Public Access to Assabet River

Automated river depth and flow gauge,
Assabet River, Maynard, MA (2010 flood)

Addresses public access to the Assabet River in Maynard, MA. Includes a kayaker's description.

For all that the Assabet River runs through the center of Maynard, crossed by seven bridges, public access points - meaning places where it is possible to sit or stand by the riverbank, and if so desired, do some fishing, wade into the river or launch a canoe or kayak - are scarce.

Passage through Maynard starts at the White Pond Road Bridge on the Maynard:Stow border and ends at Ripple Pond, which is the name of the body of water backed up by the dam next to Route 62, in Acton. This portion, some 2.5 miles long, offers a mix of flat and flowing water ranging from placid to exciting and potentially dangerous.

Upstream of the Ben Smith Dam provides five miles of flat water. Boaters' access in Maynard is at Ice House Landing and at White Pond Bridge. The former is near the Department of Public Works, on Winter Street, and offers a few parking places and a short portage to the shore, where it is possible to put in a canoe or kayak. The latter has space to put in a small boat off a trailer, but parking is problematic. Between, there are good views of the water from Track Road, on the south side, but the shoreline is steep and brushy. Farther upstream but still part of the same flat water is a put-in in Stow, at Sudbury Road.

Downstream from the Ben Smith Dam there are views from the bridges and along Walnut Street, but no accessible shoreline on town property other than a short stretch in Tobin Park, by the footbridge, and then much farther east, from a trail that descends from Concord Street.

Kayaker working the rapids upriver from Main Street, Maynard, MA

Maynard owns or is about to own or can consider owning land that could provide much more river access. Construction of the Assabet River Rail Trail will include a larger parking lot at Ice House Landing. The town could improve the put-in.

A private parking lot at the back of Millpond Square provides access below the dam. The town could look into purchasing part of the lot. There is an easy 80 yard portage to a put-in place. The same concept would hold true for buying part of the parking lot at the Elks Lodge, as either a takeout for river runners or a put in for Ripple Pond. Between, the town already owns land behind the Town Building and is in the process of buying riverside land at the end of a small parking lot on River Street. These two sites have a steep bank from shore to river, so not ideal for boating or fishing access, but could become attractive viewing areas.

Lastly, the river border from Main Street to the footbridge (adjacent to the Gruber Bros. Furniture building, currently an overgrown mess of poison ivy and bittersweet) could be improved to include a boardwalk, benches, small tables, plantings, bicycle rack, informational kiosk, water fountain, a cart selling Italian ices, live music…

                                          

All this harping on access, access, access begs the question – is it really possible to boat through the center of Maynard on the Assabet River? Safe? Legal? As noted, upstream of the Ben Smith Dam is flat water, so boating is possible, safe and legal. Through town, the criteria are deep enough to float a boat but no so high as to risk hitting the undersides of bridges. A gauge located behind Tedeschi Food Shops provides on-line information on depth and flow rate, findable via internet search on the terms USGS ASSABET followed by selection of the one that has “Current Conditions” in the description.

Pipe under Mill Street Bridge reduces clearance (flood, March 2010)

From talking to experienced boaters, a depth at the gauge between 3.0 and 4.0 feet floats a boat through Maynard and provides for stretches of Class I-II rapids. Approaching 5.0 feet the bridges become dangerous. The river gets faster. At 2.0 feet the flow is 100 cubic feet per second, increasing to 600 cfs at 4.0 feet and 1200 cfs at 5.0 feet.

As for legal, the Massachusetts River Protection Act extends state control to “Any river or stream that is a naturally flowing body of water that empties into any ocean, lake, or other river and that flows throughout the year.” Recreational activities are allowed, keeping in mind that all the scrap metal and broken glass make barefoot wading unadvisable. 


One experienced kayaker's description of running the center of town when water was 4' deep: 

• Great Road Bridge – ran to the right through a 2’ drop
• Mill Street Bridge – ran through the center, but the right arch is also an option [August 2015: just downstream of center there are large tree trunks hung up on larger rocks]
• Florida Road Bridge – flatwater under the bridge, but there are some nice waves just downstream
• Main Street Bridge – some easy waves leading up to it, but it can be run anywhere
• Walnut Street Bridge – fast moving current under the bridges pushes right, some nice wave below the bridge
• Waltham Street Bridge – ran in the middle since the left and right arches were blocked by construction steel [note: this was the old bridge; the new bridge is a single span]

A Murder of Crows

We know to say “pride of lions, gaggle of geese, school of fish,” but why? As it turns out, social standing among Medieval European nobility required that men should know their venery – the proper naming of groups of animals – else be taken for crass and uneducated. Collections of these terms culminated in a master list compiled in The Book of St. Albans, in 1486. The term “A murder of crows” dates back at least that far, but unfortunately without any historic explanation as to why “murder.”

Anyone delving into the history of venery should consult "An Exaltation of Larks," by Jame Lipton. Older versions of "murder of crows" were written as "mursher of crowys" and "murther of crowes." The 'murther' (or 'murthre') spelling was common into the 1600s but is now archaic. Similarly, 'crawe' was Old English and 'crowe' Middle English before evolving into 'crow.'  

From Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."  Crows were trained to fly
to the jungle gym. Special effects crows were added to make the
number of birds larger than it actually was.

Crows do gather. One of the key scenes in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds, cuts back and forth between the inside of a small school and the progressively larger number of crows gathering on the playground equipment outside. In real life, when crows happen upon an owl they will sound an alarm call that draws other crows from miles around. The resultant mob of crows, all cawing loudly, will harass the owl until it leaves the area. Crows will also mob hawks. It sounds very much as if the crows intend bloody murder, and perhaps that led to the historic term.

An oft-mentioned folklore on “murder” is that a group of crows can decide to turn on one of their own, pecking it to death. The truth in this is debatable. A solitary crow happening upon a crow family’s space will be set on, but driven away, not killed. These attacks can be many-against-one because families are more than just the mated pair. Offspring from the previous year or two stay near their parents and help with feeding and defending the new babies.

During the spring/summer nesting season families are scattered, but in fall and winter crows prefer to congregate, especially at night. Foraging flocks of 10 to 50 will start to cluster as evening nears, then fly to join other flocks in a preferred night roosting area, where numbers can be as high as in the thousands. In northern regions these tree roosts may be in parks and cemeteries within cities; the thinking being that the winter temperatures in cities are slightly warmer than in the surrounding countryside, and also that the ambient night light of cities discourages marauding owls.

Locally, the population of crows has been impacted by West Nile Virus (WNV). The virus is endemic and non-lethal in many species of birds in Africa and the Middle East. It was first detected in the United States in 1999, in wild crows living at the Bronx Zoo. WNV then rapidly spread across the continent. Mosquitoes are the major vector, but raptors and scavengers can become infected by eating ill or dead animals. The viral strain that reached North America was particularly lethal to crows. The crow population in Massachusetts is half of what it was fifteen years ago. There is evidence that the negative impact of WNV is stabilizing in recent years, with some states showing recovery from the lowest bird counts. 

WNV also infects people. Most will have no symptoms. About 20 percent will develop fever, headache, muscle ache, nausea or skin rash (risk of symptoms increases with age). Less than one percent will develop a severe illness. In Massachusetts there were fewer than ten cases reported each year for 2013 and 2014.

WNV is not the only bird virus troubling the U.S. Apparently, wild ducks or geese migrating overhead over chicken and turkey farms in the mid-west have caused an avian flu epidemic. Tens of millions of birds are either dead, dying or else being euthanized to prevent spread of H5N2 avian virus to other farms. The risk of human cross-infection from this strain of virus is very, very low, but do expect to be paying higher prices for eggs, chicken and turkey for months to come. And pet food, too, as laying hens, when culled for declining egg production, end up in cat and dog food.  

Murders in Maynard, MA

This entry combines two columns: "Murders in Maynard?" and "More Murders in Maynard

MURDERS IN MAYNARD?   Maynard's major crimes rate is below average for Massachusetts and the state is below average for the nation. Looking only at murders, the state's rate is roughly 2.5 per 100,000 population per year. For Maynard's 10,000 population that works to one murder every four years or so. Actual numbers are lower - according to Police Chief Mark Dubois, town records appear to show no murders in the past twenty years. Maynard was not always so quiet. Back around 1910-1940 there was a murder almost every other year! And this was at a time when the population was smaller. Here is a sampling of murders from long ago:

1896: John Dean, age 75, living on his farm on Acton Street, was murdered by Lorenzo Barnes. Dean was struck on the head with the back side of an ax and robbed of approximately $70 he had on his person. Barnes did odd jobs around town, including for Dean. He was frequently intoxicated. He was arrested because he was spending more money in town than he typically had. In evidence were his bloody boots recovered from the Assabet River. Barnes was the second to last person in Massachusetts to be executed by hanging. After that, it was the electric chair until executions ceased in 1947.

1912: Cora Olsen, 19 years old, was shot several times by Charles Lowrey, a young man she had been dating for several years. Olsen had joined the Navy, deserted, returned to Maynard, was drinking heavily and no longer welcome at the Olsen household. After the shooting, Cora ran to the nearby mill for assistance, leaving a bloody trail behind her. Doctors were swiftly contacted by telephone, as were the police. Lowrey was apprehended in South Acton trying to catch a train to Boston, where he had re-signed with the Navy and was expecting to ship out shortly. Olsen recovered from her wounds.

1919: Luigi Graceffa, age 30, found floating in Charles River, knife wounds. He had testified as a witness in a murder case in Waltham, and this was thought to be a revenge killing. Later the same year, Joseph Graceffa, Luigi's brother, along with two friends, opened fire shortly after noon on two men who were visiting from Fitchburg. Joseph Sipoli died. Rizzo Dianisa survived a serious bullet wound to the head. The attack was in thought to be in retaliation for Luigi's death. 

1921: Hannah (Ingerdella) Johnson, age 24, was shot at 7:20 PM, while walking on Main Street with her husband. By her husband. The young couple had been married for just over a year, but the marriage was strained, and reports of the time state that Mrs. Johnson intended to file for a divorce. After shooting his wife, Walter Johnson lit a cigarette, sat down next to her body, and shot himself through the chest. He died about 20 minutes later, smoking to the very end. Police found a note on the body that read in part "...I bought the gun to do this act. You [Hannah's uncle and aunt] will never understand why I would do such a thing."

Sometimes a newspaper article from the period cannot be found in the microfilm records, so all that exists is the town's Annual Reports listings of dates, deaths and causes. From this we get 1909; Joseph Fiorentino, bullet wound; 1915: Stefana Terrasi, revolver shot, 1916: Jeannie Marie Clark, bullet wounds; 1923: Rosario Buscemi, bullet wound; 1924: Oscar Hietala, bullet to head; 1924; Frank Vodoklys, pistol shot. Unfortunately for historians, the deaths reports stopped listing details after 1927, so from then on only the annual police reports. The decade 1930-40 notched nine manslaughter deaths, but without details.    

Image from Boston Globe, 1953

1953: Referred to in the Boston Globe as the "Mill Pond Murder," Lila Taryma, mother of four, disappeared the Saturday evening before Easter Sunday. Her body was found seven weeks later in the Mill Pond, lashed to a heavy radiator. Cause of death was head injuries. Her husband, Anthony Taryma, was initially charged with her murder. They had been seen arguing at a bar that evening, but he left and she remained. Anthony was not brought to trial due to insufficient evidence. He moved away, remarried, died years later in an automobile accident.

MORE MURDERS IN MAYNARD: As noted in a 2014 column, Maynard 100 years ago was a violently different town than it is today. Town records and newspaper accounts show roughly a murder every other year during the period 1910-1940, placing our town well above the national average even during that violent era. A sampling of murders from long ago: 

1901: Joseph Fredesco, age 18, was found dead in the Assabet River. Fredesco had been in the country just two weeks, in Maynard just two days, and was employed with a railroad work crew as water boy. He had eaten the noonday meal with co-workers, but his absence noted late afternoon led to the search that found his body early that evening, upstream from the Ben Smith Dam. An examination discovered a head wound on the right side, bleeding from the left ear, and multiple bruises on his back, although the actual cause of death was drowning. The supposition was that he had gone to the river bank to bathe in the shallows, his clothes being found on the riverbank, and was attacked there by a person or persons unknown, then pushed into the river while unconscious. Fredesco did not know how to swim. This was the third sudden death in Maynard within 24 hours, but the other two were clearly natural causes.

In a non-fatal incident that same 4th of July week, Richard Parmenter was shot in the thigh while walking down a street with his daughter. It was determined that the bullet was from a stray rifle shot from some distance away. Unlike others mentioned in this column, Parmenter was not a recent immigrant - his family had crossed the ocean in 1639. Dr. Frank U. Rich came to Parmenter's house and removed the bullet with a forceps. The newspaper account did not mention any use of anesthesia, and this was decades before the invention of antibiotics. Parmenter survived his wound - Glenwood Cemetery records have him dead and buried in 1934. From an 1899 news item, Dr. Rich was the first citizen of Maynard to own an automobile.    

1915: Stefana Terrasi, age 27, was shot dead on a late Sunday night in April in the front hallway of a house not his own. Police identified him as living in West Concord and working at the gunpowder mills. The medical examiner determined Terrasi had been shot three times from behind. Given the position of his body - face down, head away from the entrance - the thinking was that he had been trying to get away from someone he knew (or else had recently meet and deeply offended). A news report at the time mentioned that "...there was a crowd of people about the place all the afternoon, Sunday, and there was a great deal of noise and evidences of drinking."

1923: Rosario Buscemi, age 38, shot in an apartment building on Main Street. He and his brother had gone there to confront someone. When that person would not open the door the brothers started shooting at the door. The occupant shot back through the door, hitting Rosario. His brother fled to New York, where he stayed and raised a family.

1924: The town's annual report listed two men dead from bullet wounds to the head, but perusal of newspaper accounts found both to be suicides. Frank Vodoklys, age 59, immigrant from Poland, was despondent over the failing of his meat and provisions business (in the building now Morey's Tavern). Survived by his wife and five children. Oscar Hietala, immigrant from Finland, age 45, had recently learned of his wife's death, in Finland. He had taken to drinking heavily (despite this being during Prohibition). Survived by four children in Finland.

Nationally, there were peaks in murder rates from 1920-1935 and 1970-1995; both periods exceeded eight per 100,000 population per year. Current national rate is 4.5 per 100,000 with Massachusetts at two per 100,000. There are some interesting theories as to why murder rates go up or down, such as up during bad financial times or popularity of new illegal drugs creating violent competition amongst sellers, down from better policing, more violence-prone people in jail for lesser crimes and the availability of birth control reducing unwed mother pregnancies. One novel theory is that childhood exposure to lead (from lead paint and leaded gasoline) results in violence-prone adults, so as blood lead levels decreased nationally so did murders, decades later.     

Clocktower: IIII for four o'clock

Clocktower clock, Maynard, MA

Admire the clock faces on the Clocktower clock. On each, four o'clock is designated by a Roman numeral "IIII." Which begs the question, why not "IV?"

The best-supported answer is that Romans did not always use Roman numerals the way we do. We use a subtractive mode (IV instead of IIII, IX instead of VIIII), which became the standard in Europe long after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. IIII was used on Roman era sundials, and appears to have been carried forward in time to Renaissance era clocks.

Another theory is that IIII provides more visual symmetry for the clock face, with clock makers conforming to this practice by design. With IIII for four and VIII for eight, the two numbers opposing each other are of similar width. Jibing with this concept is the fact that the same clocks that do not use subtractive mode for four do use it for nine (IX), creating a closer visual match for III on the other side. Finally, using IIII means that the first third of the clock face has I's, the next third has V's and the final third has X's. Internet searching yields a few other explanations, but these two - tradition and symmetry - make the most sense.

Clock faces incorporate other traditions. When the Hindu-Arabic numbering system (1,2,3,4,5...) is used, all numbers are oriented to be top end up when the face is viewed vertically, but Roman numerals (I,II,III,IIII,V...) are oriented to be top end up from the viewpoint of the center of the face, facing outward. Was this to be radially symmetric or functional? Likely the latter, carried forward in time by tradition. Think of walking up to a sundial; with your back to the sun the shadow cast by the upright will be opposite you and the number it points to will be right side up.

Clock hands proceed clockwise. In the Northern hemisphere a horizontal sundial will have twelve o'clock oriented due north. As the sun's position in the sky shifts from east to south to west the shadow will move around the top arc of the face left to right. When mechanical clocks were perfected in Europe the sundial's movement was mimicked for its familiarity. Hence, the worldwide convention is clockwise. (It is possible to buy novelty clocks that run counterclockwise.)

If sundials had spread to the rest of the world from the southern hemisphere then the sun's shadow would have proceeded across the top arc from right to left and mechanical clocks might well have followed that tradition to end up going the opposite direction of what we know accept. (Of course, this manner of movement would have been called "clockwise.")

The earliest mechanical clocks did not have hands or faces. In Catholic Europe, these devices were installed in church towers to automate ringing of bells meant to signify daily calls to prayer. Hours were signified by bells. Time was audible rather than visual.

Clocktower clock face from inside the clock

External clock faces and hands were added once clock mechanisms became more accurate. Standards of design now call for a short, stout hour hand, a longer, thinner minute hand and a very thin second hand, often a different color. Days have 24 hours but clock faces have only 12, mostly because a clock face with 24 numbers would be too crowded. Smart watches keep digital time (either 12- or 24-hour) but can display analog faces. The French Revolution brought the world the metric system of measuring distance and weight, but the metric clock (10 hours, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute) was an epic fail.

Time used to be local. Starting in the 1800s, problems were caused by railroads traveling so far in a day as to be servicing cities each maintaining its own local time. The solution, reached in 1883, was to agree on dividing the U.S. into four time zones, with concord on accurate time within and between zones made possible by telegraph.  

Close-up of gears at the clock face

In print advertising for watches and clocks it is traditional to show the time as 10:10. Maynard's Town Seal shows the Clocktower clock at 12:10 to indicate the more than century long tradition - abandoned in 2011 - of the fire department conducting a daily test of the fire horn at ten minutes after noon.

I am really sad that the fire station's fire horn no longer sounds at 12:10. I found that 125 dB electric horns and a control box could be purchased from SENTRY SIREN and installed at the mill complex, perhaps on the Clocktower or chimney.   

     

Coolidge School: Past, Present and Future

Town of Maynard website: "In December 2014 the school’s main tenant, The Maynard Public Schools Administration, vacated the building. Now the town must decide what to do with Coolidge: use it, sell it, demolish it."

Click on any photo to enlarge

Going back to beginnings: May 1905, townspeople voted to appropriate the sum of $18,000 to purchase 18 lots of land (total area a bit larger than 2.5 acres) located between Route 27 and Bancroft Street, and build thereon a one-story, four-room, flat-roofed, brick school building. Maynard issued ten $1800 bonds, maturing one each year for ten years, each paying 3.5% annual interest until mature. Actual cost was $20,841.30. 

Construction of the Bancroft Street School - four classrooms - was completed in time for the beginning of the 1906-07 school year. The building was really two stories tall on the back (playground) side, with the lower level containing furnaces, an assembly hall and student bathrooms. One immediate problem - the roof leaked. Repairs were ineffective. Roof replacement was deferred until 1909 when the Town Building Committee recommended that another floor of four more classrooms be added. This project's budget was $12,000. It was completed in time for the start of the 2011-12 school year. Classrooms on both floors were about 25x30 feet.

Calvin Coolidge Elementary School, Maynard, MA
Used as school 1906-1981; admin building thereafter

The impetus for this and subsequent expansions of the school system was a population explosion of school age children. State law required school for children ages 7-14. The mill complex had been taken over by the American Woolen Company in 1899, which almost immediately began major expansion and hiring. Maynard's population soared from 3,100 in 1900 to 6,400 by 1910. Many of the new hires were immigrants from Europe, here with their entire families. Student enrollment increased from 600 students in 1900 to 730 by 1904, 900 by 1910 and 1,300 by 1915. Throughout this period, Maynard's teachers were dealing with 40-50 students per classroom.   

The Bancroft site was selected for being near the new mill-owned housing development. From one of Maynard's Walking Tour guides: "The New Village contains 206 houses (150 singles and 56 duplexes), built beginning in 1903. All streets were named for presidents. A typical house sits on a 4000-5000 square foot parcel. Thirteen different styles of houses were built. The village was built on the old Mahoney and Reardon farms and boasted a private sewer system. Each house had pine flooring, a cold water tap, a toilet in the cellar, and no central heat. Houses were rented to mill employees for $3-6 per month." That rent sounds unimaginably low, but in that era it would have represented 10-20 percent of a worker's pay.

Side view shows basement level; note window ACs

Bancroft became Calvin Coolidge School in 1932, same time Main Street School became Woodrow Wilson School. Coolidge's use as a school ended in 1981. Wilson burned in 1952; site now town's administrative building and police station.

The decision to close Coolidge was a combination of enrollment shrinking from the school system's 1970 peak of 2,098 students plus financial restrictions imposed by Proposition 2½, a property tax restriction that was going into effect in 1982.

The Board of Selectmen appointed people to a Coolidge School Re-use Committee in order to study and propose alternative uses, including keep, lease, sell or demolish. The decision was to keep the building within the school system. The building underwent a major renovation in 1984. Until recently it housed the school system's administrative offices and other operations such as Maynard Adult Learning Center and Food Pantry. It currently stands empty.

Coolidge Community Park, Maynard, MA updated 2013
Back of Coolidge School building in background

Now, Maynard's Board of Selectmen has appointed a Coolidge School Re-use Task Force, which meets twice a month at Town Hall (meetings open to public), and is charged with recommending a course of action for the building and all property - including playground - before the end of June.

Problems abound. The building is listed with the Massachusetts Historic Commission as a historic property, and probably would qualify for the National Register of Historic Properties. Abiding by these strictures would limit what can be done to the outside of the building. Interiors are rarely designated historic. For example, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Law has deemed 31,000 properties as landmarks, but only 117 of those are for interiors. Conservative estimates are that the Coolidge building would need between $2.5-3.5 million for repairs and modernization.

Damaged brick wall around back

Maynard has been down this road before. The Roosevelt School closed in 1988, after Green Meadow School was enlarged, then stood empty and deteriorating until it was resurrected in 2006 as the Library, at a cost of $5.7 million, partially covered by a $2.1 million grant from the state's Board of Library Commissioners.

P.S. Back then, children were also required by law to be vaccinated - meaning smallpox. Massachusetts was one of eleven states with mandatory vaccination. In 1905 a case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court :Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, in which an adult man refused to be vaccinated. His case drew support from the Massachusetts Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Association. He lost by a 7 to 2 vote. The decision in the favor of the greater good of the community was reaffirmed in 1922, when the Supreme Court ruled that a school system could refuse to accept a student that had not been vaccinated.

Fifty of David Mark’s 2012-2014 columns were published in book "Hidden History of Maynard" available at The Paper Store, on-line, and as an e-book.