Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte

We recently watched the Ball Square Bowling Alley come down to make way for the new Green Line station. As Somerville has gone through many changes in my lifetime, I’m happy that some of old Somerville became part of a new Somerville.

Back around 1919 or so, the cobblestones that made up the streets in Davis Square were pulled up to make way for new paved roads. My grandfather, who lived a few streets away, grabbed his wheelbarrow and started making trips back and forth moving those cobblestones to his backyard.

Hopefully, he enlisted some of his friends like Goomba Salvador and Mongooch to help him. He then created a patio area consisting of the historic stones. Think of all the trolleys, horses, and big wheeled (penny farthing) bicycles that traveled over those cobblestoned streets.

That was up until my grandpa repurposed some of the stones. The backyard was finished in 1920, documented by grandpa in a marker of tiny stones, forming a “1920” marker, which is still intact today.

From 1920 when my father, the oldest of 6 was born, up until my Auntie Olga passed in 2018, the backyard hosted the good life. That yard was where my dad, aunts and uncles, and grandparents and friends had parties, ate grapes and gooseberries, drank wine from those very grapes, and lived life to the fullest. My grandchildren, the fifth generation were in the yard playing this past Sunday.

When I look at those cobblestones today, still in place and still strong and sturdy, my mind wanders. I try to picture my dad as a young boy with his brother and sisters playing in the yard among those stones. Those cobblestones remain there today as a lasting testimony to an entrepreneurial vision and creative workmanship.

Just think, 100 years, and five generations of life in that yard with those repurposed cobblestones.

We had a driveway paved twenty years ago that already needs to be replaced. Look at the sad condition the bricks in Davis Square are in. It’s a lesson in quality. Then I look at the cobblestones in grandpa’s yard. Old country, old school, and still standing.

In 1960, my grandpa and my father built a retaining wall in our backyard out of chunks of concrete from the old sidewalk in Davis Square. I remember watching them place the pieces like it was yesterday.

What can we repurpose today? Maybe those crushed plastic road markers that have been flattened all over the city? Maybe they can be used as wiffle ball bats!

It’s soothing to see those old cobblestones still serving out their second life. Hopefully, we can find more pieces of the past that can become part of our future