In Boston: Confronting a Curley $65,000 Question

• Share

(3 of 3)

Groveland. " 'Vote early and often actually originated in either Newark, N.J., or New York City." McNeil was right. The phrase has been traced to John Van Buren, the New York lawyer son of President Martin Van Buren. But the Curley trail proved too serpentine for Jacki Lappen of Brighton. Losing the thread entirely, she suggested the Charles be renamed its "original American Indian name of Quineboquin, which means 'twisting.' " The Globe got lost, too, printing a story to the effect that Curley was once re-elected from jail. After a wave of protest mail, they corrected that error but committed another by saying that Curley "never" ran for office from jail. He did, campaigning for alderman back in 1903 while he was a state legislator serving time in the Charles Street Jail for taking a Civil Service exam for a friend. He won, of course.

This month the Globe printed what should be the climax of the Curley correspondence. Joseph Barbieri, a Cambridge artist, threw in his lot with those who "would further memorialize the late great mayor of Boston." To. illustrate how, Barbieri included a map, which may be the best map of Boston since the old Yankee version of the U.S. on which every thing west of Dedham seemed vastly shriveled. As Barbieri sees it, Cambridge will be Curleybridge, Harvard becomes Curley College with, of course, a Curley Business School across the river. The Longfellow Bridge is Curleyfellow Bridge; Beacon Hill, Curley Hill; and, where the polluted Charles flows into Boston Harbor we find, naturally, the Curley Locks.

All of which seems to leave the city council contemplating the fleetingness of fame and the high cost of bronze. — Ruth Mehrtens Galvin