Newburyport native Ben McPhail reveals a fact heretofore unheard: the South End was kind of a dangerous place to live while he was growing up there.
“I grew up on Lime Street and believe me, it didn’t get any tougher than Lime,” he says.
But, he adds, “It was the best of times. We were poor financially but rich in family tradition.”
Like other older natives, he speaks of the grocery stores on every corner, the barber shop where you could get a haircut for 25 cents and The Saunders Drug Store.
“Saunders had magazines, comic books and best of all a soda fountain, if you could scrounge up some money, it was a treat.”
A good source of funds for fountain treats was Jukey Woodman, a scrap dealer. Kids would collect newspaper and scrap metal. For their efforts they got “10 cents, 50 cents, whatever… and we’d think we were rich!” he says. And of course we were.
McPhail runs a men’s consignment shop, A Little Bit Naples, on Pleasant Street, on the other side of City Hall from the main downtown area. He got the idea while visiting his sister Susan in Naples, FL. He needed a tie and sport coat to attend an event at a club.
He thought he would get something for about 50 bucks, but he found that the cheapest tie he could find in a regular shop was $85.
There was a consignment shop up the street so he and his wife Susan (women named Susan figure prominently in his life) went there. For a mere $67 he walked out with the necessary items plus some other clothing.
A light went off in his head and the idea for his shop was born. As he says, the rest is history.
A tax accountant by vocation, he’s finding running the store to be most satisfactory.
Or as he puts it, he got all the work in his family! McPhail claims his brother David got all the talent (he’s an author and illustrator), his sister got all the good looks, his other brother Peter got all the athletic ability.
But back to danger: He explains that Purchase and Lime was the tough area while Purchase and Marlboro were “the better end.”
We were all poor and that made it tough, he says.There were some very, very tough families that lived down there. If you minded your own business, you were alright.
Finally, after years of not feeling particularly Irish, he discovered that he isn’t. The name was originally MacPhail.
I discovered that I’m a Mac, he says. “I’ll be darned, I knew I wasn’t Irish.
What he is, though, is a Newburyporter. He may live at Hatter’s Point in Amesbury at the moment, but some things don’t change.
Rich, poor, it’s the same, he says. A great place to live.
Townie Tuesday is contributed to weekly by local journalist Gillian Swart. Gillian can be reached for comment at gillian.swart@comcast.net.
