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Salty Brine for 51 Years Announces News, Weather and No School Fosta Glosta

Back in the day, broadcasting legend Salty Brine was as much a part of Rhode Island life as Del’s Lemonade, coffee milk and free parking at the beach.

Salty Brine and Jeff

Baby Boomers who grew up in the Ocean State ran home from school to watch Salty’s Shack, co-hosted by Jeff the collie and featuring Popeye cartoons, The Little Rascals and the Three Stooges.

When it snowed, they anxiously listened to Salty Brine announce school closings on WPRO-AM. Two towns in northwest Rhode Island, Foster and Glocester, were inevitably snowbound. Salty Brine lumped them together as “No school, Fosta-Glosta.” Some Rhode Islanders still believe there’s a town out there called Fosta-Glosta.

For 51 years, Salty Brine brought enthusiasm and cheer to WPRO as a disc jockey, newsman and talk-show host. For legions of Rhode Island children, it was an unforgettable experience to get his autograph, shake his hand or pet Jeff.

Salty Brine Beginnings

He was born Walter Leslie Brine in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Mass., on Aug. 18, 1918, the youngest of four children. His parents came from Nova Scotia. His father was a carpenter.

He always loved the ocean, hence the nickname. His friends called him ‘Walt the Salt.’

At the age of nine he lost his leg trying to jump on a freight train near his home. The accident turned out to be providential. It kept him out of World War II. He landed a job with WNAC-AM in Boston, after graduating from Staley School of the Spoken Word in Brookline in 1941. (John F. Kennedy and James Michael Curley polished their speaking skills there as well.) He also worked at WESX in Salem and WCOP in Boston until 1942, when he got the WPRO job that lasted 51 years.

Rise and Shine

Generations of Rhode Islanders woke to the sound of Salty Brine telling them to “Rise and shine with Salty Brine.” In summer he warned against sunburn with his line, “Time to turn so you don’t burn.”

Advertisers loved him because his product announcements boosted sales. He sold furniture and mattresses with the line, “Nobody beats Cardi’s! No-ho-ho-body!” He sold snacks, too, with perfect pronunciation: “Maid Rite Poe-tay-toe Chips!”

Salty’s Shack went on the air, live, from 1955 to 1968. Each show ended with his signature line, “Brush your teeth and say your prayers.”

Many a Rhode Island Baby Boomer cried when Jeff died in 1961. Salty got another collie, Little Jeff, from the pound. One woman said she’s still pining.

“Not long after I was married way back in the 1970s, my husband shook me awake in the middle of the night with a concerned look on his face,” she wrote at the Quahog.org blog. “Evidently, I had been carrying on—in my sleep!—about “Jeff.”

“He looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Hey, who’s JEFF???”

“After I grumbled and cursed and hemmed and hawed a bit, I managed to open one eye and say, “He’s Salty Brine’s dog, you idiot!” after which I promptly rolled over and went back to sleep.

“Needless to say, that man and I are no longer married.”

Colorful, Cheerful, Comforting

salty-brine-cartoon Salty Brine was sensitive to people with disabilities. He spent a lot of time in hospitals visiting kids who lost limbs and made many, many appearances for charity.

On air he was colorful, cheerful and comforting.

In the 1940s, one woman called in frequently to request songs. She told him her woes about the diapers frozen on the line. She had a new story about the diapers every day, so Salty began calling her the Diaper Lady.

During the blizzard of ’78, he stayed at the station around the clock to give the weather news.

Once, after a weather report from Nancy Byers, Salty announced he had just received a message from a viewer and read it:

“Please advise Miss Byers that I’ve just finished shoveling fourteen inches of light fog out of my driveway.”

Retirement

In 2003 the joke was on him. In a locally famous broadcast, an elderly caller asked disc jockey Steve Kass, “What’s this I hear about Salty Brine being accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman… he’s married and he’s 84 years old!” Kass replied that it was Kobe Bryant. She then replied, “What?”

On Salty Brine’s 35^th anniversary with WPRO, the radio station on Wampanoag Trail was named the Brine Broadcasting Center, nicknamed the Brine Shrine.

In 1990 a beach near his home was renamed after him.

Salty Brine retired from WPRO in 1993 and lived long enough to see his beloved Red Sox win the World Series. He died at his home in Narragansett, R.I., on Nov. 2, 2004.

His only child, Walter L. “Wally” Brine, co-hosted the Loren and Wally Morning Show on WROR-FM in Boston until retiring in 2019.

With thanks to Quahog.com and Rhode Island Radio By John Rooke. This story about Salty Brine was updated in 2022.

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Edwin Arlington Robinson – The Poet Who Created Maine’s Tilbury Town

Why did Richard Cory shoot himself? Because Maine’s Edwin Arlington Robinson wanted it that way.

Robinson was born in Gardiner, Maine in 1869 and spent most of his first 30 years there. He formed impressions about how men and women pursued their lives and overcame adversity – or didn’t.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

His focus on these themes arose from his own family’s circumstances. Robinson’s father, a prosperous banker, lost much of his wealth in the recession of 1893. His eldest brother, a physician, ruined his health through addiction to laudanum. A second brother disappointed him by marrying the girl Edwin had his eye on.

The family downfall shaped Edwin’s world view as he delved deeper and deeper into the life of a poet. He later earned the nickname “America’s poet laureate of unhappiness.” Yet the title doesn’t quite fit Robinson, more reserved than unhappy,

Robinson came by his name through chance. His mother expected a girl and didn’t pick out a name for him before his birth. Her illness following his birth distracted her from turning her attention to the task of naming him.

Summering in Harpswell, Maine, some visitors from away pressured her to name the six-month-old baby and so they drew names from a hat. Edwin was the first name and Arlington the second because the lady who drew the name came from Arlington, Mass.

Robinson’s second volume of poetry, Children of the Night, had modest success, but he struggled to publish subsequent volumes. Convinced he needed a change of scenery, Robinson moved to New York in 1899, His career, however, didn’t really take off until President Teddy Roosevelt discovered him.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (painting by Lilla Cabot Perry)

Children of the Night impressed Roosevelt’s son when he read it at school in Groton, Mass., and he gave a copy to his father. Roosevelt persuaded a publisher to reissue the volume and personally reviewed it. Roosevelt also found Robinson a spot on the public payroll at New York’s Customs House.

Tilbury Town

With that income to prop him up, Edwin published another book of poems, paid for by his old friends from Gardner who had faith in the town’s favorite son. Eventually, Edwin achieved that rarest of literary feats: He made a living from his poetry, much of which included allusions to the fictional Tilbury Town (in reality Gardiner).

In 1922 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems. He won it again in 1928 for his The Man Who Died Twice.

People often viewed Robinson as reclusive. His partial deafness and poor vision made him seem standoffish. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, either. But he was neither isolated nor dour. He summered at New Hampshire’s MacDowell Colony, and chums from Gardiner recall him as a funny, mischievous young man. Though never married, Robinson had several romances. He had one with a young woman he tutored and another with artist Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones.

Though Robinson had a relatively optimistic world view and published a book a year the last few years of his life, history best remembers him for his struggles as a young poet and two of his short poems. Miniver Cheevy describes a man hopelessly trapped in his nostalgia for a past age. And Richard Cory, a short poem about a handsome, wealthy banker who abruptly shoots himself in the head without further explanation.

Richard Cory

Countless generations of schoolchildren and artists have analyzed the motivations and meaning of Richard Cory. And the poem has been dissected many times for the various poetic devices it employs. The story inspired plays, imitations, and songs – including Simon and Garfunkel’s Richard Cory.

Comedian Garrison Keillor proposed his own alternate version of the poem, concluding Cory’s suicide made sense if you’d known his difficult wife. As for the actual inspiration for Richard Cory, two theories are proposed.

Robinson’s biographer suggests he drew the character from Sedgewick Plummer, a Gardiner lawyer and banker who lost his fortune and home. His brother’s widow suggested he drew him from his brother. who lost most of his wealth and succumbed to alcoholism.

Robinson himself stayed silent on the matter – much to the consternation of young students of literature – and died in 1935 of cancer.

This story was updated in 2022. Portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson courtesy Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine.

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Johnny Kelley, Beloved Icon of the Boston Marathon

The day after Johnny Kelley won his first Boston Marathon in 1935, he showed up at 7:30 a.m. at his job in an Arlington, Mass., greenhouse.

He was a salt-of-the-earth Irishman from West Medford, Mass. By the time he ran his 61st — and last — race at the age of 84, he was the effervescent heart and soul of the Boston Marathon.

Johnny Kelley crosses the finish line in 1945. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

He inspired the nickname “Heartbreak Hill,” where he went from frontrunner to fifth-place finisher in 1936.

Kelley was 65, with almost 20 more Boston Marathons ahead of him when he said, “For me, the race these days is to try to beat the girls to the finish and to wave to all my old friends along the course.”

When he was 70 he said he was afraid to stop running. “I feel too good,” he said. “I want to stay alive.”

Johnny Kelley, Iron Man

He was born on Sept. 6, 1907, the son of a letter carrier and the oldest of 10 children. His family would form a large cheering section at his races.

He ran track and cross-country at nearby Arlington High School. At 20, he ran his first Boston Marathon, one of 285 male entrants, but he didn’t finish. Like the other runners, he took the trolley or bummed a ride to get to the race. The last time he ran, in 1992, 9,629 men and women ran for $418,000 in prizes, including a Mercedes-Benz for the winner.

Others have won more marathons — Clarence DeMar won seven – but Johnny Kelley holds the record for endurance. He won the Boston Marathon twice, in 1935 and 1945, finished second a record seven times and finished in the top 10 in 19 others.

Johnny Kelley with another runner courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Boston Globe reported his bitterest defeat came in 1936.

Kelley was a little cocky when he came up on a struggling Tarzan Brown, the mercurial Narragansett Indian who also won the Boston Marathon twice:

…as they approached the treacherous stretch of hills in Newton. Kelley gave Brown a tap on the back, which was all the fuel Brown needed to rekindle his fire to win the race. The late Globe sports editor Jerry Nason, who witnessed the incident from the press vehicle, saw it as the turning point of the race and dubbed it “Heartbreak Hill.”

“He named it after me,” Kelley said. “I didn’t mean to be fresh or anything when I tapped Tarzan Brown, and it was just a tap, but Nason said I should have never done that, because it wasn’t right. For 15 years, he kept reminding me about it until I told him, ‘Enough’s enough’.”

Kept Going

Tarzan Brown and Johnny Kelley both went to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Kelley finished 18^th in the marathon. Brown didn’t compete because of a hernia, but got into a fight with Nazi brownshirts in a beer garden. Kelley would run two more Olympic marathons, the last in London at the age of 40.

In 1940, Johnny Kelley had a job as a security guard at a Boston Edison power plant and had just married Mary Knowles, a stenographer he met on the streetcar. Shortly after their second wedding anniversary, Mary collapsed and died three days later of cancer. Running, he said, helped him get through it.

Johnny Kelley got drafted in 1942, married briefly a second time and still ran the Boston Marathon. He went back to work at the power plant in mechanical maintenance.

He won his second Boston Marathon in 1945. In 1946, an undernourished Greek named Stylianos Kyiarides came from behind to beat him. Kelley graciously hugged Kyiarides at the finish.

He took up painting in his 50s, producing about 20 seascapes and landscapes a year and selling most of them. In 1972, he retired from Boston Edison and moved to East Dennis, Mass., with his third wife, Laura Harlow.

In 1991, at the age of 83, he fell into Laura’s arms after finishing the race. The two crashed to the pavement. He still hadn’t had enough. The next year it took him 5 hours and 57 minutes to finish the race, and he decided he needed to get home before dark. For the next two years, he only ran the last seven miles of the Marathon, starting at Heartbreak Hill. Finally, he retired in 1995.

No Money

He had run 112 marathons, winning one refrigerator, 22 diamond rings, 118 watches and no money.

In 1995, the first year of his retirement from running, he rode in a convertible at the head of the race as its grand marshal. Four years later, he was hospitalized with pneumonia and missed the race. He sent a tape to the champions’ breakfast before the race of his singing, Young at Heart.

Johnny Kelley in 1996

A 7-foot bronze statue of Johnny Kelley was unveiled in 1993, about a mile from the base of Heartbreak Hill on the Marathon course in Newton, Mass. The statue is actually two likenesses of Kelley: one of him as a 27-year-old winning the Boston Marathon in 1935, the other of him as an 84-year-old finishing his 61^st and last marathon. They hold hands as they break the tape crossing the finish line.

Johnny Kelley died at the age of 97 on Oct. 6, 2004 in a Cape Cod nursing home. He is buried in East Dennis, Mass., and his headstone reads, “Marathon Man.”

This story about Johnny Kelley last updated in 2022.

Image: Johnny Kelley in 1996 By unknown – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: https://archive.boston.com/sports/specials/obituaries/kelley/kelley_pictures?pg=9, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68969198.

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Cracking the History of the Uncommon Common Cracker

Every so often when you’re looking through a book of old New England recipes, you’ll find one that calls for the common cracker. Well, there are plenty of common crackers around. Saltines come to mind.

But the common crackers these recipes call for are actually a specific type of common cracker. And these days, they’re anything but common.

vermont-common-cracker

If you dropped back in time, say 30 years, you’d know exactly what the recipe needs. Well into the 1970s, the common cracker was ubiquitous throughout New England.

But to get the full picture, you’d need to step back in time a bit further, to the days when fresh bread was not easy to buy and before science took over the business of baking. With preservatives and cellophane and cardboard packaging, today you can commonly eat crackers made anywhere in the world.

But in the early 1800s, that wasn’t the case. Baking science hadn’t evolved so, and the common cracker solved a problem for hungry families needing a staple that would keep for months.

Inventor of the Common Cracker

If you want to figure out who invented the first common cracker, you probably won’t have any luck. They went by many names and many bakers produced them, with small variations in size. The Boston Cracker in Massachusetts, the Portland Cracker in Maine, the Montpelier Cracker in Vermont, and so forth.

American crackers, themselves, first came into existence in Newburyport, Mass. — or so the story goes– in the bakery of Theodore Pearson. There he created pilot biscuits.

Sailors, soldiers, explorers and travelers have carried some variation of cracker with them for centuries, as far back as you can imagine. The Newburyport version of this was called hard tack (among other things).

Hard Tack

Hard tack consists of an unleavened water and flour baked to within an inch of its life. It will last virtually forever. Hard tack produced for the War of 1812 was stored and then brought out for use in the Civil War, for example, none the worse for wear. Soldiers and sailors preferred it only slightly to starvation.

But hard tack soon gave rise (forgive the pun) to more elegant crackers for domestic use. The addition of yeast, a rising period of 24 hours (and more) and a long period of kneading, followed by baking and drying, resulted in a puffy white cracker with a hard thick outer shell. Voila! The common cracker.

Preserved hardtack from U.S. Civil War, Wentworth Museum, Pensacola.

The ingenious yankees had dozens of uses for them. Many involved mashing. They commonly used them as thickeners for soup and chowder or mashed and eaten with milk. Later, they split them, buttered them, toasted them and gave them all sorts of toppings. And when potatoes began to take over the chowder, the crackers shifted to the side for crumbling in just before eating.

The folks at The Food Timeline suggest Artemus Kennedy, a baker in what is now Arlington, Mass., originated the common cracker. Kennedy, their research suggests, began baking the crackers at his bakery founded in 1805. He rode around the nearby country on horseback selling them. But no one knows where he got the idea for them.

Early Bakers

Another early baker who dabbled with the cracker was Josiah Bent, founder of the G.H. Bent company in Milton, Mass., in 1801. The company earned a reputation for making water crackers, which Bent prized for their ability to travel well on sea voyages. Bent’s water crackers are smaller than the common cracker, but he made other products as well. Bent definitely made a lot of hard tack for the government, as did Pearce, and the company revived that recipe for Civil War reenactors a century after the war itself ended.

The G.H Bent factory in Milton, Mass.

Perhaps the best known of the common cracker makers was Charles Cross of Montpelier, Vt., and his tireless horse. Charles and his brother Thomas, originally from New Hampshire, founded Cross Bakers in 1828. The business continuously operated for 151 years, evolving into C.H. Cross & Sons before going bankrupt in 1979. Then the firm and its Cross Crackers moved to Claremont, N.H.

In the early days, Cross used a horse-powered treadmill to run the machinery for his bakery. His horse alternated jobs, one day powering the treadmill, the next hauling crackers for delivery. Over time, Cross grew to have a crew of salesmen traveling throughout New England selling his crackers to stores.

But in his earliest days, Cross packed up the crackers and displayed them in barrels. And this is probably how we most associate with common crackers: stored in a barrel that served as a centerpiece of the country store where they were sold. Visitors to the store would be invited to pull up a seat, crack open a cracker and put a piece of cheese on it. In this setting, men resolved the issues of the day, shared news and settled arguments.

Then the barrels disappeared. And as the humorist John Gould wrote, “everything has been on the skids since the common cracker declined.”

Julia Child

The common cracker had a new lease on life given to it by Julia Child, who gave them her stamp of approval for use with chowder. She became rather famously obsessed with cracking the recipe, which she eventually did.

Should you need a common cracker today, there are two companies still selling them: the aforementioned G.H. Bent, known as the Bent Cookie Factory, which has continuously operated since 1801; and Vermont Common Foods, which wholesales them and has a nice collection of recipes for how to cook with them. The company acquired the Cross cracker equipment, which it uses to make them today.

You can order the Vermont Common Cracker from the Vermont Country Store. Click here. This story was updated in 2021.

Images: GH. Bent Co. By Jameslwoodward – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7907262. Hard tack By Infrogmation of New Orleans – Photo by Infrogmation, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4615956

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