Reminiscing with Strangers

Lately I’m being told that I’m losing it, and this is from my immediate family. I’m 72 years of age now, and I admit my memory isn’t what it used to be. And yes, sometimes I can’t find my keys or iPhone, and it's right there in front of me. I know for sure I’m not alone in my current predicament; as far as I’m concerned, most folks in this country have lost their collective minds, but honestly, as little as only five years ago my wife considered me a bit of a space shot.

Just recently I was reminiscing with an old jeweler friend from my early days (1970s, yes, that early!) in the Jeweler’s building in Boston who now happens to live on the island. Around 15 years ago, he walked in the shop to introduce himself, saying he had recently retired from the business. Suddenly we both looked at each other thinking the same thing: “I know this guy from somewhere in the past?” He and I worked in the same building; he worked for his dad’s retail jewelry store on the street floor and I worked as an apprentice goldsmith for my uncle on the sixth floor. Mark and I passed by each other hundreds of times a year, running errands and deliveries all over and up and down the eight floors of stairways, instead of waiting for the elevator, which took way too long. At age twelve or thirteen, we even picked up and dropped off valuable gold jewelry and loose diamonds to the other nearby buildings. The chance of being robbed in a stairwell never entered my mind back then.

In the early 1900s, there were several buildings in downtown Boston that also had jewelers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, watchmakers, diamond setters, engravers, gold and silver plating shops, supply companies, pearl re-stringers, and even the occasional coin dealer.

Back in the old days, there were different trades in the jewelry business; it was very specialized. For example, diamond setters did not make the jewelry; they only set diamonds in the jewelry the goldsmiths made, and watchmakers didn’t sell or work on jewelry. Mark’s dad and my uncle did a lot of business together. The fancy retail jewelry stores downtown rarely had any of these craftspeople on the premises, so they had to job out to the buildings everything they took in from the public. My uncle’s shop did custom gold and platinum jewelry and repairs for a lot of Boston’s prestigious jewelry stores, not to mention dozens of mom and pop stores in the suburbs who brought their customer’s requests, jewelry and watch repairs to the building on a weekly basis.

Back then, not everyone had battery-powered watches. For all of you unaware non-baby boomers born after the 1980s, most windup watches required they be dismantled, cleaned, and re-oiled every year or so by a highly skilled watchmaker. Today, most watches are battery-powered, where a properly trained chimpanzee could do the battery change or replace a strap in most watches.

In the 1960s and 1970s there were a lot of young apprentices running around the building. I can remember Ron O., who was my age, right across the hall learning the art of being a watchmaker; Richie D. who mastered the trade of a hand engraver and also Hampik S. a young diamond setter, all of whom became extremely skillful learning from the old masters and became successful in their early twenties and later opened their own businesses. Being an apprentice wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies; it involved long hours. I was a janitor, also a gofer that involved trips to the post office (no UPS or FedEx in those days) or fetching lunch for several of the old timers throughout the building and act grateful for the 25 cent tip. Did I mention low pay? I made five dollars a week and my uncle paid me in rolls of pennies, half of which I used paying for riding the Boston Transit System! Yeah, I was living large in those days! I forgot to mention how many times I skipped Junior High school during the Christmas seasons when it was all hands on deck in the jeweler’s building.

I was very fortunate. No doubt because of my sparkling personality, the old-timers took a shine to me, and my uncle allowed me to spend time with his longtime friend Carmen Fuccetti when things were slow, who was in his late seventies then and was still considered one of the best diamond setters in the city. Carmen was kind and patient; he taught me the old school tricks of the trade and was a true master. To show you how fond he was of me, when he passed in the 1980s, I attended Carmen’s wake and his widow gave me a hug, telling me how much Carmen would talk to her about me. She then handed me the keys to his shop and told me his last wishes were for me to take his workbench, all his tools and equipment; my son still uses that bench and tools today.

Also across the hall was Sam Margolis, a seasoned master at gold, silver, and rhodium plating. He showed me the tricks of his specialized craft, something I really appreciated. And I use his methods even today. I ended up not only learning to be a goldsmith, I could set diamonds and do rhodium and gold plating, something my uncle Ernest appreciated. I also learned from the chimpanzee who did watch batteries, and that got me a raise to ten dollars a week. The old masters always felt that we young apprentices should be paying them for what we were learning from them and that our so-called pain would come back one hundredfold reward in the future.

When I’m here in my Marco Island workshop, I’m still surrounded by memories from the Jeweler’s building on Washington Street in Boston. My solid oak bench is from the late 1800s and also some of my gold rolling and fabricating machines. Some of the companies that manufactured them went out of business after the Crash of 1929, so yes, I not only reminisce with people but also old machinery. My son Andrew appreciates the old stuff and keeps them oiled and maintained, and they still perform and do the job they were designed to do over a century ago. They are, in fact, better than anything you can buy and use today.

Over the past thirty-one years on the island it’s amazing how many Bostonians have moved here or just simply visit on a regular basis and recognize my “Bawstunn” accent and when I tell them I cut my teeth in the Jeweler’s building in the 60s and 70s most my age are very familiar with it, the building was the place to go then to buy diamonds, gold jewelry, you name it. They will mention the particular jeweler that they and their Mom and Dad used to go to, and nine out of ten times I would know exactly who they were talking about! “I used to run errands and fetch lunch as a kid for Mr. Seidler!"

Mr. Seidler was, in my opinion, the classiest man I ever met as a kid: expensive silk suits, Italian shoes, manicured nails, and a perfectly coiffed head of flowing white hair. He had a niche business; he only sold antique jewelry, nineteenth-century silverware, and furniture for Boston’s royalty as well as Beacon Hill’s élite. He instructed me about the ins and outs of genuine antique and not-so-antique reproductions. He traveled the world searching for rare and exclusive collections. He also trusted my uncle and me to do many of his repairs and restorations that required TLC before the piece would go in his antique showcases.

Little did I know that twenty years later I would end up working for his nephew Robert for a couple of years, who at that time owned five large jewelry stores throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It’s now known as one of Boston’s most prestigious jewelry stores, Long’s Jewelers.

My years have flown by. One thing’s for sure: there’s no way I’ll be bounding up and down eight floors of stairwells in any kind of record time!