The grand illusion

By the time you're 18, you should have a pretty good idea as to what you want to do with your life. By the time you're 21 you should have your act together, or so I was once told. Well guess what? I'm 55 years old now and I still haven't got a clue as to what this is all about or how I fit into the over-all equation. I'm playing it by ear as I go along.

How about you? Have you figured this all out yet? If so, kindly drop me a line and fill me in because I'm really getting tired of wandering around aimlessly. If life isn't a perfect example of feeling your way around in the dark then I don't know what is.

The major reason that life isn't perfect is because it doesn't come with a manual. Some people believe that the many known ancient theological scriptures are exactly that, but I tend to think that the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" comes closer to reality than they do. That's just my opinion. Don't get all worked up into a lather over it, okay?

Sometimes it feels like there isn't one blessed thing on this planet that actually is what it appears to be on the surface. Nothing illustrates that more than one of those late night ads for that magic kitchen doohickey that effortlessly slices and dices everything from a coconut to a boiled egg for just three easy payments of $19.95.

Just try to read that fine print they flash at the bottom of the TV screen for about five and a half seconds. Putting your face right up against the screen won't do you any good. It's so small that you still won't be able to distinguish a lower case "a" from an "e" or the number "2."

The alternative to that fine print is the rapid three-second spoken word disclosure statement the announcer makes at the end of the commercial. Have you ever tried to talk that fast? It makes your lips bounce up and down so uncontrollably that it sounds like you're saying, "Bubba-bubba-bubba."

If there was such a thing as honesty in advertising they'd come right out and say, "Call now to buy our kitchen doohickey so we can suck the money out of your debit account faster than you can blink. You'll get a 30 day money back guarantee, but you won't get your item until four to six weeks after that guarantee expires."

It's funny how they can launch a satellite into space in less than an hour, but it takes four to six weeks to get a kitchen doohickey from Lakehurst, New Jersey. Explain that one to me, will ya?

What they also don't tell you is that dicing a coconut with their kitchen doohickey requires the additional purchase of their handy dandy sledgehammer. And it doesn't actually slice boiled eggs. It squashes them. But they just know that you'll be pleased with the end results anyway.

Misinformation comes in many flavors. Sometimes it's deliberate to try to cheat you. And sometimes it comes from people who honestly don't know the truth. They're afraid they'll look stupid if they say they don't know so they make something up. And then again, it also comes from sources who honestly think they know, but don't.

So what is this all about anyway and what does it have to do with growing up in Everett? I thought you'd never ask. Well actually, I knew you would eventually because you're from Everett.

It's all about the many grand illusions we experience in life. Each and every one of us has a preconceived notion as to the way things should be. We acquire these preconceived notions from all the information we gather as we journey along this beaten path. Since most of us were born and raised in Everett, we've gathered much of that data from the very same resources.

That is not to say that we all think alike. We don't. But I'll tell you one thing that you simply cannot deny. If you were born and raised in Everett, you've got this way about you that makes you stand your ground and go toe to toe with anyone who tries to pull a fast one over on you. It's as simple as that. As they say, "You can take the kid out of Everett, but you can't take the Everett out of the kid."

No matter what Everett neighborhood you were from, chances are, you knew at least one person who actually believed that they were better than everybody else either because their family had more money than yours, or because their family knew somebody important. Like everything else, what constitutes being important largely depends on your frame of reference.

When it comes to wealth, if you had any money at all then you probably had more than we did. If you think I'm kidding, then let's compare how many times you had to eat lima beans and ketchup for supper. If you're still not convinced, then let's compare how many times you've tripped over the soul of your shoe because it kept flapping in under your foot when you walked down the street. And to think, I haven't even mentioned how many times I had to eat corn flakes in water because we couldn't afford milk.

None the less, poor people like us could still establish credibility in our community. All we had to do was brag about knowing somebody famous. It was okay to stretch it a little to make it fit. Everyone else did. You know the type. They're the ones who say, "My cousin's neighbor has a daughter who's friends with the girl who dates the guy that delivers groceries to the governor's mansion."

That alone would elevate you two or three rungs above my level. My family had zero connections. We didn't even know the guy's name who emptied our trash barrels. If only we could have seen into the future. We could have said, "See that kid sitting on our front steps next to my big brother? He's gonna play for the New York Giants someday."

So how important is status anyway? Well, I'll never forget the time a bunch of us assembled on the front lawn of the Parlin for a game of "Rough-N-Tumble." For those of you who don't know, that's what we call tackle football when we don't have enough kids to constitute a whole team.

One of the kids on the opposing team called out, "You'll have to kick off to us first."

"Why is that? Why don't we flip a coin?"

"Because my father is the Chief of the Everett Police Department."

Did you guys know that? Supposedly, if any member of the opposing team is related to the Chief of Police, then the coin toss is automatically disregarded. Now I know what the referee is talking about when he stands in the middle of all those football players just before the kick off at the Super Bowl. He's asking if anybody is related to the Chief of the Everett Police Department before he tosses that coin up into the air. It's great to have the inside scoop on the official NFL rules like that, isn't it?

And that reminds me of another story, a rather amusing one at that. Like just about everything else I've ever told you about, this one also happened when I was just a little kid growing up on Arlington Street.

I'm talking back in the days when all the bigger kids hung out on my front steps long after the streetlights came on. I used to quietly sneak down the front hallway steps and peak through the mail slot on the front door to listen in as the teenagers sat around telling dirty jokes.

As soon as my big brother, Billy, caught on to me he'd make me go back upstairs. Every once in a while he'd give me a break and let me come out and sit on the front steps to hang around with the teenagers after dark. What a thrill and a half that was for a third grader, let me tell ya.

It was just one such night when this incident began to unfold. And even though the two principles involved have long since passed away, so not to embarrass anyone's descendants, I shall refer to them as Mister A and Mister B.

So anyway, there we sat crowded around laughing and gabbing amongst ourselves on my front steps on a warm summer night. All over a sudden, we heard two grown men yelling back and forth at each other just a few houses further up the street.

"Shhh, everybody. Quiet down," Artie waived back at us. "They're at it again."

We all hopped up off the stairs and ran out onto the sidewalk to watch the sideshow going on up the street. Mister A was a cop. Next door to him lived Mister B. I haven't a clue as to what Mister B did for work. He was a short, heavy-set, bald guy, who always came across to me as the more mild-mannered type. Mister A, on the other hand, was a towering six-footer.

Kids love watching two grownups get into a scrap. You should have seen the look on everyone's face. We all had these big "you-know-what" eating grins while standing there watching these two mature adults unleash a barrage of verbal abuse upon one another. They set a really good example of respectful citizenship to the neighborhood kids, if I do say so myself.

It looked somewhat comical to watch this little fat guy bend over backwards to scream up at his opponent towering down on top of him. That's a perfect example of a classic Everett personality for ya right there. God has yet to create the creature that's big enough or bad enough to ever make somebody from Everett back down.

As the argument heated up, more and more neighbors came out of the woodwork to watch this spectacle unfold. Man, you could have made a fortune selling popcorn and hot dogs at this event. Before very long, the crowd swelled to epic proportions out on the sidewalks on both sides of the street. It got so exciting that people came all the way over from High Street and Villa Ave to watch the fireworks.

And guess what they were fighting about? Hold onto your seat because as soon as I tell you this, you're gonna know I'm talking about a typical Everett situation here and now. Are you ready for this?

They were fighting over a parking spot in front of Mister A's house. Wait a minute. It gets even funnier than that. Both of these guys had their own driveways.

It all started when Mister B pulled up in front of Mister A's house in his brand new car and parked along the curb. Before he had the chance to get out of his car, Mister A pulled up along side of him. Mister A immediately jumped out of his car, leaving it running right there in the middle of the street with the driver's door wide open, and ran over to pound on the hood of Mister B's car with his fist.

Mister B jumped out of his car shouting, "What in the world is your problem, you big Ash hole? Have you lost your friggin mind?"

"I know what your game plan is, you friggin jerk. You're trying to mock me by showing off the new car you bought with the money you swindled me out of. And you're doing it by parking in my spot."

"Your spot? You always park in your driveway. I never see your car parked out here at the curb. Besides, you don't own the sidewalk. It's public property."

"And another thing," Mister B added. "I didn't swindle you. I didn't want to sell you that old car in the first place. I told you it wasn't any good, but you insisted. And believe me, your lousy fifty bucks didn't even cover the cost of the hood ornament."

"See? I knew it! You put my money towards buying that new car. That's what all this is about anyway. You just wanted to throw it up in my face. Didn't you?"

"What are you talking about? I didn't even want to sell that old clunker. I told you it wasn't any good."

"You haven't heard the last of this yet, buddy boy. I'll teach you to cheat a police officer. I'll be one step behind every move you make. I'll bury you in traffic tickets before I'm through with you."

And there you have it. The classic "you parked in my spot" coupled with throwing a little weight around to get the upper hand. It's all about status, isn't it? It's all about the grand illusion.

Apparently, this potential powder keg had been fumigating for quite some time. "Mister B" sold "Mister A" his old clunker for fifty bucks. "Mister A" claims that "Mister B" pulled a fast one over on him. "Mister B" claims he only sold it to him because he wouldn't take no for an answer. Either way, there that old clunker sat in Mister A's backyard never to go again.

So how did it all turn out? After several weeks of mysteriously flattened tires and egged windshields on each other's cars, "Mister B" eventually bought the old clunker back from "Mister A" and had it towed off to the junkie's, thus ending the bitter feud between these two otherwise meek and mild law-abiding neighbors.

Which reminds me, do you remember when the "junkie" was the guy who bought scrap metal?

My parents lived by another grand illusion when I was a kid that really ticked me off sometimes. If I got into any trouble at school, my parents never took my side. They always backed the teacher regardless of the facts. As far as they were concerned, the teacher was always right because he or she had a college education.

The funny thing about that is, years later whenever I tried to offer my expertise on any subject matter, my mother would say, "So you've got a college education. Big deal."

You can't win. Can you? You see? It's all an illusion.

I remember my sixth grade teacher, Miss Blake, explaining to us how important it was that we keep up on our appreciation for fine literature. "People will judge you by the kind of literature that you read," she said. "When you attend a party, the other guests will engage you in conversations about the literature you've read. If you haven't read any, you'll look ignorant and unrefined amongst your peers. You'll find yourself not being invited to any parties and no one will want to associate with you."

Obviously, Miss Blake did not attend any of the parties up in the back hills of Glendale Park. Oh, don't get me wrong. We did discuss literature. We talked about what we read on the flap of the Screaming Yellow Zonker box. Other than that, the literary endeavors of the hippies in Glendale Park fell way below any of Miss Blake's expectations. Trust me on that one. She was right about one thing. Everybody did look at you as if you were some kind of maladroit if you hadn't read the flap of the Screaming Yellow Zonker box.

Let me fill you in on something else that Miss Blake would never suspect. I am a book-a-holic. I love to read. And obviously, so do you.

I cannot count how many emails I've received telling me that I should write a book. By the same token, I've had people tell me that they could never sit and read a whole book, and yet, they've read every one of my journal entries. That being the case, they've read the equivalence of 3 whole books.

Think about it. The average novel is about 100,000 words, give or take a few thousand. The "We're From Everett" blog has 117 entries averaging 3,000 words each. That's about 350,000 words. That makes the "We're From Everett" journal the most concisely written dissertation on "growing up in Everett, Massachusetts" in literary history.

How dare I compare the "We're From Everett" blog to a piece of published literature? In the first place, it is published. Not in paper form, no, but this is the paperless electronic age of information. Who is the publisher? I am.

Ah yes, but a traditionally published piece of literature is widely read and recognized as an expert expose on its subject matter. Widely read? I'd say more than 40,000 reads places the "We're From Everett" journal at the top of the list amongst widely read literature about growing up in Everett. Wouldn't you?

Besides that, only peer-reviewed material is regarded as an authoritative dissertation on its subject matter. Well guess what? The "We're From Everett" journal "is" peer reviewed.

Check it out if you don't believe me. Read some of the comments people have contributed along the way. You'll find people correcting me on all sorts of things, as well as providing their own perspective on the subject matter at hand. That's exactly what peer-reviewed means. And that's why your comments, corrections, and criticisms are openly welcomed.

But are they experts? You bet they are. They're from Everett.

Almost Running Away

In the course of our lives, we live through so many experiences that by the time we start to look back on it all, we actually forget far more than we'll ever remember. That is until we get the rare opportunity to have a good heart to heart gab with one of our old childhood friends.

I think it's fascinating how some of the things that seem so insignificant on the surface linger on in the back of our minds for the rest of our lives. It's also interesting how no two minds think alike. And because of that, different things linger on in different minds for all sorts of different reasons.

Whenever old friends get together to reminisce about days gone by, it never seems to fail that one memory always triggers another. The funny thing about that is that they rarely trigger memories that relate to one another. Sometimes, one little word taken out of context triggers an entirely unrelated experience.

During a recent telephone conversation with a long lost childhood friend, he said something that triggered a memory from my childhood that I'd almost completely forgotten. I have no idea what it was that he said, but I do know that it was something totally unrelated to this experience.

The reason this is such a memorable experience for me is because ... aw heck, why don't I quit beating around the bush and just come right out and tell you the story?

From the moment I was born, we lived on the second floor, on the left-hand side of that six-family down there on Arlington Street. The first family to live down stairs from us that I ever knew of was Jacky's family. Jacky was a couple of years older than my big brother, Billy.

Even to this day, Jacky laughs about the time he had a run-in with my mother. Apparently, when Billy was only in the first grade, he ran upstairs crying to my mother because Jacky told him he couldn't play outside on the sidewalk. Infuriated that someone was tormenting her child, my mother ran downstairs and caught up to Jacky.

She grabbed a hold of Jacky's shirt collar and lifted him right up off the ground. Shaking her fist in front his face, she said, "You son of a beach. If you so much as talk to one of my kids ever again, I swear, I'll knock every last one of your friggin teeth down your throat."

"You scared the living bejesus out of me," Jacky says to her now. "Besides that," he laughs, "I'm probably the only person on the planet that can honestly say that I once bullied Billy Huffman. Who ever thought that little kid would grow up to become such a towering gorilla?"

After Jacky's family moved out, there was a string of short timers who moved in and out of that apartment. Eventually, a family did move in who stayed awhile. The daughter of that family was named, Alice. Years later, Alice married that very same Jacky. All I can honestly tell you about them is that they are both very beautiful people, who raised a really nice family of their own, and have remained lifelong friends with my family.

Now, the reason I told you about Alice and Jacky is because those were the only two families who could tolerate living downstairs from mine. There was a really good reason for that. Our families were close personal friends. The others were not. Not knowing us personally made it difficult to live downstairs from us. Let me tell you why.

Just about anybody who grew up with brothers and sisters have stories to tell about sibling rivalry. Some of those stories involve confrontation to the extent of in-house fighting. In my family, however, it was more like a WWF death match.

It's not like these were daily occurrences, but when they did happen, it was always when my mother and father left us home alone to take care of each other. They sometimes came home from a short trip down to Stop & Shop to find a broken window, furniture upturned, and food thrown all over the walls. You can only imagine how that must have sounded to the people living downstairs.

Please don't get me wrong. As a family, we did love each other. It's just that kids are far more reactive and outspoken about their feelings than adults are. Where a mature adult might say, "I tend to strongly disagree with you," a kid might say, "Oh yeah?" and then throw something at you. At least that's the way it was in my house.

I'll never forget this one particular time when my mother and father went out shopping. My sister and I were sitting on the couch watching Soupy Sales when we heard an argument break out between Billy and Carl in the kitchen. It was no big deal, really, until we heard them scuffling all over the kitchen. When we ran out to see what was going on, we saw Billy pinning Carl to the kitchen floor.

Carl kept screaming, "Let me up! Let me up!"

"Only if you promise to calm down," Billy kept telling him.

In a desperate attempt to free himself from Billy's grasp, Carl tried to bite Billy's arm. Billy, because he was laughing so hard, accidentally drooled down onto Carl's face. Carl went berserk.

Billy then jumped up off of Carl and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. Carl grabbed a hold of a kitchen chair and chased after him. When my mother and father stepped into the back door they saw Carl beating the bathroom door with what was left to that kitchen chair, which wasn't much, believe me.

Now you know why it was so difficult to live downstairs from us.

Well, it was just such a scenario that triggered the story that I'm going to tell you about right now. This was one of those times when my mother and father were on their way out to go shopping. It happened towards the end of February when I was in the third grade. I remember that because it was shortly after getting a brand new basketball on my 9th birthday.

I never did like basketball in the first place and couldn't understand why on earth they gave me one for my birthday. Even the sound of a bouncing basketball irritates the living daylights out of me. That basketball was cursed, and I knew it.

Carl and I were out playing tag with all the other kids at the bottom of Arlington Street that day. As soon as we saw my mother and father step out onto the porch wearing their coats, we shouted, "Where's everybody going?"

"Nobody's going anywhere," my Dad answered. "Your mother and I are on our way down to the Stop & Shop. You guys be good until we get back. Julie's across the street at Martha's house if you need anything. We left the back door open just in case. I don't want any fighting going on while we're out. Do you understand?" Famous last words - right?

All went well for about a half an hour or so, right up until I called a time out because I had to go pee my brains out. "I'm first," Carl yelled dashing up the back porch steps to get there ahead of me. And of course, I chased after him.

The first sign of trouble happened when he slammed the porch door on my face. By the time I opened that, he was halfway up the back stairs. When I reached our back hallway up on the second floor, I discovered he had locked the kitchen door behind him.

So now I figured that I was locked out of the house until he finished going to the bathroom. I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried. After going to the bathroom, he stood inside the locked kitchen door and taunted me.

"Carl, open the door," I screamed while hopping back and forth from one foot to the other to keep from wetting my pants.

"What do you want?"

"Open the door before I pee my pants," I shouted.

"What's the password?"

"Open the door."

"That's not it."

Now I'm banging on the door with my fist. "You're dead if you don't open this door."

"That's not the password."

If that isn't torture enough, he then asks, "How does it feel to have to beg?"

"This isn't funny."

"Try not to think about the water rushing over the cliff at Niagara Falls," he laughed.

That's when it dawned on me that the kitchen window behind the sink was wide open. All I had to do was stand up on the railing of our back porch and crawl in through the window. He caught on to me and quickly ran over and slammed the window shut and locked it. That's when I lost it altogether.

I got so mad that I grabbed a hold of my brand new basketball, walked out onto the back porch, and whipped it at the kitchen window. You should have seen the size of the hole it made in the venetian blind. That was after it passed straight through the window pane, shattering the glass into tiny little pieces.

He unlocked the kitchen door and nonchalantly remarked, "You're dead now" as he walked ever so casually down the back stairs to return to the game of tag going on outside. He was right, and I knew it, but I really couldn't care less. All I could think about right now was getting into that bathroom, which I did.

The full extent of my troubles were of little concern until I stepped back out of the bathroom and saw all the damage I had done. There was broken glass everywhere. It was in on top of the dirty dishes in the sink, and all over the floor. There were even shards of glass glistening on the kitchen table and on the kitchen stove, not to mention that great big hole in the venetian blind.

There was no way on earth I could ever clean up this mess before my mother and father got home. He was right. I was dead.

Julie came walking into the back door just as I was standing there surveying the full extent of the damage.

"What have you done?"

"Carl locked me out of the house and I had to pee my brains out," I explained.

"You're dead when Ma and Dad get home. You know that, don't you?"

"Well, there's nothing I can do about it now. I may as well go back outside and enjoy what life I have left until they do get home."

"Don't even bother," she said. "They just pulled up into the driveway."

Now I know what it feels like after you finish your last meal on death row and the parson shows up at your doorstep. The moment my mother saw that window, it was all over. There was no discussion. She wrapped that strap around her wrist, and believe me when I tell ya, it came down hard. Man, did it ever.

And that's how I wound up in bed curled around my pillow crying my eyes out. First, because of the sting of that strap, and then because of the injustice of it all. Nobody even cared to hear my side of the story. As far as anyone cared, I did it, I'm guilty, end of story.

After I wore myself out from crying, I just laid there in my bed listening to the kids playing tag outside. It really got under my skin to hear Carl's voice mingled in with all that carefree laughter going on outside. My bitter sadness quickly turned to a wallowing self-pity.

"Nobody loves me. Why should I hang around here any more? Nobody cares if I live or die anyway. If they really cared about me they would've taken the trouble to find out why all this happened in the first place."

My self-pity then turned into a vengeful anger. "You know what? I'm gonna teach them a lesson they'll never forget. I'm gonna run away. I'm gonna run so far away they will never ever find me again. I'm gonna sneak out of this prison when everyone falls asleep tonight and start a whole new life somewhere else. They'll be sorry. You'll see."

I dumped my pillow out of my pillowcase and began stuffing it with the clean underwear and socks from my drawer. My plan was foolproof. That pillowcase would look perfectly normal all puffed up under my head. They'd never suspect a thing. As soon as everyone fell asleep, I'd sling that pillowcase over my shoulder and sneak off to parts yet unknown.

Just as I had reached that point where my pillowcase couldn't possible hold any more, the bedroom door unexpectedly flew open and in came my big brother, Billy.

"Hey little squirt, I saw what you did to the kitchen window."

"Who cares?" I was even mad at him right now. Don't ask me why.

"Everybody could hear you screaming all the way down Arlington Street when Ma was laying into you with that strap," he laughed.

"You think this is funny, you big jerk? Well, it won't be so funny by tomorrow morning," I snapped.

"What's going on with your pillowcase?"

"None of your beeswax."

"Oh, wait a minute, I get it. You're running away - right?"

"Why don't you get out of here and leave me alone?"

"Let me see what you've got in here so far," he said as he yanked on my pillowcase to look inside.

I jerked it back out of his hands and snapped, "Get away from me. Why don't you go back out to the kitchen with the rest of those jerks?"

"You'll never make it past the end of the street, kid. You're doing this all wrong," he said with the flip of his hand. "You think you're gonna teach them a lesson? They're gonna wind up laughing at you when you gotta come crawling back on your hands and knees."

"Oh yeah? We'll see."

"I'm telling ya, kid. You're doing this all wrong. If you're really serious about this then let me help you out so you won't have to come crawling back with your tail between your legs because you're starving to death."

He dumped the laundry from my pillowcase out on top of my bed. "This is crazy. All you've got here is underwear, socks, and a tee shirt. What are you gonna do when you get hungry, eat your underwear? I don't think so."

Pulling the suitcase from under his bed, he threw it up on top of my bed and snapped it open. "Go get my gym bag over there. We've got a lot of work to do. Start throwing your clothes in my gym bag and I'll sneak out into the kitchen to get you some real survival gear."

Now this is great. With Billy's help I know I'm going to be able to pull this off. Ten minutes later, he came back into the bedroom with an armload of stuff. He threw everything down on top of my bed, pulled up a chair, and said, "Okay, let's get busy."

He held up this giant can of beans that was almost as big as my head and said, "You could stretch this out for about three or four good meals. Of course, you'll probably have to eat them cold out of the can, but you'll get used to it."

"Cold out of the can? I'm not eating raw beans out of can."

"Oh, yes you are. You're gonna be living out on the street. You're gonna have to eat like a hobo. That means you'll be walking around for two or three days with an opened can of beans in your bag. You've got to be careful not to spill em all over the rest of your clothes while you're walking cuz you're not gonna have any place to wash your clothes."

"That's crazy," I said. "I'm gonna have to wash my clothes eventually."

"No, man, you're not. You're gonna be a homeless hobo. Three or four weeks from now you're gonna smell like a walking garbage can. Which reminds me. You'll need some protection from all the stray dogs that roam the streets at night."

"What are you talking about?"

"Stray dogs attack homeless hobos all the time."

"They do?"

"Yeah, didn't you know that? They can smell an old hot dog or a moldy cheese sandwich all crunched up in a hobo's back pocket from a mile away. When the hobo falls asleep, that stray dog will run up and tear that sandwich right out of his pocket with those big sharp teeth."

"Do they ever bite the hobo?"

"Oh yeah, police find dead hobos in the middle of the night all the time. Stray dogs attack them when they're asleep. But you won't have to worry about that cuz we'll pack your football helmet for when you fall asleep."

"How am I suppose to fall asleep with a football helmet on?"

"You'll get used it. Besides, maybe you'll find two large comfortable rocks to wedge your head in between to hold you in place while you're sleeping."

"Why don't I just bring my pillow with me?"

"How are you gonna carry that around with all this other stuff? You're gonna need an umbrella for when it rains so you don't catch pneumonia. You're gonna need a baseball bat to protect yourself from muggers who try to steal all your stuff. And you're gonna need a couple of old newspapers to use for toilet paper."

"Wait a minute. I don't need to do that. I can just go into any store and use the rest room. They've got regular toilet paper in there."

"What happens when you've got to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night when all the stores are closed?"

"I never thought about that."

"Now you know why all those hobos sleeping on the park benches keep newspapers rolled up in their back pockets."

"See? You weren't prepared for this," he said. "You're lucky I decided to help you out. You'd have never survived through your first night as a homeless hobo. Come on, we'll hide this stuff under your bed until everyone falls asleep. You can sneak out in the middle of the night so no one will even know you're gone until morning. That'll give you enough time to find an alleyway or a sewer to sleep in tomorrow night."

After all he'd done for me, I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had already made up my mind not to run away. Getting bit by stray dogs, getting beat up by muggers, and sleeping with a football helmet on was bad enough, but as soon as he mentioned using old newspapers for toilet paper, that's when I realized that my life wasn't so bad after all.

I'll be honest with ya. I did worry about how disappointed he was going to be when he woke up in the morning to find me still there. I figured He'd get over it eventually. He'll just have to.

Looking back on it now, I realize how mature that kid really was at such a young age. He knew that lecturing me on how good I had it at home wouldn't get anywhere. What he did was show it to me from a different frame of reference.

Life was really crazy sometimes down there on Arlington Street, but I wouldn't trade these memories for all the gold in the world. Say what you will, but being born and raised in Everett really was a blessing. We could have done a lot worse. Think about it.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everybody. And wouldn't you know? I've got a special Everett Valentine's Day story to tell. Big surprise, huh?

Above is a 3D rendering of my desk at the Horace Mann elementary school, which once stood at the corner of Lexington and Prospect Streets. Those were sturdy mahogany desks mounted on two strong cast iron legs bolted to a solid hardwood floor. And those strong mahogany chairs mounted on bell-shaped cast iron bases were also firmly fastened to that same hardwood floor.

The tops of those desks did not lift open. You had to bend over to one side in your chair to reach inside to get your books. Classrooms today bear little resemblance to the classrooms of our day. They are far more cheerful and colorful now. I'll give them that. And the boys and girls are no longer isolated from one another. That's another feather in their cap they so rightly deserve.

Gone are the slate blackboards that took up two of the four walls in every classroom. At the Horace Man School there was always one behind the teacher's desk. They always arranged our desks to face the teacher's so that became the front of the classroom. The second blackboard was always along the wall to the right so we had to turn half-way around in our seats to clearly see that blackboard.

Where the second blackboard ended near the rear of the classroom was a built-in hutch with two large glass doors at the top and three drawers below. That's where the teacher kept all of her school supplies. It was always a struggled to open and close those heavy wooden drawers.

The chalk and erasers were kept on a concave oak sill attached along the bottom of each of those blackboards. Every once in a while the teacher chose two students to take the erasers outdoors to bang them together to clean all the chalk dust out of them. "Don't bang them up against the walls of the school," she always said. It is amazing that we all didn't come down with acute asthma from breathing in that cloud of chalk dust from those erasers.

We hung our coats up on hooks mounted on the wall in the corridor outside our classroom. There they dripped dry from the snowflakes and the rain we walked through on our way to school. Our boots lined up against the wall just below the coat hooks in a puddle of water.

The Horace Mann school had neither a lunchroom nor a cafeteria. Our lunchboxes and brown lunch bags leaned up against the legs of our desks right there on the floor next to our feet all morning long. From the intense heat coming off those old steam radiators, the tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches really gave off a foul odor after four hours on the floor, let me tell ya.

Another thing I miss about our elementary school days are those blue Lindy pens. I modeled one in that 3D graphic for today's essay. Go ahead; look at the graphic again. If you look close enough, you'll see that famous emblem of the seal balancing the beach ball on the end of his nose. Do you remember that?

So what was so special about those pens? Believe me, an artist appreciates a fine writing instrument. Those Lindy pens were certainly that. The ink was rich and smooth. And the finely crafted ballpoint did not slip across the paper, but held traction to the grain of the paper much like a pencil. It yielded a precise fingertip control that allowed you to master the art of your penmanship. I've yet to find another pen in any price range to equal the quality of those Lindy pens.

When I first started elementary school, we recited the Lord's prayer out loud every morning before standing with our hands over our hearts to pledge our allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the home of the free and the brave. By the time I got into the Parlin Junior High school, we observed a moment of religious silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. By the time I reached Everett High school, we didn't do either one.

Getting back to our elementary classrooms. That's the way our classrooms looked back in the early 1960's. That's pretty much the way they looked back in the late 1880's when they were first built. And that's the way they stayed until they started tearing them all down in the 1990's. Today's modern schools look like cheap imitations of Frank Lloyd Wright's functional innovations. Impressive in size, true, but cheaply constructed and without any warm architectural artistry whatsoever.

I did not come to you today to critique the architecture of our public schools. By describing the elementary classrooms of our day, I'm setting the tone for a very special day in Everett that happen a long time ago, Fifty-five years ago to be exact.

In elementary school, we celebrate four fun holidays through the year. They are Ground Hog Day, Valentine's Day, Saint Patrick's Day, and Halloween. We celebrated Valentines Day at the Horace Mann by exchanging Valentine's with our classmates. Every teacher, in every classroom, set aside a portion of our afternoon that day for a little Valentine's Day party. I do hope that they still do that in the elementary schools today. Children need fun holidays.

On the weekend before Valentine's Day, my mother took us over to J.M. Fields at Wellington Circle to buy those giant packs of Valentine's Day cards for school. The whole family gathered around the kitchen table that night writing out greeting cards and having a good old-fashioned family gab for ourselves. That was just as much fun as the parties at school.

Listening to my mother talk about her golden schooldays was always a special treat as well. There was just something special about Valentine's Day that always seemed to make my mother reminisce about her childhood up in Newfoundland. I suppose everyone has at least one fond Valentine's Day memory. At least, I hope so.

One Valentine's Day that really sticks out in my mind is the one that happened in 1962 when I was in the fourth grade. My teacher that year was Miss Dyer. Miss Dyer was a kind, soft spoken, older woman with a true look of sincerity in her eyes. She was the first teacher to ever take a liking to me.

Knowing how your reputation usually proceeds you from the previous grades illustrates how remarkable that is. My second and third grade teachers laid down the law to me the very moment I stepped into the classroom. "I've got my eye on you, Paul Huffman. One wrong move and I'll come down on you with such force that you'll wish you were never born," were Miss Martinelli's exact words on my first day in the third grade.

On my first day in the fourth grade, Miss Dyer called me up to her desk. With her sympathetic eyes and that soft tone of voice she said, "If things seem to get hard to cope with, don't ever hesitate to ask for help. That's what your teacher's for. Okay?" Maybe it was reverse psychology, but I'll tell you one thing. That woman totally defused a ticking bomb with kindness.

When a teacher goes that extra mile just for you, you appreciate it for the rest of your life. It makes an impact that changes something deep down inside of you. It gives you the courage to stretch beyond your comfort zone and become more than what everyone else thinks of you.

Carol often talks about how her teacher, Miss Curtain, at the Hamilton school took the extra time to take her aside and explain the complications of arithmetic in easy to understand terms for her. Because of that, she lost her fear of mathematics. And because of that, she's the one who balances our checkbook. She cherishes and appreciates that simple act of kindness with a fondness that will always remain dear to her heart. Come to think of it, so do I.

And that is precisely how I feel about Miss Dyer. On Valentine's Day, Miss Dyer had us all decorate a loving Valentine's Day card for our mothers. Several times she commented on the beautiful artistry of my card. "Perhaps you should consider becoming an artist when you grow up," she often said.

As we sat at our desks decorating our cards, Miss Dyer walked up and down the isles placing a red rose on each one of our desks. "One of my dearest friends has a large rose garden," she explained. "She was kind enough to share that with me so I'd like to take this opportunity to pass that kindness on to you. And you in return will pass that special touch of friendship on by showing your appreciation to your mothers in a very special way when you give her this rose with your Valentine's Day card."

That alone tells you much about Miss Dyer's character right there. But what really made this a memorable occasion for me was when she stopped at my desk to place that rose on the edge of my desk. She also placed a pinkish envelope beside my rose and whispered, "Don't open that envelope until Tomorrow." She made me promise.

When I got up to get ready for school the next day, I opened that envelope at the breakfast table. Inside was a birthday card with the image of that famous painting of Norman Rockwell painting his self-portrait. Inside she wrote, "On this day an artist was born in Everett. Make me proud. I know you can."

I never once mentioned that today was my birthday. No other teacher ever remembered my birthday. No other teacher ever cared. Miss Dyer knew I was a problem student long before she ever met me. Instead of gearing up for battle like every other teacher I've ever had, she took the time to reach out to me with a sympathetic ear and an opened mind. She opened doors that were too often closed and sealed off to someone like me.

To this very day, some 45 years later, not a Valentine's Day goes by without my remembering that special moment in the fourth grade at the Horace Mann school. You never do realize sometimes how a simple act of thoughtful kindness can make such a lasting impression on someone else's life. That's why it is so important that we teach our children to respect each other. And that's why it so important that we never forget that lesson ourselves.

If I were to choose another memorable Valentine's Day in Everett that had monumental impact on my life personally, I'd have to choose one that I was not even here to remember. I only know about it because my mother often told me bits and pieces of it from time to time. Other than that, I've had to piece it all together from what I know.

This one happened on Thursday, February 14th, in 1952. Bill and Grace had recently moved from an apartment in Henry Gray's building on Ferry Street to that one I grew up in on Arlington Street. Bill had just got laid off from his job at Swift Meats. A few days later, he landed a new job as a truck mechanic at Tufts University.

They already had three children. Their oldest was a seven-year old boy already attending first grade at the Horace Mann school. Their second was an adorable four- year old girl not yet in kindergarten. And their youngest was a two-year old toddler. When that toddler was only six-months old he suffered through many brain operations because of the head injuries he sustained when his four-year old brother dropped him.

This young couple sure had their fair share of hard times. Money was tight. Isn't it always? Neither one had any family to speak of nearby. The young bride had an aunt up in Wilmington who was about as much help as a toothache and her husband's family was all back in Indiana. On top of everything else, they had yet another one on the way.

What they did have between them to help them get through it all was love and devotion. Every night when Bill got home from work, they sat down at the kitchen table together, shared a cup of coffee, held hands, and talked about their troubles and their woes trying to sort it all out. You can get through anything with someone you love to share it with you at your side.

A week before Valentine's Day that year, Grace's best friend, Dolly, suggested they go see a fortune-teller just for the fun of it. That fortune-teller told Grace that she saw a baby boy in her future. "I see many colors and hear much music associated with that child. But I'm telling you right now, that child must be taught the value of a dollar," she warned.

"Oh no," Grace thought, "not another boy." She dreaded having another boy because of having just lived through World War Two, she often feared her sons would be called off to fight a war someday. Convinced that her soon to be born child was indeed a boy, she began to ponder a name for her new son.

Bill suggested the name Gregory. "I've always liked the name, "Greg," for a boy," he said.

"I will not name my child Gregory," Grace emphatically stated. "I hate that name."

"Well, how about Paul, then?" Bill had an Uncle Paul back in Indiana that held a special place dear to his heart. When he was just a young teenager, his Uncle Paul drove him all over southern Indiana in a pickup truck with ladders on it. They swindled people with half-done paint jobs and sloppy home repairs for nickels and dimes. They've even made a few midnight deliveries for the local moon-shiners in their day.

Bill always broke into a hardy laugh whenever he talked about his Uncle Paul. "What a shyster that guy was," he often said. "He knew more ways to make a fast buck and more ways than that to spend it. He was as dishonest as the day is long."

Not really the kind of role model Grace cared to name her newborn child after, but she did like the sound of the name, Paul. Between the two of them, they agreed that if their fourth child were indeed a boy, they'd name him, "Paul Gregory."

Valentine's Day happened on a Thursday in 1952. As a special treat for his loving bride, besides the traditional heart shaped box of chocolates from Shraft's, he also gave her a box of chocolate covered cherries. They were her favorite. Her father used to make them especially for her in his candy factory back in Newfoundland when she was a little girl.

Another reason she really appreciated that was because Bill often sat there squishing her chocolates with his thumb to sort out the jelly and crème filled ones from the carmel and crunchy filled ones. He hated the jelly and crème filled chocolates, and she always hated seeing her chocolates all squished up in the box. There's no reason whatsoever for him to squish the cherry filled chocolates. He just couldn't seem to stop himself from squishing those Shraft's chocolates so he bought her the others as well so she wouldn't be so disappointed when he did it.

"I made myself as sick as a dog that night from over eating those chocolate covered cherries," she embarrassingly admits. "I just couldn't help myself." She couldn't sleep a wink that night because of the terrible pain in her stomach. And it continued all through the following day. It got so bad that I had to ask Mrs. Forgione next door to come and help me with the children.

By the time Bill got home from work that afternoon, it had begun to snow. The snowflakes were the largest I can ever remember seeing," she said. "You could even see the intricate patterns in each flake as they drifted ever so slowly past the kitchen window."

It began to pile up. By early evening, there was well over six inches of snow on the ground and you could tell it was only going to get worse. "My stomach was in so much discomfort that I couldn't even eat supper that night. All I could get down was about a half of a piece of toast. And even that bothered me."

At precisely nine o' clock that evening, it all began to make sense. She wasn't sick from eating those chocolates after all. That little life form inside was kicking to get out. She turned to Bill and said, "I'm going to have this baby. I'm going to have this baby now."

Bill fumbled the telephone receiver a couple of times before finally getting it up to his ear. Then he couldn't seem to stop his finger from shaking to turn that rotary to dial doctor Cockery's telephone number. He did eventually get it right. Doctor Cockery told him that he'd meet them up at the Whidden Hospital as soon as possible.

Again, Mrs. Forgione from next door was called on to come sit with the children while Bill and Grace made a mad dash up to the Whidden. Thank God for good neighbors. By this time there was almost a foot of snow on the ground. Their troubles were only just beginning.

At first, because it was so cold out, the car wouldn't start. Bill had to run next door to get one of the neighbors to give him a jump. When they finally did get on their way, they fish tailed all the way down Nichols Street and all the way up Woodlawn Street. "We were travelling about five miles per hour, but the baby felt like it was moving about a hundred miles per hour," Grace recalls.

Their first three attempts to get up Garland Street failed miserably. Because of a weak link in the transmission they kept popping out of gear and rolling back downhill. Every time they did, Bill had to get under the hood to jiggle the transmission push rods back into a forward gear.

After a fourth unsuccessful attempt at trying to get up Garland Street in the snow, Bill said that they're only hope was to try to get up Malden Street. "Well you better do something in hurry, buddy, because I'm about to have this baby and it doesn't feel like he cares whether or not we make it to the hospital." That's all Bill had to hear.

They made it all the way up Malden Street on their first try. They did burn out the master cylinder in the process, but that was the least of their worries right now. It was about a quarter to ten when they finally set foot into the Whidden Hospital. Doctor Cockery came out, took one look at Grace and said, "Get her into the delivery room. There isn't any more time."

Back in those days, the husband did not accompany his wife into the delivery room. It wasn't allowed. Instead, the nervous "father-to-be" paced back and forth in the waiting room smoking one cigarette after another. You heard that right. People used to smoke in the waiting room at the hospital.

"I didn't even get the chance to punch out my first cigarette when I saw Doctory Cockery coming out into the waiting room with his hand extended towards me," Bill said. "Grace gave birth to a healthy baby boy at approximately ten o' clock. The mother and child are both doing fine."

And that's the way it happened, or so I'm told. So why is all that such a memorable moment for me? Because I am that newborn baby boy, that's why.

From that moment on I became one of the proud members of a very prestigious fraternity that is rich in history, culture, and character. I became one of the people who was born and grew up in Everett.

You're one of them, too. You're special. You belong to that very same fraternity. And a common thread runs so true through our veins. We're different. We're proud. And ... "We're From Everett!"

Snow Fun in Everett

Today's big question is, "How long does it take for a 12 year-old Everett kid to go totally berserk from cabin fever?" Survey says, "Ten seconds."

Believe me, I can understand where my mother's coming from when she says, "It's much too cold to go outside today so find something inside to keep you busy." She really is concerned for my good health. It's so cold outside that she's afraid my lungs will crystallize and my toes will get frostbite.

From my perspective, her concerns sound only too familiar in comparison to when she says, "You're gonna break your fool neck if you don't get down from that tree." She has a tizzy every time I climb up on that little maple tree out in front of our house. It just seems like mothers make a hobby out of coming up with excuses to keep you from having any fun.

As I see it, there really are only two reasons for not going to play outside. The first one is because the streetlights came on. The second one is because of severe thunder and lightning storms. Other than that, it's a go.

It doesn't really bother you all that much until you look out the window. The first thing you see is every other kid in the neighborhood out there in the middle of the street frolicking in the mounds of snow that the snowplows have pushed up onto the sidewalks.

"Hey Ma, can I go out?"

"I already said no."

"But everybody else is out."

"I don't care what everybody else is doing. I'm not their mother."

"But their mothers let them go outside and play in the cold."

"If everybody else's mother let them jump off the Mystic River Bridge would you want to do it too?"

What is it with mothers and this "jumping off the bridge" question anyway? You can never argue about anything without having to answer to that hypothetical "jumping of the bridge" question. It's their number one reason why you can't do what everybody else is doing. I wouldn't mind, but I've never once asked if I could go jump off the Mystic River Bridge. So why keep bringing it up?

Okay, I can see how this is getting me nowhere so I may as well get used to the idea that I'm playing indoors today. Tell you what. Come on into my bedroom and I'll show all the things I've got to do when I can't go play outside.

Right here under my bed is my electric football game. You can be the Green Bay Packers and I'll be the New York Giants. This game is a blast. After you set up your offense, I'll set up my defense. As soon as you say "hike," I'll flip the switch and these little guys will buzz all over that metal field. If we turn the transformer up higher the field will vibrate so hard they actually topple over. It's almost as if they're playing tackle football.

Are you ready? Here goes. "Buzzzzzzz!" Is that wild or what? Hey, let's see what happens when we turn that transformer up full blast. Watch this. "BUZZZZZZZZ!"

Man, is that loud, huh? It makes the little football player bounce so high that they look like popcorn popping out of the popper. "BUZZZZZZZZ!" What a riot. "BUZZZZZZZZ!"

What I didn't realize is that every time I flicked that switch to make my football game buzz, it interfered with the television set out in the living room. So every time Art Linkletter asked somebody a question, the screen went jittery and the sound went off every time my football game buzzed.

Only five minutes into my electric football game, my bedroom door swung open and my mother yelled, "What in the world are you doing in here?"

"I'm playing electric football."

"Do you have to do that now?"

"Nah, I'm bored with this anyway. I'll find something else to do."

"Thank you."

Hey, guess what else I've got under my bed? My Dad brought me home this regulation size Indian rubber baseball from Tufts College. Not only is this thing as hard as a rock, but it bounces like a ricocheting bullet. My bedroom is so small that if you throw it against the wall with all your might it will bounce back and forth between the two walls a half a dozen times or more. Watch this.

Ever notice how when you're a little kid totally lost in your own little world that you become oblivious to the reality of the outside world? That's why I jumped out of my skin when my bedroom door unexpectedly flew open again and my mother yelled, "What in the world is going on in here now?"

"I'm playing off the wall with my Indian Rubber ball."

"You're marking up the walls."

"Oh, I am?" Sure enough, every time that ball bounced off the wall it left a perfect impression. It's amazing how many circles you can make on your bedroom walls with an Indian rubber ball in under three minutes.

"I'm sorry. I'll find something else to do."

"Thank you."

Let's see what else I've got under my bed. Oh yeah, I've got one of those wood-burning sets. You know what you can do with one of these? You can melt all of your army men down into bubbling lumps and make weird miniature sculptures out of them. Another thing you can do is melt all of your crayons together into strange mixtures of colors. Come on. Let's do that.

It's funny how when you're totally submerged in a creative endeavor like this that you don't pay any attention to those strings of melting plastic floating through the air. You do realize that strong scent of burning plastic is what's stinging your eyes, but you never once suspect that the whole house is filling up with smoke. At least not until your bedroom door swings open again and your mother yells, "I don't believe it. Have you lost your mind? You're gonna burn the whole house down."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I was just playing with my wood-burning kit."

"I can't take it any more," she shouts. "I give up. Get dressed and go outside."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

Ya see. It pays to be a good kid and do what you're told. Because I played indoors like I was told, I'm being rewarded with the privilege of going outside to play in the snow with everybody else. Let that be a lesson to you. Good things come to those who do what they're told.

So what's the big deal about going out to play in the snow? Are you serious? You actually have to ask?

Let me tell you something. To a twelve-year old kid, when it comes to snow, the possibilities seem endless. I'll show you more things you can do with snow right down here at the bottom of Arlington Street than you've ever imagined.

We've already talked about sledding down the slope up at the Horace Mann school ground and up on the steep hills of Glendale Park back in our post dated March 30 of 2006 entitled, "No School Snow Days. So we won't even go there this time. Don't let that worry you one bit. We've still got a lot of ground to cover.

Before we begin, there is only one rule of thumb you must obey about playing outside in the snow. And that is, "Don't eat the yellow snow." Other than that, the sky's the limit.

Let's get warmed up with the easy stuff first. One thing I always liked to do was kick the "clunkers" out of the wheel wells of all the cars parked along the curb. "Clunkers" are those big frozen chunks of dirty snow that pack up behind the tires of your father's car. Don't ask me why, but I get a bang out of kicking those big chunks from out behind the tires.

Okay, you know what else I like? If you're lucky enough to have a downspout on your house that's come loose at the seems, you could wind up with a ten foot long icicle. Be carefully when you jimmy that thing loose. It weighs a ton. That thing could knock you out if it lands on your head.

Who amongst you has never spent an entire day building a snow fort? By all means, do not let life pass you by without ever building a snow fort. If you've never done that, then go out and do it right now. I don't care how old you are. Make it a point to build at least one snow fort in your lifetime.

If you take the time to build that fort block by block, you can built quite an impressive structure. We used to build our forts with windows, a roof, and an entrance. Once you've finished and crawled inside, you can't help but sit there with this great big smile on your face.

And the same goes for building a snowman. Please don't tell me you've never built a snowman. The most fun part about building the snowman is rolling the snow up into that giant ball. Don't you hate it just when you've got it the exact size you wanted it and it breaks in half on you?

One crazy thing that all the kids in my family did when we were little was to pile the snow up into a mountain out in my back yard. Then, we'd take turns jumping off the railing of our back porch up on the second floor down into the snow. It sounds dangerous, I know, but the pile of snow was over ten feet deep. We'd sometimes get so stuck in that mountain of snow that everybody else had to dig us out with snow shovels.

Hey, now that I think of it, I've just got to tell you this one. This was one of those days when I was out playing in the snow all by myself. I spent all day, from morning until the late afternoon, working on this one project. It not only involved my back yard, but I also hopped over the fences into the adjoining yards on both sides of mine to pull this off. When I had completed this astronomical work of art, I went scurrying upstairs to sound the alarm.

"Ma, come quick," I shouted. "A great big giant man just walked through our backyard. He was so big that he just stepped over everybody's fence and kept on walking."

"What are you talking about?"

"A man as big as our house just walked by. He effortlessly stepped right over Mister Bowser's fence and came right into our yard."

"He couldn't have," she said. "That fence is over eight feet high."

"I know. That's what I mean. That's how big this guy was. That fence only came up to his knees."

"Where is he now?"

"He just stepped over Gray's apartment building on Ferry Street and walked away."

"Now Paul, he couldn't have been that big."

"He was, Ma. Look out the window and see how big his foot prints are."

At first, she looked at me as if I had two heads. Then she asked, "Is this a joke?"

"No Ma, this really happened. Look out the window."

When she looked out the window, she burst out laughing. "Let me get my camera before anybody messes that up," she laughed. We went out onto the back porch with her double reflex Argus 620 camera and she used up an entire roll of film capturing my snow sculpture.

What I had done was make footprints in the snow that were about the size of a pickup truck. You could actually tell the right shoe prints from the left ones. I even went so far as to include a little imprint of a circular emblem on each heel of every footprint. They were evenly spaced apart as if a giant person had actually made them in stride.

Those footprints began in Mister Bowser's backyard next door. They crossed over that eight-foot high chain link fence that separated our yards. After crossing our back yard, they passed over the eight-foot high chain link fence that separated our yard from Henry Gray's apartment building down on Ferry Street.

Believe me when I tell ya, I spent hours on every crucial detail of each one of those footprints. The heel and toe of each print was deeper than the soul of the foot to simulate the actual pressure exerted when walking in snow. That's just one example as to the extremes you go to sometimes when you get lost in a work of art.

Now, who can tell me what the number one most common use for snow is? Come on, people. Drift back into your twelve-year old mind set when you were a little kid growing up in Everett. Snow is for making snowballs.

Raise your hand if you've never gotten into trouble with a snowball. Anybody? I didn't think so. What is it about a snowball that brings out that evil streak that lurks beneath our gentle souls anyway?

We used to stand in ambush along side of Gray's Auctioneer office on Ferry Street waiting for the southbound Everett Station trolley to go by. Our two favorite targets were the windshield, and that hook that connected to the lines over head.

Knocking the trolley line off the hook was a riot. It sparked when you knocked that hook off the wire. The trolley would roll to a gradual stop and the driver would have to get out and walk back behind the trolley to hook the line back up. And if we knew we could get away with it, we'd nail the driver with a volley of snowballs as well when he was trying to hook that line back up to the wires.

They did chase after us sometimes. As if they were ever going to catch up to us - right? Getting chased was half the fun anyway. Wasn't it always?

Some of the people on the trolley gave us dirty looks, and some of them smiled. The ones who smiled were more than likely reliving the happier days of their childhood through us. The ones who didn't had probably forgotten how much fun it was to be a kid.

My brother, Billy, was the one who taught me how to nail the pigeons on the telephone wires with a snowball. The trick is all in the timing. You don't go after the pigeons who are roosting on the wires. You aim for the ones who are just about to land on the wire.

Just as they stretch out that first claw to reach for the wire, you fire. It's still a fifty-fifty possibility, but it is a much high probability then going after the ones who are perched and ready to take flight.

The time I really caught it good for throwing a snowball was the time I was standing in the middle of my backyard holding onto this flawlessly shaped snowball I had just carefully sculptured. I stood there scanning the landscape for the perfect target.

All of a sudden, my eye caught a glimpse of a Mrs. Coolins' elaborately detailed table lamp centered in front of her living room window. I should have realized that neither that pane of glass, nor that table, were any match for that snowball. To this day, I do not know what possessed me to do it, but I did. That was when I discovered that the seat of my pants was no match for my father's belt.

You know what else I liked about playing out in the snow? I liked when it was time to go back indoors. It's not like when you go in from playing outside any other time of year. There's nothing at all to that. But going inside after playing outside in the snow all day is an experience in itself.

No matter how much of a kid at heart you are, there comes a time when you just can't take it any more. It's when the bones in your fingers begin to ache. Your eyelashes are so frozen stiff that you can't blink. Your lips are so numb it feels like you just spent the whole afternoon at the dentist. And you can't even feel your toes any more, let alone wiggle them. That's when you throw in the towel.

When you first step inside out of Old Man Winter's domain, you don't know what to take off first. You know you'd like to get that big bulky coat off, but your arms are so weak it feels like trying to pull taffy off of your back. No matter how hard you try that coat never seems to go anywhere but back and forth across your shoulders. I've gone as far as to bend over and just wiggle out from underneath it. By the time you do get that coat off you're exhausted.

Now it's time to get your boots off. Sounds simple enough, I know, but when your fingers are too weak to grasp anything at all, and you cant feel anything down below your knees, you may as well be standing in a bucket of concrete.

I remember standing out in the back hallway banging the heel of my boot on the edge of the stairs to try to loosen it's grip. When it finally moved about an inch I'd think I'd won the battle. So, I'd sit down on the step and start twisting and pulling until I was completely out of breath. I'd have to take a five-minute break before picking up where I left off. By the time I finally got it off I wanted to take a nap. And that was only the first boot, mind you.

So if it was such a bother to get undress, what was so great about coming indoors anyway? Because waiting for me inside were a hot bath, some warm dry clothes, and a hot cup of cocoa. That's why. And I do fondly remember sitting there sipping on that hot cocoa, in those dry clothes, in that warm house, looking out that window at the cold cruel world outside thinking, "I had a ball today."

Of all the things we've done and seen in our lifetime, is not our childhood memories amongst the most precious of them all? You can take all the riches in the world and put them in your pocket, but your childhood memories you put right into your heart. That's where you keep your real valuables. And to think, you and me share in these treasures together because, "We're From Everett!"

In The Dead of Winter

Now this is what I call "The Dead of Winter." It comes every year after the holiday season. That's when we get that long stretch of heartless weather that ravages the landscape into a baron wasteland. Even the bark on the trees turns a lifeless gray this time of year.

It got so cold sometimes that it hurt to breathe. And when that brutal winter wind blew, it went straight through every layer of clothing and bit right down to the bone. Oh, I do remember that.

Walking to school on those bitter cold mornings was torturous. It wasn't so bad in the elementary grades. The Horace Mann was just up on the other side of Foster after rounding the corner at the top of Arlington Street. It was little more than a three-minute walk altogether. Facing into the wind while trekking across that wide opened schoolyard was the worse part of the whole journey.

On school mornings like that, my mother bundled me up in so many layers of clothing that I had to waddle my way downstairs and practically roll out the front door. Half way up Arlington Street my eyes filled with tears and my nose leaked down onto my upper lip. It froze right there on the spot. By the time I got to school my fingers were so numb they couldn't bend any more.

I'll tell you one thing, though. That still wasn't enough to stop me from dilly dallying along the way. My third grade teacher, Miss Martinelli, often told me that I was the world's biggest dilly-dally. "You've got more ways to waste time than a snail," was one of her pet peeves. As was, "You're slower than the seven-year itch."

Every time she said that I couldn't help but imagine how terrible that disease sounds. I mean really. I've had poison ivy a few times so I know how miserable that is. Can you just imagine scratching the seat of your pants non-stop for seven long years? I hope I never get that.

I'll never forget that bitterly cold winter morning I stepped inside the Horace Mann school to find Miss Martinelli standing right there at the front door waiting for me. She stood there tapping her right foot with her hands on her hips and this really mean growl across her face.

"Now, can you tell me what is so fascinating from your house to this school that always makes you the last one to get here in the morning? I called your mother. She said you left for school twenty minutes ago. Where have you been?"

Believe me when I tell ya, I could've answered her question no sweat. I didn't because I knew she wouldn't get the gist of what I was trying to say. When it comes to living life to its fullest, grownups are way off in left field somewhere. They just don't get it.

I can tell you, though, because I know you'll understand. You and me are on the same wavelength because we both grew up in Everett. We think alike, even if it is a little screwed up by everyone else's standards. What do they know anyway?

You wanna see what is so fascinating from my house to the Horace Mann that makes me so late for school every morning? Come on, I'll show ya.

The moment you step out my front door, you're standing on the second floor of my front hallway. Leading down towards the front door at the bottom is a big long flight of stairs. Now look at the banister. Is that awesome or what?

I double dare you to try to walk down those stairs without even so much as a single thought of throwing your leg over that banister and sliding all the way down to the post. These are the types of things that are completely invisible to grownups. Grownups are "fun" blind.

If you count your seconds like this, "one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two, and so on," you'll discover that it takes an entire four and half seconds to slide down that banister. That banister is buried beneath five, rock-hard layers of age-old, oil based, enamel paint. That stuff acts like rocket fuel to a sliding kid. Just wait until you see how fast you'll zoom down that banister.

Four seconds of mindless ecstasy is never enough. Trust me. It only takes about seven seconds to run back up and jump on that banister again. This little novelty right here is just as much fun as anything they've got up at Canobie Lake Park. Why they don't build a great big one of these down in Disney Land is beyond me. I'd stand in line for a crack at it. Wouldn't you?

What's so great about this one is that there's no lines and no waiting. We can run up and slide down that banister non-stop until the insides of out thighs burn red. And it doesn't cost a single penny, either. I'm telling you right now. All we need is to get our hands on some of that Turtle Wax my Dad keeps in the trunk of his car and we could approach the speed of light on this one.

It wasn't sliding down the banister that was my big downfall. It was the running upstairs to get back on that always got me into trouble. I was having so much fun that I'd forget to tread quietly going back up the stairs. By about my thirteenth or fourteenth ride, my mother would come out into the hallway yelling at the top of her lungs.

"What in the world are you doing out here? Have you lost your mind? You're supposed to be on your way to school. You're gonna be late if you don't hurry up. Now, get going or I'll tan your hide but good."

She means it, too. Believe me. My mother's an experienced hide tanner from way back. She has really mastered the art. You'll know your hides been tanned when she lays into ya. Come on, we better get off to school.

Before we step outside, I just gotta show you this. See how old this front door is? It's ancient - right? Well, look just below the doorknob. See that skeleton key hole? You can see outside if you look through that. Go ahead. Take a peek. See what I mean? Now, step aside and let me have a look.

When the bigger kids gather on my front steps on summer nights, this is how I spy on them. That's how come I know all the latest dirty jokes. I don't always know what they mean, but it makes me sound "in-the-know" with all the other third graders.

Oh yeah, and before I forget. This plate here with the skeleton key hole in it has come loose from the paint so you can make it spin around the doorknob a few times when you flick it. I hold the world's record for five consecutive spins with only one flick. This is another one of those noisemakers that alerts my mother to the fact that I haven't gone off to school yet. Wait until you hear how loud she yells when she hears that thing spin.

Out here on the front steps is where we make up for some of that lost time we spent in the front hall. There's only three steps. They're cursed. If you step on any one of them, you won't live to see tomorrow. Don't ask me why. That's just the way it is. You've got to leap down over all three steps. Of course, that curse only applies to school mornings. On any other morning it's okay to step on these steps.

Notice how these are called steps, but the ones in the front hall are called stairs? Do you know why that is? Well, neither do I. All I know is that when they're inside, they're stairs, and when they're outside, they're steps. That just seems to be the way it works out.

Even before we get past the front gate there's something else to do. We've got this great big forsythia in our front yard. All the little yellow flowers are gone in winter. All that's left behind are those little leaf nubs. I'm sure there's a scientific name for those, but I have no idea what it is.

What I do know is that you've got to bend these twigs back and forth about a dozen times to break them off. One scrape down along the length of that branch with your thumb nail and you can strip all of those nubs off in one long pull. Now you've got yourself one of the coolest whip swords you'll ever see in your life. Just listen to the way it whistles when you whip it back and forth. Neat huh?

Watch how we can whack the rest of those dead leaves off of that maple tree out front with just one swipe. Woah, I didn't see all those noses behind that bundle of leaves. Did you? I wonder if they'll still stick to our noses. Nah, either the glue is frozen or it's all dried out. They still make good helicopters, though. See?

It's usually around this time that I hear my window up on the second floor slide open. My mother leans out and yells, "Paul, you're gonna be late. Now stop your dilly dallying and get off to school!"

Jeez, what a grouch, no? Come on, we better get going. Miss Martinelli has a conniption every time I'm late, which seems to happen just about every other day. But as you can plainly see, it ain't all my fault. There's just so much to see and do on my way to school it's hard to focus on any one thing.

You know what else I love about Arlington Street? Everybody has a different kind of fence out in front of their house. Like the Hughes' for instance. They have this little knee-high garden fence. And the Colosi's have a chain link fence. So do the Tadisco's and the Johnsons. But that weird house where nobody lives has a big wooden picket fence.

What all that adds up to is an orchestra of sound when you rap a stick along the pickets as you walk. Even the chain link fences all have a different sound from each other. So grab yourself a stick and we'll make some serious Avant Garde music on our way to school.

Every time I get near the top of the street I start to hear that loud gurgling sound. You know what that is, don't cha? The ice underneath the hard snow covering the curbstone and gutter is melting. It flows like a mighty river all the way down to the storm drains at the bottom of Arlington Street. All you've got to do is stamp right here on that hard snow and you've got yourself an instant dam.

Hey, you know what else I like to do? If you stand here in the gutter and squish the dark wet snow up between your boots you can watch it magically transform into bright white snow. These boots are perfect for that.

Did you ever have a pair of boots like these? We call these, "Gators." There's nothing fancy about them. They're just pullover black boots that fit over your shoes with metal snap down latches to hold them shut. They sure do keep your feet dry, but they do nothing to shelter them from the cold.

Did you hear that? That's probably the infamous "Last Bell" that my mother keeps warning me about. I'll bet cha a million bucks that Miss Martinelli's gonna shout, "You missed the last bell again!" We better move on.

The moment I step inside that school she's gonna rush me to get undressed. My fingers won't move, my lips won't be able to form any words, and my ears will still be ringing from the wind. And wait till you try to get these boots off. Man, they grab a hold of your shoes and won't let go sometimes.

Miss Martinelli stands there looking over my shoulder the whole time shouting, "Hurry up. Everybody's been waiting for you." As if everybody can't wait until Paul Huffman gets to school - right?

What are these people gonna do when they grow up get out on their own? They better not sit around waiting for me. That's all I gotta say. If I can find this many distractions on my way up Arlington Street, you can just imagine how many things I'm gonna find on my way to work when I grow up. If I ever do grow up.

The sad part about growing up is that you lose sight of all the magic that lies within the simpler things in life. They just don't hold the fascination that they once did. Yeah, sadly enough, it even happened to me.

It's been decades since I've tried to stick one of those maple leaf seed pods on the end of my nose, or stood there spellbound in the middle of the sidewalk listening to the way a forsythia branch whistles when you whip it back and forth. Heck, it's been fifty years now since I've last spoken to my imaginary friend.

Guess what his name was? It was, "Snowball Harry." Please, don't even ask. I have no idea where that name came from. Ask Snowball Harry. Maybe he knows.

And don't think for one minute that when we get back home from school today that we can just hide indoors out of the blustery cold. It never fails, just when I get all cozy and warm my mother will say, "Run down to Vinnie's and get a loaf of bread and a half-a-dozen eggs for supper."

Vinnie's was down on the corner of High and Ferry. After Tommy Gear turned Cassie's into a sub shop, we had to go that extra block for a loaf of bread and a half-a-gallon of milk. It was no big deal in the summer time, but in the "Dead of Winter" it was a real big pain in the "you-know-what."

By the time I got up into the Parlin junior high school, we moved up onto Foster Street. That's when I finally got a bedroom all to myself. Now that's a privilege worth its weight in gold. Creativity unfolds when you get your own room. Nobody barges in and moves your drawings and art supplies all around so you're less likely to lose your place on your works in progress. Besides that, you don't disturb anyone else when you get up in the middle of the night to jot down what happened in that crazy dream you just had.

My bedroom was awesome. It had a window on either side of my headboard. One of those windows looked smack dab into the blank wall of the house next door. Because we were somewhat at the top of Chestnut hill, the other window looked out over Chestnut Street and I could see over the rooftops on Reed Ave. In one direction, I could see all the way over to the hill projects. And in the other, I could see the Whidden Hospital up at the top of Garland Street. Man, what a view.

One night, while sitting at my desk writing poetry, I had WBOS on the radio just to have something soft and mellow playing the background. We're talking back in the days when WBOS was a more classical music station. That was the night I heard Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Rather simple, I know, but that was what inspired me into thinking, "I want to do that. I want to make music."

With nothing more than a cheap Silvertone acoustic guitar, my Longine's Symphonet mono record player, and the coziness of my own private little piece of the world, I spent many a freezing cold winter night jamming with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Now you talk about having some notable music teachers. I had Keith Richard, Brian Jones, George Harrison, and John Lennon teaching me. Beat that.

When the Rolling Stones released their "Flowers" album, there was a song on it called, "Back Street Girl." The guitar work on that song took me by storm. No, it was no hum-bucking, hard-driving, Rock N Roll electric lead that was customary of Kieth Richard's work. It was more of how I like to describe as a soft harmonic melody poetically picked in the tradition of a French sidewalk café. That was one piece of guitar work I so desperately wanted to learn.

So that's how I spent those freezing cold winter nights when it was too unbearable to go outside. I sat up in my room learning how to play guitar, lost in my own little world, letting time pass me by. To learn how to play a song, I had to keep playing the same record over and over again. Sometimes I had to keep putting the needle back on the very same groove just to keep hearing the same ten-second sample.

After an hour or more of that my mother would yell, "For crying out loud, Paul. It's bad enough that I've got to listen to the Rolling Stones, but if I have to listen to the same ten seconds of that very same song just one more time I swear I'm gonna go out of my mind." Hey, that's the price you've got to pay for creativity sometimes. You know what I mean?

What's really funny is that I would concentrate so hard on learning how to play a song sometimes that I would actually continue to learn it in my sleep. I don't know how many times I've dreamt of how to play something only to wake up at three o' clock in the morning to discover that I had dreamt how to play it right.

Man, my mother would really lose it whenever I did that. I can hear her now in the back of my mind. "For cry sakes, Paul. It's three o' clock in the morning and you've got school in just a few hours. Put that gawd damn guitar away and get some sleep. I'm gonna throw that friggen thing in the trash if you don't stop all this insanity. You're driving me out of my mind!"

Hey, nobody said growing up was easy. It's fun, but it ain't always easy.

That's what the "Dead of Winter" means to me. It's not depressing. It's when I withdraw from society into a little world of my own to hone my craft. That's the way it's always been for me. And I hope that's the way it always stays.

In a funny sort of way, I like the "Dead of Winter." It reminds me of so many of the fond memories of my childhood growing up in Everett that I'd probably otherwise forget. And believe me, if you ever lose sight of your childhood you've lost sight of what life is really all about.

This isn't just about the good old days. It's about all those thoughts and experiences we've all shared along this winding journey we call life. And especially for us because, "We're From Everett!"