Here’s to Police Sgt. Ned Shinnick and Officer John McKenna for walking the beat on Thursday in their kilts. It would have been great to follow them around getting video of the comments and looks they drew. Word has it Mayor Thomas M. McGee has been walking Lynn’s streets (no kilt), talking to business owners and other people and really showing off his love for his job.
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I know Jimmy Carter visited Lynn and I thought I saw an old photograph of Calvin Coolidge getting out of car in front of a building on Willow Street. I’m sure other presidents visited Lynn but don’t ask me to name them.
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An inquiring mind wondered if the building that once occupied the Central Square parking lot next to the commuter rail tracks was the former site of an Elks lodge. Speaking of clubs, good friend Dick Coppinger recited a litany of former establishments ranging from the Cameo Lounge with the Pioneer Club across the street in Central Square to the Buick pool room up on Union Street.
Dick thinks the Buick was upstairs from Sam’s Town and Tweed. Olympia Square, according to his recollection, sported the Castaway Lounge and the Latin Villa was in West Lynn. Joe Brogna owned the Latin Villa and the Redwood Lounge, from what I’m told. Anyone know if he’s still around? Don’t ask me.
My buddy Paul says the Latin Villa was next to the Uptown Theatre — known to locals as the “Uppie” with its plate and crockery promotional giveaways and Max the usher.
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Thanks to Edward Landry for answering my question last week about the 5 p.m. whistle. He said it was located at the former West Lynn General Electric plant on Spencer Street. “I lived on Fuller Street as a boy and I remember the whistle well because it was so loud,” Ed said.
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My apologies to Paul Emmons for forgetting that he weighed in first on the late great Riley’s chicken pot pie. Speaking of culinary memories, anyone recall the smell of brewing coffee wafting from Kennedy’s Butter and Eggs? Its modern heir apparent seems to be Kettle Cuisine on the Lynnway with the odor of onion soup emanating from the plant.
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Clara Zamejtis and Helen McSweeney deserve their stories as Lynn policewomen told. They treated women selling their bodies on the streets or who lived on the receiving end of domestic violence with respect and, on more than a few occasions, saved the lives of women by helping them escape into a new life with a fresh start. Dearborn Avenue has a small but fitting tribute to their work.
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This is a strange one: Lynn native Charles F. Lummis supposedly walked from Cincinnati to Los Angeles in 1884. Anyone know how he ended up in Cincinnati? Don’t ask…
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Is it true there are no traffic signals in Nahant?
