"See the hospital? That's the Cambridge City Hospital, that's where the babies are born around here. You know the hospital? There's a new building we built.

"Harrison School's there. Cambridge is getting lots of new schools. I built that one."

One of us tried to appear knowledgeable by commenting on the good restaurants in Inman Square. And not to be outdone Vellucci began to name the owners of every other shop, men of all different nationalities. "We've got Portuguese, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Indian... There's an Italian pastry store, and that drugstore, no he's Portuguese."

Past Inman Square Vellucci seemed even more at home. He spoke to us as if we were complete strangers to Cambridge, as though we had never come up this way, had never gone to the courthouse or to Lechmere. He turned down side streets, doubling around blocks, pointing out all the houses with Vellucci placards on them. He stopped the car outside a small delicatessen and peered in past the salami to see who was there.

East Cambridge is Vellucci's home and he knows everybody there. As we drove down the street behind the courthouse we passed some boys about ten years old, walking in the street. Vellucci stopped the car short and veiled out the window, "Hey Benny, I caught you kid. What are you up to?"

From among the boys a low voice said, "It's all right. It's Al." Then louder. "Nothing Al, just taking a kid who's new here home."

"Nothing wrong is it? You're O.K.?"

"Sure. Al, everything's fine."

"Okay, see you."

"See you, Al."

We continued our tour. We drove down streets lined with two-and three-story wooden frame houses. They seemed old and worn, ripe for urban renewal. Vellucci explained how Cambridge was getting crowded and what pressures Harvard and M.I.T. were putting on the city and its people. He talked strongly and with pride about the community that East Cambridge is: how the men there are all skilled workers, how the Puerto Ricans get a much better deal living there instead of Boston, how he wanted it to stay just the way it is. He didn't want the homes replaced with high rises even if they were "low income" dwellings.

"People need a house to live in. It has to have its own back yard. There has to be space between it and the next house. People need this, otherwise they couldn't live."

He explained to us that East Cambridge had its own industry but added emphatically that the land was zoned so that all factories and warehouses were outside the residential area and couldn't encroach on the people's living space.

We crossed back over Cambridge Street down to an area near the tracks. There in front of us was a large plot of scarred land. Vellucci spoke enthusiastically of the plans the city (he) was carrying out there.

"You see all this. This was a field of oil storage barrels. We forced the owners to clear out and now we're going to put a skating rink for the kids in here. There'll be a park here too, with bocci courts. This'll be a place where everybody can come and relax."