Although there was no official declaration that the holiday season was under way in 1922, the passing of Halloween and the arrival of All Saints Day marked the transition for young and old alike.
“The spirit of Halloween was observed last evening in all the residential sections by the younger children who, dressed in grotesque costumes with masks and carrying lanterns of various designs, held parades through the main streets, which afforded much merriment and fun for the older residents,” read The Boston Globe’s “Hull” column of Nov. 1. The fire department responded to a “rubbish fire” started by “some boys” on the beach just outside of the Village at 10:30 p.m. on what proved to be an otherwise calm holiday night. At midnight, the summer police force went off duty for the year, with the winter force beginning their portion of the annual rotation. Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose Burnside Mitchell missed the entire Halloween affair, taking off on “an automobile tour of the New England States and other northern points” before night fell.
On Nov. 1, all three Catholic churches in town switched to their winter schedules, with All Saints Day observed by Masses in all locations. The Hull Women’s Club and the Ladies Aid Society held meetings, summer residents left for their winter homes in droves, and the town pivoted its offal collection routine from summer (five districts) to winter (the town as one large district) and mulled the naming of an official winter offal collector. Chatter turned to the upcoming state election on Nov. 8. The polls would open at 7 a.m. at the Central Fire Station, but when would they close? Hull residents hoped they would remain open until at least after the 5:15 p.m. train from Boston had returned to the Waveland Station around 6:10, but the decision would not be democratically resolved; the town had been run by a political machine, the “Old Ring,” since 1893, and it would decide when enough votes had been cast.
The chairman of the Republican Town Committee, which bore the aforesaid nickname, almost lost his streak of 28 consecutive years of voting in town. At 7 a.m. Dr. Walter H. Sturgis sat deep in the Maine woods, 300 miles away with friends Frank P. Richardson and A.I. McLean. Determined to cast his vote, Sturgis stepped on the gas of his car and began the journey home. As the vehicle rolled into town with “15 minutes to spare,” decorated with eight prize deer “strapped on the sides, rear and across the hood,” it made for a “picturesque sight,” according to The Boston Globe’s Nov. 8 article.
Sturgis went right to work. Late that evening, “a motorboat with several men aboard, grounded on the Nantasket shore, and one of the occupants of the fishing party was rushed to the Sturgis Hospital in a serious condition, caused by his falling against the engine, severely cutting his throat,” said the Globe. “Several stitches were necessary to close the long cut.”
As for the election, the prized state Representative’s seat representing Hull, Hingham, and Cohasset went to John L. Mitchell of Hull. The town voted for summer resident John F. Fitzgerald for governor in a losing effort, breaking the historic run of the political slogan “As Hull goes, so goes the state.” The Globe interviewed “one old weather-beaten fisherman” who declared “’It’s the fust time in my memory that we ain’t showed the way. Sum’en wrong someplace.’”
The community’s thoughts increasingly turned in the coming days to one topic – sewers. With the awarding of the contract to build the Ocean Avenue sewer to Bradford Weston, the residents of the Sagamore Hill and Hampton Head areas waited for news from the State House of the town’s sewer commissioners’ petition to build a sewer that would discharge into the sea by way of the Weir River. Concurrently, the new seawall at the southern end of the beach, another important piece of town infrastructure, was nearing completion, providing all-important protection for the railroad tracks that ran along the eastern shore. By the end of the second week of November, work would begin on a new sidewalk on the eastern, bayside section of Spring Street, formerly a wooden boardwalk.
Armistice Day, marking the anniversary of the end of World War I, was not celebrated publicly in Hull in 1922, as it was not a legal holiday, but the American Legion did host a surprise costume party at Fort Revere. The Hull Village Club began its regular winter meetings at the Nantasket House, next to the Hull Public Library, and young Moms gathered for Monday baby clinics at the Damon and Village Schools to receive free professional parenting advice. The Hull Gunning Club voted to outfit all of its members binoculars after one member had repeatedly shot at a decoy in the surf. As the holidays approached, whist parties, dances, collations, and other social events ramped up in frequency under the auspices of the town’s various clubs, fire department companies, and church groups. On Nov. 17, one of the final lingering summer residents, Mary Canary, flew the coop.
The phenomenon of celebrating Hull life was not confined to Hull. As early as Nov. 8, groups beyond the borders began planning gatherings in wistful remembrance of the summer just passed. The Nantasket Vacationists of Roxbury planned their annual gathering for Nov. 17, an event that drew 2,000 revelers. The Nantasket Beach Vacationists of Cambridge held their event on Dec. 4, with the special annual naming of “Mr. and Miss Nantasket.” On Dec. 12, a joint group of Center Harbor, N.H., and Nantasket Vacationists celebrated at Catholic Union Hall, where, according to the Globe, it was promised that “Frank O’Donnell, South Boston’s soft-shoe dancer, will give an exhibition of the steps, including his usual ‘Frisco.’” On Dec. 13, the Nantasket summer residents of Watertown would take over their town hall for a party of their own.
Indoors in Hull, as the temperatures dropped with the season, athletes turned to the newest fad, basketball. On Saturday night, Nov. 18, the Fort Revere basketball team defeated the Tank Platoon from New Bedford’s Fort Rodman in a barnburner of a game, final score 12-10. The West Corner Community Club promised to floor a solid squad that year as well. The Central Fire Station became home to nightly concerts played by radio, thanks to drivers William Jeffrey and Charles Fitzpatrick, with not only the firemen, but many local residents invited to take in the wonder. Of particular interest was the Harvard-Yale football game on Nov. 25, which would be heard at the station, but also at the home of G. Kendrick Smith of Allerton Hill, who would host the entire Allerton football team in his home to hear the “returns.”
On Sunday, Nov. 26, the first skating party of the year formed organically on a frozen lagoon in the low and swampy land of Kenberma. Kids from Allerton, Bayside and Waveland met in the streets – all members of the Junior Athletic Club – and walked throughout town to find ice. Locating it, they retreated home and grabbed their skates. Two days later, the first heavy snowfall of the season brought out the sleds on Telegraph Hill. The high winds that came with the nor’easter drove in “great quantities of driftwood, which was eagerly gathered by the many beachcombers who are without coal,” said the Globe, noting the ongoing hardships associated with the nationwide coal miners’ strike. The news of the arrival of a load of coal to the Waveland docks spread like wildfire throughout the town on Dec. 1.
The news of the death of Johnnie Robinson, a driver at the Central Fire Station, did the same on Dec. 4, with one problem: he wasn’t dead. Somehow the rumor started in town and residents began relentlessly calling the station. Robinson finally had to inform the central operator to hold all such calls and explain that he was very much alive. Sadly, within a few days Mrs. Elsie Fairbanks and Mrs. Belle James, wife of Captain Reinier James, did pass away. Within a few weeks, James F. Patterson and Mrs. William Waldron followed them; although, due to the frozen conditions at the time of her death, Mrs. Waldron’s remains were consigned temporarily to the receiving tomb at the Hull Village Cemetery.
On Dec. 7, Captain William C. Sparrow, commanding officer of the Coast Guard Station at Stony Beach, retired. Sparrow had embraced the impossible, taking over command of the station in the months after the death of Hull’s beloved Joshua James in 1902. Now, 20 years later, his career finished, he turned to board a train to begin his journey to see his daughter in Birmingham, Ala., with one last look back and wave to his crew, drilling in their lifeboat in front of the station.
Five days later, a major fire struck the storage building on the Floretta Vining estate, next door to the Coast Guard Station (where eventually the town would build its wastewater treatment facility). The blaze consumed huge quantities of hay and three automobiles, in what proved to be the first in a string of odd accidents and tragedies that would plague the last few weeks of the year. On Dec. 22, the Coast Guard Cutter Acushnet ran aground on Toddy Rocks off Allerton, the crew rescued by new Captain Hilton Acker and his crew from the Stony Beach station. Five days later the Boston fishing schooner Mary E. O’Hara struck hard in the same area, with luckily all 23 men being saved. The next day, Dec. 28, a fire started by a “fallen wire” partly destroyed Keany’s Café and poolroom on the state reservation at Nantasket during a heavy snowstorm that had disabled the town’s fire alarm system. Firefighters responded to individual phone calls to their homes and the sound of hand-rung bells in the middle of the night. Seventy-mile-per-hour winds threatened to push the flames to Paragon Park.
The storm proved to be a two-day affair that produced a new hero for the community. The storm raged strongly, tying up shipping and sending tidal surges onto the mainland. At Nantasket, the waves threatened to submerge and undermine the train tracks. In the aftermath, sea clams and lobsters washed ashore in great quantities, which “brought great joy to the beach combers,” according to the Globe. The driftwood was welcome, too, as the town went about 32 hours without electricity. During it all, Emma Sargent remained at her post at the telephone exchange. Billeted for seven hours of work, from 4-11 p.m., she remained at her post for 16.
“Call after call came in from anxious wives regarding their husbands, from mothers asking for their daughters and sons who were somewhere along the road either in automobiles or on the trains,” wrote the Globe. “To each and every one came the cheery word of encouragement from the operator at the Central Office who told each as well as she could about the train service and the condition of the highways.” When the police reported the fire to her late that evening, Sargent was the one who called every call fireman in town individually. “Had it not been for her wide-awake vigilance in immediately answering the call for the fire, Nantasket Beach with its pleasure park and nearby residences would have undoubtedly been fire swept.”
By the 17th of December, though, the Christmas spirit had taken hold, with the annual Christmas tree exercises for Sunday school students planned for both St. Ann’s at Waveland and St. Mary’s of Green Hill. Children attending the Village Grammar School looked forward to their annual trip down Spring Street to Gould Memorial Hall for their festivities. Along the way, they would pass the newly flooded and frozen over Village Park. The Young Men’s Hockey Club had already petitioned the town for an arc light so they could practice at night, and could avoid running over children during the day, as had happened the previous winter on far too many occasions, they said.
As the schools had cleared out, with families gathered for the wonderful holiday ahead, Hull residents believed they were in the most estimable place on earth, exactly where they should be. They understood perfectly when they sat down with the paper on the evening of Dec. 24 and saw the final Christmas wish of an anonymous individual, explained in two short lines, in The Boston Globe want ads: “Wanted: To buy a small seashore cottage, Hull or Nantasket.”
For Hull residents, that holiday dream had already come true.
