'Home by Nine'
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| MAKES SOUTH END SHINE |
| BY MARK CHAG JR. |
| ATLANTIC NEWS STAFF WRITER |
| PORTSMOUTH | At last, it's a story that's never been told. |
| Local history buffs and Portsmouth enthusiasts alike have all heard the stories about the city's links to George Washington, Paul Revere, General William Whipple, Mark Twain, and other notables who crossed the town's pathways. |
| We've also heard time and again about the changing dockside area once known as Puddle Dock which underwent a revolutionary transformation to become what is now Prescott Park and Strawbery Banke. |
| What's more, we've all heard of the remarkable effort to save the Music Hall from an imminent wrecking ball, and restore it to its Gilded Age glory. |
| So much has been documented and revealed about Portsmouth's rich history, but, until now, there was a story that had yet to be told. |
| Harold Whitehouse Jr. recently released his memoirs, "Home by Nine: The Real South End," and it's a must-read for anyone who wants to understand not the lavish side of Portsmouth's history, but the South side. |
| Whitehouse was born in Portsmouth in 1928, the first of Harold Sr. and Grace Whitehouse's six children. |
| The South End was a working-class section of town, where people earned meager livings, particularly during the Great Depression, when Whitehouse was a young boy. |
| "My mother would always say, 'We were not poor, we just didn't have fancy things," Whitehouse writes. |
| Indeed, all eight family members shared a half of a house in the South End, where they had a single toilet in the cellar, and a basin they would fill with water once a week for baths. |
| But "Home by Nine" is not-at-all a bleeding-heart tale of hardship and strife. Whitehouse enlightens the reader with delightful and oftentimes humorous tales of what life was like for a transitioning time in Portsmouth's history, stretching from the 1930s right up to present day. |
| The South End he refers to is a section of the city spanning from Newcastle Avenue to Pleasant Street, to Parrott Avenue to Lincoln Avenue, to South Street and along the back channel. |
| The title is a reference to the city's curfew when he was a young man, which required all youth to be indoors by 9 p.m. - a rule that his family strictly enforced. As a teenager, if Whitehouse was at the cinema and a movie was half-way over, he would leap up at five minutes to nine and race home before the city's whistle sounded. |
| In the book, Whitehouse amusingly recalls how, even after he joined the Navy and returned home to visit his family while on leave, he was still required to home by nine. |
| The book covers the marvel of the shipyard during WWII, an array of facts and nuances on people, places and changes in the city, even the great jellyfish fight of 1941 that Whitehouse participated in, and which left South Street smelling nauseatingly ripe. |
| "Home by Nine" does not disguise itself as a literary classic of woven words on tapestry - but it does deliver a gem of a story. |
| "It's written the way I talk," Whitehouse says with a laugh. He adds that he's been telling and retelling stories of old Portsmouth for years, and decided about four years ago when he was encouraged by a colleague "to put it all into print." |
| "I think I must have my mother's genes for memory and longevity," Whitehouse says. "Every day she'd tell a different story about Portsmouth." |
| Now, with "Home by Nine," those stories have been preserved, so that all with an interest in Portsmouth will never forget what life was like in the South End. |
| At nearly 80 years old, Whitehouse still owns his "South End" jacket that he bought as a teenager, to proudly wear about town with his friends who wore the same. |
| "I paid $7 for it, and another 25 cents to have my name put on the front," Whitehouse says. "It's still in pretty good condition," he adds, saying that he'll likely pass it along to his grandchildren at some point, as a prized family heirloom. |
| The South End has evolved dramatically since Whitehouse's childhood, morphing from a poor neighborhood to an affluent community of exquisitely-restored homes. |
| "Times have changed," Whitehouse says. "Now we have Prescott Park, and Strawbery Banke, and people are buying and restoring homes in the South End because everyone wants to own a piece of Portsmouth history. We shouldn't lose anything. We should keep things original for the next generation to see." |
| "Home by Nine" reveals Whitehouse's journey from Portsmouth into the US Navy, where he served on the famously-historical USS Missouri, and traveled the world, before returning to his beloved Portsmouth to raise his own family, and ultimately his 30-plus years as a public servant on the school board and city council. |
| Today, he lives in South End, only about 100 feet from where he was raised, in the same family home he had built in the 1960s. |
| "I've lived here for 40 years, and I hope I can last another 40 more," he says with a chuckle - a milestone which would probably herald another edition to his book. |
| Whitehouse will be signing copies of "Home by Nine" this Saturday starting at 10 a.m., at the Maine-ly New Hampshire specialty gift shop, located at 33 Deer Street in Portsmouth. He will also be signing books at River Run Bookstore at 20 Congress Street on May 13. Copies of "Home by Nine" are also available at Tugboat Alley at 47 Bow Street. |
