You Are Here - Chester, Vermont

Even though the signal lights aren't flashing, always be careful crossing railroad tracks like these here in Chester, Vermont.  In the cartoons, somebody's always getting flattened by a train that zooms right in front of them the minute they put a toe on the track.  Wile E. Coyote, mostly.

Phyllis Thaxter - Court Square Theatre, Springfield, Mass.

Phyllis Thaxter died a week ago on August 14th. Though many will remember her film and TV roles beginning in the 1940s and ‘50s, through to her stint as Superman’s mother in the 1978 film, perhaps a few will recall the young actress who toured New England in the stage production “Claudia.”


Above we have the program cover advertising the national touring company of “Claudia” when it hit the boards at the Court Square Theatre in Springfield, Massachusetts. It ran for three days, March 29, 30, and 31, 1943. Miss Thaxter played opposite Donald Cook and Frances Starr. She understudied Dorothy McGuire as Claudia on Broadway, and when Miss McGuire won the film role of the popular play, Thaxter took over in the leading role on stage. Phyllis would have her own Hollywood career soon.

She was a New England girl, born and raised in Portland, Maine, her mother a former actress and her father, Sidney, a Maine Supreme Court judge. On a visit to her family in 1952, while swimming in the ocean, she developed the first frightening symptoms of polio. She was pregnant at the time, and required treatment in an iron lung for a brief period. Fortunately, the illness abated, she recovered her ability to walk, and had no difficulties delivering a healthy son some months later.

Phyllis Thaxter and her husband, Gilbert Lea, spent their retirement years between Maine and Florida. She was 92 years old. Her obituary in the New York Times is here.

These program pages from the Court Square Theatre display advertising from Springfield businesses of the day. Perhaps you remember True Brothers, Inc., Jewelers, or Converse Carlisle Coal Company, or J.E. Cheney and Staff opticians. Perhaps you went to the Hotel Bridgeway to dance in the Mayfair Room to Vin Breglio’s Society Orchestra.

Or bought your shoes at Stetson’s Shoe Shop on Bridge Street.

Or maybe you’ve never heard of them. Until now.

Tremont Theater - Boston

A reader, John Y., recently contacted me with these two great scans of postcards of the Tremont Theater.

I put them up on my Tragedy and Comedy in New England blog, but wanted to include them here as well, as this blog is where my theatre posts are now going.

His contribution is in response to this past post on Boston's Tremont Theater.

From John Y.: "Here you'll see an early, say, 1905 view of Tremont Street looking north towards Park Street. Just a hair to the right of center, if you look carefully, you'll be able to make out the "Tremont Theater" sign on the front of the marquis, the same as is on the first post card. On the right side of the marquis is "C. S. either Millard or Willard". The dance studio is upstairs and just to the right of that sign is a two-story tall Quaker Oats mural. Other businesses readable are Estley Organs and Weber Pianos. I'm confident that the white stone building at the right edge is the Masonic Temple.

Printed in Belgium for Kosmos Art Co., Boston, this view is dateable mostly because of the lack of electric and/or gas engine vehicles and the existence of the subway.

One of your bloggers, Herb, I think it was, correctly determined that the Astor Theater did occupy the building after our Tremont Theater.

If you or any of your friends would like, and you wouldn't mind being the connection, I'll be glad to share whatever views I have of the City. Just let me know what and whaere and I'll check my stuff."

Here is another from John's collection, dated a year later in 1906:

These are wonderful glimpses in Boston's magnificent theatre history, and I'd like to thank John very much for sharing them with us.

Plum Beach Lighthouse - Rhode Island

Today is National Lighthouse Day. We mark the establishment of America’s lighthouses through act of Congress in 1789 on this day. The lighthouse above is called the Plum Beach Lighthouse, and represents how both a love of lighthouse history and future preservation can come together.

It stands in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. The Jamestown Verrazano Bridge looms over it, though when the 53-foot lighthouse was constructed in 1899, there was no bridge here, and a need for aid to navigation around Plum Beach Shoal.

The Hurricane of 1938 wreaked havoc on the little light, and trapped the keeper and his assistant, who reportedly tied themselves down to the apparatus that turned the beacon. They made it through the storm, but the Plum Beach Lighthouse was put out commission only a couple years later, not through storm damage, but because of the first Jamestown Bridge that opened in 1940. The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1941.

For several decades it sat rusting, in a kind of legal limbo, until the Friends of Plum Beach Lighthouse were formed to restore and preserve it. The incredible task of restoring this lighthouse is detailed in the Friends of Plum Beach Lighthouse website here.

The lighthouse is now restored and the light, now a solar-powered beacon, was re-lit in December 2003.

For more on the history of Plum Beach Lighthouse, have a look here. For more on National Lighthouse Day, have a look at this website.

Speak Out Before You Die

We interrupt this blog for another in our continuing series of annoying announcements: the second book in my new “cozy” mystery series is available now as an ebook, and will be published in paperback in August.

For those who write book reviews on their blogs and would be interested, I’ll provide the first five people who email me, a free copy of the ebook (through a coupon on Smashwords to be read on any ereader device or on your computer) or a paperback book, or both if you prefer. My email is JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com. Please don’t leave your email or mailing address in the comments section. All emails and mailing addresses will remain private.

The cover is done by that extraordinary talent, Casey Koester, whom you might know better as Noir Girl from her blog.  The vector graphic style used here is the same style she applied on the first book in the series, Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red, and I hope her participation on these covers will continue for several more books. She’s terrific, as you can see. I like the whimsical nature of the illustrations, the feel of being both from the era of the stories (late 1940s, early 1950s), and yet still seeming clean and modern.

And now (drum roll) the blurb: Speak Out Before You Die, the second in the “Double V Mysteries” series reunites wealthy Juliet Van Allen and ex-con Elmer Vartanian on New Year’s Eve, 1949. Guests are gathered in snowbound mansion for the wedding of Juliet’s widowed father to an elegant younger woman just after the clock strikes midnight. When Juliet finds what appears to be a threatening note directed at her father, she calls Elmer to pose as a hired servant to help ferret out the danger…but midnight is approaching and time is running out. There may be murder as the old year dies.


What interests me about these characters of Juliet and Elmer, who began their partnership for mutual survival in the first book Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red -- is that neither is a mastermind sleuth. I’ve always been a bit annoyed at the great literary detectives who possess so much knowledge on bullet wounds and African poison darts, and who also seem to solve the crime in the last few pages of the book by producing evidence which the writer has withheld from the reader. (“I had my assistant wire these documents from the War Office last night which PROOVES that the colonel was a VEGETARIAN!”)

There’s a scene at the end of the movie “Murder by Death” (1976), the Neil Simon parody of great detectives where Truman Capote berates the famous sleuths for withholding clues from the reader until the last minute. When I first saw that scene as a teenager I agreed with his complaint, erupting in righteous indignation.

“Hey...yeah!” I said.

That was pretty much all I said at the time. I never claimed to be articulate, just indigant.

Fast forward to now and my two characters who are not geniuses. Juliet and Elmer are ill-equipped to find murderers. She is the daughter of a wealthy financier and museum administrator, and he is an ex-con, who had made more use of his opportunities to read literature in prison that she did at finishing school. They are intelligent enough, but not more than anybody else. They have no superior gifts. With their back stories, including the pain over the outcomes of their previous marriages, they carry a lot more emotional baggage than most.

The edge they have going for them is their growing relationship. Their trust in each other and their reliance on each other’s opinions and perspectives is what guides them through the sticky mess of who done it. Their relationship, with its ups and downs, will be the engine that drives the series, and takes them through the brave new world of the 1950s.

Speak Out Before You Die (the title, though appropriately lurid, is actually from a line in a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) ebook version will be on sale for the next month at 99 cents, then will be ruthlessly jacked up to $2.99. The paperback will be sold for $12, plus postage. You’ll be able to buy the paperback directly from me, or in the coming weeks from CreateSpace or Amazon. Currently, the ebook is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/208667

Hindenburg Over Hartford, Connecticut

Have a look at the Hindenburg flying over Hartford, Connecticut in October, 1936, from what is apparently someone's home movie.  Note the Olympic rings on the side.   In that year, both the Summer and the Winter Games were held in Germany, and this logo on the airship was a bit of public relations.  The following spring, of course, the Hindenburg would explode over Lakehurst, New Jersey.  Here it looms over the Traveler's building.

Mapping the Way

This map has been making the rounds on the Internet.  I don't know who created it, but I leave you to decide on the accuracy of the cartographer.  When visiting Tanglewood this summer, do be cautious about the dragons.  We've lost more than one motorist on the westernmost stretch of the Pike who decided to stop and feed them.