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Newton, Massachusetts, in 1938 was a mix of Irish who came fleeing the famine, French and Jews looking a safe harbor from war and persecution.
The Italians came, mostly from the village of San Donato Val di Comino. They were all first and second-generation immigrants looking for a better way of life in America.
The “Lake area” is in Nonantum, one of thirteen villages that make up the city of Newton. Researching my home area was a unique experience. I learned a lot about its historical beginnings and more about the people and places I knew as a child.
The story I have told is fictional. The basis of the story is one theory about the “Lake Language” and how it became incorporated into the everyday usage by the locals in the area.
Lake Talk is a cryptolect, spoken particularly among older Italian-American residents. The origins of Lake Talk are unclear. A 2001 article in the Boston Globe speculated that it is a blend of Italian and some World War II code, but others have seen similarities to Angloromani or Italian Romany slang.
I have used stories my father told me about his growing up in the “Lake.” The old stories have been woven into the novel. The name “Bottle Alley” was the nickname for Adams Street.
In my father’s time, children did gather coal from along the railway line. My House on Chandler St. was moved there when they built the rail line.
In my research I did find a peat bog on Hawthorn Street, and I remember skating on Silver Lake as a
child. I grew up in the house on Chandler Street and have used the house as the home of the Flannigan Family.
Fried’s store was where we bought most of the clothes we needed until shopping malls arrived. Mazzola’s bakery had the best fresh bread; the smell of the bread baking filled the neighborhood.
Going to the gypsy carnival at Our Lady’s with my father was a treat. He won a bank in the shape of Peter Rabbit, made of plaster, which I kept for many years. “Our Lady Help of Christians” was my school from kindergarten to graduation from high school.
The hurricane is also true. It was called the “Long Island Express.” It devastated Long Island, New York, and seven hundred lives were lost. It traveled at sixty miles an hour and was preceded by a week of heavy rain, wind and flooding. It crossed Western Massachusetts on its way to upstate New York and Canada.
I have created characters and families to bring the story of the “Lake” and its language to life. All names and characterizations are from my imagination and do not reflect on any real person alive or dead.
The story is told from the perspective of my Irish Roots. I hope the contributors to the language will forgive me.
Lake Talk
One strong idea is that the language is a carryover from the traveling carnivals that roamed the country in the 1930’s and 40’s. The young locals worked the carnivals for extra money and used the strange language as a code of solidarity among them.
The language is still in use today and is being passed down to the younger children.
The mark of a true, old-school Lake resident is talent for the so-called Lake language ─ a collection of words and phrases believed to have roots in Romany, a language spoken by Gypsy immigrants from Europe, and brought back to the Lake early this century by local youths who worked for a time with traveling carnivals.
The Romany words became mixed with Italian, English, and other street slang of the 1930s and ’40s to produce a lively mix that is one of the strongest links to the Lake’s proud and rough-and-tumble past.