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Health & Fitness

Dispatch From Upper Falls: A Great Neighbor

Our favorite yard in the neighborhood

When we moved to Upper Falls a few years ago my daughter was just starting first grade at Countryside. Every morning we’d walk from our house, down High St and up Pettee Street to the bus stop. The highlight of the walk for both my daughter and I was always the house at #59 High St. 

There’s no other house or garden quite like it.  The front garden is custom made to fascinate a first grader (and her father). Interspersed among the lush vegetation and flowers are all sorts of whimsical delights – statues of rabbits, frogs, dogs, geese, cats,  etc.  In the middle of it all is a little waterfall that flows into a tiny pond filled with fish.

Within the first weeks in the neighborhood we bumped into the owner, Bruce Marcy, out tending the garden one day.  He invited my daughter Jayla up to see the fish in the pond and told her she was welcome to go into his yard anytime she wanted.

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Not long after, we learned from another bus stop parent that Bruce’s yard was their shortcut to the bus stop. Bruce’s yard backs on to the Emerson Playground – a city park. When Bruce was a kid the city put up a chain link fence around the perimeter of the park.  Bruce’s father thought it was ridiculous that his kids had to walk the long route to the bus stop via city streets when it was right out his back yard.  One weekend, his father cut the chain link fence and put in a gate.  The gate in Bruce’s yard has been the short cut ever since for everyone in our neighborhood - shaving off an important 3 or 4 minutes when you’re running a bit late first thing in the morning.  Bruce couldn’t be more welcoming of the neighbors trekking through his yard on a daily basis.

Once we began using the shortcut, we then saw his backyard is just as interesting as his front.  It’s a mini-farm back there.  Bruce grows all kinds of vegetables, fruits, and flowers.  He’s got little homemade green houses back there and he’s an encyclopedia of gardening knowledge.  Nearly the whole year round he’s out there tending some part of the garden or another. 

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Aside from the garden there’s nearly always something else interesting going on back there.  Bruce heats his house with wood so over the last few weeks his backyard filled up with walls of chopped wood in preparation for the coming winter.  Meanwhile all of his fruit has been ripening recently and Bruce encourages us to pick a pear, a peach, raspberries or whatever else is ripe on our way to the bus stop in the morning.  He doesn’t spray his fruit trees and that’s been a good education for my daughter.  She’s learned that a gnarly looking peach with all sorts of visible imperfections can taste way better than a perfect looking peach that we bring home from the supermarket.

Once we got to know Bruce we also found that he’s the single best source of first hand neighborhood history.  He grew up in that house and has been there his whole life. With his stories he can paint a vivid picture of the neighborhood 50 or 60 ago.  The residential High St. of today was much more of a jumble back then– that house was the fire station, that house was the variety store, the barn down there on the corner was a print shop, etc. 

We also learned from Bruce some of the history of our own house.  One curiosity of our house is that it has two electric meters and two electric bills even though it’s a single family house.  We learned from the previous owner that at one time it had been split into two apartments.  

Once again, Bruce brought it alive for us.  He told us how a young couple lived there – the Valasek’s.  They had both grown up in the neighborhood and his mother still lived nearby.   When the man was about 40 years old he died suddenly.  A few years later his widowed wife had her mother in law move in with her.  At that point she split part of the house into a separate apartment for her mother-in-law.  The mother in law lived there for many years and her daughter in law looked after her to a ripe old age.  Since Bruce told us all of this it transformed our view of our own house.  The office I’m typing this is was her living room, our laundry room was her kitchen and my daughter sleeps in her bedroom.  Bruce’s stories of our neighborhood have brought the history of the neighborhood and its residents alive for us.

We love it here in Upper Falls and one of the best things about it is our neighbor Bruce.

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