TREES

I turned 81 on Mar. 6th,2016. I lived in Southie until I was 32 when I married and moved to Burlington, Ma. My ties to South Boston remained because my parents continued to live there. My family returned for all of the main holidays-St. Patrick’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and Thanksgiving.  In the later years of my father’s life I returned to take him to his Doctor’s appointments. He lived to nearly 103 so I was back often.

The Southie of my Youth is different then what is here today. I remember standing on Dorchester St. looking down West Fifth St. where I lived and seeing the trees that lined both sides, providing shade during those blistering heat waves. It was like looking down a lane in a thickly forested woods. During the WWII years cars were no longer manufactured and no one on our street could afford one anyway, so the CO fumes couldn’t destroy the beautiful elms that provided that lovely canopy.

The warning clangs of the then electrified trolley cars that ran along Dorchester St. to Andrew Station and the other way to City Point remains locked in my memory. The Oil and Car companies found a way to convince the Government to do away with the electrified trolleys and replace them with gas burning buses. Before long the greenery we had long loved was just but a memory.

On the whole we are better off than those that lived before us. But in other ways we are not.