The first television in my neighborhood, and visiting with some patriot ancestors
My father, Walter Duffy, owned the first television in my old South Boston neighborhood, and this trip to Boston I retrieved that 6.5-inch-screen TV. My earliest memories of it are from about age 7 when many of the neighborhood men would gather at our apartment in Old Harbor Village Project to watch the Wednesday night fights. The grownups drank beer and cheered pretty much like I did the other night when the Celtics beat the Clippers at the Garden. My father was an electronics tinkerer so it was only natural he got the first TV in our poor Irish neighborhood. What a treat for the neighborhood men back then.
I’ve been having a great time in Boston, even though the hotel pool has the wrong chemical mix so my skin is about as red as the lobster I ate at Legal Seafoods today. My back muscles are tightening up too so I spend about an hour a day stretching so I can walk around and see the sites. Lots of inspiring history here about courageous and determined citizens who risked everything to win their freedom from a tyrannical government.
Following are some photos I’ve taken.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I’ve loved reading your posts and seeing your pictures while in Boston. I’m curious as to what that second picture is of?
March 25th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
It’s Paul Revere’s tombstone.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:38 am
The question above puzzled me a bit until I discovered that the captions under the photos are not showing up if you read my blog in Internet Explorer. When I first loaded them, Internet Explorer seemed to handle them fine. I use Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/), which is a free download online and runs about twice as fast as Internet Explorer. (I’ll adjust the captions so they appear in Internet Explorer.)
I also use Mozilla Thunderbird as my mail program. It is more secure than most other mail programs and is also faster.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Wow, Jake’s grown and then some in the past year. Howdy to all the Duffy’s and enjoy your stay in MA.
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Hi Dave,
My 22 year old son and I spent 5 days in Boston the same week with you were there. Who knows, maybe we crossed paths. I gave my son a good lesson in history and the birthplace of of our nation and liberty. We walked the Battle Road and the North Bridge. My son had a good discussion with the volunteer docent at the Minuteman Battlefield Visitor Center. Dan just could not figure out given the legacy of what happened there, how Massachusetts could turn out to be the most liberal and socialistic state in the nation, including anti gun ownership banners and billboards on the Mass Pike. Maybe you can offer some insight as native Bostonian.
Best Regards,
Dave
Liberty Lake, Washington
April 4th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Cities tend to be far more liberal than the countryside. I live in Oregon and our only big city is Portland way up on the northern part of the state about a six hour drive from my home. While Portland is very liberal, most of the rest of Oregon is conservative and libertarian. But since Portland has the lion’s share of the population, we conservatives and libertarians live by whatever laws the large, concentrated population in Portland votes for. Makes me think we need a set of laws for city folk and a different set of laws for people who live in the country.
The city, I think, is an artificial, man-created world. The people who live there full time have very little contact with nature. The closest they come to a wild animal is on television. Most have never planted a garden to appreciate where food comes from. They have no connection between the meat on their table and a slaughtered animal raised in the countryside. They can’t conceive of a sport like hunting, and most have probably never even held a gun in their hands unless they were in the military. Government is also an artificial construct of man, so it may be that city folk are naturally inclined to identify with these artificial worlds with their laws conceived by bureaucrats and politicians who are also out of touch with the real world.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Dave,
Thanks for the reply. I can relate. We live in far eastern Washington State a couple miles from the Idaho border. People out here feel the same about Seattle as rural Oregon feels about Portland.
-Dave
June 15th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Dave,
Were I to stand where you stood in Boston, and in the old burial grounds which hold the remains of some of our most sainted dead, this old Confederate would have had to have some alone time to weep.
The damage that has been done to our country during and since The War of Southern Independence is unimaginable. Sad, I am, that the city of Boston, home to our God blessed founders, is such a hotbed of liberalism and socialisim, and a cradle of those who would destroy our nation.
Take care. Love your writings. My condolences on the loss of your friend.
“But no one’s ever heard it,
Tho some folks mimic it well.
No soul alive can truly describe,
The sound of the Rebel Yell!”
From “The Rebel Yell.
The Pebroch of Southern fealty”
Monty Akers
T.H.Bunner
Deo Vindice!