Whether a mom and pop operation, a one-man/woman show, or a whole family, there’s something special about an owner operated business. Teeny little Watertown, weighing in at just 4.2 square miles and 32.000 people, is a hotbed of familial entrepreneurship.
This is the second installment in this series.
There are a few essentials to be stored in everyone’s contact list. You need a good plumber, a good electrician, and of course a good doctor. It may not be a life or death matter, but everyone occasionally needs a good tailor.
Nestled between several unassuming storefronts on a short block on Mount Auburn Street is John’s Tailoring. The small, pinkish neon “Alterations” sign that blinks in the front window is just enough to get your attention. In good weather, there’s a rack of clothing outside the door, enough of a hint so you notice the “John’s” sign over the door.
It registered enough so that when I tore a favorite but quite banged-up pair of shorts earlier this year, I brought them there with high hopes of getting them back for another season of yard work and painting.
The narrow space inside was a throwback to earlier era. Nothing fancy. Plainly painted and lit, it resembled the kind of unassuming watchmaker or tailor or small appliance repair place I visited as a kid.
Racks of women’s clothing line the walls all the way to the back of the store. The one nod to the 21st century is a small LCD TV mutely playing in the corner.
Toward the back stood a woman next to a sewing machine that looked strong enough to repair a tank tread. It’s festooned with a rainbow range of spools of thread. Pincushions seem to be everywhere.
The woman brushes back her short brown hair to inspect what I’ve brought in. “You will see where I fixed but it will do what you want,” she smiles reassuringly and hands me her card.
Here we have Ugur Eskici, owner of John’s Tailoring. Ugur’s road to Watertown is a classic immigrant story. Future father-in-law arrives in Watertown from Harput, Turkey and opens tailoring business. Son follows. Son returns to marry sweetheart in Turkey, brings her back to Watertown. All work in family business. Father dies. Tradition is carried on by family.
The original John of John’s Tailoring was Jan Eskici, Ugur's father-in-law, who operated a successful business on Pleasant Street for more than 25 years. His company specialized in stitching together pre-cut clothing supplied to them by Johnny Appleseed's (now known as Appleseed’s), a Beverly, MA company founded in 1946 that specialized in high quality women’s apparel.
When the building they rented was sold eight years ago, Jan and Ugur looked for a smaller place. “We saw the ‘For Rent’ sign, liked the location and the size, and here I am,” she said. It’s Ugur’s baby now, all on her own.
Women’s clothing, wedding dresses and prom dresses are a specialty but she’ll tackle anything she thinks she can do successfully.
Ugur is one of those people who knew exactly what they wanted to do when they grew up. She didn’t have to go farther than down the stairs to find her role model. “Every day when I woke up, my mother was sewing for her customers. I learned everything from her. She was the best tailor!” she beams.
Perfectionist tendencies and an ingrained work ethic are paired in this family like a needle and thread. “I don’t want to do it and make bad job,” she says in her new second language, “Better than money for me, you know, I don’t want to do it and just like get the money and bad job, I want to try to do good job.” Don’t you wish everyone felt that much pride in their work?
A darker side of immigration is that it’s often prompted by persecution. Ugur is Armenian, as is her husband. Many of her forbears were wiped out in the Armenian Genocide. It wasn’t pretty. Scars must still linger. She lives somewhere safe now.
“I want to stay my whole life in Watertown,“ she gushes. “ I love it here. I don’t want to go anywhere else, just here. The people are good quality and they tell their friends about me.”
Right on cue, in walks customer Laurie Kahn. The two exchange warm greetings.
“I needed some alterations done and my teenage daughter Anna said, ‘Mom, you’ve got to this place I found. The lady’s great there!’ Anna’s best friend found this place and she told my daughter about it,” the Watertown film-maker explains.
This is the kind of small business that puts the meat on the bones of a small town. People seek services that are professional in quality and personal in spirit. We spend enough time in big-box stores. We write enough checks to NStar and Comcast. We like paying for an artisan’s quality work or an owner operated diner and thinking that our money will help support someone’s family.
Money is important but what really makes Ugur Eskici tick is looking at the job she’s finished and realizing she’s just the kind of tailor she dreamed of becoming back in Harput around the same time she learned to walk.







































Life Friendly Gardens: Feed Them Love, Not Chemicals
Summer is still splashing around in Watertown. Several of the gardens listed in the Life Friendly Garden Tour last weekend happened to be within walking distance of my digs on Oliver Street. It's inspiring to see how many ways there are to create a garden, large or small, with familiar or unique plants, sculptures, outdoor furniture, or even objects cast away by others, that results in an aesthetically pleasing, even whimsical, space.
The mini landscapes surrounding several of the 14 houses on the tour within walking distance of my house were impressive. I’m good at growing grass, a few hardy shrubs, and two beds of pachysandra, which, as you know, require the maintenance skills of a sodbuster.
Knowing and accepting my limitations around anything requiring green thumbery is an asset. No longer do I view creative landscaping and plants that appear to be ready for a photo shoot for HG TV with malaise and a sense of insufficient imagination, an utter lack of what George H.W. Bush labeled “the vision thing.”
A walk through these gardens has the same effect on me as it does on their creators. Sort of an earth bound “Tranquility Base.” One gardener calls her space an "urban patch of solace" after a long day’s work. Another calls hers a “healing garden, healing first of all for me, the gardener, who finds infinite renewal in its ever changing beauty through the seasons.”
Entrance to Sharon Bauer's "Healing Garden" at 62 Pearl Street, Watertown (click Life Friendly Gardens Tour above).
Gardeners, like artists of any stripe, enjoy showing their work to fellow gardeners or oooh and ahhhhh types like myself. Cutting in flowerbeds, adding rocks, stones, and outdoor sculpture, tiny hand constructed pools complete with goldfish, and finding the right plants that will flourish in your environment requires patience. Some of the gardens on the tour have been in process for years.
These folks share tips and information. There are no proprietary secrets in this group. They’re eager to give ideas to the neophytes and share cuttings or little starter pots with anyone who asks.
They’ve got Farmer’s Almanac mentalities and plant flowers that will bloom from spring to late fall. Never a dull month in their gardens.
The result is a shade garden (left) chock full of several kinds of hosta and shade loving flowers plus funky, colorful little garden sculptures plonked around the shady stuff - “an urban perennial shade garden,” she says.
The son of one homeowner made a small rock lined pool and filled it with koi (goldfish) and comets and topped it with lilies that Monet would have loved.
The same gardener, Sharon Bauer, printed a pamphlet for visitors. “Wild flowers flourish around the edges, providing food for humans and animals. Milkweed attracts Monarch butterflies. Goldfinches flock to evening primrose seeds, mockingbirds to pokeweed berries. The pin cherry tree next to our driveway volunteered from a seed dropped by a bird, and now catbirds enjoy a feeding frenzy when the cherries are ripe. Bees love goldenrod. Plantain heals bee stings. Motherwort, yarrow, red clover, nettle, chickweed, lady’s thumb and many other 'weeds' provide good medicine.”
Henry David Thoreau, legendary naturalist who lived in nearby Concord, MA, would have been right at home in this intersection of random acts of nature and conscious acts of gardener. Maybe this is what he was thinking about when he said,"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."
Vines bearing Mucat grapes cover back porch
The Chemical Use Reduction and Education Task Force (CURE) that sponsored the tour is a project of the Watertown Citizens For Environmental Safety (WCES), which is committed to educating the public about the dangers and safe alternative solutions to chemical use in the house and garden.
Today was a tour de force that showed beauteous gardens can be created without the aid of pesticides. Imagination, patience, and a good work ethic will do it just fine.
Photos by Paul Tamburello
September 13, 2009 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (7)
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