Book Alert / The Historic Shops & Restaurants of Boston

The Historic Shops & Restaurants of Boston -- A Guide to Century-Old Establishments in the City and Surrounding Towns by Phyllis Meras, The Little Bookroom '07, $16.95, 224 pages, ISBN #978-1-892145-44-4. Indexes, unillustrated.

Years ago, I took my Hartford law office slaves to Boston's Quincy Market for dinner at Durgin Park before rooting for the Red Sox at Fenway Park, a short MBTA trip away. Don't go to Durgin Park unless you like people -- you're expected to jam in happily together at overlong, checkered tablecloth spreads. As it happened, we sat opposite two lovely Texan nurses, both in tears. In this happy city? Turns out this was the last evening of their two-week tour of New England, the one they had reserved for lobster, lusting for red crustaceans. Instead, because they unwittingly had ordered Lobster Newburg, they were confronted with a casserole. We soon took care of that, and everyone left smiling.

Such are the Bostonian stories the oldtimers (such as I) collect. Those who live on Martha's Vineyarders or summer there as well and her Boston and Providence acquaintances (all readers of her marvelous writings) will rush to add Phyllis Meras's pocket-sized volume to their collections. It is divided into chapters about art galleries, barbershops, bookshops, clothiers, florists, food and spirits shops, hardware stores, jewelers, musical instrument makers, sporting good stores, stonecutters and, of course, tobacconists.