The Circle Chair

Someone recently asked me what I thought was most memorable about my childhood growing up in Everett. When I think back on all those magic moments I've lived through during my formative years, it seems next to impossible - if not impossible - to choose one amongst them. The funny thing is, once I really thought about it, I realized that there really was without a doubt one special moment in my life that outshines them all.

It began as one isolated incident, but somehow it just kept repeating itself. Before long, the whole house was filling up with the repercussions of a whole series of those events. They certainly changed our lives. I'll give them that. And once it started there seemed no way of ever stopping it. It started with my big sister, spread on up to my big brother, and eventually found its way all the way down to me. Scary thing this is.

Okay, so let's start at the beginning shall we? I believe the year was 1966. It was the Sunday following Thanksgiving. It was one of those drizzly dark November days that are perfect for daydreaming out the window. My bedroom window up on Foster Street looked out over the intersection of Foster and Chestnut.

Because the trees were so bare, I could see through the rooftops all the way over to Reed Ave and beyond. On a clear day I could see all the way over to the projects on the hill. I suppose I needn't mention that I could also see the Whidden Hospital at the top of Garland Street because, after all, you can honestly see that from virtually half of the city of Everett anyway.

Just a little more than a week before this incident took place, I watched the Great Leonid Meteor Shower of 1966 right out through that window. What a spectacular event that was. It rained shooting stars. I must have made at least a million and one wishes that night. One of them unexpectedly came true. There must be some truth to that old adage about the more shots you take on goal - right?

By the way, have I ever told you that I love drizzly dark rainy days? They are my favorite. There are several reasons for that. Most importantly, drizzly rainy days instill a sense of melancholy that inspire me to write and draw with a poetic sense of compassion. Artistically, I lose myself in creativity on rainy days.

I remember exactly what I was drawing on the day that wish came true. It was a pen and ink drawing entitled "Curiosity Killed the Cat." Tilting back ever so slightly in my favorite high back wooden chair with my feet up on the windowsill, that cobalt blue natural light from outside softly illuminated the sketchpad on my lap. I was lost in my own little artistic world, daydreaming the time away while listening to Donovan sing "Sunshine Superman" in the background.

That's when my artistic journey into mindless ecstasy was suddenly interrupted by the obnoxious blast of a telephone ringing. Who on Earth could be so cruel at this hour? So I answered the telephone. The conversation went like this.

"Hello?"

"Paul?"

"Yeah?"

"It's me, Dicky." He's my brother-in-law.

"Hi Dick, what's up?"

"Julie just gave birth to a baby boy. You're an uncle."

"Abba dabba dabba what?" That was my reaction.

"You're an uncle."

He went on to describe how much the baby weighed, the exact hour of birth, and things like that. I didn't hear a word of it. My mother and father came running out into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.

"What's going on?" My father asked.

"Julie had a baby boy," I shouted.

He looked at me sternly and said, "You shut that up!" He thought I was fooling around. You can't really blame him. I was known for my outlandish pranks at the most inopportune moments sometimes.

So I handed him the phone and said, "It's true. See for yourself."

I saw a gleam in my father's eye like nothing else I've ever seen before in my life. He passed the phone over to my mother and said, "You're a grandmother now, old lady." Damn, he was as proud as a peacock. Nothing could wipe the smile off of his face that day.

So that's how it all started. And believe me when I tell ya, that was only the beginning. That moment changed my life. Over the next several months I learned how to prepare baby formula, warm bottles, and change diapers. It was no burden really. After all, my sister did the bulk of the work. I only helped out from time to time when she really needed it.

My parents were so tickled pink over being grandparents that they totally forgot all about me. This was great. I was coming and going at all hours of the night and they didn't even notice. Every once in a while they'd look up at me and say, "Are you just coming home at this hour of the morning?" And I say, "No, I just ran down to the store for something." And they would believe it.

The truth is - as long as I wasn't getting into any serious trouble, they felt like they didn't have to worry about me. After all my big brother, Billy, had put them through, I was an angel in comparison. Not having to worry about me gave them more time to spend with their adorable grandchild. It worked out best for everyone. They had nothing to worry about and I enjoyed more freedom during my teenage years than any of my siblings ever did.

Now let's talk about that little grandchild of theirs. His name was Richard. My mother affectionately nick named him "Dicky Bird." She called him that all the time. Of course, many years later, as he approached adolescence, he asked her kindly to please refrain from using that moniker. You really can't blame the kid now - can you?

Before very long, this kid was up and running all over the house. I grew rather fond of this little tyke, I must say. On weekends when my sister wanted a night out, Dicky stayed overnight at our house. He and I had a ball together.

Instead of reading Mother Goose to him, I'd read him things out of the National Geographic. And instead of telling him about the three little pigs, I'd tell him all about our expanding universe, molecular structure, electromagnetism, and the fundamental principles of sound waves. He used to sit there listening to me as if he understood it all. He was so adorable.

It was really cute when he first started learning how to talk. He knew what he wanted to say, but forming the actual words was a bit of a challenge so he developed his own vocabulary. Candy became "meemees." Milk became "mung." And Paul became "Ba." So if he said "Ditty mont mung and meemees," what he was actually saying is "Dicky wants milk and candy."

Another adorable thing he would do is stand outside the bathroom and wait for me to come out. He'd say, "Ba?" And I ask "What?" And he'd say, "Ditnah." And then I'd answer back, "Ditnah." Even to this day I have no idea what "ditnah" means. He promised he'd tell me when he grew up but he never did. That's nephews for ya.

For as long as I live I will never forget that Friday night my friends pulled up in front of the house to pick me up to go party hopping. It was taking me so long to get out of the house that one of the guys came running upstairs to see what was wrong.

What he saw was Dicky holding onto to my pant leg for dear life. He desperately did not want me to go out and leave him that night. My mother was showering me with the old guilt trip routine saying, "How could you go out and leave that poor desperate little thing who loves you that much?"

Even to this day I still have a guilt trip over that. But honestly, I was seventeen. I was young and crazy. And if you've ever gone party hopping with a gang of hippies then man, you know you don't want to miss out on that portion of your life. After all, you're only young once.

How I handled the situation was by telling him that I was on my way out to the store to buy him some candy. I knelt down and took him into my arms and promised, "Ba is gonna go buy some meemees for Ditty." That did the trick. Sure he loves his Uncle Ba, but nothing compares to a bag of candy coated chocolate M&Ms - trust me.

The last thing my mother said as I headed out the door was, "You better not forget to bring home some candy." When we got down to the car, everybody asked, "What took you so long, Dude? Problems with your do?" They teased.

Ronnie turned to the rest of the guys and said, "Hey man, cut the Dude some slack. Ba's gotta get some meemees for Ditty."

"Whaaaaaaat?" They looked at us like we had completely lost it.

"Man if you don't understand that, then you are just way out of touch," I laughed.

Okay, so now you're wondering whether or not I remembered to bring home meemees for Ditty - right? Not to worry my Everett people. I never once came home without meemees for Ditty.

When children start coming into your life - you mature in so many different ways. If truth be told, they teach you far more than you can ever hope to teach them. If nothing else, they show us childhood from the other side. After having seen it from the inside looking out, we now get to see it from the outside looking in. We get to relive the magic of our childhood all over again. And I honestly believe that it is so much better the second time around.

Another thing about children coming into your life that is important to note is that - When it rains it pours. By the time I turned seventeen, it felt like a human wave attack around our house. We had little kids running every which way.

Between my brother and sister, the hits just kept on coming. They were pumping out puppies faster than you could keep count. And I don't know how you feel about kids, but as far as I'm concerned - the more the merrier. Yeah sure, they're a lot of work and worry, but they absolutely light up your life. They added another dimension to my being that I never suspected could ever happen.

My brother and sister proved to be excellent parents. Yes, they fussed and fought with their kids over the years. Who doesn't? But I learned what it takes to become a parent by watching them. There was nothing they wouldn't do to provide for and protect their children.

Nostalgia is all about reliving those golden memories that make you smile. Sometimes, they even make you laugh out loud. How many times have you stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes and then all of a sudden just burst out laughing? Everyone looks at you smiling and asks "What are you laughing about?" You almost always begin your answer with, "I remember the time that..."

Well that's what this is all about. It's all about some of the funniest moments that happened when all those little kids came into my life. These are not only stories about my nieces and nephews, but includes one of my own children as well. So come along for a ride on the Everett Time Machine, and I'll show some hilarious filmstrips from my memory banks of what it's like growing up in Everett - with children.

My first memory happened when my first nephew, Dicky, woke me up early one Sunday morning after being out all night partying with my no-good hippie friends. My journey into dreamland was suddenly shattered by this high-pitched wail screeching at the top of his lungs. Sitting up on the edge of my bed, I grabbed a hold of my head to make the room stop spinning.

Squinting one eye so I can see out the other, I scanned the room to find that pair of pants I knew I had flung somewhere before passing out sometime around first light earlier this morning. After doing that one-legged hop to pull them up over those wobbly legs of mine, I staggered out into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.

Sure enough, little Dicky Bird was throwing a fit in his high chair while his poor harried grandmother stood helpless nearby. "So what's going on?" I asked.

"Dickey wants juice for breakfast and I don't have any," she explained.

Dicky looked up at me with this "Uncle Ba will save the day" sense of security gleaming in his eyes. When a kid looks at you like that, you'd risk life and limb to hold that reassurance in that innocent little heart.

"So why don't you give him a glass of milk?"

"That's what he's yelling about. He doesn't want milk - he wants juice."

So now I look at a Dicky and ask "Oh, Ditty monts juice?"

"Yep," he said nodding his cute little head with the most adorable smile of innocence you've ever seen in your life.

"How come Nanny won't give Ditty any juice?" I asked him.

He shrugged his angelic little shoulders as if he couldn't figure out what her problem was.

"Paul, Gawd dammit, I don't have any juice," she explained in utter frustration.

"I think Nanny's crazy, huh?" I said to Dickey. He laughed.

"Okay, Uncle Ba will get some juice for Ditty."

"Paul, how many times do I have to tell you? I don't have any juice."

When I opened the refrigerator door - I acted so surprised as I triumphantly announced, "Hey, look everybody, Uncle Ba found white juice. Does Ditty mont white juice?"

Sure enough, he beamed with happiness, shaking his charming little head with an enthusiastic "Yes."

My mother looked at me as if I had lost my mind. She knew there wasn't any juice in the fridge. She'd looked behind everything in there a dozen times. Of course, it only goes to show how foolish we become when we lose that childhood perspective sometimes.

I grabbed a hold of Dicky's sippy cup, filled it with milk, and then held it up into the air and proudly announced, "Uncle Ba has white juice for Ditty."

He grabbed a hold of that sippy cup and drank every last drop of that "white juice." He was a happy camper now.

"Paul, I'm gonna kill you," my mother smirked.

"You just gotta think out side the box sometimes Nanny," I laughed. Now that all was quiet on the home front once again, I could go back to bed to sleep off last night's party in peaceful serenity.

There was also another the time that I was woken up from a sound sleep after having partied all night up in the back hills of Glendale Park. This time it was both Dicky, and his little brother, Bobby, throwing a fit. It was Thanksgiving Day. We had so many little kids running around the house now that Nanny had to use folding chairs to seat everyone around the dinner table.

What they were throwing a fit about was that one of them had to sit on a folding chair that had a big circle stained into the seat of it. Neither one of them wanted to sit on that chair because of that circle. That circle was the end result of my having tie-dyed a sweatshirt in a laundry bucket on that chair. If you'll remember, tie-dyed sweatshirts were all the rage amongst the hippies back then.

When I found out what all the commotion was about, I turned the whole scene around by shouting, "Oh boy, that means Uncle Ba gets the circle chair. All right, this is way too cool. Yeah, Uncle Ba wins. Yes, yes, yes!" I excitedly chanted. I hopped onto the circle chair as if I had just won the lottery.

Now they both wanted the circle chair, but I would not surrender it. Hey, I got it first. After much deliberation, they both agreed to enjoy their Thanksgiving Day dinner by sitting on my lap. All three of us shared the circle chair.

From that moment on, they took turns sitting on the circle chair at suppertime. It became the most popular chair in the house. Competition for the circle chair became so fierce amongst my nieces and nephews that mother once said, "And to think I got angry at you for staining that chair. Now I wish you had stained them all."

When I think about all the funny stories involving the little kids in my life, I could go on endlessly. There is, however, one story I simply must share with you. This is a very funny story about my first born son. This story is a riot.

My mother-in-law had taken my four year old son, Andy, out for a day at the beach. When they got back home that afternoon, my mother-in-law hung their bathing suits out on the clothesline to dry. That's when she discovered a most embarrassing calamity. There was a great big hole right in the crotch of her bathing suit.

"Oh my goodness, Andrew" she cried out, "I hope grandma didn't have this big hole in her bathing suit when she was laying out on the beach."

"Yes, you did, grandma," he innocently answered. "I saw it when you were laying on the beach blanket."

"Well why didn't you tell grandma, honey?" She asked so embarrassingly."

"I didn't think there was anything wrong with it," he answered. "I thought they put it there for fresh air."

And those are the kind of things that happen in our lives because - "We're From Everett!"

Summer Time Blues

We're inching towards the back end of July. By now we've really settled into summer. School is the farthest thing from our minds. Raise your hand if you remember anything at all about what they taught you in school last year. Anybody? I didn't think so.

Since school is the biggest obstacle in any kid's life, you'd think we'd be smack dab in the middle of Heaven right about now - wouldn't you? But life being what it is, Murphy's Law is an unavoidable principle in our mechanical universe that always seems to plays its hand just when you're ready to rake in the chips.

Obstacles? Man, we got obstacles. This is Everett. Just try to have a game of stick ball out in the middle of Arlington Street and you'll find obstacles galore.

Picture this. You're standing there on the mound winding up for the pitch. You've got three balls and two strikes on the batter. It's the bottom of the ninth. You're winning Two to one, and you're only one strike away from that third out.

They've got a man on second, and the kid up a bat is notorious for whacking pimple balls up over the telephone wires and out into the middle of Ferry Street. To say that the pressure is on is an understatement. All eyes are on you. Even that really cute girl from up the street is watching. The last thing you need right now is to flub this up.

There are a hundred and one ways for this scenario to play itself out. The one that won't happen is the one you're hoping for. So let's talk about the one that's most likely to unfold - shall we? This will give you a really good idea of what kind of obstacles we deal with on the average summer day while growing up in a city like Everett.

Okay, let's get back to the game.

Second base is an old pizza box we found in the trash. Third base is an old record album. Like I said, you're winding up for the pitch. All of a sudden the man on second books it towards third. You spin to throw to your third baseman, but he's looking up at a pair of sneakers dangling from the telephone wires.

The runner from second slides halfway across the street on his elbows when he slips on that record album. While the third baseman is looking for the ball under the shrubs in front of Mister Bowser's house, everyone else crowds around that injured runner on third. And wouldn't you know - that really cute girl from up the street is all over him with sympathy. It makes you want to just go over there and tear his arm off to beat him with the wet end - doesn't it?

Ten minutes later, the third baseman steps out from behind the shrub holding the ball up in the air celebrating. So naturally you yell at him. "Just throw it to me, you Goober. If you were paying attention he wouldn't have stolen third."

"Hey, I was paying attention, you Jerk!"

"Paying attention to what? You certainly weren't paying attention to the game."

"I was too."

"You were not, Jerko. You were all wrapped up in that stupid sneaker dangling from the telephone wire. You know what they say? Little things amuse little minds."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

Now you and the third baseman are standing out in the middle of the street poking each other in the chest, screaming back and forth at each other.

"Come on, play ball," the batter yells.

So you end it with "Just pay attention next time."

"Drop dead," he shouts back as he takes his position back at third.

Now you're ready. You wind up. Then somebody yells, "Look out! Car's coming!"

Sure enough, some crazy greaser in a Pontiac Grand Prix with pin stripped rocker panels and fuzzy dice swinging from his rear view mirror comes plowing up the street as if there's nobody else on the planet. You either move it or lose it, so you dash towards the sidewalk before this knothead plows you down.

Okay, so now you're ready. You take one last good look into the batter's eyes. They're saying, "I'm gonna knock this sucker into the middle of next week." Holding steady, you take one quick last glance over at third to make sure the runner's not leading for a steal. Sure enough, instead of staring up at the sneakers this time, your third baseman is staring off into space while picking his nose.

"Are you serious?" you call out to him.

"What?" he asks.

"What are you doing now?"

"What do ya mean? I'm getting ready for the pitch."

"By picking your nose?"

"I wasn't picking my nose."

"Pay attention!"

"I am."

Okay, so now you're really ready. You wind up, step forward, and release one of your best pitches. The batter does that half-swing step, draws back, and then "POW." He socks it straight up into the air.

"I got it - I got it - I got it," everybody yells out at ounce. Focusing on nothing else but that pimple ball up there against that deep blue sky, you race to get right under it. It's coming right back down smack dab into the center of your hands. And just as you're about to close your fingers around it - "BAM" - you smack (face first) into a telephone pole.

You know that feeling - right? Your eyes get all watery, your nose goes numb, and your lips swell up to the size of a hotdog roll. It takes a good ten minutes to regroup your senses. You've gotta walk around in circles until all the marbles upstairs roll back into place. What I want to know is - How come that cute girl from up the street with all that sympathy is never around when these things happen to me?

After all that, they call it a foul ball. This game ain't over yet.

Okay, so now for the umpteenth time, you're ready. You wind up, and then somebody's mother hollers, "Jimmy, it's time for supper!"

"You're kidding me?" You say.

"No, I gotta go," he says.

"She can wait ten seconds. Let's finish the game."

That's when it happens. You hear your own mother yelling out, "It's time for supper!" Soon everybody's mother's calling. "Okay, okay, we'll meet back here after supper and finish the game. Agreed?"

"Agreed," everybody calls out as they dash off in different directions.

Not until you get upstairs do you find out that you're having something totally repulsive for supper. It's too late now to save yourself by claiming you couldn't hear your mother calling. Before you can even open your mouth, your mother yells, "Get in there and wash those filthy hands. You're taking a bath after supper and that's final!"

"Ma, I can't take a bath after supper. I'm in the middle of a game."

"I couldn't care less about your silly game. You're not going back out in public looking like that."

"What's the difference? Who's gonna see me?"

"Get in there and get washed up before your Lima beans and broccoli get cold," she shouts. As if Lima beans and broccoli are going to taste any better if they're hot. If that isn't bad enough, when you do sit down to the supper table your mother looks at your father and says, "Maybe we should all go over to JM Fields after supper. They're having a mid-summer sale on underwear."

"I can't go," you plead. "I'm in the middle of an important ball game."

"You'll do as I Gawd damn say," she shouts. "They've only got this sale going on for two more days."

"We can go tomorrow then. I don't need any underwear right now. I've got some on." Makes sense to a ten year old kid. After all, you only wear one pair at a time.

"We're going to JM Fields. I've made up my mind - end of conversation," she snaps.

You're only hope now is to plead with your Dad. You know he'll understand.

"Please Dad, can't we wait at least a half hour after supper before we go? I've got three balls and two strikes on the batter. There's two outs with a man on third. One pitch is all I need. We're winning two to one."

Okay, okay," he says. "If you eat all your Lima beans and broccoli I'll let you finish your game."

"But I want him to take a bath before we go," your mother argues.

"For what? I'm not gonna try the stupid underwear on in the middle of the store," you protest.

"The point is," she shouts, "I'm the one whose suppose to be running this house - not you kids. What I say - goes. The last thing I'm gonna do is let my kids run my Gawd Damn life!"

The best thing to do right now is to eat every last one of your Lima Beans while your mother and father fight over not backing each other up over the kids. If you even hope to get back out to finish that ball game you better lick that platter clean no matter how bad it tastes. And don't forget to tell your mom how much you love everything she cooks before you dash out the door. You can always spit what you've got stored up in your cheeks out behind the shrubs in the front yard.

Once you get back outside, you've got to wait for all the other kids to trickle back into the game. "So where's our third baseman?" You ask.

"He's gotta go to JM Fields with his parents," somebody answers.

"I don't believe it," you say. "Okay, we don't need a second baseman right now. Tommy take third."

Everybody's in place. You're all set. You wind up and pitch. "Whacko" the batter nails it. It shoots like a bullet straight at you and smacks you in the forehead. You snap it up after one bounce off the ground and fire it home. The catcher and third baseman have the runner trapped. While that's going on, the man on first steals second. Eventually, the third baseman drops the ball and the runner makes it home. That's when you lose it.

"I don't believe it. We had these guys. Now it's all tied up. How could you have possibly dropped a lobbed ball like that?"

"We wouldn't have had that problem if you struck the guy out!"

"Hey, we're lucky he didn't drive it out into the middle of Ferry Street. I think I'm doing darn good at pitching."

"Yeah, well I think I can do better."

"Oh, you do - do you?"

"Yes I do."

"Okay wise guy - take over then."

So now you're covering third. There's a runner on second. They've got two outs. Look at it this way. It won't be your fault if you lose now because you're not pitching.

"Let's wrap this up. No batter, no batter," you call out when the little fat kid in the neighborhood steps up to the plate. "Everybody move in."

So now the street sweeper turns the corner. Only in Everett can something like this happen in the bottom of the ninth. I swear this guy hides around the corner just waiting for a game of stickball to break out. It's going to take this guy an hour and a half to go by because he's got to swing in and out between all the parked cars. In the back of your mind you're worried do death that your mother's gonna call you in the meantime to go to JM Fields.

By the time the street sweeper does pass by, your original third baseman comes home from shopping. He wants to take his old position back on third. You've got a fast runner on second and the kid that picks his nose while staring at a sneaker wants to take over "THEE" most critical position at the most inopportune point in the game. You can't win.

What's the use? Give him third. It really doesn't matter at this point - does it? Why bother to argue? So you take over at second and the runner's snickering and you know why. Three minutes later you hear your mother calling because she wants to go to JM Fields.

"I'll be right there," you yell back.

Your third baseman looks over at you and says, "They're having a sale on underwear at JM Fields."

"Who gives a crap," you yell back.

"I got some really neat Superman underwear at half price," he says.

"That's really good. Maybe you can wear them over your pants to school. Can we get back to the game now?"

"I was just saying. Don't be so snippy."

"Look, Goober, nobody cares about your friggin Superman underwear."

"You're just jealous," he says.

"Play ball," you shout out in frustration.

The pitcher finally releases the ball. The batter whiffs it. "Strike one, baby. Keep em coming."

Suddenly, the third baseman calls out, "Hey you know what else they've got?"

"Who's got?"

"JM Fields."

"What are you a spy for my mother? Who cares what JM Fields got? Let's finish the game."

"They've got Zorro underwear."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I saw them," he says.

"No, man, that's not what I mean. What I meant was - nobody cares about what kind of underwear JM Fields has."

"You don't like underwear?"

"Not right now I don't - no!"

"Strike two," the pitcher calls out.

"I don't believe it. I'm actually losing concentration because this monkey keeps going on and on about JM Fields," you throw up your hands.

"I'm not talking about JM Fields," he explains. "I'm talking about underwear."

"Gee, I'm sorry. How could I have made such a foolish mistake? Can we go on with our lives now?"

It's actually starting to get a little dark by now. That's when the ice cream truck comes around the corner playing that little jingle. Now everyone comes pouring out of their houses to crowd around the ice cream truck. We've got a delay of game because the ice cream truck stopped right on top of the TableTop pie tin we're using for first base.

"I'm gonna go ask my mom if I can get a push-up," the third baseman shouts.

"She probably spent everything she had on your stupid Superman underwear," you shout back.

"I'm getting a Hoodsie," the runner on second shouts as he dashes towards the ice cream truck.

So what do you do? You call out to the pitcher who is already half-way to the ice cream truck and say, "Quick, throw me the ball." He throws you the ball. You step on second base and shout, "You're out! We won!"

"This is an official time out," the runner shouts.

"What are you talking about? Nobody called a time out. You stepped off the base."

"It's official because everybody else left their positions at the same time," he argues.

He's right and you know it. It was worth the try anyway. And just when you think it can't get any worse, your mother taps you on the shoulder and says, "Get in." They've got the car all revved up right there behind you. Your stay of execution has terminated. It's time to go.

Tell me. Have you ever gone shopping at JM Fields? Maybe it was a thrill for the old fogies looking to cash in on some cheap underwear, but to a ten year old kid it was even less exciting than watching paint dry. Even more so if you had to go there with your mother and big sister. Now there's an experience you won't want to miss - believe me.

For a ten year old boy, going shopping with your mother and sister is a lot like staring at a blank wall for hours at a time. They'll pick up an article of clothing and look it over for twenty-five minutes before throwing it back on the rack because they didn't like it in the first place.

The whole concept is really quite fascinating when you think about it. I mean really. They will examine a simple article of clothing as if they were trying to find a microscopic mite in a mountain of dust. By the time they've finish looking at something, they've examined it with such a fierce curiosity that you'd swear they counted how many threads it took to manufacture that sucker.

Go ahead and ask them why they didn't like it. They'll say, "I would never buy anything like that anyway."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"

What's even worse is that they go ballistic when they finally realize that you're bored out of your mind. They'll say, "Well why don't you go over and look at the boy's clothes if you're bored?" Like that's going to excite you to no end - right?

So how do you explain to them in a way that even they will understand that it only takes a guy exactly three seconds to look at any article of clothing to decide whether or not he wants it? In under one minute, a guy can pick through a dozen pairs of pants, shirts, underwear, socks, hats, coats, pajamas, bathrobes, and shoes. He'll not only know which ones he wants, but he won't have try them on four or five times after he gets them home to make sure. Trust me, if you leave your shopping up to a guy, you'll be in and out of that store so fast it will make your head swim.

If you really want to lose your mind, go underwear shopping with your mom. She'll hold up two separate packages of identical plain white underwear and ask, "Which ones do you like best?" Don't prolong the agony. Just tell her you like the pair on the left. If she asks why, tell her you like the way they look. They always fall for that one.

Okay, so what about the ball game? You can forget about the ball game. By the time you get back home from shopping the streetlights will be on and the streets will be so bare you'll swear you saw a tumbleweed roll by somewhere in the vicinity of Nichols and Ferry.

It still ain't over yet, believe me. When you do get back in the house, your mother will say, "Why don't you try on a pair of those underwear to make sure they fit."

See? They can't just go shopping. They've got to fiddle with everything they just bought until they've convinced themselves that they really don't like any of the things they picked out. That way they can bring it all back tomorrow and go shopping all over again. It never ends.

If you ask me, my mother couldn't care less about hitting the sales. She's out to fill up the rest of those S&H Green stamp books. Every time she picks out something at the store she figures out how many S&H green stamps it's worth. She has so many of them now there's no room left on the kitchen counter for the toaster.

You want to hear the clincher? She's saving them up to get a fancy oval mirror for the front hall. Do you believe that? All that for a silly mirror to peek at before you step out the door. Man, I wouldn't go through all that for 100 free rides on the Cyclone down at the beach.

So like I said, she's standing there stretching out one of those brand spanking new pairs of underwear saying, "Try this on so we can see if it fits."

So I look at her like she's got two heads and ask, "Are you serious?"

"Yes, I'm serious. If I'm going to spend a whole dollar for three pairs of underwear I want to make sure they're going to fit."

"Get away from me. They'll fit if I have to jam a football through the leg holes to stretch them out. I'll make them fit."

That's when the telephone rings and your mother says, "It's for you."

"Hello?"

"Hey Paul, it's me Bobby."

"Hey Bobby, what's up?"

"So did you get the Superman or the Zorro?"

My mother gives me this really odd look when I slam down the phone.

"Who was that?" She asks.

"Wrong number," I shrug.

So that's it in a nutshell. You think summer's all peaches and cream? Try having a game of stickball in the middle of Arlington Street. I'll show you the true meaning of summer time blues. That's what the good old summer time was like for me growing up. Did stuff like that ever happen to you?

I used to think that's the way it was because we grew up in the city. But now I honestly believe that's the way it was because - "We're from Everett!"

Sound On Sound

By the time I turned fourteen, my big sister had grown up and gotten married. My big brother Billy had gone off to fight in Vietnam. And we moved out of that six-family house at the bottom of Arlington Street up into the second floor of a three-family on Foster Street near the corner of Chestnut.

With only my brother Carl and I left at home, I finally had my own bedroom for the first time in my life. Having my own space meant that no one was going to move my works of art in progress from one corner of the room to the other any more. That alone was worth its weight in gold.

My Dad brought me home a beautiful desk from Tufts University. To celebrate the occasion, I went out and bought a really nice lamp to augment it with. Now I could stay up until all hours of the night painting, drawing, writing, and experimenting with recorded sound without disturbing anyone else.

Several times I thought about giving up that paper route, but couldn't find work at my age yet. I knew a few kids who worked under the table at different places, but they still weren't bringing home the money I was on my paper route. Someone told me that Gloria Caterer's down on Union Street paid by the hour in cash. After talking to a few of the kids working there, I decided to hold onto my paper route for just a little bit longer.

Having my own room inspired me to experiment more in art, writing, and especially in recorded sound. For tape recorders, I had one Grundig seven-inch open reel recorder, one GE five-inch open reel recorder, and I swear I was one of the first people in Everett to ever buy a Norelco Carrycorder 150 - if not the first.

Just mentioning my Norelco Carrycorder 150 still makes the hairs on the back of my arm stand on end. The Norelco Carrycorder was one of the first cassette recorders available on the market. It looked like a cigar box and had very few dials and switches as compared to the complexity of the open-reel recorders.

This machine came with auxiliary inputs and outputs, as well as an external Mic with an on/off switch. They actually gave you all the patch cords you needed to plug this sucker directly into your record player, TV, or radio. If that's not enough to impress the heck out of you, then just wait until you hear this. They also gave you four blank 60-minute cassettes to get you started.

This baby only weighed in at around three pounds. It ran on five flashlight batteries. The only drawback to this technical wonder was that the one and seven-eighths i.p.s. (inch per second) tape speed meant it recorded at nowhere near the quality of an open-reel recorder. Even so, you couldn't tell the difference from the quality of sound you recorded from the radio or TV. And the overall quality of recorded live sound was not all that bad even by today's standards (not including digital audio of course).

What that portable Norelco cassette recorder meant to me was that I could now walk any where, at any time, and record my brains out - and I did. This hobby became such a passion with me that I walked all over the city of Everett at three o' clock in the morning by myself with the microphone held out at arms length recording anything and everything that caught my fancy.

Even to this day, people ask if I still have any of those off-beat recordings that I entertained everyone with whenever we all got together. The truth is - I have boxes of this stuff. I'm still digging through these recordings trying to digitize them, restore them, and catalogue them for future prosperity.

So naturally, you're wondering what kind of recordings I actually have - right? Well, let's take into consideration the many different things I've recorded while growing up in Everett and try to sort it all out from there. The sad reality is that over the years I've lost track of so many of these recordings.

Somewhere down in one of these boxes (I do hope and pray) is a recording of Leo Brotman leading us all into a balloon breaking contest down at the Park Theatre with all the chants, cheers, and screams that go right along with it. If my memory serves me well, that was a very clear and static free recording. My only hope is that it still exists buried beneath my collection somewhere.

Also somewhere in this pile is one of the funniest recordings of all my Parlin Junior High and Everett High School teachers you will ever hear. What I did was record several minutes of each one of my teachers. After edited out everything except the "ums, ahs, and ahems," I blended them all together to construct a conversation consisting of nothing but those sounds.

We used to play that tape at parties and laugh until our faces hurt. You could sometimes tell which teacher made which sound. That may be a little difficult to do now after all these years due to our faulty long-term memory banks, but the sound quality is very good. That is one of the sound tracks that I do have and will post when I get the time to digitize it.

Another recording I cherish dearly from my collection is my recording session after school at Vargis Diner. There is a short excerpt of that recording already posted on the "Extra" page at the "Growing Up Everett" web site. What's posted there is only a thirty second sound bite, but it's a good representation of what the entire twelve minutes actually sounds like.

Amongst these recordings is a drunk lying in the alleyway between Gray's apartment building on Ferry Street and the house next to it. This is the building that's situated right between Arlington and High on Ferry Street. This guy was lying in that alleyway on his back holding an empty bottle up into the air and singing, "Happy trails to you, until we meet again," at the top of his lungs - what a riot.

With that Norelco Carrycorder, I walked all over Everett talking to strangers for no other reason than to record random voices. Some of those recordings are hysterical. One guy staggering home from a night at the Rendezvous (the bar on Ferry Street across from the intersection with Union) did an entire monologue about how the communists were infiltrating our local government. He sincerely believed that the Soviets had specific plans for taking over the city of Everett.

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. This guy was dead serious. You should have heard him. He went on and on with specific details, naming names, telling how each politician was tied in with the next, working in cooperation with the Soviet Union to undermine our city government.

When I played this recording for my friends at school the next day, we laughed until we cried. Even my homeroom teacher, Anthony Sarno, got a big boot out of that one. That is another of my favorites that I do hope still exists somewhere buried in these archives.

One of my friends drove me all over the city of Everett one night in his little convertible MG so I could stop and interview people. We came upon this kid who was probably a few years older than us. He was definitely three sheets to the wind. This happened on Woodlawn Street. For some reason, he thought we were broadcasting live on the radio. We never told him that, he just assumed it.

After shouting greetings to all of his family and friends, he then began to apologize to his ex-girlfriend for whatever it was he said that caused them to break up. He started pleading with her to call him so they could patch things up. You should have seen (or heard for that matter) the mood swings this guy went through during this interview. He went from laughing and crying to shouting and swearing all in one breath. It makes no wonder she opted out of that relationship.

By the end of the interview, I nearly had to pry the microphone out of his hands. He was crying into the Mic saying, "Call me Linda. I love you!" As we drove away he shouted out, "If you don't call me I'll never talk to you again you rotten "@$#X%." Now honestly, how could anyone resist a sincere romantic plea like that?

Amongst my random voice recordings is an argument between a police officer and a cabbie in Everett Square, a fight between a husband and wife at a bus stop on Elm Street, and a shouting match between two groups of girls at the Hale School playground. And I honestly believe that somewhere buried in those archives is a recording of Everett's very own singing bus driver. Hopefully, I'll find that when I sort these all out.

Every year on New Years Eve, the local radio stations did a top 100 countdown of all the hits for that year. I'd set up my seven-inch open reel at the three-and-a-half inch speed to capture it all. By midnight on New Years Day, I had recorded everything - including the news, weather, and commercials.

For those of you who do not yet know, there are nostalgic Boston radio sound clips to download on the "Extra" page at the "Growing Up Everett" web site. Some of those radio sound bites date all the way back to the late 1950's. Amongst them you'll hear the birth of Boston radio station WRKO, and Carl DeSuze on WBZ reporting on the Beatle's invasion of Boston. This is classic nostalgic stuff. Check it out.

So now you know how I spent News Years Day every year during my early teens. Using my two open reels hooked up to each other, I rerecord the top 100 hits for that year and edited out all the news, weather and commercials. Don't get the wrong idea. I did not discard all the news, weather, and commercials. I just moved them over onto their own reels.

By the time I turned sixteen, I had an extensive library of recorded music. I've often toyed with the idea of starting my own radio station when I was a kid. That dream became a reality when I discovered how to boost the signal of Radio Shack's miniature broadcast kit. From my bedroom on Foster Street, I went on the air at three o' clock on a Sunday morning and reached as far away as Lebanon Street in Malden. Not bad - huh?

When I bought my first Volkswagen Beetle, it had a shelf below the dashboard above your feet. I rigged up my five-inch reel recorder so I could play music tapes in my car. We drove all over Everett listening to the entire Rolling Stones record collection long before anyone else had a tape player in their car. Man, we was rockin!

One evening while thumbing through the Bargain Hunter's Guide, I came across an ad for a used dictaphone that recorded on seven-inch discs. They were asking thirty-five dollars for it. Once I found out that they had received no other inquiries, I chewed them down to twenty bucks.

They only had six unrecorded discs left, and the original manufacturer had gone out of business. We're talking back in the days before the internet, so finding obscure recording material was a daunting task. Luckily, Noyes Stationers up on Broadway carried sheets of acetate that I could transcribe (record) on beautifully. What I had to do was purchase a cutting compass to cut the circular records, and a hole-punching chisel to knock the necessary holes into the center of the record to fit down over the spindle.

By wrapping electrical black tape around the capstan drive, I was able to change the recording speed to thirty-three and third RPMs. That gave me up to twenty minutes recording time on each side of the record. I then purchased full sheets of adhesive labels to make my own record labels. I had to decorate and letter those by hand using Indian inks so they wouldn't smear. In the end, I was making records with a superior sound quality that you could play on any record player.

Now what could you do with something like that? Think about it. On my mother's birthday, I gave her a record of radio news events that happened on her birthday that she could play on her record player. At the end of that recording, all of her children sang Happy Birthday to her. What a great personalized gift to give to somebody. She loved it.

My obsession with recording sound did get me into some of the craziest predicaments. When an argument between two drunks out on the sidewalk in front of the Brown Derby on Ferry Street turned ugly, I raced over there to catch it all on tape. Once they discovered me standing there holding on to a microphone, they shouted, "Get that son of a @%$+#."

Lucky for me, they were far too drunk to chase me any further than the corner of Broadway and Ferry. They were so winded that they had to lean on each other to catch their breath. So I stood there on the sidewalk about twenty feet away recording them shout, "We'll kill you if we ever get our hands on you," between each puff and pant. Sure it was risky, but I simply could not pass up a golden opportunity like that - now could I?

Recording sound effects is big business. Purchasing an extensive quality sound effects library is extremely expensive. To use a licensed sound effect without paying for it is illegal. The repercussions for doing so could be catastrophic. That's why the ability to record and create your own effects is a Godsend to a multimedia developer in today's market place.

Today, there are numerous sound and noise software generators on the market. These programs enable you to electronically recreate any sound imaginable, as well as to create sounds that the human ear has yet to conceive. I use this technology extensively in creating and composing electronic music.

Since owning my very first tape recorder, I've been collecting sound effects. Even to this day, I use many of these effects in my work. Over the years I've recorded such things as the kids jumping off the diving board at the Everett pool, as well as the sound of traffic on Ferry, Broadway, and Main Streets. I have recordings of the crowd mumbling at the Rockwood Auditorium, at the Everett Stadium, at the Park Theatre, at Vargis Diner, and the sound of shoppers shopping at the old Stop & shop on Ferry Street in Glendale Square - just to name a few.

One humorous sound effects recording story I often tell is about the time I wanted to recreate the realistic sound of a nuclear bomb exploding. By recording back and forth between two recorders, I was able to create many strange and wonderful effects.

With today's digital technology, doing something like that is a snap. But back in the days of the old open-reel tape recorders, you really had to manipulate the mechanics of the recorders to reproduce some of these sounds.

After much experimentation, I discovered that the best way to reproduce that sound was to record snapping a rolled up wet bath towel on the face of a washing machine at a fast recording speed. After that, I rerecord the sound at a much slower speed. The outcome was flawless.

When artists are immersed in their work, they are completely oblivious to what's going on in the world around them. They lose track of all consciousness and separate themselves from such mundane trivia as space and time. All they can think about is how to achieve the desired goal without even bothering to take into consideration anything else along the way. That's why creative people like Beethoven, Dali, and Edison were crazy. Keep in mind that nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

So anyway, there I was, completely submerged in my work. Standing in the middle of the kitchen with the tape recorder running, I began whacking that wet towel against the face of the washing machine at fifteen-second intervals. The fifteen seconds allowed me to capture the entire sound, including the resonation as it faded off into silence.

The house was totally silent except for that exploding "WHAMO" every fifteen seconds. After recording about twelve of these, I played the tape back at full volume to hear how clearly I had captured the original sound. After readjusting my VU recording levels, I decided to record another couple of samples just to make sure I had at least recorded one perfect sound.

Again the explosions began. "WHAMO," "WHAMO," "WHAMO," and just as I was rolling up that wet towel to strike again, I was startled out of my wits when my mother suddenly appeared out of nowhere screaming at the top of her lungs, "What in the world are you doing? Have you lost your friggin mind? It's four o' clock in the morning!"

I just stood there looking at her with my mouth wide open. I was speechless. For one thing, I never once realized that everyone else in the house was in bed asleep. It should have dawned on me that something was up. After all, it is so rare when the house is quiet enough to record without having to worry about background interference. And for another, I did not realize that whacking a heavy wet towel against the face of the washing machine was denting it. When she saw that, she went totally ballistic.

You should have heard her. "You're not normal. I should have you committed. What kind of blithering idiot beats up a washing machine with a wet towel in the middle of the night? It doesn't make any sense. You're a lunatic. That's what you are. You need professional counseling. I knew there was something wrong with you the moment you were born." She went on and on for at least a half-hour or more.

Now this is how I know that I'm not always playing with a full deck. Rather than care anything at all about what she was saying, I was seriously worried that my recording tape would run out and not catch her every word. Most people would be far more concerned over the yelling, but I couldn't care less. Instead, I was concerned with catching it all on tape. Not that I would ever use it to embarrass her, mind you, but because it would make such an excellent addition to my extensive library of random voices - and it did.

Another fun thing I did with my tape recorder is record the sound portion of popular television shows. My mother loved soap operas. So what I did was record one of the soap opera's that she didn't usually watch, including the commercials. We had our TV up on a stand that had an enclosed shelf below. In there is where I hid my tape recorder.

When a commercial break came on, she dashed into the kitchen to fix herself a cup of coffee. That's when I turned the volume down on the TV and the volume up on the tape recorder. You should have seen the look on her face when she realized that the television was showing pictures of Ivory soap, but talking about liquid Prell. It just so happened that both commercials ended at precisely the same time.

Now here's where it got really funny. On TV it showed the words, "As The World Turns," but the announcer said, "and now back to The Guiding Light." If that wasn't enough to blow her mind, when the woman's lips moved on TV a man's voice came out of it. Not only that, but none of the lip movements were synchronised with the spoken words.

She looked at me with a really inquisitive look and said, "Are you hearing what I'm hearing?" Then she asked me if I'd be good enough to get up and change the channel to see if all the other channels were all screwed up as well. Sure enough, no matter what channel we switched to, the dialogue never changed. All we could get was the audio portion of the Guiding Light.

This little charade went on for good solid ten minutes. Finally I said, "I have an idea."

"I'll try anything at this stage," she said. "I just want to make sure I'm not losing my mind."

"Let's try this," I suggested. I opened the door concealing the tape recorder and said, "Let's turn the tape recorder off and turn the TV sound back on and see if that works."

She shook her head with that really embarrassed smile across her face and said, "You son of a gun. I might have known." We had a good laugh over that one. That was great.

Now honestly, I realize that all this sounds a little crazy, but consider this. There are millions of crazy people in this world. They all just can't be in my family alone. Most families have at least one eccentric. It only makes sense. And we do have our fair share of eccentrics. After all - "We're From Everett!"

Listen To The Music

Nothing demonstrates the true meaning behind that old proverb "One man's poison is another man's medicine" quite so candidly as music does. We may never agree as to which songs truly deserve notable recognition, but I'm sure we'll agree that music, like clothing, is an honest reflection of its time. Listening to a song from the past reminds you of what was going on in the world during the time that song was popular.

Watching the kids walk to school through my living room window is one image from my childhood that really sticks out in my mind. It reminds me of that 1960 movie, "The Time Machine" starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. As Rod Taylor's machine traveled through time, he watched the style of clothes on display in the dress shop window across the street change with each passing generation.

That's what watching the bigger kids walk home from school was like for me. Arlington Street was a heavily travelled route to and from school. Even though I was just barely tall enough to look out over the windowsill, our living room window was my portal to the outside world. And because my mother always had the radio on in the background, I got to experience how fashion and music together helped shape the times.

For example, when I hear "Rock Around Clock" by Bill Haley, or even "Love Letters in the Sand" by Pat Boone, I remember seeing the Everett High School girls dressed in plaid pleated skirts that went down to the their knees, with white bobby socks rolled down at the top. Oh yeah, and those poodle skirts, I remember those. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also believe these were the days of those wrap around skirts with the giant safety pin that held them closed.

I also remember the girls wearing those short sleeved, solid-color, pullover tops that looked like lightweight sweaters. They sometimes tied their ponytails back with a ribbon, and they also sported a kerchief around their necks. If they were going steady, they wore their boyfriend's high school sweater with that big red letter "E" on the lower right front panel.

The guys back then were conservatively conventional, much like the "preppies" of a later era. They sported flat tops and crew cuts, wore short-sleeved dress shirts, string ties, and chinos. And of course, if they were on the football team, they wore their high school sweaters.

Unlike the "hippies," the beatniks did not dominate their era. They were more the exception than they were the norm. It was extremely rare to see one amongst the high school crowd. They did, however, exist in Everett. I know that because I saw them hanging out a couple of times down at the Stop & Shop parking lot on Ferry Street.

Back in the fifties, you never saw kids walking home from school in blue jeans. It was not only because of the strict dress code in school, but also because wearing blue jeans back then was dressing down. They did wear them, but only for play or lounging around the house. Whenever these kids headed out for a night on the town, or any social function for that matter, their hair was neatly styled and combed, and they were respectfully dressed for the occasion. They were a parent's dream come true.

Like every other generation, this one had hoodlums as well. How do I know that? I lived on Arlington Street. That was home for a few of the baddest hoodlums in Everett. My suspicions were confirmed years later when some of these individuals spent the majority of their adulthood behind bars. One of them never made it out alive.

From my perspective, the kids of the fifties beamed with local pride. They also adhered to conventional rules of etiquette. Boys did not refer to girls using derogatory terms, they opened the car door for their date, and it was not all that uncommon for the boy to bring along a special little gift for the girl on a first date. Should a boy dare to physically abuse a girl back then, every other guy in town would have broken his neck.

Sounds corny - doesn't it? I once thought so. But now that I see how losing that sense of values has plunged us into a depth of decadence that has trashed our communities and ruined the peaceful coexistence we once enjoyed, I now think we've made the ghastly mistake of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

There were many things about that era that were wrong. Even still, what we should have done was righted the wrongs without discarding the rights as well. We can argue until we're blue in the face as to what's right or wrong with the world today, but I'm sure we'll all agree, acting respectfully towards one another is certainly a step in the right direction.

The hit songs that defined that era for me are songs like the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace," Perry Como's "Catch A Falling Star," and of course, Elivis Presley's "All Shook Up." I mean really - to not mention Elvis Presley when talking about the fifties is to totally ignore the sound that defined their generation. Elvis was their Beatles.

They had their own form of folkie satire just like every other generation. One particularly clever little protest ditty I remember them singing back then was, "Winstons taste sour - just like Eisenhower."

A few years later, I began to recognize some of the faces passing by below my window. Some of them lived right here in my own neighborhood. What am I saying? Two of them lived right here in my own house. My older brother and sister's crowd now ruled the roost.

As one generation's influence begins to dominate the airwaves, the earmarks of the previous generation are still ever present. Connie Francis, Tony Bennet, Pat Boone and Fats Domino were still making it into the top forty. Even so, it was the newcomers like the Four Seasons, Neal Sedaka, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, and a band called, "The Beach Boys" that now dominated the top twenty.

Girls still wore skirts to school, but they were now tight and above the knees. Bras had also undergone somewhat of metamorphosis as well. They were now sharp and pointed like the rear taillights on an old Ford Thunderbird. They looked more like a pair of guided missiles pointing straight out at you. Leave it to a guy to remember that - right?

Bobby socks had vanished in favor of nylons and high heels. Those adorable kerchiefs the girls once tied their ponytails back with were no longer appropriate because the girls were now teasing their hair up into a beehive (as they called it). It looked more like a wind swept bird's nest if you asked me.

You may disagree, but I believe that this was when boys stopped treating girls with the proper respectful etiquette that they so rightfully deserved. One of the reasons for that was because the girls had now adopted the same street language and social graces as the boys. They were using the same derogatory language and slang as the guys standing on the corner. I heard it.

The guys were no longer sporting crew cuts and flat tops. They now greased their hair back into a DA with a little curl that dangled in front of their foreheads. With a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up into their sleeves and a spare cigarette tucked in behind the ear (for emergencies - I guess), they had developed one hundred and one ways to look cool when they sparked up a smoke.

Instead of short sleeved sport shorts, the guys now wore a white tee shirt with a waist cut leather jacket. This was the era of the "Fonz." I recently came across a web site about this era in which the author claimed that the "Fonzi" style was the exception rather than the norm. This author claims that most of the kids during that era really dressed like Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.

Obviously, this person did not grow up on Arlington Street in Everett. Believe me, if you dressed like Richie Cunningham in my neighborhood back then, you'd look like a fish out of water. You certainly wouldn't get a date on a Saturday night.

It was no longer my mother who was playing the radio in the background. My big brother and sister now had the radio on all the time. My big sister listened to the radio while she painted her toenails and talked on the phone for hours at a time. We still only had one telephone, but she called the Phone Company and had a fifty-foot cord installed so it could stretch all the way out onto the back porch. Back then, it was unlawful to change anything at all about the telephone installation in your own home.

Another thing I remember about the guys during that era was their obsession with combing their hair. They never went anywhere without their pocket comb. You'd even see them looking at their reflection in the plate glass windows of the shops in Everett Square to comb their hair. Spitting also became a tradition with these guys. They'd spit after every third or fourth word. What in the world was that all about?

The Wolf Man Jack spun the platters on the radio, and Dick Clark's American Bandstand introduced the new hit wonders on television. Del Shannon lamented over his "Little Runaway," the Four Seasons discovered that, "Big Girls Don't Cry," and the Crystals had a special crush on this one certain guy because "He's a Rebel." And surprisingly, the Beach Boys had a big success with "Surfin' Safari." Perhaps the secret to the Beach Boys' success was the fact that they had found a way to mix both the styles of the fifties with the new sound of the early sixties.

I was no longer watching the world pass by from my front window. I was now out there in the trenches shuffling along with the rest of the crowd. These were not my teenage years. These were my elementary school days.

Don't even ask what I was wearing back then because pre-teen boys couldn't care less about their clothes or hair. We leave such trivial matters to our mothers. I was preoccupied with finding boxes to play with from the Storm Shield building across the street. That was also around the time that my friend from Pleasant View Ave and I were down in his cellar shooting beer bottles with a beebee air rifle.

That was the day that I shot him in the rear end with a beebee when he bent over to set up the bottles for me to shoot at. I couldn't resist. I mean really, it's only human instinct that when you're looking through the scope of a loaded rifle and somebody bends over and sticks their fanny in the cross hairs, you'd have to have the restraint of a saint not to pull the trigger.

That was also the time when I discovered another use for that tank of Acetylene down in the cellar attached to my Uncle Ed's welding gear. We found out how to fill a beach ball from the spigot of the welding torch. After carefully carrying the ball out into the center of the backyard, we dowsed it with lighter fluid. We then threw a lit stick match to it and ran.

It only took seconds for the fire to melt the ball. When it exploded, it released a ball of white smoke about twelve feet in diameter. The smoke formed a thick white cloud that you could not even see through. That ring of smoke did not dissipate easily. It rose ever so slowly up into the air. It took so long to rise and break up that I was certain someone would see it and alert the fire department. What a fun way for a gang of ten year olds to pass the time - no?

I recently received an email from one of my hippie friends from Glendale Park. He said that he often told his kids that growing up in Everett was much like watching the Little Rascals. I couldn't have said it any better myself.

America lost her innocents only a few years later when those shots rang out in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Following that moment, the cynical side of the beat generation gained more influence over teen society - even right here in Everett. We had reached a crossroads in society, and America's youth had chosen the path that had previously gone unexplored by the mainstream. Things were beginning to change at a rapid pace.

When I hear "A Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles, I envision that long line of kids waiting outside at the Park Theatre to see the Beatle's first movie. The girl's hair dropped across their foreheads in bangs. They wore paisley bell bottomed slacks and jumped up and down screaming with excitement over getting to see the Beatles. All the boys had mop top haircuts and wore paisley shirts with extra wide white collars trying to impress the girls with their new mod look.

Shortly afterwards, Barry McGuire held up a mirror so that America could take a good hard honest look at itself in "The Eve of Destruction." I've yet to hear anything that so chillingly resonates the true hypocrisy of our moral principles like this work does. It more than made a statement. It spawned a whole new generation of philosophy in American rhetoric.

When I hear "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, I envision the girls and boys dressed alike, sporting bell bottom dungarees, tasseled fringe leather jackets, head bands, Benjamin Franklin style sunglasses, a piece symbol medallion, and both had shoulder long hair. My big brother was fighting in Vietnam and my big sister had gone off and gotten married. My era had arrived.

Nothing defines the style and attitude of my generation quite like Woodstock does. That was us all over. Woodstock says it all.

The dress code in school was gone. We strolled into class at Everett High wearing trip glasses, headbands, sweatshirts, and sandals. You talk about bras? Some of the girls had thrown theirs away. Remember the bra burning liberated woman of the Sixties? You're talking "hippie" now.

Another thing that certainly defined the hippie movement was the fact that Winslows Potato Chips weren't the only things that came in nickel bags. Remember the old maxim we used to say? "Don't get wise. Get Winslows."

No longer watching the world go by through my window, I was now knee deep in it partying up in the hills with the hippies in Glendale Park. Actually, I honestly didn't realize we were hippies until that Thanksgiving Day dinner at my mother's house when my sister turned to my mother and said, "Guess what, Ma? There's hippies in Glendale Park."

If there was ever one song that would give you an honest view of looking from the inside out of the hippie generation, I honestly believe it was the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." Perhaps only a hippie would truly understand what they meant by the line that says, "Remember what the dormouse said. Feed your head."

Other songs that reflect our times include Jimmy Hendrix' "Purple Haze," "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, "Mama Told Me Not To Come" by Three Dog Night, and of course, absolutely anything by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In all honesty, there were hundreds of songs that reflected our era. Trying to choose only a mere few to help define our generation is a daunting task.

Like I've said many times, not every one in our generation was a hippie. We had many conventionally conservative kids amongst our ranks. It goes right along with the concept about how a previous generation leaves its mark on the following generation. Not everyone tuned in, turned on and dropped out.

I mentioned the song "Mama Told Me Not To Come" by Three Dog Night because I've been to hippie parties where I swore I'd never make it out alive. I've also attended a couple of non-hippie parties that I swore my jaw would crack from yawning. Nothing is funnier than mixing hippies and straights at the same party - trust me.

On Friday nights we went party hopping. You never wound up at the same party on Saturday morning that you first started out at on Friday night. In the course of the evening, you'd attend more than a half dozen parties. I still have some of the scars to prove it.

One party got so out of hand on a hot summer night that everyone hopped over the fence at the Everett pool and went swimming after midnight. Hey, this isn't Beverly Hills. This is Everett. We didn't have a backyard pool so we went out and found one.

I'll never forget the night we showed up at a party hosted by a group of academically conservative high school students. It happened because during that school day, one of those kids had innocently invited a hippie to bring some friends along to his party. What was that boy thinking?

The party was down in his family room in the cellar. When we got there, the girls were sitting in chairs on one side of the room chatting, while the guys stood at the opposite side of the room drinking non-alcoholic punch. In the background, they were playing music by the Beach Boys. I don't ever remember hearing a Beach Boy record at a hippie party. The reasons are self evident.

Once we found out his parents weren't home, all hell broke loose. I'm sure those kids were never the same again. And I'm sure they never got that room restored back to its original condition either.

What I do respectfully attribute to my generation is a broader awareness in music. Aside from the Rock n Roll and folk music that permeated our generation, we began to explore new genres previously overlooked by America's youth. Because many of us were self taught musicians, we began to respect the art form with a sense of curiosity that propelled us beyond our limited pomposity.

We not only listened to the likes of Segovia and Leo Kottke; we also began to imitate them. As a result, Everett possesses a wealth of sophistication and variety of musical talent beyond your wildest imagination. Give me time, and I will convince them to share those talents with you. Trust me, I'm working on it.

Music is an art form that speaks to us in a universal language that we all understand. It is not only a reflection of our life and times, but is a medium of expression much like poetry, photography, and drawing that can inspire you to explore beyond your comfort zone. It can soothe a broken heart, calm a raging beast, and express a heart felt sentiment.

As time goes by, we mature to the point where we all recognize our youth and our past for what it is - our youth and our past. We all evenually become a part of a much larger cultural clique we commonly refer to as - the "older" generation. You'll realize this when the younger generation starts calling you Mom and Dad. You'll realize it even more so when they start calling you Grandma and Grandpa.

One more note of interest. On Friday, July 21, 2006, my hit counter registered 132 hits. That is my highest hit count for a single day since this project began on January 17 of 2006. With over 6,000 total hits registered, we are growing. It is happening.

Help me get the word out. Tell everyone you know that our life and times growing up in Everett is on the internet. Tell them they are openly invited to join in, make comments, and add their own personal experiences and perspectives along the way.

Our goal is to lay before the world a legacy that sets Everett up on a pedestal like a beacon for all to experience for many generations to come.

Not only can we do this, but we are doing it. After all - "We're From Everett."

The Story Behind The Story

I'm a sucker for a good story. Story telling fascinates me. When I was a little kid, barely a Saturday night went by that I didn't sit down in front of the radio with a jar of Cheese Whiz and a stack of Ritz crackers just waiting to hear Jean Shepherd's next adventure.

His stories held me spellbound. Let's face it, nobody tells a story with such an enthusiastic human touch like Jean Shepherd.

Our parents and grandparents are great storytellers also. Hearing stories from their childhood opens windows of opportunity to gaze into the personal lives of our ancestral history. What's even more interesting is when they tell stories about us when we were too young to remember them.

The first story that comes to mind is one my mother loves to tell every year over Thanksgiving Day dinner. Apparently, this happened back before I started kindergarten. She remembers it taking place near the end of the school year because it was such a warm sunny day that she had every window opened in the house.

After my Dad had gone off to work, and my older siblings had gone off to school, she was busy cleaning up the kitchen while I sat on the couch in the living room watching Big Brother Bob Emery on TV. I must have gotten bored with that because I soon walked over to the window to watch the people pass by our house on Arlington Street. Back in the later 1950's, many people still did not own cars. People walked by our house all the time to get to the bus stop down at the corner of Arlington and Ferry.

When she had completed her kitchen chores, my mother made herself a cup of coffee and sat down on the overstuffed chair in the living room to relax in front of the TV for a minute. She felt so at ease with the gentle summer breeze blowing through the house that she kicked off her slippers and put her feet up on the hassock. She could relax comfortably now because I was so preoccupied with gazing peacefully out the window in my own little world.

All of a sudden, she heard me call out, "Hey mister, my mother's up here all alone."

"I couldn't believe me ears," she cried. "I crept over and jerked Paul away from the window without letting that guy down on the sidewalk see me. I was afraid he might think I was using my kid to solicit men. I was never so embarrassed in all my life. Whatever possessed that kid to come out with something like that is beyond me."

I absolutely love that particular story because it always made my Dad laugh so hard that he cried every time she told it. My Dad once laughed so hard over that story that he lost his breath and started choking. Everyone thought he was going to have a heart attack and die. No one could come to his aid because they were all laughing uncontrollably, as well. They weren't laughing at the story. They were laughing at my Dad.

Every time she tells that story she always looks at me and says, "I wanted to kill you that day." At least she laughs about it now. It wasn't so funny back then. She said she didn't dare let me go near the window for weeks after that.

Perhaps that was my way of getting back at her for always telling me that I was such an ugly baby when I was born. My mother actually said that I was so ugly that she asked the doctor if I was going to be all right. She said, "You looked like a wrinkled up little red monkey. You were so ugly I couldn't bare to look at you."

She actually once told me that when they first brought me into the hospital nursery, she was hoping that there was some sort of mix up. All she could think of was "My God, is that ugly creature my child?"

Can you imagine your own mother telling you something like that? I mean really - thank God I'm so unconventional. Had I been born sane that might have had a serious adverse affect on my mental well being. Gee whiz, I didn't even have a face that only a mother could love. Now you know why I never made it as a pin up on one of those Chippendale calendars.

Another story she often tells is about the time I went out into the backyard to collect ants. I had a pickle jar filled with grass clippings hoping to build my own homemade ant farm. Being the considerate humanitarian that I am, I had poked holes in through the lid of the jar so the ants could breath.

What she didn't know was that after collecting my army of red ants, I put the jar under my bureau for safe keeping. During the night, the red ants had conveniently marched up the side of the jar and out through the air holes in the lid. By morning all of my drawers, as well as my bed, were crawling with red ants. I had bite marks all over my body.

"I couldn't believe my eyes," she cried. "When I walked into your bedroom that morning your whole body was covered with these little red ants. You were still sound asleep as if you didn't have a care in the world. I had to strip you down and plop you into the bathtub to wash these things off of you."

"I had to wash every stitch of your clothing and bedding all over again by hand. After that, I had to wash down your entire bed room with bleach and alcohol (include every square inch of the furniture) to finally get rid of what looked like at least a million red ants."

"After all that," she adds, "You cried all day over the fact that I had killed off all the ants in your ant farm. You're lucky I didn't kill you."

Listening to my mother spin her yarns gives you an honest glimpse into the trials of motherhood. When I was just a toddler, she had to tie me to the fence to keep me from running out of the back yard and dashing out into the middle of the traffic on Ferry Street, which I had actually done many times.

On one hot summer afternoon while she sat out on a lounge chair in the back yard reading the newspaper, she decided to run indoors to get a cold drink for the two of us. "I figured you'd be all right because you were tied to the fence and I wouldn't be gone out of sight for more than a minute."

"When I came back out into the yard, not more than a minute later, you had climbed up the high chain link fence, and up onto the neighbor's garage roof. If that wasn't bad enough," she laughs, "You were standing on the edge of the garage roof with your zipper pulled all the way down, peeing down on top of the neighbor's car."

The whole time I was still tied to the back yard fence. That story should give some credibility to the old adage about giving someone just enough rope to hang themself with. My mother swears she never let me out of her sight ever again after that. I can see why.

Now I fully understand why my big brother once said to my father, "You know what, Dad? I'm beginning to think that being artistic is a mental illness. Look at Paul. He isn't normal, is he?"

Which reminds me of the story my father often told about the day he was watching a Sunday afternoon football game between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. In his words, the story goes like this ..."All of a sudden I heard this big "bap" like noise. There was a flash of light. Then all the power went out in the house."

"After opening the fuse box down in the cellar, I discovered that every fuse in the box had blown. Right off the bat I knew there had to be a short in the circuit somewhere. So I ran back upstairs to check all the outlets."

"When I opened the door to the boy's bedroom, there was Paul sitting on the floor in front of the outlet holding onto that wooden handled prong I use on the hibachi. It was burned and smoking. Even the wall all around the outlet was burned. I just looked at him and asked, What did you do?"

"I was just trying to light up this big fork to make a flashlight," he answered."

You would never believe that same little kid eventually made into the Alpha Chi College Honor Society now would you? Had it not been for that wooden handle, chances are, you would not be reading this story right now. And believe me, this is not the only time I had engaged in a life threatening experiment.

My mother often tells the story about the time that she came walking out onto our second story back porch just in time to grab a hold of me before I leaped to my death. Apparently, I thought I could safely parachute to the ground with an opened umbrella.

"I had just stepped out onto the back porch for a breath of fresh air," she explains, "And there was Paul with one foot off the railing, stepping off into thin air, holding onto an umbrella. I raced across the porch and grabbed a hold of him just as his body was tilting forward. Had it been one second later, he would be dead."

Hey, can I help it if I was such an inquisitive little tyke? How else am I going to explore the unknown wonders of the mechanical universe if I don't experiment? Where would our technology be today if people didn't take risks?

Just to let you know that I wasn't the only nutty one in the family, let me tell you my great Aunt Grace's favorite story about my big brother, Billy. We used to visit with my great Aunt Grace and Uncle Ed every weekend. They owned several of the properties in our neighborhood, but they themselves lived in Wilmington.

I know what you're thinking. If they were so rich, how come we were so poor - right? Well actually, my mother grew up wealthy in Newfoundland and never tasted poverty until she got married. She's a prime example of one of those "riches to rags" stories.

Anyway, on this particular day, my Uncle Ed had started a fire in his back yard hibachi. When he went indoors to get the steaks for the grill, Billy got a hold of an old paint rag, hooked it onto the end of a stick, and was dipping it into the fire.

When my Aunt Grace came out into the backyard, there was four year old Billy holding onto this smoldering rag. "It hadn't actually caught fire yet, but had blackened and was spewing smoke," she explained. "I shouted at him to drop that stick and to quickly get away from the fire. After picking the rag up off the lawn, I told him to go into the house because he couldn't be trusted out in the back yard alone."

"We went into the kitchen and I sat him down onto a chair at the table. As I was lecturing him about the importance of not playing with fire, the entire kitchen filled up with smoke. It was then that I discovered that the love seat on the sun porch was in flames. The smoldering rag had caught fire to the love seat."

"We had to quickly grab a hold of the backyard hose to dowse the flames before the whole sun porch caught fire. After putting the fire out, we had to remove the love seat to the back yard to clear the house of all the smoke," she said.

She was so angry that she lost her temper, turned to Billy and shouted, "You stupid little boy! Look at all the trouble you caused now! You could have burned the whole house down!" To which he innocently replied, "Who are you calling stupid? You're the one who put the rag on top of the love seat, not me."

"I was never so ashamed of myself in all my life," she exclaimed. "It's true. I was the one who set the love seat on fire. In all my anger, I forgot that the rag was smoldering when I absent-mindedly threw it down on top of the love seat on our way into the house."

She always laughed when she told how when she asked Billy if he could ever forgive her, his reply was, "Why don't I think about it over a dish of chocolate ice cream?"

Another story involving my big brother Billy when he was little, is one my mother tells about when she brought all us kids up to Newfoundland to visit my grandparents in the summer of 1952. I certainly don't remember anything at all about that visit because I was only five months old.

She says it drove her British father insane to constantly listen to my older siblings singing "God Bless America" and "You're a Grand Old Flag" to the top of their lungs every time they went out for a drive in the car. "I never once thought I'd be saddled with a slew of Yankee grandchildren," he used to laugh.

That sentiment reached its zenith on the morning he walked into the bathroom to find five year old Billy dipping the Union Jack down into the toilet. "That does it," he shouted. "I've tolerated your singing "God Bless America," and "You're a Grand Old Flag" until I was blue in the face, but once you start flushing my flag down the toilet, you've gone too far!"

My father was always a great one for telling us kids seriously exaggerated and fictitious tales. My mother would often scold him saying, "Now Bill, don't you go telling those impressionable little minds anything so outlandish as that." We could always tell whether or not to believe him when we got older because he always laughed when he made something up.

He often laughed over the time when we were really little and he made up this long adventure about trapping gorillas in Africa (the man never once set foot outside the western hemisphere). Whenever he reminisced about this moment, he laughed so hard over it that we couldn't make out what he was trying to say.

Apparently, he had just finished making up this long yarn about killing a lion with his bare hands, and riding on the back of an elephant through the jungle while hunting for gorillas to capture for the Stoneham Zoo. Out of nowhere, a giant gorilla leaped down out of a tree and knocked him off the elephant's back. The gorilla then rode away with his elephant, leaving him to die a slow death while he sank inch by inch, deeper and deeper into the quick sand that the gorilla had knocked him into.

"At this point of the story," he laughed, "You kids just sat there spellbound with your jaws dropped open while I wove this tale of adventure. All of a sudden Carl blurted out with, "Did you die?"

In all honesty, it was really hard sometimes to know whether or not to believe this guy. He used to tell us when he was growing up in Indiana, that he and his uncles used to swindle restaurants out of meals.

What they supposedly did was pull up to an empty building across the street from a restaurant with their pick up truck. After setting ladders up against the building, they would go across the street to the restaurant to cuff a meal.

They'd tell the proprietor that they got hired to paint the building across the street. They promised that after they got paid at the end of the day, they would return to honor their tab. After eating a hearty meal, they'd pack up their pickup truck and just drive away.

We never did believe him when he told us that story. Many years later when my aunt (his sister) came to visit from Indiana, she verified the story as true. Because of that, we never knew when to believe him.

That's why none of us ever believed him when he said that when President John F. Kennedy was a Massachusetts Senator, he and Jacqueline once stayed at the Parlin House on Church Street in Everett. He claims that when Senator Kennedy addressed the people of Everett, he recited the famous "We're From Everett" chant. And he also claims that he actually got to shake hands with Senator Kennedy.

I never knew or met any one else who claims to have met John F. Kennedy in down town Everett. I have never heard any one else say that President Kennedy ever spent the night in Everett. In essence, I never believed that story.

If there's any one out there who can set the record straight, by all means, enlighten me. The reason I ask is because I now have in my possession a recording that actually sheds a whole new light on the subject. What I have is a home recorded disk which supposedly contains a recording of President (then senator) John F. Kennedy reciting the "We're From Everett" chant.

You have got to hear this to believe it. And yes, I'm going to share this with you. Just click on link to the "Growing Up Everett" web site, go to the "Sound" page, and then scroll to the bottom of the page. You'll find an MP3 copy of that recording to download and listen to for yourself.

And those are just a few of the many yarns I've been told over the years about the days of my early childhood when I was much too young to remember them. Crazy - huh? Well what did you expect? After all - I'm from Everett.

My Reckless Summer Adventure

There comes a time in every little kid's life when he or she ventures outside of their safety zone to experience the unknown beyond where the sidewalks ends. You can see that special look in the child's eye when curiosity creeps into their heart as they cast their gaze over the backyard fence. The known world suddenly becomes too small for that inquisitive little mind. That thirst for knowledge and adventure becomes a driving force.

Growing up in a city like Everett means that many little kids from the same neighborhood, and sometimes even the very same apartment building, reach this pinnacle of enlightenment at precisely the exact same time. That's the way it was for Bobby, Joey, and I, in the summer of 1960 when we were eight years old.

This was the summer following my quantum leap into the first grade at the Horace Mann Elementary school. Bobby had moved into one of the apartments downstairs during the school year. I've known Joey since I could sit upright. His family lived across the yard in Gray's apartment building on Ferry Street. They lived upstairs from Mrs. Day.

Our backyard was a giant unpaved parking lot connecting my apartment building to Gray's apartment building on Ferry Street. It also opened up into the small lot behind the detached building on the corner of Ferry and High that housed the Laundromat. That backyard was our whole life.

All together, Sixteen families shared that backyard. A whole world full of social interaction materialized in that little plot of ground on a daily basis. Teenagers souped up their street rods, young newlyweds sought child-rearing advice from the elders, and the neighborhood kids played hide and go seek right there in that backyard.

On hot summer nights, the women gathered on their back porches to chitchat in the cooler summer night air. It was much cooler than staying indoors because nobody had air conditioning back then. Our fathers got together down in the backyard to blow the suds off of a couple over a game of horse shoes. And the bigger teenagers hung around on the lower back steps to play cards.

They'd sit on the steps betting nickels and sneaking beers when the grownups weren't looking. And man, you should have heard some the cuss words that came out of their mouths whenever they threw them cards face down on the steps like they was mad at the whole world. We sure got an earful of education sometimes - let me tell ya.

I'll never forget when the airline stewardesses moved into several of Gray's apartments on Ferry Street. You could see right into their windows from my back porch. On this one particular night, one of those stewardesses hung out her back window to clip clothes out onto the clothesline. I never heard that game of horseshoes fall so quiet in all my life.

I honestly believe it was because she wasn't wearing anything that she drew so much attention. My Dad was in denial of the whole affair. He swore up and down to my mother that he didn't see a thing. That is so amazing because every one else saw plenty. I sure did.

Seeing something like that is certainly a good indication that's there's a whole lot more to see and explore of that great big world beyond my backyard. Who knows? Maybe that was exactly the motivation that inspired me to concoct a wild scheme to venture beyond that little plot of neighborhood that had dominated my existence up until now.

Each one of us had journeyed into Boston on the "T" with our mothers enough times to know the routine. Our biggest drawback to making our escape was that we were constantly under the watchful eye of our mothers. The moment we stepped out of the backyard, they wanted to know exactly where we were going. If we were gone out of sight for any more than five minutes, they chased after us. That was a substantial obstacle to overcome.

To overcome that barrier, we had to execute our escape at a time when our mothers felt secure over our where-abouts. The only time my mother felt comfortable enough to allow me to go up to the playground was when I was with my big sister. There's no way my big sister would let me take off on the bus with my friends to parts unknown. So I cooked up an elaborate scheme that brought all the necessary elements together to enable our great escape. The plan was so plain and simple that it was virtually fool proof.

We waited for one of those nights after supper when all the men had gathered to play horseshoes in the back yard. All we had to do was ask our mothers if we could sit out on the front porch to play Old Maid. They agreed. After sneaking into my mother's money jar and stealing a grand total of sixty-eight cents, we were as good as gone.

It didn't get dark until almost Nine o' clock so we had plenty of daylight to play with. At first, we set down on the front porch and dealt out the Old Maid deck. Bobby took off first. He ran down to Ferry Street and hid in the alleyway between Manny's Variety and Major's house. We waited another few minutes before Joey took off to join him.

The way I saw it was that if all three of us went running down the street together, it might cause a stir and raise suspicions. By going one at a time, if anybody's mother came to check on us, those remaining could say whoever was missing had gone to the bathroom. To ensure the success of the initial phase of the plan, I would not leave my post until I saw the bus pull up to the corner of Ferry and Arlington.

Don't worry, I've practiced and timed my run several times. Besides the fact that my cohorts could tell the driver to wait for me, it only takes me seven seconds to run down to the bus stop. The initial phase of our operation went as smooth as silk.

Because we had to hand the driver our dime directly, there's no way we could cheat. By the time we reached Everett Station, we only had thirty-eight cents left between us. It was going to require some serious creative financing to pull this off. Believe me, we had that all figured out as well.

At Everett Station, after you dropped your token or your dime (yes, your dime, not your dollar) into the slot, a large fully-enclosed gate revolved to let you out onto the outbound side of the station. If we paid for the subway as well, we'd only have eight cents left to our name. We had to cheat on this one.

Everett Station had virtually no security. As long as we weren't kicking up a fuss, we drew no attention. One by one, we scaled that gate and leaped down onto the outbound platform. It was a bit of a drop, but it was nothing that we weren't accustomed to after having jumped down off of so many garage roofs and tree limbs.

The only other person waiting for the train that afternoon was the oddest looking gentleman we had ever seen in our lives. He looked like he just stepped out of a time machine from the American Revolution. His hair looked just like Thomas Jefferson's. It was long and wavy. And he was dressed like him too. Man, we haven't even left Everett yet and already we're seeing different things.

Bobby walked right up to the guy and asked, "How come you're dressed like that?"

He smiled thoughtfully and replied, "I'm an actor in a play. Have you ever seen a play?"

"Yeah, I was in a play at school," I answered excitedly. "I was a chicken in Old MacDonald's Farm."

"Did you like acting in the play?" he asked.

"I would've liked it more if they let me be the farmer. They picked a big fat kid for that instead."

"Well," he said. "We rarely get the part we hope for. But every time we except an opportunity to act, we learn new ways to express our interpretation of what the writer envisioned for that character. It helps us mature as actors. It's quite challenging."

My response to that was, "Oh, I see." But honestly, I really couldn't care less. Now that I knew why he was dressed like that my curiosity was satisfied. I was ready to move on to newer experiences now. After all, the last thing I wanted to do is get bogged down on any one thing during a once in a lifetime opportunity like this.

After the subway train roared up in front of us, the doors swung wide. A man with an MTA suit stepped off the train and looked right at us. "Does your mother know you're here at this hour of the afternoon?" he asked.

"Yeah, she's waiting for us. She works at Jordan Marsh," I said. That was the only store in Boston I could think of at the time.

"Okay," I'll tell you where to get off then."

This was great. We now had an unwitting accomplice. After those doors slid shut, we gathered at the window to watch the world go by. That train took off like a streak of lightning.

We went up into the air and zoomed past a whole bunch of dilapidated buildings. I looked into people windows and could see some really shabby apartments along the way. It must be terrible to listen to the train roar past your windows all day long. Minutes later, the light went dark as we rolled through the tunnels. Before very long, we stood out in the middle of downtown Boston.

Boston was like Everett magnified a hundred times. The buildings reached up all the way into the heavens. You should have seen and heard all the traffic. There was just as much traffic on the sidewalk as there was on the street because of all the people.

We found a joke shop that had some of the wildest things you've ever seen on display in the front window. I saw a pocket comb that worked like a switchblade knife. While Joey and me were looking in one window, Bobby walked over to see something in the other one. Some guy came over and put his arm around Bobby's shoulders and asked, "See anything you like?"

I got this really bad feeling about this guy, so I ran over a grabbed a hold of Bobby's arm. After yanking him away from this guy, I yelled, "If you don't get away from us I'll scream for the cops." That guy took off like a bat out of hell.

After walking a little while through the crowd, I somehow got separated from Joey and Bobby. I came upon what looked like a darkened purple entranceway with a couple of older kids standing there. They flagged me over. Feeling sure of myself, I walked over towards them.

"Hey, you wanna see a naked lady?" they asked.

"Where?"

"We'll open that door and you can peek in," They said pointing at the purple door.

"Okay," I agreed.

"Get ready," one of them said.

I got ready. He jerked open the door. Sure enough, there was a whole line of guys drinking beer and smoking cigars sitting at a long bar. On top of the bar was a naked lady walking back and forth holding what looked like a black handkerchief in front of her. Some guy jumped up and shouted, "Hey you!" We all took off running.

"Over here," one of the kids yelled out. We all ran into this dark entranceway to a subway station.

"Come on before the cops catch us," he said as we leaped onto the down escalator.

Two of them stood on the lower steps in front of me. One of them was a couple of steps up behind me. And the fourth one was walking down the up escalator on the other side of the handrail beside me. That's when one of the kids in front of me pointed to the other kid on the up escalator and said, "Look at him." When I did, the kid socked me in the face."

"When we get to the bottom, we're gonna take all your money and pound the living daylights out of you," the kid in front of me said. These kids were a lot bigger and several years older than me. I was doomed.

It was not bravery, but fear that saved me that day. Fearing the worst, I grabbed a hold of the two moving handrails, swung up, and kicked the kid who was standing in front of me in the face with the toe of my shoe. When I turned to run upstairs, the kid behind me grabbed a hold of my shirt. I poked him straight in the eye as hard as I could. He dropped to his knees holding onto his face. I leaped over him and ran up the escalator.

The kid on the other side of the escalator chased after me. Because I was closer to the exit, I made it out onto the sidewalk just as he grabbed a hold of me. It's times like these that you know there must be a God, because standing right there was a Boston policeman.

"He's gonna kill me," I shouted.

Just as the police officer turned to look, that kid let go and ran back down into the escalator. I was a free man. All I needed to do now is hook back up with Bobby and Joey. A few minutes later, I joined up with them just a little bit further down the street.

After telling them what had just happened, they wanted to go back to see the naked lady. They didn't believe my narrow escape story. They thought I made it up so they would miss out on seeing a naked lady. I told them exactly how to get there, but there was no way I was ever going back. Naked ladies are fine, but I'm sure not risking life and limb just to peek at one, and that's final.

We eventually made our way to the Boston Commons. That place always was a carnival sideshow just waiting to happen. The first thing we saw was a whole group of grown men dressed in white robes dancing in circles and banging on tambourines. Their heads were shaved bald except for a long ponytail. One of them came right up to me and held out a cup full of change towards me. I thought he was offering me some money. He jerked it back when I tried to reach in to grab a handful.

Over near the pond we saw a guy covered in pigeons. They were flocking all around him, perching on his shoulders, and fluttering back and forth from his fingertips. That looked so cool until we discovered that his entire back was covered with bird poop.

Then we saw a sidewalk artist who draws elaborate scenes with chalk. These works of sidewalk art were unbelievable. This guy could draw better with chalk on the sidewalk than I could on paper with a pencil. He was phenomenal. And you should have seen all the dollar bills people had thrown into his hat.

Further on down the road we saw a trio of musicians entertaining the crowd with the prettiest music. There was a guitarist, a flutist, and a very pretty girl playing the violin. I liked her best. And yes, it was because she was so pretty.

We watched a mime put on a play, magicians perform amazing feats with slight of hand trickery, jugglers tossing bowling pins back and forth to each other, and another guy who could actually swallow fire. If all that wasn't enough to quench your thirst for excitement, then you could always go watch the swan boats sail by, or go take a look at that gold dome on top of the state house.

Down by the water fountain we saw a guy with a carton hanging from his neck who was giving out free samples of cigarettes. He was handing out these little boxe