Problem Students

Were you one of those? Were you one of those kids the teacher had to "speak to" every day in class? Did you get caught repeatedly staring out the window? Did you constantly forget to do the homework? Did you frequently draw a blank when staring at the questions on your test even though you knew the material?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, then you would be classified today as either having "Attention Deficit Disorder" or you would be referred to as "Learning Disabled." Back in the early 1960's, my third grade teacher at the Horace Mann school had another name for it. Her term was more to the point and she often used it when talking about my learning disability. She commonly referred to me as "stupid."

After years of being called stupid by my teachers, I was convinced that I was the dumbest person on the planet. You can only imagine how shocked I was when they inducted me into the college honor society, Alpha Chi. I wanted to run back down to the Horace Mann and slap my teacher in the face with the certificate.

Back in our elementary school days, they had so many rules and regulations to live by that I got all stressed out every morning just getting dressed. Just trying to get through an average day at school was like walking on eggshells. And believe me when I tell ya, I spent more than my fair share of school days in the cross hairs of the teacher's scope.

Living under the constant threat of getting ridiculed in front of the whole class caused me to screw up on even the most simple of things. That's all they ever expected from me anyway. Anything otherwise would be a big disappointment. After all, everybody needs a good whipping post.

I'll never forget the time that my sixth grade teacher, Miss Blake, told us to clear off our desks to get ready for our spelling test. Wouldn't you know? That's when I discovered that I couldn't find my pen. If I had to admit that I lost my pen all hell would break loose. You talk about stress?

Believe me, I looked everywhere for it. After checking inside every one of my books and under every scrap of paper jammed into the back of my desk, I even looked inside my lunch bag just in case. I made such a commotion looking for that dreaded pen that Miss Blake finally shouted, "Paul Huffman!"

"What?"

"What on earth are you doing?"

"I'm looking for my pen."

"It's in your other hand," she yelled.

"Oh, so it is."

"If you had a brain you'd be dangerous," she said.

That was the year they introduced us to the "new math," or so it was called. All it was, was simple Algebra. I know a lot of school teachers out there are going to jump all over me for this but, Algebra is really nothing more than a complicated way of solving a simple problem. Anything you can do with Algebra, you can do easier with basic arithmetic.

All the "new math" ever accomplished was to cause more stress and confusion for the students who struggled with arithmetic in the first place. It took a straightforward process and made it complicated. When I proved that to Miss Blake she went ballistic.

Having stating my case, she called me up to the blackboard. She wrote out a simple algebraic equation and challenged me to solve it using basic arithmetic. I accomplished in one simple operation what it took her five complicated steps to do. Rather than to acknowledge the fact that I had proven my point, she said, "Your answer is wrong because you didn't follow the proper procedures."

"Excuse me? I have the very same answer that you do. I did it faster and in fewer steps than you did."

"But that's not the way they explain it in the book," she retorted. "That's your problem in life. You think you don't have to follow any rules. You think you can just go along doing things your own way. Well, you can't. If you don't do it this way I'll mark you wrong every time."

So there it is pure and simple. That is precisely why we graduate from high school knowing the chemical element of salt, but not how to do something so practical as balance a checkbook.

They weren't trying to teach us to explore alternative possibilities. All they cared about was teaching us how to follow the rules and to do as we were told. They wanted mindless robots who conformed to the archaic mediocrity of the habit and routine. The last thing they wanted was innovation or improvisation.

Anyone who showed any tendencies towards the more creative quickly became labeled as a "problem student." Amongst the more notable people in history who were once known "problem students" includes Ludwig Von Beethoven, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. Need I say more?

Even to this day, I shake my head in disbelief at what Mister Dakin said to me in the seventh grade at the Fairfield Whitney. This happened during a study period. It was one of those rare moments when I kept my eyes on my own paper and didn't make a sound. I was completely absorbed in trying to draw a cat with a ballpoint pen with such exact detail that it looked like a black and white photograph.

All of a sudden this big hand came out of nowhere and crunched my drawing up into a ball.

"This is what you're wasting your valuable school time on?" He shouted.

"I'm trying to become a better artist," I tried to explain.

"Do that on your own time," he yelled. "My job is to give you a valuable education and not to allow you to get side tracked on something so trivial as drawing. On the other hand, I worry about giving an education to a nut like you. Giving you an education is like giving Lee Harvey Oswald a rifle."

It took me a while, but I finally figured it all out. If I didn't want the teacher to call on me, I'd wave my hand frantically in the air and say, "Ooh, ooh," so they'd think I knew the answer. And it worked. It ruins their day when the kid they love to hate knows the answer. God forbid they should ever have to give someone like me a word of praise.

If I did want them to call on me, I'd pretend I was trying to line my head up with the kid in front of me to become invisible. There's no way on earth that I was ever going to become invisible to the teacher. Trying only made me all that more visible. That worked too. For some kids, answering the teacher's question correctly gave them a feeling of accomplishment. For me, it was more like getting revenge.

In so many ways, the Everett public school system inspired me to reach beyond my comfort zone and strive to achieve beyond my limitations. How did they do that? By making me to want to prove my teachers wrong.

That realization came to me during the summer between the eighth and ninth grades. I just had a wonderful school year experience in Mister Sarno's homeroom. Now that was an exceptional teacher, let me tell ya. And in so many ways, he was responsible for my taking a closer look at this academic concept.

This great epiphany came to me one summer day while I was vacationing at my great aunt's house up in Asbury Grove. My great Aunt was one of those early to bed, early to rise kind of people. By nine o' clock every night the whole house was sound asleep, except for me. I'd sit quietly up in my room reading and drawing until three o' clock in the morning.

Like I've said so many times before, my father was notorious for bringing home discarded textbooks from Tufts University. Whenever I stayed over my Aunt Grace's house I'd bring along a half a dozen or so of these books to read. It just so happened that one of those books was all about the basic laws of Physics. Don't ask me why, but for some funny reason, I found this book fascinating.

The supervisor who worked the recreation center there was a girl who was currently studying for her Masters in Education at Salem State College. Once she found out that I was from Everett, she looked down on me like I was a piece of trash because she was from Ipswich. "La-de-da" right?

It was raining cats and dogs outside that day so we all gathered around this big oak table in the middle of the room to play cards. We were playing "Knock-out." She and I were the last two left in the game.

"Well, this should be easy," she laughed.

"Why do you say that?" I had to ask.

"Honestly, Everett isn't known for great analytical thinkers."

"And Ipswitch is?"

"Probably more so than Everett," she deviously remarked as she dealt us each two cards.

"You don't hit me as a great analytical thinker," I arrogantly said as I looked at my cards. She dealt me the king and ten of spades.

"What do you think your chances are of ever earning a Masters in Education?" She asked while studying her cards.

"Not too good," I admitted. "I don't want to go into education. I want to become a nuclear physicist." Yes, I was bluffing, but she didn't know that.

"Oh, that's a good one," she laughed. "And I suppose you can tell me what the fastest known speed in the universe is."

"As a matter of fact, I can."

"Oh really? So tell me then."

"It's the speed of light. It's the only constant in the known universe and it travels at 93 million miles per second. What's trump?"

"It's spades," she said. You should have seen the look on her face. I was biting my lip not to smile.

"Oh, and I suppose you know the speed of free falling objects as well," she asked as she threw down the Jack of Spades.

I threw down the king and said, "Yeah, it's thirty-two feet per second squared."

Then I threw down the ten and asked, "And I suppose you can quote Newton's second law of motion for me?"

She threw her eight of spades at my face and said, "Yeah, it's "F" You!"

"So much for the analytical thinking power of Ipswitch," I burst out laughing. She was pissed.

That's when it dawned on me. I had discovered the power to take control of my school environment. Rather than to let the teacher ruin my day, I can ruin theirs. Not by acting up and getting into trouble, but by mocking them and pissing them off. And the best way to do that is by acing their material and being arrogant about it in the process.

Both Miss Blake and Mister Dakin were right after all. With this newfound knowledge I was now armed and dangerous. For the first time in my life, I couldn't wait for the new school year to begin. But as we all know, there is an irony to life that always seems to throw a monkey wrench into the works. This turned out to be another one of those classic "If I knew then what I know now" scenarios.

The ninth grade was the only grade I got to put this plan into practice and only on a very limited basis. I only had one despicable teacher in the ninth grade. It was my literature teacher. When I got up into high school I didn't have any teachers who made my life miserable. Go figure.

Divide and conquer was the predominate mentality of our elementary school environment. They found more ways to separate us from one another than they did to help us get along better with each other.

The first thing they did was to separate the girls from the boys. As soon as the bell rang, the boys lined up in one row and the girls in another. At the Horace Mann we had one playground for the boys and another one for the girls. It makes no wonder we became awkward when either one of us tried to relate to the opposite sex. We literally had no practical social interaction with each other during our elementary school years.

Sisters don't count. Can you imagine how unpopular you'd quickly become if you treated your date the way you treated your sister? And believe me when I tell ya, girls are complex creatures. They hate fun and take everything serious. I could tell that just by watching them play at recess.

I never saw girls chase each other all over the playground to fart at each other. They never once flicked their boogers at each other. And they haven't the faintest idea as to who is the toughest out of the bunch or who can spit the farthest.

When a girl gets mad, it brews inside of her like a boiling pot for years on end. They don't forget anything. If you want to find out whether or not a girl has a photographic memory just piss her off. You'll see a photographic memory that will humiliate Kreskin himself.

If a girl gets mad at you, she'll turn her back on you and give you the silent treatment for the next thirty-two years. When a boy gets mad at you, he'll just beat you up and forget about it. A girl will remember exactly what it was you said and when it was you said it for the remainder of your natural life. It's happened believe me.

I've had girls scornfully quote me verbatim, and then to add insult to injury, tell me exactly where the minute and second hand was on the clock when I said it twenty years ago. A boy won't remember either one three minutes later.

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to talk about one of the biggest misconceptions I've ever heard in my lifetime. Remember when they used to say that females were the weaker sex? What a bunch of malarkey that is. Have you ever made the fatal mistakes of making a girl so mad that she literally came after you?

I'd take a beating from guy any day over getting beat up by a girl. A guy will stop once he knows you're licked. A girl will kill you. If you think I'm kidding then just go ask any guy who was stupid enough to mouth off to Martha.

So like I said, they found more ways to separate us from one another than you could shake a stick at. By constantly pointing out the differences between us they kept us pitted against one another so they could keep us under their thumbs. They separated us by who was the smartest, who was the quietest, and who was the class clown. They labeled each and every one of us. And it worked too.

We began to see each other by the teacher's labels. We'd point someone out and say, "That kid's smart," or "that kid's a dummy." Years later when you found out that somebody became successful in his or her adult life you'd act so surprised because you always took that kid for a dummy.

They constantly harped on the subject of good citizenship but their methods of mind control yielded the exact opposite results. If they were serious about pumping out a generation of good citizens they should have focused more on pointing out all the similarities between us. It would have helped us to relate more accurately with each other, to have a better understanding of one another, and to get along better with each other.

Sure, no two of us are exactly alike. It's okay to be a little bit different from each other. That's what makes the world go round. It reminds me of something I've heard my own daughter say from time to time. "You laugh at me because I'm different, but I laugh at you because you're all the same."

Think about it. There are so many similarities between us that it staggers the imagination. And since your teachers never pointed that out to you, I'd like to give you just a few examples that I think will help us relate to each other a little better. Here is just a brief list of some of the things we all have in common.

Here's something we've all done. Think back to a time when you were having a conversation with somebody and about to make an important statement when all of a sudden - your mind goes blank. For the life of you, you can't remember what it was you were going to say. They'll stop talking and ask, "What was it you wanted to say?"

"I don't know. I can't remember what it was I wanted to say." And you don't either. You have no idea.

Another example is when you're talking about something and know exactly what it is you want to say, but can't remember the word for it. You'll say something like, "What you need is a, a, a, damn! What's the word I'm looking for?" It's right there on the tip of your tongue but you just can't see it. Three hours later when your miles away from that person talking to somebody else about an entirely different subject, that word suddenly pops into your head.

"Oh damn," you'll say. "I wanted to tell Sally she needed a proctologist. That's the word I was looking for." That's when the other person looks at you like you've got two heads because they'll have no idea what on earth you're talking about.

Okay, here's another one. Think about a time when you got all dressed up to have your picture taken at school. And just before you leave the house you take one last look in the mirror because you want to look your best. That's when you discover that big red pimple on the end of your nose that wasn't there ten minutes ago.

Or how about the time you were walking down Main Street with your best friend and somebody pulled up along the curb to ask you how to get to Pantiadossi's bakery. When you point in the direction you're going to send them in, you accidentally poke your friend in the eye. Or how about when you spent ten minutes giving someone directions on how to get to the Parlin library, but then later realized that you sent them the wrong way. Don't you hate that?

Or how about the time your brother made you laugh so hard at the supper table that milk came out of your nose? You remember that one, don't ya? Speaking about the supper table, can you remember a time when you were just about to put a whole forkful of pasta in your mouth when all of a sudden your hand goes into one of those involuntary convulsions and you spill the spaghetti all over your lap? That always seemed to happen to me whenever I ate over somebody else's house.

Or how about when the bells rings before you've had time to finish your lunch? So you try to hurry up and gulp down that last bit of milk at the bottom of the bottle, but all you get is a mouthful of air.

You could have sworn there was at least one more mouthful of milk left in that bottle. You'll have to look down into that bottle three or four times before it finally registers. You'll even go as far as to tip it up side down and look up into it to defy gravity before you'll convince yourself that it really is empty.

And have you ever reached out to grab your bottle of milk thinking it only had one more sip left to it but then discovered it was full and poured it all over your face? Either that or you swallowed so fast it felt like you were trying to swallow Niagara Falls? And how about that time you quickly lifted the bottle to your mouth only to poke yourself in the eye with the straw? Has that ever happened to you?

You see what I mean? We have a lot of things in the common. These are the kinds of things that help us relate more to one another. They help us identify with each other.

Believe it or not, none of the things they did to me during my school years in Everett have scarred me for life. All I had to do to see my way clearly in the adult world after graduating from Everett High was to come to the realization that the majority of the things they taught me were wrong. Once I reached that conclusion everything was fine.

Oh yeah, and before I forget. Here's one more thing we all have in common. "We're from Everett!"

The Great Escape

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was stumble into the bathroom and look into the mirror. You would not believe what I saw. There was a stranger standing there looking back at me. He looked familiar. I know I've seen him somewhere before, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on when or where.

Wait a minute now. Was that the kid who was with Bobby the day he got caught stealing at Kresge's? Yes, I think it is. He does look a little bit like him when you take a closer look. You can actually see some of his original childhood facial features behind all those wrinkles. Yeah, that's him.

Now that's a funny story. It happened on a Friday morning shortly after getting back home from finishing my paper route. This happened sometime in the early summer. If memory serves me well, it was just a few days after we got out of school for the summer vacation that year.

There was a little bit of a chill in the air that morning, not enough to make you bundle up, but enough to make you throw on a light jacket. It was cloudy, looked like rain, one of those days when you just can't tell. You know what I mean?

After stopping in at my house for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I headed up to the Horace Mann school ground on my bike to see if anybody had a game of stickball going on. It was still a little bit too early, but I figured I'd check it out just in case.

There wasn't a soul around. From a distance, I caught a glimpse of Bobby coasting down Prospect Street so I put my thumb and ring finger between my lips and bellowed out a whistle that pierced the early morning silence with such force that it echoed off of all the houses in the neighborhood.

"What's the matter with you? Quiet down out there. Don't you have any consideration for anybody else? You're making enough noise to wake up the dead," I could hear some irate old lady yelling out from gawd only knows where.

Sure enough, it was that grouchy lady who lives next door to the playground on Foster Street. I finally spotted her hanging out of her second story window in her bathrobe and curlers. What a sight to behold through the eyes of a little kid, let me tell ya.

She had a hair dressing shop up on the second floor of her house. And believe me when I tell ya, she hated kids with a passion. Every time we got a game of stickball together up at the school ground, she called the cops. They'd come down and break up our game saying, "There's no ball playing allowed in the playground."

"Why do you call it a playground then if we can't play in it?" I wasn't trying to be a wise guy or anything. But honestly, if you can't play in the playground where are you supposed to play?

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Peter Pickeltecky.' Why should I tell him my real name? I didn't break any laws.

He pretended to write it all down in his little notepad. "Where do you live?"

"400 Hancock Street." I don't even know if there really is a 400 on Hancock Street.

"I'm writing you up in my report," he said. "You get into any more trouble today and I'll run you in. Just you remember that," he said waiving the eraser end of his pencil at me.

That lady even called the cops whenever we played basketball. The cops would come back down and tell us we couldn't play basketball either. If you asked, "Then why did they put up a basketball net?" They'd tell you not to be such a wise guy.

She raised such a fuss that she forced the city to put up a ten-foot high chain link fence between her house and the playground. It makes you wonder why she bought a house right next door to a school if she hated kids so much. A month or so after that, she made them hang a sign on it that read "No Ball Playing Allowed." They'd tell you to go play ball at Glendale Park instead.

There were four baseball diamonds in Glendale Park. If the Little League wasn't using two of them, the Softball League was. Every time you tried to play anything in Glendale Park somebody would shoo you away for one reason or another. If you weren't in one of the organized leagues, you could forget about playing anything at Glendale Park during the baseball season. Our only other option was to play in the middle of the street. So, that's what we did.

That "No Ball Playing Allowed" sign did come in handy. We lowered it down on the fence behind our makeshift batter's box and drew a big red circle on it. Now we could use it as our official strike zone whenever we played stickball. It eliminated all the arguing over balls and strikes.

Bobby coasted over towards me from across the playground. "What are you up to?" He asked.

"Nothing yet, there's no one around."

"You wanna take a ride down Everett Square?"

"What's down the square?"

"I wanna see what they've got for baseball gloves at the sports shop. You interested?"

"Nothing's opened yet. It's too early."

"It's not that early. Everything opens up in about a half-hour or so. You wanna go?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Now honestly, it shouldn't take any more than about three minutes to get from the Horace Mann to Everett Square on a bike, but you know kids. There are just too many things to divert your attention along the way, especially on trash day in Everett.

We spotted an old 78-rpm, ten-inch record sticking up out of somebody's trash barrel on Orchard Street. For the next ten minutes or so, we played Frisbee with it back and forth across the two sidewalks. It was so hard and sharp on the edges that it actually hurt to catch it sometimes.

You couldn't control it as easily as you could a Frisbee. That's probably why it swooped off to the far right when I tried to put a really fast spin on it. It slammed up against somebody's living room window. We vanished into thin air as soon as that happened.

Since there wasn't any cars going back and forth on Summer Street, we made a couple of loops in the middle of the street on our bikes. We were right at the top of the hill just before you head down onto Clinton.

"Hey Paul, check this out," Bobby had stopped his bike and was staring into the front window of the house at the corner of Orchard and Summer.

I've always liked that house. It had a wrap around front porch, large front windows, and was always nicely landscaped with shrubbery. But the very moment I turned to see what he was pointing at, all the charisma and charm went right down the tubes.

They had this really old lady propped up in a chair so she could look out the window and catch a few rays of golden sunlight. By the way they had her all bundled up in that lacy white blanket, she looked like she was lying in a casket. To a twelve-year old kid, it looked like a scene prop from one of those grade B horror movies we used to see down at the Park Theatre.

We just stood there and stared. There's no way on earth she could have possibly seen us. Her eyes were so far sunken into her head that you could have fit your whole big toe into one of her eye sockets. Her lower jaw hung limp to one side. And her skin looked like old leather stretched acrossed a fragile bamboo frame. She had to be at least a hundred fifty if she was a day. She scared the living bejesus out of the two of us.

"Do you think she's dead?" Bobby asked.

"No, she can't be dead. Why would they stick a dead lady up in front of the window?"

"Maybe she died and they don't know it yet."

"That I can understand."

"I'd like to find out if she's dead or not," he said.

"How you gonna do that?"

"We could sneak up to the window and then jump out and yell "Boo" to see if she flinches."

"Are you serious? If she flinches she'll break in half."

"If that was my grandmother, I'd hold a pillow down over her face to put her out of her misery," he said. And believe it or not, he was serious.

"What makes you think she's in misery?"

"Does she look happy to you?"

"I'll tell you one thing. I've seen enough. I'm afraid if we stay here too long she might sneeze and blow her nose off," I laughed.

"Oh yeah, that would be so gross. There would be all kinds of puss, and blood, and snots all over the window," he said with this really disgusting look on his face.

"Aw man, you're making me sick. Let's get out of here."

Further down on Summer Street we saw an interesting looking box sticking up out of somebody else's trash can. You talk about hitting pay dirt? It turned out to be a box full of those fragile glass Christmas tree bulbs. We found three boxes full of them. That was enough to make us reverse direction and head back up towards the Parlin. By the time we got there the clouds had cleared away bringing forth a cheerful sunny day.

That fire escape on the back of the Parlin was perfect for dropping fragile glass Christmas tree bulbs down onto the hot top. Something like that could hold a couple of twelve-year old boys spellbound for hours on end.

They not only gave off an echoing hollow burst when they hit the ground, but they also sprayed splintered glass in all directions that twinkled iridescently in the sunlight when they exploded. My gawd, what a beautiful sight. We took our time and dropped them one at a time to enjoy the full effect of the moment.

You can just imagine how surprised we were to hear that twelve o' clock whistle blow. That's how much time we spent just farting around that day. We still weren't ready to head off down the Square just yet because I came up with another great idea. And thank gawd I thought of it before we wasted that last box of Christmas tree bulbs.

Every year around this time, my big brother, Billy, bagan stockpiling fireworks for the Fourth of July. He hides them down the cellar so my mother won't find them. Well, guess what? I know where his hiding spot is. And guess what he's got? He's got those two-inch blockbusters with that heavy wick sticking out of the side. Those things are deadly.

After hiding our last box of Christmas tree bulbs in the high weeds on the left-hand side of the Parlin, we hopped on our bikes and headed down to my house to get a blockbuster. And I'll tell you something else. It's almost impossible to keep your mouth shut when you've got something this good going on.

I didn't realize how many kids we actually told about this until we got back up to the Parlin. There must have been a dozen kids or more who came to watch the show. What we did was set that box of bulbs down on the middle landing of that cement set of steps. Then we stuck the blockbuster into the center of that pile of bulbs.

Instead taking the risk of getting hitting with flying shrapnel, we drilled the wick through a Lucky Strike cigarette and lit that. Then we got well out of harm's way and waited for the big bang. My only regret is that we didn't have a movie camera to film that one. That was awesome.

The explosion was magnanimous. It reverberated off the walls and echoed like a cannon. The cardboard box disintegrated. And the glass vaporized into a shimmering cloud of dust that sprayed straight up as high as the school building itself before twinkling back down on top of us like a snow storm. Everybody brushed sparkling glass dust out of their hair with their hands for what seemed like an hour.

It wasn't until sometime in the early afternoon that we finally headed off on our bikes down towards Everett Square. We were supposed to be on our way to the sports shop. While coasting down Broadway, Bobby yelled out, "Hey, you wanna go look around in Kresge's first?"

"Sure, why not?"

Kresge's was always full of shoppers, especially in the summer. Whenever two kids walked into Kresge's without an adult, they watched them like a hawk. The manager looked at us as soon as we stepped into the place and asked, "What do you want?"

"We just want to look around for a little bit," I said.

"Are you going to buy anything?" He asked.

"If I see something I like."

"Do you have any money?"

"Yeah, I've got money." I did, too. I had a quarter.

"Let's not stay together so they won't suspect anything," Bobby suggested.

Now I should have suspected something myself as soon as he said that. I mean after all, if we had nothing to hide then why should we care if they suspect something or not? If we're not going to do anything wrong we've got nothing to worry about - right?

Not being much of a shopper myself, I got bored in less than a minute just gawking at stuff in a store. Looking over at Bobby, who was on the other side of the store, I saw all of the telltale signs of a storm brewing. He stood motionlessly in front of one of the bins with his right hand holding onto something. His eyes kept darting back and forth between the manager who was standing near the front of the store, and the sales clerk who was standing over by me. I saw it coming.

In the blink of an eye, whatever it was he had his hand on, went down into the front of his shirt. It happened so fast that I barely saw his hand move.

"Hold it right there! I saw that!" The manager shouted.

Bobby darted straight out the side door onto Norwood Street.

"Grab him," the manager shouted to the sales clerk standing right beside me.

"I didn't steal anything," I shouted. And I didn't either. She grabbed a hold of my arm anyway.

The manager caught Bobby outside the front door. That's where we left out bikes. He was actually stupid enough to run back around to the front of the store to get his bike. And that's the only reason he got caught.

As soon as the manager dragged him back into the store, he told the sales clerk to let me go.

"He can go now. I caught his friend," he said. She let go of my arm. I walked straight out the side door and walked around to the front to get my bike. I didn't want anything more to do with the whole affair after that.

When I got up to the intersection of Church Street, Bobby came barreling past me on his bike shouting, "Go, go, go!" He got away. When I looked back around I saw the store manager and a cop running towards me at break neck speed. I never peddled so hard and fast before in all my life. And I did not stop until I coasted into my backyard.

Sitting there on my back steps puffing and panting while still holding onto his bike was none other than the fugitive himself.

"How did you get away?" I had to ask.

"That jerk let go of my arm to write down my name and address so I took off."

"Does he know your name and address?"

"Yeah, he thinks I'm Peter Pickeltecky from 400 Hancock Street."

"You used my favorite phony name and address?"

"Yeah, you better make up a new one now. I'm sure they're out there looking for him."

"Thanks a lot, pal. Do you have any idea how long it took me to dream that one up?"

"And do you know what the funny part is?" He asked.

"No, what's the funny part?"

"After all that, I still got away with it," he said pulling the stolen item out of his shirt.

Guess what it was? It was one of those stupid windup monkey toys that bangs two little cymbals together. I kid you not. All that over a stupid windup monkey. I could have strangled him.

"I just wanted to see if I could pull it off," he laughed.

Somehow I failed to see the humor in it at the time. It's funny now that I look back on it.

That's what being a little kid in Everett was like back in the early 1960's. On any given day you experienced more adventures than you ever anticipated. Adventures just popped up out of the woodwork and defined themselves as they unfolded. You couldn't plan things like that if you tried.

That's what was so precious about our childhood. We didn't plan anything. We played it by ear and felt our way along by following the flow of events as they unraveled before us. Some of the things we did made absolutely no sense at all. Isn't that beautiful? When there is no chaos, no randomness, or improvisation, there is no creativity. Without creativity, nothing is ventured, and nothing is gained.

In so many ways, Everett was the perfect community for the inquisitive innocence of the childlike mind. Everett really is different from every other city in America. And it is the people who make it that way. Yes, in so many ways, they are unreasonable sometimes. But remember this. Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man or woman.

People from Everett have accomplished phenomenal things. One of the girls from our Everett High School graduating class of 1971 is on the "Who's Who Register." She received an achievement award from President Bush. Her name is on The National Aviation and Space Exploration Wall of Honor at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. She is also a Research Partner with the American Diabetes Association. Can you imagine that?

So naturally, you would suspect that to be the highest achievement from our graduating class. Well, from a professional standpoint, it probably is, but wait until you hear this one. This one is unquestionably the highest of distinctions in character.

We had a boy who was supposed to graduate with our class, but didn't. He did eventually finish his education and continue on to college. But rather than graduate with us, he left school to volunteer for two tours of active duty in Vietnam. Did you catch that? He "volunteered" for "two tours" of "active duty" in "war time."

When I first found that out, the hairs on my forearm stood on end and a chill went right down my spine. Can you imagine having the guts to stare almost certain death in the face on purpose, not once, but twice? And for what? For what?

I'll tell you for what. Amongst us walks such a rare individual that he would lay down his life for his friends. He surrendered all of his freedoms to protect ours. His courage humbles me. His character strengthens me. What an honor it would be if he were to allow us to induct him into our graduating class where he so rightfully belongs.

Those are the kinds of people that come from Everett. I am so proud of them that I feel a sense of accomplishment myself for no other reason than because they are one of us.

You people keep telling me that I am doing something wonderful here, but let me tell you something. You make it so easy. You are all exceptional people. Each and every one of you, in your own little way, have inspired within me talents that I never dreamed I had. I owe you so much.

That's why I have such a good memory about growing up amongst you. I sincerely appreciate everything about you. The only thing special about me is that I am one of you. I refuse to let your legacy go quietly into the night. I want the whole world to see you through my eyes. In the process, you will begin to see yourselves, and each other, the way that I do. And it will teach you to respect, and to love one another, as I do you.

You deserve that. You are very special people. After all, you're from Everett!

Time Lines

Perhaps one of the most astonishing lessons we all learn as we get on in years is how fast time flies. My mother, who is now in her eighties and still living in Everett, often recalls a time when she and her girlfriend, Daphne, were playing with their dolls on her kitchen floor up in Newfoundland.

"I couldn't have been any more than about five or six years old," she said. "My father and mother were sipping their afternoon tea at the kitchen table. I distinctly remember hearing my father say, "Now look at those cute little children having the time of their lives, Julia. In no more than the twinkling of an eye, you and I will be gone and they'll be sipping tea at the kitchen table watching their children play." "

That point in time in which my grandfather was referring to has long since come and gone. As the time passed by, it was me who was kneeling down on the kitchen floor playing with my little race cars while my mother and father sat at the kitchen table sharing a cup of afternoon tea. I couldn't have been any more than about five or six years old. That was the first time I remember hearing my mother recall that memory.

My grandparents have been gone now for more than thirty years. My father passed away more than a decade ago. I've already had my day sitting at the kitchen table watching my own children play. I'm now old enough to relive the experience through my grandchildren. What am I saying? I've got a grandchild who will graduate from high school in only three more years. Chances are, within less than a decade, I'll be a great grandparent myself. Man, time does fly.

After all the shoot-em-up westerns we've seen in our lifetime, it becomes a bit of shock to discover that the time span of the untamed west was actually less than a twenty-year period in American history. Watching the History channel makes you think that World War Two lasted at least a hundred years. Hitler's entire reign of terror only lasted twelve years. Already well in progress by the time the United States entered the war, America's involvement in World War Two only lasted four years.

Like my grandfather often said, "A lifetime passes by in the twinkling of an eye." When I wake up in the morning, it isn't until I get up out of bed and stretch that I realize I'm not that same little kid who used to live down on Arlington Street. I've got aches and pains in places that I never knew existed before. Believe me when I tell ya, I have no idea who that old man is who keeps looking back at me from inside the bathroom mirror. And the real tell tale sign that I'm getting old is that every time I sneeze I've got to change my underwear.

At any rate, what got me going on this timeline thing in the first place was some of the comments I've received on some of my older posts. On various posts, and in many of the emails I've received, people tell me what neighborhood they grew up in, where they played as children, and where they hung around during their teenage years in Everett.

Somebody recently left a comment on my "There's Hippies in Glendale Park" post saying that they were from the original "GPA" crowd who hung around at Glendale Park. I could tell by the things they talked about that everything they said was true. They mentioned many familiar surnames that I personally know had hung around at Glendale Park.

Two of the things they said really threw me for a bit of a loop. The first one is that "G.P.A." stood for "Grossest Pigs Alive." Although I hung out with the hippies in the back hills of Glendale Park, I never once heard the abbreviation "P.G.A." referred to as "Grossest Pigs Alive." I only ever knew it as the "Glendale Park Association." So that was a new one on me.

The second thing they said that really got me thinking was "We ruled Glendale Park from 1963 through 1973." As soon as I read that, I said to myself, "Wow, ten years is a very long time." To be honest, my entire stint as a hippie in Glendale Park lasted less than three years. Six months after graduating high school, I headed off to Newfoundland.

That is one thing that is both unique and characteristic about Everett. People from Everett go back many generations. Many of our notable sports figures followed in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers before them, as did many of our local civil servants and schoolteachers.

You even met teenagers who hung out on the very same street corners that once served as the stomping grounds for their parents. There are people in Everett who still live in the very house that was purchased by their ancestors many generations before they were born. I love that about Everett.

What I've got to admit is that whoever left that comment is certainly far more deserving of their membership in the "G.P.A." than I. There's no question about that. From 1963 to 1973 a lot of changes happened in my life. And like I said, less than three of those years were spent up in the back hills of Glendale Park.

In 1963, I was in the sixth grade at the Horace Mann school. I was really too young to "hang out" anywhere. My paper route kept me busy, and when I wasn't playing stickball in the middle of Arlington Street, I was off on my bike with friends going to Pine Banks, Revere Beach, and God only knows where else.

A lot happened in 1963. That was Bob Cousy's last season with the Celtics. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, ordered the closing of the Alcatraz federal prison. They banned the Lord's Prayer from public schools that year. The Reverend Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. And most notably, the greatest man to ever serve the common people as our president was murdered in Dallas, Texas.

On the music scene, I remember my big sister listening to "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, "My Boyfriend's Back" by the Angels, and "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March, just to name a few. She had one of those 3 speed record players that let you stack five or six 45's at a time on the spindle. That was also the year she taught me how to dance all of the popular dances like the "Monkey," the "Shout," and the "Locomotion."

If one memory really stands out in my mind about 1963, it was one of my memories I shared with Pat Hughes. On this one particular night, my mother went off to work at Transitron, my other siblings had gone out somewhere, and the last thing my father said before he dozed off on the couch was, "Don't you dare sneak off somewhere or you'll be grounded for a week." Famous last words - right?

Well, the "New Way Sweepers" (not sure if I'm spelling that right) had a game that night up at Everett Stadium. As soon as my Dad fell asleep, I quietly slipped off to the football game. I stood waiting at the entrance on Cabot Street for the opportune moment to mingle in with the crowd so I could sneak in without paying.

"What are you doing here?" I looked over my shoulder and saw Pat Hughes.

"I just want to see a little bit of the game," I said somewhat nervously.

"Well, come on, then," he said. "This should be a good game."

With his hand on my shoulder, we walked right in through the gate. All he said to the ticket taker was, "He's with me." That's all he had to say. I've known this kid ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. There was something special about this kid that just radiated from his persona.

In all my youthful innocence, I could tell that Pat really had his act together. I admired and looked up to this kid like no one else on the planet. He never knew that. Well, he does now, I'm sure.

Out of all the kids who ever grew up on Arlington Street, this was the one who was actively pursuing all of the possibilities that someone could reach out and achieve in their lifetime. So strong was my admiration for this kid that I became shy and humble in his presence. He set such a good example of what it means to pursue your dreams that he inspired me to never give up wanting to become a published editorial cartoonist. And because of that inspiration, it eventually did happen.

That game was awesome. There was one pass reception that really stood out during that game that I still vividly recall even to this day. A downfield wide receiver effortlessly caught the ball as it came sailing gracefully over his shoulder without once glancing back to see where it was coming from. Everyone in the stands just looked at each other and said, "Did you see that?"

At halftime, I told Pat that I snuck out of the house and my father would kill me if he woke up to find me gone.

"Even if you're with me?" He asked. "

"Yeah, I better get home."

"I'm worried about you walking home alone so late at night," he said. "Stay and enjoy the game and I'll take you home afterwards."

"I'll be all right," I assured him. "I'm from Arlington Street."

To which he laughed and said, "I know you. You'll be okay."

When I got back home my father was sitting up on the couch waiting for me. And man, was he fuming.

"Where were you?" He shouted.

"I went to the football game, but I was with Pat the whole time. I left at halftime so you wouldn't be mad."

"Well as long as you were with Pat that was okay with me," he said.

Do you believe it? I could have stayed and watched the whole game after all. That's what I mean about Pat. He gave off such an aura that even the grownups in the neighborhood admired and respected him. Some time after eleven o' clock that night the telephone rang. It was Pat making sure that I got home all right. That's just the kind of guy he was.

During the 1964-65 school year, I attended the seventh grade up at the Fairfield Whitney on Summer Street. That was the year of the British Invasion when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones changed the course of Rock N Roll forever. Our music teacher, Mr. Boyd, made a list of all the popular rock bands of our time in an effort to prove that Beethoven was here to say, but those Rock N Roll bands were not. Here it is 43 years later, the Rolling Stones are still going strong, but Mister Boyd is long gone. I guess you could say he's now one of those decomposing composers.

The trolleys had completely disappeared from the Everett street scene by now. All the buses were gas-driven and even the overhead trolley cables were taken down. I added seven new customers to my paper route that year so now I had to venture all the way down the Lynde to deliver newspapers.

That was the worse of all my school years. Mister Dakin open handedly slapped me across the face, and my English teacher, Miss Cunningham, wrongfully accused me of cheating. What saved my ass that year was getting hospitalized for a severe bout with Poison Oak that burned away my entire outer layer of skin. I missed out on the last three months of school. And even though they gave me seven "E's" on my report card, they promoted me anyway.

From September of 1965 until June of 1967, I attended the eighth grade at the Parlin Junior High. You read that right. I spent two years in the eighth grade. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss out on anything.

It was on the last day of school during my first year in the eighth grade that our homeroom teacher, Miss McGrath, handed out next year's classroom assignments. She discreetly informed me that I didn't get promoted. Everybody kept asking who I had for homeroom next year to see if I was going to be in their class. Rather than prolong the agony, I just came right out and told everybody that I stayed back.

"What are a bunch of jerks they are," one of the kids said.

"Hey, it's my own fault," I admitted. "I never did any homework and I never studied for any of my tests."

Staying back in the eighth grade actually did me a lot of good. From my second year in the eighth grade on, I did all right in school. My grades improved tremendously (how could they not?) and I made a lot of new friends. Some of them turned out to be life long friends.

In September of 1967, I finally made it into the ninth grade. My homeroom was room 9 on the first floor with Mister Barbati. There was this really cute girl in my classroom that year. She had an adorable overbite that made her look like a bunny. We became good friends. She'd squint her nose up at me and smile every time I looked at her.

Everybody said that she liked me, but I was much too shy to ask. You can ask her yourself if you don't believe me. She's sitting right here beside me. We have the same last name now.

On Tuesday morning, September 3rd, in 1968, I became a student at the prestigious Everett High school. It wasn't until the spring of 1969 that one of my classmates turned to me and asked, "They tell me you play guitar. Is that true?"

"Yeah, I play guitar."

"Do you party, Man?"

Now honestly, everybody parties, but let me go into a little more detail here. The kid I'm referring to hit me as a very sophisticated, well natured, longhaired hippie. At the time, my hair was growing, but it wasn't really all that long just yet. And believe me when I tell ya, I hadn't yet partied to the extent that this guy was accustomed to.

"Yeah, I party." What was I going to say? You've got to throw caution to the wind some time. This seemed as good a time as any.

"Come on down to the back hills of Glendale Park tonight, Dude. I'll turn you on to a whole new scene," he said. And man, did he ever.

I felt right at home the moment I stepped in amongst that crowd. My hair grew down to my shoulders. My clothes went from bad to worse. And they taught me how to laugh at absolutely anything. We laughed at the sidewalk. We laughed at the fence. And we laughed at each other.

The Hippie movement was one of the strangest and funniest eras in teenage Everett history. It infiltrated the city of Everett like an underground conspiracy and spread like wildfire. Being a hippie in Everett was like living in the Twilight Zone.

When hippies party, they sometimes wake up the next day on the floor of a place they've never seen before surrounded by people they don't even know. I remember one such hippie in a similar circumstance turning to another hippie and asking, "Dude, is this your house?"

"No Dude, I thought it was yours."

"No Dude, it ain't mine. By the way, do I know you?"

"Gee man, I don't know. Have you ever seen me before?"

"I'm not sure. Do you live around here?"

"That depends. Where are we?"

"I have no idea, Dude."

That also reminds me of the time that four Everett hippies stopped in at McDonalds on the Parkway for a bite to eat. It took them over a half an hour to walk from the front door to the counter. When they finally got there, one of them turned around and said, "Hey Dudes, how long is this place anyway?"

"Gee Dude, I know what you mean. I'm exhausted."

One of the other hippies turned to this young couple who were sharing a quiet moment together and asked, "Did you people see us come in through that door?"

"Yeah, we seen ya. Why?"

"How long ago did we come in here?"

"You just walked in."

"Wow, Dudes, that is like so heavy," he said.

If that isn't strange enough, when the kid behind the counter asked, "Can I help you?" They all looked at each other and burst out laughing. They laughed so hard they had to sit down and catch their breath before they could get back up to place an order.

See what I mean? Some really strange phenomena occurred in Everett during the Hippie Sixties. If you don't think the hippies were any different than other generation of teenagers before them, then consider this.

Hippies got traffic tickets for driving too slow. They were the first generation to play their record albums backwards. It was considered an honor to be referred to by your peers as a "real freak." They never wore shoes or socks. And everybody's name automatically became "Dude."

My participation in the hippie generation lasted from 1969 to 1971. It was all over for me after I graduated from Everett High. Six months later, I took off to Newfoundland. By 1973, I had a full time job, got engaged, and bought a house up in North Reading. That, in a nutshell, is what happened in my lifetime from 1963 to 1973.

So, in the span of time that person said that they hung around Glendale Park, I transformed from a runny nosed little newspaper boy, to a longhaired far-out hippie, and then to a full grown married man with a home of my own. And that's why it kind of threw me for a loop when they said "We ruled Glendale Park from 1963 through 1973." That, without a doubt, establishes a true "dynasty" in the history of Glendale Park.

It's experiences like these that put all the fun into reminiscing about our childhood days growing up in Everett. Let's face it, those were the best days of our lives. Maybe it's because our childhood is so short that we cherish the memories so dearly. When you really think about it, it's almost heart breaking how fast our childhood goes by.

One thing is certain. It doesn't matter what neighborhood you lived in, or where you hung around, or what generation you belonged to, or whether you were rich or poor. The color of your skin, your religion, or your nationality doesn't matter either. Right here amongst us is where you belong. We are all equal here, and we all do belong together because - "We're from Everett!"

Kids Don't Have Problems?

Tell me something. When you were just a little kid growing up in Everett, how many times did you hear your mother say this? "You don't have any problems. You're just a kid. Just wait until you grow up. You'll see what problems are all about. I wish I were a kid again so I wouldn't have a care in the world."

See how naive grownups are? They actually think kids don't have problems. Well just let me tell you a thing a two. Growing up has its own set of problems, even in Everett. And if you don't think so then just allow me to jar your memory a little bit.

Let's go back to a summer's day when we were all out on the sidewalk playing stickball, or off the wall, or whatever it was we were doing that day. All of a sudden, the ice cream truck comes jingling down the street. So you make a mad dash upstairs to get a dime because everyone else on the planet is lining up to get an ice cream.

As soon as you step in the front door, your mother says, "Forget it. I don't have any money to spare."

"Oh, but Ma, all the other kids are getting ice creams."

"That's not my problem. Those aren't my kids."

"But Ma, how can I possibly go out there while everybody's sitting around gobbling down an ice cream? They'll tease the daylights out of me."

"Just pretend you didn't want one anyway."

"I can't do that. They'll know I'm just saying that because I don't have one."

"Well, just stay indoors then until everyone else finishes eating their ice creams."

"Oh Ma, please, all I need is a dime."

"There's people in hell that want ice water and can't get it." Do you remember that one? Where did they get that from anyway? That's what I'd like to know. Every time I pleaded for anything, my mother would come out with that little ditty about people in hell wanting ice water.

Time is running out. That ice cream truck isn't going to stay out there very long. You've got precisely thirty seconds to squeeze the blood out of that stone and you know it. Trouble is, your mother knows it too. It becomes a test of wills.

Don't ever make the mistake of thinking that you're gonna win out over your Mom by throwing a big fit, especially not with our parent's generation. They've seen and heard it all. They've survived an entire World War.

They've dealt with the likes of Hitler and Al Capone. This generation is as tough as nails. You just try to pull one of those crying jags on that crowd and believe me, they'll grab a hold of that strap and give you something to cry about.

The only way to win a test of wills with that crowd is through their soft underbelly. This generation has a soft spot in their hearts for their children. Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it there with his fireside chats about prosperity and a brighter future for their children. Their number one priority was a better world for their children.

As they say, "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link." The only way to weaken that stone wall now is through sympathy. So, you play the role of the good understanding child and hope it inflicts an unmerciful guilt trip on them.

"That's okay, Ma, I understand. I'll just sit here quietly and look out the window until all the other kids finish enjoying their ice cream cones just like you said." So you sit there staring out the window with that great big sad look on your face. That always seemed to work for me.

"Oh for cry's sakes here. And don't ask for another penny all this week," she'd say.

"Thanks, Ma, you're the best."

You'd think my troubles are over, but they're only just beginning. I'd fly down those front steps and out the door in the blink of an eye just in time to see the ice cream truck rounding the corner onto Ferry Street. He's gone.

Everyone else in the whole neighborhood is sitting there on my front steps with these big "you-know-what" eating grins on their faces with ice cream all over their chins. It's even running down their forearms and dripping off their elbows. And if that don't beat all, there's always one wise guy in the crowd who pipes up and says, "You missed the ice cream truck."

"Well, no ship, Sherlock."

"Where were you all this time?"

"I had to go to the bathroom."

I said that because I didn't want everyone to know that we were so poor that I had to get down on bended knee to beg for a dime. As if everyone didn't know I was poor. Take a ride down Arlington Street sometime and look at the houses. Then pick out the one that you think the poorest people in the neighborhood live in. I'll bet cha ten to one that you'll pick mine.

I'm sure those holes in the knees of my pants, and those souls on my shoes that flap when I walk down the street were a dead give away. Wouldn't you think? And I didn't realize that everyone knew I was poor. Is that a riot or what?

Look at it this way. I'll be ready and waiting for that ice cream truck when it comes around the corner tomorrow, let me tell ya. Now if that doesn't sound like a crisis to you it's because you've forgotten what it feels like to be a kid. And if that's ever happened to you then you know what I'm talking about.

It's torturous just sitting sit there waiting for everyone else to finish gobbling down their delicious mouth-watering ice cream cone before getting back out there in the middle of the street to get on with that game of stick ball. It kills me every time one of those kids grabs a hold of their belly and bellows out, "Oh man, I'm too filled up with ice cream to run." If looks could kill - right?

Let me tell you something else. The scales of justice are heavily lopsided against some of us on this planet. Don't ask me why. It's just the way the ball bounces. We learn to accept it and live through the pains of injustice because we have no choice. Let me give you another example of what I'm talking about.

The very next day, we're all out there running up and down the sidewalks of Arlington Street having a game of tag. You know what that's like? Kids will risk life and limb so not to hear those dreaded words, "You're it." They'll toss trash barrels in your path, run straight through a thorn bush, and even leap off the edge of a garage roof down onto the hot top so not to get tagged.

It never fails, just when you least expect it, you'll feel that heavy hand in the middle of your back when somebody shouts, "You're it!" It becomes a moral imperative to turn and chase after the kid who just tagged you. You need revenge. There is no justice in life without revenge.

Like I said, "The scales of justice are heavily lopsided against some of us." If you're in the same boat with me, some outside force will throw its influence in your path to prevent you from getting that revenge. Let me give you an example.

You start chasing that kid from the corner of Foster Street, all the way down the hill to the corner of Arlington and Ferry. Just as your sides begin to ache because you're all out of breath, and you're stretching your arm so far that it feels like it's about to pull loose from its socket trying to touch that kids back with your fingertips, that's when the ice cream truck comes jingling around the corner and somebody yells, "Time out!"

That means you're "it" until everyone finishes eating their ice cream. And believe me when I tell ya, nobody's gonna let you forget about it either. The whole time they're gobbling down those ice creams they'll be laughing about how you got caught.

You'd think I'd be in mindless ecstasy enjoying my ice cream, but I'm not. The whole time I'm eating that cone, I'm plotting and planning who I'm gonna tag as soon as somebody calls, "Time in." I'd rather it be that kid who tagged me, but I'll take anyone at this stage of the game.

Okay, now here's where my troubles go from bad to worse. I've got one of those half-vanilla, and half chocolate, soft serve cones that swirl all the way up into the heavens. As the ice cream truck pulls away from the curb, I'm in the middle of biting off the bottom end of my cone to suck half my ice cream down through it.

Because the top half is now dripping down along the outside of the cone, and all down along the back of my hand, I've got to lick the edges of the ice cream that's jutting out over the sides. Just as the ice cream truck rounds the corner onto Ferry street and disappears from view, I place my tongue against that mound of ice cream on top of my cone.

Well, guess what? That entire mound of ice cream breaks off and drops onto the top of my shoe. I just lost three-quarters of my ice cream. All that's left now is about a spoonful of ice cream and it's dripping out of the bottom of my cone at the speed of light. Do you believe it?

I waited two whole days to buy an ice cream cone with the only dime I'm going to get for an entire week and that's what happens. I look up into heavens and ask, "Why have you forsaken me? What have I done to deserve such a fate?"

At precisely that moment, somebody yells, "Time in," and everyone vanishes into thin air. It's funny how fast everyone can run with a belly full of ice cream when I'm "it." Explain that one to me.

Nickels and dimes were hard to come by when we were little kids. That's why we kissed our candy bars up to God whenever they fell on the ground. Think back to a moment in your childhood when You had one solitary nickel to your name. You stepped into the neighborhood candy store, plunked it down on top of that candy counter and said, "I'll take a bag of those M&M Peanuts." Remember the ecstacy you felt when you took possession of that bag of M&M Peanuts?

So, you walk out to the edge of the sidewalk and sit down onto the curb. Then, with both hands, you tugged at the top of the sides of that bag to open it. All of a sudden, the bag explodes and all of your M&M Peanuts fly up into the air. All but three land in a puddle of oil down in the gutter.

There are just some things that fall outside of the safety zone when it comes to kissing things up to God. This is one of them. I've had the same thing happen with a bag of potato chips as well.

That's why it makes me laugh when I hear grownups lamenting over their problems. They don't have problems. They wouldn't know a problem if it came up and bit them on the ass.

Acceptance amongst our peers is yet another adversity we faced on a daily basis during our childhood. Everyone wants to feel like they belong. It's only natural. So, let me ask you this. Did you ever feel like the only negatively charged electron in the universe that repelled all other life forms?

One day after school, I believe it was during my stint in the second grade at the Horace Mann, a whole bunch of us were walking home together. One of the girls in the crowd joyfully announced, "I'm gonna be Joey's girlfriend." Another said, "I'm gonna be Eddy's girlfriend." And still yet another one said, "I'm gonna be Jacky's girlfriend."

There were three other girls in the group and yet, not one of them spoke up to claim me. Being the simple-minded glutton for punishment that I am, I asked, "Who wants to be my girlfriend?"

"Not me!" They all said simultaneously.

It reminds me of the time that I discretely asked this girl out during my junior year at Everett High. Now, maybe it's me, but I would expect to be turned down in the manner in which I asked, which was, discreetly. But no, that's not my luck.

I'll be honest and say that the girl in question was respectful of my feelings. So not to let me down hard, she wanted to fully explain why it wouldn't work out. What she did was give me this long detailed explanation in front of the high school during recess in full view of the entire student body.

She should have just hired a sky writer or rented a billboard. The whole time she was going through this long drawn out dialogue, I wanted to crawl under the shrubs next to the front steps of the high school. I mean, really. Just say no. Don't twist the knife.

Do you honestly think I wanted to go back into that school when the bell rang knowing that everyone who showed up for school that day heard me get shot down in such explicit detail? I couldn't bear to make eye contact with anyone in the corridors for the remainder of the day. You talk about feeling like the loser of the century? That was the ultimate.

Try to get up enough courage to ask any other girl out after that one. I was afraid they'd say, "Are you asking me out because so-and-so shot you down?"

And if that ain't the clincher, I had a friend named, Kathy, who sat in front of me in home room all through high school. We chatted back and forth every day. It just so happens that it was on this very same day that she turned around and asked, "How come you don't have a steady girlfriend?"

I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "I dunno." I wanted to say, "Why don't you go ask so-and-so? She seems to be the resident expert on that subject."

And believe me when I tell ya, that's only par for the course. I didn't even gain acceptance in Miss Jean's Romper Room. Do you remember her? She used look through this tennis racket thingy as if she could see through the TV at all the kids in their living rooms watching Romper Room. She'd say, "Hi Linda. Hi Stevie. Oh, and I see Gracie is here with us today." But did she ever mention me? No!

I'd be sitting there on my living room floor frantically waving my hands up over my head and she still didn't notice me. She'd even wish a "Happy Birthday" to every name in the book on any given day, but did she ever mention mine? Not on your life. She never even asked me if I was a "Good Do Be." It's not as if I had one of those bazaar uncommon names or anything. She just couldn't care less about me.

What is it with me? Am I invisible or something? Was I born with a great big "L" on my forehead or what? I wonder why my mother named me, Paul, in the first place. She should have just named me "Reject" and got it over with.

That also reminds me of a really bazaar incident I haphazardly ran into on Ferry Street when I was in the eighth grade. It happened on a Saturday afternoon when I came walking out of Sam's Spa. No sooner had I stepped out onto the sidewalk did this kid, who I vaguely knew from school, step out in front of me to block my path.

"Hey Paul," he said. "My friend over there wants to fight you."

He pointed over at these three kids who were leaning up against the wall. Two of them looked as though they might be worthy contenders, but not enough to cause any real concern. But the one in the middle, I certainly hoped that he wasn't the one he was referring to.

That kid had hands bigger than my head. His chest was wider than the Wonderland bus. And he towered over me by at least four or five inches.

I kept my cool. By that I mean, I didn't let him hear my knees knock. I just looked back at him and asked, "Which one?"

"The one in the middle," he said. Wouldn't you know?

Maintaining complete composure, I looked over at that kid and said, "Name a time and place."

He said, "How about here and now?"

That wasn't quite the response I had hoped for. After sizing up the situation, I did the only logical thing I could do. I turned around and ran all the way up Chelsea Street as fast as I could.

There's no way on earth I was going to stand there and let that gargantuan pound me into the pavement. Even if I did start to get the best of him, which was never going to happen, the other three would have moved in and finished the job.

So, what ever came of that? Well, nothing really. Years later, that gargantuan became one of my hippie friends up in the back hills of Glendale Park. Instead of locking horns, we wound up partying together.

My point is, any grownup that thinks kids have it any easier just because they don't have to worry about bills, completely forgets what it's like to be a kid. Every one of us faced dilemmas like those almost every day of our lives when we were kids. It wasn't just me. Ask around.

I remember when I used to say, "I can't wait to grow up. The only thing grownups have to worry about is money." We've seen childhood, and adulthood, from both sides now. Think about it. Was it really any easier when we were kids?

We look back on our youth with a heartfelt nostalgia. We often say, "If I only knew then what I know now." But we didn't know it then, did we? And that's exactly what was so hard about it.

Look at it this way. Problems come and go. At the time we're dealing with a crisis, we can't imagine ever getting over it. But the days do go by. The sun comes up, and the sun goes down. And before you know it, that problem is miles behind you and there's another one on its way. Problems are a part of our daily lives. They're no big deal. So take it easy. Let the days go by.

And no matter what, we've got two things to be truly thankful for. The first one is that we're still here. And the second one is, we've got what it takes to face anything that comes our way because ... "We're from Everett!"

Another Brick in the Wall

"Written somewhere in the stars is a warning.
It says something about the calm before the storm.
And the waiting, and the watching, and the scratching at the clouds,
has torn me away from the world.

You can tell just by the way that something sounds
as to whether it is wrong or right.
But it can only be heard by those who will listen.
And those who do not, will continue to talk,
and they just go on, and the repetition continues.

And the hidden agenda behind everyone's intentions,
were once driven home with crucifix nails.
And the world tried to spin, drenched in its sin,
and the puppets were tossed in the wind."

Believe it or not, an eleven year-old kid from Everett wrote that poem. He wrote it in a pocket spiral notebook while sitting at the top of the larger set of steps leading out onto Foster Street from behind the Horace Mann elementary school. It happened sometime around nine o' clock on a weekday morning near the end of the summer vacation in 1963. I know all that because I wrote it.

Not more than about twenty yards away, the neighborhood kids were gathered around the playground teacher on the smaller cement steps at the bottom end of the larger playground. I could hear them talking, and giggling, and having a really good time for themselves.

It startled me when this girl named, Ann, who lived just a few doors down from the playground on Foster Street, came up behind me and asked, "What are doing over here all by yourself?"

"I just needed some time to myself to think so I could write something down," I told her.

"You're a really funny kid sometimes, you know that?" she smiled. She then turned away and ran back over towards the swings. She didn't wait for a response. If she had, I probably would have said something to effect of, "What do you mean sometimes? I'm a funny kid all the time."

Billy Raimo was fixing something on his car in front of his house directly across the street. I could hear the song, "Sugar Shack" coming from his car radio. Diagonally across the street from where I was sitting was Betty Ann's house. She lived in a three-story apartment house that was very nicely kept.

Her yard was decorated with so many lawn ornaments that it looked like some sort of miniature Golf Course. Some people thought it looked a bit tacky, but I really liked it. It was different and gave off a really cheerful outwardly appearance.

She had a cousin, or maybe it was her uncle (I'm really not sure now), who was about four or five years older than me. His name was Joey. Joey had red hair and lots of freckles. I'm inclined to describe him as a typical teenager for the times, easy going, good-natured, you know what I mean - right? He lived either upstairs or downstairs from Betty Ann, I don't remember which.

Well anyway, he stepped out onto the sidewalk yawning and stretching as if he had just rolled out of bed. After looking both ways up and down Foster Street, he looked over at me and asked, "What are you doing over there all by yourself?"

"Why is everybody so concerned about what I'm doing all by myself?"

"Because it's weird," he answered.

"What's so weird about it?"

"I don't know. It's just weird. Why ain't you over there playing with all the other kids? Did they shoo you away or something?"

"No, I just wanted to be alone."

"That's what I mean," he said. "That's weird. What are doing anyway?"

"If you must know, I'm writing a poem."

"To a girl?"

"No, man, to the whole world."

"Oh, I get it," he laughed. "It ain't so much that what you're doing is weird as it is that it's you who's weird."

He was about to step off the curb to come across the street towards me when a car pulled up in front of him. The driver, a much older gentleman, rolled down his window so Joey leaned down to hear what the guy had to say. He then stood back up with a laugh and asked, "You ain't from around here, are ya?"

I could see him pointing and giving directions, but I really couldn't make out what he was saying. After the guy pulled away, he started across the street towards me again. "Can you imagine that? That guy said he lives in Everett but doesn't know where Glendale Park is. Is that even possible?" He asked shaking his head.

When he reached the bottom of the steps, he took a cigarette out from behind his ear and sparked it up. "So tell me about this poem you're writing. Read it to me."

So naturally, I read my poem out loud to him. After blowing out a long stream of smoke and flicking his spent match out towards the middle of Foster Street, he looked back at me and asked, "So what's it mean?"

After going through this long detailed explanation about what that poem meant, he laughed and said, "You're a sick puppy."

"Why am I sick?" I was laughing, too, because it was funny how he though my innermost thoughts and feelings were so weird. It reminded me of something Euripides once said. It goes like this. "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."

It's not that I was well versed in the writings of the ancient Greek playwright at the time or anything. I had recently heard the quote said over the radio and really liked it because I could apply it to so many situations in my daily life. This was certainly one of them.

"You're sick because you're just a little kid. You shouldn't be thinking about deep philosophical things at your age. Most kids your age worry about getting caught throwing a rock through a window, and not what the world's coming to," he laughed. "I'm gonna tell ya brother what you're doing. They need to get into therapy before you hurt yourself."

"Haven't you ever written a poem?" I had to ask.

"Yeah, you want to hear it?"

"I'd love to."

"It goes like this."

"Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I like peanut butter.
Can you swim?"

"And that," he said jokingly, "is the kind of poetry you should be writing at your age."

Being a creative artist in my neighborhood was funny. Nobody understood where I was coming from. I had a thirst for knowledge that was completely outside the box in comparison to what they were teaching us in school, and in comparison to the mindset of the people I was surrounded with in my neighborhood.

That's not to say that they were wrong, and I was right. Let me explain something to you. Every time people gathered around for an opinionated conversation, I was always the one who came out with something that nobody else understood.

I'd sit and listen to everyone else's opinion first, trying to fully analyze the situation. And just when I thought I had the answer to everyone's dilemma, I'd throw my two cents worth in. That's when everyone would look at me and say, "What planet are you on?" It got to the point where the bigger kids started calling me "Astro" because I was so way out in space.

It served me right to suffer the pains of marching to the beat of a different drummer. I deserved this punishment. When I was in the first grade, there was this kid who lived up the street from me named, "Ronnie." I tormented this kid because he took tap dancing lessons. It got so bad that he eventually snapped and punched me in the stomach.

Even though we were the same age, he was much smaller than I was physically. After he socked me, he took off running up the street and I took off after him. Who stopped me was Pat Hughes' younger brother, Dennis.

He grabbed a hold of my arm and said, "You stop right there. I saw that whole thing and you deserved that. Why are you tormenting that kid anyway? He's much smaller than you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I expect so much more from you. I'm really disappointed in you."

Those words cut like a knife. I really had a lot of admiration and respect for Dennis. He made me realize what a jerk I had been. I never did torment that kid ever again.

The reason I am so sorry for having done that in the first place is because he was, and is, a really nice kid. Not only that, but a very talented person as well. And now that I had the obstacle of that tough guy mindset cleared out of my subliminal self, I could go on to bigger and better things in life, even if I was only in the first grade.

So now let me tell you what brought all of this on. A few days earlier, Charlie Marenghi, the director of Everett's Parks Department, showed up at the Horace Mann school grounds with a couple of city workers. They walked along the top of the stone wall that secured the school property on the Foster Street side, testing some the weak spots in the old wrought iron fence. I then heard him say, "Let's tear the whole thing down and put up a chain link fence."

That stone wall, and that wrought iron fence, possessed an aesthetic charm that added a touch of artistry to the overall appearance of Foster Street. A chain link fence on top of such a beautifully constructed stone wall would entirely diminish all of the charisma it added to Foster Street. It troubled me deeply that they didn't realize that.

Another interesting fact about that wrought iron fence I feel compelled to tell you about is the challenge it presented to all the kids who grew up in that neighborhood. It's almost as if you didn't achieve self-actualization as a normal kid until you walked along the entire legnth of that wall on the outside ledge while holding onto that wrought iron fence. We all did it. You didn't have to. It was not a requirement or anything like that. It was just one of those things where you did not feel like one of the bunch until you did.

It was on my way home from finishing up my paper route that morning when I overheard that conversation amongst the city workers. I couldn't wait to get back to Arlington Street to sound the alarm. The usual crowd had gathered out on my front steps when I got home that morning. When I rolled up to them on my bike I shouted, "Hey, guess what?"

"What now?"

"They're going to tear down that beautiful wrought iron fence on top of the Horace Mann stone wall on Foster Street and put up a chain link fence."

"So what? Who cares?" Mikey looked at me as if I was weird for even bringing it up.

"Do you know what that's going to look like?"

"Yeah, it's going to look like a chain link fence on top of a stone wall," Billy laughed.

"Foster Street will never be the same again," I was really concerned.

"I'm really worried about you," my brother, Billy, said. "Nobody cares what happens to the fence on Foster Street, and neither should you."

"They can't keep tearing down all the artistic charm all over this city only to replace it with a bland quick-fix just because it's cheaper. If nobody does anything to stop them now we're going to wind up with a really ugly looking city." I was serious.

"Wake up and smell the coffee," Donny said. "You couldn't get any uglier than the city of Everett."

"Excuse me? I happen to think Everett has lots of charm."

"And that's why you're an artist," Donny said, "because you're crazy. Tell me one thing that looks beautiful about the city of Everett."

As I sit here recalling that conversation now, all of the things that I told him that I thought possessed an aesthetic charm about the city of Everett are now gone. I talked about the magnificent archways to the entrances of the Evans, and the Horace Mann schools. And how master craftsmen painstakingly laid the brickwork by hand to sculpt these magnificent works of art.

They sat there laughing at me the whole time. They never once marveled at the craftsmanship of the brickwork of these beautiful buildings. When they looked at these buildings, all they saw was a school. They overlooked the minute details inherent in the design of the structure themselves.

"The Horace Mann school is nothing more than giant brick rectangle," Artie said. He couldn't have been more wrong if he tried. That giant rectangle stood level on one of the most lopsided plots of land in Everett. Therefore, it couldn't possible be a perfect rectangle.

And it wasn't the overall building that I found so appealing anyway. It was those two beautiful archway entrances at the front of the school, as well as those arched windows to the auditorium, and the circular windows on either side of those. I did explain all that to him, but all he did was laugh.

"Have you ever stood on the mound of Lexington Street and looked down at the front of the Horace Mann school?" I asked.

"Gee, no, I must have been really busy that day," Billy laughed. "What would possess you to do anything like that in the first place?"

"These are the types of things I see on my paper route every morning. There are so many examples of Americana charm all over this city that it absolutely warms my heart and inspires me to draw," I explained.

"The next time you go up to Vargis Diner, don't just sit there staring into your plate of french fries. Stand across the street and take a good look at that beautiful aluminum structure. It's such a classic example of Art Deco that even Norman Bel Geddes would be proud."

"Norman who?"

"He's the architect who designed the futuristic city at the 1929 New York World's Fair."

"See what I mean?" Billy said. "An eleven year-old kid shouldn't know that. That's why I worry about you sometimes."

Oh, but it was so true. Back in 1963, Everett had charm bursting from its seems. The lamp posts on every street corner were cast iron poles with concave grooves running all the way up to the top of the lamp. And the lamps were so quaint. They had a seashell like shade that extended out from the poles on a scrolled arm.

At the bottom of each pole was a bell shaped housing. It looked like something right out of turn of the century rural America. One by one, they kept hauling them down to put up these bland looking aluminum poles that were totally devoid of any aesthetic charm whatsoever. And the worse part about it is that nobody cared.

The newer streetlights did cast a brighter illumination that the older lamps just couldn't provide. But all of the charm was now gone. That faint light that the older streetlights gave off cast romantic shadows upon the sidewalks at night. Those newer streetlights were so bright that all of the shadows were gone. It all looked so one-dimensional now.

Even the trolleys were disappearing from our city streets. The new gas-driven buses were taking over. We no longer got to see the bus driver walk to the rear of the trolley, pulling on his heavy gloves, to hook that line back up to the wires overhead. And gone was the spark it gave off when he made that connection. With every new innovation, less and less people interacted with each other out on the sidewalk. I watched the transformation as it unfolded every day on my paper route.

One of my most treasured scenic memories I saw on my paper route was watching the shopkeepers bringing Everett Square to life every morning. As I coasted down Broadway towards the Square, I watched the trolleys pulling in and out of traffic to pick up a handful of eager passengers waiting on the sidewalks to venture off towards destinations unknown. Not only was the traffic bustling through that intersection of Chelsea, Broadway, and Norwood Streets, but there were pedestrians crowded at every crosswalk waiting for the traffic lights to change. There were people everywhere.

The hustle and bustle of that maddening crowd added yet another dimension to the over all charming allure of Everett Square. I know how crazy that must sound to you today. Ah, but there was once a time when Everett Square had atmosphere galore.

You not only heard the sound of the traffic, but the chiming of the church bells echoing against the backdrop of sidewalk shoppers greeting each other cheerfully amidst this tapestry of sound. And behind it all stood the quaint image of that Parlin Library, ever so humble, and yet so artistically designed that it looked like something right out of a Currier and Ives painting in winter.

As the traffic grew heavier, the number of people on the sidewalks diminished. As the number of people on the sidewalks diminished, commerce dried up in downtown Everett Square. I watched it happen. Everett Square eventually became nothing more than thoroughfare to Boston. It lost all of its charm.

The smaller shops began to open and close at the blink of an eye. Without window shoppers to lure into your shop, there was no longer anyone wandering about on the sidewalks to cast a fleeting glance at what you had to offer. Everyone was too busy fighting traffic to get in and out of Boston to waste any of their precious time indulging in the quaintness of the smaller independently owned shops.

It all had a rippling effect on all the smaller businesses through the city of Everett. As our everyday lives became more streamlined, our time became a more hectic rush to get from here to there. People stopped taking the time out for a relaxing hot cup of home brewed coffee at Vargis Diner in the morning. They opted instead for a drive-by throw me a quick one out the window.

Before very long, they hauled Vargis Diner away. In its stead we got a bland squared off cubicle of steel and glass that spit out watered down coffee. People ran in, grabbed their tasteless coffee, and ran back out the door without so much as a single, "How are you today?" Nobody took the time to share a little bit of themselves with each other any more. Everyone was in a big rush to go nowhere.

By the time I graduated from Everett High school in 1971, everyone owned a car. Hardly anyone walked the sidewalks of Everett any more. Laugh at me if you will. Say that I focus on things that don't matter. But I saw this coming a long time ago.

When we stopped strolling along the sidewalks, we isolated ourselves from each other. We stopped talking to each other. We lost touch with each other. And we became easy prey for the evils that lurked in the shadows at night because we no longer stood united as a community. Once common courtesy disappeared from our daily lives our community went to hell altogether. Didn't it?

That's why it is so important that we genuinely care about each other. If we've learned anything during our time here on earth, hopefully we've learned how counter productive it is when we turn our backs on each other. We all need each other. Collectively, we "ARE" the people from Everett. Not one of us is any more significant than the other. And without each other, we stand alone.

So, did all that come about because they tore down that beautiful wrought iron fence at the top of the stone wall at the Horace Mann school? Yes, it did. That was an important brick in the wall. If you keep taking the bricks out of the wall, insisting that it is only one little insignificant brick, you will eventually topple that wall. It happened.

That beautiful stone wall that once charmed the sidewalks of Foster Street is now completely gone. In it's place now stands a featureless cement wall. With that chain link fence on top, it looks more like they're trying to seal off a prison than it does a playground.

Everything you do effects every thing else either directly or indirectly. Life is a chain reaction. Every event has its consequence all the way down to the infinitesimal quarks in the nucleus of the atom, and all the way out to the mountains on the moon. Shift just one grain of sand and you've changed the overall environment it lives in. It happens with every stroke of the brush on a canvas and in every detail of our lives.

Never make the mistake of believing that aesthetic beauty is not important to a community. No community can thrive without pride. Pride does not flourish where the quality of life is in decline. And the quality of life declines where there is no aesthetic beauty.

They tell me that Everett is but a deteriorated shell of its former self. I've seen it myself. Only two summers ago I wandered about the city streets of Everett. I know that it's tiny. I know it's overcrowded, and I know it looks a bit rundown. And chances are, I may never live inside those city limits again in this lifetime. But in my heart, that's the only place on the face of this planet that will ever feel like home.

And those are the sentiments of that funny little kid who was born and raised down on Arlington Street. I know it all sounds crazy, but we're all a little bit crazy sometimes. We've gotta be. "We're from Everett!"

Humble beginnings?

Humble beginnings? Is there any other way? How could a beginning be anything other than humble? Have you ever thought about that?

It never dawned on me that my family was poor until I met this kid who lived in one of those houses up behind Fuller Street. You know, the Estes Street area where all those brand new, beautifully landscaped houses were all so neatly laid out like something out of "Better Homes and Gardens."

If memory serves me well, his family had just moved into Everett from God only knows where. I first met him on a Saturday morning when a gang of us went down to Glendale Park to meet up with a bunch of other kids for a game of "Rough N Tumble."

Because it started to drizzle by the time we got there, we called the whole thing off and just kind of hung out together. We gathered on one of the benches under the bigger trees near the front end of the Park at the corner of Elm and Ferry. The trees were just big enough to keep us dry from the steady, but gentle rain.

There were a couple of kids in the crowd that I really didn't know, but between the lot of us everybody more or less knew each other. We got to talking about some of the funny things that happened at our different schools. At one point in the conversation, Nicky pointed at me and said, "Nobody can draw like this kid does."

One of the other kids pointed at this new kid and said, "I'll bet cha he can. This kid draws better than anybody."

So naturally I looked at this kid and asked, "You draw?"

"Yeah, art is my life."

"Who's your favorite artist?" I had to ask. After all, every artist's work is influenced by somebody.

"Who's yours?" He asked back.

"To be honest, I have many. For illustration I love M.C. Escher. For contemporaries I'd have to say Norman Rockwell. And naturally for the more creative and surreal I like Bosch, Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte."

"Never heard of them." He answered.

"Never heard of who?"

"Any of them."

Okay, I'm gonna cut the kid some slack here. By the wildest stretch of the imagination, even if you've never put brush to canvas in your entire lifetime, it's pretty hard to grow up in America without at least knowing Norman Rockwell. Wouldn't you think?

On the other hand, if you are an artist, it's equally as hard to escape the lure of Salvador Dali's brilliance. Trust me on that one.

Either way, no true artist would ever completely shut the door on a frame of reference he or she has yet to explore. Creativity itself demands that the artist remain open to any and all possibilities. My not understanding how someone who claims that "Art is my life," doesn't know the names of well-known artists does not mean that he is any less of an artist than I. On the contrary, the possibility exists that this artist may strive from an inspiration I've yet to experience.

So not to close that door, the last thing I'd want to do is put him on the spot or make him feel uncomfortable. Rather than to go any further with that line of conversation, I changed my approach to inquire about his work itself. "What kind of mediums do you like to work with?" I then asked.

"What do you mean?" Was his response.

Now tell me something. I'm primarily asking those of you who have not dabbled in the arts. When I ask, "What type of medium do you prefer?" Do you know what I mean? I know the artists among you understand that. But in all honesty, I take for granted that almost anybody knows what I mean by that.

Again, so not to make him feel uncomfortable I explained, "What I mean is do you prefer oils over acrylics? Or pen and ink over pencil?"

"Would you like to see some of my work?" He asked.

Did you catch the question the same way I did? He did not ask if I would like to see his paintings, or drawings, or renderings. Instead, he spoke like a true artist when he asked, "Would you like to see some of my work?"

There were many other quirks about our conversation on our way over to his house that would classify as unconventional, especially between two artists. I know how odd that must sound on the surface. I mean really. What could possibly be any stranger than two creative artists talking - right? None the less, I was certain that everything would fall into place once I've seen his work. And I was right, it did.

Let me be fair to this kid and explain that as a person, I really liked him. He was funny, and witty, and friendly. You could tell that he wasn't from Everett. As Larry Glick so often said, "You don't sound like one of those sophisticates from Wellesley or Newton. You sound like one of those tough kids from Everett."

You should have seen his house. It was the kind of house I always dreamed of living in. The kitchen alone was worth more than all of my family's material wealth including our car. I could have sworn that nobody had a kitchen that looked like this.

The tablecloth matched the curtains. Even the handles on the cupboards were elaborate. And the layout of the appliances were so ergonomically designed that three people could cook a dinner for twelve without ever bumping into each other. Now that's a kitchen.

I hate to sound so underprivileged, but I was even completely impressed with his cellar. The boiler was so whisper quiet, neat, and clean, that it looked more like a refrigerator than it did a boiler. His bedroom was like something I'd swear I'd never have in my lifetime. And yes, of course, I complimented him on what a beautiful home he had, to which he so politely thank me for doing.

As for his artwork, well, in all honesty, it was nothing more than childish scribbles with a ballpoint pen on notebook paper. But of course, I would never react to anyone's art as coldly as that. I praised every one of his drawings as if Henri Matisse drew them himself. After all, Salvador Dali never ridiculed Picasso's work, I'm sure.

Naturally, he asked if he could see my work. Nothing would please me more. So, we left his beautiful home for our trek across Everett back to Arlington Street.

What really made an impression upon him about Arlington Street at first was how the cars were jam packed on both sides of the street. He couldn't get over how the kids had to make a mad dash in and out of moving traffic to get across the street. And he thought it really looked shabby how the kids had thrown sneakers and bicycle tires up over the telephone wires.

When I offered to introduce him to some of the neighborhood kids, he told me not to bother. "My father would never allow me to associate with these kind of people anyway," is exactly what he said. And if that don't beat all, you should have seen his reaction when he saw where I lived.

He looked up at my apartment building and said, "You live in that?" The look on his face was one of repulsion. After stepping into my kitchen, he took one look around and said, "What a dive." And when he saw my bedroom he said, "I'd kill myself if I ever had to live like this."

For as long as I live I will never forget the way he reacted towards my artwork. "Is that the best you can do?" He honestly asked. "That's the best I can do," I admitted. He smirked when he threw my drawing down onto my bed and said, "Don't give up your paper route any time soon."

There was nothing left between us after that. What kind of friendship could ever possibly exist between two people who came from such widely separated worlds? We parted ways back at Glendale Park. "I'll give you a call sometime," I said. I really didn't mean it. It just felt like the right thing to say at the moment.

"That's alright," he waived me off. "I've got my own friends anyway."

That incident left a bitter taste in my mouth that lasted many years. Because of that, it was a long time before I ever invited anyone else over to my house from outside of my own neighborhood. From that moment on, I felt so ashamed of the way we lived.

But don't let that trouble you. By the time I became a hippie in high school I had adopted that more bohemian mind-set. I then honestly felt that you either accept me for who I am at face value, or don't bother to waste my precious time at all.

Looking back at it all now, I see how shallow of a person he really was. I also blame myself for not pointing out the heartwarming aspects of our humble abode that transformed it into a loving home. He wasn't looking at it through my eyes. That was the problem.

Let me show you what I mean. Let me take you for a walk through my humble home down on Arlington Street back in 1964. Let me show you why Everett means so much to me.

Stand right here beside me and look across the street. You're looking at the front of that six family apartment house at fourteen Arlington Street. The front porches up on the second and third floors have a partition in between. That porch down here on the first floor belongs to everybody. It served as the community porch for all the kids on the lower half of Arlington Street.

That's what I always liked about living upstairs. Even though the people up on the third floor had to walk through our front and back hallways to get outside, our porches were our own. Upstairs from us lived old Mister McGlaughlin. In so many ways, he was like one of the family. You can read all about him in my posting dated 4/09/2006, entitled, "Neighbors."

Mrs. Forgione lived next door to us up on the second floor during my younger years. After that, the Thistles moved in. They stayed a good many years. If memory serves me well, they were still there when we moved out.

Downstairs on the first floor from us lived Jacky White's family. After that, Alice's family moved in. Years later, Alice married Jacky. They're still together even to this day and they're still close friends with my family. That gives you a good idea of how the neighbors in Everett bond to become life long friends.

Let's step inside and I'll show you what it is that makes a house a home. If you're one of those who always thought it was the material things that mattered most, then you're in for a big surprise. For the most part, kids don't quite look at things the way the old folks do. And if you ever want to know if a house really is a home, you'll see it in the children's eyes.

Right here in my back hallway up on the second floor is enough memories alone to last a lifetime. I remember when my big sister called the Telephone Company without my parents knowing about it. She had them send down a utility man to install a fifty-foot extension cord on the telephone so she could have some privacy. Once they installed that extension line, she'd come out here in the back hallway to talk to her boyfriends on the phone.

So why didn't she just install the extension cord herself? It was against the law to run your own telephone wires back in those days. That's the main reason everyone only had one telephone in their house back then.

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