Bay side

Two snapshots of the urban scene

by Michelle Chihara

Jenny, retired Castle Island, South Boston

This is our place," Jenny says, gesturing to the little doily of shade cast by a lone tree halfway up the slope of Castle Island. Jenny is one of a dozen retired women -- and a few retired men -- who sit under this tree all afternoon, every day.

Rising behind them are the hammered granite walls of the oldest continuously fortified site in the British Empire of North America. The current "castle" was occupied by Lieutenant Paul Revere's American troops after the British abandoned it; it is the eighth fort to have been built here, on the tip of the horseshoe-shaped beach, at the southeastern edge of the city.

In more recent history, Castle Island pride has been an Irish thing. The South Boston Irish community dominates the Castle Island Association, which meets regularly and runs historic tours of the fort in the summer.

"We're not part of the association," one of Jenny's friends says. "They're Irish. Lots of Irish people here." Instead, their tree draws a clan of Poles, Czechs, and other Eastern European immigrants; Jenny, 73, came to this country from Czechoslovakia more than 50 years ago. Perched in a lawn chair and wearing a snappy white visor, she won't tell me her last name, but she's glad
to talk.

"We've been coming here 15 years," she says. "Rain or shine. We come. Every day." They travel from Belmont, from Dorchester, from Hyde Park. And then they sit. "It's nice weather," Jenny says. "It's between the shade and the sun. No cars."

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Also in the Phoenix's beach special

5 beach jerks
Our editors pick the best beach videos for the sunburned
Two beaches for the sand-hater within
Martha's Vineyard: The world's most expensive beach
The Phoenix picks eight of New England's best seaside spots
One intrepid reporter finds out he's not so "clothed minded" at at Nudefest '99
An environmental advocate discusses how humans help and hurt the beach

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No cars, but low-flying planes heading to Logan make conversation impossible about every five minutes. "We have a ball -- " and a plane roars by. Everyone looks ahead, and a couple of them wave their hands slowly toward the water, as if to say, "Just let it go." Once the plane has passed, Jenny picks up where she left off. It's not clear that she knows that she has paused. "We order pizzas!"

As the shade stretches out toward the base of Fort Independence, the immigrants say that they feel at home here. The two or three men seem somewhat marginalized; they move from the lawn chairs to a bench on the path. Perhaps they feel left out of the conversation. "We talk about cooking first, baking second, politics third," Jenny says.

"I'm going to tell you like what," she continues. "When we first came from Europe, we would just see each other, we started to say hello. Now, we've known each other for 50 years."

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Paul Pruitt, Manager, Kelly's Roast Beef, Revere Beach

It's that magic hour when every Top 40 DJ is thanking God for the end of the workweek, and already a line has formed outside Kelly's Roast Beef at Revere Beach.

Kelly's, the famous corner stand that's been carving up sandwiches and serving platters of fried seafood since 1951, is a place proud of its statistics. "We've got seven Fry-O-Lators," says manager Paul Pruitt. The three gaping ovens in the back, he says, are "capable of cooking 150 roast-beef sandwiches every three hours." As it is, they turn out about 70 on a good day.

Pruitt says Kelly's secret is fresh ingredients, oft-changed oil, and its classified recipe for tartar sauce. In the walk-in freezer, two 20-gallon vats of tartar sauce sit on the floor. Kelly's sometimes goes through both in a day. "I had a girl walk up, just the other day, and ask for a cup of tartar sauce with a spoon," Pruitt says.

All the cooking, frying, roasting, and vat moving is performed by Kelly's staff, which consists of a couple dozen strapping young men. In fact, to work the front counter at Kelly's Roast Beef, it seems that you must be strong-boned, affable, of drinking age at the oldest -- and male. Pruitt tells me, in confidential tones, that "it can get pretty rough-and-tumble in here when it's busy." He won't say for sure if that's why the staff is all male, but over at Kelly's Ice Cream, just down the block, the staff is just as young, attractive, and affable -- and all female. It's been that way since the '50s: the guys do the heavy frying and the girls serve the sweet stuff.

Of course, some things do change. The staff is still almost completely local, but "Revere's been getting more diverse," Pruitt says, looking around the room. "Where are you from?" he calls out to a cook. "Cambodia," the cook replies, hefting a metal vat onto a counter. "There's the Asian communities, the Spanish folk," Pruitt says. "My brother-in-law is Spanish, so he brought a lot of kids in. They're hard-working kids, and they bring in their friends." (Spanish, in this context, turns out to mean Colombian.)

No matter where you're from, don't expect to talk to Mr. Kelly. His picture, along with the history of Kelly's, is printed on the take-out bags -- which, except for the savory roast beef and the melting sweetness of the fried clams, are the four-store chain's only advertisements. Kelly himself was an Irish florist and the maître d' in a restaurant, where he worked with Kelly's other founders before they all started their own place together.

"I met him once," says Pruitt. "I saw a little round guy with those laughing Irish eyes, and I said, `That must be Kelly!' He looks just like the drawing!

"You know, sometimes people who want something will come up to the stand and say, `Oh, I talked to the owner, Mr. Kelly, and he said it was okay.' And I say, `Oh, really?' "