It wasn’t just luck that we ended up buying apartments a mile down the road from each other. We’ve been friends since 7th grade. A mile was close enough to bring over the extra set of keys if one of us got locked out, needed soup for a cold, or comforting after a personal tragedy.
As luck would have it, smack in the middle (you can count the steps between our houses) is Doyle’s Café. In our 40s, the iconic 137-year-old Jamaica Plain bar became our refuge, our situation room, the other constant in our lives.
Except for the time they changed the French fries. They’d been thick, wide, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle. I remember when our server (a poet I’d seen promoting his new book on our community cable network) put the plate of unfamiliar curlicues on the table. You looked at him aghast. “What happened?’ You pleaded your case. “Please tell the owner, “These have NO place next to the Best Burgers in town. “
When the old laminated, sticky-green menus metamorphosed into a dark gilded thing with a fancier font, we tossed it aside and asked: “Do you still have…?”
Then the fries came back. Imagine our relief.
As a trauma therapist, I know that very few things in life are constant. You and I learned that lesson as kids. In 8th grade, we founded the Dead-Parent Club. We held our meetings on the thick rug between bookshelves, in the sun-drenched school library in the Boston suburb where we grew up. We weren’t exclusive – if your parents were divorcing, or just excessively unpleasant, you were welcome to come along.
You made your way: Connecticut, New York, Cambridge, and Watertown. I followed the Syrian African Rift Valley’s migratory route; then Vermont, Somerville, Cambridge, West Roxbury. Then, finally, we both landed in JP. And we found [or adopted Doyle’s as our hangout??] Doyle’s.
I’d peruse the bar’s historic photographs of Boston politicians, remembering trips to the State House and City Hall with my mother who went toe to toe with these guys over welfare reform and housing rights. She died the summer before I met you. We always saved her a spot in our booth at Doyle’s.
We’d get extra napkins — sometimes for crying; or dabbing excess grease from a hamburger patty: And for the inevitable spills when we were engrossed in conversation. Irish Coffee capped with whipped cream, and a drizzle of Crème de Menthe eased my losses and personal failures. “It’s clinically indicated,” I’d explain. You’d opt for a Cosmopolitan.
In 2009, following the election for his final term in office, Mayor Menino’s boisterous consortium sat at the round table in the corner.
A few months later??, we gave in to the noise from Ayanna Pressley’s City Council campaign speech to the JP Progressives Forum in Doyle’s event room: “I’ve never been cynical about government I’ve always believed we can create systemic and sustainable change for people…”
During our Doyle’s debriefing upon my return from a trauma conference in Northern Ireland, I viewed the framed testaments to Irish history hanging on the corridor walls with renewed curiosity.
New romances and break-ups, old romances recycled–Doyle’s. A parent moved to a nursing home, a friend critically ill – Doyle’s. I lost my job – Doyle’s. You lost a family member—Doyle’s. The young man I mentor was arrested—Doyle’s. When he was released from prison, we watched him eat his Braddock burger and fries with vicarious pleasure.
Volunteering with my colleagues from the Israel Trauma Coalition after the Boston Marathon bombings, we took a breather at Doyle’s.
The announcement in September of the restaurant’s demise brought a flurry of social media posts. “Maybe we can invest funds? Put it into a community trust? “
One defeatist Facebook post read: “Things come and go.”
“’Things come and go’ are you kidding me?” I called to tell you the news?? [or do you mean called to tell a friend about the things come and go comment?, gripping my cell phone tight with anger].
For twenty years our Jamaica Plain always had room for the three of us: Me in my artist’s loft; you in your condo in a triple-decker facing the Arboretum; and Doyle’s, equidistant and ever-present.
Lately, our sweet borough’s been stacking cold cubes of steel and glass (with luxury amenities) over family homes, casting shadows over backyards and playgrounds. Rent is out of reach, Doyle’s owner Gerry Burke has said. He’s sold his liquor license to a chichi, fine dining establishment in the bougie Seaport District and put the property up for sale.
Does it really have to be this way? Say it ain’t so, Marty Walsh. Say it ain’t so.
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Previously Published in Boston Globe Magazine
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Photo credit: John Phelan