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.