The best meal of the day: City seniors meet for food and friendship

Say the word retirement and some people right away think of sleeping in late every morning. But that's not the case with Mary Almeida, her sister, Evelyn Rose, and two of Almeida's four daughters.

The four Taunton women, all retired, have established a tradition of getting together every morning for breakfast at a pair of local restaurants - if for no other reason than to keep one another from becoming overly complacent.

"It gets us out of bed," is how Lorraine Murphy, 73, puts it.

Murphy, her sister Irene Devlin, 70, and their aunt Evelyn Rose, 83, make a habit each morning of accompanying Mary, who recently turned 90, either to Simon Says restaurant in the Weir or Off Broadway Diner downtown.

Irene, Lorraine and their mother (Mary's sister is visiting in California for a month) were at their usual front table in Off Broadway Monday, doing what they normally do at 8:30 a.m. on any given morning of the week: eating eggs and toast and chatting up the latest news.

This morning the tragedy of six trapped Utah miners and the death of three would-be rescuers was fresh in their minds, as was the advance of Hurricane Dean.

But bad news doesn't always take center stage, said Irene Devlin.

"I try to update them on 'American Idol'," she said. "They don't watch, but I do - I love music."

The sisters were also quick to shift gears to give credit to their mother who, despite the fact she is now officially a nonagenarian, continues to lead an unusually active life.

"She's still going out every day, and that's a marvel," said Lorraine.

She added that her mother is also out on the town five nights a week playing Bingo at various church halls, and takes a bus at least once a month to test her luck at Foxwoods in Connecticut.

"You should see her at weddings," said Irene. "She still gets up and dances, and she likes a little pop now and then."

The pop, she said, is usually a vodka Jello or butterscotch shot.

Mary Almeida did little more than smile. "I'm not much of a talker," she said.

"She goes with the flow," Irene said.

All of the women live together in a three-family house on Somerset Avenue and are widows except for Irene, whose husband Ray is likewise retired (he previously worked as a prison guard), but prefers the comfort of staying home mornings to read the local paper and do the puzzles.

Mary Almeida has two other daughters and two sons, all of them living. The sons and one daughter are retired and living in Florida, while the other daughter, Marie, is semi-retired and living in the Silver City.

Prior to retiring some 20 years ago Mary worked for 26 years as an attendant at the Paul A. Dever School for the Mentally Retarded.

When asked for their assessment of the current state of Taunton, all three women lamented the loss of shopping opportunities downtown, and recollected the pre-mall days when Woolworths, Pober's and Goldstein & Antine were just some of the mainstays along Main Street.

They're also disturbed with what they consider to be a general state of uncleanness in the city, in terms of litter.

"There's so much trash on Somerset Avenue - it's a disgrace," Lorraine Murphy said. "I've been to Europe and Canada, and they take more pride."

She said when she and her brothers and sisters were younger and growing up in Weir Village empty booze bottles and tossed eggs were virtually unheard of.

Murphy blames kids who she said lack "family discipline" and "an influx of outsiders" moving into Taunton from larger cities such as Brockton for compromising the integrity of her old neighborhood.

Devlin wonders why Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgkin doesn't bring his "tandem crew" of prisoners back to Taunton to pick up trash downtown, as they did a few years ago.

The women are also saddened that parents nowadays in cities and towns throughout the state face paying for extracurricular activities such as sports for children in the public school system.

"All the new houses and taxes coming into the city - where's it going?" Murphy said.

Whatever happens locally or internationally, the women say they'll keep coming out in the mornings to order, eat and kibitz.

"I think people need the interaction," Devlin said.

Asked how long they'll keep up what is now a tradition, they enthusiastically responded in unison: "As long as we can."

Charles Winokoor of The Taunton (Mass.) Daily Gazette can be reached at cwinokoor@tauntongazette.com.