Some Early Reflections On "Muscato's Musings"

When I was a student at Boston College, I would regale my dorm mates with Easton stories.  It just seems that I always had troves and treasures of stories from growing up in this community. 

To those who know me, I really need not state that I am having a blast with my “Muscato’s Musings” column for Easton Patch.  I enjoy telling Easton townie stories perhaps more than anyone. 

I have been fortunate and greatly heartened with the response to this column.  It has become storytime, a soap box and a meeting place. 

Almost six months into this enjoyable column writing experience, I am stepping back and taking a look at what "Muscato's Musings" is all about.  Sort of.  

When I happily, enthusiastically and gratefully signed on to write the column, one that runs three times a week, some might have wondered if it would be possible to come up with a separate subject – with each subject tied to Easton in some way – and keep it going week after week.

Well, there is not a problem in finding fresh material, and keeping it going.  I do want to say though that certain people, places and events will reappear and be mentioned over and over through the string of the columns.  These people, places, events are the vehicles and instruments enlisted to help me tell different stories. 

I want you to become familiar with these people, places, and events – and consider them players in an ongoing narrative. 

It’s like, David Letterman’s mother frequently makes appearances on his show; she participates in various skits.  Bill Simmons, the ESPN sportswriter and bestselling author, has many times mentioned his father – formersuperintendent Dr. William Simmons – in his columns. 

In the late 1940s, those who listened to Jimmy Durante on the radio always heard the name Mrs. Calabash; they heard it when Durante spoke these words in his signature sign-off: ”Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”

Good storytelling and entertainment has characters that reappear; the plot just changes.

In this space you will read more about my family, the Muscato clan, and more about the old neighborhood in which I grew up in North Easton Village.  I will also take you back now and then to Summer Street, where my family moved in late fall of 1979.  

Other family names will reappear here, like – and for example – Nixon, Conceison, Gomes, McEvoy, Craig – and, yes, of course, Ames. 

I will write about townies and the newly arrived – about events of a couple hundred years ago and those that happened yesterday – sometimes all in the same column. 

will be a rock on which I will build many columns.  So too will North Easton Village.  will be featured frequently.  Come to think of it, get ready for more Borderland State Park mentions.

OA Tiger sports are going to get a lot of play here. 

The Hockomock Swamp is fertile – and mushy and wet – ground for much storytelling.

You see, the thing is – and think Garrison Keillor and his fictional Lake Wobegon here – to be able to focus on a small slice of life, whether that slice is defined in terms of geography, a society, or a span of time, and drill down and extract from it story after story, entertainment after entertainment, and lesson after lesson.  

You know, I bet I could write a book – a good book – that focuses just on the old neighborhood.  I most certainly am going to write a book on the North Easton Village District.

And this brings me to the "North Easton and South Easton thing.  Okay, I know that I write more about North Easton than South Easton – but I fully recognize that both places are villages located within one incorporated town.  It’s just that when I was growing up in Easton, we distinguished between North Easton and South Easton.  One wasn’t any better than other.  They were just different locations.

Of course, people also said they were from Unionville and Eastondale and Furnace Village (aka “The Furnace” – an area that includes "Five Corners" and about which Easton Patch columnist Lee Williams writes beautifully). 

Local historians, Hazel Varella and Ed Hands, both former chairs of the OA history department, will be frequently referenced here – because they know more local history than anyone, and they validate and certify historic info I put in the columns. 

You’ll also read a lot more of what professor emeritus, acclaimed author, and long-time Easton resident, Chet Raymo, has written – for he too has valuable and interesting insight and understanding of Easton that I want to share with Patch readers.   

I can’t very well be any sort of columnist who focuses on Easton if I don’t bring in here and there the wonderful architecture and designs in town that are the genius and artistry of H.H. Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Stanford White, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John LaFarge, Andrew Jackson Downing, and John Ames Mitchell.

My childhood gang of Jonathan Ford, Bill Maguire, Bill Marsan, John McEvoy, Joe Richard, Stan Sampley, and me are the characters in many stories that I will relate in this column.  If you read this column regularly you will get to know other guys who I hung around with more once I got into high school – dudes like Mike Gallagher and Shawn Bissonette.

And you know who is becoming an indispensable asset to my column creation is one Brian Chapman, a few years younger than me, and of Columbus Avenue fame.  He's a good storyteller.  Expect more Chapman stories. 

Indeed, expect more Columbus Avenue centered action. 

Foolishness, chicanery, and hijinks – they’re all on the “Muscato’s Musings” menu.

I hope this column is interesting, educational, entertaining, sometimes inspiring, sometimes moving – and that it often elicits in you a feeling of nostalgia, either for times past in Easton or for the place that you are from – or for both.  

I enthusiastically encourage people to suggest to me column ideas. 

We are on this ride together.   More fun, games, and stories are on the way.