Going out for dinner in Revere recently conjured up many unrelated memories. A collage really.
The restaurant was along what I always called the airport road, which was near the marsh road and broken up by various dangerous traffic circles. Such as Bell. I had gone to a restaurant at the same spot with my mother the summer before I began college. The place was called something else at the time.
For me growing up further up the North Shore, Revere was its own black box. Beyond Lynn, the city of sin, but somehow more daunting … a subway city, cheek by jowl with the more “urban” Chelsea and Everett.
Revere was served by the Blue Line. A backup choice to B&M Buddliners for getting into Boston from the North Shore. On the clickety-clack Blue Line cars, older men with eyes glued to racing forms rode expectantly to Wonderland and Suffolk Downs, hoping to win, place or at least show.
I remember later winning $25 myself on the greyhounds at Wonderland. My dog nearly caught Swifty, the mechanical rabbit. Apparently, when dogs do catch the fake rabbit and realize they’ve been fooled, they never race again. And I never gambled again. Finally, a vice I didn’t have.
I vividly recall Roland Merullo’s book about families shocked by the plane crash at nearby Logan, and kids necking on the Revere Beach wall.
Historic markers note that Revere Beach was the first public beach in America (saying something, considering the commonwealth’s historic lack of public access to the ocean). Revere Beach also hosted the world’s tallest (and some claimed, fastest) rollercoaster, a hulking wooden structure that I never rode, but often marveled at before it burned down.
During summers of college (and high school?), friends and I made careful forays into the bars along Revere Beach. We started with the Porthole Pub (which is actually in Lynn but had the latest last call on the North Shore and was a natural crossing into Revere for kids up to no good). I recall the Driftwood. Always with rumours of gangsters. And undoubtedly cops.
Ah, pretty, tough Revere.
