Library Lag

"NO, I'm not going to shake hands with you," said the Milton Mother in the purply-red suit. "You've turned our community upside down. I'm not going to shake hands with you." Edward J. McLaughlin, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, was embarrassed. An Irish blush washed his face, lapping the edges of his gray temples.

But he was a kind man. The MBTA, after all, tries very hard to be kind. "Look," said McLaughlin to the Milton Mother, "why don't you and your friends come on over to our office sometime and we'll talk this over? Okay? Come on now, let's shake hands." But the Milton Mother would not shake hands. And all the people in the corridor outside the Transportation Committee Room were watching, and Big Ed McLaughlin--who had spent nearly ten years here on the Hill as Dorchester's Representative, defending people like the Milton Mother--was very, very embarrassed.

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Library Corporation has been embarrassed too lately. The hearing where McLaughlin and Mother had their tiff was all about the Kennedy Library. After two years of pulling and scraping, it seemed last week that the Library had finally found a place to unload its 12-acre bulk. But now, there are still bills and hearings and hold-ups and Milton Mothers. Doubt is creeping in again, and the Library may not be able to meet its self-imposed, January, 1970, deadline for groundbreaking.

The problem was evident at Thursday's State House hearing--people hate the MBTA when the MBTA wants to take away their trolley stops and plant huge transit facilities in their backyard. The only way Cambridge can get a Kennedy Library is for the MBTA to move its Bennett St. facility (across from Eliot House) to make way. The only way the MBTA can move is to find a place to relocate.

THE MBTA Advisory Board last week approved a plan to move the car barns and repair yards to Mattapan Square and to run a rapid transit line there, replacing the trolleys that now run along the route through Dorchester and Milton. But the trolley stops are too close' together for high-speed subways, so some of the stops would have to be eliminated--three in Milton and one in Dorchester.

The Long Walk

On Thursday, the Milton Mothers and the Dorchester Mothers were complaining about how far their children would have to walk to catch a sub-way to go to school. The Kennedy Library was not mentioned once. The whole issue was the MBTA.

Dorchester legislators Joseph B. Walsh and Paul Murphy sponsored the bill that was under public debate Thursday. For them, the battle is all for show. They can hold up the Mattapan Plan for a few months, but they don't have a chance to beat it. Meanwhile, the folks in Dorchester are delighted. Battling giants like the MBTA, Harvard, and the Kennedys is great fun.

The Library Corporation has everyone on its side--Governor Volpe, Mayor White, the MBTA, and almost all the legislators in the Great and General Court. Volpe is "committed" to the Library, he says, as the Commonwealth's memorial to the late President. Two years ago, the legislature voted to pay over 80 per cent of the cost of the Bennett St. land as its gift to the Library.

But, even with all this help, the Library Corporation has bungled the job. The reason is that it has tried to keep the issue apolitical. No single representative at the State House is pushing the bill. Like other legislators, the men on Beacon Hill play the quid-pro-quo game. The Kennedy Library has little to offer anyone, so it gets no favors in return.

SENTIMENT for the late President Kennedy has subdided among the Boston Irish. There is still talk and talk, to be sure, and machine-auto-graphed pictures hanging over the South Boston bars. But to Massachusetts legislators, Kennedy is gone. "The President is dead now. He can't do anything for them," one observer said.

No Soft Spot

Dorchester and Milton residents don't have much of a soft spot in their hearts for Harvard University either. Although, like Kennedy, the name of Harvard is carefully avoided in floor debates and open hearings, the animosity is still there.

A final factor is Ted Kennedy. The men on the Hill resent his quick rise to power, his avoidance of the state Party, and his identification with the Yankees rather than the Irish. Ted would naturally seem able to use his influence as a U.S. Senator to help get the Library built. In fact he has no influence on Beacon Hill.

One bill to hold up the Library was written as a personal attack on Ted. Its author, Rep. Michael Paul Feeney (D-Boston) is trying to get even with Kennedy for Ted's refusal to endorse him in a recent race for a state senate seat. One observer pointed out that Ted's endorsement would have proved "the kiss of death" to Feeney and that Ted was doing Feeney a favor. Feeney lost, so he didn't see it that way.

In the end, the Mattapan Plan will survive its State House opposition and be enacted. But the uncertainty remains, and construction may be held up for months before the Library gives architect I. M. Pei the go-ahead. Meanwhile, all the pudgy fingered Milton Mothers are doing a fine job of teaching Harvard and the Kennedys a little lesson in Boston politics.