THROWBACK: BOSTON’S BICENTENNIAL BOMBING SPREE
The 40th anniversary of hideous events that are nonetheless worth remembering
BY SEAN L. MALONEY
One of the best things about Boston is that there is history everywhere and that it’s all interconnected. Under every cobblestone, around the corner of every cow path, the old stories are often wilder and weirder than you would expect from a sleepy provincial town. While researching my upcoming book 33 ⅓: The Modern Lovers — about Boston proto-punk pioneers The Modern Lovers’ debut album, Interstate development, and urban renewal in the late ’60s and early ’70s Massachusetts — I unearthed so much of this wild, weird history that a lot of it had to be left on the cutting room floor. Luckily, my friends at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism won’t let so much nerdy fun languish on my hard drive.
It hurt to cut the gangster who got his head crushed with a cinder block at Revere Beach from my manuscript. Editing out the dead body they found on Inner Belt Road pained my pulp noir-loving soul. I grew up on Spenser for Hire novels, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and The Thomas Crown Affair…
