By Darlene DeVita
(The following is one in a series of sneak peeks at the upcoming People of Chelsea additions by Photographer Darlene DeVita. The new work will ultimately appear on the fence of the Chelsea Public Library (CPL) this fall in a collaboration between the People of Chelsea project and the CPL.)
My name is Judith Dyer, Dyer! My husband was Walter Dyer, and I was Judith Dyer. We were not related!!! We happened to meet because of our last name being the same.
This is the house I grew up in. The house was built around 1847. I found out from my husband’s step-grandfather that he lived here once. It was a rooming house. It was called Lebanon St., not Heard St. And, there is no firewall! – Somebody just put up a wall and divided the house. My insurance is high because of that. I grew up on the other side in #13 and moved here to #11 with my husband. We had two sons and a daughter.
My father was a tugboat captain in Boston Harbor. That’s why we lived in Chelsea because his boat was docked in East Boston. This was in the days when people didn’t have cars, and he would walk home. Everybody walked in those days. If you had a car, that was something special. When my father knew he was coming through the bridge [in those days, there were no electronics], he blew the whistles, and my mother would know when my father was coming home because he would send her messages through the boat whistles.
Growing up here as a child was nothing like it is today. We were outdoors all the time. We played hopscotch. We played what we called 1/2 ball with a wooden broom and 1/2 of a pimple ball [a variation of stickball] because people were poor. I still have my favorite rock from hopscotch. We blew bubbles. My mother used Lux Flakes [soap] and an old coffee can, we added the water, and she added glycerin to make the bubbles shine in colors. Chelsea had a 9 PM whistle that blew every night, and that was our cue to go home.
My very best girlfriend growing up was Jewish. Chelsea was highly Jewish. On Jewish holidays there was no school because the teachers were mostly Jewish. She eventually married a non-Jewish man, and he converted for her. Over the years, I went to all the services with them through the holidays, and they, in turn, would spend Easter and Christmas with us. All my life, I attended the Universalist Church, which no longer stands in Chelsea. It was a beautiful stone church on the corner of Clark and Cary Ave. We had church suppers, square dancing. My mother did all the cooking for 200 people, my sisters and I waited on the tables. She was a fabulous cook. Attendance was very low so it was eventually torn down. A Chinese church in Boston bought our stained glass windows.
I have such fond memories!