Everybody's a little odd.
This time, a case with no body.
It is 11:21 PM, Eastern Daylight Time. Tuesday.
Late spring. When the thoughts of men and women turn, as is only natural, to public records, fires, and vaguely-remembered fraternal organizations.
The MBTA Red Line runs from Braintree, Massachusetts, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The old trains run roughly street level — not a true elevated train, not a streetcar, and definitely not a subway — from Braintree to JFK/UMass, where they dive underground, into brake-dust crusted tunnels.
For most of my life, midway through that stretch, visible from the windows of an inbound train, was an undistinguished clapboard mixed-use building, with a wooden sign on the second floor. “Odd Fellows Hall.”
I promised to write; the sleeping pill hasn’t kicked in.
How about a game. Instead of the usual, running down a person from a forgotten case, until there’s nothing left to find, perhaps I’ll run down this building.
Lets see how far I can go, with Odd Fellows Hall, before I get too drowsy, or weird, to continue.
First. From memory. What do I know, coming in. Location: Quincy, Massachusetts, on the western side of Newport Avenue.
I also seem to recall that the reason it’s not there anymore is because it burned down.
Twice.1
Fires are always a great place to start. We’re so interested in them, as humans, it’s almost cheating. A great big fire will always be in the press.
Newspapers.com, though, is unavailing. Perhaps the relevant rag is outside their coverage; the local paper, the Patriot Ledger, holds its archives close, and doesn’t like to share. Or maybe I misspelled.
The Patriot Ledger2 — selfish bastard — has what I need.
Historic and present. And somehow not fully paywalled. Seems like it has burned, multiple times. July of 1987, and the rest of the way in March of 2019.
Now that I have a date, I took a run back to Newspapers, to see if I could get something better than the first time.
And we do. Boston Globe has this little explanation, along with a neat photograph:
An address. I love an address.
Wonder if these Odd Fellows rented, or owned.
Off to the registry of deeds, then. But only metaphorically. The real one is across the street from Norfolk Superior Court, and while the Karen Read trial is going on, there’d be nowhere to park.
Lets see what we can learn from the deeds3. And why don’t I search for “Odd Fellows.” How many can there be?
Apparently, somewhere between a buttload and a shitton.
And none are “ours.”
I wonder why. Misnomer, seems most likely. The “Corporate Name” for these Odd Fellows turns out to be International Order of Odd Fellows.
But that yields no results, either; perhaps they rented.
Could a building known for burning twice during my very short lifetime4 have burned, maybe a third time? Or become embroiled in some kind of controversy?
Newspapers have been a bust. Let’s try the state. Massachusetts maintains an online searchable archive of images, mostly educational, some fun.
Man, these fraternal organizations go up in a matter of minutes.
This has been as far as I could get in forty minutes. Still unexplored, but I am sure I can get there, are (a) how long were the Odd Fellows there, between fires; (b) Who were these Fellows, and why did they own so much in Norfolk County (c) What happened to — and who owns the — property since it’s been burned; and (d) What was happening in the storefront, underneath. .
And a final image.
I think that’s it. Second gable down from the awning. No plaque, but the same roofline.
If there is something we love in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, more than light roast coffee made with unfiltered water and cooled to tepid with half-and-half, it’s balloon frame buildings, timbers thoroughly dried from running radiators eight months of the year, going crisply to kindling.
This is not shitting on local independent media. This paper was acquired by one of those massive companies maybe ten years ago, and is now mostly a finger-staining op ed and inexplicable political cartoon, printed next to a school lunch menu, wrapped around a sales circular for Stop & Shop,.
Massachusetts, which will never allow anything to be easy, in fact has two parallel systems of keeping title and deed records; one, called “recorded land,” is the typical deed system. The other, “registered land,” is very similar, except it involves “Land Court.” In Massachusetts, you’ve never not found something, unless you’ve not found it twice.
Shut up.
Having lived in Mass for some time (largely in Watertown, some in Brookline), one day I realized at a party (at Amanda Palmer's, out of all places, in the South End), that if you move to Boston with zero local knowledge or contacts it's almost impossible to figure out the minutiae that only exists in Boston. But if you move there with an established group of friends - even 2 or 3 - the tables turn completely. The walk from Kenmore to the ocean is only 3 miles, after all. It's a small town masquerading as a big city, but with lots of big city things happening.
I ended up in a house across from the cemetery in Watertown. Less than a year after I moved out they found the marathon bomber in a boat at the end of my street. It was my 1L year only because Suffolk and NE waitlisted me and Gonzaga didn't. I got into all 3, but hey, the jesuits know how to act fast. My spot ini the house was taken up by a friend who moved there from Waltham, on the street where the older Tsarnaev committed that murder. When you have 8 people, all newly graduated into the recession, in a sprawling Victorian with only 2 bathrooms and literally secret entrances, a lot of takeout was ordered, and in all likelihood we had some calzones delivered by a terrorist. This was just normal, the city and really anything inside the 128 is too small for such things to not happen.
Nobody will tell you that Downtown Crossing is Park Street but follow the masses and you'll figure it out. My two winters there I saw at least 4 fights over parking spots that were marked by cones that were ignored. Three were in Somerville. I learned - because my friend told me - that by being in the correct lane two lights ahead of time is the only way you will be able to get onto the one way that doesn't lead you to Worcester all of a sudden. There were multiple groups of people who set up above Storrow Drive and take bets on how many U-Hauls get stuck. At one point as a mod in /r/boston we had a serious debate as to whether to reveal where the actual best cannoli place is in the North End and whether people will believe us. It's the only place I know where one would get assault for proclaiming to be an Angels fan even though our rivals were Seattle and once 4 of us started a "let's go Angels" chant that had the ushers move all the other patrons away. There was even a way to efficiently hit up every single dollar oyster place every day of the week and really just between Harvard and Beacon Squares you're set. Because the T stopped running 30 minutes before last call and the one person who actually made any money in the house took Intro to Exotic Dance at college and so was overqualified to work the combat zone I ended up driving some of the girls home since I had to pick up my roommate anyway. The one thing that never changes is that you will get pulled over if you're Asian in a car full of white girls. The only state where this wasn't a thing was Vermont, but my county had like 15 Asians and I knew all of them. At least it took 3 whole years before anyone noticed that I was in the first episode of Wahlburgers since we hoped there would be free booze or free burgers or something. No dice. The food was mediocre and only Donnie showed up. Although in the long term the lack of decent actual Mexican food would've killed me (no menudo, even on Saturday? What?), the gas station across from the Mass General red line stop was the hidden joint if you order in Spanish, just as all the Chinese places will give you a different menu if you greet them in Chinese.
Some cities are easier to merge into than others. Los Angeles is where I'm from and everyone I knew from high school left, replaced by a new group of friends from everywhere but LA. In New York I had exactly one friend who grew up in Queens and everyone else was a transplant. But Boston is different, the division being those in the know and those who aren't. Infamously, so much ink has been spilt on this property's existence, it can probably pain the exterior. https://maps.app.goo.gl/4VVUpZEqqRST14iJ9
As for the Odd Fellows, they were around since Daniel Defpe's times, an were a men's social club for men who couldn't join one of the more exclusive ones. They spread to the US where it became centralized, and flourished largely during the age when such clubs were the norm, between 1830 and 1870, an anti-dote to bowling alone (bumper bowling, in this case). There were countless such organizations and the Shriners, the Masons, the Kwanis are somewhat like that. But gradually they lost traction, as one pays dues but gets not a whole lot of tangible benefits - I donate to think tanks and public interest firms, and they bring law suits, liaise with congress and the executive branch, and once in a while I'm invited to some fancy pants retreat. Without a coherent set of policy goals or common interest, well, it's like a paid IRC server, or somethingawful.com, except the latter actually more or less created the internet culture we know today (and didn't exclude women). You let everyone join and it's a big tent that may end up falling. They represent an artificially constructed affinity group with the affinity being a due-paying member - and groups with more focus from Tammany to the Yale Club to the ABA (founded in 1878 to uh, exclude all but white dudes from being lawyers) led to their marginalization, although they exist, independently by large, in many towns. You need a bit more reason than "we paid money so now we're part of this" for an affinity group to exist. Today, we have fandoms for culture and sports, politics in practice and in theory, Oprah and the book she's shilling, and groupchats. Mastodon servers and Matrix chats, subreddits and feuding subreddits. What's left is the vestige of a time when dudes want to do dude things together with other dudes in some hall and pay money just so they can say they belong. I think our system today is a little more rational, if not always ideal.