Rockland, Maine — Defining the South End

Recently my friend, Bill Pease, asked me to “define” the South End. He was talking about the physical borders of the area. I couldn’t give him a definitive answer because everyone who lives or lived in the South End defines it differently. I have my own definition, others have their own.

One woman who lived in the South End as a child says, “The real South End kids went to Crescent Street School, the rest of us went to Purchase Street School.”  By that definition, I guess I’m a “real South Ender” as I went to Crescent Street School. I wonder though, how the kids who went to Purchase Street School defined themselves. Were they half South Enders or what?

I don’t mean to be obfuscating about the matter, but it really depends upon who you talk to as to where the true borders of the South End lie. It may have something to do with the mystique of the area as I talked about in an earlier blog, “The South End Mystique.” I really believe that we Southenders really delight in trying to confuse outsiders. It’s like an inside joke with us.

That said, I will attempt to define my South End as I lived in it as a child running around the neighborhood. Basically, that area would consist of the loose border beginning with the head of Water Street where it splits with South Main. If you walked down South Main Street as far as Mechanic Street, turned left and wound your way along the waterfront again to the lower end of Water Street, where Mcloud Street empties into the waterfront, you would be in my “neighborhood.”

However, my world usually consisted of the kids I played with from Fulton Street, Mcloud Street, and Linden Street, taking in Suffolk and Pacific Streets, which bordered this area. I also spent as much time as I could at Sandy Beach, along with a bunch of kids in that area. There were, however, some areas I would not venture into if I could help it. I can count on one hand the times I ever ventured down the lower end of Crescent Street and along Atlantic Street. When I was growing up, that was deemed to be a rough area, with rough kids who wouldn’t stop at taunting you in some way. Whether or not that was really true I don’t know, but I was told to stay away from there by my mother, so I did.

One other thing that defined my world in the South End was whether or not a particular area or street had mean dogs that would chase you. They scared me to death, especially when then ran in packs chasing a female. There were no leash laws at that time. It was not until many years later that I learned to appreciate dogs and make friends with them.

Sometimes my South End borders expanded when my mother took me to visit other mothers outside of our immediate neighborhood. We visited the Ripleys up on Broadway, across from South School a bit. We also visited the McKennys, who lived just down Prescott Street from the Ripleys on Orange Street. I became friends with Gene (Fred) Ripley, and Brenda McKenny this way. We also visited the Wiggins family on upper Fulton Street, where I became friends with Christine. Our family later bought that house after the Wiggins moved away. My mother would also invite mothers and their children from the North End, around Cedar Street, where our family lived when the boys were little, to come to a gabfest and catch-me-up session down on Mcloud Street.

So you see my world was not always myopic when I lived in the South End. As I grew and went to school, I developed friendships with kids in other areas. Learning to drive, of course, opened up many more opportunities to meet and mingle in other areas. Wherever I went, however, I would also respond with pride to the question of where I lived with: “The South End.”

I invite other Southenders to respond with their own definitions of where the “real” South End lies. Whether or not I accept your answers is another question.

Thanks for listening.

SPECIAL NOTICE: I will be purging the archives for 2009 at the end of March. I will reedit them; add comments and pictures; then republish them as a booklet. If you have a favorite blog from 2009, please print it off for yourself now. I will not be able to email anyone an old blog because of time constraints. Some of my readers are not computer literate and depend on others to print off my blogs for them. I therefore decided to publish them in written form so they could read them at their leisure. I will inform all of you when the booklet is ready for purchase.