Some people cannot run a business without making that business an integral part of the community in which it is located.  They cannot operate an enterprise without giving not just a little, but giving a lot. Their business is not just about making a living, but it is also about making a life. This is what the Richard family and Buddy's Union Villa are about. This is what Buddy's Union Villa's annual children's Christmas party is all about. The Richard family donates everything, with the exception of wrapped presents, which the children's parents and other relatives provide. The party has …

John "Jack" Powers started playing hockey as a grade-schooler living in Dorchester.  He continued playing the sport when his family moved to Easton, to Prospect Street, in the early 1970s, when he was 11 years old.   Jack played in the Easton Youth Hockey League, and then four years at Oliver Ames High School; he was a right winger on the junior varsity for two seasons, and on the varsity as a junior and senior.  "Some of my fondest memories are of hockey and playing bantams under Coach [John] Bissonette, and in high school for Coach [Dave] Cleary," said Jack. "Back then hockey was oftentimes…

I enjoyed and was moved by fellow Easton Patch columnist Bob Havey's piece, "It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times. "  It was a particularly poignant reflection and commentary about local giving and compassion; its message and lessons are valuable for everyone and for every day throughout the year. One of the takeaways from the column, at least for me, is don't worry about whether you have your giving and philanthropic initiative planned out just right and coordinated, and whether you have all the resources you need to give.  Just give.  Be nice.  Help out.  Be a good friend and…

Now we rally. This is what good people do when something like this happens.  And I will put up this community, Easton, against any community anywhere in terms of its quotient of caring and civic mindedness and concern for others.  You just can't beat Easton on this front. And in keeping in mind that there is nothing wrong about feeling good about doing good, maybe, just maybe, it will bring the denizens of this community an especially high level of satisfaction and warmth of spirit to give back to a family which has given so much of itself to Easton. Anne and Rick Martin, pillars of Easton …

I guess I can state that I have reached that place in life when I can return over and over to that line, that comment tinged with nostalgia and longing and sometimes used to mildly criticize young people of today– this line here:  When I was a kid.   When I was a kid can be the setup for any number of stories.   Like when I was a kid we used to walk places.  Walking a mile or more was what we did.     And when I was a kid bicycles and bicycling (not for exercise, but to get places) were a big deal. It was all integral to our culture. As for the bicycles, we're talking not so much the BMX or …

I was reading an online British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) story about the sense of smell.  Here is how the story starts out:  "Smell is the only one of our senses directly hard wired to our brains. "Just one whiff of an old classroom can instantly transport you back to your school days." How true.  Smells.  Aromas.  Fragrances.  They all pull and connect to us to different times and places.   They can affect our mood, making us happy or sad; they can excite and energize us.  Of course, smell and taste are tightly tied and are of close consequence to each other. I thought about today and …

In 2005, a book by Mariana Gosnell, titled, Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance, was released.  The book is 576 pages long, and it is all about ice.  How cool, literally. I got myself to thinking:  if Ms. Gosnell can write almost 600 pages about ice throughout world history, I should be able to fill one column that is focused just on Easton and  ice.   And since we are now in December and, in that, Easton has had its first ice –albeit paper thin –of the season, now is a good time to write that column. Here we go. There was a glacial period that lasted from…

Sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way. You have to love that scene in the movie, A Bronx Tale, when Sonny (played by Chazz Palminteri), the local Mafia boss, is called in to help out a neighborhood bar owner who, at the moment, is being besieged by eight loud, obnoxious, and menacing members of a biker gang called Satan's Messengers.  Sonny walks into the bar and tries to reason with the leader of the gang.  At first, it seems that the gang leader and his posse are hearing what Sonny is saying and that they are prepared to calm down and be respectful.  But, as soon as Sonny …

You can level a whole lot of negative criticism at this nation and be right on the money.  I always want to be mindful of our long history, and that we have a whole lot of deep-seated original sin, and much more we have sown through the years up into present. White people landed on these shores and soon they went about the business of taking land from and then inflicting genocide on an indigenous people.  This nation was also built on enslavement and slave labor.    A nation was founded on the principles of the protection of God-given rights and freedom – just not for all people.  As …

In the late 1980s, portions of the movie Mermaids, starring Cher and Winona Ryder, were filmed in Easton, primarily in the area surrounding Parker's Pond, which is behind Unity Close, the big stately Victorian on Main Street near the Ames Free Library. Easton police oversaw security, and its officers did details on and near the set.  One afternoon, Officer Patrick Brophy was on Main Street working one of those details.  Suddenly, who comes bursting out of one of the trailers but the young starlet, Winona Ryder; she was agitated and upset about something.  And who next emerges from the …

Sometime probably around 1980 or so, on Christmas Day, my good friend, Bill Marsan, was walking along Main Street in the downtown section of Easton, and walking toward him was a scraggly, thin, and bearded man with long hair, maybe his early to mid 20s.  Bill recognized him at the dude who was living in a tent behind the Town Pool - he was a sort of Thoreau type. As Bill and the young hermit were about to pass by one another, the guy who was living outdoors, who probably had next to nothing, smiled at Bill and gave him the peace sign, and then vocalized the sentiment, saying, "Peace." Bill …

It was in 1863, while the Civil War was raging, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be celebrated every November.  Yet we go further back – to 1621 – to find what we call the first thanksgiving celebration in America.  Celebrating and giving thanks were the recently arrived English settlers – the Pilgrims – and the natives of the area. The Pilgrims had arrived on the Mayflower in September 1620, touching down at what is now Plymouth.   The New World, in the short term, would be a place of brutal suffering for the Pilgrims; only half of those who traveled …

Please indulge me another Muscato family nostalgia session.  In last Friday's column, I wrote that we were doing the final moveout over the weekend of the house on 53 Summer St. that has been our family home for 33 years.  In the column I reflected, waded and jumped into all the nostalgia, about what it meant – and then I went back and visited in the column the home and neighborhood I knew prior to 53 Summer St. – the home at 11 Andrews St. which is located close to the heart of North Easton Village. My life in the community has been charmed and blessed. Alas, the the moveout of 53 Summer St…

A bit sad this weekend.  We are doing the final move out of 53 Summer St., our family home for close to 33 years.  My mom and dad had the home built back in 1977.   The house is sold.  It is a nice home in a nice neigborhood.  I hope the people moving in enjoy both.   My mom, who turned 82 last month, moved in August out to Evanston, IL, a Chicago suburb, to be near my sister and her husband and kids.  Mom is living independently in a nice retirement community.  My dad died in January 1991; just think, almost 20 years ago. But this is the natural ebb and flow of things.   You cherish your …

The temptation was just too much.   Jonathan Ford and friends were walking home after school from the Easton Junior High School, and there was Andy Mullen's bike parked at the end of a driveway on Columbus Avenue, its two rear-wheel baskets chock full of Enterprise newspapers. Andy Mullen was maybe 30 to 40 feet away, hand delivering a newspaper to the front door of a customer.  Andy Mullen was a paperboy – and a good one.  Again, the temptation was just too much.   Jonathan took the bike and threw it on its side, causing the newspapers to fall over the end of the driveway and on to the …

As I wrote in my most recent column, Easton isn't a big producer of football talent, but we aren't a gridiron desert either.  The Shovel Town has had a couple of its sons play in the pros, and we have had some NCAA Div. 1 players as well.  We also have NCAA 1-AA and NCAA Div. 2 players.  Many former Oliver Ames players and other Eastonites have played at the Div. 3 level. I thought in this column I would do a call-out to some NCAA D.1 and NCAA 1-AA athletes who hailed from Easton.  If I missed anyone, please email me and I will make a mention of the player in one of my upcoming columns.  I …

Easton has a lot of dedicated and hardworking young people playing football in the community at the youth and high school levels – and coaches who believe in the programs and who are investing considerable toil and emotion in them.  I am taking the opportunity to write a couple columns – this here and another one that will run on Monday – to give an incomplete but educational, and maybe even a bit inspiring, history of football in Easton, and give a call out to some of the players who came from this town.  Now, for sure, we aren't one of those communities that is an assembly line of football …

George H. Niland Jr. is testament to how an abundance of love, courage, devotion, faith, and work ethic solidified and secured American greatness.  Almost everything he did in life he did with intensity and emotion – and he was an integral component of a generation of men and women who had the right values and virtues to build a nation. His life is an example of how government support and individual liberty and sacred labor and the right values can compliment one another and together get things done and make society better.    George Niland – diminutive in physical stature, but oversize in …

It was the spring of 1983 and two examiners from the Massachusetts Banking Commission were at North Easton Savings Bank conducting a routine audit.  It was just a matter of basic business – a part of the state checking in on and overseeing of the operations of all the banks in the commonwealth.  At the time of the audit, North Easton Savings Bank had been around for about 100 years.  As it is today, it was a conservative and well run financial institution and generous in the community.  For sure, nothing would be amiss.  Everything would be in order. However, on this audit, the examiners – …

Over the past few years, working for one of Easton's more renowned sons, Jim Craig, goalie for the 1980 U.S. "Miracle on Ice" hockey team, I have had a couple opportunities to work with camera crews that were in town to shoot footage for stories being done on the team and Jim.                  Indeed the story of the "Miracle on Ice" team is one of the most heart-warming and feel-good in sports history.   And Jim Craig, the kid from North Main Street, was the backbone of that team.                                      But, of course, Easton's Olympic heritage is far more than just Jim Craig…