You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

I shake my head and laugh every time I think about my big brother, Billy. What a one in a million personality that guy had, let me tell ya. The more I think about him, the more it amazes me at the depth, and the breadth, of his character.

For as far back as I can remember, he's been pulling me off to the side for some serious one-on-one life coaching. It's funny because he never said anything that you didn't already hear many times before. It's just that when he said them, they somehow took on this urgent sense of cynical sarcasm.

He had this real "down-to-earth" way with words that made you realize how important it is that you heed these simple tidbits of common wisdom. You could tell just by the way he said them that you either follow the rule or you were going to be in deep "you-know-what" from the consequences of your own actions. Let me give you a few examples of what I'm talking about.

This was one of those cold winter nights when my Dad sent me down to Anna's Variety on the corner of Cherry and Ferry (okay, I know, it rhymes) for a loaf of bread, a half-a-gallon of milk, you know, things like that. It was the winter of my stint in the third grade at the Horace Mann. My Dad sent Billy along with me to protect me from the evils that lurk in the darker corners at night, but mostly to help me lug home all the groceries. There really wasn't all that much to fear at night in Everett back in 1961.

When we were coming out of Anna's Variety, I happened to see one of the kids who was in my third grade class. What took me by surprise was that he was dressed to a tee from head to toe in a dark suit and tie. My first instinct was to blurt out, "Wow Johnny, don't you look snazzy. What happened? Did somebody die?"

Billy marched off ahead of me. I could tell he was fuming. Johnny just walked on past me without saying a word. I had to book it to catch up to my big brother. He didn't say a word until we rounded the corner onto Arlington Street. That's when he spun around, smacked me on the arm and said, "What's wrong with you, man? Don't you ever think before you open your mouth? Are you that stupid?"

"What did I do?"

"Think before you open your mouth next time. Remember that. Don't ever open your mouth again until you've carefully sized up the situation first. Do you understand me?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Who was that kid?"

"Who? Johnny?"

"Yeah, Johnny. Who is he?"

"He's a kid in my class."

"Is he one of your friends?"

"Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, he plays punch ball with us before school. Why?"

"Because you just lost a friend, stupid. That's why."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you didn't size the situation up before you opened your stupid mouth. Didn't you see the car that he just stepped out of?"

"Yeah, I saw it. Why? What's the big deal?"

"Okay smarty pants, what kind of car was it?

"I don't know. It was some kind of big, long, black car."

"Oh, so you did see the car?"

"Yeah, I said I did."

"Did that look like the kind of car somebody's family usually drives around in?"

"How should I know?"

"That was a black limousine, stupid. His whole family was in that car. They were all dressed up, and they were all sitting in the back. Somebody must have just died in his family. They were obviously on their way to the funeral parlor. That kid is in mourning. Do you know what that means?"

"Not really."

"It means his heart is broken. Somebody close to him died. That hasn't happened to you yet, but when it does, believe me, you'll really feel the sting of what that kid's going through."

"All I said was ..."

"I know what you said. When somebody's hurting like that they're very sensitive. You're lucky he didn't smack you in the mouth."

"He wouldn't do that. I can take him."

"You wanna make a bet? Forget all about that stupid who can take who stuff. That doesn't always count. You can only kick a dog for so long before he eventually turns around and bites you. He won't care if you can take him or not. Believe me, if he sneaks up from behind and halls off and gives you a full round house, you'll still wind up with a fat lip and a black eye whether you can take him or not."

"Besides, that's not even the point," he argued. "If that kid just lost somebody that meant the world to him, he will never forget this day. And he'll never forget how careless and insensitive you were. Trust me, you just lost a friend."

You know what? He was right. That kid never spoke to me again.

So you'd think I'd learn my lesson after that, wouldn't you? Well, I didn't. This was one of those lessons I had to experience twice before it really sunk in. I did learn it the second time around, though. I can guarantee you that.

It happened during my junior year in high school when a whole slew of us from Glendale Park went out party hopping on a Saturday night. We started out at a party on Franklin Street. A few hours later, a handful of us broke away from the crowd and showed up at a party up in the projects. A few more hours after that, a couple of us wound up at a party we came upon by chance somewhere up behind Main Street near the Malden line.

You should have seen the crowd at this party. Man, did we stick out like a couple of sore thumbs. We looked at each other and laughed, "What is this? The Twilight Zone?"

In the punch bowl they actually had punch. All the girls were dressed like they just got out of parochial school. And all the guys had short hair, wore skinny belts, and chinos. I felt like I had just landed on the set for the Donna Reed show.

And you should have heard the conversations they were having. You talk about nerd city? I overheard one of the guys proudly proclaim above everyone else's voice that, "Mr. Vozella said that mine was the best essay in the whole class." Wow, now that's certainly gonna land you a chick for the night - right?

We tried to mingle in with these squares as best we could. My eye caught a glimpse of this cute little number on the other side of the room so I wandered on over there. Just as I was getting knee deep in all the rhetoric I've been taught by the coolest of the cool down on Arlington Street, somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

You would not believe what I saw when I turned around. Standing before me looked like a Dobbie Gillis impersonator with the squarest set of threads I've ever seen in my life. "Can I help you, my good man," I laughed.

"You weren't invited to this party. Were you?" he asked.

"Oh yeah, I was."

"Who invited you?"

"Your mother invited me. She wanted me to tell you to hurry home and change your clothes before anybody sees you like that."

"Nobody thinks you're funny." He was pissed.

"No man, they don't, but they think you're hilarious. I love your outfit. What is that, a cross between Dobbie Gillis and Willie Whistle? What are trying to do, man, chase all the chicks away?"

"Melvin wants you to leave." Now he was fuming.

"Melvin? You've got somebody here named Melvin? This I gotta see," I laughed.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Look man, I'm like really busy right now. Why don't you go shine your shoes and come back later, okay?"

He pushed my hand off his shoulder and said, "You'll wish you took my advice. Melvin won't be so pleasant to deal with."

"Yeah, well let me worry about Melvin, all right? Go grab yourself some free punch and a cookie on me, okay little buddy? I'm busy right now."

This was certainly another one of those times I should have carefully sized up the situation before I started shooting off my mouth. I didn't. What I did was turn back around to continue my spiel with this cute little number.

You should have seen that smile on her face. I thought she was swallowing my sweet-talk, hook, line and sinker. What she was really smiling about was the scenario unfolding right behind me.

I got to meet Melvin. He put his hand on my shoulder. Well actually, he put the ball of his pointer finger on my shoulder. I could feel his thumb across my entire back. Glancing down at my shoulder, I could only look at one finger at a time. They were that big.

"I'm Melvin," he said. The words sounded like they were trumpeted through a tuba. They reverberated off the walls. My curiosity got the best of me and I turned around. You should have seen Melvin.

At first glance, I was only looking at one of the buttons on his shirt. It was big enough to slice up a large thick crust pizza on. I had to take a few steps back to see the whole person. He was dressed just like Dobie Gillis, too, but he didn't look like a Dobie Gillis impersonator. He looked more like Haystack Calhoun dressed up in a Dobie Gillis outfit. This guy was huge. Nay, more than that. This guy was a giant.

"I'm giving you until the count of three to get out of here. If you don't, I'm gonna bust you up." That's exactly what he said. He poked me in the chest with his pointer finger when he said it. It felt like getting poked by a baseball bat.

There comes a time in every man's life when he's got to stand his ground and prove he's a man. This was Melvin's time to do that, not mine. There also comes a time in every man's life when he knows the cards are heavily stacked against him. I distinctly remember my brother, Billy, once saying something to the effect of, "He who turns and runs away lives to fight another day."

I didn't hang around long enough to hear Melvin say the number three.

Another one of my brother's favorites was, "Don't ever judge a book by its cover." It's sound advice, sure, but we all do it anyway. You can't help it, really. I mean, after all, there's love a first sight - right? The first thing we do whenever we evaluate anything is look at it. I know I do.

Guys are cynical and insensitive by nature. Everybody knows that. We don't mean anything by it. We're just being guys - right?

When all the bigger guys in the neighborhood sat around on my front steps on summer nights, they entertained themselves by making fun of all the people who walked by. Like when that big heavy guy up the street with the skinny little dog walked by, Artie would blurt out with, "Hey, what's wrong with this picture?" And everyone would burst out laughing.

And then there was this older gentleman who walked by regularly. This guy was a widower on his way to go a courting. He was always dressed in a funny little suit. It was funny by our standards anyway. Every time this guy walked by, one of the bigger kids would say something like, "Hey look, here comes Pinky Lee. He's bound to score tonight with that new bow tie he's sporting. That dude is just too hot to trot."

They had a grand old time for themselves putting everybody down. My brother, however, never took part in that. He'd always come back with things like, "So you guys are all perfect - right?"

"Oh man, we're just having fun," they'd all say.

"Putting people down isn't fun. It's stupid," he'd say.

If you knew my brother, you'd never expect that about him. But trust me when I tell ya, this kid really cared about people. Maybe that's who I got it from. You never know.

One thing I do remember is the night he lost it when Donny starting singing, "You're in the Army Now," when Jerry walked by. My brother went ballistic over that. He made Donny feel like two cents.

Let me tell you about Jerry. Jerry was different. Jerry's hair was short and wavy. And Jerry always wore a waist cut dungaree jacket, a garrison belt, dungarees with a trucker's wallet on a chain sticking out of the back pocket, and work boots. On top of all that, Jerry was a girl.

My first recollection of Jerry happened one Sunday afternoon when my father sent me down to Manny's for a loaf of bread. Manny was in the back room somewhere and Jerry was sitting at the snack bar having a Coke and cigarette. I just hopped up on a stool beside Jerry and waited for Manny to come out of the back room.

I didn't really know Jerry personally because, after all, I was just a little kid. She was a regular around our neighborhood though. Everybody knew her. I knew her by sight, but not by name. After sitting there spinning around in circles on the stool beside her for about 5 minutes or so, she leaned back and hollered, "Hey Manny, you've got a customer out here."

"I'll be out in a few minutes," he yelled backed.

"He's probably going to the bathroom," I laughed.

"God only knows what that man does back there," she said. "What you want, honey? I'll get it for ya."

"I just need a loaf of Wonder bread."

"Hey Manny, how much is the Wonder bread?" She yelled out.

"Twenty-three cents," he yelled back.

She bagged up my loaf of bread and I handed her the quarter. She threw my two cents change down inside the bag so I wouldn't lose it. On my way out the door she said, "There's a little something extra in there for ya when you get home for being such a good kid." When I got back home I found a Chunky down inside the bag. Now is that a good person or what?

Billy was sitting at the kitchen table when I pulled out that Chunky. "Hey look at this," I said. "I've got a free Chunky."

"How'd you get that?"

"That funny lady down at Manny's gave it to me."

"What funny lady?"

When I described what she looked like, he said, "Oh, that's Jerry. Jerry isn't funny. She's just a little bit different than what you'd expect from a lady. She's one of the nicest people you'll ever want to meet. So don't think of her as funny. Just think of her as different. There's nothing wrong with people being different. Just imagine how boring the world would be if everyone was exactly the same."

That conversation alone taught me a lot. I really looked up to my big brother. This kid was no wimp. He was one of the tough guys in the neighborhood. What nobody understood about this kid was that he really cared about people. He had a heart of gold. And he looked down on no one.

That was so different from all the other kids he hung around with. They got a big kick out of ridiculing and making fun of anyone they perceived as not being cool. Learning to be more tolerant of people's differences opened up a whole new world for me. I wound up making many friends during my childhood with kids that weren't cool from a streetwise standpoint, but had so much more to offer in so many other different ways.

Had I kept that in mind, I never would have opened my big mouth the way that I did at Melvin's party. I reverted back to my wise-guy street-smarts that night. And you see where that got me - right?

When Billy passed away back in 1991, we inscribed his most famous saying on his urn. It reads, "You gotta do what you gotta do." Man, I can't count how many times he's said that one to me. The most memorable of them all happened during one of the most treacherous guilt trips I've ever suffered through.

This happened during my summer after the sixth grade. A few friends, and I, were walking along Summer Street when an old nun from the Imaculate Conception convent waived me over. She asked if I would be so kind as to drop a handful of envelopes into the mailbox just outside the Summer Street Market.

On our way down to the mailbox, we discovered that the envelopes had money in them. I could feel the outline of the quarters in the envelopes. There was a lot of them. "Hey guys, there's money in these things."

"How much?"

"I don't know. It's a whole bunch of quarters."

"Let's rip em open."

"Think we should?"

"Yeah. We can't get into any trouble. We're all Protestants. Come on, rip em open."

That's what we did. We ripped em open and stole the six dollars worth of quarters. We each got a buck fifty out of the deal. After pocketing the money, we threw the ripped opened envelopes into the mailbox.

For the life of me, I cannot remember how we spent that money, but I do know what I got for it. I got the worst guilt trip I ever suffered in my life. Not a moment passed by that I didn't wish that I hadn't done that. It tormented me day and night.

It must have become obvious because there I was sitting out on my front steps when Billy came walking up the street from the bus stop at the corner of Arlington and Ferry with this really odd look on his face. He stood at the bottom of the steps and just looked at me for a minute or two before asking, "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"What's got you down, kid? Something's bothering you. You've been down in the dumps for over a week now." He sat down beside me and said, "Come on, kid. Let it out."

I told him what I did.

"You know what? I'm not even gonna lecture you on that one. There's one thing in life you'll never get away from. And that is "You gotta do what you gotta do." There's just no two ways about it."

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do," he said reaching for his wallet. "I'm gonna give you six bucks. You do with it whatever you want. I know you. You'll do the right thing." He patted me on the shoulder and headed off upstairs.

It took me a few days to muster up the strength, but I did go back to that convent and knocked on the front door. When a younger looking nun answered the door, I said, "An older nun asked me to mail some envelopes for her a few weeks ago. I wonder if I could speak with her?"

"Wait right here," she said.

You should have seen the look on that older nun's face. She looked so trusting, and so honest. How could anyone so cold-heartedly cheat this person?

"Can I help you?" She asked.

Try as I may, I couldn't hold back the tears. "I am so sorry. You asked me for a favor and I betrayed you. I stole the money out of your envelopes. I need to pay you back." I held out the six dollars towards her.

"That isn't necessary," she said. "You have made your covenant with God. You are forgiven."

"Please," I cried. "I cannot keep what is not mine."

She reached out and took the money from my hand. "Bless you, my child," she said. "Don't let it trouble your heart any longer. You are forgiven."

If memory serves me well, I cried all the way home. They were not the tears of a broken heart, but the kind that cleanse the soul. I never felt so good before in all my life.

A few days later when we were all playing "hot beans" out in the backyard, Billy turned to me and said, "It feels great to have your good conscious back doesn't it?" Man, you don't know how true that is.

Had I not repented for that evil deed, I'm telling ya right now, it would have troubled me to this very day. Let's face it. No matter what you do in life, "You gotta do what you gotta do." There's just no two ways about it.

I know that you can tell how much I miss my big brother. I would have cherished the opportunity to have grown old with him. Something will always be missing from my life because he's gone. But he does walk along side of me every day of my life. His words of wisdom guide me every step along the way.

Everything I needed to know to guide me along this path in life, I learned when I was just a little kid growing up on Arlington Street. I suppose we could all say that. Especially us because, "We're from Everett!"

Look Through Any Window

I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I do struggle with writer's block sometimes. When it strikes, writers go out of their minds for the want of something to say. They'll look in every direction, read every tidbit of literature they can get their hands on, and even take a nap per chance to dream. When it happens to me, I sit and stare out the window.

When we first arrived in Indiana, we got a big kick out of the fact that when we look out our kitchen window in the morning we can see cows grazing in the pasture just across the street. Just beyond that lies amber waves if grain, or to be more truthful, endless fields of cornstalks.

My wife often talks about how when she was a little girl at the Hamilton School, she used to sit and stare at this one particular picture in her geography book. It was an aerial view of an old fashioned automobile driving ever so peacefully along a winding country road over hill and dale through pastures of wheat bending in the direction of the easterly winds. "How I so longed to be in that picture," she says.

Well, she's in that picture now. It's funny how the grass is always greener in the other fellow's yard. What she's come to realize is that it does make a relaxing backdrop when you're not really paying any attention to it. But when you really do want to sit and look out the kitchen window while sipping on your first cup of coffee in the morning, you'd like to look at something.

Watching a cow chew on the same mouthful of grass for over an hour gets old really fast. The truth is, if you sit and stare out any one of my windows for any length of time, you'll fall asleep in your chair. There's nothing to look at.

And that is precisely why I like to sit and stare out the window whenever I get hit with a bout of writer's block. It's so boring that it makes my mind wander all over the place.

That never happened when I was a little kid growing up in Everett. If you got tired from looking out your window in Everett when you were a little kid, it wasn't because you were bored. What happened is that you wore yourself out trying to keep up with everything going on outside.

Tell you what. Grab yourself a snack and come on over here beside me. I'll show you what I used to see from my windows down on Arlington Street when I was a little kid.

I never once thought that all those times I got punished for sticking out my tongue behind my mother's back would become fond memories later on in life. The memory of that smack I got across the lips with the back of her hand certainly taught me to watch my p's and q's more carefully the next time around. Let me tell ya.

When I got punished, I was not allowed to watch TV or listen to the radio. Sometimes, my mother wouldn't even let me draw. She knew that would get to me. The only thing she'd let me do was to sit and look out the window. In that way, I'd get to see all the fun I was missing out on.

She thought that was torture. For a budding artist, it's a golden opportunity to study the human race at the best possible moment. When they are busy just being themselves.

Take a step back into time and come take a look out my window beneath the setting sun. What you're about to see are everyday people doing every day things back in the early 1960's in good old Everett, Massachusetts. These are the things that make the world go round.

Take a look over there across the street. There's Jon, and Stanley, and Jacky having a game of off the wall. That's exactly the sort of thing my mother wants me to see. This is classic. Watch this.

Jackie's up. He fakes throwing the ball at the wall so Jon and Stanley make a jump for it. Then he does a quick pitch off the wall to catch them off guard. Stanley snatches it on the first bounce after it sails over Jon's head.

"That does it, I've got a man on first and third," Jacky says.

"No way," Stanley argues. "You've only got a man on first and second."

"How do you figure that?"

"Your second pitch was foul. Your man on base can't advance on a foul."

"That wasn't a foul. It hit the ground before Mr. Lassitor's truck."

No way, it bounced way past the front tire and hit the trash can. That's way out of bounds."

"No sah. The trash can is in bounds."

"That's not even possible. I'd have to pass straight through a telephone pole and a parked car to catch it. There's no way that's in bounds."

"Who says?"

"That's the way we've always played."

"No sah. We've never played that way."

"Yes sah, we've always played that way. Right Jon?"

"Oh yeah, of course he's gonna back you up cuz he's out on the field."

This line of argument will continue on until one of them says they ain't playing any more because Jacky's cheating. Rather than lose out on a game where he's ahead, Jacky concedes on the "Man on third" theory and settles for a man on first and second. Trust me on this one. I've been there.

Okay, here we go. Now watch this. A very pretty girl just came out of Whitehill Pharmacy and she's walking her bike across Ferry Street. Seeing how pretty she is, I'll give her ten seconds before one of the salivating males in the neighborhood alights from midair down upon her.

What I tell ya? Do I know this neighborhood like a book or what? There goes my big brother, Billy, strolling across the street in her general direction combing back his locks. He stops halfway across the street, pulls that butt out from behind his ear and sparks it up. He's trying to project that cool, laid back, James Dean image.

And there he goes. He's made contact. The two of them are standing there on the corner talking to each other. She's smiling. He's doing it. Is that guy smooth or what? I know this routine. I've heard this guy before. It goes like this.

"Hey, haven't I seen you before?" That's his classic opening line.

She says, "I don't know. Have you?"

"I think I have. I remember that pretty face." Innocent enough -- right? She's smiling. The hook caught her lip. All he's got to do now is reel her in.

"What's your name, honey?"

She tells him.

"My name's Billy. Funny we've never met before. Can I walk with you?"

"If you want to," she shrugs.

Of course he wants to. Whether he scores or not, this is a golden opportunity to hone his craft. He gets his license next year. He wants to master the trade by then. What good is your license if you can't cruise the Parkway with a pretty chick at your side?

Should she ask whether or not he has his license yet, he'll see no need to dampen this pleasant occasion with the truth. He'll do what every other guy does who's taking an earnest shot on goal. He'll lie.

So now all the girls out there will turn to their soul mate's and ask, "Do men always lie to women?"

The answer is "No." Only my big brother did that. The rest of us always told the truth.

If he plays his cards right, he'll come walking back cool and slow with that great big "you know what" eating grin on his face waving his trophy up over his head for all the other would-be contenders to see. "What trophy?" You ask. It's that coveted piece of paper with her name and phone number on it.

It's funny to watch this scenario unfold from up here. By the look in my brother's eye, you can tell he's got that superiority thing going on. Guy's always think they're in control of the situation. They honestly think the girl hasn't got a clue as to what's happening here. It isn't until they feel the weight of that ball and chain do they finally realize that "a guy chases a girl until she catches him."

Hey, while you're here, take a look at all the cool machines cruising up and down the street. Down there at the end of the alley is Mister Coolin's 1952 Ford pickup. Every teenager on the block drools over that thing. Artie's already asked him four times if he wants to sell it. You should hear the way he carries on about it.

"Man, if I could ever get my hands on a machine like that," he says, "I'd block that engine right up out of the hood and top it of with a rail of chromes. Then I'd pin strip a spider's web on the hood. I can see myself now cruisin down the parkway with that back end jacked way up into the air. I'd blow every challenger away that dared to cross my path. I'm telling ya right now. If he don't let that sweet missile go soon that thing's just gonna disappear out of thin air on him."

As if Mister Coolin's not gonna figure out that the kid who lives four houses up the street stole his car - right? Artie's not always the sharpest knife in the drawer. Lucky for him, he's got friends who really care about him so they always stop him before he tries to pull off one of his hair-brained schemes.

And there goes Bobby cruising by in his candy apple red 1957 Chevy Bel Air convertible. Now that's a cool street machine if I ever saw one. That sure turns many a pretty girl's head when that sweet machine rolls by, let me tell ya. Doesn't do them any good, though. Bobby's not out on the prowl.

That boy's already tied down by the ball and chain. He don't even dare turn his head when a pretty girl walks by. He's engaged. Every time he comes walking down the street all the bigger kids start singing, "Dum-dee-dum-dum." He laughs it off and says, "Your day will come. You'll see."

Hey, there goes Mikey cruisin along in his two-tone, 1962, Checker Marathon. What a beautiful car, no? That is the only Checker Marathon I've ever seen in my life. Jeez, and now that I think of it. He's got the newest car in the whole neighborhood.

Oh man, he's gonna run over Mrs. Day's cat. Check this out. This happens almost every other day. One of the neighbor's dogs takes off after Mrs. Day's cat and she runs right out in the middle of traffic chasing after the dog. Somebody's gonna kill that poor woman one of these days, I swear.

Just listen to her scold that dog. You'd think she was chastising a little kid by the way she talks. Listen to her.

"You're a naughty dog. Where do you get off chasing a poor defenseless little kitty cat? She didn't do anything to you. What's wrong with you anyway? Didn't anyone ever teach you any proper manners? Get along wit cha. Go on, go home."

You think she's crazy - right? But look at the dog. It's almost as if he understands every word she says. He's got shame written all over his face. He stops dead in his tracks, stoops his head down low and looks shamefully up at her with those big sad eyes. Then he slinks away with his tail tucked in between his legs while constantly looking back at her as if he's shamefully asking forgiveness. This is classic stuff for Wild Kingdom right there.

In the meantime, Mrs. Day's cat runs right out under Mikey's front tires. Good thing he saw it. He screeched on his brakes just in time. So now Mrs. Day lets him have it.

"Why don't you watch where you're going? You almost hit my cat. You drive like an idiot. You're not the only one on the road you know."

Mikey looses it. "Shut up you old bag. I've never had an accident in my life. It ain't my fault if your stupid cat runs out underneath my tires."

"Who do you think you're talking to? Don't you dare call my cat, stupid. She's a lot smarter than you are," she shouts back.

"She's certainly a lot smarter than you," Mikey yells.

"Somebody ought to teach you some manners," Mrs. Day hollars back at him. "You need to respect your elders."

"I respect the ones who deserve it. What are you so worked up about anyway? I didn't hit your stupid cat. She may not be so lucky next time."

"That'll be the sorriest day of your life if you ever did." Now she's waiving her finger in his face.

"If that cat ever runs out in front of my car again I'll make sure I slow down so I'll crush every bone in its body. Then I'll throw it over Major's fence."

Now that's a threat. Major is the most dangerous dog in the world. He lives just around the corner on Ferry Street. He is, without a doubt, the biggest and most viscous German police dog I've ever seen in my life. That dog would eat an entire cat in only one bite.

I'll tell ya another thing. Maybe Mikey's right to shout back at Mrs. Day. And maybe she is wrong for jumping all over Mikey like that. But Mikey knows that in this neighborhood, he's got to make amends with Mrs. Day. She's actually a very nice person. She's just a little overly sensitive when it comes to her cat.

Our neighbors will not tolerate one of the teenagers threatening an elderly lady, no matter what the situation is. We live by a strict code of peaceful coexistence down on this end of the street. There are some grown ups around here who look crazy enough to hurt you. They haven't yet, but nobody really wants to find out for sure. They keep a peaceful balance going on in the neighborhood. They insist on it.

Mikey catches a glimpse of one such neighbor out of the corner of his eye. This guy came walking out onto his porch giving Mikey a real hard look as soon as he threatened Mrs. Day's cat.

Take a closer look at this guy. He's a got a deep scar over his right eye. Nobody knows how that happened. Nobody dares to ask. This guy has never had a job, and yet, he's never in want. He seems to go out at night and doesn't come home until the wee early hours of the morning. I've seen him sometimes walking home under the streetlight like a shadow in the night. This guy's actually kind of creepy.

Mikey takes one look at this guy and he knows he's just about crossed that line in the sand. So now he gets out of his car and says, "Look, I'm sorry I almost hit your cat. And I'm sorry I got so angry with you. You kind of caught me off guard and I lost my cool. I apologize."

"Now that's more like it," Mrs. Day smiles. "I shouldn't have overacted myself, I suppose. You're apology is accepted."

Mikey looks back at the guy on the porch. He gives Mikey a reassuring courtesy nod and goes back into the house without saying so much as a single word. And that's how it's done down on Arlington Street.

If you press your forehead up against the glass and look straight down in front of my house you'll see Hilda and Karen with their jump ropes. Girls absolutely amaze me. Give em a football and tell them to sweep around to the left and they'll run smack dab into every defender on the field. Give em a jump rope and they'll gracefully elude every flake in a snowstorm. Go figure.

You could get hypnotized watching these girls jump rope. They make dazzling shapes out of that rope with just a slight flick of the wrist while spinning it faster than an airplane propeller. Not only that, but they jump through it flawlessly in perfect rhythm. They never miss a beat. How do they do that?

And the songs they sing. What a riot. "I, my name is Irene. My husband's name is Irving, and so on. And then they get this "salt & pepper" thing going on where they jump at about half the speed of light. They go so fast sometimes I get all out of breath just watching them.

Now here's another common sight down here on Arlington Street. At least once a week they send somebody down to climb up the telephone pole to pull all the sneakers and bicycle tires down off the telephone wires. The guy always yells at the kids to stop throwing things up on the wires. He says we'll be really sorry if we ever knock one of those live wires loose. "That thing will fry you to a crisp in a matter of seconds," he says.

And of course, we always deny it was us. As if Mrs. Day goes out there after the streetlights come on to whip her sneakers up over the wires. I mean really. Who do we think we're kidding?

Just up the street a little ways is one of those houses where nobody knows who lives in it. Did you have one of those in your neighborhood, too? It seems like almost every neighborhood has its own little piece of the Twilight Zone. That house is ours. We've never seen anybody either come out or go into that place. It's really weird.

There's so much going on outside my window down here on Arlington Street that it could hold you spell bound for hours on end. My mother thinks she's punishing me. They don't even have stuff as interesting as this on television. That's why there's no channel selector on the window pain.

Everything you'd ever want to sit and watch is right out there happening spontaneously without so much as a single rehearsal. Now that's entertainment. Nay, more than that. That's Everett.

Cowboy Supper

Good lord, it's not fit for man or beast out there. I am so surprised you even ventured outside on a night like this. I suppose I shouldn't be. You New Englanders don't even bother to look out the window before you step outside. You people would go out into absolutely anything rather than to suffer a fit of cabin fever, now wouldn't ya?

Well, nobody's happier than me that you did. No matter how cold it gets outside, nothing warms my heart like sitting down at the kitchen table and having a good gab with my best friends. So come on in. You know me. I've already got the kettle on.

The winds are howling through the Wabash Valley right now. You know that "Wabash Cannonball" they sing about in all those old Country & Western songs? That roars right past my house.

Let me tell ya something about the Midwest. They've got more freight trains out here than you can shake a stick at. Some of them are so long it takes twenty minutes for these things to roll by. The ground shakes and the windows rattle when they do.

If you're one of those people who thinks the distant sound of the hollow train whistle in the lonely midnight air is romantic, then believe me, this is where you want to be. I warn you though, the romance of it all soon wears out its welcome after about the third or fourth time it goes by in a single day.

And even though that mighty Wabash Cannonball is only about fifty yards down the road, the wind is howling across that desolate cornfield with such force that it's muffling the noise of that freight train to a mere whisper. It's been so long since I've felt a bitter cold like we've got outside right now that it reminds me of this one really cold winter night we had back in January of 1959. Do you believe that? I even remember what year it was.

Well, I'll be honest with ya. There are many reasons why I remember that year. That was a time when a whole slew of circumstantial events seemed to unfold all at the very same time. Some were historically notable events, but most were the types of things that just seem to stand out in the mind of a six year-old boy.

What I'm about to tell you involves a little episode in the history of my family when times were tough. Now don't get all teary eyed on me just yet. It ain't all that bad. All it is, is an isolated moment in a poor and troubled family's life. It's one of those trying times every family goes through at one time or another. This was ours.

I wasn't going to be six years-old for very much longer. My birthday was only a few weeks away. I was born on the day after Valentines Day. Just my luck -- right? I couldn't be born on the one day of the year that we all celebrate love. I had to be born on the day that we suffer the morning after. That's gotta tell ya something about my luck right there.

The good news is that my seventh birthday was going to fall on a Saturday. That means I don't have to go to school on my birthday. Now that's worth celebrating.

For the life of me, I cannot recall what day of the week it was when all this transpired. I remember Miss Nigro, my first grade teacher at the Horace Mann, making a big fuss over how we now had a new star on our flag. Alaska had just become our 49th state. As soon as she said that, we all looked up at the flag on the wall expecting to see the new star. "Our flag doesn't have the new star yet," she explained. "But we will soon get one that does."

When you're a six year-old first grader, and somebody tells you that "We have a new star on our flag," you expect it to be there. Don't go saying there's a new star there if it isn't there yet. Little kids take what you say at face value.

Just a few days before that, I heard Jack Chase on the news say that the President of Cuba had to flee the capital city because of the invading guerrillas. I couldn't wait to tell everybody. Can you imagine? The President of Cuba released fleas all over the capital city. He was probably hoping they would bite those gorillas that were invading his country. They must have escaped from a giant zoo. It all makes sense to me.

This was one of those really dark winter days. From inside our classroom, it looked like night outside. It was so dark out that when you tried to look out the window from your desk, all you could see was the reflection of the inside of the classroom. I always hated those kinds of school days. When it's that dark outside, I'd rather be home with my family. It doesn't feel natural to be in school when it's dark out.

When I was only in the first grade, my big sister, Julie, and my brother, Carl, were still at the Horace Mann with me. They were in the sixth and fourth grades, respectively. Billy was up at the "Voc" by then.

Julie, Carl, and I walked home from school together that day. And I couldn't wait to get home to get in out of that freezing cold. We huddled together to protect ourselves from that biting wind all the way down Arlington Street. It passed clear through every layer of clothing right down to the bone. My teeth were chattering.

My mother welcomed us home with the most encouraging smile. God only knows what got into her that day, but she was unusually cheerful. After stamping the snow off our boots, and hanging our coats up on the hooks out in the back hallway, we gathered around the kitchen table for our family after-school chat.

That's when I noticed that big bright candle burning on the kitchen table. I love candlelight. It casts a soft melancholy shadow all over the house. Candlelight feels so poetically romantic to me.

"How come we've got the candle on?" I had to ask.

"We're having blackout," my mother explained. "Nothing's working right now. We've got no radio, no TV, or any light other than that candle. The wind must have knocked out a power line somewhere. But that's okay, we can have a lot of fun with that."

I've warmed buckets of water to soak your tired feet in to warm you up after that cold walk home," she said.

What a special treat that was, let me tell ya. Nothing feels quite so soothing and relaxing as soaking your tired feet in a tub of hot water. It felt so good that I almost dozed off a couple of times right there in my kitchen chair.

Okay, so what was so special about today? Did anything exciting happen at school?" My mother asked.

"Nah, it was just another school day," I replied. "We're gonna get a new flag in our classroom that has a new star. Other than that, everything's just the same old baloney."

"Hey Ma, Did you hear about Alfalfa of the Little Rascals?" Julie asked.

"Yes, I've heard about Alfalfa." After she said that she kind of nodded towards me as if to tell Julie not to talk about it in front of me. And of course, that only made me all the more inquisitive.

"So what happened to Alfalfa?" I had to know.

"Somebody shot him dead," Carl blurted out.

"Where in the world did you hear that?"

"We talked about it in school today," Carl said. "The teacher said she heard it on the news on her way to work on her car radio. Didn't you watch the news today?"

"No, we don't have any power. We did get the newspaper this morning, but I haven't looked at yet. I've been too busy," my mother explained.

Julie and Carl pulled the newspaper apart at the kitchen table looking for that story about Alfalfa. Sure enough, they found it. Apparently, he went over to a friend's house in a drunken stupor demanding fifty dollars that he had to award some guy for finding his friend's dog.

He was minding the dog while his friend was away. When his friend got back home, he refused to pay Alfalfa back for the reward money. He felt it was Alfalfa's responsibility because the dog was under his care when he got lost. They got into a scuffle over it and he shot Alfalfa.

After hearing the story all I could think was, "Oh great, there's not going to be any more Little Rascals to watch." They had to explain to me that Alfalfa wasn't a little kid any more and that those films were made decades ago. Even still, I could never watch the Little Rascals ever again without thinking in the back of my mind that I was watching a dead kid. It gave me the willies.

I must admit, I was having a really good time for myself soaking my feet in that tub of warm water and listening to Julie and Carl read the newspaper out loud by candlelight. Carl was thumbing through the Entertainment Section when he piped up and said, "Hey, there's gonna be a new television show coming on next week."

"Really, what is it?"

"Bozo's coming to television."

"Bozo? What in the world is that?"

"Don't tell me you don't know who Bozo is," he said as if everyone knew.

"No, who is he?"

"He's Bozo the Clown, you darn dummy."

Now honestly, Carl had no idea who Bozo was either until he read about it in the newspaper. So now he puts on this big act like he's one up on everybody else because we don't know who Bozo is. That's when Billy came tramping in through the back door without shaking the mud and snow off his boots.

"Hey Billy, do you know who Bozo is?" Carl asked.

"Yeah, you," Billy laughed. "You're a Bozo."

"Bozo the Clown is coming on TV," Carl shouted with enthusiasm.

"Oh boy," Billy joked. "That certainly changes all my plans for the weekend. By the way, what's for supper?"

"We're having cowboy supper tonight," my mother said with a smile and a wink. Did you people hear that? I'm having cowboy supper tonight. Man, it don't get much better than this, or so I thought. That is, of course, until I found out what cowboy supper actually was.

My mother cooked up this great big pot of lima beans. She then crushed up a whole sleeve of saltine crackers into it. After that, she loaded it up with mounds of ketchup. She said that's what the cowboys eat when they're out on the range. I ate it so I could be like a cowboy, but it tasted terrible.

The lights came back on by the time my mother put me to bed that night. That took all the fun out of the whole evening for me. I don't know why, but I loved blackouts when I was a little kid. It was a shame my Dad had to work so late that night. He missed out on all the fun we had.

Curled up under those heavy blankets, I laid my head on that pillow and drifted right off into dreamland. What a fun night that was. When the lights go out, it seems like we come closer together as a family. I really like that.

What woke me up out of a sound sleep was the racket going on out in the kitchen. My Dad had finally come home from work. Instead of greeting him with that warm and pleasant spirit that she had welcomed us home from school with, my mother laid into him like a crazed lunatic. She was yelling at the top of her lungs and I could hear every word.

"You mean to tell me," she shouted, "that all this time you had stopped into the bar for a drink with your friends? I had no food in this house for these kids. All I had was one lousy can of lima beans, one sleeve of crackers and a bottle of ketchup. These kids were hungry."

"Well, how was I to know?" He asked.

"Not only that," she shouted, "There's no more coal in the cellar. I had to warm buckets of hot water to soak their feet so they wouldn't freeze to death. Don't you care anything about your kids?"

"I didn't know there wasn't any more coal in the cellar," he shouted back.

"Well, you should've known. That's your responsibility. You've got children to look after now. You're not free to go gallivanting all over the place anymore. Do you honestly think I'm going to continue to live like this? I'll take these kids back home to Newfoundland where they can live a decent life. You can stay here by yourself and rot for all I care," she shouted.

That's all I had to hear. I buried my head in my pillow and burst into tears. All I could think about was how awful it will be when we move away and leave my Dad behind all by himself. That was the last thing I'd ever want.

What a terrible end to such a fun filled night. The more they shouted back and forth, the harder I cried. My heart was breaking.

All of a sudden, a pair of big strong hands picked me right up out of my bed and held me close. It was my big brother, Billy. He sat me on his knee, and rocked me gently on the edge of his bed while I buried my head into his shoulder and cried my little heart out.

"Now, don't you ever be afraid," he said. "Ma will never pack up and leave Dad behind. She loves him way too much for that. She's just really mad at him right now."

"Everything will be back to normal by morning," he said. "You'll see. We've got a really good family. We all get mad at each other sometimes. We all fight sometimes, but we always make up. Don't we? Ma and Dad are having a fight just like we do. They'll make up. They always do."

He then pointed over at Carl, who was still fast asleep and said, "See, even Bozo isn't worried about it." That made me laugh. After tucking me back in under the covers, he stood there and rubbed my back until I fell back to sleep.

He was right. The very next morning everything was back to normal. It was another freezing cold day, but when I got home from school that afternoon, the house was as warm as toast. We even had a hearty home-cooked feast of fried chicken, french fries and corn for supper that night. Somebody must have gone shopping.

That happened 48 years ago. Both my Dad, and my big brother, Billy, are now gone. They were two of the many guiding lights that have helped me navigate this intricate maze we call life over the years. That just goes to show you how nobody finds their way all by themselves. People really do need each other. That is also one of the benefits of having a family. We so easily take that for granted sometimes.

There is nothing phenomenal about the story I just told you. There never was anything extraordinary about my life as compared to anybody else. But of course, that all depends on how you see things.

Take my mother, for instance. She took one frustrating moment out of her life and dressed it up so that it became a cheerful experience for us kids. Rather than complain about not having any heat in the house, she showered us with affection and warmed our little feet with hot water that she boiled on the stove. Rather than to lament over the fact that there was barely a morsel to eat for supper, she gathered what she had and prepared a meal that was fit for a cowboy. She shined an inspirational light on an otherwise dismal situation.

And even my big brother, Billy. We're talking about a kid who had a tough reputation to uphold. That rough exterior was nothing more than a shield to protect the vulnerable soft underbelly of a truly thoughtful and loving human being. Why is it that we all feel the need to hide the sincerity that lurks deep within our hearts?

You can travel across the planet and see marvelous things. You can go listen to Big Ben chime in London. You can get lost in the extravagance of the Taj Mahal, or even trek upon the Great Wall of China for that matter. But verily I say unto you, not one of those things will ever make such a lasting impression as the way other people do when they reach out from the bottom of their heart and take hold of your hand.

In my own mind, I've lived an extraordinary life because I've known extraordinary people. None of them were rich or famous, but they had a natural honesty about them that far supercedes all the riches in the world. They had all of the qualities you'd ever hope to find in a trusted friend.

They have taught me to count my blessings when my misfortunes were staring me in the face. And every time I started to think that you couldn't trust anybody anymore, they've proved me wrong time and time again. And do you know what else was so special about them? They were from Everett!

Our First Anniversary

This is our first anniversary. I hope you didn't forget. If there's one lesson us guys must learn in life it's to never forget our anniversaries. Man, there's hell to pay if you ever do that.

I dare say, that's one of the first things every man should teach his son. That is unquestionably the most important universal law of survival. Never mind the facts of life. They can come later. If you hope to seriously help your boy navigate through this intricate maze of life then by all means tell him, "Don't ever forget your anniversary my dear boy or you'll spend the night on the couch."

This being our anniversary, we have much to talk about. Over the course of the previous year I have openly invited you into my personal life. Not that my life was anything spectacular by a long shot, but I couldn't come up with any other idea on how to pull this off. And I had to do this. I just had to.

There's more to it than just my welcoming you into my personal life with opened arms. I needed your trust. Nobody just walks right into anybody else's house, sits down, kicks off their shoes, and makes themself at home unless they know and trust that person first.

You do know me by now. And you do trust me - don't you? This is not unfamiliar territory to you anymore. You've been here so many times before that it feels like home - doesn't it? Well it should, because when you're here, you're home. You're with family now. You belong here.

So come on in and set a spell. I'll put the kettle on. We'll have a good gab for ourselves, spend a quiet moment together, and let the rest of the world go by. This is our sanctuary away from the maddening crowd. This is where we close the door behind us, kick off our shoes, and run around in our stocking feet.

When you're here, you don't have to care about what anyone else thinks. You're free to speak as you feel and say what you mean. We may disagree sometimes, but that's all right, too. Differences of opinion are accepted here. Nobody's gonna shout you down. You go ahead and have your say. We'll listen.

Every time I think about us all getting together to relive the good times growing up in Everett, it reminds me of years ago when the neighbors used to come over and gather around our kitchen table. Everyone laughed, talked out of turn, and sometimes you couldn't even get a word in edgewise. You'd have to shout over everyone else's voice just to throw your two cents in.

If you could only see that image as I see it now. You'd see the smile I'm seeing on everyone's face. And you'd hear the guffaws of laughter that only come from when you laugh so hard that your sides ache and you'd have to hold onto the kitchen table when you double over on your chair. Now that's a good time.

At the end of the evening, after everyone else went back home, and my mother put us kids to bed, I could hear her out there in the kitchen cleaning up after everybody. She wasn't complaining about the big mess we all left behind. She was singing. And do you know why? I'm not just gonna say why, I'm gonna show you why.

Turn on the TV for minute. What do you see? Go ahead and flip through the channels. Over the next sixty seconds you'll probably see somebody naked, hear about somebody dying, hear about somebody else killing somebody, and then you'll find out which celebrity is getting divorced this week. If that doesn't keep you on the edge of your seat, you can always tune in to find out what that loud obnoxious lady recently said about that millionaire with the bad hairdo. As if you really care.

Keep flipping through the channels and you'll hear some lame brained politician telling you how important it is that you surrender your constitutional rights so "he" can protect "you." And then you'll hear yet another politician that's hell bent on taking care of all the people on another continent without any regard whatsoever for the millions of homeless and needy people right here in our own country.

You'll even hear two political parties vying for your vote by telling you that you don't know what's best for you, but they do. All they want is your vote. After they get that - you can go shit in your hat and pull it down over your ears for as far as they care.

I mean honestly, They've been promising us a nationalized health care system for what - five decades now? Man, things do move slowly when they favor the common American - don't they? Oh, don't get me wrong. Some people do get free medical care in this country. It's just not available for Americans yet.

I think the democrats are on the right path, though. They want to give the Social Security benefits that you paid for away to the people who don't belong here. Hey, why not? You're not using that money for anything right now - are you?

Gee, I guess there must be plenty of money still left in that system after all. Somebody should tell the president. I don't think he knows that. At least tell Carl Rove. He knows how to break things down so that even the president can understand it. Thank God for him - right?

Somebody help me out here. Which party is supposed to represent the American people? I can tell which one favors big business, and which one is all fired up about protecting the rights of people in other countries, but I'm having a hard time sorting out which one cares about the American people. Am I missing something here?

On the lighter side, if you keep flipping through the channels you'll eventually see a sixty-five pound, has-been actress who is willing to sell you her secret for staying thin for just an arm and leg. Another one will sell you her secret formula for a smoother, younger looking skin for just six easy payments of thirty-nine ninety-nine. After you lose all that ugly fat and smooth out them tell tale wrinkles, you'll really look snazzy in one of them new fancy-schmancy automobiles that can tell you where to go and how to get there.

Man, I've got a lot of catching up to do. I can pinch way more than an inch on my sides and with every passing birthday my skin looks more and more like the street map of Everett square. Not to mention all that snow I've got up there on the roof. Don't let that scare you off. There's still plenty of fire in the furnace. And I'll show it to ya, too, right after my afternoon nap.

Wait, there's still more. Just in case you're really down on your luck with nowhere to turn, we've got another guy with a really strange hairdo who holds the secret to the keys of Heaven. All you gotta do is left up your hands in praise and you'll be welcomed into the kingdom. And now that your up out of your chair, you may as well write that check and send it off to the "Loose Nut Chapel" for your "FREE" spray bottle of Holy Water.

Okay, had enough? Go ahead and shut that TV back off. There ain't nothing worth seeing on that darn thing anyway. Every time you turn that thing on you fall prey to a scientifically constructed means of mind control. Those in power use that medium for no other purpose than to convince you that "Everyone thinks like this, and you should too, or you're a loser." That's all that is. That's all it ever was.

Believe me, it goes way deeper than that, but to explain it all in every minute detail would take volumes. Those of you who have studied the history of mass media in college know what I'm talking about. Those of you who did not, trust me, every situation comedy, every drama, every movie, every news item, and every advertisement you see on television has been carefully orchestrated to alter your frame of reference. If somebody isn't going to profit in one way or another by what you're looking at, then you'd be staring at a blank screen. It's as simple as that.

And that is exactly why my mother was singing out there in the kitchen all by herself while cleaning up after everybody else. She had just spent a whole evening with people who genuinely cared about her personally. They wanted to hear what she had to say, and they wanted her to hear what they had to say. Her opinion was important to them because she was important to them.

Some thirty-five years ago, I was sitting on top of my suitcase on the edge of the road in a foreign country in the wee early morning hours. There was a gentle misty rain falling and it was freezing cold. I was waiting for a bus that would take me 90 miles to the airport so I could catch a plane to get back home. I never felt so alone in all my life.

It was sunrise before the bus ever showed up. Lucky for me, I had my guitar with me. You can't go running all over Newfoundland like a street ragged hippie without your guitar. It wouldn't be prudent. So there I sat, in the wee early hours in the middle of nowhere, without another human being within miles of my voice, strumming on the old geetar and singing the "We're from Everett" chant.

I know it sounds crazy, but I just wanted to be able to say that at one point in time, somebody sang the "We're from Everett" chant in Newfoundland. It had to be done.

Have you ever been stranded in the middle of nowhere? All kinds of funny things race through your mind. I wondered if any of the kids I went to school with even remembered me. And then I laughed to myself thinking about what they would say if they only knew I was stranded in the middle of Newfoundland somewhere singing "We're From Everett" to the crickets on the side of the road. Only an artist can get away with doing something like that without getting committed to mental health facility. Well, come to think of it, either an artist or somebody from Everett. I was both.

The first time I told my wife that story she said, "You were out in the middle of nowhere all by yourself? Weren't you scared?"

"Scared? What have I got to be scared of? I'm from Everett."

That reminds me of a time back in the early 1980's when a whole slew of us took off up to Ticonderoga on Lake George in upper state New York. A fistfight broke out in a bar up there one night. This kid (well, actually a guy) gave his opponent a serious TV beating. You know what I mean by that? It was one of those beatings you see on TV where the guy gets knocked over tables and chairs before getting thrown through a window. That's the kind of fight I'm referring to when I call it a "TV" beating.

When the fight was over, one of my friends (another lifer from Everett) grabbed a hold of my shirt, pointed at the guy who just won the fight and shouted, "I know that kid. He's from Everett." Is that a riot or what?

That also reminds me of that night we were all partying up in the hills in Glendale Park when two of our friends showed up looking like they had just been dragged through a thorn bush.

"What in the world happened to you two?" We had to ask.

"We got in a fight at a dance at Reading High School," they said.

"Who did you fight?"

"The whole school."

"They all ganged up on you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, let's go then. Nobody gangs up on Everett."

"Don't even bother," they laughed. "We almost won. If there had been three of us we would have pulverized them. As it is, they look worse off then we do. We had a good time anyway."

Now that's Everett kids for ya right there.

Now tell me something. As you read the narratives of my childhood experiences growing up in Everett, don't they bring out all those cherished memories from your childhood? Do you sit there smiling to yourself as you read? Isn't it a lot like sitting down amongst your friends and having a good old-fashioned gab about the good old days?

We've learned a lot of interesting things about our hometown over the past year. For example, how many of you knew that the "Piece-O-Pizza" shop next door to Whalen's Drug (on the corner of Broadway and Chelsea) was once called "Mellons?" That was the hot spot hangout for all the teenagers back in the fifties. Wasn't that fascinating to find out? I thought so.

That's why it is so important to hear from every generation, and from every neighborhood. There is so much more for us to enjoy and explore. We're just beginning to scratch the surface. Not more than a couple of weeks ago I heard from Walter who graduated from Everett High back in 1951. He told me a little bit about the three-day "VE Day" celebration in Everett. What a fascinating story that is.

I'm a little embarrassed to have to explain this, but we have many readers who were born long after the Kennedy assassination so "VE Day" seems like ancient history to them. At any rate, for their benefit, "VE" stands for "Victory in Europe" Day. It happened in 1945 on May 8th.

Walter said the sirens blared, but there was very little horn blowing because not many people had cars. And there was a three-day party right out in the middle of Third Street, which was a residential area back then. He also said that Mr Cardillo sat there playing the piano while everyone danced right out there in the middle of the street around the clock for those three days. And the story was covered extensively in both the Boston Globe and the Record American.

Now you tell me, isn't that a great thing to learn about our city? See, I told ya. Everett people really know how to party. They always did.

It was also nice to learn how Walter and I knew many of the same people. I wasn't born until one year after he had graduated from Everett High. Even still, communicating back and forth with him was like talking to a long lost friend.

I sit here writing these articles sometimes with heart felt tears in my eyes. And sometimes, I break out in a hearty laugh and have to run out into the kitchen and say, "Hey Carol, do you remember the time that..." It's nice to have a fellow classmate at my side. She really helps rekindle that Everett spirit for me.

There is a wealth of Everett nostalgia buried within those archives along the right hand side of this blog. My only regret is that by the way "blogger" is set up, I can only list them by date. Not seeing the titles makes it a little confusing to navigate. Well, the good news is - I'm working on that, too.

I also have a wealth of Everett nostalgia that many people have generously sent to me that I am going to share with you. I only ask for your patience because this "We're from Everett" project is growing leaps and bounds and is very much a daunting task for just one person. I do promise you this. You have much to look forward to in the coming year.

And now that I have your undivided attention, it's time I told you this.

What inspired me to undertake this project in the first place is you. You are a unique people. My journey on this planet has been all worth while because of you. You inspired within me a desire to express myself artistically, and you taught me the value of friendship. I may never be rich in my lifetime, but because of your friendship, I will never be poor in spirit. I'll take that over money any day.

Say what you will about Everett. "It's tiny, it's dirty, it's over-crowded and it's corrupt." But when you finish saying that, also add, "I am so thankful that I grew up there because amongst those people shines a light in their collective spirit like no other on the face of this planet."

"They'll break your neck if you start a fight with them, but they'll reach out with opened arms if you cry out to them. They will step up to the plate and fearlessly stand their ground to take on any foe, or fight any injustice. And they will win. Make no mistake about that."

There are no words to express how truly grateful I am for all those wonderful emails I have received from all of you over the past year. Yep, I've answered every one.

It is a riot when I get an email from somebody I grew up with and they can't believe how much I remember about them. Trust me, if you remember me, then I certainly remember you. And if I didn't know you, then I do know someone who does.

And stop being so surprised when I answer your emails. If you write to me - there is a 100 percent chance that I will right back. Try me if you think I'm pulling your leg. You are that important to me.

So every time you sit down at your computer and click on that bookmark that says "We're From Everett," you're walking right up to my front door. And when that page loads, it's just as if I've opened the door with a smile that comes from the bottom of my heart. And in the back of your mind you'll hear me say, "I was just thinking about you. Welcome home. I'll put the kettle on."

Happy Anniversary!

The Technology Bug

Make no mistake about it. I'm a sucker for technology. You invent it and I'll buy it. I don't even care what it does (or whether I need it or not) so long as it's new and different. I've been that way ever since I was a little kid growing up in Everett.

I'm mind traveling back to my childhood days when the whole family crowded around that little black and white TV set in my living room down on Arlington Street. I sat there green with envy watching all those fancy schmancy commercials touting the features and benefits of a whole slew of new-fangled contraptions that we could never afford. My mother and father scoffed at every one of them as nothing more than a waste of money. "It don't make much sense to throw your money away on something that you can do for free with your own two hands," my Dad always said.

Even still, I had this yearning in my heart for technology that just wouldn't let go. When Mattel came out with that "Mister Machine" I lost it all together. When I sat up on Santa Claus' lap in Gorins that day that was the only thing I told him I wanted for Christmas. I wanted a Mister Machine so badly I could taste it. He got it for me, too. You can always count on Santa Claus to come through for you in a pinch.

One thing we can say about our generation is that we grew up on the threshold of the new technology. We watched the digital age unfold before our very eyes. The world began to change drastically immediately following my graduation from Everett High. It's almost as if I had stepped through some kind of invisible vortex into the future. Innovations seemed to pop out of nowhere almost every other day. It was becoming a full time job just trying to keep pace with the rest of the world.

Now that I look back on it, I should have seen it coming. There were tell tale signs cropping up all over the place, but it just didn't dawn on me at the time. You've gotta understand that we were a family of modest means. We were not accustomed to having the best, or the most expensive, or the latest style of anything. Chances are, yours was probably better than ours, and ours was second hand.

I remember the day that Mrs. Forgione got her new washing machine as if it happened only yesterday. She lived in the apartment right next door to ours up on the second floor. It happened on a hot summer Saturday afternoon. We were all sitting around the kitchen table chowing down on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.

My mother was laboring over the old washing machine at the kitchen sink. Man, when I think about how hard my mother worked back in those days I shake my head in disbelief. She had to wheel this big heavy tub over to the sink so she could hook the hose up to the faucet. After the clothes went through the initial wash cycle, she had to feed them by hand through those rollers mounted on the back of the machine to wring them out. There was no spin cycle.

Believe me when I tell you, it was a lot harder than it even sounds. There was nothing automatic about it. Those rollers were mounted on bearings that moved by nothing other than brute force. It took every bit of strength my mother could conjure up to pull each article of clothing through those rollers. Her knuckles turned white in the process and she would sometimes lean on the edge of the kitchen sink in total exhaustion just to catch her breath.

That's what was going that day when our whole world suddenly became interrupted by this gawd awful noise out in the hallway. Needless to say, we all hopped up and ran out to see what all the commotion was about.

Down at the bottom of the stairs were two workmen in Sears uniforms trying to wedge a hand dolly with a great big box on it through the front door. Right across the box it said, "New Automatic Washing Machine."

It's funny now when I think about it, but back then we couldn't imagine what could possibly be any more automatic than a washing machine already is. I mean, really. What's it gonna do, put the clothes in by itself?

Now here's another funny thing about growing up in Everett I never thought about before. Whenever any of the neighbors got anything new, we all ran over to their house to marvel at it. If you did anything like that today people would think you're off your rocker. Man, we ran over to each other's house even if you just got a new radio. It didn't take much to get us excited back then.

Maybe that's why we had so much fun growing up. We took pleasure in the most simple of things. And neighbors just love sharing the experience with each other. Whenever any of the neighbors got anything new they called everyone over to get a gander at it. Nobody was playing one-upmanship. They were just sharing the excitement of the experience with each other.

You want to laugh? I remember going over to Mrs. Day's apartment with my mother one afternoon to see her new toaster. Man, what a marvel in technology that thing turned out to be. It had a dial on the side of it so you could select how light or dark you'd like your toast. Besides that, it was one of those new fangled "pop-up" toasters. It popped the toast up into the air when it was done. Honestly, I'm not kiddin ya.

We sat there all afternoon making toast just to watch that thing pop the toast up into the air. We even took turns trying to grab a hold of the toast when it popped up. It was like taking turns at one of those concessions on the Revere Beach Boulavard. I never ate so much toast in one setting before in all my life.

Well you should have heard us carrying on out there in hallway that day Mrs. Forgione's new washing machine arrived. You'd have thought that she had just won the million-dollar lottery by the way we acted. Her kitchen filled with neighbors who were all excited over watching the workmen set up her new automatic washing machine.

If that doesn't tickle your funny bone, just wait until you here this one. Everyone sat around Mrs. Forgione's kitchen that whole afternoon having a good gab for themselves and eating cookies while watching that new contraption go through a complete wash cycle. She actually threw in a load of laundry just so we could see what an automatic washing machine could do. And we were impressed, let me tell ya.

You should have seen this thing. It didn't even have any rollers mounted on the back. It didn't need them. All she had to do was throw her laundry into the top of the machine, add her detergent, and close the lid. Nope, she didn't even have to wheel it over to the kitchen sink. It was already hooked right into the existing plumbing. Do you believe it? You just "set it and forget it." Now that's automatic.

We talked about that thing for days. My mother wanted one in the worst way. I can see why. It wasn't for at least another two years until she finally got one, and when she did, she bought it used. She was still tickled pink just the same. She must have really liked it though because she never went back to using that old roller type of washing machine ever again. So much for that "throwing your money away on something that you can do for free with your own two hands" philosophy - right?

The next piece of technology that threw me for a loop happened in Tommy Gear's Variety Store down on Ferry Street. I believe that store is a pizza shop now. If you live in Everett, when you drive past the bottom of Arlington Street going towards Chelsea, it's that first little store on your right just after that odd little cement slide at the bus stop. You'll see what I mean when you get there.

This was before he changed the name of the store to "TeeGees" and turned it into a sub shop. So at the time, he still had the snack counter and soda fountain in there along the left-hand wall. We're talking long before the JFK assassination, I do remember that.

On this particular afternoon when I stepped into the store, I noticed that everyone seated at the soda counter was mesmerized by something towards the back of the store. As soon as I looked back to see what it was, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Up on a shelf at the back of the store was this thing that looked like a miniature television. It made no sound whatsoever. All it showed was the white silhouette of an airplane passing across the screen from right to left. That's all it did. People came from all over the city to see this thing once the word got out. It was a great marketing ploy and an innovative application for an otherwise useless technology.

All kinds of new products started pouring out onto the market after that. A friend of mine who lived up on Dern Street brought me over to his house one day to show me his mother's new kitchen radio. It was called an "FM" radio. Not only did it have an additional dial with a whole new band of radio stations to listen to, but it broadcasted true stereo sound. We sat there listening to classical music with our jaws dropped open.

Shortly after that my big brother, Billy, came home with a tiny radio that was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It had this earplug you could poke into your ear and listen to without disturbing anyone else. And then came the real shocker. My best friend, Stanley, who lived right next-door, brought me over to his house to see something I never thought I'd ever see in my lifetime. They bought a new television that showed everything in color. Can you imagine?

By the time I was twelve years old, I had become somewhat adept at digging old open-reel tape recorders out of other people's trash barrels and fixing them up. I knew relatively nothing about the electronics involved. It was the mechanical aspects of those tape recorders that just seemed to come naturally to me. I could repair and solder a broken wire if I found one, but if there was a bad diode or capacitor somewhere in the mix, that machine was as good as gone as far as I was concerned. All I could do was save its mechanical parts to fix other broken tape recorders with.

It was around that time that a new friend came into my life. His name was Billy. He had a younger sister, named Donna, and they lived up on High Street. What I don't recall is the day we met, or how we met, or anything like that. What I do remember is why we became the best of friends.

There were so many things that I admired about this kid that I don't even know where to begin. So not to veer too far from the beaten path, I'll tell you about just one of the very many.

Billy was an electronic whiz. Nay, more than that. For a little kid, Billy was to electronics what Professor Hawking is to the mechanical universe. Think I'm kidding? I've spent hundreds of work hours sitting beside this kid down in his cellar at his workbench watching this kid build things I never thought possible.

The first one that comes to mind is this sound oscillator. It was a simple box with a single knob on top. As you turned the knob it emitted a sound that spanned below and above the human range of hearing. It was much like an analog forerunner for the software oscilloscopes we sound engineers use today to benchmark test the sound cards in our computers. Keep in mind that I'm talking about a twelve-year old kid.

Still not impressed? Then wait until you hear this. This kid took quarter inch copper tubing and cut it into several dozens of pieces of varying lengths in half-inch increments. Then, he soldered them all together in a spiral to construct what looked like a miniature pipe to a church organ.

On one end of this tube he attached this electronic doohickey that he had built himself. To that he attached a set of headphones. He then mounted the entire device on a tripod. So now you're wondering what it did - right?

With that contraption we could listen to you whisper a hundred yards away. And it worked perfectly. What was also so amazing about this device was the quality of the craftsmanship in its construction.

When this kid built anything he was so meticulous in its construction that it was like watching a sculptor shape and mold a masterpiece. I dare not even say that you would be hard pressed to find a microscopic dot of extra solder on any of his connections. You simply would not find it. It would not happen. This kid could blend capacitors and diodes on a perf board to a keener perfection than any machine driven device could ever hope to achieve.

I gauge everything I do by the quality of Billy's craftsmanship. Every sentence I write, every stroke of the pencil when I draw, and every musical note I jot down on the staff must measure up to the standards I've learned to respect by what I saw in this kid's work. He was a monumental influence on my talents. Sadly enough, I did not even begin to delve into music until after he moved away. Did I happen to mention that he was also an accomplished organist on top of everything else?

His whole family made a dramatic impact on my character. They were a loving family that welcomed you with opened arms. His father was the kind of guy that spoke softly, but carried a big stick. You wouldn't want to cross this guy, but he'd give you plenty of leeway to atone for your mistakes if you did. His mother could whip up a batch of raviolis and meatballs that would lift your feet up off the ground. And his little sister was so cheerful that she could brighten any room with just a smile.

They moved out of Everett in 1967 when I was about 15 years old. A light went out in my soul when they did. After I helped them move into their new home, Billy's father said some things to me that touched me deeply. I never knew until then how highly his father thought of me. He left me with a few words of encouragement that I have clung to my entire life.

The love I experienced amongst that family over the years would be an inspiration to all. Now that's something neither technology can emulate or money can buy. Hopefully, they will remain that close as a family all the days of their lives.

By the time I reached my senior year in High School, we bought a television that had two channel selector knobs on it. We now had both UHF and VHF channels to watch. Had it not been for that I might have never enjoyed the likes of Willie Whistle. I can't imagine having grown up without Willie Whistle. Can you?

Six months after graduating High School, I took off for Newfoundland for a year. When I came back home, my brother Billy and his wife had moved into an apartment right across from my parents on Foster Street. He called me over to his apartment late one night to show me something he said that would blow me away. It did.

Attached to his television was this box that said "Odyssey by Magnavox" on it. It had these two little things attached to it that looked like transistor radios with just one big knob on top of them. It was the oddest-looking thing I had ever seen.

And guess what it did? Two people could compete with each other playing arcade games right there on the television. I kid you not. We stayed up all through the night bouncing a little white blip back and forth across the screen. The world was never the same again.

It wasn't much after that that people started talking about this new innovation for home entertainment called "Cable Television." Even my Dad had caught the "technology bug" by this time. Ever notice how your parent's lives seem to blossom after you leave the nest? What is that all about anyway?

Regardless, my Dad called me over to his house to see what this new cable TV talk was all about. I could not believe what I was looking at. He had this box on top of his TV where the antenna used to be. He didn't need that anymore.

Now wait until you hear this. All my life whenever my father needed to change the channel, all he had to do is say, "Paul, get up and turn the knob to channel four" and I did it. That was my contribution to our household. I was the channel selector.

Now that I had moved out to a place of my own, I thought this guy would lose a little of that extra bulk by getting up and down to change the channel on the TV. Thanks to cable, that never happened. Technology had replaced me. His new cable TV service came with this little device they called a "clicker." It was attached to that cable box with a long wire that reached all the way over to the couch. With that "clicker" he could change the channel faster than I could get up out of my chair.

By the time I started having children of my own, the whole world had changed into something totally unrecognizable from my childhood days. Nobody had to carry cash around all the time because we all had checking accounts now. You could now buy something without cash even when the banks were closed. "Cable TV" and "Pong" had become household words by then.

And just look at us today. I haven't written a check in ages. Everything's processed through my little plastic debit card. And telephone calls? What a waste of time they are. Shoot me an email and I'll get back to you after I pop this bag of popcorn in the microwave. I'll take this new fangled technology over the good old days any day.

After all, it was this new technology that has enabled us to get back together again to relive the good times of our childhood growing up in Everett. When you think about it, it's gotta make you smile to yourself when you think that somebody has actually used this new technology to spread the story of growing up in Everett all over the world.

Isn't that a riot? Leave it us - right? Look out world. Here we come. "We're From Everett!"

The Pity Hole

We have gathered here today to rekindle those magic moments of our childhood growing up in Everett. You can only imagine how gratifying it is to see how much the popularity of this blog has grown. I've heard from people all over the world. Some of them have never been to Everett in their lives. What entices them here is how many of the aspects of our childhood coincided with theirs, even though they grew up thousands of miles away.

Everett, itself, is a significant entity of a much larger equation. We are New Englanders through and through. We grew up in the historic shadows of the birth of our nation. And as New Englanders, we possess all of the cantankerous qualities that the outside world enjoys about us. The overall New England experience is not complete without those unique peculiarities that belong to Everett alone.

Hard headed, stubborn, independent, resourceful, those are the very qualities that toppled British rule in the colonies. That's a New Englander all the way. Come to think of it, that's Everett in a nutshell. Think about it. Everett is the only community in all of America with a bicameral legislature. Now if that isn't hard headedness, I don't know what is. I'm proud of it, though. Aren't you?

One of the things about my childhood that taught me to appreciate my hometown, and its people, was our traditional Sunday drive. Like every other kid in the world, when I became a teenager I outgrew that innocent yearning to hop in the car with my family and drive around the block a few times for no other reason than to watch the world go by at a faster rate of speed.

What is it about teenagers that makes them habitually embarrassed by their families? It's a phase we all go through, I guess. Thankfully, we do all outgrow it, but while we're going through it, we fear the whole world is going to look down its nose at us because we have a weird family. As I matured, I realized that the weirdest one in my family was me. Being an artist, that's a bit of a prerequisite to success.

Our Sunday drives were a blast. That's when we really enjoyed being together as a family. My Dad took us everywhere. I loved when we drove up along old Route One going up and down over those roller coaster hills. We'd stop at the Agawam Diner for a bite to eat before driving all the way up to Strawberry Bank in Portsmouth. Years later, I'd take my own kids out for that very same Sunday afternoon drive.

When our daughter was only about four-years old, I asked her where she'd like to go for a drive. She said she'd like to drive past the "Grand Finale." Carol and I couldn't figure out what on earth she was talking about. It dawned on us one Sunday as we drove by the Topsfield Fairground and she excitedly shouted, "There it is. That's the Grand Finale."

She apparently was referring to the time when we took her up to the Topsfield Fair during the last day of festivities. We told her we were going up to enjoy the "grand finale." So naturally, she thought that was the name for it. We've called it that ever since.

Thankfully, I grew up in a family who was really tolerant of my artistic unconventionality. Whenever my Dad asked where we'd like to go for a drive I'd say, "Let's take a ride through the slums."

He'd laugh and say, "Okay, I'll just spin around in the back yard a few times."

So now you're wondering why I wanted to go riding through the slums - right? Well, it's only natural that an aspiring young artist be enthralled with the likes of someone so sophisticatedly artistic as Norman Rockwell. Many of his scenes depicted the hardships of the downtrodden in a more spiritually humanistic setting. I really liked that.

You know what I mean? Like his painting of the poor mother and children saying grace before eating dinner at a truck stop. And images of mothers leaning out the window of a tenement building to hang clothes on the clothesline in the background of children playing gleefully out in the parking lot below. Illustrations like that say more to me than do the portrayal of glorified wealth and fashion. I'm a sucker for the underdog.

What I never suspected when I was a little kid, is that one of the things we drove past almost every time we went out for a drive through Everett would eventually play a large role in my adult life. I'm talking about the cemetery.

I'll never forget that day we were driving past this large wrought iron fence. Just inside that fence I saw a group of people with their heads hung low surrounding a large stone. So, I asked my Dad, "What are those people doing over there?"

"They're crying at the pity hole in the bone yard," he laughed. My mother got mad at him for saying that. "Bill," she scolded. "Don't go saying something like that to a little kid."

"What's a pity hole?" I had to ask.

"That's where they throw you away when you die," my brother Billy explained.

"They throw you away when you die?" You can only imagine how that sounds to a little kid.

"No, they don't just throw you away," my mother said.

"Yes, they do," Billy added. "They throw you in a pity hole."

"Can we go see a pity hole?" My curiosity had reached fever pitch now.

"Sure thing," my father said. "You want to go see a pity hole?"

"No, he doesn't want to see a pity hole," my mother said sternly. My mother gets really squeamish when anybody talks about pity holes. I don't know how many times I've heard her say over the years that, "You'll never get me to buy a grave while I'm still alive. I'll let everybody else worry about that when the time comes. I do not want to know where I'm going to be buried for as long as I'm alive. It gives me the shivers."

"Yes I do. I wanna see a pity hole," I shouted.

So that's what we did. My Dad took us for a ride through the cemetery. It was my first up close glimpse at a pity hole. When I spotted a gravesite all covered over with sheets of plywood, I asked if we could get out of the car and take a peek under the wood. My father granted my wish.

I rather doubt that any little kid would ever forget the first time they looked down into an opened pity hole. It gave me the shivers. Not only was it dark and deep, but there was a puddle of muddy water at the bottom of the pit. It was nothing like the romantic image I had pictured in my mind's eye for a final resting place - let me tell ya.

After graduating from Everett High in 1971, my life was at a crossroads. Who's wasn't? I waited all year to get out of school so I could run off and see the rest of the world. Six months out of high school, I packed my bags and ventured off to Newfoundland for no other reason than to see what I could see. One year later, I came back home with little more than a pocketful of spare change. What I needed more than anything else right now is a job.

Neither loading trucks at the docks, nor working construction were steady enough to call a real job. Nothing motivates you to find a steady job like a mother who keeps nagging you to get out of the house and a girlfriend who wants to get married. Marty (the legendary guitarist from Everett) called and said, "Hey Paul, the Woodlawn Cemetery is hiring. Let's go check it out." Hey, if it was good enough for Rod Stewart, it's good enough for me.

Growing up in a working, blue-collar city, I was taught to believe that a steady job, fringe benefits, and a weekly paycheck symbolized respectable responsibility. Our elders considered anything more as illusions of grandeur. Everyone around me had me convinced that to pursue a career in the graphic arts was just that - an illusion of grandeur.

The very next day, I showed up at the cemetery front office. A dozen or so applicants looking for a job crowded the small office building. We looked like a motley crew of green horns showing up for our first day at school. In a sense, we were.

The guy in charge of the operation came out of his office to survey the crowd. He looked at me and asked, "Where have you worked?"

So I tell him, "Factories, loading docks and landscaping."

"Do you have work shoes?" He asked.

How would he know if I'm wearing my only pair of sneakers? "Sure, I got work shoes," I tell him. I just met the guy and I'm lying to him already.

He hands me a slip of paper and says, "Here, fill this out. You start tomorrow at 8:00 a.m." Thus begins my journey beyond the wrought iron gates.

What I never suspected is that I would spend the next twenty years of my life as gravedigger. Of all the things I've done in my lifetime, I must admit, the most memorable was spending twenty years of my life digging pity holes in Everett. During my tenure at the Woodlawn Cemetery I became shop steward, and was eventually elected as the Union Vice President.

Even still, there really is something to the old adage that "the dead bury the dead." There comes a time when you realize that the clock is ticking and if you really do want to do something productive with your life, you need to shake the dust off your sandals and move on.

In the beginning, working at the cemetery felt like escaping off into a separate reality from the hustle and bustle of the maddening crowd. From behind a wall of trees, I could only faintly hear the noise of the surrounding, densely populated, city outside. Protected from uncertainty, I settled comfortably into a non-stop, steady routine.

People visit the cemetery every day. From down in the pity hole, you can hear them getting in and out of their cars. They did have a life until somebody close to them died. Over time, they begin to talk and laugh amongst themselves. Eventually, you don't see them anymore. They rebound from the trauma and go on with their lives.

The dead go on in the spirit, the living go on with their lives, but the gravedigger never goes anywhere. He just stands there on the sidelines, burying the dead, indifferently watching life slowly pass by. The dead do bury the dead.

I remember the day I greeted a fellow gravedigger with the usual, "What are you up to?"

"Dying a slow death," he replied.

Another coworker often commented, "Look what we're doing for work while someone else is trying to invent something in a laboratory somewhere."

That all seems so very long ago now that it really doesn't feel like it was actually a part of this life. One thing is certain. That cemetery is an integral part of the city of Everett. We played there as kids. We partied there late at night as teenagers. And many of us worked there at one time of another during our lifetime. To ignore it would be closing our eyes to a very important part of our growing up in Everett.

Every one of us has our own set of reasons for the things we believe and in the way we spend our lives. There are times when it seems like we're either stuck in a rut or the pace gets so hectic that we haven't the time to decide. That may help explain why many of us question who we are from time to time.

I have often read that, "we should try to sum up our lives in a statement reflecting how we would like others to think of us." That's an indirect quote from just about everybody. This is exactly what everyone tries to do on their grave stone. Every epitaph tells a story. There is nothing so charming as a stroll through an old cemetery reading the epitaphs. You'll find Doctors, lawyers, musicians, truck drivers and every other profession imaginable carved in stone.

The dates on the old gravestones remind us that "long ago" was not so long ago after all. Looking at the old family album, we come across people we don't even know standing in front of cars we've never heard of. There will come a time when we will be the images in the photograph everyone struggles to identify.

Gravestones constantly remind us that we are only visiting here. The older grave stones withered smooth from the elements, rendering the epitaphs illegible, remind us that time passes on long after we've gone.

There is a natural uniformity, order and direction to our lives that beckons to us. With that in mind, I now offer you the unique opportunity to see what it's really like on the other side of those wrought iron gates from the gravedigger's perspective.

As soon as somebody finds out that you work at a cemetery, the first thing they ask is "What is it that you do at the cemetery?" And this is what I'd say.

I stand among the dearly departed, in a place where the clouds in the heavens can be seen through a rectangle cut into the ground. It is a place where the dead must look up and the living must look down. From the depths of the bowels of the earth, I go first where you will all journey to last.

You will arrive head first, in a pine box, in the back of a black limousine. I will be waiting for you there. Opening your limousine door, I will cordially escort you to your rightful place of honor among your guests. I've prepared a place for you to rest your weary bones so you can talk to angels until your soul can be found. I am a gravedigger and these are my own words.

Consider the age old, children's folk song.

"Did you ever think when a hearse goes by
that you would be the next to die.
They wrap you up in a big white sheet
and bury you six feet deep.

All goes well for about a week,
and then your coffin begins to leak.
The ants crawl in and the ants crawl out
and the worms play pinochle on your snout.

Your skin then turns a ghastly green
and your guts run out like heavy whipped cream
You wipe it up with a piece of bread
and that's what you eat when you are dead."

------- (Author Unknown)

There comes a time when every gravedigger looks at his coworkers and asks, "Can you imagine what people would think if they knew what we had to do for work today?" The everyday stress of burying the dead sometimes causes outbursts, confrontations and even fist fights among co-workers. It is a difficult atmosphere to cope with. It happens to all of us.

You eventually become a hard as nails, pick and shovel gravedigger. It's a defense mechanism to cope with the brutal reality of your average workday. This kind of stress causes deep, inner discord, among certain individuals. You tend to lose track of reality and become bitter. It certainly gives you a warped sense of humor.

Don't get the wrong idea about what type of people become gravediggers. There are just as many different types of people from all different social, ethnical and educational backgrounds who become gravediggers as any other occupation. If you've ever wondered what that nice man is really like, who works at the cemetery and always helps you find your grave, then you shall now see him from the other side.

My experiences as a gravedigger make me feel like a hardened veteran of a never- ending war. It's a war against time that seems to accomplish nothing more than an endless supply of dead bodies to bury. My tour of duty lasted twenty years. Every day of my life involved death, caskets, and holes in the ground. People fought, and shouted, and cried, as an endless procession of cars yielded yet another casualty of everyday life.

Of all the gravediggers I've met in my lifetime, it's safe to say that most of them have an explosive temper. Yet, these are quality people. They are sincere, honest, and hard working people. To know them is to love them. I think of gravediggers like a war veteran thinks of his old army buddies from boot camp. Because of the quality of their character, I have become a better person.

A seasoned gravedigger is a skilled craftsman. He can work the earth with basic hand tools to a keen precision. Gravediggers achieve a psychological separation from what it is they do for work. If you stopped to think about what you're actually doing sometimes, you would lose composure.

You must become "conditioned" to justify some of the necessary procedures to complete this work through an inner code of dedication and strong conviction to an age-old profession. Gravediggers see images and witness experiences that would bring stronger men quivering to their knees. A seasoned gravedigger possesses the ability to cope with the most unimaginable situations. Some of the actual tasks necessary to complete this work may seem cold and brutal, but they are essential to enable the cemetery to fulfill its intended function.

It is hard to explain how some of the things that a gravedigger must do may seem a bit humorous. It is difficult to know when it is appropriate to find humor in death. On the lighter side, working at a cemetery can give rise to comical and embarrassing situations.

One that comes to mind is the time I sang "Happy Birthday" out loud to a co-worker, forgetting a funeral was in service on the other side of the shrubs. Another gravedigger I know loves to tell the story about the young lady who pointed to a pile of dog "pooh-pooh" on her family's grave lot one day and sternly asked, "Did you do that?"

Gravedigger stories? I could hold you spellbound for days on end. The ones that really stick out in my mind are the ones that have touched me personally in monumental ways. One such incident involves a scholarly looking gentleman I encountered while planting flowerbeds. While out on his afternoon walk, he stopped to watch us work.

As we went about our work, planting flower beds and talking amongst ourselves, he piped up and said, "I have come to realize that it is not wealth or stature that's important, but happiness. You can be just as happy working at a cemetery as someone else in a more professional occupation. It's all a matter of how you live your life."

He went on to explain that he was a wealthy, former, vice-president of a major corporation. When I told him that I was a penniless, young newly wed, he put his hand on my shoulder and with an honest look in his eyes, he said, "You have your whole life to look forward to. You have no idea how I envy you. I'd gladly give my entire fortune to trade places with you."

And then there is the day I learned a very valuable lesson. That lesson is that we are seldom aware of what a positive impact our individual lives could possibly make on another human being. Some insignificant gesture of kindness or encouragement could inspire the humble recipient to realize the power of their full potential.

One such example of inspiration happened on a cold and drizzly workday while planting flowerb