Birthplace

This was my first home; it’s in the Valley Falls section of Cumberland, Rhode Island. My parents rented it from about 1962-1966. It looks nearly identical in old pictures. The house was built in 1937 for a couple of immigrants—James Donohue and his second wife, Margaret Crozier—who both came with their families when they were

Ann & Hope

Ann & Hope has so many connections to me. It’s probably the first place that I saw Santa Claus in the flesh. It’s definitely where I bought my first record: The Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits. My brother Tim worked at Ann & Hope for a while. My father grew up around the corner. What Ann & Hope is, is a huge red brick building in my

Suburban

This is the house I grew up in. Cumberland, Rhode Island. My parents still live here. They were the second owners of this “ranch” house which was built in 1956. The world I grew up in was middle-class suburban. In my neighborhood, surrounded by woods, swamps and former farmlands, almost every house and family was

Lonsdale Landlord

John Joseph Lynch (my grandfather) was named for his immigrant uncle, an Irish-born mill worker in Norwich, Connecticut. Younger John worked in mills too, as a young man in Providence. He had dropped out of school to help support his poor family. Later, he went to night school and eventually got himself an office job

Overseers

The Lonsdale Company (1831-1946) built this big red brick house in 1888. It is identical to the one next to it, and to the others running up Blackstone Street in Cumberland, Rhode Island. This was a row of “Overseers” houses, built for executives of the Londale Company which ran a group of big mills along