Autobiography - Hull, MA the early years 1951 - 1969

My memories of my mothers side of the family are more vivid since I grew up with them. My grandparents Lloyd and Ruth Miller had three children William (aka Sonny), Lillian and Anna. Ruth had a daughter Lorraine from a previous marriage with an army colonel. Lloyd had also been married before to Elmira Lyons. The story the Millers tell is that the family were loyalists (Torys) during the American revolution meaning they remained loyal to the English monarch King George III. They departed Boston to Nova Scotia on Evacuation Day on March 17, 1776 when George Washington agreed not to fire on the British Fleet if the British General Howe would not burn the city of Boston to the ground. The Millers remained in Nova Scotia for 100 years before returning to Boston.

Lorraine moved to California and married Ed Gaynor and had two children Chris and Nancy. Nancy married an Asian American David Liu and had two boys. Her parents were not initially supportive of her marrying an Asian so Nancy estranged them and Chris joined in. Lorriane and Ed passed away having never met their grandchildren.

Sonny Miller helped run the family business. My most vivid memory of him is when he broke his leg in a snow skiing accident in the early 1960’s. He was convalescing at the family home at 743 Nantasket Ave in Hull. I went up to room and he had a full plaster cast on his leg. As we talked for a few minutes he kept drilling holes in his cast with a metal scribe (needle). He said that is how he could scratch itches. Sonny married Kay and had two children Lori Ann and Bobby. Bobby married Sally and has a daughter Katy. He was a successful comic book store owner (Sarges) in Groton , Ct. The story of Lori Ann is she is the reason the Millers had to sell Miller’s Marina at U Street. Lori ran up credit card debt to the level that required the marina be sold to pay her debt.

Lillian married Dick Willis from Indiana. He was also in the Coast Guard. Dick and Lil had four sons Ricky, David, Kenny and Gary. My greatest memories of the Willis family (and there are many) is for several years they took me camping in New Hampshire. I was the fifth Willis boy. I made that statement at their funeral regarding how much I enjoyed that stage of my life with them.

Our home at 1 Central Ave was modest. When I saw it many years later after I moved out, it seemed amazing five people lived there. It had three small bed rooms and one bath. As the oldest I had my own bedroom. My bothers Bruce and Billy shared a room. My bothers were born five years apart as was I. The joke was that Si only came home from sea every five years. That was a bit of an exaggeration but he was away most of the time. He was stationed on Boston Light, the Boston Light Ship and weather ships that cruised the North Atlantic for several months at a time. When Si was away he gave my mother $30 to survive on per month. Even in the 1950’s that was below the poverty level. Anna would find a way to stretch it out. She told me whenever we would go for a walk with her friends and their children and they would buy a ten cent ice cream she had to tell me I wouldn’t like it.

Hull was a great place to grow up. I was half a mile from my middle school and grandparents winter home at 743 Nantasket Avenue ( corner of K Street) and one mile from Miller’s Marina on U Street. I wore out several sets of bicycle tires over the years riding to those places. My grandparents rented their home each summer and they lived at the marina. My grandfather Lloyd always referred to the renters as the heebs. I assumed their name was the Heeb family. A few years later the renters came to the marina and I asked Lloyd in front of them if these were the heebs? Oops! There name was Silverstein. In Lloyd talk heeb was short for Hebrews.

Having grandparents that owned a marina was a very fun thing. I spent every summer of my youth there. I started a business. At the marina, all the boats were on moorings. There were no slips. The boat owners had access to row boats to get to their boats. After rowing out they had to return the row boat to the dock. My business was to row them out to their boat so they did not have to bring the dingy back. Most boaters gave me a quarter ($0.25) each way. Some thought my services were provided free by the marina. My mother made a sign for my hat “Tender Service 25 cents”. My income sky rocketed. In few years my grandfather gave a Chippewa Chief 14’ dingy and a 2.5 hp Johnson outboard. I was in heaven. I cruised that boat all over Hingham Bay. And one day another miracle happened. My grandfather gave me a 5 hp Johnson outboard motor. That was a enough horse power to get the Chippewa Chief on plane. That boat and motor were the center of my universe for several years. Then a hurricane was forecasted. I will have to look up the year but I will guess 1962. I always wonder why my uncle and grandfather did not take 10 minutes to haul my boat out of the water or at least suggest I remove the motor. Oh well, my boat sank and the motor was ruined.

The boat shop was a haven for me. There were infinite tools and weird stuff to make stuff. My grandfathers shop had been a repair shop for model T fords. There were hundreds of original model T parts laying around. My friends and I built a motorized go-cart with a lawn mower engine and soap box derby wheels, steering wheel and axels.

My grandfather had a 40’ Novi lobster boat named Spindrift that he used for fishing charters. He had a first mate named Tom Windsor. He took me on several fishing trips. Tom had a joke he liked to tell. If you catch one cod fish, two haddock and three smelt how many fish do you have? Answer - three fish because three smelt and you threw them back. The joke was funnier because Tom was known to have never taken a bath.

The Sprindrift was eventually the demise of Lloyd. The word Spindrift is the white spume blown off the top of a wave in gale force winds. One winter the canvass cover on Spindrift came loose. Lloyd put a ladder against his boat to climb up. The ladder slipped on the ice and Lloyd broke his hip. That was a death sentence and he did not recover.

My grandmother Ruth walked on Nantasket beach several times a week for exercise. Her favorite time to walk was after a Northeast storm. The beach would be covered with sea clams. She would gather the clams and make a delicious clam chowder. She let me help her grind the clams in a meat grinder. I would put the clams in the top and turn the handle around and around to grind them up. Later in life she became an avid candle pin bowler. She joined a bowling league and played until she died in her 90’s. At her funeral the minister said if there is a bowling alley in heaven Ruth is already there.

The background on my grandmother Ruth Olsen Is that her father was a cabin boy on the sailing ship Flying Cloud that made a record breaking voyage from San Francisco to New York going around Cape Horn. When the ship later arrived in Boston Harbor there was talk about a return trip around the Horn. He jumped overboard and swam to shore. Ruth had a brother Ollie that lived on Allerton Hill. He was an invalid in a wheelchair when I knew him. I visited him several times a year.

My mother told a few stories about living at the shop (marina). There was one man that thought he was funny but my mother felt he was a bully. Whenever he saw her he would say Anna Marie you are full of pee. During World War II everything was rationed including toilet paper. (Just like during the pandemic in 2020). Whenever someone would use the bathroom at the shop she would say toilet paper is rationed, use both sides. She was married when she was twenty years old. She never talked to me about her early life or life in high school or if she ever dated anyone other than my father.

My first memory of my Miller grandparents at age 3 is me standing in their basement stairway at K Street. My mother told me I was very shy and did not speak to my grandparents. They kept trying to get me to say something. After several weeks I finally spoke the words my grandfather Simons had taught me. I said “pig shit.” I am sure grandfather (pop pop) Simons was very proud when he heard.

Our house on Central Ave had three small bedrooms and one bathroom. It had an eat in kitchen and small living room. I am sure it was much nicer than anything we would have rented or tried to purchase on a Coast Guard salary. It also had a great location near the bay, beach, pharmacy, grocery store and Cohen’s restaurant. When I was five my brother Bruce Edward Simons was born and at when I was 10 my brother William Charles Simons was born. I had a few friends nearby. Larry Ross was two blocks away on C Street and Kenny Resnick lived next door. Years later my brother Bill would marry Kenny’s neice Joanne. Both Larry and Kenny were a year younger so we were not in the same grade in school. I had another friend Dick Cooper that lived on Strawberry Hill. Strawberry Hill was one block from my house. Kenny was a fireman in Hull and eventually joined FEMA. Kenny passed away in his 50’s, Larry and I never kept in touch until a few years ago. Larry moved to Maine and became fascinated with the aviator Charles Lindbergh. He bought the shipping container used to ship Lindbergh’s plane the Spirit of St Louis back to the US from England. He set up a small museum. Dick Cooper joined the army, served in Vietnam and retired from the army. He lives in Florida near our condo so we had lunch in 2019.

Most boys played baseball all summer. Larry and Kenny played baseball and I worked at the boat yard. In the fall winter and spring we played all the time. Winter was the most fun with sledding on Strawberry Hill. There was a chestnut tree near the sledding hill. Every fall the chestnuts became the coin of the realm.

When I was nine years old I decided I could fly. I watched Superman on TV. All he needed to fly was a cape. One fine day I took a bathroom towel and attached it around my neck with a large safety pin. Fortunately my mother was at the kitchen sink looking out the window when she saw me climbing up on the railing of our back porch. She came out and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was going to jump off the porch and fly around our yard like Superman. She quickly explained that everything you see on TV is not real. I had not considered that. OK, no flying today. I did manage to fall out of a tree once and I broke my collar bone twice. Other than a few bruises resulting from a roll over car crash I have been relatively injury free.
This is a bizarre event in my life. It happened when I was ten years old but I remember it as if it happened today. It was a big deal to take the bus from Hull to Hingham. This was probably the first and last time I took the bus. My friend Doug and I decided to go to the movies in Hingham. We took the bus and saw the movie. I do not remember what movies were popular in 1962. I guess I could Google it. After the movie we went to the Brighams ice cream store and I bought an ice cream for Doug and me. Doug helped me with my tender service business so I wanted to treat him. We walked to the bus stop with our ice creams. The bus arrived a few minutes later and we boarded. There were a few other people in front of us getting on the bus. The bus driver took off as each person dropped a dime into the meter. I was last in line and reached into my pocket for my dime. My heart dropped. No dime in my right pocket, no dime in my left pocket but I had a 25 cent ice cream in my hand. I asked Doug if he had a dime. He said no. I saw two boys I knew on the bus and asked them. No. There were several adults on the bus and they looked away. The bus driver was the curmudgeon of all curmudgeons. I can still see his evil face and hear his evil voice yelling at me. If you do not have a dime you must get off the bus now! I suggested I could go home and get a dime. The bus depot was one block from my house. Yes, directly across the street from the Texaco station. None of the ten people on the bus had a dime to lend me. The curmudgeon stopped the bus and kicked me off. There I was with my ice cream in my hand and a five mile walk home. As I started to take my first step I heard the honk of a car horn. I looked back and saw my neighbors from across the street Carl and Wilma Ross waving at me. I walked over to their car and they asked me if I needed a ride home.

Having a fishing pier a half block from my house did not help my grades at school. Very often I would come home from school and grab my fishing rod and head to the pier. I was never alone. Several of my classmates lived nearby and they were fishing too.   The pier was also fun for swimming. There was a floating dock that made it easy to climb out of the water. The tide rose and fell 8 - 10 feet so jumping off the pier into the water could be exciting. One summer I had a job running the Bayside yacht club. The BYC had a building on the pier and my job was to ferry members out to their boats in the club dingy. I was perhaps 12 years old at the time. The pier swarmed with older kids that were bullys. They would climb the gates and come into the club and swim off the private docks. This upset the members. I was ill equipped to deal with this nonsense and was soon unceremoniously fired from my yacht club job.

There was a sad incident that summer. A younger boy dove of the pier into shallow water and did not come up. The police and fire department were called. The fire station was only two blocks away. Everyone on the pier was looking down trying to see the boy. He floated out from under the pier below where I was standing. I saw his white T-shirt and called out for help. His body was recovered.

There was another incident at the pier that was almost life changing for me. I made a spear gun out of an aluminum pipe, surgical tubing and a hose clamp. The spear was an aluminum arrow with no fletch. A friend stopped by my house and I was anxious to try out my new toy. I had never launched it so I had no idea what would happen. At the time the pier had a covered bridge at the entrance. There were numerous lockers where fisherman could lock up their gear. One of the local fisherman that fished almost every day was Happy Gould. I do not know how he came by that name. Happy was walking off the pier. I could not see him because he was in the covered bridge area. I raised my spear gun and launched the arrow toward the pier. I expected the arrow to fly a few yards and land nearby. To my delight and soon to my horror the arrow soared hundreds of feet into the air in the direction of the pier.   I watched the arrow. My friend watched the arrow. We both saw Happy about to walk out from under the roof of the covered pier. My friend screamed out Happy’s name which caused Happy to stop a foot from exiting the covered bridge. The arrow impaled into the roof a few inches from the end. It was dead center on the top of the roof sticking straight up. Happy had no idea how close he came to harm that day. He just looked at two crazy kids yelling his name and kept walking. Eventually when the coast was clear I retrieved my arrow. I never shot my spear gun in the air again.

The pier became another source of employment. After the debacle with the BYC I was hanging out at the bay when I heard a voice say “Hey, want to be a paperboy?” Bill Petty was the South Shore distributor for the Boston Herald Traveler. He was a movie star looking guy in a red convertible. I needed a job so I asked him how it works. I ended up delivering newspapers for five years. My service area was the alphabet streets from A street to N street. That is a little over a half mile long and two long blocks wide. It was early to rise every day (seven days a week) before going to school.   Many of my customers were summer residents. They figured out if they ignored me collecting weekly near the end of the season, they would have free newspapers. I tried to collect when they returned the following year, they were all absolutely certain they had paid.   I explained this dilemma to my mother. She suggested I unilaterally raise the price of the newspaper delivery. She wrote up a flyer explaining the weekly price for delivered newspapers will increase 50%. She asked a friend that worked at the middle school to mimeograph (photocopy) 50 copies. I handed the flyers out to all my customers. My income skyrocketed and helped cover my annual end of season losses.

Getting up at the crack of dawn for five years seems impossible to me now. I had to fold each newspaper and put a rubber band on it so I could throw it from my bicycle. My bicycle had two baskets in the back, a basket on the front and I wore a giant canvas newspaper delivery bag. I did this so I could take all my newspapers in one trip and not have to return home half way through my route. I remember every Sunday looking at a stack of newspapers that was taller than me.

One of the many challenges was the weather. If it was raining I had to put the newspapers in plastic bags and ride my bike in the rain. My father would help wrap the papers when he was home. Winter brought Northeast storms as strong as hurricanes. One Sunday in winter when the roads were shear ice, just like the postman, I would not fail. My bike had 100 pounds of newspapers when I skidded on the ice and the wind blew all my newspapers away. That hurt my bottom line. Years latter I was talking with my handler Bill Petty and I mentioned I had a problem collecting from certain customers each year. He said I should have told him and he would reimburse me the cost of the unpaid papers. Then he told me he knew I had raised the price for delivered newspapers because several of my customers called him to complain. He had my back and supported me. Many years later after I was in college I heard Bill was on a date with his girlfriend and had a confrontation. Someone smashed out his teeth with a baseball bat. So ends the story of my life as a paper boy.

One of the advantages of having 50 paper route customers is many of them need services. I had many side jobs mowing lawns and shoveling snow. I had a push mower to cut our lawn at home. I used it to start my lawn mowing business. Then I bought a power reel lawnmower. Unfortunately there is a common tall weed on most lawns that my new lawnmower would not cut. I ended up using the motor from that lawn mower on my go cart. I bought a rotary lawn more which served me well. I charged between $3.00 and $5.00 per lawn. I mowed and trimmed. Our neighbor two houses east had a landscaping business. Joseph Bongazone was to top end landscaper to the rich households in Hull. He charged $15.00 per lawn. I decided to test price elasticity on my next customer. A summer rental on Samoset Avenue with five men hired me to cut the lawn. I charged $12.00 and they were happy with my services for several months. Then my neighbor Kenny Resnick told one of them I was ripping them off. They fired me. Kenny said one the men was his friend and he had no choice but to tell him. I must have had loose lips and mentioned something to Kenny. My bad.

Because my income dropped in the winter because my tender service and lawn mowing businesses ended I shoveled snow for several of my paper route customers. There was always a way to make money if you were motivated.

My first W2 job was working at the Waveland Texaco gas station during my junior and senior years in high school. It was one block from my house. The owner Tony Mascioli (Texaco Tony) hired me to pump gas. My job was to pump gas, clean windshields and check the oil. Customers would pull up and get $1.00. worth (three gallons). As a sixteen year old working at a gas station the learning curve was very high. Tony’s son Vinny was a summer policeman in Hull. He worked at the gas station in the evenings. He would walk across the street and buy beer at the package (liquor) store. I gave him 25 cents for a beer. I would take one sip and he would finish it. Over the summer I built up my consumption so I could drink my own full beer.

One of the employees, Lee Denison, was a practical joker. One day a lady pulled up for gas. Lee cleaned the windshield while Vinny pumped the gas. Lee mentioned that Vinny should tell the lady her headlight needed replacement. Vinny told her and she called him an idiot. Then Vinny saw the right front fender was completely smashed in.

Eventually I was promoted from pumping gas to doing oil changes and fixing flat tires. Once a week we would load a 55 gallon drum of dirty oil on a pick truck. We drove the truck four blocks to a vacant lot on D street. We dumped the oil on the ground and drove away. Many years later the family living in the house behind the gas station began to feel sick all the time. An investigation revealed the underground gasoline storage tanks had been leaking for years. The EPA closed the gas station and years later I met Tony bagging groceries at the Stop and Shop in Cohassett.

My cousin Robert Parker Miller provided the following insight into the Olsen family history which is different from what Oly told me.

From what my dad told me, his Mom's grandmother Hilma was an Olson from Sweden and his Grandfather Thor ( later changed to Thomas ) was an Olsen from Norway. They supposedly met on one of his log hauls over to the US as he was a rigger on the old sailing schooners.

I found a hospital report/newspaper notice from when he fell from the rigging and retired from active sea duty. It was at that time he became the caretaker of the Hull Station of the Boston yacht club in the village. I have attached a jpg of that building from a huge Panorama I have created. It is where Nana and her brothers grew up. Nana said some of her brothers took to Olson while she preferred Olsen. I think the whole clan eventually decided on Olsen .

I have also attached a jpg of the entire panorama. It prints out at 16 feet! Though looks decent at 8 feet wide by three feet in height.
I understand Nancy has done an extensive history of that section of our shared family, but I have yet to reach out to her.

The Miller and Simons family in 1952 - back row Ruth, Lloyd, Sonny. Front row Lillian, Anna, Johnny and Bob. I assume Dick Willis took the photo.

Johnny at age two. Always a boater from the very start. Mother, mother ocean, I have heard your call. Wanted to to sail upon your waters since I was two feet tall.

The meat grinder my grandmother let me use to grind the sea clams to make clam chowder.

The Miller home at 743 Nantasket Ave, Hull, MA.

Johnny and Bruce - Christmas 1960 - 1 Central Ave.

Cowboy Johnny when it was still cool for kids to have toy guns. I am guessing age 6 in 1957.

Johnny in grade school - maybe age 12 in 1963.

Ruth is the baby. I will try to identify the names of the others. I believe this is Thomas (Thor) and Hilma Olsen.

. Here is the result of my DNA test with Ancestry.com — .
Here is the result of my DNA test with Ancestry.com