Detouring through The Lake

Detouring through The Lake

One of the curious ways we think about space is driven by our mode of transport - in a car, on a bike, or on foot.   I often bike into work, which is pleasant for the most part.   I live in the town of Newton, which  is pretty high-brow, white collar.   There are a lot of professionals in Newton: lawyers, doctors, and professors (like me).   I won't make apologies for being what I am, but, for the most part, that's Newton.

Getting from my home in Newton into Harvard on bike is pretty much a no-brainer.   There's a bike path that winds along both sides of the Charles River and ends up close to my office.   The only minor trickiness is actually getting *to* the bike path, which means crossing the Mass Turnpike, and avoiding the insane drivers.    When planning my bike path, I got out a topographic map, and found the least used bridge over the Mass Pike.   Then, things got a bit trickier.   At first I rode past a couple of schools.   These proved problematic.   In the thick of rush hour, there were tons of parents dropping off and picking up their kids.   

The fun thing about biking is that the streets that are best for bikes are often the quiet back streets, so it leads to a lot of detouring.   In the process of taking the detours, I began to find that one neighborhood was particularly bike-friendly, if only by virtue of how quiet the streets were.   This neighborhood is called Nonantum.   

When you ride through Nonantum (or drive for that matter), you're immediately struck by one item:  it is unmistakably an Italian-immigrant neighborhood.   The fire hydrants are painted the red-white-green of the Italian flag as are the stop-sign poles.   Instead of the double yellow lines down the middle of the street, it's the red-white-green. 

 Stripe down the middle a street in The Lake. 

 Fire hydrant in The Lake

Another conspicuous item seen throughout Nonantum are signs and bumper stickers for "The Lake".   At first, I was asking myself, "What lake?  There's no Lake here."  There's even a store called Silver Lake Liquors.   One day, I was at the local hardware store, getting some tools, and I saw a set of old photos pinned to the wall in the back.   These were photos of the original Silver Lake.    Back in the 1930's there was a Silver Lake, but it gradually got filled in and the familiar houses of Nonantum were build on top of what was left.  

I've learned that the people of The Lake are pretty tight and feel a real sense of neighborhood, which is conspicuously absent throughout the rest of Newton.   One of the human-incarnations of the culture of the Lake is Anthony (Fat) Pelligrini.   He's the unofficial mayor of the Lake and is something of a walking, talking museum of the Lake.  Supposedly he was the mastermind behind the red-white-green striping of the Lake.   I noticed that the physical 'town' of Nonantum is larger than the red-white-green striping would indicate.   Had Fat singled out a specific subset of Nonantum for the treatment?   Was it commonly understood that The Lake was only one area of Nonantum?   By doing a set of detours  on my bike, I tried to compile a map of the red-white-green striped streets.   This is shown below as the red-colored area on the map. 

The Lake, according to the Fat Pelligrini test.

Since Fats is the inventor of the red-white-green striping, I figure he's the one who decided which parts of Nonantum qualify as The Lake, hence I dub it the Fat Pelligrini test.   

Now the people of The Lake are united by more than their Italian heritage.   They also have a language all their own, called Lake Talk.    It's a curious mixture of Romany (language spoken by the gypsies) and Italian.   The Romany supposedly came from carnies who hung out in Nonantum when the circus was in town.  Lake Talk is one of those insider languages that identifies the locals and excludes the outsiders.   It's also a 'guy' talk to a large extent.   A 'guy' is a 'mush' in Lake talk.  A 'divvya mush' is a crazy guy.  Here, 'divvya' derives from a Romany term for 'crazy'.   A 'quister mush' is a 'standup guy'. 

I've gotten to know several people from The Lake and have to say that they're pretty down-to-earth and friendly.   There's Hank Maguire, who runs Maguire Plumbing, with the sign on his trucks, "Hire Maguire."   He's always asking about my kayaking adventures.   There's Steve Solari from Advanced Auto.   I think I've single-handedly financed his fishing boat.   He likes to fish, and when I drop off my car for servicing, we'll yak about fishing for stipers and blues.   My son, James, has gotten to know the owner of Silver Lake Liquors.   Every Friday, they hold a beer tasting session, which I'm pretty tempted to go try out.  

All-in-all, the bike detouring gave me a view into The Lake and drove my curiosity about the roots of the place.   Thank god for detours!