Random Stuff, Part 5

I’ve taken several photos of what I’ve always referred to as the “hillbilly bridge” behind Gate of Heaven Cemetery on Tinkham Road. The bridge connects two nature reservations—the Tamarack Woods and the woods that follow the South Branch of the Mill River into the Mill River. It also allows people to cross the South Branch in a short cut between the Hanson Drive and Tinkham Road neighborhoods. 

I wondered for a long time who built and maintained the bridge, I finally got my answer in a Facebook post: the man behind this structure was Michael Forgette, who died this year:

 

The bridge was his labor of love before he started having health issues, and it has been deteriorating as of late, its decay documented by these Facebook photos taken by a friend of his:

 

It was much sturdier in 2013, when I took the photos below during one of my mountain bike runs. If you look closely, there is a “bench” on the left. As you can see from the layers under the surface, it was pretty much fortified every once in a while by adding scrap wood on top. You can argue that it’s somewhat crude, but the sheer weight of all the additional wood on it guarantees that it won’t break up when the stream swells in the spring:

 

A memorial was made by a relative near the base of the bridge:

 

It would be great if people kept this bridge in shape, but who knows? Kids these days don’t hike or bike the pathways, so its future is uncertain.

 

 

Did you call it the “one-ninety” (it’s real name) or the “eye-ninety” (what most Massachusetts people called it?

 

This was a curious hole-in-the-wall, tucked into the doomed Enfield Outlet Mall. Remember this “mall”? I used to go to its flea markets on Sundays. At one point, the 190 East had a “juice bar” for the underage crowd. Wasn’t Crazy Joyce’s, the head shop, here once in the mid-1980s? My memory fails me. It’s the same building where Barnes & Noble is now.

 

I had found myself in the middle of several “disturbances” at the 190. The first I described in another blog post, when I was supposed to give a guy we knew named Dave Moran a ride home, and it ended up in an emergency room visit because he got in a brawl and needed stitches.

 

Another time, my friend Ray Vadnais and I had some words with some guys at the bar, and when we got in my car, there they were, yelling at us, and one of them made a spitting gesture toward us through the open car window. After we drove away, I didn’t think anything of the incident, until I ran my hand through my hair and discovered a wad of spit! I got off at the next exit and roared back to the 190—with Ray begging me not to do it. But I was determined to kick ass. However, the lot was a barren wasteland—no cars or life of any kind—when we got back, and I was partially relieved, because I had some time to calm down on the highway. Thank God no one was there! Boy, was I pissed when I found that phlegm ball in my hair!

 

* * * * * *

 

I recently talked at length about Dave Moran with another guy who hung out with him, and he cleared up a couple of legendary stories about him. I had always heard that Moran was once stabbed in the back with a pair of scissors, and sure enough, this dude witnessed the event in the parking lot of—where else?—the 190. Moran was getting in a beef and someone—I always heard it was the brother of the combatant—sunk a pair of surgical scissors into his back. Another trip to the ER.

 

I asked him about the signature knife scar across Moran’s face, and he said that he received that outside of a dance at the MacDuffie School. He wasn’t with Moran and didn’t know the particulars, but this is one story of several I’ve heard about the incident, and I’m inclined to believe this one.

 

Anyway, the guy insisted that Dave Moran was calming down (as in not getting into a fight every weekend) in the final year of his life. I always had a feeling that if he died young, it would be as a result of a stabbing or shooting by fucking with the wrong dude, but he perished at 23 due to—let’s say it was a death by misadventure. If I were specific, many people would know exactly who I’m writing about (if they don’t know already). He died of a head injury while clowning around, and let’s leave it at that.

 

 

All this writing about the Enfield bars jogged up more memories, when the drinking age was 18 in Connecticut and the Massachusetts folks used to make their way down there to places like the Dial Tone AKA “Dial-a-Fight,” Shaker Park, and Katie's Cafe.

 

 

There were other dive bars like the Hazardvilla (below), which really raked it in because of the lower drinking age. 

The Hazardvilla burned down in 2000 and the owner was charged with arson. I don’t know how the case was ever resolved—the Hazardvilla was facing “financial difficulties” and there was evidence of accelerants at the scene of the fire.

 

 

I had totally forgotten about the Pumpernickel Pub for decades. It was a little more off the beaten path than the 190 (on Elm Street, or Route 220). On Nickel Night (Mondays) you could order a drink and the second one cost five cents. This place went out of business in 2000. It was demolished that year, and the site is now the parking lot of a Kohl’s.

 

I was going to ask if anyone remembers riding up the elevator to the top of the neoclassical City Hall tower. But I’m really guilty of dating myself because this practice stopped—I’m not sure when—after the tower started falling apart. Or when the elevator became unsafe. Or both.

 

What’s officially known as the Campanile Clock Tower was built in 1913 after the old City Hall burned in 1905. At 300 feet, it was the tallest structure in Springfield until Baystate West was built in 1970 (371 feet). In 1911, during its construction, anarchist Ortie McGanigle (below) tried to blow up the tower, but it withstood the blast.

 

The tower has a carillon of twelve bells that used to play sixteen notes of Handel's Messiah. God knows when that broke, and the four clocks haven’t shown the right time in decades.

 

Black mesh bands have prevented the deteriorating corners from dropping limestone chunks on the ground. It’s not incredibly unsightly, but it’s still a black eye on the city skyline: a great work of architecture that was never maintained and can’t seem to get fixed.

 

There was a $20 million capital campaign that was to raise the funding for a restoration of the tower, but that was derailed by the 2014 death of William L. Putnam III, the founder of WWLP TV and the driving force behind the effort.

 

Two years later people were wondering what had become of the plans, and we were told that refurbishing Union Station and building the new senior center at Blunt Park were more important. And this year, with the refurbishment of the Court Square Hotel building—and the city pouring in another $6.5 million to rescue the project—I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath on the stalled Campanile rescue.

 

Unfortunately, I can see this discussion taking a turn for the worse a few years from now, when they announce the tower can’t be saved and has to be torn down. This is what is happening to the 197-foot city hall tower in Pawtucket, RI—a full removal and replacement. And yes, I can see Springfield balking on spending the money on building a replica but ultimately settling for NOTHING in its place and moving the money elsewhere. Because….well, it’s SPRINGFIELD. Prove me wrong, Springfield. Prove me wrong.