Pat and I met our new landlady, Mrs. Falletti, in Charlestown, outside the Warren Tavern, where she had enjoyed a liquid lunch. She was a short, cheery soul, wearing a housedress that was only partially buttoned. It seemed like she had sprung a leak, and what squirted out was non-stop chatter, “Oh hi, How are ya? I’ll show you the place, my John isn’t home right now, come this way.” 

“Hi,” I said and reached out my hand.

“Oh, I don’t shake hands as a rule. My John does that.”  She leaned closer and whispered loudly, “But he’s busy—at the racetrack.” She rolled her eyes. “So here we are. Pleasant Street. You know, like the personality! My John says I have a pleasant personality. Did I mention he’s at the track? Three to one he’ll come home late—and broke.” She drifted off, then snapped out of it.  “So I’ll show ya the place. It’s only halfway up the hill—don’t worry. We don’t have to walk all the way up there. “ She pointed to the Bunker Hill Monument.  “That’s the beauty of this location.” She stopped to catch her breath. “I wonder who’s winning?” she murmured to no one in particular. “Here we are. Number 29. That’s a lucky number. I’ll have to play that one later.” She fumbled with a large clump of keys. “Three to one I brought the wrong keys.” She started to swear, but then stopped. “Wait. We can get in the back way. It’s always unlocked.”  

Pat and I exchanged glances. We squeezed along a narrow alley, through a small courtyard, up a flight of wooden stairs to, sure enough, a wide open back door. When she stepped into the kitchen, a cat darted out between her legs. “I think that’s Bunky!” she squealed. “Three to one Hilly is in here somewhere. They’re always together—Bunky and Hilly. Get it?”  We laughed. 

“I’ll get my John to put a lock on that door if you want the place. No charge.” 

In the 1970s Charlestown was in serious transition on many levels. There were plans to remove the noisy overhead and relocate the T stop at the community college, renovate the beautiful copper Thompson Square Station and build a modern shopping area. There was also racial and spiritual conflict—Charlestown was where much of the horrific busing controversy played out, not to mention the hideous revelation of flagrant pedophilia in the Church.

But it was still possible to rent a place for $115 a month, so we moved in. I had just graduated from Mass College of Art with an Illustration portfolio and wobbly plans to build a freelance business. I had turned down an offer from Hallmark to illustrate greeting cards—cute bunnies with big feet for $650 a month, all done in-house, in Kansas City.

I went back and forth: the freelance world was extremely unstable. It was rare to get any job offer right out of art school. It was 1973—$650 was nothing to sneeze at. Hallmark on my resume would open doors down the line. And, minor detail, there were no other offers on the table.

But in the end, my heart won. I had just met Pat, my first girlfriend, and I didn’t want to move to Missouri. 

Luckily, Pat had a real job. I, on the other hand, was on a constant search for freelance illustration work. Even during my busiest months, a graph of my income would look like an EKG printout of someone near death. 

One day Pat and I walked by a tiny storefront on Main Street. It was boarded up, and for rent. We decided on the spot to open a toy store called The Pumpkin Patch. It was a lot of fun designing the space and doing the renovations. I jigsawed the letters for our sign, designed the logo, and promotional materials. My dad and I installed a new window and a nifty security system of painted plywood that protected the window at night. The store was stocked with handmade cloth and wooden toys, bought from local craftspeople. We also found a couple cool women’s collectives, one in Appalachia, called Possum Trot. These women made realistic looking woodland creatures—stuffed groundhogs, porcupines, possums, hedgehogs—no cute bunnies or duckies. Included in their farm animal series was a mother pig with 2 rows of snaps that looked like nipples on her belly, and a litter of piglets with the other side of the snaps for mouths… It was wonderful. 

We opened on April Fool’s Day, and did very well for many weeks after the grand opening. But it was not all smooth sailing. By August, the locals were familiar with our stock and stopped coming in so often, and by October we had reached an unanticipated stuffed animal saturation level. Cobwebs were growing on my brain, sitting there every day, waiting for someone in Charlestown to need a stuffed hedgehog. 

One day a woman came in with a preschool aged little boy. When she noticed the stuffed mother pig with her little snap nipples, she covered the little boy’s eyes, “Don’t look! That pig has titties! That pig has titties!” She left in a huff, yelling, “X- rated toys! Pigs with titties!” I immediately ordered more. 

Pat and I doubled over with laughter telling that story to friends, until later that month I witnessed The Tittie Lady showing her little boy how to give the finger to the busses of Black kids at the traffic light. Not funny. 

I was fighting back a wave of depression and creeping stagnation, so I enrolled in a Children’s Book Illustration class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and I rearranged the back of the Pumpkin Patch—to set up a small studio, separated from the retail space by a curtain.

We were excited about our first holiday season, hoping it would bolster us financially and renew our enthusiasm, which had taken a dip. We stocked the shop full of fun stuff. We found another collective that made hand-carved nativity figures. Sales were good. 

The studio setup was helping with my cobwebs-on-the-brain. On Christmas Eve, while happily working in the back, I heard the door open and called out, “If you need any help, just let me know.” I didn’t get a response so I peeked around the curtain just in time to see a young boy stuffing something down his pants. I walked out front and stood between him and the door. 

“OK, Put it back.” I said. He panicked, turned red. 

“Put what back?” 

I saw a name on his jacket. “Nice try, Tony.” I kept a stern look and a serious voice. His lip started trembling. Reluctantly, he pulled a Wise Man out of his pants and handed it to me. Before I could say anything his hand moved back towards his pants, and I realized he had more in there. Keeping my cool, “Come on. What else? What else?” All three Wise Men, a Shepherd AND baby Jesus. 

“You can get into a lot of trouble stuffing Jesus down your pants!”  

By now he was crying, “It’s not for me. I don’t have enough money, and I know my mother would like these.”

“What do you think she’d say if she found out you stole them?”

He sobbed. After a few seconds I felt my heart shift.

“OK,” I sighed. “Let’s find a box. By the way, you didn’t get a camel, and what about Mary?” We packed up an entire Nativity set. “Here you go,” I said, and handed him the package.

I closed up shop, and headed home to collapse. We had survived our first holiday season. “I’m beat,” I said to Pat. “Let’s skip Midnight Mass.” 

Pat, (Sister Seamus), had been in the convent for seven years and I was on my own spiritual journey, but we were not traditional church-goers. “Let’s wait till next week.” The Feast of the Epiphany had always been a favorite of mine, in sharp contrast with the commercialism of Christmas.

We walked to Saint Ann’s for 10:00 Mass. The church was full. I noticed Tony and his mother sitting on the right, near a large bank of votive candles. 

The Mass started and soon the sermon: “This is the Feast of the Epiphany—the day we celebrate true giving.” The priest’s voice was calm and soothing. “The Three Wise Men brought their very best to Christ—Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.” He paused. Then at the top of his voice, “AND WHAT DO YOU DO? YOU THROW A QUARTER AT THE FEET OF JESUS AND THINK YOU’RE COVERED! I WANT YOU TO REACH DEEPER…” I took one look at Pat. We got up and walked out, down the center aisle, in the middle of the sermon. We were not discreet. 

The next day the phone rang. It was our landlady, Mrs. Faletti. She started talking before I even said hello, “Oh hi dear. How are ya? I saw you had to leave church yesterday. What happened? Did ya get a nosebleed? I told my John, ‘Three to one it was a nosebleed.’”

“Well, no. Actually, we were offended by what the priest was yelling about in his sermon…” 

“Oh I know what you’re saying,” she interrupted. “The Three Wise Men.” She lowered her voice, “Did you know one of them was a Black?”

“What? No. Wait.” I was stunned.

“Gotta go. Here comes my John. Nosebleeds can be terrible. Use a little Vaseline next time. Ok I was just callin’ to check up on ya…”

Click.

Epilogue

At the end of January Tony wandered back into the Pumpkin Patch. Without making eye contact, he sheepishly asked if I had any trash he could empty for me. I did. 

When he saw my studio out back his eyes lit up. He liked to draw too. He did a few chores and I gave him some art supplies. He had never used oil pastels.

A few days later, he brought me a drawing—an abstract arrangement of orange blobs, which I thought was a pumpkin patch. He beamed when I matted it and pinned it up in the window. Weeks later, I took a closer look and realized it wasn’t a pumpkin patch at all. 

It was the mother pig and her babies. 

“Very cool, Tony. Very cool.”