump and grind" music as you visit now, but I doubt it. Today's version is a completely up scale tourist trap called Fanuel Hall. The kiosks no longer sell fresh, ripe produce but imported trinkets. Like the junk we gave the Indians for Manhattan.

As a twelve, thirteen year old my memory is different. Max  would take a couple of us to the market on saturday morning. It was a working holiday...we were to young to understand the concept, but we were there to tote the weeks groceries. Push carts lined the streets that now house multi-star hotels. Everything from cabbage to kumquats were for sale. Doorways along the facade opened into meat markets, none much bigger than your front room at home. "Front room"=Parlor, Living space or whatever the current silly buzz word is. One of Max's favorites was a few doors up from the corner and down the stairs into the cellar. Hanging slabs of beef, wood chopping blocks, sawdust, knives and sharpening steels, blood, mayhem...of course I loved it, what kid wouldn't. A big roast (for a big family), then  a chicken perhaps, not too many steaks or chops, cost efficiency a must.

Meat purchased, the weeks load of produce can be planned out and purchased. When we first moved to Everett there was still a man driving through the neighborhood selling fruit and vegetables from his truck. Also, a milkman, an iceman, an oilman and a baker. They were now gone, change had come. But the market was still there. Until Rome and the Campo dei Fiori I thought those days gone, but thankfully I was wrong. Everything had it's own venue, you went to Chelsea for fresh bagels, Jewish cold cuts and bread...different stores! The Newfoundland store was up on Hancock St. where your salt cod and Red Rose tea was available. Kennedy's in the square had butter and freshly ground peanut butter.Two seafood shops and two MacKinnons markets for canned goods. Today we have Stop & Shop/Publix/etc, what an improvement!

I grew up and got married. The market was still there but on the way out. I shopped the same kiosks and stores for a year or two until the market moved to an industrial location for retail only. One of my memories of these last days was picking up chicken breasts for my in-laws and dropping them off on the way home. As I walked through the door, Mary Ellen informed me that I had to go back...the chicken wasn't "clean". In the market the butcher took the bird and severed the pieces you wanted...you had to finish the cleaning process.  I hadn't realized people didn't know that, so of course I returned and finished the job. 

...another time, dinner time, another reminder that I was being transported into a new world; "please don't open the new milk until I finish this glass. They might be from different cows"! Hope you can laugh at that now Elizabeth, I did then!