Rain Rain Go Away

I’ve been living on this planet for almost sixty years now and I still don’t get the gist of what all of this is supposed to be about. What I do know is that nothing ever goes as planned. My mother often said that things always find a way of working themselves out. The down side is that when they do, the end result is usually the one I was hoping to avoid in the first place.

All I ever wanted out of life was a simple plan. What I got was endless miles of bad road, complications galore, and perpetual string of unfortunate events. I should have known better. All of the telltale signs were right there in front of me ever since I was a little kid living down on Arlington Street. I just didn’t see it.

Let me take you back to one of many dismal school days I spent in the Everett public school system. I’m mind traveling back to this one particular day in my third grade class at the Horace Mann. We’re talking sometime around 1961. That was the year that read the same way upside down as it did right side up. I remember my teacher making a big deal out of that.

From the very start I knew that I would never forget this day. It was that terrible. That was one morning that my mother didn’t have to wake me up for school. The rolling thunder outside did that for her.

You couldn’t see out the window because the morning sky was as black as night. And the rain came down so hard you’d swear you were living right under Niagara Falls. Billy, Julie, and Carl were all sick in bed with a bad cold so I was going off to school alone. What a terrible feeling that was.

I always delighted in the fact that my older brothers and sister were right upstairs from my classroom. It gave me a sense of security and confidence. It was something to lean on. Going without that was like pulling the rug out from under me.

My dad couldn’t get his car started again that morning. We still had one of those clunkers with the split windshield. You can only imagine how obnoxious that was when you had to sit in the middle, especially at the Meadow-Glen drive-in.

So anyway, when I sat down to my bowl of Cheerios at the kitchen table, I had to listen to the ungodly sound of that old worn out engine crank over and over again to no avail. Well, that, and a wall of noise from the driving rain that pounded against the window.

My mother didn’t have time to sit and chat with me that morning. She was too busy running hither and yon dispensing cough syrup and taking temperatures. Thank gawd for Jack Chase on the living room TV. If not for him, there’d have been nobody to say, “So long and make it a good day,” just before closing the door behind me.

You couldn’t get me to carry an umbrella for all the tea in China. They seemed so clunky and awkward. I had enough to deal with anyway. My raincoat was one of those black-hooded rubber thingies that snapped shut from your chin to just below your knees. It had a zero insulation value. It kept you dry, but the rubber got so cold that you felt every bit of that damp chill.

Let me clarify that. It only kept you dry down to just above your knees. Every drop of rain ran down along the outside of it until it found its way to the leg of your pants. My Gators stopped the rain from soaking my feet. You gotta remember Gators – right?

Gators were those black rubber rain boots you pulled up over your shoes that snapped shut with a series of metal latches that ran up along the front of them. They also had a zero insulation value, but they did keep your feet dry. So between your raincoat and your Gators, the only thing that got wet were the laps of your pants. And they got soaking wet.

Taking your Gators off when you get to school is one of the more difficult tasks you’ll undertake in your lifetime, especially when you’re only eight or nine years old. Gators have a way of clutching onto your shoes like a rusty lug nut. That’s not the only thing that makes the task so difficult, but you’ve also got to deal with an inappropriate work area.

At the Horace Mann we had cast iron clothes hooks mounted on the wall outside of every classroom. Those hooks were just above eye level, and beneath them is where we kicked off our boots. What that means is that 30 soaking wet raincoats dripped down onto the hardwood floor.

If you were one of the stragglers who always showed up ten seconds before the late bell, you were greeted with a puddle that was deep enough to wash the mud off your hands with. What you wouldn’t find is a dry spot big enough to plank your ass down to pull off your Gators.

The first Gator was no big deal. You just used the toe of your other Gator against the heel of your opposite one to kick it off. And without fail, your shoe came off with it. It was stuck down inside your Gator. You would suspect that all you had to do then was reach down inside to pull it out – right? It wasn’t that easy.

Because you're standing in that puddle beneath those dripping raincoats, you can’t put your first foot down because all you’ve got on it is a sock. So now you’ve got to hop around on one foot while trying to yank your shoe out of your Gator. And to think that some grownups have the audacity to say that kids don't have problems.

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the way that Gator gripped your shoe was the initial inspiration for super glue. Man, that thing was like trying to yank the wisdom tooth out of a rhinoceros. By the time you got your first shoe out of your Gator you were exhausted, and you still had the other one to deal with.

You’re still not in the clear once you do finally crawl out from under all of that rain gear. Ten to one your tie is crooked, your hair’s all messed up, and your dress shirt is so twisted that your top button popped open. You know what that means – don’t cha? It means that the teacher can see your underwear.

You younguns out there are not going to believe this, but if you showed up for school without an undershirt on they’d send you back home with a note to your mom demoralizing the evils of indecent expose. I kid you not.

Before you even think about stepping into that classroom, you better make damn sure that your teacher cannot see the collar rim of your undershirt behind your tie. And you better make damn sure that your tie is straight, your shirttails are neatly tucked into your trousers, and that your hair is neatly combed, because if it isn’t, your teacher will let out with a scream that could blast the paint right off the walls.

I used the term “trousers” because I once said, “pants” to my teacher and she threw a fit at me saying, “Trousers, please, pants sounds so vulgar.” That’s a true story.

So let’s touch upon your neatly combed hair. By the time you get that excess rain baggage off you’ve got a bed head that looks like a porcupine. It happens every time. Now how many eight-year-old boys do you know who carry a pocket comb around in their back pocket? I don’t know a single one.

That’s where your handkerchief comes in handy. By dipping it into that puddle underneath the raincoats you can wipe it across your hair like a hairbrush. Does it work? How should I know?

They never gave us a mirror outside of the classroom so the best you could do was to just wing it. If you headed off to the boy’s room without permission you’d wind up standing in the corner for the rest of the day. It was a catch twenty-two if there ever was one.

It was always around this time that the teacher came storming out of the classroom yelling, “What are you doing out here? You’re always the last one into the classroom. Can’t you do anything right?”

That’s exactly how that day started. And it only went downhill from there. For on that day, a despondent dreariness loomed over the entire classroom.

So like I said, the sky was as dark as night outside. The fluorescent lights overhead continually flickered and buzzed and sputtered, but couldn't muster the strength to burn back the gloom of that dismal school day.

The teacher paced slowly about the room with her hands folded behind her back, banging her heels against the echoing hardwood floor like a Gestapo in search of a security breech. Should so much as one eyelash flicker out of synch with the rest of the class, she'd have a cow and a half beyond belief. You didn't dare make a move.

I sat at my desk, gazing out the window in utter despair. It felt like being stranded on a desolate planet. My blood ran cold. I just wanted to go home. You probably recall such a school day yourself.

When you’re a little kid, the outside world is a vast wilderness just waiting for you to explore. It’s what you gazed out the window at while cranking away at that pencil sharpener mounted on the windowsill. That is precisely why your pencil so often dwindled away to nothing in no time flat. And as soon as it happened you knew you were up the creek without a paddle.

There’s no way on earth that you could turn around to your teacher and say, “I need another pencil.” Well you could, depending on the teacher, and you may eventually get one, but not before getting chastised in front of the entire class for wasting public property.

More often than not they felt compelled to make an example out of you, so they’d send you back to your seat and make you write with that tiny facsimile of a writing instrument. If the day isn’t bad enough already, you now had to grip your pencil between your fingernails and try to write like that.

You know what my favorite past time was on a school day like that? You guessed it. Watching the clock. There’s just something about a school clock that can turn a minute into an eternity. I just wish I could make my life, as it is right now, progress at the same rate of speed as the clocks they hung on the wall at the Horace Mann. Those clocks held the secret to the elusive fountain of youth, I swear.

Use your photographic memory to bring that classroom clock back into focus. Look at the massive size of that thing. No wonder it took so long for that minute hand to move. It looked like it weighed more than a sack of potatoes.

You’d know when it was about to tick off another minute because before it did, it cocked back like the hammer on a revolver and held steady until it built up enough thrust to make its move. It’s like waiting for the second shoe to drop when you’re perched and ready for the dismissal bell to ring.

When it finally does, you don’t just leap out of your seat and lunge for the door, even though that’s exactly what all of your basic instincts tell you to do. Don’t forget, we’re talking the feudal public school system back in the days of rabbit ear antennas, horizontal and vertical control knobs, and Ma Bell's party-line telephone service. We’re talking the dark ages here.

Before releasing a bunch of uncivilized hooligans like us onto an unsuspecting public, they lined us up into two uniform rows, one for the boys, and one for the girls. I guess the logic behind that was to protect us from each other’s cooties. It must have worked because I never once came down with a severe case of cooties. I honestly don’t know of anyone who did.

Once that dismissal bell rang, we single filed out into the corridors, down the stairways, and then out into freedom. From the moment you stepped off of that school property, right up until you stepped into the front door of your house, the world was your oyster. That little stretch of real estate was yours.

There were a billion and one things for you to do on your way home from school. Besides sticking those whirligigs from the maple trees onto the end of your nose, you could float a Popsicle stick in the water streaming along the gutter to see if it will follow you all the way home, or you could just as easily give into your inner animal instincts and go stamping through the deeper puddles.

You do have to keep a sharp eye out for some of the bigger kids, though. What you’ve got to watch out for is that look they get in their eye when they’re up to no good. If you’re not quick enough you could easily wind up on the receiving end of a headlock followed by fifty-two noogies.

Once you step into that front door you are no longer in control of your environment. Your mother takes over from that point on. And you know what you’ve got to do without her even saying so much as a single word.

First things first, get out of those school clothes. Then take out the garbage. And you know here that goes, don’t cha? No, you don’t wrap it up in a plastic bag and throw it in with the trash, not at least for another decade or so.

You dump the garbage down into that bucket with the step lid on it out in the backyard. Just make sure you hold your breath before you step on that lever or you’ll projectile vomit from the smell alone.

On second thought, don’t even look down in there. It looks like a boiled dinner covered with maggots and flies. That’s the best way I can think of to describe it. And that was precisely the image I conjured up in my mind’s eye whenever I asked, “What’s for supper?” And my mother came back with, “We’re having a nice boiled dinner.”

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. The word “nice” and the term “boiled dinner” cannot coexist within the same sentence. It doesn’t make any sense. Putting “wicked” and “pissah” together makes far more sense than that.

To a little kid, there is no such thing as a nice, or a good, or a delicious boiled dinner. It doesn’t exist. The only proper adjectives you can use to describe a boil dinner include, “rancid,” “disgusting,” “foul,” “repulsive,” and “nauseating,” just to name a few. When in reference to a boiled dinner, the adjective must be in the derogatory.

Chances are that your mother was out of something when you got home from school so it was up to you to go and get it before you could go out to play. If she doesn’t send you next door to borrow a cup of sugar, or a couple of eggs, then you’ll more than likely have to run down to the corner variety for something else. If she’s got the money for it, then you may be lucky enough to hear those mind-blowing words, “Keep the change.”

“The change,” as she so aptly referred to it as, was usually somewhere in the vicinity of around three or four cents. Every so often it actually reached the unbelievable zenith of a whole nickel. With a whole nickel you could go mental at the candy store for an hour and a half just hemming and hawing over what to get.

I can’t honestly think of any candy that cost more than a nickel when I was in elementary school. Believe it or not, a Chunky did cost a whole nickel, and I’d have given them serious consideration had they not stuck raisins in them. What kind of a knothead would stick a raisin in the middle of chocolate in the first place?

If she didn’t have any money that was no big deal either. You just went down to the store and got whatever it was that she needed and said, “Put it on our tab.” When you got paid they got paid. There was no interest, no late penalty fees, and nobody reported it to Equifax.

Once you got all of those after-school obligations out of the way you were free to join your friends outside to roam all over the neighborhood until your dad gets home from work. As soon as you see your dad pull over to the curb you know that it’s suppertime. Even if you do have to suffer through a boiled dinner, don’t dilly-dally because there will only be hell to pay if you do.

Kids from Everett learn a lot from each other. We share insider secrets on how to handle just about every dilemma you’re bound to come up against in life. You’ll get a far more practical education on our sidewalk network of communications than you ever will in school.

You’ll learn a foolproof way to ball your broccoli up in a napkin and hide it under your lap until you can get excused to go to the bathroom. You’ll even learn how to flush it down the toilet after you’ve faked a pee.

After supper, homework, and baths are out of the way, we gathered in the living room for a family night of TV. Being the youngest, I rarely got pick what to watch. Truth be told, my dad got first dibs on whatever we were going to watch until bedtime.

I’ll tell you one thing, tho. Just once I’d like to see Perry Mason lose a case. I just wanted to see the look on his face when his client got that guilty verdict. And wasn’t it kind of odd how the real culprit was always right there in the courtroom? To a little kid that show was about as exciting as watching paint dry.

I never thought the day would ever come when we would have more than one TV in our house. Can you imagine the luxury of going off to your own room, closing the door behind you, and watching whatever you wanted to watch without any interuptions. That’d be the day – right?

By the time I got up into Everett High School I did buy my own little TV for my room. That turned out to be more of an end to an era, than it was the start of something good. My oldest brother was off fighting in Vietnam. My big sister got married and moved out. And my mother took on an afternoon job at Transitron in Melrose.

We hardly ever sat down to the supper table together anymore. Everybody had something to do, or someplace to go. And heck, you could pop into McDonald’s on the Parkway for a burger, a fry, and a coke, for less than fifty cents. Who needs to cook?

Yeah, I could lay back in the privacy of my own room and watch the “Twilight Zone,” but there was nobody there to share it with, or to talk to, or to throw popcorn at. And a year or so later I bought a Volkswagen Beetle so I was hardly ever home myself anymore.

That’s not the way I expected it to turn out at all. I somehow naively believed we would always be there for each other at the end of every day. I should have known that nothing lasts forever. I should have realized that the day I had to go off to school by myself. Heck, I should have figured that one out just by watching the seasons change on that maple tree in front of our house on Arlington Street.

I’d give anything to gather my whole family back together again for one last meal. I’d even eat my whole boiled dinner without balling up my broccoli in a napkin under my lap. No foolin.

I will never break bread again with my whole family in this lifetime. I can’t because some of them have journeyed beyond the far horizon. They will live on forever in my heart. I visit with them often. They still bring a smile to my lips, a tear to my eyes, and a comfort to my soul when I grow weary, but they themselves have gone to the ages.

What they left behind is a lifetime legacy of memories. It’s what makes me strong when all else fails. It’s what makes me who I am. It’s what I believe in.

So now that I think about it, maybe most of the things we dreamt about when we were little kids didn’t turn out the way we expected them to, but one thing we never once suspected actually did.

And that is that we really do belong to a lifelong fraternity of family, acquaintances, and friends. We share this journey together, and are very much a part of each other’s lives. We belong together because – “We’re from Everett!”
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