Instant Townie

For Quincy to welcome you, you’ve got to welcome Quincy

I’ve always envied townies. The townie knows the lay of the land, knows the local players, knows how to get things done. The townie never gets a traffic ticket because he went to kindergarten with the town cops—townies themselves. The townie gets free HBO and his kids always make the team. Man, I would love to be a townie.

Unfortunately, true townie status has always eluded me, because no matter where I live, I’m always from somewhere else. Growing up in Maine, I couldn’t be a townie because I was born in Massachusetts. In Southie, I couldn’t be a townie because I grew up in Maine. In Beacon Hill, I wasn’t a townie because I’m not descended from Henry James.

So this time around, I’m determined to become a townie in my new home, Quincy. I want to refer to places by the names that were outdated 20 years ago. I want to know local slang. I want to be connected, like the guy in my ’hood who’s expanding his house about 10 feet—onto a public beach. That is a classic townie move right there.

To get a little behind-the-scenes Quincy knowledge, I recruited my friend Kerry, who lives near Wollaston Beach and writes about food and football for the Herald and the Cold Hard Football Facts web site. Kerry, I figured, would have a few insider tips to help me assimilate to my new surroundings. Shortcuts through town, bars that actually clean their taps once a month, things like that. Little did I know that I was soliciting the hard-won knowledge of a de facto townie.

“I’ve lived all over the place and traveled all over the world,” Kerry says. “But I grew up in Quincy, and I live here now… so I guess that makes me a townie.” But even within a single town, there are territorial subsets, and Kerry is from Adams Shore, while my new digs are in Hough’s Neck, a peninsula that juts out into Boston Harbor between Quincy Bay and Weymouth. “I played youth football for the Hough’s Neck Manets, but I only had a green card,” Kerry says. “They never issued me citizenship, but I speak Neck-ese fluently.”

That’s fortunate, because evidently, becoming a townie here will involve linguistic adaptation. “If you want to tell someone to chill out,” Kerry says, “you say ‘Easy lips.’ And people in Hough’s Neck are called ‘Neckers’ or ‘Neckbirds.’ But an outsider can’t call a Necker a Neckbird. It’s an insult. Only a Necker can call another Necker a Neckbird. Otherwise, they’re just plain old Neckers.” This explains a poster I saw that advertised tee-shirts bearing slogans such as, “Hough’s Neck—one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” The purveyor’s slogan read, “Shirts for Neckers, by Neckers.” Back in Maine, a shirt for neckers would be a turtleneck to cover up your hickeys. Which are called “muffler burns.” But we mustn’t confuse out townie lingo.

Kerry tapped a couple of his Quincy friends for further pointers. Of a sketchy-looking local bar, one of Kerry’s buddies said, “Stay away for 13 to 15 years, just until you get your feet wet. But if you do happen to go in and see a large-breasted Neckchick named Wanda, tell her she owes me $350 and an apology.” And one of Kerry’s high-school classmates, Renee, stopped by to welcome me to the neighborhood and divulge some Neck knowledge on who grew up where in several of the houses in my immediate vicinity. Now, if I’m talking to my neighbor Jimmy, I can casually name-drop Rhonda and Danny and mention how Jimmy’s sister, Patti-Anne, used to hang out with Randi. These are the connections you need to memorize if you want to earn even a provisional townie card.

In search of more local insight, I talked to my brother-in-law, Rick, who lived in Quincy for a few years and was good friends with a Necker. Rick told me about how the Hough’s Neck Maritime Center—the public dock and boat ramp—used to be the site of Hurley’s Boat Rental. “People would rent skiffs there and go flounder fishing, but then they cleaned up the harbor and the flounder went away because there was no more poop to eat off the bottom. Also, there was a drunk who hung out down there who’d dive off the top railing of the dock if you gave him a beer.” Also, according to Renee, you can buy lobsters right off the boat on weekends down at the Maritime Center—I mean, down at Hurley’s, where I used to go flounder fishing before the poop went away.

As a final right of passage in my townie crash-course, I hit a local dive bar with Kerry. I figured he could interpret and help defuse the situation if I made an inadvertent cultural gaffe, something akin to sticking your chopsticks straight-up in your rice in Japan or calling a Necker a Neckbird.

As we sidled up to the bar, Kerry noticed a recent Hough’s Neck Manets team photo on the wall. Pondering the fact that there’s a street named Manet, and the word shows up on the crest emblazoned on the police station, Kerry asked the bartender if he knew what, exactly, a manet is. The bartender, it must be said, had a bit of a local accent, but edified us on the meaning of the ubiquitous Quincy term. As we walked out of the bar, I said, “That’s interesting that a manet is a bear.” Kerry, looking surprised, replied, “Bear? I thought he said ‘beer.’ But I guess a bear makes more sense.”

I thought for a second about going back in to ask the bartender to clarify, but decided that would be awkward. Sometimes you just have to say to yourself, “Easy lips.”