Paul McCormack, Jimmy Imperial and Tom Lennon agree that Paul Lenzie —an unassuming guy I remember from my days working in the Item building on Exchange Street— was McDonough Square’s baddest of the bad in his day. But the lifelong friends insist they held their own against all comers and never backed down when it came to proclaiming West Lynn’s greatness.
The West Lynn natives (minus running buddy Danny Lennon) regaled me for three hours during a storm-swept Red Sox game about the days when $50 was a princely sum to be paid and “government cheese” was a meal staple in big households where incomes were stretched thin.
Names like The Arena and The Venice roll easily off the trio’s tongues along with accompanying stories about punches thrown and really rough joints where “everybody got a gun or a knife when they walked into the place.”
The local bookie held court in a local “spa” and outfitted the neighborhood ball team with all new uniforms and equipment.
Barroom bravado only went so far when this mobbed-up guy walked into a local watering hole and confronted an unlucky gambler over unpaid debts. If you knew what was good for you, you put down your beer and took a hike.
The West Lynn of the last century included kids running up to the train tracks to collect coal that spilled off locomotive tenders. Life lessons got intermingled with dirt lot or school gymnasium sports. The kid you tussled with one afternoon might be the one who kept you from fighting the wrong person the following day.
There were neighborhood cops who “always did good.” There were cops on the take who shook down merchants. In the West Lynn McCormack, Imperial and Lennon remember, braggarts ultimately had to prove themselves or shut up — and you always defended the weak, the halt and the lame.
The three friends clapped eyes on all the sports greats of their day, including Mickey Mantle and Bobby Orr, during an era when famous people did not have their images perpetually burnished or tarnished by social media.
Everything seemed to get done on foot back in the day in West Lynn. In winter, you hitched a ride hanging onto the back of cars or buses, your shoe soles skidding along packed snow or ice.
You walked to your neighbor’s house or your cousin’s. You walked to the store. You always walked to school. You stumbled out of bars and stumbled into work. Speaking of work, the trio defined employment in loose terms: The bar you drank in one day might be the one where you were working the next.
Cars seemed to last about as long as relationships, with a procession of blondes, brunettes and redheads riding in Oldsmobiles, Corvettes and Cadillacs.
That description probably sells the three friends short: These guys served their country in uniform and, to hear them tell it, they remain respected and detested in places as far flung as Australia.
Tall tales aside, the real testament to their toughness is their iron-clad commitment to remaining friends across the decades. They always have each others’ back and they would (and almost have) laid their lives down for their brothers.
The jokes and ribbing sound dated. But the words are drenched in love and they offer a good reminder that if we don’t have people we care about and the opportunities to spend time with them, then we have nothing in this life.
