Julia Carlson has written a poem about Somerville that is set in 1976.  Somerville was a vastly different place then.  Carlson, a Somerville Bagel Bard and a senior clinician with Bay Cove Human Services in Boston, gives us the detail and delivers a fine poem.

1976 -America’s Bicentennial –

Davis Sq was an eyesore

No one looked well-heeled

More down and out than in style

Tufts kept its students on campus

Or shuttled them to Cambridge

And Johnny D’s only dished up

Meat and booze along with the Blues

Vegetarian  – whazzat?

The locals hated the Brownies

Yuppie precursors, Outsiders who were

Buying up the neighborhood

And ruining it, of course.

One of my neighbors boasted

He had lived in Somerville

His entire life – 88 years-

Had never crossed the river OR left town

“Why would I want to leave?”

Why indeed when his front yard

A four foot graveled square

Boasted an inverted tire

Its interior painted robin’s egg blue,

The Virgin Mary rising like Botticelli’s Venus

From her cozy latex nest.

My State Representative,

A realtor on the side,

Found me an apartment I could afford

A miracle due to its Virgin Mary

As resplendent as the neighbor’s,

With her own oyster-pink rubber shell –

The next month, July it was,

My hardworking democratic Pol

Made the front page of the Boston Evening Globe

Photographed swaying as majestically

As the billowing sails of the Tall Ships

Anchored in Boston Harbor

Stumbling drunk up the gangplank

Demanding permission to board

“In the  name of The American Revolution,

God Damn It!” and got arrested.

Now I ask you, why would anyone

Ever want to live anywhere else?