Jimmy Del Ponte slams and tells a Somerville story last week at PA's Lounge.

By Andrew Firestone

It is often said that the culture of a people can be derived only from the stories told within the living memory of the community. If that is the case, the Storytelling Slam at PA’s Lounge March 10 was a modern-day history lesson, as scenes and times of Somerville past came alive again.

Organized by Bess Paupeck and the Somerville Arts Council, the event saw four Somerville storytellers take the stage, competing for the title “Best Somerville Tale.” In the end, Dan Gewertz, professor and journalist, took home the vaunted prize.

Gewertz began his story saying that he hoped to move to Cambridge, not Somerville, and believed he had achieved his goal when he moved to Line Street. However, he was mortified when he realized that “the reason it was called Line Street is because the Cambridge-Somerville line went right down the middle of the street, and I was on the Somerville side!”

“I was beside myself,” he said. “I’ll tell everyone I live in Cambridge.” He then tested the veracity of his claim by mailing himself a letter, interchanging the town of Somerville for that of Cambridge.

“It took a week and a half to get the letter. Cambridge is all crossed out. Somerville in big block letters.” At this, he realized he was now part of Somerville, and began to work his angles in the high school as a teacher, moonlighting as a talking head at Time Warner Cable in Davis Square.

Gewertz despaired at his low ratings. While working at the high school one day as a teacher, he was approached by student. “Hey, Teach!” The student said, “I saw you on TV last night.” Elated, Gewertz asked what he was talking about on the program. “I don’t know, I had the sound down,” the student answered.

Gewertz’s moment of cartharsis came one night as he drove a colleague home to the Holiday Inn at 2:30 a.m. “I’m on Summer Street. There’s a red light, it seems like it’s lasting forever. I notice in the rear view mirror, there’s a cop car and it gets me kind of nervous. For some reason, I think he’s trying to pass me, go around me, so I kind of drift forward a few feet going like one mile an hour, but I drifted way too far. All of a sudden, I’m in the middle of the intersection.”

Gewertz began to panic. “I don’t want to back up, because I could hit him. So I go forward at one mile an hour, against the red light.”

Pulling up to the curb, the inevitable occurred.  “At that point, he turns on the sirens, puts on the light, they’re whirring. He pulls me over, I was already pulled over.”

Thinking fast, Gewertz claims he put his best foot forward.  “I said, officer, I thought you were trying to pull around me.”

“Nothing I did would indicate to you, that I was trying to pull around you,” the officer replied.

Deciding to try to fight the ticket. Gewertz wrote a long-winded letter to City Hall. One day, he got a call from a woman working at City Hall, who turned out to be the cousin of his sister in law who recognized his name. “I have to ask you a question,” she said, “would you like me to rip up the ticket?”

Overjoyed, Gewertz found himself free of a traffic blemish. “I put down the phone, and thought, I’m no longer an interloper. I’m no longer a stranger. I’m no longer an outsider. I am a Somervillien!”

Other storytellers included Jimmy Del Ponte, who recalled his trouble-making past, and eventual redemption.

He recalled one of his worst troublemaking incidents, where he and his friends once took over the principal’s office in high school, and grabbed the announcement microphone.  “We’re having a demonstration, come on out. We want to wear dungarees. Yea! Yea! Yea!” This being in protest of blue jeans being banned.

However, the world turned, and soon Jimmy found himself staring down the pipe at being the new drama teacher at Somerville High School. “I’m going to be a teacher and report to the teachers I hated in school,” he said. After being sworn in, he eventually decided he didn’t want to do it, and quit the next day.

Time mellowed Del Ponte’s resolve, and he began work as a substitute, getting a reputation of being able to keep kids out of trouble. Del Ponte demonstrated his ability to perform cartoon voices, being quite uncanny in their impression. Eventually, he was rewarded with a post at the Western Junior High School, when Dr. Wendell Jones offered him a job as an English Teacher.

“The students just threw the teacher out the window,” said Jones. “And oh, James, could you leave the leather jacket at home.”

Other stories included a rendition of a typical trip to Revere Beach by Susan Fontano, who remembered the first time she saw the first public beach in America.

“I start running and screaming to the water. I get to the shoreline, I trip, I go headfirst. I start to drown. I swallowed a lot of sea water. I’m passed out,” she said.

Her mother did not know how to perform CPR. “My mother grabbed a hold of me and started punching me out. Slapping me out. This was before child abuse days,” she said.

The incident ended with her mother making her father buy two air conditioners and a pool, which is why her house is still called “Fontano Resort.”