In Newburyport

Three years ago, one Andrew J. ("Bossy") Gillis, red-headed retired Navy "gob," bought a choice corner in Newburyport, Mass., and set about erecting a gasoline station. Staid citizens invoked the town's zoning ordinance and stopped him. They were visited with red-headed revenge.

"Bossy" Gillis strewed his vacant lot with tombstones and household crockery labelled: "The Spirit of Newburyport." He called on Mayor Mike Cashman, punched his jaw and spent two months in jail denouncing "the fossils that run this burg."

Still denouncing fossils, "Bossy" Gillis ran last November for Mayor of Newburyport. Without knowing quite why, Newburyport elected him. Last fortnight, he took office. Last week, he began bossing.

Specimen statements by Mayor Gillis:

(On patronage)--"What the hell! We Won, didn't we? Don't the winners deserve the gravy?"

(On "Goldtooth" Mahoney, town em- ploye)--"He did me dirt. He can loaf somewhere else."

(To the police force)--"All youse guys are going to work an extra hour every day and you're going to like it.

"J. D. Foley, don't spend your time talking. Keep moving. Leave the ladies alone until after duty's over. Use better judgment. Stop talking politics. Keep moving. . . . Report cars parked in the street all night. Prosecute the parkers.

"Lynch, take a run down to the gas house now and then and look things over. Don't strain your eyesight....

"Mason . . . Keep out of garages, stores and restaurants. Give drunks a show. Don't club them. . .....

"Gove, keep on the move. Don't get acquainted. It won't be long now.

"E.A. Sullivan, keep out of the depot. It's too warm there.

(On his mail)--"They must think I got nothing to do but open envelopes. Here's a letter from some guy I pushed into the river once. And look at this--a mash note from some skirt."

(On "bums")--"You can't tell about bums. Some of us grow up and get refined and have our day. Then watch out!"

Mayor "Bossy" Gillis was not Newburyport's first eccentric hero. Late in the 18th century, an illiterate tanner named Timothy Dexter, who had made a fortune in Continentals, moved to Newburyport and there performed commercial prodigies. He shipped mittens and warming pans to the West Indies, coal cargoes to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He cornered the whale- bone market. His profits startled.

Styling himself "Lord," Timothy Dexter crowned a haddock-hawker his poet laureate with a wreath of parsley. He drank copiously, published incessant screeds of his own and built a house which bristled with minarets and was approached through a triumphal arch surmounted with wooden statues of heroes, from Adam to Timothy Dexter, at whom, as at "'Bossy" Gillis, the world gaped.