The Doohickey that Rocked the Snatch Alley!

Okay, so I was four months old on this particular Tuesday back in 1948; however, that was not the BIG news.

In fact, the BIG news on this day was announced without a great deal of fanfare. And yet, THIS changed EVERYTHING!


At the Bell Telephone Labs in New Jersey, the nerds decided to announce that they had received a patent for this thing they called a “transistor,” which pretty much revolutionized electronics. In other words, no more bulky, fragile vacuum tubes for radios, baby! The transistor radio was on its way!

The doohickey was invented by three Bell Lab dudehickeys named (left to right) John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain. Check out their ties in this photo.

As for the term “transistor,” it was coined by another Bell nerd named John Pierce. About that, Bell Labs says this: “Transistor. This is an abbreviated combination of the words 'transconductance' or 'transfer', and 'varistor.' The device logically belongs in the varistor family, and has the transconductance or transfer impedance of a device having gain, so that this combination is descriptive.” But Pierce says this: “The way I provided the name, was to think of what the device did. And at that time, it was supposed to be the dual of the vacuum tube. The vacuum tube had transconductance, so the transistor would have 'transresistance.' And the name should fit in with the names of other devices, such as varistor and thermistor. And. . . I suggested the name 'transistor.'” And the gang at the Nobel Foundation claims that the term is a combination of the words “transfer” and “resistor.” But were the Swedes there? Of course not, so they should just mind their own beeswax.

While all of this might have flown under the radar for most of the public in 1948, the announcement would reverberate down through the ages. Within a few years, there would be radios powered by transistors that could be installed in (gulp) automobiles! That would mean those long drives back to the Cape from Cranston would be enlightened by such people as Jack Benny. (There were probably others, but I was asleep by then.)

Most importantly to those of us in the U.S. baby boom was that advertisers with things to sell us would come looking for us and try to grab our attention. The best way to do that was to start us young, maybe send some guy with a Duncan yo-yo into the schoolyard and show us tricks. (Try attempting THAT these days!)

But the next best way to do that would be to get our attention through music that spoke to our age group and our hormones. That meant that New York girls like Carol King (who was already six when the transistor was announced) and California guys like Brian Wilson (who was also already six that year) eventually would be able to share with their cohorts in the baby boom some thoughts that we all might be able to understand.

“Tonight, the light of love is in your eyes, but will you love me tomorrow?”

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3irmBv8h4Tw

 or

“Do you love me, do you, surfer girl?”

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYZQ7Im3MXQ

Without the transistor, Snatch Alley would have been just another road. Instead, Snatch Alley remains part of American History. And it was fun, fun, fun.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4FOiVM4bQc

ALL roads (and bridges) lead to Snatch Alley.

Sunrise on this date back in 1935 shown upon the Sunday traffic that crossed the two new canal bridges that had opened just the day before.

New Bourne Bridge opened 22 June 1935

And this should serve as a little reminder as to just how much effort it had taken people to get to Snatch Alley when it was constructed in 1932. The Great Depression aside (for the moment), even the new automobiles were not known for either their comfort or their speed. The same can be said for the roadways. But the new bridges at Bourne and at Sagamore were a step (on the gas pedal) in the ride direction.

 Original drawbridge at Bourne

Even before work could begin on digging the canal in 1914, two drawbridges had been constructed in 1911 to carry traffic above the work site and onto the Cape.

 Bourne Bridge under construction

Sagamore Bridge under construction

Old Bourne Bridge in the foreground raises its span to reveal the new Bourne Bridge to its east

While the bridges did move traffic over the canal, the ride to Snatch Alley was still a long and winding Route 28 that was not likely to have much of a radio to blast out the tunes. 

And so it went.

Trying to Make A Little Sense of It All

Though you really don't need to know what I've been up to since the last post, I'll tell you just the same. I'm working on pulling together all the threads that weave the story of Snatch Alley. Some of that is personal, and some of that is History (both town and nation). At some point, it needs to focus upon the Snatch Alley Years, when the Baby Boom came of Age and the road along the beach was packed with teenagers in cars and teenagers on foot and teenagers just sitting on the fences that lined the road. Summer was in the air, and so was the music of the night. But before I can get to that, I thought I'd track down some of the events that eventually led to that road.

In the beginning, after all, there was no road. No Snatch Alley. No Old Wharf Road. No way along the beach whatsoever. This part of the town and the village was known as "The Plashes," and it was mostly woods and beach and bogs. A look at this 1922 map of Dennisport shows us that, as compared with the roads of today.

In 1922, Cape Cod was not much of a destination at all. And the same could be said about Dennisport.

On THIS date some 90 years ago, however, things began to quietly change and property in The Plashes began to change hands. Before there was Ray Grindell from Brockton, or Arthur Chase from Onset, there was Charles B. Long from Dennis. With his partner, Carl S. Ell, Charles formed the Longell Land Trust. At the same time, though, Charles Long also dealt in property on his own. And on 17 June 1926, Charles B. Long sold a large chunk of land in The Plashes to Arthur F. Chase. Here is the record from the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds. There had also been a transaction three days before.

Now, if this were some other time and some other place, you and I would be chuckling at the idea that Long had managed to sell some sort of swampland to Chase, and then he was laughing all the way to the bank. But we already know where this story is going to lead. So, let's get back to the point.

The point of all this is simply that there suddenly became some need for a road. After all, if Arthur Chase planned to do anything with his land, he would need to be able to access it. And so the tale continues.

This is a picture of what this part of town looked like in those days. Sand and pine and water.

R.I.P. "The Greatest"

While I am thinking of "The Greatest" on this day and all the memories created by the life and times of Muhammad Ali, I can't help but flashback to a Snatch Alley Saturday morning in June of 1959. I was 11 that summer. Across the street from us lived, Marion and Everett Hall from Mansfield. She was secretary to the Dean at Wheaton College, and he was a CPA. Though they were still "summer people," they came to the Cape most weekends whenever the weather permitted. To me, they were always "old," and were much like surrogate grandparents. As with my Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Al, Marion and Everett had no kids of their own. So, they spoiled my brother and me.

When the Halls were down and the campground was open at Grindell's, one of my weekend chores was to walk over to Grindell's store and pick-up Everett's copy of the Boston Record. The Record-American was the tabloid forerunner to the Herald-Traveler. The morning edition was the Boston Record, and the evening edition was the Boston American. Same with the Herald and the Traveler. All the neighborhood newspapers were delivered to the store, where each was set aside with a subscriber's name penciled on the upper right hand corner. Needless to say, I was entrusted with the Record set aside for Hall.

As I type this mindless episode I can clearly see me stopping in my tracks in front of #5, which was owned by a couple that for years I knew only as "Tina and Morey." (Their cottage was one of the earlier ones of the street built by Wilbur Grindell, just south of #7, the one he had built for his sister Maida.) There were still tall pines along the edge of the dirt road, and I stopped beneath the pines in front of Tina and Morey's to read the story that went with the picture on the back of Record. As with all tabloids, that was the sports page. And the full-page photo was the image of the stunning upset in the world of boxing: Ingemar Johansson had knocked out Floyd Patterson before a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium. THIS was BIG NEWS. In 1959, there were two major sports in the United States. One was baseball; the other, boxing. As we know, baseball was America's pastime, something that filled the days of summer. Boxing, however, was an event. And some events were greater than others. Some were championships of the WORLD!

Forget the fact that this was a white guy defeating a black guy in 1959 America, because Floyd Patterson would come back to pommel Johansson in their next two fights. This was only the fifth time that a non-American had won the heavyweight belt.

Boxing was big in the U. S. of A., but it was even BIGGER on Snatch Alley. Because the Grindell family was from the city of Brockton, Massachusetts, and because a lot of folks who camped in the Grindell's park or who bought land from Ray Grindell had hailed from Brockton, and because Brockton also was the hometown of Rocky Marciano, the so-called "sweet science" of boxing was BIG on Snatch Alley. The Rock had been the undefeated heavyweight champeen of the world (!) from 1952-1956: 49 wins in 49 bouts. (You can do the math on the frequency of those events.)

 The Rock with Floyd Patterson.

Anyway, when word reached Snatch Alley that Patterson had been upset by a Swede (by a Swede, by golly!), the beach was abuzz.

Having been born three years before Rocky, my mom had gone through a lot of school years with the champ. So, even she had a mild interest in boxing. But both my folks and the Grindells all lived in the Campbello section of Brockton, which was predominantly populated by immigrants from Sweden, of which my mom was a first generation. So, the name Ingemar floated along Snatch Alley; however, he was nothing compared to "The Greatest," who "floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee."

Despite his rapid rise to fame, Ingemar Johansson proved to be more a palooka than a Joe Palooka. A palooka was an inept fighter, but Joe Palooka was a comic book character who epitomized the best of the American character. (By the same token, most of us kids confused Joe Palooka with Bazooka Joe, who was the character in Bazooka bubble gum comics. Grindell's sold both Bazooka and Double-Bubble gum for a penny.)

Such was life on Snatch Alley in June of 1959. Floyd Patterson had become not only the youngest heavyweight champion of the world, but would become the first heavyweight champion ever to re-gain a championship, and he would go on to fight "The Greatest" on two occasions. Both times, though, Patterson lost.

In 1970, a fictional match between the undefeated heavyweights, Marciano and Ali, had the Rock defeating "The Greatest." That's fiction for ya.

But that was life on Snatch Alley.

Here's May in June, 1948.

This photo was taken on my mother’s 28th birthday (2 June 1948) as she posed with my brother and me on the front steps of the beach house. There’s only so much that could  be done with a Kodak Brownie in those days, but this box camera seems to have done the job. And I’m guessing that my dad is the one taking the picture. From the angle of the sun, it appears to be mid-day.


In retrospect, I can inspect a number of things in this picture. The paint is all fresh, and the screen door is one that my father had made from scratch. In years to come, it would be painted gray and slam shut each time my brother or I or the dog ran out the front door. In the winter, it would be taken off its hinges and stored away. Obviously, it let in the breeze and kept out the bugs, but it was useless against the dust of a dirt road and the rain. Such was life on Snatch Alley. (C’est la vie, arracher ruelle.)

The steps lack any garden on both sides, and I’m guessing there are no window boxes there yet. In years to come, this front step would be THE site for posed pictures, as well as 8mm silent movies. Apparently, no visitor could escape the Kodak magic.

And then, I look at my mother. Bobby socks, lipstick, and some sort of rebellious hairstyle that foreshadowed the hotrod pompadours of Snatch Alley.

Here also is a picture of my mom and dad, mugging for the camera on her birthday. The sign on the tree reads “Happy Birthday, Dot,” and it’s nailed to the pine between our house at #10 and #12, which has been owned by several families over the years: Sandell, Brown, Novello, Rochefort, and McGrillis. [In the 1951 picture of my Uncle Al, the man on the left in the picture is Stanley C. (Pete) Sandell, who was the first owner.] This birthday picture was snapped in 1974, when Julie and Al Novello owned the place. That would make my mom 54 on that day, and my dad was 58. Though you might think that these two are just hamming it up for the picture, that would only be partially true. They were always together and always loved each other’s company. And they seemed to enjoy expressing that in front of any camera. Everyone we know was accustomed to seeing that.

What I also see in this picture is the lack of stockade fence . . . anywhere. In the background, the Wakefield (now Mitchell) place on Shirley Avenue was still on its original cement block foundation at ground level.

As a final note, I’ll add this. Among the things that I never thought of asking my mother was just why her parents named her May, even though she was born in June. If they had expected her to be born sometime the month before, they still had a day to reconsider and go with the name of June. Still, they did not, and no one ever called her May, unless it was done so in jest. Of course, to me, it was always Mom.

So, happy birthday, Mom.

Memorial Day: Preserve Your Memories. They're All that's Left You.

In 1961, Memorial Day fell upon a Tuesday. And for those of you who might raise an eyebrow at that statement, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was not enacted until 1968, and it did not go into effect until 1971. So, May 30 fell upon a Tuesday in 1961.

Today, though, I thought I’d share a couple of images and thoughts of my Uncle Al Nyrell, who was one of my mother’s three brothers. All of them not only were salesmen for the Morton Salt Company, but also great guys to have as uncles. Axel, however, shared a special bond with my mother and with my brother and me. My mother had been the baby of her family, and Al was the middle of her three older brothers. She also had two older sisters. In addition, all of my mother’s other siblings had kids of their own; however, my Uncle Al and my Aunt Myrtle had none. My brother and I were the youngest of all the offspring, so Al and Myrtle spoiled us to no end.

Uncle Al was eleven years older than my dad, and he served in the U.S. Army in Guadalcanal when he was 36. Having survived that ordeal, he returned home to be a salt salesman, and his territory was Rhode Island. My uncle and aunt had settled in Cranston, so we would take that long drive about every other month to visit them, and they would come to the Cape on those months in between. In those days on those roads with those vehicles, the Dennisport-Cranston route was a long drive.

Along with the family lore about my dad’s wanting to name me “Bill” is the tale of my uncle’s visit to the Cape when I was still in my crib. One of the highlights of my March birth was that I was born with bronchial pneumonia. I don’t recall that, but I have been told on numerous occasions that my uncle awoke one morning in my mom and dad’s newly-built Cape home and asked why the coffee had been percolating seemingly all night long. His kid sister had to explain to him that it wasn’t the percolator that he heard, but her baby’s breathing. That would be me.

There are so many other great things to say about my Uncle Al (as well as my Aunt Myrtle and all the others), but I will share just two more. As I said, Uncle Al’s last name is Nyrell, and his favorite beer was Cranston’s own Narragansett Lager beer. Whenever my aunt and uncle arrived on Cape, he would unload a case of ’Gansett from the trunk of his company automobile (which is what they called cars back then). Uncle Al gave me my first sip of beer. (Thanks, Al. It’s never tasted any better than that since then.) What I very clearly remember, though, is the day that he showed me all the bottles in his full case of Narragansett, each of which had an N atop the cap. Even though I did not know the alphabet, Al taught me early on that “That N stands for Nyrell.”

The other thing that I remember so well is the day that my Uncle Al died. It was 1954, and he was 49 years old. He had died of a quinsy sore throat, which is an abscess on the tonsils. Ironically, his symptomatic sore throat could not be soothed by gargling with Morton salt in warm water, but he did not think it was anything serious. He choked to death on that abscess. At the age of six, I was home when my mother received the phone call on that August day, and I can still picture her sitting in the sun on our back step and sobbing beyond control. It was the first instance I had ever known of anyone’s dying.

Needless to say, my Uncle Al taught me a lot of things in those six short years, and a lot of those memories are clearly linked to life along Snatch Alley. One of these pictures below was taken in our yard in June of 1951, when other homes had begun to spring up. My Uncle Al is on the right, with his hand in the pocket of his cardigan . . . in June.

The other picture is of him in Guadalcanal. That picture sits on my shelf, where I see it every day. Clearly, there is a longneck bottle in his right hand, and I choose to believe that it is a Narragansett Lager. You and I can almost be certain that it is not, but still I like to believe it is so.

Today is Memorial Day, and -- among others that I have known and lost in battle and thereafter -- I am remembering Axel Nyrell. He was a large part of life along Snatch Alley.

Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left you.

The kids are all right.

Some people just don’t get it. They fail to understand that referring to Dennisport’s Old Wharf Road as “Snatch Alley” simply reflects a memorable period when the youthful bulge (known the “Baby Boom”) in this nation’s population was coming of age in postwar America. To deny that Snatch Alley ever existed is to deny the existence of two important generations in the history of America.

The first of these two would be the generation of my folks, the so-called “Greatest Generation.” They included those who great up in the shadows of the Great Depression. Some fought in the second World War; others worked tirelessly on the homefront to outfit the troops. Still others tossed and turned each night with the worries of having a loved-one abroad. They included two of my mother’s brothers, as well as Jack Kennedy, who knew little of the deprivation of the Great Depression, but who knew much about the hell of war. Aside from their triumphs in wartime, their efforts brought unprecedented advancements in technology and production that continued long after the end of World War II.

The second of these two generations would be that of the “Baby Boom,” which the survivors of WWII brought forth in the years from 1946 to 1964. This generation includes myself, as well as my older brother. Though he was born in 1943, he was on the cutting edge of the boom. The schools and such that raised his cohorts quickly became inadequate to handle the massive bulge in the population. By the time I came along, new schools were being built, new roads were being set out, and new homes were being built.

Having been born in 1948, I became a teen-ager in 1961; my brother had done so in 1956. In my brother’s time, the word “teenager” first came into being. Before that, “teenage” (like "cabbage" and "cribbage") was a British word. Teenage kindling wood. Boys and girls aged 13-19 were simply known as “teens.”

Meanwhile, on this date in 1961, Jack Kennedy was celebrating his first birthday as an occupant of the White House. It was his 44th, and my dad was a year older than the President of the United States. In the 1960 election, America had chosen their youngest Chief Executive, and youth would be at the fore of the nation’s thoughts. Hyannisport was not Dennisport. And Squaw Island was not Snatch Alley. Still, to understand Snatch Alley is to understand the impact of the Baby Boom upon American culture and of the nation’s fixation upon youth.

Only because we must begin somewhere.

Down by the beach, before I was born, my father built our first house. It was not the first of others he would build, but it was the first of those that he and my mom would own outright. Until then, my parents had owned no such thing. Nor had many other adults in the USA.

But then came 1946. My dad was thirty, my mom was twenty-six, and my brother was three years old. Together, they were living on the second floor, just above Mrs. McGathlin, the widow who owned the house herself. In the fall of that year, my folks purchased from my grandfather’s neighbor, Ray Grindell, a small plot of sandy land on Cape Cod just inland from the shoreline of Dennisport. For “consideration paid,” they took possession of eight one-hundredths of an acre of property which they could call their very own.

The following spring in 1947, my dad cleared their land of scrub oak and black pines, staked out a hole that he could dig by hand, and set down a cinderblock foundation that measured twenty-five feet across the front and twenty-three feet along the sides. Freehand, my mom had drawn up their plan upon a single page. And on the back of that, my dad recorded every expenditure they were making. He would measure and cut every single board, hold and pound each and every nail, and carefully realize their very first house.

Throughout that spring and summer, as well as into the fall, the house took shape during the time that my dad was not working for the electric company. My mom was helping wherever she could, but she had my brother to attend to. And I was there, too.

Let me be a bit coy at this point and spring ahead to March of that next year, 1948. Barely escaping a Leap Year Day’s birth, I was born in a blizzard that raged into the first of March. Family lore is that my dad wanted to name me “Bill,” because I came at the first of the month. True or not, that story told often throughout my life is typical of the spirit that reigned over our household, and it is part and parcel of what made their house our home. To this day, I still enjoying telling people that my parents amused me as a child. (There, I said it again.) Let me repeat that. My parents amused me as a child.

The point of this particular diversion is that something must have happened between my mom and my dad about nine months before 1 March 1948. Only someone with too much time on his or her hands would bother to count back the months on your fingers and discover that the date would be about 1 June 1947, which is also damn close to Memorial Day weekend. So much for being coy. That’s all I can figure, and we are left to our imaginations.

So, as my dad built our house, my mom helped as much as she could and took care of my older brother . . . and me: an aboriginal wharf rat, born in a sign of water, and destined to come of age on Snatch Alley.

Snatch Alley is a very real place, as well as a beloved part of the heritage of Cape Cod.

Formally established in the early 1930s along the southern shore of Dennisport village and then paved, “County Road” was how maps first named this two-mile stretch before the town of Dennis laid claim to it as “Old Wharf Road.”

Come the early 1960s, this route beside the beach became known most affectionately as “Snatch Alley.”

To those who lived this shoreline life, that phrase still evokes memories of a simpler place, as well as a carefree time when every aspect of a summer’s day revolved around the beach.

This simple blog reflects the cherished style and history of those who were lucky enough to have lived along Snatch Alley . . . and of those who forever wish they had.

The Dennis Historical Society provides further details of Snatch Alley’s origin in The Gazetteer of Dennis, edited by Burton N. Derick.