It was with appropriately little fanfare recently when the Rockport Public Works garage, known locally as the town barn, was razed to make room for a new DPW facility. In its day (beginning in 1956), the barn enabled several previously semi-independent municipal commissions — highway, water and sewer, park, beach and forestry and cemetery — scattered about the town to consolidate under one roof. This gave the newly established DPW, led by a professional director, the manpower and flexibility to meet the town’s growing service needs. Fortunate timing. A plowing response equal to the epic snowstorms in 1969 and 1978 would never have been possible without the barn as a base of round-the-clock operations and maintenance. That and plenty of coffee, doughnuts, pizza, bread and cold cuts to sustain the crews during sometimes 30-to 40-hour shifts.
I worked there for 17 years full-time and a few summers during college before I went to the Transfer Station to finish out my career, encountering some memorable characters along the way. First a sincere thank you to the late Dick “Squizzle” Manson, family friend and 1960s selectman, for the assist. I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity.
My first summer in 1968 I got a special welcome when the hard-boiled highway foreman took notice of me and bluntly asked, “Who the hell are you?” Who could forget the DPW’s unique personalities with their colorful nicknames? We had Babe, Bo, Beaver and Boone, Daddy, Dipstick, Duffy and Dyke, Grass, Moochy, Onion, Salty, Tedda and Wheezy. Like our own doubled version of the seven dwarfs only taller. Working class legends all. Not to be outdone, our office was staffed by the real Thelma (Steen) and Louise (Bodoni).
Early arrivals to the barn would often bump into likably crusty water/sewer worker and skilled mason Dave. The conversation would go like this. “Good morning Dave, how are you?” “Miserable!” he’d snap with a crooked little smile on his face as he took another drag on an ever present cigarette. Dave had better places to be than the barn.
The snow and ice foreman was also a man of few words. When I got called in to plow for the first time, the phone rang, I said “hello” and a gravelly voice growled “come to work.” Before I could respond, he hung up on me.
Even our longest serving director knew to check his ego at the door when he ventured into the barn. One day he dropped by unannounced as he liked to do. With the best of intentions he approached our mechanic Frank while he worked on a truck. “How’s it going Frank?” he inquired. “Fine until you showed up,” Frank replied without even bothering to look up. In the early to mid ’70s a two-way radio system was introduced in the barn, the trucks, the plants and Town Hall office to improve efficiency and communication. It certainly succeeded, although on rare occasions explicit private conversations leaked out over the air due to an accidentally keyed mic. The guys were amused, the boss wasn’t and the comments are best left unsaid.
Whether it was an awkward attempt at humor, biting sarcasm or radio bloopers, in the barn you never knew what might be said or what the next day would bring. Somehow it all balanced out and they always kept things running. Looking back I came to realize I had been privileged to work with and get to know dozens of hard-working, plain-spoken local men from the greatest generation. Children of the Depression era, veterans of World War II and or Korea, they had endured life’s hardships, willingly made sacrifices and survived. Through their work these employees in turn possessed a wide-ranging institutional knowledge of the town’s visible and hidden infrastructure. Invaluable information held and passed down to those who would succeed them.
Some led by example and others didn’t mind showing you the ropes. Add to that their ability to safely operate complex machinery and fix what broke. Some of that was bound to rub off. You learned the dignity of work no matter how routine the job or mundane the task. Two individuals who went out of their way to be encouraging and set good examples were Roger Parady and Roger Parady Jr.
The job at the barn was an educational experience no money could buy and no school could teach. The barn may be gone, its history complete, but as longtime DPW groundskeeper Tom Somers often reminded us, “Better days are coming.”
Retiree Mel George is the former supervisor of the Rockport Transfer Station and currently delivers Meals on Wheels in Rockport.