Olds Rocket 98

By Paul Baker

I bet a lot of you remember the Olds Rocket 88 and 98 as these cars and engines were produced by the Olds division of GM instead of the common platform car manufacturers use today. Our family could ill afford this car, but my father had to have it. So in 1953 he purchased an Olds Rocket 98 sedan for $3300.00, a small fortune back then.
It was two-tone blue with a gray cloth interior.

The V8 engine produced about 160 HP, and it felt pretty fast for a heavy car. It had a lot more room than the 1949 Buick coupe we had as it was becoming difficult to squeeze in 4 kids. Of course, like today, every neighbor had to come over and check it out. I guess that’s a time honored tradition here in America.

The Olds 98 was a family sedan, and was used for just that, the family. On summer weekends we would all pile in and head for the beach. Back then the only way to get to the beaches was up old Rt. 1. My father wasn’t into Mass beaches as he preferred the long excursions to beaches in New Hampshire and Maine. Hampton Beach in New Hampshire was then, as it is today for the most part, a family beach and there were many stands where you could get food and most importantly, ice cream and salt water taffy.

I remember one time in August we rode up to York Beach, Maine, it was a beautiful beach but the sand texture was coarse along with a lot of rocks near the water’s edge. In Maine, no matter the time of year, the water is always frigid. I swear it would take me about a half hour to walk in up to my knees all the time listening to my teeth chatter, and then with all the courage I could muster, to finally dive in. It would only take a few minutes before you would turn blue and had to run back to the beach blanket and try to warm up. Overall, we kids didn’t like this beach, but my father went there mostly for the long drive in his Olds Rocket 98.

Returning to hot, old Everett, was a downer after leaving the cool and green Maine coastline. We lived on the second floor and it was hotter than hell in the summer. We didn’t even have a window fan and it was almost impossible to sleep during the summer months. About the only thing we kids could do was take a wet face cloth to bed with us and lay it over our face trying to keep ourselves cool.

In the provided photo taken in front of my home on Fremont Ave, I’m pictured sitting in the front seat and Charlie Marchese in the rear seat. Charlie was an Everett police detective and though retired from the force, still works in a local court. His daughter is a secretary to the police chief if I remember correctly, and guess what? He still lives in the same house that he grew up in.; he has lived over sixty four years in that house.

While I’m on the subject, let me tell you a little more about Charlie. If you recall the picture in the first episode about the Hospital Hill Gang, I’m sitting on a grassy area above the street curb, and the cool dude next to me is Charlie. Did you happen to observe how he was dressed?

Well, number one, he’s wearing aviator sun glasses, white shirt, khaki trousers, and dress shoes. Now Charlie didn’t get all dressed up for that picture, that was the way he always dressed, I mean, how many kids came out to play dressed like that? I can’t ever remember seeing Charlie dressed in blue jeans. Charlie was just one cool guy and felt he had to dress accordingly.

He also was the first kid I meet on Fremont Ave. I was headed to the Hamilton School for the first time one morning when I passed Charlie’s house which bordered the Pear Field on Fremont Ave. Charlie popped out of the front door and started talking to me like I was his long lost friend. He has never stopped talking all the years I’ve known him as he had the original motor mouth.

He was as good natured as they came, but if you got him mad then his Italian temper would come out. One time while I was visiting him, he was giving his older sister a hard time. She told him to either shut up or she was going to stuff his head in the toilet and flush it. Telling Charlie to be quiet was really a waste of time and he continued giving his sister back talk.

Next thing I knew she was dragging him off to the bathroom and true to her word, shoved his head into the toilet bowl and flushed it. I couldn’t believe my eyes as Charlie’s head disappeared into the white foamy water, and would you believe it, once he came up for air, he was still talking! You just had to love this guy.

The summer recess from school was nothing but play time for us kids. One of our favorite games was what we called “A Game of Guns.” A lot of the kids didn’t even have a cap pistol to play with and I would hand out what I had. Somehow I managed to assemble an arsenal of hand guns.

If I needed to make a weapon, I would take a piece of wood and saw and shape it to resemble a rifle. I would nail on a wooden piece to resemble the clip magazine, and nail on an old leather belt so I could sling it over my shoulder like a real soldier would. We would divide up into teams, and give the enemy time to hide, and then we would hunt them down.

If you had caps, then you would fire your pistol and yell out “gotcha Freddy”, if you didn’t then bang was all you needed to yell out. Our yards didn’t have fences so we could travel down a beaten path thru other neighbor’s yards that lead to vacant house lots so there were plenty of places to hide.

One time we divided up into teams of boys and girls, it was the first time we ever did this and we boys snickered at the thought that the girls could defeat us in a game of guns. We waited a few minutes for them to hide, and then we charged down the drive ways to the back yards all the time yelling and whooping it up.

Once we got down to the yards, we couldn’t find the girls, no sounds, no bang I got you, nothing. Where we they? We soon found out. Under some of the back steps leading up to the first level porches of our homes, there was a shed built underneath. In one of these sheds were a lot of protruding guns, and a lot of bangs which in a couple of minutes wiped us out. That was the last time we played the game that way, the girls were too savvy.

Another popular game was ball tag where one kid was it, and he had to hit another kid with the ball so that kid became it. I know these games sound simple, but it’s all we had unlike today’s kids that are entertained by other’s inventions. Bellevue, Garland, Lawrence, and Harvard Streets were our game boundaries which gave us a wide range of territory.

One of our favorite pass times was climbing the small maple trees that lined the front of the nurse’s home. On a windy day, we would climb up to the top branch and get a free ride whenever a gust of wind would blow. It was a blast swaying in the wind hanging onto a small branch.

Behind the Nurse’s Home was a flag pole and we would untie the rope and use it for a wild ride. The ground sloped behind this building so you could get a running start then jump and go for a ride around the pole. Hopefully, you had a large enough arc so that you didn’t slam back into the pole.

On the other side of Garland St, was large, sloping field we called “the back of the hills.” In the winter, we would go back there for skiing. I bet that they weren’t too many Everett kids that had a skiing area nearby their homes. Needless to say, these fields are long gone.

How many of you remember Duncan yoyos? We heard that a rep from Duncan yoyos was coming to the playground on Hancock St by Sunnyside Ave., and there was to be a contest. I wasn’t much of a yoyo player and could barely make the yoyo sleep, but I decided to enter anyway. The rep challenged us to do different tricks, and I was soon eliminated from the contest. But the winner got a white diamond studded yoyo. We kids thought that it must have been worth at least $1,000.

When I read Paul’s articles about the games he and his friends played, it sort of amazes me that even though we are from different generations, we basically played the same games. I guess that's what makes growing up in Everett so special, and why many years later, we still come back to our childhood homes to relive the best years of our lives.