JR was a lifelong Hanson resident with a good job, who never married, cared for his elderly father, and was very generous in subsidizing the needs of his friends and neighbors who had children and financial struggles. Although he never had kids of his own, he certainly loved being with kids and acted like the favorite uncle. Being a childhood friend of my mothers, he regularly dropped in to visit, play scrabble or whist, always brought a huge fruit basket at Thanksgiving. Rumor had it that at one time he was close to marrying my widowed aunt, who’s three young boys could have used a good father. No one was sure why it didn’t work out, but figured he preferred not having THAT much responsibility. After my parents divorced there was a bit of speculation about the possibilities, but I don't think any of us kids believed much in the probability of him becoming a step-father.
JR loved skating and, although he didn’t play hockey, he was a big fan. He brought us public skating in Brockton (brother David was labeled “The Human Zamboni” for the amount of time he spent “cleaning” the ice – although he did eventually become an all-star hockey player). Laurie was in high school and many of her male friends (all of whom’s parents JR knew well) played on the high school team, so trips to Asiaf Rink became weekly events. WHRHS had a powerhouse team and, being the glory days of the Big Bad Boston Bruins, most games included isolated scuffles to full-blown brawls. Our primary job was to hold Laurie back from joining the fray. Occasionally, the rink lights would be shut out (so nobody could see who they were fighting against and might therefore stop) until the Brockton police arrived. Adding to the adventure, these trips always included either early morning stops at the donut shop or evening stops at the Friendly’s where four to ten of us would shoot straw wrappers and ice chips at each other and be too noisy.
JR was inspired one winter night while watching me create a backyard ice rink by patiently sprinkling water onto our patio, eventually building up a solid inch thick layer of ice over the bricks. Being a mechanical engineer he concluded that he could build an outdoor rink in an used field owned by another friend by pumping water from the nearby stream. He invested his own money to scrape and level an area, bring in telephone poles and plywood for boards, acquire real nets. We would go late at night whenever the temperature dipped below freezing, and pump water into our rink. He founded the local youth hockey association and organized their first ever games – played on our home-made outdoor rink, two years before Hobomock Arena was built. Knowing how tight money always was in our family, I have no doubt that JR insisted on helping foot that bill for my mother’s three hockey playing boys - because I know for a fact a number of other kids who got to play solely because of his generosity.
JR loved riding dirt bikes, and Hanson was an ideal location – with hundreds of miles of cranberry bog service roads and old abandoned woods roads. He purchased two Honda SL100’s and two minibikes from Bettencourts. Many weekends he would drive us to his house where we would take turns (with all the other neighborhood kids) first learning to shift and turn and stop, later doing jumps and wheelies and exploring the long abandoned fields and paths between Pleasant, Main and Reed streets. As we became competent riders, he started to let us keep a minibike and an SL100 at our house so we could ride at will. Younger brothers Eric and David both became very skilled and fearless riders and soon were given permission by my mother to try racing in Middleboro. Before long, JR was bringing them to races all around New England along with a few other boys in their age range.
JR was the one who taught us how to dig clams on the mud flats near the Powder Point Bridge. He knew where the best blueberry bushes in the Great Cedar Swamp were. He loved being outdoors. Not being a hunter - he used “Old Bottle Hunting” as a hobby/excuse to explore old stone walls and back woods dirt roads and overgrown foundations of long forgotten houses or barns. Pretty soon we all knew how to read the landscape, determine prime spots to discover a bottle dump, and recognize double eagle flasks and such. Most of us kids and cousins had our own collections growing and read books about how to identify and gauge the values of different types of bottles.
One year JR took a number of us panning for gold in a Maine river and we hiked Tumbledown Mountain. I remember him taking some of us to Paragon park (but we didn’t get to ride the coaster because Frankie from Elm St wasn’t tall enough). Although JR was just a couple of years younger than my parents, he had a very contemporary taste for music. He was a big fan of The Doors and CCR and other 60’s & 70’s bands that most parents simply didn’t care for.
JR had a co-worker who owned a very rustic un-used house in tiny, rural Washington NH. It was right on the Main street (actually, it was about three feet away from the edge of the tar). There was an old wood burning cook stove in the kitchen and a barrel drum wood stove for heat in the living room. Upstairs were two unheated bedrooms whose beds had old goose-down mattresses and quilts. There was an attached barn where the chord wood was stored. We would have wood chopping contests – most wood cut / fastest time / fewest swings/ etc… An outhouse was located in the rear corner of the barn - no working plumbing here – only a hand pump that you couldn’t drink from (some story about a skunk that had died in the well. We didn’t quite believe it, but didn’t dare disbelieve it either). There was an old player piano and a Victrola with thick scratchy records. At night we played Clue, Yahtzee and whist. JR invented and taught us “Washington Whist” – a two player version.
When we got to go there in the spring, summer, or fall we explored lakes and streams and hiked up Lovell Mountain. We investigated the cemetery where the Dole (the pineapple mogul) crypt is located. There were maple syrup farms, an 80 year old lady who cut and sold chord wood, the little gas station/general store right beside the family who had the hay barn with a rope swing inside. Right across the street was a creepy old library, and next door to that – the Silly family. Winter trips meant great sledding on the hill out back or down by the church on the town green, but the water in the wash bowl upstairs would freeze. One year the whole family (including Grammy even) decided to do Thanksgiving in Washington NH. All of the cooking was done in the wood stove, everybody pitched in, and a grand time was had by all. It even snowed, making things feel more like Christmas. After dinner, Grammy reluctantly headed for the outhouse (the cold breeze coming up from underneath was not a pleasant thing to anticipate). Shortly thereafter a loud “THUD” shook the whole house – a car coming down the hill where the road curved to pass by the house slid uncontrollably straight – right into the corner of the attached barn – 10 feet from the built-in outhouse (ooops, where is Grammy?). The occupants of the errant vehicle were all Ok, but Grammy demanded to be brought back to Massachusetts and civilization.
Another unusual but neat place JR occasionally brought us was an authentic Finnish sauna on Furnace Pond in Pembroke. Run by old Finn immigrants, this was our introduction to good old fashioned northern European health care, skin care, clean pores, cold cures, and sweaty old naked men wrapped in towels by the room full (the ladies had a separate adjacent sauna room). There was an indoor shower room, but the real thrill was to go out into the pond in authentic Finnish fashion. In the winter you would timidly go in about waste deep and squat down, and if you stayed very still the water around you would actually warm up from the heat of your body. But if somebody wanted to “get” you, they would jump in next to you – disrupting your warm water zone, and your would feel the freeze! One evening we actually had to break a thin skim of ice to get into the water. Still, this was more fun than warmly showering with naked old men.
When I was officially too old to skate in youth hockey, JR talked me into coaching and found a team that needed an assistant. He was always a good source of advise, and being the league president, what advise he offered was well worth listening to. He was impressively knowledgeable on a wide range of topics, very systematically could figure out who had what for trumps in their whist hand or who held which suspect/weapon/room card in “Clue” games. He was about 6’2” tall, clean cut and athletic, always keeping the crew cut and physical fitness habits learned from his days in the service. He was a confident debater, an insightful evaluater of people, who despite being financially very well off never flaunted or acted better than anyone else. In short, he was the ideal person to emulate – even though I was always a bit jealous that he paid more attention to my younger brothers, cousins and neighbors than me.
PS:
Now, for all of you readers who’s VIRTUS training antenna’s have been zapping uncontrollably through all of this – congratulations. This was a “text book case”. Rumors had even been prevalent around town, and some parents wouldn’t allow him near. But Uncle Mac and Dad assured Mom that although gay might be a correct label, they felt that nothing more than that was likely. Many friends & siblings (myself included) expressed complete confidence that nothing inappropriate had ever happened. Mom was distraught and torn – not wanting to believe but not able to deny - when years later a Marshfield man (former childhood friend of my brothers and a former member of JR’s young entourage successfully brought JR to civil court (criminal statute of limitations had since passed) and key corroborating testimony was given by a very close relative. In hindsight – with this knowledge and the general acquired wisdom of adulthood, it is so easy to see and even predict with complete confidence who the other of his “favorites” were.
Certainly my pain of being betrayed by a role model doesn’t hold a candle to the pain suffered by his victims, but the haunting questions of how things might have been different for me, or how easily things could have been prevented for others, or how such a good person can be such a bad person linger to this day – for me and many others I’m sure. If I erase the final two paragraphs, these are stories about some of the best times of my teen life. Are they now to be viewed as bad times? Many of the interests that are still near and dear to me today developed in large part from JR’s positive influence on me. Are they now tainted? Am I?
