Over at the Dorchester Yacht Club, they like to tell the storyabout the South Shore commuter who once pronounced the weatheredclubhouse with its fleet of gleaming white power boats 'the lastattractive thing' he'd see on his way into Boston.
On a lazy midsummer afternoon, a group of men who have known eachother so long they can finish each other's stories basks in the glowof that remembered praise. Sitting out on the clubhouse porch, withits frozen-in-time view of Dorchester Bay, they revel in swappingyarns.
'We have old-timers,' says Tom Cooney of the group, which on thisday includes Joe Coyne and Wally Cabral and Bob Welch. 'And we haveolder timers.'
'Do you remember the half-boat?' Cooney wants to know.
'That was a tourist attraction,' says Coyne, recalling the daythat 'a guy in a nice suit drove up in a Cadillac with his grandsonand wanted to see it.'
It seems that longtime member Al Wadluga had a doubleendedsteel-hull boat, 26 feet long and 10 feet wide, and was taking it upto Lynn for the winter when it ran up on the rocks.
'He just cut it in half and welded a plate on the stern,' saidCooney. 'People said it wouldn't float, but we used to go lobsteringin it.'
Stacked up against the Southeast Expressway on a body of waterthat is more pond than bay -- it's only 8 feet in the channel at lowtide -- the Dorchester Yacht Club is a place where even the here andnow seems like the past.
There are only three sailboats among the 150 or so powerboats atthe club, but when Robert Mirabito, the club's vice commodore, digsout a copy of the club's history, it is to reveal a bygone day whenit was a premier sailing club and the yacht America, for which theAmerica's Cup was named, was moored just off the clubhouse in the1870s.
That was long before Dorchester Bay Basin was enclosed as aresult of the construction of Morrissey Boulevard -- a time recordedin an old undated photograph that Robert Malinowski, the club'scommodore, produces. A gaff-rigged yawl sails past the clubhouse-- in its original location at the end of Freeport Street before itwas moved in 1955 during construction of the expressway -- with theopen waters beyond it.
These days, the tint of a bygone era still clings to the clubhouse-- nothing too obviously new here, nothing too fancy. This is, afterall, a workingman's club. It is also a women's club, as it was oneof the first yacht clubs in the state to admit women as regularmembers.
Old photographs decorate the Members' Room, a sanctum of sorts --except that the door is invariably open.
And around the walls in the upstairs meeting room -- the room witha picture-window view over Morrissey Boulevard to the Harbor Islands-- are faded banners commemorating the Dorchester Yacht Club'sparticipation in rendezvous with such yacht clubs as Town River inQuincy and Volunteer in Lynn.
Twice now the Dorchester Yacht Club has voted down proposals toseek a liquor license. 'We'd have no problem getting one,' saysCooney, 'but we want to keep it a family club.'
But he adds, ironically -- and gets a good laugh all around -- 'Iwas heartbroken at the time.'
Without a liquor license -- except for one-day permits for specialevents -- much of the club's socializing takes place in its 48wooden lockers, small rooms that are the senior members' hideaways.
'Years ago,' says John Kiley, a former commodore and a membersince 1957, 'they were used for storage of sails and gear andrubber boots. Then people started putting in iceboxes and fixingthem up the way they liked.'
Highly prized, the lockers are awarded by seniority. 'It took me28 years to get one,' says Welch.
Joining in on every yarn-swapping session is nonstop storytellerLenny 'The Quahog' Cornell, who explains that the nickname refers tohis first experience opening a clam.
'I didn't know about using a knife on it,' he says, demonstratingthe approved technique, 'so I stood it on its side and knocked itwith a hammer.'
'And you got it all over yourself,' says Malinowski.
'What you do with a clam now,' Welch contributes, 'is stick it inthe microwave for two seconds and it opens right up.'
Food is as hot a topic at the yacht club as boating, and a visitoris told he missed out on a memorable fish fry the day before --featuring cod and haddock caught off Jeffries Ledge during adaylong fishing trip on Malinowski's 25-foot sport fisherman, Nova.
As an obviously proud Mirabito tells it, his 12-year-old son,Ryan, caught the day's prize, a 15-pound cod.
'He was yelling, `I can't hold him. I can't hold him,' 'Mirabito recalls. 'So I told him to cut the line and let him go.But he said, `I can't do that, Dad,' and I guess he found someenergy.'
'It always works out that the littlest guy gets the biggest fish,'says Malinowski.
The catch was prepared by club member Gene Nardini, whom theold-timers describe admiringly as 'an artist,' with a little helpfrom a summer supply of basil he grows on the club porch.
Inevitably, the yarn swappers get around to talking about thewaterfront's needs.
Almost all of the club's 150 boats are in slips, which werecreated by running finger floats off the network of floats thatextend out over the tidal flats into the relatively deeper waterbeyond.
'They've got a life of 12 to 15 years,' Cooney says of thefloats, but they need constant repair.
On this afternoon, new member Pat Williams has volunteered torebuild one of the finger floats, so Cooney heads down the ramp toexplain the mechanics of float construction.
'I just want to haul it up on the dock today and see what I needto do,' says Williams.
There's got to be a 4-foot block of styrofoam at the end thatconnects to the main float, Cooney says, 'so it won't drag the mainfloat down.'
'Take your saw,' Cooney advises, 'and just cut those eye boltsoff.' They used to be the way to connect the floats, 'but they swingtoo much' and angle irons will be more rigid.
Williams, who has a new runabout, a small outboard boat, joinedthe club in March but observes that he has already fallen into thetime warp known as 'yacht club time.'
