Those Were the Days

LINDEN ON THE SAUGUS BRANCH (401 pp.) -- Elliot Paul -- Random House ($3.50).

Elliot Paul is a literary handyman who once announced that he had found Paradise and went to live there. When his paradise (the village of Santa Eulalia on the Balearic island of Iviza) was bombed at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Paul got out and wrote the moving Life and Death of a Spanish Town. Six years later, wearing his nostalgia for Paris on his sleeve, he hit the bell again with The Last Time I Saw Paris, a gamy, garlicky recollection of Left Bank life. Now he is going back where he came from. Linden on the Saugus Branch is the story of Paul's New England boyhood. At 56, Author Paul seems convinced that those were the days. The present days being what they are, many readers of his own age (and the romantically inclined among the others) may agree with him.

Linden, where Elliot Paul grew up, is an outlying part of the city of Malden, Mass., on the outskirts of Boston. Employing either the faculty of total recall or a ready knack for improvisation, Paul sets down in detail a persuasive picture of New England life at the turn of the century. Author Paul is essentially a yarn-spinner, and Linden is largely a string of amusing and often indelicate anecdotes, but those who knew the area and the people will vouch for the genuine flavor.

Placid Loafers. In Linden, circa 1895, the pace of life was leisurely. The horse-cars would stop while conductor and passengers got out to give some neighbor a hand. When a fire started, the volunteer fire fighters seldom got to the scene before the building was leveled. Most people worked hard but were not acquisitive enough, says Paul, to kill themselves at it. Even the town loafers, apparently a numerous caste, he remembers with respect for their placid bearing while their wives took in washing to support the family. But they were true to their natures, and so, it seems, was everyone else in Linden, even to the point of eccentricity.

Linden was predominantly Protestant and officially dry, but the Massasoit House lay conveniently over the town line in wet Revere. Paul, who established a lifelong regard for alcohol in his teens, speaks with romantic awe of the Massasoit House crowd, which included his Uncle Reuben. They were kindly, lovable, generous, liberal, fair, colorful and manly.

Lindeners were basically easygoing, but could become aroused over really important issues. The streetcar company's attempts to cut down a huge and historic linden tree on its right of way provoked an epic battle which cut through religious, political and even family lines. So did the argument as to whether the turn of the century came on Jan. 1, 1900 or Jan. 1, 1901. Another question that provoked a fist fight: Can salmon best be grilled over birch or willow coals?

Unrecaptured Contentment. Linden also had its racial and religious problems, but Paul has a historical tolerance of his home town's intolerance, which apparently made life something of a trial for its Jews and Catholics. Essentially, he remembers, "nearly everybody liked everybody else. ... It will hardly be believable, in the light of present-day existence, how many contented men and women I report out of Linden. I do not suggest 'going back' to those conditions. That is foolish and impossible, and not even desirable. Recapturing the contentment, striving for it, recognizing that it is most important, is another matter. That we must do."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.