The other day, a young friend of mine, a journalist of promise whose focus is on Dorchester, told me that he and two pals were looking into renting a place on Lonsdale street, which runs east to west from Hemenway Park on Adams Street up to Dorchester Avenue, where the low numbers begin. "What kind of rent are you looking at?" I asked him. "$450 plus utilities," he said, "for each of us."

As happens more and more these days, as I move halfway through age 60, any mention of Dorchester and St. Mark's Parish and Lonsdale Street transports my mind back two score years and ten or so to a time when all seemed right with the world, a time when all the family pictures, and all questions of right and wrong, were rendered in black and white.

But the mention of rent &emdash; in this case, $1,350 plus utilities per month for a five-room flat &emdash; summoned up especially vivid memories of my life on that street where I lived in Mary and Anna Ford's two-family house at Number 22 from 1943 to 1976. Mary, to use the term of the time, "kept house" while Anna went off to work each day at the New England Telephone Co. where she was a supervisor. Neither married, but they had family: Their older brother Thomas was a priest in the Boston archdiocese (he was a pastor by the time I was born) and their younger sister Catherine, who was married to Martin Larner of Waltham, lived in Forest Hills, New York. The Larners, who were childless, adopted the Mulvoys downstairs for several weeks each summer when they came to stay with Mary and Anna. The fact that they came by train, from Grand Central Station to Penn Station in New York to South Station in Boston, lent an air of the exotic to the couple, at least in the eyes of a young boy whose world was contained essentially in the blocks between the Ashmont and Fields Corner stations of the MTA.

My parents, Tom and Julia (Harrington) Mulvoy, met Mary and Anna Ford several weeks before they were married, in September 1940 and were accepted as the new tenants of the five-room flat on the first floor, which comprised a 10-by-12 bedroom at front left, the living room and dining room at front right, a bathroom off the hallway, the kitchen, a walk-in pantry, a 10-by-12 bedroom at the back right, and a back porch where laundry could be set to dry.

The rent was $36 a month, payable on the first. It was a goodly sum to the young couple; my father at the time had been a clerk at the South Postal Annex for three years and my mother, who had worked at Sears & Roebuck, was going to stay home and raise their family, which was not long in coming. Mark was born in August 1941: I first slept at 22 Lonsdale in February of '43; Bobby came along a year later, in February 1944; Mary arrived in June 1947; Jimmy kept it in the decade, joining the gang in February 1949; and in March 1953, Patty Anne completed the team, but only for a while. She died on the afternoon of June 3, a little doll in white turned blue in her carriage on the first-floor porch of Number 22.

Hindsight suggests strongly that the seven Mulvoys were cramped in that five-room flat, but what did we know? Our experience &emdash; up to a point, that is &emdash; was shared by countless families in the neighborhood. The difference was that we had Mary and Anna Ford as keepers of our house. As was the case with virtually all of our neighbors, pride of place marked the street, which was full of trees from the avenue to the park until the hurricanes of the 1950s blew down all but a few of them. Mary Ford tended to Number 22 with loving care. It was painted when it needed to be spiffed up, and from time to time a carpenter came by to fix this or that; the lawn, shrubs and two large trees were kept neat and trimmed, and the sidewalk and gutter received a sweeping most every day.

When they looked up in the mid-1950s and saw a bunch of teenagers in the house with them, my parents figured it was time to put a shower into the bathroom. I was standing behind my mother when Mary came downstairs to inspect the new deal, which she had, of course, approved. "How much did this cost, dear," Mary asked to Julie. My mother told her and said that this was something she and my father had already paid for. "This my house," said Mary, "and I'll take care of all improvements. I won't accept any rent from you until the bill is paid."

From 1941 on, as the kids kept coming along, each and every birth, baptism, birthday, First Communion, Confirmation, graduation, and wedding was noted by a card and a few dollars from Mary and Anna. When one of us got sick, soon enough there would be a knock on the back door and Mary would come in with a large tray of her delicious Spanish cream pie, a box of cookies, and maybe some ice cream. I still have the card Mary sent to me in 1974 when I was named assistant sports editor of The Globe. In it was a ten-dollar bill with the notation, "Treat yourself to a sundae."

Father Ford died in 1952, Anna Ford died in the late 1960s, and Catherine followed just a few years later. By 1976, Mary was dying, too. I still lived on the first floor, with occasional stayovers at my parents‚ house in Braintree, and on the first of the month that she died I paid the last rent by a Mulvoy at 22 Lonsdale Street. It was a check for $36 made out to Mary Ford.

Over 36 years, the Fords never raised the rent on the Mulvoys. As time went by, the situation became a source of private embarrassment to my folks and they would tell Mary they wanted to pay more. She had one response to their urgings, and she said it more than once over the years: "You take care of your babies‚ bodies and minds, and I'll take care of the roof over their heads."

In her will, Mary left the house to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church, which promptly sold it. Number 22 today in no way resembles the home where Mary Ford took care of the Mulvoys, but when I drive by these days, I don't see what's there now; it's once again a day in the 1950s and one of us is dressed in white, standing on the steps having a picture taken while Mary and Anna Ford stand at the door in the background, guardian angels on watch.

Thomas F. Mulvoy, Jr. is a former managing editor of the Boston Globe and a columnist for the Globe City Weekly section.