Anyone familiar with the Revere Beach of yore, the Revere Beach of my childhood, circa 1980s/early 90s, would experience the same incredulity and thrill as I did yesterday, upon plucking four perfect ears of corn from a farmers’ market stand there. It was as though the fraternal twins of illusion — reality and nostalgia — had conflated and swapped identities: I was staring at a twinkly sea with a smooth shore, no longer scarred by expired syringes and every kind of Plastic Packaging Known to Man. All around me, cheery shoppers browsed aloud with a locution indicating they had not traveled far to get there (”hi honey how are yas, these peppas are beautiful but they give me agita”).
As a Revere native, as the daughter of two Revere natives, and a granddaughter of one Nana Ceccarossi who still lives today on American Legion Highway in a house with a front yard that has been completely replaced with a paved, concrete piazza kind of thing, I would like to invite you all to go visit the Thursday (12-6) farmers’ market on Revere Beach. It is indeed a wonderful thing, and not very much like the blissful and bustling middle / upper-middle class shopping affairs that we conjure when we think of farmers’ markets elsewhere. Or I conjure anyway.
Here is what you can find there:
-A stand with what appears to be fresh caught oysters and small lobster — does anyone know anything about this?
-Farmer Dave’s lush veggie display
-Another lush veggie display from a farm whose name I can’t recall
-Baked goods
-Vinny’s Italian food…not a local thing to be found at his table, but I suspect he was strategically placed to lure the non-traditional farmers’ market shopper. A nice lookin olive bar all the same
-And curiously, more advertisement for the WIC program, as it can be used at a market, than I have ever seen. In fact, yesterday, there was a table set up where you could pick up a free tote with the WIC logo on it
-Salty air, a lovely view, voracious seagulls somehow amazingly kept at bay
-Real live people who grew up and still live on the North Shore
-An excuse to ride the Blue Line nearly all the way to Wonderland — the Revere Beach T stop is across the boulevard from the market stands.
Tags: Farmers markets