Post Island is a community that is part of the city of Quincy, Massachusetts, 8 miles south of downtown Boston. This is probably what it looked like in 1850 or so when it was still part of the John Quincy Adams estate.
Eventually, the land was carved into tiny quarter-acre parcels that were sold to the huddled masses of South Boston and Dorchester to become part of the “Irish Riviera.” My grandfather, Robert Henry Hunter, built our family’s cottage on Post Island around 1900.
Grandpa Robert Hunter and Grandma Edna Foster Hunter
Here’s an entirely fictionalized account of what happened in my novel “Stripah Love” that was originally published in 2005.
“The Gordons came to Boston by way of Nova Scotia in the mid-1800s. By the turn of the century they were well established as accountants and actuaries and dentists in Dorchester and South Boston and started coming to the Quincy shore for aquatic recreation. At first these were manly affairs, the men staying in simple camps that accommodated expeditions to hunt ducks, catch flounder, or dig clams. Bull and his three brothers, including Artie’s father Bruce, weren’t consciously aware of it, but they were continuing a tradition that had been lived by generations of Wompatuck Indians before. As the Gordon boys grew older, they began to bring their girl friends on their salty excursions. Their camps became gentrified, a great place to spend the Roaring 20s. Then, the girl friends became wives, and there were lots of little kids.”
My mother, Connie, was one of those little kids.
That’s Connie on the left, younger brother Gordon in the middle, and Bob on the right.
Brother Bob turned out to be the business success in the family, developing a machine that cleans and recycles the fats used in deep frying. His company, the R.F. Hunter Company, is still in business after more than 75 years, and is still in the family, now under the watchful eye of his grandson-in-law, Paul Santoro. It started off as a fish store, Hunter Sea Foods, and evolved into a manufacturing business.
The R.F. Hunter Company played a significant role in the development of both Howard Johnson’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. I described this in “Stripah Love.” I am a writer who thinks of research and fact checking as cheating, so my accounts are unsullied by either. Bob Hunter was the inspiration for “Bull Gordon” From “Stripah Love.”:
“But what he really knew was fat. All fish fryers know that food tastes best when cooked in clean oil. Over time the fryers become cesspools of all that has been cooked before. When Bull looked into the cost factors of his business, he was surprised to find that fat, even more than fish, was the highest cost commodity in his business. He could have done what most small restaurants do and just use the fat longer and longer, until a single piece of fish reveals the entire history of the summer. Or he could have kept the fat fresh, and raised his prices. Instead, he developed a simple pump and filter that cleaned the fat and extended its usable life. Not only did it reduce operating costs, but it improved the quality, consistency, and taste of his fried foods. He called the device the Gordon Filtron. The take-out fish shop thrived, but Gordon’s Sea Food was about to morph again. The owner of an ice cream stand in nearby Wollaston came to Bull to learn the secrets of his grease. He had just opened a restaurant and wanted to served golden fried clams, just like those that came from Bull’s fryers. People were traveling more, he told Bull. They wanted familiar food in familiar places. His plan was to open restaurants with instantly recognizable orange roofs all over the country. And his name was Howard Johnson.
Bull nodded, and agreed to outfit his fryers with Gordon Filtrons,
The R.F.Hunter Filtrator in real life. A few years later another local entrepreneur approached Bull. His business, a small coffee and donut shop, was only a few miles away. If Bull’s fat filter could improve the flavor of Howard’s fried clams, wouldn’t it work with donuts, too? In not too many years Dunkin’ Donuts were sprouting like weeds up and down the Eastern seaboard. The restaurant was closed down because it made more sense to manufacture Gordon Filtrons than fish & chips. Bull’s small place in fast food history was assured.”
The cottage at Post Island was, for many years, the constant in my life. I was there, at least for a while, every summer. This simple structure withstood the Nor’easters and hurricanes of more than a hundred years. Eventually, in March, 2017, the cottage met its match and was destroyed in a storm that devastated much of Post Island and resulted in the seawall being raised for the third time in my life.
Post Island, pre-sea wall
My life, like the tides, cycles back to Post Island periodically. It is one of the connective tissues of my life. Music, another. Beer, arguably, is a third. A fourth, and one inextricably intertwined with Post Island, is baseball.
Post Island was a very self-contained place. It’s a private community of 40 houses, wedged between two other middle class neighborhoods of Quincy, Hough’s Neck and Adams Shore. It was no more posh or exclusive, but because it was private and set off by a surrounding salt marsh, Post Island maintained an aura of aloofness. For kids, the three short streets plus the beach were the world. Occasionally we would dash across the marsh to go to Perry’s Store (right across the street from Hunter’s Sea Foods). and at night we’d stroll as a pack up to the DQ (Dairy Queen) where $0.10 or $0.15 could get you a small mountain of creemee.
There were two annual excursions that were as much a part of summer as thunderstorms and shooting stars–Fenway Park and Nantasket Beach.
If you take a boat from Post Island, past the Pumping Station and Peddocks Island, across Hull Gut, and continue along Nantasket Roads until Boston Light is directly on your left, then hang a right, you enter a different world. No longer do you have the protection of the Harbor (let alone the inner sanctum of the puddle that is Quincy Bay). The water is now colder, and the waves higher. Life, overall, is more vibrant and beguiling.
To your right is a two mile stretch of sand, Nantasket Beach, for many years the last stop on the trolley for Bostonians seeking relief from the summer heat. To your left, just over the horizon, is Portugal.
Depending on the light, time of day, or state of inebriation, the beach can take on a spectrum of complexions. They are all intoxicating. The Atlantic always feels icy at Nantasket, especially compared to the mud puddle of Quincy Bay where the waters are warm by passing over the sun-baked flats twice a day. Within a few minutes, however, the waters become inviting, beckoning. Make no mistake, however, something very titillating is going on.
We’d generally go to the beach in the afternoon and save the amusement park for the evening. Paragon Park was a delightfully sleazy place, filled with tough-looking teenage guys and painted women smoking cigarettes. I loved it, of course. Our parents held us withing their protective grasp, but this is what made me want to grow up. There was something going on here that I wanted to understand.
The clackatyclack of the roller coast is always accompanied by a soundtrack, and the soundtrack is a loop, and the song that’s playing is “Palisades Park” by Freddy “Boom-Boom” Cannon. But there are other musical memories associated with Post Island:
* The jingle for Adventure Car Hop on Route 1 in Saugus where if you said “Woo-Woo Ginsburg” into the speaker after ordering the daily special, you’d receive another one FREE. (You can read that full story, and hear the jingle on SilverbackDigest.com).
* Anything and everything by Roy Orbison. “I was all right, for a while. I could smile for a while …”
* The summer I showed up with my electric guitar and plugged it in in the garage/bunkhouse. The same group of kids that had been my bunkmates just the year before, crowded in. They thought the guitar was cool as I fumbled my way through the intro to “Walk Don’t Run,” but it was instantly clear that we, as teenagers more than Post Islanders, were now on different planets.
Step Morris, Bobby Pearson, Ricky Reyenger circa 1963
* The summer of 1971 when I got my “just-in” copy of the highly-awaited Who’s Next album. Lacking a proper hi-fi source of playing music at the cottage, Laura and I went up to my Uncle Bob’s basement where he had one of those all-in-one hi-fi units, a Grundig, I think. We pored over every aspect of the album … cover photo, song lyrics for the next couple of days, listening to the album probably 15 times. Laura, who had followed me into Who fandom, now happily shared the obsession and fantasized about having Roger Daltrey over for dinner.
* Coming back for a Cuzzins Reunion so that Patrick, Jake, and now Whitney could meet the extended family. On the way home, in the car, we sang a round of:
*** From a hand-written sign in Hunter’s Seafoods, in the area where clamdiggers would bring their harvest to market.
** Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Briny as the ocean, sweet as candied yams,
Everybody’s eating chocolate-covered clams.
*** No honkeys, no crackies, no muddies, no sandies
No honkeys, no crackies, no muddies, no sandies
** Lyrics by Rutherford Robbins Romaine, III (Yale 1970)
A Post Island inspired sea shanty
