Welcome to Woburn, Massachusetts

"Industry and Virtue," A Nostalgic Tribute To My Hometown and Family

If my book ever becomes a film, I imagine it will open with, “Dirty Water” by The Standells, as an establishing shot carries us over a body of water we can only assume is Boston Harbor.

I’m gonna tell you a story—

We then see the usual pan up to reveal the city’s skyline. The first thing we catch after that is a flash of sunlight bouncing off the John Hancock Tower, the city’s mirror that confesses all its sins.

Then the director switches over to street scenes to give our setting more authenticity: drivers swearing at each other on the Central Artery, also known as the other Green Monster, Duck Boat tourists quacking their faces off at indifferent business men by Faneuil Hall, people buying fish at Haymarket, endless blue and yellow separators cordoning off the Big Dig, hiding Boston’s open heart surgery, and more Duck Boats bobbing in the song’s namesake, the toxic waste Charles River, making you wonder which asshat tourists paid to endure that smell for more than 30 seconds.

But this isn’t a Boston story. This story begins in Woburn. Hit rewind. We then hear the scramble of tape moving toward the opposite reel, and the song starts over.

I’m gonna tell you a story—

Now we’re moving across the water again, but our shot pans up to reveal Horn Pond Mountain, which is just a hill in the half cement, half leafy Massachusetts suburb of Woburn. It resides twenty minutes northwest of Boston if there isn’t traffic. No one around here speaks in miles. Woburn is now a little famous due to Jonathan Harr’s bestseller A Civil Action, which detailed a landmark environmental case involving Woburn’s dirty water. It’s now being made into a movie starring John Travolta, but none of it will be filmed in Woburn.

Well I love that dirty water…

Our white-haired mayor looks out his corner office window onto the ruckus of Woburn center, an overcomplicated cement triangle containing smaller-scale road rage compared to Boston, while war memorials honoring the city’s dead reside peacefully on its middle green. The mayor takes a sip from his coffee in an off-white mug that has Woburn’s city seal along with its Latin motto, “Industria et virtute,” which translates to, “industry and virtue”.

Then the mayor turns toward the window behind his desk so he can see Woburn Public Library, an architectural marvel designed by H.H. Richardson, who designed Trinity Church in Boston and had the Richardsonian Romanesque style named after him. Inside the library, a frail elderly woman puts on her reading glasses before checking the card catalog. Wood creaks underneath the carpet after she closes the drawer and walks to find her book among the magnificent stacks. Later in life, I visit the Trinity College library in Dublin and decide that the interior of Woburn’s library must be a smaller scale imitation.

Around the rotary and down Montvale Ave, the Woburn High School scoreboard proclaims, “GO TANNERS.” The team name and bull mascot pay homage to the city’s leather making history.

The people are leather too. A construction worker wearing Carhartt pants and a reflective vest walks out of Dunkin Donuts with a tray of four iced coffees and a bag of donuts, a tired mother holding a toddler’s hand drops a VHS tape in the return box at Blockbuster Video, a rail-thin dude with a mustache and faded jeans takes a shot at The Moose, taking a sip of Budweiser after his 8 ball goes in, a middle-aged woman with dry, dirty blonde permed hair knocks down 10 candle pins and takes a drag from her Newport at the Bowladrome, a teenage boy with curly blonde hair and an oversized suit coat rips someone’s movie ticket at the Showcase, a college-aged bartender with black hair and a black polo shakes a drink at the 99 Restaurant, a curvy Bickford’s waitress sets down a plate of pancakes and makes a sassy comment that makes everyone at her table laugh, a kid kicks a soccer ball into a goal, a cashier scans a carton of cigarettes at Star Market, and an old Italian guy tosses dough at Louie’s Pizza.