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I love waking up on a summer morning in Everett. Any time you can wake up in the morning without all the stress associated with getting ready for school is all right by me. If you don't look out the window, you'd swear you just woke up on the side of a country road. The birds are singing. The leaves are rustling. And you only hear that Doppler swish of a random automobile slowly passing by.

My big brother, Billy, was one of the first people I knew to buy one of those radio alarm clocks that wakes you up with music instead of that gawd awful electric buzz. This is great. The first thing I hear every morning is the sound of Carl DeSuze on WBZ.

For a while there, he had Jess Cain on WHDH programmed into the alarm, but my mother got furious over the wild antics on his show at that hour in the morning. Then he went over to Pat Patterson on WCOP. As it turned out, Carl DeSuze was the only one my mother could tolerate listening to that early in the morning. I suppose she should be thankful that Arnie Woo Woo Ginsberg's Night Train didn't come on in the morning - right?

Speaking of listening to the radio. If you go the Extra page on my "Growing Up Everett" web site, there's a new MP3 sound file for you to download. Go ahead, you're going to love this. Listen to a scan of the Boston radio stations from the 1950's to the late 1960's. This will trigger a floodgate of nostalgia for ya - I promise.

Billy had to get up early because he worked for Henry Gray's Auctioneer down on Ferry Street. He loaded the trucks, took inventory, and helped Henry and Paul Gray get their auctions all set up. He had a nice little job going for himself there. It kept him out of trouble (finally), and he was scraping enough money together to buy his first car. I couldn't wait.

So why did I have to get up at the crack of dawn on a summer morning? Hey people, I'm no slacker. I had a paper route.

My paper route was the largest of them all out of Robey's newspaper office up there on Broadway. It was actually my brother Carl who came up with this brainstorm. Because Carl suffered from epilepsy, Robey wouldn't give him a paper route. Before you go dissing Robey, you've got to understand his concerns. Robey was afraid that if Carl had a seizure while delivering newspapers, he may wander out into the middle of traffic and get himself killed.

What happened is that three of Carl's friends decided to quit their paper routes. Carl took all three of those routes and combined them into one. Then he gave them to me. I'm the one responsible for the route. I go up to Robey's office, get the newspapers, and meet Carl down around the corner behind Chestnut Hill Pharmacy to give him half of the newspapers. He delivers half of the route and I deliver the other half. We split the take.

I so vividly recall that first morning I walked into Robey's office to take over this route. For those of you who don't know, Robey's office was that first string of stores up on Broadway at the opposite end from DiBlasi's sub shop. Of course, Dablasi's wasn't there yet, but I cannot for the life of me remember what was there that far back.

Well anyway, it was in the wee hours of the morning when I showed up at Robie's office. A couple of guys kept running in and out of Robie's office carrying bundles of newspapers from the delivery truck. None of the other paper boys had shown up yet.

There was nothing fancy about this place - believe me. All along the left wall was a long wide shelf for the paper boys to fold and roll their newspapers. Along the right wall was a long and wide bench that Robey and his assistant, Dave, stood behind to stack the bundles for each paper route and count change.

Robey was a white haired older guy with glasses. He was thin, kind of short, and always grouchy and snappy. Dave was a younger, stronger guy with a crew cut. Dave always had a pleasant way about him. His personality really helped brighten the atmosphere in that dingy newspaper office.

The only lighting in the place came from the three or four simple warehouse drop lights that hung from the ceiling, and whatever daylight could filter in through the soap they smeared all over the front plate glass window. All the walls were bare except for a couple of notices they had tacked up that nobody ever read. Beneath us was a well-worn hardwood floor that nobody ever swept.

When I first stepped into the place, Robey dropped his glasses down to the end of his nose and snapped, "What you want?"

"I'm your new paper boy."

"I don't have any new routes. Besides, you gotta put your name on the waiting list."

"I don't need a list, I already have a route," I said handing him a note from each of the three kids who had surrendered their routes. He snapped the notes out of my hand and readjusted his glasses.

"You gonna be able to deliver a hundred and sixty newspapers every day? A little guy like you?"

"No problem."

"I'm not so sure I can risk it."

"Give me a chance. I'll surprise you."

"Here fill this out," He said handing me a personal info contact sheet. "I'll give you a week to see if it works out. I trusted these guys. They must've had some faith in you to give you their routes. If it doesn't work out, you're gone. Understood?"

"Sounds fair enough."

"What's your name?"

"Paul."

"You gotta last name?"

"Yeah, Huffman."

"Where do you live?"

"Fourteen Arlington Street."

"You know Mister McGlaughlin?"

"I live right downstairs from him."

"Good. I'll give him a call today while you're out delivering your papers. If he says you're all right, then you're in. You got it?'

"Yeah, that's cool."

"Give him his papers, Dave."

Dave slid three stacks of papers across the table towards me, giving me a nod and a wink to welcome me into the fold. He turned out to be a real great guy.

"I'll need another paper bag."

"Take half your route now and come back for the other half," Robey snapped.

"I can't do that. The first half of my route ends down the Lynde. I'll be late making my deliveries. I'll lose customers."

"All right, all right, here's another bag. Take good care of these things. They cost money," he said throwing another bag across the room at me.

The other thing that sticks out in my mind as I gathered my newspapers that morning was how fast Robey and Dave could count and roll pennies. Man, those dudes could count and roll pennies faster than you could blink. I did get pretty good at it myself after a while, but nothing like these two guys. They were the masters.

By now the place was filling up with paperboys. I knew half of these kids already. This was great. We all shot the "you know what" and shared a few laughs while gathering our routes together. It's great not having to watch your language when you're just a bunch of guys. Guys take liberties when there's no girls around.

Once I got all my newspapers rolled and folded, I slung those two bags over my shoulders and headed out for my first day on my new paper route. What I couldn't do is let Robey know these two heavy bags were breaking my back. I couldn't wait to meet up with Carl behind Chestnut Hill Pharmacy to unload one of these heavy bags.

Sharing my paper route with Carl did have its drawbacks. There was one time in particular that I remember my father pulling up along side of me down the Lynde one morning to tell me that Carl had been rushed to the hospital. He had a seizure. My father had no idea where his newspapers were or whether or not they had been delivered.

What I had to do was retrace his steps. I found his newspaper bag in the gutter on Nichols Street. His newspapers were scattered all over the sidewalk. After gathering up his papers, I had to go to every house on the list to find out which ones got delivered so I could finish his route. And here I thought I was finished for the day.

Another incident that comes to mind is the time Carl and I got into an argument while standing in front of Chestnut Hill Pharmacy. The whole time we were arguing, he was standing on top of my newspaper bag. I don't remember now what that argument was all about, but I remember telling him to go finish his route and we'd straighten it out later.

Without thinking, I grabbed a hold of my newspaper bag strap and yanked it from under him. He fell backwards right through Chestnut Hill Pharmacy's plate glass window. A large shard of glass sheared a good chunk of his ear almost completely off. He stumbled backwards through the window, knocking over the magazine rack, landing on his back in the middle of the floor. There was blood everywhere.

They had to call an ambulance to rush him up to the Whidden to stitch up that gash in his ear. Man, I was scared to death to go home after finishing my route that day. I was certain my Dad was going to tear me in half after that one. I took my sweet time delivering newspapers that day - I'll tell ya.

The moment I stepped in the door, Carl started. He was sitting there at the kitchen table with my mother and father. You should have seen that field dressing wrapped around his head. "This was all his fault," he shouted pointing his finger at me.

"Grace," my father said, "Take Carl into the living room. Paul and I need to talk." "So here it comes," I thought. Thankfully though, it wasn't anything like that at all.

My Dad explained that he was relieving Carl from delivering newspapers. It was just too risky. He told me to do whatever I felt necessary to do to make that paper route suitable for just one person. "You're on your own," he said. "I'll find chores around the house for Carl so he can earn some pocket money. That way he can stay close to home where we can keep an eye on him."

That's exactly how it went. There was no yelling, screaming, or accusations. This was great. Rather than get stuck with a paper route that was really too much for one kid to handle, I gave away a third of my route. I let go of the portion that was south of Ferry Street.

Once that paper route became my sole responsibility, it became less of a bother and a far more rewarding experience. I had some really nice customers. The only bad customer I ever remember having was a lady who never paid her bill.

Every once in a while you'd find one of those little yellow tags sticking out of the side of your stack of newspapers. It was either a complaint or a new customer slip. On this particular Monday morning, I got a slip for this new customer on Linden Street.

This new customer requested that I place the newspaper between her storm and front door. That meant I had to get off my bike for that delivery. Okay, so once in a while you go that extra mile - right? On Friday mornings, everybody left their money in envelopes out in their mailboxes for me to pick up. If they forgot, I'd have to go back on Saturday.

It was understandable that my new customer forgot to leave her money out on the first week. Hey, it was a new delivery and I'm sure she just simply forgot. When the envelope wasn't there on Saturday morning, I rang the doorbell.

This grouchy looking wench in a housecoat and curlers yanked open the door and yelled, "What are you ringing my door bell for at this hour in the morning?"

"You didn't pay me for the newspaper delivery."

"I left the money out in the mail box," she shouted.

"Well it's not there. I checked."

"Don't give me that. I know your scam. There's no way I'm paying you twice!" she slammed the door shut in my face.

Okay, so maybe there was a mix up. I continued to deliver her newspaper for another week. On the following Friday however, there was no envelope in the mailbox again. Rather than wait until Saturday, I went up and knocked on the door. Again she gave me the money in the mailbox routine. This was early on Friday morning. There's no way she put that envelope out there.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I can no longer deliver newspapers that I don't get paid for." I couldn't. I was paying for her newspapers out of my own pocket. What kind of business sense does that make?

Well, you should have heard the language that came out of that lady's mouth. I mean really, I was just a little kid. She said things that we don't even say amongst ourselves down at the newspaper office. At the end of it all, she threatened to call Robey's office to get me fired.

Sure enough, when I got back to the office after delivering my papers, Robey was livid, to say the least. After going up one side of me and down the other, I snapped. This was the only time Robey ever saw me lose my temper. And man, what I didn't say to that guy. It worked though let me tell ya. He dropped that customer like a hot potato.

I suppose the city is no longer safe enough for a little kid to go off on his bike in the wee hours of the morning by himself delivering newspapers. What a pity. That was a great way for kids to learn how to earn and manage money. Over the Christmas holiday season I would rake in almost a hundred bucks in tips alone. For a twelve year old kid, that was like a million dollars.

Other than those handful of incidences, plus that drunk guy who followed me all the way up Walnut Street one Christmas morning, my paper route was one of the most rewarding experiences of my childhood growing up in Everett. I not only met a lot of really nice people, but some of those acquaintances proved very beneficial later on in life.

A handful of my customer made such a lasting impression on me that I never forgot them even after all these years. One of them was Charlie Merrenghi. Back then, he supervised the City of Everett's Park Department.

Many decades later, I had the pleasure of getting to know Charlie on a more personal level. I now fully understand why the city of Everett's playgrounds were so well cared for and supervised. Charlie Merrenghi was such a credit to the civil servants of our city that I strongly believe they should, at the very least, name a park in his memory.

How many of you people remember Frank Digby? If my memory serves me well, he was a detective on the Everett Police Force for many years. That guy was one real class act - believe you me. As was his side-kick, Huck Flanagan. Flanagan's son, Marty, and I were good friends growing up.

Up on Waverly Ave was Rae Goodwin. He and his brother migrated to Everett from Nova Scotia. Many years later, I worked along side of Rae and his brother at the cemetery. For some funny reason I cannot recall his brother's name. This is terrible. I knew this guy for years. You see? This is what happens to ya when you begin to get on in years.

Both of those guys had really great families. I fondly remember how these two guys teased me about how my ancestors were "two boaters." I guess that's what they called the "Newfies."

Another incident I fondly recall involved another really nice family on Waverly Ave who had a really big collie. This dog went ballistic every time I delivered their newspaper. On Christmas Eve, they invited me into their home so their dog would get to know me better. They figured that would stop him from going crazy every time I delivered the paper.

He sat there ever so dutifully while I patted him. I was still a little nervous anyway. They gave me a piece of candy. Just as I was about to put it in my mouth, they laughingly shouted, "No, no, don't eat that! That's dog candy!"

There was a really nice old Italian lady down the Lynde that always gave me home made chocolate chip cookies. I never knew her name. It broke my heart the day I found out that she passed away. I can still picture that heart-warming smile of hers even to this day.

There was another nice lady on Walnut Street who always left a homemade brownie for me along with my pay envelope on Friday mornings. She had one of the cutest little enclosed front porches that was so quaintly decorated. I remember a wall plaque she had that showed a fat lady in an apron carrying a steaming pot to the stove. It read, "The hurrier I go - the behinder I get." Isn't it funny how little things like that stick out in your mind sometimes?

These special people left lasting impressions that remained dear to my heart throughout my whole life. Like I always say, it was the people who made Everett special. So I guess that makes us special. Because after all - "We're From Everett."

Summer in the City

It's summer in the city. No more pencils, no more books, and no more teachers' dirty looks. What kid didn't storm out of school laughing and skipping all the way home on the last day of school? I sure did. I can tell you that.

From this moment on, we're all up at the crack of dawn - aren't we? Everett comes to life in the summer. I couldn't care less about what's on TV now. Besides, my mother's got the TV all tied up watching Dave Garroway on the "Today" show every weekday morning anyway. After a quick splash behind the ears and a fast bowl of cheerios, I'm out the door.

On my way out towards the open road I can hear my mother's last minute instructions fading off into the distance. "Be careful crossing the street. Look both ways. Don't go running in and out of the house all day long. You're either in or you're out. Stay away from those bigger kids. They're nothing but trouble. Don't go spending all your money down at the Summer Street Market (gee whiz, I've only got a nickel). Wipe your feet off before you go traipsing mud all over the house, and wash your hands before you eat anything."

I've heard it all so many times before that it's programmed into my frontal lobe. As soon as I get outside I'll clip that well-worn Bill Monbouquette Topp's baseball card to the back tire of my bike and I'm gone. On weekday mornings, I'm off to the Horace Mann school playground.

Because of the Horace Mann playground, Foster Street became somewhat of a pivot point for our neighborhood. Back then, the city of Everett employed High School girls on a part-time basis to act as school ground teachers. It must have been a trying experience for these girls sometimes.

Every summer, the kids held an initiation day for the new school ground teacher. They pulled harmless pranks, played tricks on them, and at the end of that day we soaked them with water balloons. It was all in good fun. After initiation day, we respected and honored the authority of the school ground teacher.

Out of all the school ground teachers who worked the Horace Mann, I only remember Marsha and Judy. Marsha grew up on the corner of Villa Ave and Foster Street. She came from a very nice family. I vaguely remember how pleasant and friendly her mother was, even though I was so very young. I still remember what her mother looked like. I don't know why I remember that. I do remember how disappointed I was when Marsha did not return as a school ground teacher the following year. She went off to college.

There was another school ground teacher before her who lived at the corner of Foster and High Street. It was so long ago, and I was so very young, that I cannot recall her name. I do remember what she looked like, but that's all I remember. Hopefully, she'll read this and email me to refresh my memory. She must have left a lasting impression for me to have remembered that she even existed at all.

I remember Judy best because I was getting older during her tenure at the Horace Mann playground. I was probably around 10 years old at the time. Judy lived on Dern Street. She was an exceptional person. If memory serves me well, her father was once the official photographer for the Everett High School football team.

Judy made it fun for all the little kids at the playground. We sat around on the cement steps and played board games like Chinese Checkers, Go to the Head of the Class, Monopoly, and Chutes and ladders. It was also a good opportunity to sit and have a good talk amongst ourselves. Judy would ask you what you wanted to become when you grew up and then always had something encouraging to say about it.

Mary Ellen wanted to be a teacher. Tommy wanted to be a cop. Bobby wanted to be a construction worker just like his father. And me, I wanted to become an artist since I could sit upright in my crib.

I almost said that I wanted to be an artist since I stopped wetting to bed, but then I had to stop myself. Now there's a terrifying secret that I had to live with throughout my entire childhood. Up until I was eleven years old, I was a bed wetter. You can only imagine the whole set of problems involved with trying to conceal such an embarrassing malady as that when you're a little kid.

Nothing is more embarrassing than to have your mother hang out all of your freshly washed sheets on the clothesline every morning. My friends kept commenting about how my mother seemed to really be into washing sheets. Whenever somebody came up to my bedroom and sat on the bed, the first thing they noticed was the plastic cover over my mattress.

I had to keep telling the same old lie over and over again about how my mother had this thing about bed bugs so she covered the mattress with plastic. When they asked how come she didn't cover over all of the mattresses, I'd tell them, "We can only afford one plastic cover and she loves me best."

Another problem associated with bed wetting is when somebody asked, "Hey, you want to sleep over my house tonight?" As much as I wanted to, I couldn't. I spent my whole childhood with this big dark secret looming over my head. It mades me feel like a fugitive always running away from the truth.

You do, however, find at least one really good friend that you can trust in your lifetime. I've slept over my friend Joey's house many times. He lived up in one of Henry Gray's apartments down on Ferry Street. What I tried to do was stay awake all night so that I didn't wet to bed.

One time, I did the unthinkable. I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning I was soaking wet. I just lied there wondering what to do and what to say when he woke up. I wished I were dead.

The moment Joey woke up, he looked across the room at me and said, "You're awake already?"

"Yeah, I just feel like lying here and relaxing," I said. That was my way of prolonging the inevitable. It didn't work.

"Come on. Let's go get some breakfast," he said. Jumping up out of bed, he came running across the room and yanked the blanket off me. I died right then and there.

"You wet to bed?" he asked surprisingly.

"Yeah," I said. I felt so humiliated.

"That's okay. We'll throw these sheets in the washer and nobody will find out."

That's exactly what we did. He never said another word about it to anyone. Now that's a true friend.

Now tell me, does every kid who has brothers and sisters wish at least once in their lifetime that they were an only child? I distinctly recall this one time when my brother, Carl, and I were arguing out in the middle of the street in front of the whole neighborhood. It was all over something as important as who shot who first when we were playing cowboys and Indians.

He always wanted to be a cowboy and I always wanted to be an Indian. Just as he had stepped out from behind a parked car, I stood up from behind a trash barrel, drew back my invisible bow, and "thuck" - I drove an invisible arrow right through his neck.

So, what does he do? He turns around, points his Fanner Fifty at me and shoots. "You're dead," he said.

"How can I be dead, you numb skull? I just put an arrow through your neck."

"You missed me."

"How could I possibly miss you? I'm only standing three feet away."

"Yeah, but I took you by surprise."

"What are you talking about? You didn't even see me until after I put that arrow through your neck."

So now he starts drumming up public support. "You saw it. Didn't you, Tommy? I shot him first. Didn't I?"

"Gee Carl, I'm sorry," Tommy said. "I didn't see it."

So now he turns to Franny because Franny will back up anything he says. "You saw it, Franny, didn't ya?"

"Yeah, I saw it. You shot Paul first."

"How could you see anything? You were standing at the back of the driveway."

Now it comes time to wield his ace in the hole. "Look, you either fall down dead or I'm gonna tell the whole neighborhood that you wet to bed!"

Well guess what, Dude? You just did.

"You wet to bed?" Tommy asked.

"Nah, he's just saying that to get back at me. Actually, it's him that wets to bed."

"I do not, you do, and I can prove it!"

And that's what he did. He ran upstairs, grabbed a hold of my bed sheet with the pee stain on it, and draped it over the front porch railing up on the second floor like a billboard for the whole neighborhood to see. All I wanted was a hole to crawl into. That's when I start thinking along such lines as, "Now let me see. I could be out of jail by the age of 21 on good behavior. That's only eleven years from today."

That's what is so great about water balloon fights. There's absolutely no question as to who hit who first. The water says it all.

Fussing over something is a notoriously favorite pass time. Put any two kids together on a hot summer's day and they'll find something to argue about - won't they? If it's not whose dad is the best, then it's who tagged who first. Just think about all the fights that broke out over a game of tag rush.

It always happens just after you make the play of the century - doesn't it? The ball is snapped. You head out zig-zagging past the backfield. Just when you reach that parked Chevy Impala with the broken headlight, you spin back towards the quarterback (we call that a button hook).

"Thoop," the ball hits you in the gut and you wrap you're arms around it. The defender reaches out to take a swipe at you, but you react quickly by bending yourself sideways like a bow. You run along the curb on your tiptoes until you get past that big maple tree. "Yes," you shout, spiking the ball right there in the middle of the street.

"You didn't score, I tagged you."

"You never touched me," you respond with that mimicking smirk across your face.

"You saw it didn't ya? I tagged him!"

Watch this. This is classic. All the kids on offense say he never tagged me. And all the kids on defense say he did. At the preliminary stage of the confrontation, it's the usual back and forth rhetoric until the defender says, "If you're gonna be a baby about the whole thing then we ain't playing."

"Whose we? You got a mouse in you pocket?"

"All of us," he says pointing to all the kids on his team. "We ain't playing if you're gonna cheat."

"Come on, man, admit it. You're just trying to cover up the fact that you stink at tag rush."

"I don't stink. You're mother does!"

"What did you say?"

"You heard me!"

That does it - doesn't it? We all know the rules. You just crossed over that line in the sand. You can say anything, but nobody mentions anybody's mother. Once that happens, there's nothing more to be said.

The offended dashes across the street towards the offender. It starts off with left hooks, jabs, and counter strikes. The crowd circles around and chants. There's pushing, and shoving, and slapping, and kicking.

After a while, both fighter's arms get all tangled up trying to get the upper hand in the confrontation. If you're lucky enough to get that open shot, you yank his shirt up over his head and drag him down. Once you've got him in a headlock on the ground, you squeeze until he cries, "I give."

"Say, Uncle."

"Uncle."

"Okay then," you let him go.

Where in the dictionary does it say that the word "uncle" means "I give up?" It does though - doesn't it? Where did that come from?

Another thing I've come to realize is that hitting each other is another favorite pass time. Kids can conjure up more than a hundred and one reasons to hit each other for recreational purposes. For one thing, there's "Padittle." Every time a car drives by with one headlight burned out, somebody yells "padittle" and punches you in the arm.

You could also get two for flinching. What they do is fake you out by pretending they're going to poke you in the eye - so you flinch. That constitutes two punches in the arm. That's a damn sight easier to take than getting fifty-two nugees - I'll tell ya. And if you and your friend say the exact same thing at the exact same time, you can whack him with the old, "Jinks, jinks, you owe me a coke" routine.

Of course, there's always someone in the crowd who offers to show you how a match can burn twice. Sounds interesting enough until you say, "Okay, show me." So they light a match, blow it out, and then touch the burned out match head to your arm. "See, it burned twice."

Believe me, I could go on and on with this thing. "Hey, you're shoes untied." That's always good for a poke in the eye. "By the way, did you get that letter I sent you? No? That's because I forget to stamp it!" That's what you say as you stamp down on top of your victim's big toe.

If somebody says they're hungry, then you could always offer them a hurts donut. What you do is pinch their arm as hard as you can and say, "Hurts, don't it?" And last, but by no means least, is the dreaded "you know what" twister. That is so disgusting, cruel, and painful that I don't really care to say anything more about it.

Summer is officially underway. We've got so much to do and so little time. How is it that one day lasts an eternity when we're sitting in a classroom, but they pass by like the blink of an eye during the summer? Now there's a dilemma that Einstein's space-time continuum never addressed.

Stories about summer, I've got a million of them - ha cha cha cha! And you're all invited to come set a spell and share them right along with me. Don't hesitate to add a comment or two to tell us some of your summer stories along the way, as well. I'm working on a special treat for you guys come July 4th - you just wait and see.

That's it for now. I've got to get back to the future. We had a good time though - didn't we? We always do. That's because (say it with me) - "We're From Everett."

A Heartfelt Journey

Even though I've grown accustomed to the backwoods simplicity of America's Heartland, I suffer from a deep-rooted yearning in my heart to come home. To those of you who still live there, I know the moment you read this you'll think about the noise, the traffic, the corruption, and the crime, and say to yourself, "That boy is crazy."

Well maybe I am, but in my heart, Everett will always be my home. That's exactly why I made the pilgrimage back to my hometown during the summer of 2005. Rather than cheat myself out of the full experience, I made that trip on the slowest and most inconvenient mode of transportation possible. The last thing I wanted to do was hop on an airplane and zoom across the sky, landing at Logan Airport a couple of hours later without actually seeing anything. I considered it, but talked myself out of it.

If I learned one valuable lesson in my lifetime, it was "Listen to your heart." After my brother passed away, I took a step back from the habit and routine of my daily life to reevaluate the road I had taken. What became painfully obvious to me was that the path I had chosen was nothing more than a waste of my precious time here on Earth. That's when I realized that it sometimes becomes necessary to change horses in the middle of the stream.

Most people base their life decisions on economics. It is, after all, the most logical reason for doing so. And yet, if we were all to base our life plans on that same assumption, the world would lose out on all the creative wonders of expression that enhance our lives. Aside from that, some of us have that burning desire to venture down the road not taken.

It takes an unreasonable person to turn their back on economics to pursue their true calling. Without those unreasonable people, we would have no Theologians to explore the historic wonders of the scriptures. We would have no artists struggling to capture the essence of our imagination. No composers would strive to communicate with the natural rhythms of our inner consciousness through sound. And we would have no writers who write letters that open our hearts to one another.

As crazy as it may sound, most of the things that inspire the creative impulses within me lie within the city limits of Everett. Some of these things are tangible. You can see and touch them. Some of these things you can only picture in your mind's eye, and feel their inspiration deep within in your heart.

Since beginning my "We're From Everett" journal in January of 2006, I have received hundreds of emails from people all over the world who, at one time or another, lived in Everett. I have personally answered every one. That's how important you are to me. You are all very much a part of my life. I value your friendship dearly. That is just one of the many things you can't see or touch, but can feel its influence deep within in your heart.

Those are exactly the reasons why I chose not to zoom across the sky and drop into Everett without seeing anything along the way. I wanted to live the experience.

What I did was hop on a Greyhound bus. The journey took over twenty-three grueling hours to complete. I met many interesting people along the way. Amongst them was a young man from Montana in route to his family home in Philadelphia. We talked for hours.

Because of a very funny incident that happened on the bus, we keep in touch and still laugh hysterically over that incident. What happened was that a young woman saddled with many small children got on the bus somewhere around Dayton, Ohio. One of her little boys was sitting with his brother in the seat directly in front of his mother. He kept complaining that he was hungry even after she had given him many snacks to eat.

Sometime later, my friend from Montana tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Paul, you gotta see this." When I looked across the isle, I saw that little boy holding onto one of his shoes. His shoe was bright, shiny, and soaking wet. It was so wet that it was dripping all over him.

The reason it was so wet was because he was licking the shoe clean. He had even licked all of the dirt off the bottom of his shoe. You could tell by the look on his face that he was really having a good time for himself. We laughed so hard we couldn't breathe.

I mean really, we all try so hard as parents to teach our children right from wrong. I suppose we all wrongfully assume that there are some things in life that are just a given. I must admit - I never once thought to say to any of my children, "Remember not to lick your shoes because you never know what you might step in."

It was in the wee hours of the morning when the bus rolled out of the terminal in Albany. I changed seats to get right up front. Since I hadn't been home in so long, I wanted to get a good view of driving into Massachusetts. You really do have to be away for some time to fully appreciate it in the heartfelt fashion that I do.

When you think about it, Massachusetts, in so many ways, is a replica of the world in miniature. Consider the Hammond Castle in Gloucester for instance. That looks so much like a miniature replica of the Kilchurn Castle ruins on the shores of Loch Awe, in Scotland. Even fisherman's Warf in Gloucester reminds me of the many seascapes along the shores of Portugal. And Bearskin Neck up in Rockport reminds me of the shops along Water Street in Saint Johns, Newfoundland.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the sign that read, "Welcome to New England." And I've got to admit, it made me smile when I saw the sign that said, "Welcome to Massachusetts. The Home of the Super Bowl Champions - The New England Patriots." Believe me - I got a lot of mileage out of teasing all of my Hoosier friends every time the Pats knocked the Colts out of the playoffs.

Massachusetts is so small that we rolled into South Station only two hours later. Rather than hail a cab, I hopped onto the Red Line and switched over to the Orange Line at Downtown Crossing. When I stepped off the subway at Wellington Station, I felt like I was home for the first time in years.

I had completely forgotten how crowded it gets on the subway in Boston. It's been years since I stood waiting for a bus at a bus stop. When I asked the young lady standing next to me how much it costs to ride the bus, she looked at me somewhat inquisitively and asked, "You're not from around here - are you?"

I felt as giddy with excitement as a little kid on Christmas morning when I first saw that 110 Wonderland bus. Man, I wasn't really quite sure where it was headed, but I was determined to take a ride on that sucker. You should have seen me sitting there, looking out the window, and smiling like an idiot. This was more exciting to me than going to Buckingham Palace.

Stepping off the bus at the intersection of Nichols and Ferry streets triggered a shipload of childhood memories. Walking up Arlington Street, I couldn't help but feel that this is my hood. This is where I grew up.

For the next three weeks I walked all over the city of Everett. It's true - Everett sure ain't what it used to be. What those of us who move away seem to forget so easily is how tiny and crowded it is in Everett. To walk from one end of my hometown in Indiana to the other is equal in distance to walking from Everett Square to North Reading Center.

Nobody walks anywhere here in Everett. You've got sidewalks on every street, but nobody uses them. Do you know how rare that is? We don't have sidewalks or corner variety stores where I come from. When I walk to the local store where I live I've got to cross railroad tracks, open fields, and a cow pasture. I kid you not.

All the same houses are still there in Everett, but I really don't know most of the people that live in them any more. Everett has always been a starting point for immigrants. I hope that never changes. Because of that, we grow up with a well rounded character. During our childhood while growing up in Everett we got the opportunity to try just about every ethnic food imaginable.

If you're one of those people who thinks your bloodline is native to this land, then I suggest you go down to Plymouth and talk to the Wampanoag Indians. They'll open your eyes to a whole new perspective on the true history of the land of our fathers - trust me.

It did my heart good to touch base with many old friends during my visit back home. You should have heard the way they talked about the corruption in the city of Everett nower days. The way they carried on you'd think corruption in politics was an entirely new concept in the American political landscape.

They looked at me somewhat bewildered when I told them about the scandalous controversy surrounding James Madison and his co-conspirators during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. What they did was ratify an illegal document as part of the Articles of Confederation. So there you go. Politics is dirty business no matter where you're coming from or where you're going to.

The truth is - politics is not my bag. If it's yours, then I salute you. We honestly do need more people like you. Let's make a deal. You take care of the political end of things, and I'll take care of writing these essays to bring the nostalgic memories of growing up in Everett back to life - okay?

One of the things I had forgotten about Everett was how hilly it was. It's not at all what you would expect in a city that is only 2 miles away from the Atlantic coast. Riding your bike down Garland Street is a challenge many of us chose to undertake to quench that thirst for excitement every kid suffers from. No matter how much of a daredevil you were, there's no way you were going to coast down that hill without squeezing on those brakes every inch of the way.

Garland Street is not the ultimate challenge anyway - Alpine Ave is. Almost every kid whose ever lived in Everett has stood at the top of Alpine Ave looking all the way down at that house at the bottom of the hill and thought, "Thank God I don't live there." Back in my high school days, I burned out the master cylinder in my Volkswagen Beetle just coasting down that street. I can only imagine how dangerous it must be when it freezes over in winter.

Although only readily apparent when looking up Broadway from Glendale Square, a high mound exists starting at Ferry Street that peaks up at the Parlin Junior High School. That's why Arlington, Villa, Pleasant View, Lexington, Prospect, Chestnut, Elm, Franklin, Reed, and the rightly named Hillside Ave, are all steep hills. They all lead up towards the crest on that mound.

Halfway up that mound was where the Horace Mann elementary school once stood. If there ever was a silly place to build a school, the site on which they built the Horace Mann Elementary school was certainly that. The school was level, but the land all around it was a very steep slope.

Playing in the playground presented a unique set of challenges. We had a basketball court that leaned 15 degrees to the left. After years of playing there, everyone in our neighborhood stunk at basketball. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one of any notable recognition for basketball ever came out of the Horace Mann school area.

We did, however, have a notable NFL football player who played many years for the New York Giants before getting traded to the New Orleans Saints. Other than that, our area is best noted for jailbirds, blue collar workers, skilled technicians, artists, musicians, and a gifted tap dancer.

There were however, many scholarly educators that did come out of this general area. I find that fascinating. Several of them were classmates of mine at the Horace Mann school. It's funny how we take such different paths in life, even though we have such similar beginnings. What makes some people love school so much that they'd want to spend their entire lives in it is beyond me. Of course, these were not the people that the teacher always yelled at. I was. That probably explains it right there.

Another thing that took me by surprise is how big the skyscrapers are in Everett. Maybe it's because I just came out of the flatlands, but good gawd, you people sure do have some really big buildings poking up into the sky over there. What in the world is that monstrosity across the street from the Parlin library? Holy smoke people, leave some space up there for the clouds to get by.

These are the thoughts that raced through my mind as I sat there on the park bench that now occupies the very space where Miss Dyer's forth grade class once stood. She used to tell us such imaginative heart warming stories. During our lunch period, Miss Dyer called on kids to come up front and entertain the rest of class. For almost the entire year I somehow squirmed my way out of having to get up and make a fool of myself.

My luck ran out on the day that one of my classmates raised her hand and said, "Paul Huffman and I go to Sunday school together. We know all kinds of Sunday school songs." If only looks could kill - right? Needless to say, I was forced to disgrace myself by singing, "Yes, Jesus Loves Me," with Jill in front of the whole class.

Looking around at the neighborhood from here, I see the houses in which many of my childhood friends once lived. Mister Dolan's house is still there. I've always admired that house. A few doors down on Prospect Street is Mary Ellen's house. We eventually graduated from High School together.

On the corner of Dern Street lived my good Friend, Donny. He once gave me a haircut so we could spend the money my mother gave me for the barber. He ruined my hair. My mother threw a fit when she saw the damage. It had bald spots everywhere, and I was foolish enough to think that she wouldn't notice. That's kids for ya.

Across the way on Foster Street is Betty Ann's house. Her yard was always so nicely decorated that it looked like a miniature golf course. A few doors down is Tommy's house. He was the world's greatest baseball player on crutches.

On the opposite side of the street is Ann's house. What an adorable kid she was. We graduated from High School together also. I played stickball with her brothers right here in the new parking lot to this playground. I wonder if she remembers the time I stuck that bubble gum in her hair?

Right here, on this very spot, I've stood in the corner, got yelled at by the teacher, played punchball, fell in love, sang on the swings, coasted downhill on my sled, got into a fist fight, and swore that once I grew up I'd leave this forsaken place behind and never look back.

It's funny how things turn out sometimes. Here's the guy that swore he'd never come back, sitting right on the spot he swore he'd never come back to, reminiscing about the good old days. If only I knew then what I know now - I wouldn't have had to ever get up out of this chair. What a laugh - no?

This is just a small sampling of the many memories I recall as I sit here looking around from this one park bench. You can only imagine the avalanche of memories that followed as I walked up and down the side streets all over the city of Everett. What a pleasant surprise it was when people I hadn't seen in years honked their horns and pulled over to have a gab with me. They were actually happy to see me. Do you believe that?

During my walks through Everett I spoke with many people. I even made a few new friends along the way. I met a really nice family from Brazil who has now established a strong foothold here in our fair city. Their children will grow up singing, "We're From Everett" just like we did. And we will welcome them into the fold with opened arms.

So this is Everett. The politics are corrupt, everything's based on nepotism, the sidewalks are littered with trash, the traffic is noisy, the neighborhoods are overcrowded, the crime is out of control, and you still gotta look both ways before you dash across the street.

For better or worse - that's our hometown. For some crazy reason it pulls at our heartstrings. And the only logical explanation I can find for that is because - "We're from Everett!"

Boys Will Be Boys

Having children of my own enabled me to watch the social atmosphere in the public schools gradually change over time. What has changed so drastically since my school days is how relaxed the learning environment has become. And although I do have issues with today's public education system, I do applaud many of the changes I've seen over the years.

You can finally chew gum in the classroom. I like that the boys and girls socially intermingle during recess at the elementary school level. Perhaps the most impressive change is that it is no longer intimidating or embarrassing to leave the classroom for circumstantial reasons. You can now do that without having to blurt out all of your person business to the rest of your classmates.

Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, daily life at the Horace Mann Elementary School was overly strict - to say the least. That was so typical within the elementary school system all across America at that time. At the Horace Mann they had an intricate system of coercion in place to force the students to comply.

We had HM's monitoring the hallways at the Horace Mann. These were sixth graders wearing red arms bands with big white H and M letters on them. They stood at the end of each corridor in Gestapo fashion to report anyone who whispered or turned their head while marching in single file through the corridors. The letters stood for "Horace Mann," but we often referred to them as "Human Monkeys."

To become one, it seriously helped if you were the teacher's pet. Of course, it didn't take long for the teacher to run out of pets, so the honor trickled down in order of grades, family connections, and social status. And yes, there were those amongst the proud who refused the privilege.

Many who undertook the responsibility transformed into a spoiled tattle tale once they were shielded behind the teacher's apron strings. If for any reason they had a gripe with you before the appointment, they now had the power to make your life miserable. It did happen.

Many were forced into taking on the burdensome responsibility. They served honorably. What they did was fulfill the duties of the appointment without becoming a cowardly turncoat on their fellow classmates. If nothing else, this demented scheme did more to incite violence after school than it did to maintain order in the corridors.

What comes to mind is an incident that happened one day at school when I was in the third grade. I've actually composed a guitar instrumental commemorating this incident. It's entitled, "Fight After School," and you can download the MP3 recording on my EZ-folk page.

A mild mannered, very friendly, sixth grader, named Bobby, was appointed to be an HM for this particular week. While monitoring the hall that day, another sixth grader, named Huey, got totally out of control. He was laughing, talking, and swearing out loud.

Bobby pleaded with Huey to calm down. He feared that if any of the teachers heard this outburst, they'd blame him for not fulfilling his responsibilities. Huey took offense and told Bobby, "Okay you big chicken, we'll settle this after school."

"That isn't necessary," Bobby replied. "I'm not turning you in. I just don't want either one of us to get into any trouble."

Huey poked Bobby in the chest with his finger and threatened him. "You meet me down the Valley after school to settle this like a man or I'll hunt you down."

"I'll be there," Bobby said. "But I think you're being silly about this."

"It ain't silly to me," Huey yelled back. "I'll straighten you out after school."

Rumors of a fight after school spread like wild fire in a wheat field. It became the talk of the day. If anyone leaned over towards your good ear with their hand cupped around their mouth there was a 99.9 percent chance that they were going to whisper, "There's a fight down the Valley after school."

You already know what Bobby's like, so let me tell you about Huey. Huey was a big strapping kid that wasn't afraid of anybody. He was loud, and a little bit pushy at times. Not that he was a regular bully - he wasn't. It's just that you watched your P's and Q's around him so not to get into any troubled. There was little doubt in anyone's mind that he was going to annihilate Bobby.

We watched the clock that entire day with anticipated excitement. There's nothing like the thrill of a fight after school. When that final bell tolled, we all dashed down to the Valley on Prospect Street to secure a good spot in the crowd to watch the main event. The Valley was a wooded field enclosed by the houses on Prospect, Dern, and High Streets.

Huey showed up first surrounded with a group of his friends. They stood laughing and joking at the center of the circling crowd.

"If he doesn't show up, I'll hunt him down," we heard him say.

When Bobby came walking slowly down the pathway alone, the crowd fell silent. Rolling up his sleeves with a sly smirk on his face, Huey called out, "Good thing you showed up cuz I'd have hunted you down if you didn't."

"I'm willing to talk," Bobby said.

"I'm sick of talkin'. You wanna bow out like a chicken, then bow out!" He said stabbing his pointer finger into Bobby's chest.

Stepping back, Bobby peeled off his jacket and threw it on top of a nearby shrub. He rolled up his sleeves and stepped forward. They began the traditional rope-a-dope ducking and dodging to the backdrop of chants and cheers from the peanut gallery.

Huey took the first swing. He connected beautifully. It was a head shot that staggered Bobby back a few paces.

The entire peanut gallery fell silent as we witnessed one of the most awesome displays of artistic fist-a-cuffs we've ever seen. Bobby opened up with moves and strikes like nothing we'd ever imagined. He gave Huey what looked like a good old fashioned TV beating. It was like one of those beatings the bad guy gets at the saloon on one of those cowboy shows.

It happened so fast, if you blinked, you'd miss half the fight.

Down on all fours, spitting blood, Huey called it quits.

And although Bobby's pugilistic skills were spectacular, it was what he did after the fight that left a lasting impression. He stretched out his hand to help Huey up.

"It's over," he said. "Now, can we be friends?"

They gathered their things, and walked out of the Valley, side by side, as friends.

That entire HM thing was only one of the two major drawbacks a little boy had to contend with while attending the Horace Mann school. The other one, was the fact that all (except for one ) of the Horace Mann School teachers were spinsters - especially back in my day. As such, they had relatively no outside experience to help them effectively communicate with little boys.

These teachers were largely unfamiliar with the natural stages of development associated with boyhood. As such, they had a zero tolerance level when dealing with boys. Having virtually no parental experience, they were useless in the capacity of teaching, instructing, or offering any valuable guidance to a little boy.

How they dealt with little boys was absolutely damaging to the welfare of the child's self esteem and self-confidence. Had it not been for Mr. Devenuti, our principal, and Mister Dolan, our janitor, we could have wound up scarred for life. Because of them, we were able to better understand and come to terms with the shortcomings of our female teachers.

Not all little boys are alike, that's true. How a small boy matures depends largely on his environment at home. Those who have older brothers grow up with a better understanding of the natural changes they're going through. The same applies for those who may not have brothers, but spend ample quality time with other boys in their social environment.

Those who grow up in a heavily dominated female environment are many times discouraged from participating in typical boyhood activities. This is not good.

Anyone who understand boyhood knows that if your little boy breaks everything in his path, or pulls everything apart to see what makes it tick, or climbs up on everything, or crawls under everything, then he is normal. Also, if he picks his nose, laughs when he farts, or is constantly trying to see how far he can spit or pee, trust me, he's normal.

Don't become alarmed if your little boy shouts out loud for no particular reason, shows you what the chewed up food in his mouth looks like, or gets into a fist fight with his best friend over whether or not a gorilla can beat up an elephant. Those are normal attributes of boyhood. These are the very things that spinster teachers do not understand.

One day in the third grade, while the teacher was out of the classroom, my classmate, Nicky, jumped up and ran over to my desk and farted at me. Not to be out-done, I chased him back to his seat to retaliate. And wouldn't you know it, just as I lifted my leg to deal the fatal blast, Miss Martinelli walked back into the classroom. What timing - huh?

Here's what she saw. She saw Nicky crouched at his desk, cowering behind a book, to protect himself from the coming fallout. She saw me standing in the middle of the isle, with my left leg lifted into the air. She then heard me deliver the full payload. She lost it!

Against a backdrop of giggling school children, Miss Martinelli grabbed me by the ear and dragged me across the hall to Mr. Devenuti's office. She literally threw me up against his desk. The unsuspecting Mr. Devenuti sat there in a state of shock while Miss Martinelli stood towering over him, shouting incoherently, and waving her finger in his face. To which he replied, "Perhaps you haven't tried to communicate with this boy."

Throwing her hands up into the air, she shouted, "What's the use?" and stormed out of his office, slamming the door behind her. She slammed that door with such force that the frosted pane of glass reverberated. "Women," he said, shaking his head in total frustration. He then turned to me, waived his finger in the air and said, "You're in for a life of hard knocks unless you learn to play the game by their rules, Paul." No truer words were ever spoken.

Mr. Devenuti then asked me to explain what happened. I told him everything. He sat there listening attentively to every word with a slight smirk across his face. Just by the look on his face I knew he could relate to the story. I'm sure he's had similar experiences back in his school days.

After lecturing me on the importance of following appropriate behavior at school, he sat me down at the large oak desk in his outer office and gave me a book about football to read. He also gave me a carton of milk and a bag of potato chips. Now this is what I call, "Making the punishment fit the crime."

An hour later, he escorted me back to Miss Martinelli's classroom, after making me promise that I would act accordingly. And I did try to be good. I didn't want Mr. Devenuti to be disappointed in me. As the saying goes, "a little kindness and understanding goes a long way," especially with children.

This negative confrontation with only one teacher so early on in life haunted me for the remainder of my years at the Horace Mann School. Okay, I know all the teachers are going to jump all over me for this, but it's true. Teachers can't let anything go, nor do they ever forgive you - ever! Make one mistake and you're doomed forever. There's no such thing as repentance in the eyes of a teacher.

What these teachers do is tell your next grade teacher that you're an unruly troublemaker. From the moment you step into the next grade level, they're watching you like a hawk. They've already got you labeled. Nothing you do will convince them otherwise. To illustrate my point, allow me to tell you about something that a future Everett High School principal did in the sixth grade.

As a young kid, Tommy was a typical boy in every way. He was a good kid, with an impeccable reputation. Since he never got into any serious trouble (like I did), he did not bear any negative labels handed down from previous teachers. Tommy and I, were classmates in Miss Blake's sixth grade classroom at the Horace Mann school.

On this particular day, while Miss Blake was lecturing the class, we suddenly heard this overwhelming noise that sounded like a dozen marbles rolling across the floor. Turning to see what all the commotion was about, we discovered that Tommy had spilled an entire bag of M & M peanuts. He was sneaking a snack during class, which was a major "no-no" in our day.

Because of the embarrassed look across his face, everyone in the classroom burst out laughing - everyone! All of a sudden, Miss Blake shouted, "PAUL HUFFMAN!"

To which I surprisingly responded with, "What are you yelling at me for?"

She shouted back, "Because Thomas knows better!"

"Well," I answered, "If Tommy knows better, how come he had the "(very extra naughty word goes here)" candy?"

She marched me directly down to Mr. Devenuti's office and demanded that he expel me from school. After hearing my side of the story, he didn't. Thank God I had Mr. Devenuti for a principal - right?

The other person who was very instrumental in helping boys cope with the lopsided unfairness of the social atmosphere at the Horace Mann was our janitor, Mister Dolan. Mister Dolan worked that entire school on his own, and he kept it spotless. Not only that, but he was very well respected by the students - and for good reason.

A fun chore that the boys got to partake in at the Horace Mann when they reached the sixth grade was to take turns delivering milk to the classrooms. Having no cafeteria, we all brown bagged it from home and ate our lunches at our desks. When it was your week to be a milk boy, you got to leave your boring classroom to go downstairs to Mister Dolan's work area when they delivered the milk every morning before lunch.

No words I can conjure up could possibly do justice in describing what an exceptional person Mister Dolan was. He was one in a million. He ordered a couple of extra chocolate milks every day as a special reward for the milk boys. We sat there on milk cartons in his workshop, guzzling down our chocolate milks, having a good old gab with our friend, Mister Dolan.

He had a special way about him that got you to open up and talk comfortably. It was like conversing with your closest friend. You could talk to him about anything. And yet, he was not so lax that you would ever lose your proper perspective and speak in any way that was disrespectful. Never once did I ever hear him talk down to anybody, or ever say an unkind word about anyone. He was a good father image to the boys struggling through the hard times at the Horace Mann.

Because of Mister Dolan's high moral character, and personable ways, we learned the value of judging a person by their character, and not by their station in life. So honorable was this man, that he raised his son to become a popular, well-respected, and morally responsible educator in the city of Everett's public school system.

This dedicated citizen of Everett deserves notable recognition. By setting such a good example, he taught us what it meant to be of high moral character. He set a better example than any hollow passage carved into the front of a school building. May he rest in blessed peace forever.

Looking back on it all now, I realize that it makes no wonder we had such a difficult time knowing how to act in mixed company. The boys were separated from the girls in every aspect of our school life back then. We even had separate playgrounds.

Whether it was lining up outside waiting for the bell to ring, or changing classrooms, the boys stood in one line, and the girls in another. They tried their damnedest to keep the boys away from the girls. Maybe they were afraid the boys were going to corrupt the girls or something. Hey, we did it anyway, didn't we? As they say, "Boys will be boys."

I laugh to myself sometimes when I think back to my Horace Mann elementary school days. That's when I thought I had so many troubles I'd never survive. My biggest problem back then was worrying whether or not the teacher was going to call on me to answer that question I didn't know the answer to. I'd line my head up with the girl in front of me to turn invisible to the teacher. She'd call on me anyway.

We did survive though - didn't we? And do you know why? Because - "we're from Everett!"

Another One From The Heart

There comes a time when this journey ends. For those of us left behind, an emptiness burns within our hearts that never loses its grip. During the course of our lives, we build a scrapbook filled with vivid memories in our mind's eye. The memories we've shared with those who have passed on becomes the spiritual connection that links the very essence of our soul to those we love on the other side.

Just beyond those wrought iron gates at the entrance to the Glenwood Cemetery, sets a little white military gravestone with the power to break my heart. The simple name, rank, and dates inscribed cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the untold story that sleeps beneath this hollowed ground. Reaching out from my heart to touch those inscribed letters triggers a floodgate of memories that tell the story.

So from the very start, you know where this story ends. The ending, however, has very little to do with the actual story. What the story's all about is the voyage along the way. If you're up to it, I'll take you on a nostalgic heartfelt journey through my childhood growing up in Everett.

My earliest recollection begins sitting in one of those toddler car seats that hung over the backrest at the center of the front seat of my father's car. There's a strip of metal running down the center that separates the two halves of the windshield. That is so annoying - even to a toddler who stretches up out of his car seat to peek out over the hood to watch his dad fiddle with whatever it is he toys with everyday to get that motor humming.

It coughs, it sputters, and then all of a sudden that motor revs up and purrs like a kitten. Two giant hands that appear out of nowhere grab a hold of the hood on each side of the ornament. When that hood slams down - there he is - the personification of the answer to all my questions. The good thing about being a boy is that life comes with a talking reference manual. We call that reference manual, "Dad."

With the most self reassuring look of confidence you'll ever find on the face of this planet, he smiles at me through the windshield and gives me that double push gesture with the heel of his hand. That's my signal to hammer down on top of the horn of that toy steering wheel on my car seat.

I watch his every move with complete fascination right up until the moment he opens that door and slides onto the seat beside me. "Put up your dukes," he teases with his fists held up in front of his face. So, I put up my dukes. He draws back his left fist as if he's winding up to deliver a knock out punch. I reach out with both hands to intercept the blow. Somehow that right hand moves in undetected and delivers a tickle where my neck meets my collarbone. It makes me wince in laughter every time.

"Let's go show the whole world what we're made of, little Buddy," he says while jerking that stick up and down that shoots out from behind his steering wheel. Everything outside starts passing by at an accelerated pace as we roll merrily along. When we reach the stop sign at the intersection of Ferry and Arlington Streets he says, "Slow us down, little Buddy. Slow us down!" I pull back on my little steering wheel, and low and behold, it works every time. What would he do if he didn't have me there to slow that car down for him?

With a flash of light - the scene changes. I'm standing on my back porch watching, "Major," the most dangerous dog in the world drag my big brother down onto the ground. Up and over the railing my father leaped into mid air. Within a fraction of a second later, I watch that giant of a man take on a ferocious German Shepherd. He annihilated that dog in the first round. It limped home whimpering.

My dad came walking home carrying my big brother in his arms. My big brother held onto his father for dire salvation and comfort. You could tell just by the look in my big brother's eyes that he felt as if nothing could hurt him now.

That's what fathers are. They are not the gentle kiss that soothes the bruise. They are not the warm endearment that consoles the battered ego. They are the shelters in the storm. They are the warriors who stand between the threatening predator and its helpless prey. They are the guiding lights in the valley of darkness.

Another glance at that little white stone and again the scene changes. My brothers, my sister, and I are bobbing up and down on oversized inner tubes upon the waters at Revere Beach. The waves keep rolling me further and further away from the shore. I can barely see the people frolicking on the sand from way out here.

My sister is the closest one to me now, and even she's becoming nothing more than a dot against the horizon. From way out here the sounds of all the concessions have dwindled beneath that harmonizing roar between the open wind and the ocean waves. When my bobbing up and down starts feeling like I'm bouncing uncontrollably on a trampoline, that's when I realize I'm in trouble.

I'm getting further and further away from the beach every time a wave rolls beneath me. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to make this thing go in the proper direction. Paddling frantically only gets me tired. I haven't the strength to go my own way.

In the distance I can barely make out my sister bouncing up and down on her inner tube waving her arms frantically. She's calling for me to come back. I'm exhausted now. I can't go back. I'm frightened. I can't swim.

Another giant wave bounces me high into the sky. When it passes by, I see something come crashing through that wall of water. It's my knight in shining armor. It's my dad.

The very moment I clung to his back with my arms wrapped around his neck I knew I was going home. Nothing could stop us now. My Dad's invincible - or so I thought.

My dad was a truck mechanic for Tufts University. Every once in a great while, he'd take me to work with him. What a thrill it was to see where my dad worked. My favorite part about the whole experience was taking a stroll along the university grounds. He showed me the original skin of Jumbo the elephant at the library.

I cannot begin to count how many times he impressed upon me that the men and women of Tufts University were great humanitarians and scholars. He held the deepest admiration and respect for that institution. He felt honored to work in its employ.

Ernie Slater was not only his boss, he was one of his dearest friends. I remember our family going up to Mister Slater's cottage in New Hampshire for a cookout one summer weekend. Mister Slater had a daughter about the same age as my big brother, Billy. And yes, she was a knockout.

We've got a snapshot of the two of them sitting on the front steps together. My brother had that coy sheepish look of shyness written all over him. To say that his heart was pounding through his chest is an understatement.

It was because of Ernie Slater that I once saw my father cry when I was a little boy. The telephone rang one evening while we were gathered around the supper table. My dad hopped up out of his chair and dashed into the living room to answer the only telephone we had in the house. We sat there waiting for what seemed like the longest time for him to return so we could say grace.

It soon became a little awkward just sitting there looking at each other not knowing what to say. My mother then broke the uneasy silence by calling out, "Bill, is everything all right?" With the most broken up voice I've ever heard come out of that guy, he said, "Everything is so wrong." After that, I heard a wail cry out from the depths of that man's soul. His heart was broken. His friend, Ernie Slater, had died.

With the blink of an eye, again the scene changes. I remember so vividly that unconscious smile in my father's eyes as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake when I was only five years old. He looked somewhat like a child himself waiting in excited anticipation for me to open that gift wrapped in Zorro paper.

Guess what it was? It was my very first set of acrylic paints, complete with mixing palette, canvas boards, and horsehair brushes. Not even getting to meet the master, Norman Rockwell, himself, would have made me happier. And yes, believe me, even at five years old I was well aware as to whom Norman Rockwell was.

On that very evening, I began working on my first masterpiece in acrylics. I sat up on my top bunk and copied a winter scene I fell in love with out of an old comic book. For the next few days I worked on that painting in Miss Cook's kindergarten class at the Horace Mann school. You should have seen the way my father reacted the night I showed it to him. "My God, Grace," he said to my mother. "This kid's a natural." I beamed with pride.

A week or so later, on a Saturday morning, my father took me for a ride over to Tufts University. He brought me into a stately brick building with heavy dark wooden shutters on each of the windows. After stepping through a dignified foyer, he knocked on this huge oak door. When the door opened, a kindly looking older gentleman greeted my father and I with an air of sophisticated pleasantry.

"So, this is Paul?" He asked bending down to shake my hand.

"This is Paul," my father beamed with an air of pride about him.

For the next hour or so, I sat at a large highly reflective table in an overstuffed chair in this huge study surrounded with countless shelves filled with books. One by one, this gentleman kept spreading out books filled with magnificent artwork before me. I felt myself captivated by all the things this man was telling me. This was the day I learned about the pen & ink masterpieces of M.C. Escher.

At the end of our visit, this kindly gentleman gave me a set of India Ink pens, a few bottles of India ink, and a whole ream of heavy board paper on which to draw with these pens. It felt like Christmas all over again.

What impressed me most about this visit was the way this gentleman related to me more like an equal rather than to look down on me like a child. He answered all of my questions and responded to all my observations with the utmost respect and dignity. If I learned nothing else that day, I learned to appreciate the finer qualities inherent in proper etiquette. And I must say, that gentleman reacted in such a way as to make me feel as though he was just as excited to meet me as I was to meet him. I will never forget that day.

Looking back on the moment years later, I came to realize what a special quality my father possessed to go through all that bother just for me. What he had done was tap into a rich resource to help expand my horizons towards the path I was taking. Not having the knowledge himself to guide me along that path, he went out of his way to find someone who did. It's moments like these that make you realize that anyone can be a father, but it really does take a special person to be a dad.

My father was born and raised on the farmlands of southern Indiana. He had a streak of religion about him, but it was something he felt in a personal way so he kind of kept his religious opinions to himself. Other than that, my dad could talk to anybody about anything. And he did.

Every time I took a trip down to the Stop & Shop in Glendale Square with my dad, he'd wind up talking to just about every other person in the store. It took this guy two hours to spend five dollars. I'd shake my head in disbelief over some of his conversations.

I'll never forget the day that he and some old lady went on and on about Preparation H. I mean really, the last thing I needed right now was for one of the girls in my class to walk by while my dad was talking out loud about medicine for your bum in the middle of the Stop & Shop. It embarrassed the dickens out of me when I was younger. As I matured, I learned to appreciate his back woods country ways.

What also surprised me about my father was the knowledge that came out of this country boy sometimes. Thumbing through a copy of the Art Journal one day at the kitchen table, I came across an article about American painters. Without even reading the article, he looked at the picture and said, "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, by John Singer Sargent. He was an impressionist." My jaw dropped open.

As a country boy, he possessed none of the required social skills when it came to wooing the ladies. My mother always said that he was such a good-looking young man that it came as no liability to him. I think she was kind of partial - don't you?

Wiping a tear from the edge of my eye, the images start flowing in a rapid succession. My big brother started getting into trouble during his teenage years. My other brother's epilepsy worsened to epic proportions. And my sister ran off to get married.

The overwhelming burdens weighed heavily across his shoulders and he began to increasingly take refuge in the bottle. It only got worse when my big brother shipped off to Vietnam. My father and I continually drifted further and further apart.

My hippie days were something he just couldn't relate to. We now stood at opposite ends of the spectrum. It's not that we bickered and argued or anything like that. We just drifted apart from each other. It wasn't long before I took him up on the offer when he said, "If you don't like it around here, the door is open and the road is wide."

As the years passed by, my big brother and sister regrouped around the nuclear family. They stood by my father and helped him kick his addiction to the bottle. My big brother and father became the best of friends.

Having moved out of state, I was never really a part of all that. It's not that I had become the prodigal son of the family (even though my mother often referred to me as such). It's just that I had taken the road less traveled with my life. I did not come back into the fold until shortly before my older brother passed away.

When my brother died, my father reached out to me and said, "I need you to be my rock through this. I can't do this alone." For several weeks I stayed at my parent's house in Everett to be with my family through this ordeal. It gave me the opportunity to reconnect with the family I left behind.

What it really did was give me the opportunity to rediscover how much I truly loved this man. We finally got the chance to share some precious moments together as adults. In so many ways, it felt like my childhood growing up in Everett all over again.

On one of those nights, he spoke to me with words of encouragement and endearment like never before. It happened on the night I had finally fallen to pieces after having kept my emotions in check while trying to shoulder the responsibilities of my brother's funeral. I broke down in tears and shamefully apologized for not being the kind of son my big brother was.

He said to me, "You could never be the kind of son that Billy was to me. I wouldn't want you to be. My relationship with you is so different than my relationship with him. You're a different kind of person than he was. He was my fishing buddy and my side-kick. When I lost him, I lost my best friend."

"Through you I got to experience things I never imagined I would experience in my lifetime. You will never understand how proud I am to say that I am the father of someone whose editorial cartoons were published in the newspapers, and whose music has been heard far and wide. My son is an artist who has designed storyboards for television commercials. And whenever I see a brochure or sign with a company logo on it that you designed, I can point at that and proudly say, "My son drew that."

"The very fact that once you flew the coop you never looked back tells me that I have succeeded as a father. That is how a father knows when he has done what it takes to be a successful father. When his child spreads his wings and leaps into the air soaring off into the heavens is when a father knows he's done his job. That's what you have given me. I truly thank you for that."

Time does pass by like the blink of an eye - does it not? My father told me that fifteen years ago while sitting in his living room on Arlington Street. Those words were the most precious gift he has ever given me. I shall cherish them dearly all the days of my life.

He was the kind of man that each one of his children, and each one of his grandchildren, can honestly lay claim to a unique and personal relationship with. He was a man of modest means, but when it came to love, he was the richest man in the world. As a father, and a grandfather myself, he is my blueprint in striving to achieve such an honorable distinction.

That is the story that sleeps beneath that hallowed ground at the Glenwood Cemetery in Everett. Allow me to quote a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet when he wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

With that in mind, on Father's Day, I will relive all the precious moments I've shared with my father with heartfelt compassion. He lives on because I live on. And we shall never cease to be because with each passing generation, we live on through our descendants.

To those of you whose father has crossed over beyond the far horizon I dare say, "Spend a precious moment with you father on Father's Day. For just as certain as you are reading these words, you're father will know your sentiments."

And to my extended Everett family of brothers out there - Happy Father's Day!

The Gathering Storm

Every one believes that it was their generation who changed the world. When in fact, every generation makes its influential mark on the wave of the future. Every generation strives to break free from the bonds and restrictions enforced upon it by the preceding generation.

It's the common law of social evolution. We are suppose to learn from our elders. The last thing we should do is repeat the same mistakes all over again. What we've yet to learn is how to identify the good traits from the bad traits so we'll know which ones to discard.

The problem lies in the innocence of our youth. In our eagerness to rebell against our parents, we sometimes wrongfully scrap the whole equation thinking we know better than they do. By the time we do know better, we've already handed the whole catastrophe off to the next generation. I suppose that's nature's way of giving the older generation some form of revenge.

The Rappers revolted against Generation X. Generation X revolted against the Hippies. The Hippies revolted against the Greasers. And the Greasers revolted against the Big Band Era.

Do a little research and you'll find that the offspring of the Mayflower generation revolted against their parents as well. For the record, it was the children of the Mayflower Generation who coined the term, "Good-bye."

"Good-bye" is a contraction for the term, "God be with you." "God be with you," is how the Pilgrims said "good-bye." To the Pilgrims, the word "good-bye" was a vulgar slang that they frowned upon. They even forbade their children to say it. But you know kids. They said it anyway.

Throughout our lives we've witnessed one generation after another break away from the accepted norms to stake its individual claim on changing the world we live in. It never dawns on us that the day will come when we will be the generation that the younguns try to break free from. And yet, the day does come - does it not?

It has occurred to me that the time has come to give one preceding generation their due. Today, I cordially invite you to take a walk with me through the time tunnel. Let's go back to what we once thought of as an age of innocence in good old Everett, Massachusetts. Let's go back to the 1950s.

Come on, now. Close your eyes, tap your feet together three times and repeat after me. "There's no place like Everett. There's no place like Everett. There's no place like Everett." Okay, now open your eyes.

What you are about to experience is not the observations of a teenager during the 1950's. They are the sights and sounds of the 1950's as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of a seven-year-old child. These sights and sounds will undoubtedly play an influential role in the shaping of that young mind.

Our story unfolds in the living room of our apartment on Arlington Street. My family gathered around the television on this summer evening sometime after dinner to enjoy a variety of entertainment.

The evening began with a solid half-hour of my drooling over Annette Funicello on the Mouseketeers. Then, we watched Guy and Raldna belt out a few show tunes on the Lawrence Welk Show. We listened to Mitch Miller's inanimate men's chorus bellow out "Oh, Them Golden Slippers" to the accompaniment of an eerie wailing harmonica. After that, we laughed at the severed head in the little box that says "sall right" on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Milton Burl had just introduced the enormous Kate Smith. She held out her arms like a gargantuan dinosaur and began belting out yet another off-key rendition of "God Bless America" with a voice that yelled instead of sang. "Boy, they don't sing like that any more," my father commented as my mother nodded in agreement. I didn't dare say it out loud, but to myself I thought, "Somebody should stick a sock in that beast's mouth."

Just as Kate Smith yelled, "...stand beside her, and guide her..." the loud twang of an electric guitar filled the room. The sound was so rich and true; it could not possibly have come from the TV. We all looked at each other inquisitively. And then it happened again.

"What in Gawd's name is going on around here?" my mother asked.

That's when it exploded. You should have heard it. The smooth electric tremolo rhythm of strumming chords accompanying a rich electric lead filled the room. It was coming from the front hallway downstairs. We hopped up and ran out into the front hall to see what in the world was going on down there.

I stood mesmerized at the top of the front stairs. Down at the bottom of the stairs stood my brother Billy, with Jacky (who lived downstairs), and Arty, and Mikey, and George. It was all the teenagers from Arlington Street. And man, they were rockin. I've never seen or heard anything like this before in my life.

They looked so cool with their hair all slicked back and their collars turned up just like Elvis. Swinging their guitars like Chick Berry, they filled our house with the sound of the future. For the very first time in my life, I wanted to dance. They were so "tuff."

Well "Good Golly Miss Molly," they "Rocked Around the Clock," and "The Good Times Rolled." I couldn't stop my foot from tappin' or my leg from shakin'. They touched a nerve inside me that Jimmy Dean or Tennessee Ernie Ford just could not reach no matter how hard they tried. This was the wave of the future. I could feel it in my bones.

In the 1950's, music had come to life like no other era before in American history. It was for the kids, by the kids, and of the kids. No matter how much the old folks bad mouthed it, or tried to ignore it, it charged full speed ahead like an oncoming train. Rock N Roll was here to stay - and they knew it.

From my perspective, life all around me changed rapidly after that night. With every new innovation came yet another bewildered response from the older generation. "What will they think of next?" Wrap around windshields and automatic record changers were just the tip of the iceberg.

The older generation rolled their eyes when Elvis shook his hips on national television. Their mouths dropped open when Chuck Berry skipped across the stage with his guitar hung low. And they gasped in shock when Little Richard hammered out "Good Golly Miss Molly" on the piano.

You should have heard the way the older generation came down on these kids. Senator Joe McCarthy was convinced that the communists had infiltrated America's youth. The self-exalted religious leaders of the day warned that Satan himself had invoked the concept of Rock N Roll music to drive the whole human race closer towards the gates of hell fire. And every mother told every daughter how disrespectful it was for a girl to call a boy on the telephone.

My brother's crew cut grew into a DA with a curl that bounced in front of his forehead. That plain looking short sleeve shirt transformed into a white Tee shirt covered with a waist cut black leather jacket. Instead of playing stickball out in the middle of the street, he now hung around on the corner whistling at the girls.

Every step along the way, the older generation tried in vain to tighten its grip. What the older generation couldn't see was the forest because of all the trees. It was more than just music that led these crazy teenagers astray. What the older generation didn't understand was that good old fashion American Enterprise had targeted a whole new yet untapped market. Let's face it, nobody gets in the way of progress when it makes a profit for big business - right?

My parents were sitting out on the back porch enjoying a summer night's chat with the neighbors. My mother and Mrs. Forgione from next door were talking about how scandalous it was that the new Jack Paar show encouraged people to stay up until all hours of the night watching television. My father and his good friend, Jack, were contemplating whether or not Y.A. Tittle had what it takes to lead the New York Giants into the playoffs next season. Us kids were out in the back yard down below having a squirt gun fight in the dark when my brother Billy showed up with his friend Mikey.

"Hey, Paul, come over here." He called out to me. "I want to show you a magic trick."

Always a sucker for a slick magic trick, I darted over towards him.

"Okay," he said. "Turn around and face the crowd."

I turned around with my back towards him to face all the other kids. He cupped his hands over my ears and said. "I need a volunteer from the audience." All the kids jumped up and down waiving their hands. He chose my brother Carl.

Okay, here's how the magic works. When Carl says, "Play," Paul will magically hear music coming right out of the palm of my hand."

"Yeah - right," we all laughed.

Carl yelled, "Play."

All of a sudden, I heard Freddie "Boom-Boom" Cannon singing "Palisades Park" loud and clear coming from the palm of my brother's left hand. It was phenomenal. Because of the surprised look on my face, everybody wanted to take a turn at having this magic performed on them so they could witness it first hand, too. And my big brother was more than happy to oblige.

So naturally, you're dying to know how he had performed this uncanny stroke of magic - right? Well, tune in next week and ... only kidding. Here's how he did it.

My brother showed us something that could have only come as a result of investigating that space ship crash at Roswell, New Mexico, I swear. I've never seen anything like this before in my life.

He had a little tiny radio that fit into the palm of his hand. You could listen to all the radio stations on it without plugging it into the wall. What's even more amazing than that is - it came with this little doohickey you could stick in your ear and only you could hear it. Do you believe that? What will they think of next?

They called it a "Transistor Radio." Before very long, it became a common house hold item. All the teenagers had one. Heck, you could now mow the lawn and listen to the radio at the same time. Do you believe it?

This trend setting Rock N Roll craze took over the airwaves. All the old cronies began to disappear from the hit parade in the same dispirited fashion that Jimmy Durante walked off into the darkness from under the spotlights at the end of each show. It wasn't long before The American Bandstand blew the roof off the top of the Lawrence Welk Show. For the first time in America, without the consent and in spite of their elders - music belonged to the youth.

The way they carried on was positively shameful - believe you me. Girls rode around in cars with boys after dark - without a chaperone! They danced openly in public to the tunes on the jukebox at the malt shops. They cruised the carhops in their pin stripped street rods and drag raced from streetlight to streetlight along the Revere Beach Parkway in the middle of the night. They even parked beneath the pale moonlight and held each other passionately while listening to that Satanic communist noise they called Rock N Roll. And I hear talk there was even a little hanky panky involving alcohol going on as well.

Just by listening to some of that music you knew the world would never be the same again. Lyrics like "How much is that doggie in the window?" were now replaced with "Ramma lama ding-dong." "Don't sit under the apple tree," had vanished in favor of "Don't step on my blue suede shoes." And titles like "The Beer Barrel Polka" were washed away with the likes of "Who Wears Short Shorts?"

Listen to their music sometime. You'll discover things you were never aware of. They were the first in so many ways. If you're a guitarist who loves hum bucking rock licks, trust me, Link Wray and Chuck Berry laid them down long before the Rolling Stones or Aerosmith ever played an instrument. I kid you not.

The rebellious youths of the Fifties began breaking down barriers and opening doors that had been shut tight for centuries. There was still a very long road to travel ahead, but they were the first to begin whispering against segregation. They were the first to turn their backs on the nonsensical rhetoric of puritan values and openly proclaim, "It's time to change." And they were the first generation to tote gun and canteen into the rice patties of Vietnam.

The teenagers of the Fifties were the first generation Baby Boomers. Make no mistake about it - they faced insurmountable odds to pave the way for every Rock N Roll generation that followed. They were the first generation to hear their parents yell, "Turn that God forsaken racket down!" As a result, they were the first to the throw the rock through the establishment's window.

As a hippie from the sixties, I've come to realize that the reason my generation succeeded in changing the world in so many ways was because the teenagers of the Fifties had planted the seeds of revolution before us. They opened the window of opportunity - and we jumped through it.

If you're one of those who glances back at the Fifties with an air of indifference thinking they were bland and unexciting, then verily I say unto you, "You will never clearly see the future until you remove that splinter from your field of vision." The Fifties rocked - and because of that - the rest of us rolled.

The teenagers from the Fifties grabbed a hold of America - and turned it around. We watched it happen - right here in Everett.

An Unexpected Pleasure

When I was a little kid growing up in Everett, Sunday mornings were always special to me - especially in the summer time. My dad was a morning person. He got up at the crack of dawn. And so did everybody else. He gave you no choice in the matter.

It was either that or you'd lie there in your bed with the pillow wrapped around your head so not hear all the pots and pans clanging and banging while he sang "Beautiful Dreamer" at the top of his lungs.

This dirt poor farm boy from Indiana had a one in a million personality. He had little use for putting on airs or even trying to pretend he was something that he was not. His outlook on life was and pure and simple. "You either like me or you don't. If you do, come in and set a spell. If you don't, the door is open and the road is wide."

Breakfast with my dad was a blast. You'd never guess the things this guy conjured up for breakfast. It was not uncommon to wake up on a Sunday morning to a plate filled with eggs, bacon, fish cakes, grits, and vegetables. Whenever he made grits, he prepared them several days in advance so he could turn them into a cake in the refrigerator. Then, he'd slice them up and deep-fry them in bacon grease. Man, you talk about cholesterol.

He also had a serious weakness for butter, I can tell you that. This guy would make you sick just watching him eat butter. On every forkful he balanced a full pat of butter. And it had to be real butter. He hated margarine. If that wasn't enough to turn your stomach, this was. He also drank buttermilk. Yes, with his breakfast. By the time he finished eating breakfast he probably consumed a full cup of butter and a half-cup of bacon fat. Now there's a heart healthy breakfast for ya - right?

Another thing I so fondly remember about breakfast with my dad was how he always made us laugh through the whole ordeal. My dad never remembered the proper name of any person, place or thing. He kept us in stitches when he read the newspaper to us at the breakfast table.

"Hey, look at this," he said one morning. "Some guy jumped off the Mystic River Bridge and committed sideways (he meant suicide)." He shortened Governor Endicott Peabody's name down to "Govna Endibie" and President Kennedy's name down to "Prezent Kenny." Listening to my dad read the newspaper was hysterical. If you mispronounced anything he'd either say, "you get out of that now" or "You shut that up." He didn't say it in a scolding fashion - it was more like a harmless tease.

By the time we finished breakfast, the entire kitchen looked as if it qualified for disaster relief funding. There was food spilled all over the stove, and messy pots and pans piled up on top of the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. And we did not all pitch in to clean it up either. My mother wouldn't let us. She preferred that we all get out of her way so she could work her magic. We appreciated it, believe me, especially after taking one look at that Gawd awful mess.

The other thing that made Sunday mornings special was the fact that we always headed out after breakfast for a Sunday drive. On this one particular morning when I asked, "Where are we going for our drive today?" My father asked, "Well, do you like pirates?"

"Yeah, I like pirates?"

"Do you like whales?"

"Yeah, I like whales."

"Do you like sailing on pirate ships looking for treasures?"

"Yeah, I like all those things. Can we do all that?"

"Now don't you be teasing him like that, Bill" my mother scolded him.

"I'm not teasing him," my father laughed. "Today we're going on a pirate ship, see a whale, and search for treasures."

"Are we really?" My eyes lit up.

"Now don't go telling him things like that. He'll be so disappointed," she scolded him again.

"Why should he get disappointed? He said he likes pirates, and whales, and searching for treasures," my father answered.

"Can we really do all that?" I asked with excitement.

"Oh, don't listen to your father. He's only teasing," she said.

"I am not," Dad answered. "We're going on a real pirate adventure today."

"This better be good," my mother said somewhat dubiously.

"Well, let's get ready," my father said. "Times a wasting."

On that day, my father took us on an adventure filled with enough wonderful memories to last a lifetime. And we didn't have to wander very far from Everett to do it either.

If you're looking for a nostalgic trip filled with wonderful memories, then come along on this special Sunday drive with my family and me. I've got an adventure I'd like to share that will spark a nostalgic warm glow right down to the center of your inner child's heart. We're going someplace extra special today.

I remember this day as if it happened only yesterday. I was seven years old. How I remember that is because on the night before, my brother, Carl was all excited over the fact that on his next birthday he's was going to have two digits in his age. He was going to be ten years old. "I'm not a little kid anymore," he so proudly proclaimed.

By now, my oldest brother, Billy, had already opted out of going along on our Sunday morning drives. After all, he was now well into his teens. There was no way he was going to give up standing on the corner all day long doing nothing with all the other teenagers.

The year was 1959. We still had that 52' Ford Customline with the wrap around windshield. Julie, Carl, and I piled into the back seat. My mother put a cooler filled with sandwiches in the trunk and hopped into the passenger seat up front. My dad took one last look at us in the back seat and said, "Don't lean up against the back doors." We were on our way.

Notice that I did not say, "We buckled our seat belts." There wasn't any. Seat belts were relatively unheard of back in 1959. They were even more obscure back in 1952 when they made this car.

That day, while heading up old Route One, I leaned against the back door. It popped open. Because I was leaning up against it with all my weight, I literally fell out. By the time I had reached a forty-five degree angle to the street, my sister, Julie reacted lightning quick, grabbed a hold of my arm, and jerked me back into the car. Had she not done that, I would not be writing this article today. And that's the truth.

So where did we go that day? We only drove up to the third exit off of Route One. I'm sure there are far more exits along that stretch of Route One nower days. This exit was special because a few years later, they opened a "Child World" right there at this exit. If memory serves me well, that eventually became a "Toys R Us." Correct me if I'm wrong.

The road we took off of the highway stretched and wined past trees, wooded lots, and a beautiful pond. You couldn't swim in that pond because it was a drinking water reservoir. I remember seeing the sign that read, "Entering Wakefield." It felt like a million miles away from home. When I grew up, I realized that one of the reasons everything seemed so far away was because my father drove slower than a snail's pace. The last street sign I remember reading that day was the sign for "Salem Street."

My excitement reached fever pitch when we pulled off of the paved road onto a dirt path that led into a wide clearing through the trees. My mouth dropped open. Right before my very eyes was this great big sign that read, "Pleasure Island." You should have seen it. These were giant white letters that stood out against the deep blue sky. There were tall masts of ships covered in flags reaching up into the heavens directly behind them.

Pleasure Island was no more than a fifteen-minute drive from our house, but it was in a world all to its own. They had a Dixieland Band, a little milk wagon you could sit up on, and a real honest to goodness train ride. That train ride was phenomenal. It was the Old Smokey Locomotive and it took us through the woods and over a bridge upon the waters. The excitement was beyond my wildest dreams.

We even took a ride on a pirate ship with real pirates, including the one and only, Captain Kidd. During our adventure on the pirate ship, we saw dangerous wild natives along the banks of the river. The pirate ship eventually landed at the Cove on Pirate's Island. They told us that the pirate's had buried their treasure somewhere on this island. We even saw people panning for gold. Man, if only I could be the lucky one to find it and get away.

On Pirate's Island there was a huge wooden fort that we could climb all over. Yes, we even climbed up onto the high look out tower. That fort belonged to Captain Kidd himself. Real Buccaneer Pirates were all over the place.

Julie and Carl must have done something terrible because they got locked up in the stockade outside. It's true and I can prove it if you want me to. My mother took pictures of the entire adventure with her twin reflex Argus camera.

Do you remember those old cameras? Those were the ones where you looked down onto a small screen at the top to bring your subject into focus. You used to have to cup your hand around that screen to block out the sunlight to see it clearly enough to frame your shot.

We even got to experience the life and times of the rugged frontier at Western City. A real stagecoach took us along the Old Chisolm Trail. I could hear yelling and screaming coming from a dentist's office upstairs in one of those old western buildings. They tell me they didn't have any novocaine back in the old Wild West. Can you imagine?

And if you think cowboys are exciting, wait till you hear who I saw there that day. I saw the one and only, Rex Trailer. He was really there. I could not believe that all this was actually happening to me. What could I have possibly done to deserve all this happiness in one lifetime?

There was so much to see and do I could not contain myself. I got to sit in a teepee at the Indian Village. I hand-fed little animals at the pe