The Sunday Drive

There was once a time when each of our separate communities had a uniqueness all to their own. There was also once a time when you could instinctively point out those differences between any two given communities. As soon as you drove into another city it looked like another world as compared to the one you just left.

That's why we got up on a Sunday morning, went to church, and then piled into the car for an afternoon drive. Mine wasn't the only family who did that. While we were piling into our car, my next door neighbors were piling into theirs. I remember yelling out over the backyard fence, "Hey Stanley, where are you guys going today?"

And he'd yell back, "We're taking a ride up Route One. My Dad says we're gonna stop at the Agawam Diner for lunch and then we're going to the Topsfield Fairgrounds. Where are you guys going?"

"We're going for a ride in the country."

It makes me laugh when I think about that now. You know what a ride out to the country was for us back then? It meant taking a cruise up through Stoneham, Wakefield, and all the way up into North Reading. It's true. To us, that was the country.

Believe me when I tell ya, we experienced another dimension in those few miles. I'd say it was no more than about fifty yards from the corner of Arlington and Ferry when I started noticing the change. Through my little portal of the world at the age of nine, it seemed like we were in another world already by the time my Dad pulled over along side of the curb at Anna's variety on the corner of Cherry and Ferry to run in for a pack of butts.

You'd see Anna and Maxie sitting out there on the sidewalk in front of the store sunning themselves. "Just leave the money on the counter," she'd say. She saw no need to get up out of her chair. She knew she could trust my dad to go behind the counter, grab a pack of Chesterfields, and leave his whopping Twenty-eight cents right there next to the cash register. Why shouldn't she? After all, if my dad didn't have the money, all he had to say was "Put it on my tab," and she did.

Less than three minutes later we'd spot those mouth-watering eclairs in Mandolesse's front window and cry out, "Can we get some pastry for the ride?"

"Ah, why not," my dad said as he pulled up along the curb again.

"Take it easy now, Bill. We're not made of money," my mother scolded.

"For crying out loud, Grace. We've gotta live."

"Well, we don't have to live on eclairs and doughnuts."

"Just this once," he'd say as he darted across Ferry Street.

Two minutes later he'd pull into the gas station on the corner of Ferry and Broadway. Nobody had to jump out of the car. They came out, pumped your gas, washed your windshield, and checked your oil. They'd even tell you if one of your tires looked a little low.

And get this. They'd even pump your tire up for you if it needed some air. You got all that without spending any more than the customary Thirty-one cents per gallon of gas.

You'd think we'd be well on our way by now, wouldn't you? No way. It never failed that just as soon as my dad pulled back out onto Broadway, one of us kids in the back seat would yell out, "I gotta pee my brains out."

"You've gotta be kidding me. Didn't you go to the bathroom before we left the house?"

"Nobody told me to."

"Nobody should have to tell you to go to the bathroom," he'd say in that cynical tone of voice.

"For cry's sake, Bill, he can't help it." That's one good thing about mothers. They always come to the rescue when you're dealing with the basic bodily functions. "Pull over somewhere so he can go to the bathroom."

Next thing you know, we're stopping at that gas station with the domed roof at the intersection of Eastern Ave and Broadway in Malden. You should have seen the bathroom. It was as clean as a whistle. Back then you could go into a public bathroom without getting some kind of weird rash where the sun never shines.

Okay, so now we're finally on our way. Not more than two or three minutes after heading out onto the open road we'd start with the "Are we there yet?" routine. That really irked the living daylights out of my dad, especially when we were only going out for an afternoon drive.

"What do you mean by are we there yet?" He'd throw up his hands. "We ain't even going anywhere in particular." His only other complaint was to keep reminding me to stop kicking the back of his car seat.

The fun really began when we reached the "Hey, look at that" phase of our Sunday drive. It was that sign up on Route 99 that looked like a giant rocket crashing into a building that always inspired us to start pointing and shouting out the car windows. What a novelty idea that was. I never knew what that place was, but I never once missed that landmark. God only knows if it's still there.

We're talking long before they built that giant overpass you have to drive under to get up onto Route One. All they had back then when you reached the end of Broadway (Route 99) was a simple intersection with a stop sign. Miss that stop sign and you'd stand tall before the man in seconds flat.

I've got a question for ya. What was unquestionably the most distinctive landmark you'd see when you first pull out onto Route one? Funny thing is that because it was on the southbound side, you had to turn your head all the way around to see it when you got onto the highway heading north. But then again, it was such a novelty that you rarely failed to lay eyes on that landmark.

For you young-uns out there, let me tell you a little bit more about the Route One I'm talking about. Yes, it's the same one that you know and love today, but it's gone through some serious renovations over the years. It didn't have that ten-foot high chain link divider between the north and south bound lanes. What they had was a much wider grassy divider.

They even had opened areas where you could cut across the opposing lanes to get to stores on the other side. Believe me, it was a far more feasible concept in its day. There was only a small fraction of the volume of traffic back then as compared to the madhouse that it is today.

Nower days when you head north you feel like you're close enough to whack door handles against the oncoming south bound traffic. On rainy nights, the cars speeding along in opposite directions in the passing lanes soak each other's windshields. You'll get drenched if you leave your window rolled down.

The number of store signs leaping up into the air was not so overwhelming either. We had them, but there wasn't so many of them that they blocked out the skyline. We could tell the signs apart from one another. You knew when the place you were looking for was coming up because you could see the sign.

You can't do that today. They've got so many signs now that you can't differentiate one from the other. That's why you've got to keep going up to Danvers to turn around to get back to the place you've missed on your first try. It's a jungle out there.

Okay, so now that I've finished going off onto that tangent as I so commonly do, let me ask you again. What was the most distinctive landmark you'd see when you first pull out onto Route one? Give up? It was that giant dinosaur at the miniature golf course. Remember that? Is that still there? I hope so. I hope that thing makes it into the next millenium. I love that thing.

Have you ever had the privilege of stopping in at that place? Now that was a time to remember, especially for a little kid. Besides playing miniature golf, they had batting cages and an ice cream stand. After that, there's only heaven.

They served some of the best soft-serve ice cream on the planet. Man, I'd give my right arm for a cone full of that mouth-watering chocolate ice cream right now. Just thinking about that makes me want to make a mad dash over to the fridge.

If one memory sticks out in my mind about that place when I was a little kid it was the time I had the whole place backed up waiting for me to get my ball into that light house obstacle. I was as lousy at miniature golf as I was at baseball. If you did it on your first stroke you got to play the entire course again for free. Thank gawd I never won that. It took me hours to get through that course.

So anyway, my dad had finally had enough of watching me continually whack that ball against the side of that lighthouse. "Here, let me show you how it's done," he said. He grabbed a hold of that club and whacked that ball so hard it seemed like he was trying to bang it off the dark side of the moon. That ball not only sailed up into the air with a ferocious velocity, but it also cleared the fence and bounced out into the traffic on Route One. I doubled over in laughter when I saw that "Oh shhh" look fall across his face.

Two exits later you could stop in at Child World and play with all the new fangled toys that you never had a chance in hell at actually taking home with you. Go ahead and laugh, but look at it this way. You could spend hours playing with dozens of toys that you've seen advertised on TV and it didn't set you back one single dime.

If you drove past Child World without stopping, you'd soon come to a fork in the road. If you turned left at that fork you'd travel along a country setting that eventually let out into Wakefield Square. If you turned right you'd travel down a long and winding road beneath over hanging shade trees, some cozy looking houses, and a fresh water reservoir.

No matter which way you turned at that fork in the road, you headed towards a place that was worlds apart from your hometown. You were not about to find anything that would resemble Vargi's Diner, the Park Theatre, or the Armory in any way, shape, or form. What you did find were landmarks that were distinct to these communities alone.

Come with me now, back and forth through time, and let me show you some of those distinct landmarks. Along the way, allow me to give you but a brief introduction as to how some of those places impacted the life of a wandering native from Everett.

We shall dispense with presenting this journey in its chronological order. Instead, we'll witness the experience in an order that best fits the point I'm trying to make. I am trying to make a point. It just isn't all that obvious to you yet. Don't worry. We'll get there. Trust me.

Let's go back to that fork in the road. For our first experience we'll veer off to the right and journey down that long and winding road beneath those over hanging shade trees, cozy looking houses, and that fresh water reservoir. After the stop sign at the first intersection you come to, you'll pass under Route 128.

If you continue on after that you'll drive through Middleton and eventually wind up in North Andover right there at Merrimack College. My only real recollection there is that I once studied Algebra at Merrimack College back in 1979. This is not, however, the first thing I wanted to show you.

What I really wanted to show you first is right there after you passed beneath that route 128 overpass. Off to your left is the back entrance to the prestigious Colonial Inn. This is where I gave my hand in marriage for the very first time back in 1973 to a girl from Reading. When I first laid eyes on her she was a fun loving hippie who drove around in an old blue Plymouth that she had affectionately named, "Elsa."

That girl no longer walks among us. Many years later she passed beyond the far horizon after losing her battle with Cancer. She is sadly missed and leaves behind a legacy of beauty and charm that touched the lives of everyone around her.

Okay, let's get back to that fork in the road before I get all teary eyed and lose my train of thought altogether. It was not my intention to turn this into a tearjerker by any means.

This time, let's veer off to the left and head on into Wakefield Square. Towards the end of the Square you'll pass by the Wakefield commons distinguished by its giant and very attractive stone gazebo. Just Beyond that lies the famous Lake Quanapowit.

Lake Quanapowit is a favorite landmark for joggers, bicyclists, boaters and lovers. And it would be inconceivable if I were not to mention the beautiful brick mansions that I could never afford in this lifetime just across the street.

How the light of the full moon shimmers across the wind swept current on the lake at night is an artist's inspiration beyond compare. I can't count how many times I sat along the banks of that lake with either my sketchpad or my acoustic guitar soaring to new heights of creativity. It was there that I penned the lyrics to the song, "The Rest of Our Lives."

Also along the banks of Lake Quanapowit you'll find an old stone church beside an overgrown crumbling cemetery that would give you the creeps to walk through at night. Keep walking and you'll wind up on the far side of the lake. You'll pass by a baseball diamond, and a parking lot, before winding up at a charming little park complete with shade trees and benches that look out over the water.

You'll never know all the memories I hold so dear to my heart in that enchanted little park alone. They involve a very special girl who came into my life at a time when I honestly believed I would never love again. There were so many facets to her hypnotic charm that I could never pinpoint any single one as the dominating factor that took me by storm and swept me off my feet.

Maybe it was how when I looked into her eyes I felt so off balance that I fell into a dream come true. Or maybe it was how when her lips touched mine for the very first time that I knew God had put her here for no other purpose than to make my life complete. I should have known. After all, she's from Everett. It makes no wonder that I got down on bended knee and pleaded with her to spend the rest of her life with me. Thank God she agreed.

When you finally get out of Wakefield, you run smack dab into Reading. Although I have many fond memories of Reading, there are but a handful of distinct landmarks that really stick out in my mind's eye. The first, and perhaps the most famous of them all, is that full sized steel ship that somebody lives in along Route 28. It's right behind what used to be a Marshall's. Have you ever seen that?

My jaw literally dropped open the first time I saw it. In an area quaintly populated with cozy little houses, this seaworthy vessel sets high on a hill. It's the eccentricity of the idea that strikes you at first. After that you'll start to wonder how dreadfully noisy it must get during a downpour. Then you'll start to wonder how amazing it is that it has never been struck by lightning after all these years. I'm sure having nothing but portholes for windows gets on your nerves after awhile as well.

Another notable landmark in Reading that will always remain in the forefront of my mind is the miniature bust of Winston Churchill that adorns the top of a small fieldstone wall in front a house just after Zitso's.

I got cha, didn't I? Come on, admit it. Ya gotta be thinking, "What in the world is Zitso's?" - right?

Zitso's was a family owned store fashioned out of a very large barn. Because of the uniqueness of its name, it earned notoriety among the common citizenry. That, plus the fact that it had an air of country charm about it. You'd be surprised at how many people you'd run into in the most remote corners of the world who knew about Zitso's. The shame of it all is that many years later it was bought out by a larger franchise and became nothing more than a carbon copy of every other store of its kind.

The last landmark in Reading I'd like to show you has long vanished from the face of the planet without a trace. Shortly after driving past Zitso's you'd reach the onramp to Route 93. In the open field encircled by that onramp, there once stood one of the most distinctive landmarks to this community.

At the time of its existence, the self-proclaimed prestigious local residents looked down upon this distinctive showpiece as an eyesore and an insult to the prominence of their community. In reality, it added more humanistic character to their otherwise pompous community than they ever realized. They were just far too pretentious to see it.

In an area populated with magnificent estates, expensive automobiles, and professionally landscaped terraces, this property stood as a haunting reminder that all men are created equal in the eyes of God. For on this simple plot of ground stood the run down shack of a very old man. I only wish I had a snapshot of this place to show it to you.

This one room shack leaned so far to one side that you'd have sworn the slightest summer breeze would have toppled it right down on top of that little old man. There were more roof patches and scraps of deteriorated plywood holding that shack together than you could shake a stick at. None of the windows were broken, but they were so dirty you could barely see through to the dilapidated shades that were always drawn to a close behind them.

If the shack itself didn't grab your attention, then the surrounding property certainly would. That poor old man's estate was littered with broken car parts, an old bath tub, rolls of rusted chain link fencing, and God only knows what else. Trash was randomly strewn about the landscape in every direction for as far as the eye could see.

It was hard to imagine this contemporary work of art as being anything less than a deliberate act of rebellion. After decades of suffering the indignation that this righteous denizen had imposed on his surrounding swellheaded community, the old man died. Not soon afterward, that notable landscaped was entirely stripped of all of its unique character. They triumphantly transformed it into a lifeless patch of ground that no one takes notice of any more as they zoom by on their way towards Route 93. In essence, it has become nothing.

Herein lies the lesson.

One by one, all of the things that made our individual communities unique slowly disappeared without a trace over a long period of time. For the want of expedited conveniences and lower prices we submissively complied when the big franchises pushed the independent shop keepers out of business. We've reached a point in time when it really doesn't matter where you go any more. Everything looks the same.

That aside, let me share with you one last heartfelt memory. It's the image of a happy Everett family on their way back home after a Sunday drive in the country. Listen carefully and you'll hear the song filled laughter of four little kids bouncing up and down in the back seat bellowing out their rendition of "Row, row, row, your boat."

No matter how hard they tried to keep that four-part harmony thing going on, they always wound up stepping out of time and getting the chorus line all tangled up. It's what makes the challenge all that much fun. Eventually they'd just say "the heck with it" and break into a shouting performance of "How much is that doggie in the window?" You know, the one with the waggley tail.

You just took a Sunday drive with that infamous family of hooligans from Arlington Street. In just a few short miles we passed by some notable artifacts that not only impacted the landscapes of their communities, but had also tugged at the heartstrings of a kid who did all of his growing up in Everett.

No one is more pleased than I that you came along for the ride. Nothing beats sharing a heartfelt moment with someone you love. We may not be the richest, the brightest, and the most famous people on the planet, but we've got a legacy of character so inspiriting that it brightens the darkest of nights. With that alone, we'll find our way through this intricate maze.

The good part is that we never have to go it alone. We belong to a fraternity of friendship that binds our hearts together for all time. We belong because - "We're from Everett!"

Stranger Than Fiction

God only knows how we all fit into the schemes of things. Sometimes life really does get stranger than fiction. Nobody knows that better than the people who grew up in Everett.

What brought all this on was thinking about a strange encounter I once had while standing in line waiting to pay for my gas at a roadside station somewhere in the middle of New Hampshire. The guy behind me shook his head and said, "They're slower than the seven year itch up here."

"You can say that again." I really didn't care. I was in no rush.

"That's what you think, Paul," is exactly what the guy in front of me said when he turned around and leaned forward to look out over the rims of his dark sunglasses at me. For the life of me, I couldn't imagine how this chubby guy with a crew cut could have possibly known my name. He must have known by the look on my face that he had taken me somewhat by surprise.

He laughed and said, "Do you remember the time...," and believe me, that's all he had to say. It's funny how you picture your childhood friends as always looking the same way as you last saw them. You never picture them as all grown up.

I suppose that's what keeps us in that "forever young" frame of mind. So long as I don't look in the mirror, I still feel as young as I looked in my high school graduation picture. Damn that mirror. Why can't they make one that lies?

"Man, you're starting to look old," he laughed.

"Thanks for pointing that out."

"You wouldn't want to me to lie, would ya?"

"A small lie doesn't hurt every once in a while," I laughed. "So how did you know I was standing right behind you?"

"I'd know that voice anywhere. Nobody sounds like you."

We're talking about two kids whose paths had crossed only by chance early on in their journey through this dimension. As fate would have it, they ventured apart at a fork in the road along the way shortly afterward. Thirty years later they inadvertently came face to face at a place and time that is so wrought with parallel similarities that it staggers the imagination. The irony in at all is that it was just such a scenario that brought the two of them together in the first place.

"You got a minute?" He asked.

"Yeah, I've got some time to kill."

"That looks like a nice restaurant across the street. Want to grab a bite to eat?"

"Sounds good."

His name is Kenny. I don't think I ever knew his last name. Don't ask me why. For the two times our paths crossed in our lifetimes they both happened so fast that I never took the time to find out.

The first time was during the summer vacation following my stint in the third grade. I went to the Horace Mann. He said he went to the Immaculate. It's funny because he didn't seem to know any of the other kids who went there. From the very start it just seemed like there was something he wasn't telling me.

It all began on a Friday morning. If memory serves me well, and it usually does, this was late in July when the weather is hot and there's really not much else going on. It was so early in the morning that none of my friends had come out to play yet so I took off for a ride on my bike. The only other people I saw along the way were the trash collectors.

Just as I was leisurely coasting down High Street, I saw this kid reaching down into a trashcan in front of old man, Bloomberg's place. His bike was leaned up against the tree beside him. When I coasted up along side of him I said, "Looking for breakfast?" He stood up and laughed.

"Check this out," he said as he held up a length of what I can best describe as a strip of surgical rubber. "You know what this is good for?"

"Yeah, that would make an excellent sling shot."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. And there's a whole bunch of it here. You want some?"

"Definitely."

Instinct is funny. Sometimes you know right off the bat that you're totally compatible with someone. It's as if there's a meeting of the minds the very moment you look at each other. That's exactly how I felt about that kid. And even though we all have reservations of sorts when we first meet somebody new, my instincts were telling me that this kid was somebody I could effortlessly get along with.

"What we need to do now is find a couple of strong branches to make some sling shots with," he said.

"I've got a better idea. We can make slingshots out of steel piping."

"Sounds great on paper, but where are we gonna get the piping?"

"Come with me. I'll show ya."

He hopped on his bike and followed me back to my apartment house at the bottom of Arlington Street. My father had barrels full of odds and ends to tinker with down in the cellar. As soon as I pictured a slingshot in my mind's eye I thought about that barrel full of half-inch piping next to my father's work bench. I just knew that stuff would come in handy one of these days.

"You live here?" He asked.

"Yeah. We're kind of poor."

"Are you kidding? This place is neat. I wish I had a cellar like this to tinker around in. What's your father do?"

"He's a truck mechanic."

"That's great. He sure has a lot of neat tools."

"What's your father do?" I asked innocently enough.

"I don't have a father."

That's the first time anybody's ever said that to me. I wasn't sure how to respond. All I could think to say was, "I'm sorry."

"That's okay, don't worry about it. I never knew my father. My mother never talks about him."

"Let's see what we can find here," I said while tipping that barrel down onto the floor so we could dig through the piping. Not knowing what more to say about the father thing, I thought it best to change the subject altogether.

"This is exactly what I was looking for." Down inside the barrel were two threaded Y joints. There were also two five-inch straight lengths of piping and the threaded collars to connect them with. We now had our handles.

Further down under the pile we also dug up four more pipes that were a little more than three inches long and threaded at both ends. Those were perfect for extending the Y piece for the slingshot.

And just when you start to think that your good fortune is about to run out, we found four end caps for those pipes. With those end caps we could secure the surgical rubber to the slingshot. The only other thing we needed now was the patch to slide through the surgical rubber to hold onto the stone with.

"Hey, you know what? Let's take a run upstairs into my bedroom. I know I've got two pairs of dungarees in my drawers that have patches on them. We'll use those."

"Will your mother let you use them?" He asked.

"You don't honestly think I'm gonna ask my mother, do ya?"

"Won't she get mad when she finds out?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no, it all depends on how I handle the situation. If she ever asks I'll tell her they felt uncomfortable or something. What I'm not gonna do is tell her I used them to make slingshots."

"Won't it bother you to lie to your mother?"

"Man, what planet did you come from?"

Trust me, nobody has ever admired my apartment down on Arlington Street. Most people seeing it for the very first time usually play it cool and just don't say anything at all. Not this kid. He was genuinely impressed with the place. You'd think we lived in Buckingham Palace by the way he was carrying on.

You should have seen the look on his face when he discovered my drawings. "Did you draw these?" He asked flipping through one of my sketchbooks.

"Yeah, I draw all the time."

"You're an excellent artist."

"Hey, thanks. Do you draw?"

"No I don't draw, but I am an artist of sorts."

"What do you do?"

"I write."

Now that's one I've never heard before, especially from a kid my age. Up until now I never once thought about writing as an art form, but I suppose it is when you think about it.

"What kind of things do you write?"

"Short stories and poetry mostly. I'll let you read some of my stuff sometimes."

"I'd really like that." I was being polite. Reading is something they make you do in school. The last thing I'd want to do over the summer vacation is read poetry.

And I was right about those dungarees. They had the patches we were looking for. It took us about a half an hour to remove them with the edge of a razor blade without cutting into the dungarees. After that we went back down into the cellar to cut the slots to pull the surgical rubber through.

It wasn't until sometime in the late afternoon that we had finally finished our project. Taking our time to do this right was certainly worth the effort. We had built the best homemade slingshots I had ever seen in my life. I'm laughing to myself now when I think back on just how shrewd a couple of nine-year-old boys can get sometimes.

Naturally, you would suspect that we were eager to try these babies out - right? Well, you're right. We were, but before we could do that I had to cover my tracks. The last thing I needed was for my father to come home from work to find a gawd awful mess all over his workbench. That's just asking for trouble.

By the time we got that mess all cleared up I could see that familiar shadow pass through our cellar windows whenever my father's car comes rolling into the driveway. That's the end of it right there. The rule is, "When my father gets home from work it's time for supper."

"Hey Kenny, I got to go in for supper. Can you come back after supper so we can try these out?"

"Yeah, I think so. If not, I can come back tomorrow."

"Okay, I'll be right there in my front steps waiting for ya."

In the blink of an eye, he was on his bike and gone. I forget to ask him what his last name was, or where he lived, or for his phone number for that matter. He was gone before I ever thought of it.

After supper that night I wound up playing Hearts out on the front steps with some of the neighborhood kids. Kenny never showed up. I was dying to try out my new slingshot, but I thought it would be nice if we did that together. Trouble is, he never showed up on Saturday or Sunday either.

Come Monday morning I decided I'd just give the other slingshot to Stanley so we could have fun with them. Just as I was heading out the front door, Kenny showed up.

"Where you been?"

"My mother dragged me around looking at apartments all weekend. We're gonna move again. Where we live now is just too small for the two of us."

"Where you living now?"

"Come on, I'll show ya."

He lived in the attic apartment of a house up on Broadway. It was somewhere past Chestnut going towards Glendale Square. If you were to ask me which house specifically I'd draw a blank. All I can remember now is that his apartment was at the rear of the house. A very small, enclosed, back porch led into his kitchen door. I'm not even sure if he had a front door.

All they had for a kitchen table was a piece of plywood balanced on top of some milk cartons. His mother draped a decorative tablecloth over it to add that homey touch. They had three metal folding chairs positioned around that makeshift kitchen table. These people were getting by on the bare minimum.

His mother had her own bedroom, but Kenny slept on the couch in the living room. And believe me when I tell ya, that couch was nothing to write home about. What these people did have was pride and character. They were polite and courteous. You couldn't ask for two nicer people. They made me feel so at home that I wound up kicking my shoes off and putting my feet up on the coffee table.

You could sense the close loving relationship between them. Now I understood why he questioned if it would bother me if I lied to my mother. It was plain to see that he could never lie to his. She meant way too much to him to ever betray her like that.

Kenny handed me a file folder crammed with paper. "Take a look at some of my writing while I put the kettle on," he said. So, that's what I did.

Up to this point in my young life the only writing that had ever impressed me were the works of Robert Frost. That makes sense because, after all, Robert Frost wrote simplistic poetry geared towards children. For the first time in my life I was held spellbound by somebody else's writing. I could not believe that what I was reading was written by somebody my own age. To say that I couldn't put it down is an understatement.

He had this one poem about a little boy who dreamt about floated over the rooftops in a bubble. By the way he described the experience I felt like I was living the story. Towards the end of each vivid excursion the bubble would pop and the boy would wake up on the floor from having fallen out of bed.

What really took me by storm was a short piece he had written entitled, "If I Had a Father." This was so overwhelmingly heart warming that it should be a required reading assignment for every student in America. This thing brought tears to my eyes. From reading this short piece, I really got a glimpse into the inner most feelings to this kid's heart. No question about it, this was one exceptionally talented artist.

"So, what did you think?" He asked handing me a hot cup of tea.

"I honestly don't know what to say. These are the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read. I feel like I know you better than I know myself after reading this stuff. I can't wait for the book to come out."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes, I do. Doesn't everybody react to your work this way?"

"You're the first person I've ever showed it to."

"You've got to start showing this stuff around. Nobody else writes like this. You're a natural."

"Trust me, I'm no natural," he laughed. "Every sentence was written a hundred times over until it was so polished that there was just no better way of saying it. I spend a fortune on writing paper. My mother gets really mad at me sometimes. It takes both sides of a hundred sheets of notebook paper to write the perfect paragraph. It doesn't come naturally."

"I'll bet ya ten to one that you'll be a famous writer someday. You've got what it takes."

"I certainly hope so. That's my dream, to become a published author."

Shortly afterwards, we headed out on our bikes. We wound up at Pine Banks. Our slingshots turned out to be awesome works of craftsmanship. If you shot an acorn at the base of a tree with it from ten feet away, the acorn actually put a dent in the bark. You can just imagine what you could do with a rock.

Later that afternoon, we were riding our bikes down that long stairway on the left side of the Parlin. I've often referred to that area as the creepy side of the Parlin. On a whim, I picked up a small stone and put in my slingshot. Pointing it towards the school I said, "Pick a window"

"You wouldn't dare."

He was right. I wouldn't. What I did instead was turn towards the bushes on the other side of the fence and fired. We heard glass tinkle. My jaw dropped open. When we ran to the far end of the fence to see what I had hit, we knew we'd better hop on our bikes and flee the area. There was a perfect round hole in the windshield of a car parked right on the other side of those bushes.

We didn't see the humor in it until we safely coasted into my backyard. Once we knew that no one had seen what I had done, we sighed a heavy breath of relief. Come suppertime he headed home without his slingshot. "I wouldn't want to get caught dead with that thing in my pocket now, "he laughed.

The very next morning my mother informed me that it was my turn to spend a week up at my Aunt Grace's place in Asbury Grove. She was already here to pick me up. "If Kenny comes by tell him I'll call him when I get back," I told my mother. She assured me she would. It bothered me that I didn't get the chance to tell him that I was going away for a week. I couldn't call him because they didn't have a telephone.

During my stay at my Aunt Grace's house was when I first began to write. My new friend had inspired me in monumental ways. And even though I would never achieve the level of artistic creativity that he had clearly accomplished, I couldn't wait to get back home to share my newfound talent with him.

I was so disappointed when I got home to find out that Kenny never did come calling for me the whole time I was away. It worried me that maybe he told his mother what happened with the slingshots so she forbade him to hang around with me anymore. Willing to take the risk, I headed on over to his house.

After walking up those three flights of rickety stairs, it surprised me to see the curtain no longer hanging in the window of his back door. Because he was such an honest kid, I felt guilty looking in through his back door window. I did it anyway.

Everything was gone. The place was empty. Yes, of course I realized that he had probably moved away, but I just couldn't accept it. I stood there knocking on his back door for a good twenty minutes just the same.

On my way back down stairs, the door on the floor below opened and an older woman poked her head out. "Was that you knocking on the door upstairs?" She asked.

"Yeah, I was calling on my friend, Kenny. I just got home from summer vacation and wanted to get in touch with him."

"They moved out a few days ago."

"Do you know where they moved to?"

"I'm sorry, I don't."

It happened that fast. This kid drifted into my life, made a profound impact on me, and then just disappeared into thin air. I never stopped writing. He had smitten me with the bug.

So here it is thirty years later, and in the most unlikely place imaginable, this kid pops up out of nowhere. And there he sits on the other side of the table chowing down on a chicken sandwich with a side of fries.

"So what happened to you, man. Where did you move to while I was away on vacation?"

"Oh man, we moved so many times I can't remember where it was that we lived at any given time."

"How come you didn't know any of the other kids at the Immaculate when you went there?" That was a question that kind of troubled me all these years. I just had to ask.

"I never went there. I made that up so you wouldn't think any less of me. Truth is, I went to special education classes for slow learners.""

"Slow learner? You?"

"I know what you're thinking. I could write like a son of a gun, but when it came to anything else I was as thick as a brick."

"What are you talking about? We designed those awesome slingshots together."

"You designed them, Paul. Using steel piping was your idea. I never would have thought up anything like that. I thought you were genius."

"Me? Actually, I always thought I was the stupid one out of the two of us."

"That's because we really had a special friendship between us. You were blind to my shortcomings. All you could see was the good in me."

"What about your mother? How's she doing?"

"She passed away when I was still in college."

"I am so sorry. She was a truly wonderful person."

"That she was. I miss her terribly."

"Did you ever find out anything about your father?"

"No, I never did. He never took the trouble to find me so I just let it go. It doesn't pay to pine over people who couldn't care less about you."

"I suppose not. So, did you ever become a published author?"

"Well, sort of. I've written articles for magazines over the years, but nothing notable really. My true love is teaching. I'm a high school English teacher. "

"That makes sense. I'm sure you're an excellent teacher. It was you who inspired me to write in the first place. Once I read your material I had to write."

"I'm really glad to hear that. Funny thing is, once I saw your drawings I started to draw. I still do."

As our conversation continued to unfold, the similarities in our lives right up to this very moment became strangely similar. For two very different reasons, neither one of us at this point in time were married. We both had three children. He was living in Vermont, and I in Massachusetts.

On this very day, I had decided to take a ride up into the country, by myself, for no other reason than to just get away from it all. I had even taken a sick day from work to do so. He said that those were the exact same reasons why he was at that gas station at that very moment. He, too, had called in sick from work.

It doesn't get any stranger than that. Well, wait a minute, maybe it does when I think about it. I forgot to ask him what his last name was. I also forgot to get his phone number or ask for his address. Do you believe it? I did it again.

Want to know something else that's really weird? We're both from Everett!

You've Gotta Move

When it rains - it pours. Nah, I'm not talking about Morton Salt here. I'm talking about life. There comes a time in everyone's life when they just feel like giving up. Tell me you've never once thrown your hands up into the air and said, "I can't win."

Well, that's exactly how I felt last night when I booted up my computer and all it said was, "Fatal Hard Disk Error." From that moment on it seemed as though time stood still while I worked vigilantly through the night tearing that machine apart, piece by piece, and putting it back together again in a futile attempt to recover months worth of hard work trapped inside that dead computer.

Recovering those critical work files became a moral imperative. A long overdue work of art that I've promised to some people in Everett now suffocates inside that "Fatal Disk Error." It also contains all of the work I've done over the past several months to expand the "We're From Everett" experience, including scanning and editing the entire EHS Class of 1971 yearbook.

There's just no way that I could have gone off to bed with my life's work hanging in the balance. If I lost all that, I swear, I'd go out and bang my head against the sidewalk until I heard those tubular bells chime on my way towards the guiding light.

You've got to learn to count your blessings - right? It took hours of relentless blood, sweat, and tears, but I finally got this old jalopy up and running again. At least one of my two USB drives still works. I do thank my lucky stars for that. Now I can plug in my 2 GB flash drive and move all my critical data over onto my laptop. Believe me when I tell ya, I worked through the night to get where I am right now.

The next thing you know, Carol's out in the kitchen making coffee. The sunlight is filtering in through the venetian blinds. And the clock on the wall is telling me that I just missed out on a whole night's sleep.

You talk about counting your blessings? There's my most cherished blessing right there. It's that girl from Everett out there putting the coffee on in the kitchen. That girl absolutely drives me up a wall sometimes, but my life wouldn't be worth a nickel without her.

She's got the cutest little overbite that makes her look like Bugs Bunny whenever she smiles. And no matter how bad my troubles get, I just have to look over at her and I still see that cute little girl who used to squint up her nose and wink back at me in Mr. Cecere's 9th grade Civics class at the Parlin. I'm telling ya right now, I'd crawl across a mile wide creek full of alligators just hear that girl breath on a long distance phone call.

As for that dumb ass computer, I've seen this coming for quite some time now. Let's face it, this thing's a dinosaur. For some funny reason I just can't seem to part with it. It hasn't been able to recognize it's printer port for almost six months now. The rewriter CD drive got so out of kilter that I've had to completely remove it from the CPU altogether. Only one of two USB ports still functions. And the spacebar on the keyboard broke over a year ago so I stuck the "delete" key from the number pad in its slot.

So why, in God's name, do I still sit here banging away on this useless piece of crap? Because like countless generations of my ancestors before me, I'm a creature of habit. I know this computer inside and out. I've torn it apart and put it back together again more than a dozen times since I first bought it back in May of 2000. We're like old friends.

It reminds me of that old Philco radio we kept out on our kitchen table down there on Arlington Street when I was a little kid. All it had was an AM dial, and an on/off volume knob. They bought it long before I was ever born. When they came out with the new FM band, my dad still couldn't part with that thing. "Why do I need any more radio stations?" He'd say. "I get the news, weather, baseball, and music all right here. What more could they possibly broadcast that would ever interest me?"

Every once in a while that thing would buzz, and snap, and quit out altogether, but he just couldn't seem to let it go. He'd break it open and fiddle around with it and replace a few tubes and such until he got that thing up and running again. As far as he was concerned, that was the only radio he was ever going to need.

We also had an old cantankerous Motorola TV set that did the same darn thing. You had to stand there sometimes holding the rabbit ears up in the air just so my dad could see the rest of "To Tell The Truth." Every so often he'd hop up and give it a bang with the cuff of his hand to set the picture straight. I don't know how many times I came home to find him stretched out on the living floor behind that TV with a pile of tools on one side, and all the guts to that set on the other.

Even when they came out with the new UHF band, he refused to buy a new TV. He went out and bought one of those "add on" antenna boxes with a UHF knob. All they had were channels 56 and 38 back then anyway.

Ah, but there's the rub. If not for channel 38, I would have never experienced the likes of Willie Whistle. Willie Whistle was one of those unique characters who touched your life much in the same way that Tiny Tim did on the night he sang "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" on the Johnny Carson show for the very first time. Without characters like these, the whole world becomes mediocre.

I'll never forget the night that TV finally gave up its ghost for good. My dad was sitting there singing his heart out along with Mitch Miller. Just as they came to that famous line that goes, "I was strolling along, on moonlight..." it went "Boink!" He sat there with this really odd look on his face while watching that little white dot in the center of the screen fade off into the sunset. And right along with it went all of his faith in the world.

My mother roared with laughter. She had tears in her eyes.

"What, in God's name, is so funny about that?" He demanded to know.

"Oh, the look on your face," she laughed.

"You know what this means, don't you?" He asked in a somewhat stern tone of voice.

"Yeah, it means we can finally throw that piece of junk out in the trash where it belongs and get a regular TV like everyone else."

"We're not made of money, you know?" He reminded her. "And they don't make televisions like that anymore."

"I certainly hope not, "she replied. "For once in my life I'd like to have something that wasn't the oldest one on the block."

Going shopping for a new TV with my mother and father was one of the funniest experiences of my growing up in Everett. We went to virtually every store that sold televisions on the North Shore. God only knows how many bewildered salesmen they left in their wake. If my father was going to spend that much money on a TV, he wanted something phenomenal.

All the knobs on those new fangled televisions confused the living daylights out of my father. Even after a dozen salesmen explained how the two channel knobs interacted with each other, he still couldn't grasp the concept.

"For crying out loud, Bill, there are only three knobs on the whole TV set. I'm sure we'll figure it out," my mother kept saying.

"I don't see much sense in buying something that I can't work intuitively," he kept complaining.

You should have seen the look on the salesman's face when my father asked, "How long does it take for one of these sets to warm up?"

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing when the salesman responded with, "Televisions haven't had to warm up since back in the old days when they had those vacuum tubes."

"You mean to tell me they don't have any tubes in these darn things?" Obviously, it's been a long time since my dad bought a TV.

The other thing that really got his goat was how big these new television screens were. "My gawd, look at the size of that picture," he exclaimed. "I feel like I'm looking at a drive-in movie." It was only a 19-inch screen. He was used to squinting to see the picture on that tiny set I grew up with.

After all was said and done, they finally found the one they wanted. He caught on to all those extra knobs in no time flat. It's funny when I think of it now, but before he passed away back in 1995, he bought one of those 29-inch wide-screen TV's with picture in picture technology. His remote had more buttons on it than my laptop does today. He sat there switching back and forth between all those little screens while recording on his VCR without missing a beat. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

What it all boils down to is human inertia. Once we get used to the way things are, we hate to upset the apple cart. Nobody wants to venture off onto a learning curve. God forbid we should ever take a step beyond our comfort zone.

And as we all know only to well, it's always when you're all cozy and comfy with your life just the way it is that fate comes along and turns the whole thing upset down. Such was the case when I came home one night after partying with the hippies up in the back hills of Glendale Park. My father was sitting up at the kitchen table waiting for me. Just by the look on his face as I stepped in through the back door I could have sworn the world was about to come to an end.

"We need to talk," he said.

I swallowed hard. All I could think of was that he probably picked up my acoustic guitar and something fell out that needed some explaining. It was bound to happen soon or a later. Braced to take on the inevitable, I pulled up a chair and said, "Okay, let's talk."

"I know how much this neighborhood means to you," he began. "You were born and raised right here in this house. Believe me, we wish there was some other way, but the circumstances are beyond our control."

"What are you trying say, Dad?"

"We've got to move."

"That's it? That's what you waited up all night to tell me?"

"Well, it bothered me because all of your friends are here. This is the only place you've ever known."

"Have you found a place yet?"

"Yeah, we've found a place. We're moving on Saturday."

"So, where are we moving to?"

"We're moving up onto Foster Street."

"In Everett?"

"Yes, in Everett."

"For cry sakes, Dad, by the way you're carrying on I thought we were moving to Lithuania. Foster Street is only fifty yards away. I think I can cope. If not, I'll get some counseling," I laughed.

"Don't make any plans for Saturday. I'll need you to help us move."

"You've got a deal."

My oldest brother was off fighting in Vietnam at the time. That was also the year my sister got married and moved to Wakefield. Come Saturday morning, between my new brother-in-law and I, we rounded up quite a sizable congregation to help with the big move. When my dad saw how many guys showed up to help, he turned to my mother and said, "You'll need to boil up a big pot of beans to feed this crowd."

"Dad, it's 1967. This is Everett. You're not back on the ranch in Southern Indiana. These guys don't want to hang around and fart after we get this done. Everybody's got places to go and things to do. They're here because they're our friends. You don't have to feed them."

"Yes, I do," he insisted. "We've got to show our gratitude. I'll spring for some pizza."

"For thirty guys? Are you crazy?"

To save money, my dad borrowed a truck from Tufts. That's where he worked. It was one of those flatbed trucks with removable wooden railings on the back. If it rained that day, we were dead. Luckily, it didn't. That wasn't our only problem, believe me. That truck was far too wide for its own good. There was just no possible way to maneuver it up to the doorway on such a narrow street. We had to leave it idling out in the middle of Arlington Street while we worked.

With cars parked on both sides of the street, there was no room for anybody to get by. And you know Everett, within the first five minutes we had a line of cars beeping and honking so impatiently that we had to do something. What we finally did was backed that big old truck all the way across Ferry and halfway down Nichols to let the traffic thin out. I swear it would have been a lot easier if each kid just grabbed a stick of furniture and lugged it up to the new place.

My mother was being a typical girl through the whole process. She was trying to tell us which pieces of furniture to set beside each other up on the truck so she could rearrange it easier when we unloaded it up at the new house. And we were being typical guys. By that I mean, we didn't listen to a word she said. We just kept grabbing things and jamming them up onto the back of the truck. All we wanted to do was get it done. We couldn't care less about what goes with what.

There were so many of us that we loaded up that whole truck in only minutes. I honestly think it took longer to drive that truck up around the block than it did to load it. Making that sharp right turn onto Foster with cars parked on both sides was like trying to thread a sewing needle. That's probably what took up most of our time out of this whole ordeal.

Needless to say, unloading was nowhere near as easy as loading. It never is. Don't ask me why, but things that fit through narrow doorways and around tight corners when you're moving them out seem to swell to epic proportions when you're moving them back in. It's probably the result of breathing that refreshing Everett air after being shut up inside the house for so long.

Within the hour, we had moved lock, stock, and barrel. It's amazing what you can do with thirty hippies sometimes. And you can just imagine how fast ten pizzas disappeared amongst those starving savages. If you didn't move quickly enough you might've lost a finger in that crowd.

When I came home that night, my dad was passed out on the couch snoring to beat the band. He had comfortably settled into the new place already even if the couch was still out in the middle of the front hallway. The man just got all tuckered out watching the young-uns do all the work. My mother, on the other hand, was still scrubbing and wiping and putting everything back in its proper place. She had worked herself into frazzle that whole day and she certainly looked the part.

"Jeez, Ma, give yourself a break," I said. "Rome wasn't built in a day."

"True," she said, "but if I waited for Nero to get up off his lazy ass we'd never get settled in."

That's one of the few nights I can remember sitting down at the kitchen table and having a good gab with my mother over a cup of coffee. She was truly happy even if she had work herself into a state of exhaustion that whole day. She now had far more living space than she ever had in that tiny little apartment down on Arlington Street.

From our new front porch, we could now see beyond the rooftops all the way over to the Whidden Hospital. All we could see down at the bottom of Arlington Street was the house next door, unless of course, you crawled up through the skylight to get up onto the roof.

That little apartment down on Arlington Street was so small that you had to sit sideways on the toilet to be able to close the bathroom door. You had to move a kitchen chair out of the way every time you opened and closed the oven door. And to top it all off, we all had our own bedrooms in this new place. That alone was worth its weight in gold.

The only thing that troubled my father was how my brother, Billy, was going to find us when he got home from Vietnam. "Oh for cry sakes, Bill, we didn't move to the far ends of the Earth. If he can find his way back to Boston from the Far East I'm sure he'll find his way up around the corner of Arlington Street," my mother kept telling him.

"Maybe we should draw him a map," he suggested.

"I think you're the one who needs the map," She laughed.

"Don't you worry about a thing," he reassured me. "You'll make new friends. There's a kid about your age right across the street."

"Yeah, I know, Dad. His name's David."

"You met him already?"

"Yeah, we go to school together."

"That's great. Maybe he'll show you around."

My father was serious. You'd think I was still peddling around on a tricycle by the way he was carrying on. He meant well. That's all that really matters.

That's what I mean about fate throwing a monkey wrench into the works every time you get too comfortable with the way things are. Remember that the next time your life goes haywire. Life is like Pepto Bismal. You've got to shake it up every once in a while to keep it regular.

No matter what happens, or how much your life changes, you'll settle into your new routine just as comfortably as you were before the big change. We sure did. That's just the way we are because, "We're from Everett!"

Then and Now

When you really think about it, we actually do far more here than just reminisce about the good times we experienced growing up in Everett. In the process, we evaluate the world as we see it today in comparison to those experiences. Those evaluations help us untangle the mystery of what this life is really all about.

Everyone knows it wasn't all peaches and cream when we were growing up. We never said it was. It was never my intention to paint you a picture through rose colored glasses. I can think back to a number of things that I never liked about the past, just as I can list as many things that I liked better back then than I do today.

From within that frame of reference, let's take a gander at some of the little characteristics of our lives when we were kids in comparison to those very same things as they are today. As they say, it's the little things that mean a lot - right?

Let's talk about old people. Think back to what old people were like back in the late fifties and early sixties. By those standards we don't even have any old people on the planet today. An eighty year-old woman today would seem like she was at least twenty years younger than a fifty year old woman from back in 1960.

Remember your mother saying, "Go give grandma a kiss?" Man, what a torture in a half that was. If her chin feathers didn't stab your upper lip then her nose hairs would poke your eye out. And they all wore that same flowered one-piece dress complimented with a pair of those laced up high steps that looked somewhat like a pair of steel-toed work boots. It's almost as if all the old ladies back then belonged to some kind of secular cult.

Back then, your grandmother was shocked when Elvis Presley shook his hips on the Ed Sullivan show. As far as she was concerned, Rock N Roll was a communist conspiracy. She couldn't fathom a girl calling a boy up on the telephone. Most of them never drove a car in their lifetime. And if God wanted us to fly then he would have given us wings. Narrow-minded wasn't the word for it.

Even still, we both loved and respected them. We loved them because they were our own flesh and blood. We respected them because even though they were not akin to new ideas, the wisdom of their years gave them a solid foundation of common sense when it came down to the real nitty gritty.

Love and respect for our elders, now there's something we don't see too much of in the world today. Impatient drivers curse at them because they take so long to cross the street and advertisers completely ignore them. Oh yeah, they're beginning to zero in on the aging baby boomers, but if you pre-date the baby boomer era, you'd be hard pressed to find a radio station that patronizes to your liking. And when was the last time you saw anybody helping an old lady across the street? You see them walking, don't you? They're on their own, aren't they?

Take a look at the kind of grandmothers we have today. Some of these chicks are knockouts. They ride motorcycles, attend college, and go to rock concerts. Maybe it's me, but for the life of me, I can't imagine my grandmother ever hoping on the back of a Harley to take off on the open road to attend the annual summer outing for Rolling Thunder in Southern Indiana.

Every summer, Rolling Thunder holds an outing at the Fair Grounds right here where I live. They roll right past our house. You've got to see this to believe it. We stand out there at the edge of the road and wave to them as hundreds of them roll by covered with American flags. Some of those bikers are women who are decades beyond my years. I kid you not.

So how narrow-minded are the grandmothers of today? Today's grandmothers know how to text message, email attachments, and even bundle up digital snapshots in a zip file if they have to. And don't even dare hang out your window to shout at one of these grandmothers to hurry up across the street, especially if they grew up in Everett. They're libel to flip you the bird and tell you where to go and how to get there.

Who are these new grandmothers anyway? They're baby boomers, Dude. Many of them were hippies. That means they partied naked at Woodstock, smoked pot (but they didn't inhale), and burned their bras. They marched in protest against bigotry. They held a candle light demonstration one night in Glendale Park to protest the war in Vietnam. And they stood up for women's rights. These are liberated women. There isn't an ounce of narrow-mindedness in their whole body.

You wanna talk about old people? Heck, I'm quickly becoming one myself. It's funny how we never see that far off into the future. I never once thought about the day when I'd be old enough to join the AARP. Regardless, that day has arrived. Getting on in our years is no big deal. There's nothing wrong with getting old. It's when you stop getting old that you've got to worry about, because when you stop getting old -- you're dead.

My local grocer broadcasts the hits of the 50's and 60's over his PA system. You know you're getting old when they start playing your music at the grocery store. One day, as I hemmed and hawed over the outrageous price of tomatoes, I noticed an older gentleman standing there beside me. They started playing "Not Fade Away" by the Rolling Stones over the loud speaker. I couldn't help but wonder how that old codger tolerated listening to the Rolling Stones while shopping for his groceries.

All of a sudden, that old codger turned to me and said, "Do you believe they're playing the Stones at the grocery store now?"

"You're into the Stones?" I asked somewhat surprised.

"Yeah. I've seen them live three times."

"No kidding? How old are you?"

Well, as it turns out, he was about five years younger than me. That really made me feel old, let me tell ya. In my mind's eye, I had this guy pegged as an old fuddy duddy. As it turns out, the old fuddy duddy was me.

That reminds me about something else I'd like to talk about. When was the last time you went out to dinner and enjoyed a nice quiet conversation at your table? Are there any restaurant left where they don't blare the music so loud that you can actually hear yourself think? What's that all about anyway?

When you sat down for a bite to eat at Kresge's snack bar in Everett Square, they played soft orchestral music that blended into the background. No, it didn't make you tap your feet and I never once heard another patron say, "Hey, I love this song." What it did do was enable you to sit and chat in a relaxing atmosphere.

What makes them think I want my eardrums blown out while I'm eating? Hey, like it says in the Book of Ecclesiastes, "To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose, under heaven." When I want to share a good meal with friends, give me some soft mellow background music so I can digest my food and enjoy a good conversation. When I want to Rock N Roll I'll strap on my headphones and crawl across the living room floor on my knees playing my air guitar, okay?

They do the same thing in the stores nower days. Remember what it was like to stop in at Grants for a few odds and ends down in Glendale Square? They had that neutralized elevator music going on in the background that was just loud enough to calm your nerves and soft enough so not to confuse you. You took your time and just kind of drifted around the store, didn't you? Most of the time you came out with a half dozen other things besides the one you went in for. Why? Because you enjoyed the shopping experience.

When was the last time you went into Walmart? Did you have a good time? The music is so loud you can't think straight. Nine times out of ten, I forget what I went in there for.

I hate to sound like a prude, but I'll take that neutral elevator music of yesterday over the noise they're spewing out over the loud speakers in the stores and restaurants today. Believe me, I love the Beatles, but I don't want to hear "A Hard Day's Night" playing so loud that it's rattling the windows while I'm trying to digest a ham and cheese omelet with home fries and toast. And as much as I like the Stones, I really don't care to listen to "Satisfaction" when I'm trying to pick out fresh tomatoes, especially at decibels that are ripening the bananas before I can get them out of the store.

Now that we're on the subject of shopping, do you remember when you could ask the sales clerk for assistance and get it? Oh sure, they'll run to the back room to see if they've got one more toaster oven for ya, but ask them one thing about the item in question and you'll draw a complete blank.

There was once a time when you could walk into Vinnie's on the corner of Ferry Street and High to ask him which was the better cut of veal he had in the display case. He'd take out what he had, lay it out on a piece of white wrapping paper and explain every little detail in each cut to you. The man knew his meats.

Go try that in any grocery store today. They'll point out which one is on sale and which one is thicker, but they haven't a clue as to why one cut would be any better than the next other than by weight or by price. They don't know any more about the product they sell than you do.

Back in my Parlin Junior High school days, there was an electronics store next to Robert Halls down on the Parkway. For the life of me, I can't remember the name of the place. They sold everything from Ham Radios to old radio vacuum tubes and they knew their product line inside and out. When I saved up enough money to buy my first cassette recorder, they advised me every step of the way. Based on their advice I bought my Norelco Carrycorder 150. Even to this day I consider that to be one of the greatest tape recorders I ever owned. These guys knew their stuff.

Even the people at Noyes Stationers down the Square completely understood their product line. They knew the difference between a calligraphy nib and a technical drafting pen. They could explain to you when to use rice paper and when to use vellum. And they knew the difference between a sheet of plastic and a sheet of acetate. There actually is one.

Just the other day as I was shopping in Staples, I had to bite my lip when I overheard the sales clerk trying to convince this unwitting couple that the more expensive Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista was the best computer on the market today. For one thing, Toshiba will not replace your operating systems discs if you lose them or they become corrupted. They'll tell you to send the machine in for repairs. Hewlett Packard will send you the discs and you'll be back up and running in days for a mere fraction of the cost.

Besides that, all new computers come with Windows Vista. That's no big deal. The draw back is that Windows Vista is still in the beta stage. Most software and hardware are still incompatible with it. Hewlett Packard will let you choose your operating system. Either that sales clerk didn't know that or he was just hell bent on selling the more expensive machine.

What it boils down to is that retailers no longer care about customer loyalty. All they care about is the quick sale. Profit means everything. That's why they refuse to part with the necessary funds to train or educate their sales clerks. It's not the clerk's fault. The fault lies within the upper echelons of management. It's no skin off their backs. It's you, the consumer, who winds up getting the dirty end of the stick anyway.

Now that we're on the subject of technology, let's talk about telephones. When was the last time you called information to get a phone number? I haven't done that in decades. It became too expensive and too much of a bother. And if that don't beat all, now they make me push "1" to hear it in my native language.

Ah, but there was once a time when if you picked up the receiver and stood there without dialing for any length of time, a real person came on and said, "Number please" in a language that I could understand. That is, of course, if the other party wasn't using the phone.

For those of you who are too young to remember, party lines were once the norm back when there was only one telephone company. You'd pick up the receiver to make a phone call and somebody you didn't know would say, "Hang up. I'm on the phone." You had to sit and wait for somebody you didn't know to get off their phone so you could use yours. What a pain in the ass that was.

My mother refused to surrender her party line. Her line of reasoning was that if everyone else had a party line then she'd wind up getting one by default. She was right. For decades she paid a lower rate because she still had a party line even though nobody else was on it.

Another crazy thing about back then was that it was illegal for you to do anything whatsoever to your telephone. You couldn't add a second phone in another room or even add an extension to the phone cord without calling the phone company first to pay a qualified technician to come out to your house to do it for you.

I remember how worried my mother was when my father added a second telephone in the kitchen. "We're all going to wind up in jail," she often said. She was afraid to call the phone company for anything at all fearing that we'd all get hauled off into court. It could happen. We were the rebels of Arlington Street when it came to bucking the telephone system back in the early 1960's.

Now they've got so many different companies handling every separate little detail to my basic phone service that I don't know if I'm coming or going. Reading my phone bill is like trying to interpret a legal affidavit. There are so many different charges listed on page ten that I can't tell if they're cheating me or not. And when I do call up to complain they hook me up with someone in Madagascar that I don't understand. You can't win.

Phone booths are another endangered species. Well, they've still got those public phone stands that are really hard to find if you ever need one, but how many people actually use them nower days? If you ask me, the cel phone was one of the greatest innovations in the historic timeline of communications.

Thinking back to when I was a little kid, I can remember the time when my father's car conked out just after we drove up onto the Parkway past Everett Square. We had to abandon the car and walk all the way back to Broadway in the blaring hot sun for a pay phone to call for help. I also remember the time (some twenty-five years later) when I was driving down the south bound lane on Route One near the K Mart exit when this thick white smoke came seeping out through my dashboard. My serpentine belt had snapped.

All I had to do was push one button to call Carol. While she was on the horn getting me a tow truck, I pushed another button to call my sister to come and pick me up. Today's payphone fits into my shirt pocket and goes wherever I go. I never leave home without it.

My only gripe about cel phones today is that they've now got more bells and whistles than I know how to handle. If I want to text message I'll send you an email. If I want to take a picture I'll grab my camera. If I want to play a game I'll whip out my Gameboy. And if I want to listen to music I'll snap on the radio. Give me a break for crying out loud. Just let me make a phone call.

Even still, I've got to admit, we've come a long way since the days of the rotary dials, party lines, and the old Dunkirk 7 phone listings. Have we not?

And now that we've talked about cars breaking down, here's one last item I'd love to touch upon. My first car was a Volkswagen Beetle. Owning a Volkswagen Beetle propelled a hippie into notoriety. It was the ultimate status symbol for hippies.

Like so many other cars back in our day, you could easily fix it yourself. When you opened the hood you saw an engine, a couple of dipsticks, and a belt. If you didn't have a Volkswagen Beetle then you also had a radiator. That was about it.

You knew what your carburetor looked like. A little water in the battery went a long way. You could bang the dirt out of your air filter when your car started sputtering. And if your starter burned out you could always pop the clutch and take off down the road.

Go out and take a gander under your hood today. It looks more like a sub atomic particle accelerator than it does an engine. You can't so much as fiddle with one insignificant screw without throwing the whole system off kilter.

There was once a time when you drove around with a complete sense of confidence so long as you had a spare tire, a jack, a wrench, and a screwdriver in your trunk. The only things you need now are a cel phone and a credit card because those are the only tools you're qualified to work with when it comes to car troubles.

Back in 1969 it cost less than two dollars to fill my gas tank. Unless, of course, I went to C & C Gas down on the Parkway. I could fill up for under a buck at C & C Gas. Granted, it was only a ten-gallon tank, but how much does ten gallons of gas cost you today?

Even the price of buying a car today is mind boggling. Go out and price a good used car today and your jaw will drop open. There was once a time you could scoop up a good used car for about a hundred and fifty bucks. My dad used to buy roadworthy wrecks for about fifty bucks. Hey, they were good enough to get back and forth from work.

Now honestly, I don't expect to find anything in today's economy for a hundred and fifty bucks, but five thousand dollars for something that's all smashed up with over a hundred thousand miles is ludicrous. Man, those ten-speed Schwinns are looking better and better every day.

One thing that never changes are the friendships we've accumulated along the way while we were growing up in Everett. We've had our fights and arguments over the years just like everybody else, but because we all grew up in Everett, a thread runs so true through our moral fiber that binds our hearts and holds us together for all time.

We are the Baby Boomers. Collectively, we out vote every other segment of the population. Together we have the power to shape the world around us. Because of that, there is no reason on earth why we should let our country plummet into despair. We need to come together to start working towards that goal. We need to begin building a grassroots effort to strengthen our voice. If anyone has the ability to do that, we do. "We're from Everett!"

Happy Birthday America

If you haven't already done so, go back and read my last year's Fourth of July tribute to the City of Everett entitled I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. I am really quite fond of that one. When you're finished doing that, come on back here to spend a rabble rousing Fourth of July with your "We're From Everett" family.

Happy Birthday America, and yes, we have a surprise for you. For on this day, we will gather with our brothers and sisters to hoot and holler beneath a moonlit sky while rocket propelled colors light up the night. We've been doing this sort of thing now for some 230 odd years in observance to the birth of our nation.

If you are not one of us, then chances are, hearing me say that probably sickens you. From what I've been told, you hate us. That strikes me rather odd because you don't even know us. And I'm willing to bet, you've only seen us from a distance through somebody else's eyes.

Hate us if you will, but at least give yourself the opportunity to get to know who it is that you hate. Give us a moment of your time and we will stand before you like an opened book. Hear what we have to say so that the next time somebody asks you, "How come you hate Americans so much?" You will be able to look them earnestly in the eye and say, "I hate them because I know how they think."

Chances are, if you're one of those outsiders who walks among us, then you probably have more rights and privileges than we do. For you see, our government has not represented us for a quite some time. Our government has abandoned us. Our elected representatives have betrayed us.

Make no mistake about where our loyalties lie. Our life's blood is deeply rooted in allegiance to the flag, and to the United States of America for which it stands. The principals upon which this nation was founded formulate our culture and everything we believe. Some of our ancestors are natives to this land. They were here long before settlers from the Eastern Hemisphere ever set foot on this continent.

Our forefathers gave of their blood, their sweat, and their tears to formulate an integrity of character upon which no other land on the face of this planet can lay claim. Tread lightly in your stride. The spirits of our ancestors lay beneath this soil. You walk on Sacred Ground.

When you spit on my flag, you spit on me. When you curse my Declaration of Independence, you curse me. When you show little regard for the principals my forefathers risked life and limb to forge into a Constitution for these Untied States, then you insult my ancestors and have no respect for me. That I do not forgive.

You have mistakenly judged us by the character of our government. Believe me, we are on opposite ends of the spectrum. There are those among us who are still fooled by the charade, but their numbers are dwindling rapidly with each passing day.

We honestly do understand why it is that you don't respect us. You've been watching our elected representatives have their way with us for so long that we look like easy prey. And for quite some time, we have been just that.

Since childhood, we've been taught to respect the virtues of loyalty, honor, and charity. So deeply were those lessons driven into us that with each passing generation, we have strived to achieve a social structure that honored the high set of principles as set forth in the writings of our forefathers.

We work diligently towards forming a society in which we hold one truth to be self-evident. And that truth is that "All men are created equal." That's why those embattled farmers stood together on the far side of that crude bridge in Lexington to fire the shot heard round the world. And that's why Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.

It's been a long hard struggle. With many lives lost, and many tears cried, we forge ahead building and shaping a society so founded in freedom that it shines like a beacon for the whole world to see. We do that because of the way we were brought up.

Call it blind faith if you will, but because of the belief system they drilled into us at school, we so naively mistook many assumptions as a given. For example, we just naturally believed that if someone were to run for an elected office, they would dedicate their servitude to the people who elected them. We also took for granted that whatever was in the best interest of the American people would dictate the due process of government. We naturally presumed that common sense would guide the way.

We never once dreamed that our elected officials would sell off the roads we built and paid for out of our own pockets to foreign countries who are hostile towards our way of life. We never thought that tax incentives would be given to private industries for moving their production overseas so as to undermine the standard of living for American workers. And we certainly never thought they would jeopardize our native language to accommodate only a small fraction of the population.

So why would our elected officials openly betray our trust in the first place? Think about it. We've got no one to blame but ourselves. We've allowed these back stabbers to pass laws that "We the People" would never have agreed to in the first place. Perhaps you should read What Your Congressman Won't Tell You. Go ahead. Click on that link. A whole new window will pop up and awaken you to some seriously harsh realities.

We should have known better. Look who we've chosen to represent us. Let's talk about that senior senator from Massachusetts who vows to go against the will of an overwhelming majority of the American people to push an immigration amnesty bill down our throats that we don't want. If you truly want to understand why immigration amnesty is so important to this senator, then perhaps you should read this.

Trust me, this senator is far from being the only lawmaker who has openly betrayed his country and the will of the people. If those words sound harsh to you, then I suggest you also read this.

It is interesting to note that this senator once asked, ""Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?" I often wonder how Mary-Jo Kepechne might respond to that question.

Believe me, I could go on endlessly naming elected officials who have betrayed our trust. We've even got a former Speaker of the House who couldn't win his own seat back in congress, but is so arrogant as to think that we're stupid enough to elect him as our president. This guy actually said, "Americans are going to have to give up some of their freedoms so we can protect them." Do you believe that? Has this man no shame?

Trust me, we're going to be really careful about who we choose to represent us from this day forward. We've learned a lot over the past eight years. Our very own president once referred to the United States Constitution as nothing more than just a piece of paper. That alone is grounds for impeachment in my book. And now that he has commuted the sentence of a convicted traitor, he has stripped any remaining threads of credibility from his administration.

Perhaps now you understand why I say, "This government, and the people it serves, are on opposite ends of the spectrum." Let me break it down to make it easier for you to understand.

This government has systematically violated every American citizen's privileges as set forth in our Bill of Rights. They can rip open our mail, listen in on our phone calls, and search our personal belongings with nothing more than an idle suspicion. None of us ever voted to surrender those rights as outlined in the Fourth Amendment.

We have never felt more betrayed since the founding of this nation as we do right now. So who's fault is that? Who is to blame? Shall we blame the Democrats or the Republicans? Shall we blame the liberals or the conservatives? You know what I say? I say we blame them all.

Our border guards sit in prison for carrying out the job they were sent to perform while a convicted foreign drug smuggler goes free. The average American citizen doesn't qualify for government-sponsored health care, but illegal immigrants and elected politicians do. They can find 80 billion dollars annually to finance a war that's going nowhere but they can't afford to care for our hungry, sick, and homeless veterans. And I haven't even touched upon the shambles they've made of our public education system.

Our government is the very reason you do not respect us. It is the very reason you hate us. Because our elected officials have so arrogantly trampled us under foot, you expect to do the same. Don't you?

Well guess what? Both you, and our elected officials, have awakened a sleeping giant. Enough is enough. The game stops here. Take a look at us now. For you have not seen the likes of us in almost 237 years. You talk about an angry American? You are about to feel the wrath of 270 million of them.

We're taking our country back. No politician can ignore the overwhelming majority of that many votes. So here's the deal. On this day, We the People, have a special birthday gift for America. It is a new sense of loyalty, pride, and commitment.

What it all boils down to is nothing more than common sense. To those politicians who wish to serve us, we'll make it simple for you. Here's what we want.

We're looking for a new party platform that focuses on strengthening the will of the American people. We want our borders closed and the illegals exported. Yes, all of them. We want the roads we bought and paid for with our tax dollars reclaimed from private ownership through eminent domain. You had no right to sell them off in the first place. They were never yours, they belong to "We the People."

We're expecting a complete overhaul to the organization of our government. The details of which shall be dictated by the AMERICAN people. From now on, we want to elect the members of the Supreme Court. They will serve a limited term just like everybody else. And we don't want anyone to serve more than two terms in any capacity. These lifelong free rides are over. You've got no one to blame but yourselves.

We expect American citizens to take precedence over anyone else when it comes to government grants, social services, and health care. And just so we understand each other. Every American is entitled to the same benefits congress enjoys. See to it you get the details worked out within the first 90 days of the new administration. Don't tell us you don't have the money to fund it. You seem to find billions of dollars every year to help every other nation on the planet, except ours. You can certainly pull this off.

Leave the Social Security fund alone. Don't touch it. You certainly DO NOT have our approval to share it with outsiders who have never paid into the system. If you ever so much as dare to even suggest such a STUPID thing, be prepared to step down from your office post haste.

By the way, we expect you to work forty hours per week with only four weeks of vacation. For that forty hours we expected you to be either in your office or in the general assembly, and not traveling all over the world at our expense. That isn't necessary any more. We want you to focus on rebuilding America. We couldn't care less about what's going on everywhere else. If it's that important, use the internet to do your research. That's what we do and we seem to have our finger on the pulse of this planet far more than you do.

From now on your staff's salary will come out of your own pocket. You work it out. Oh yeah, and before I forget, you're not getting any more of our tax funds to run for office. That free ride is over as well. You no longer vote for your own pay raise either. You'll get the customary standard of living increase like everybody else.

Let's talk about oil, shall we? We don't want to buy any more oil from the Middle East. We've decided to use what we've got up in Alaska. We built those pipelines with our own money so lets start putting them to good use. We couldn't care less if we run out over the next 200 years. We'll worry about that when the time comes. It's time we began to migrate towards solar and wind energy anyway.

One of the ways we can fund all of these changes is with the new heavy tariffs we're going to impose on foreign companies. We shall simply define a foreign company as any one who's goods or services are produced or rendered from outside our borders. That will give rise for a new incentive to bring our jobs back.

Please don't bother to run for public office promising to better the quality of life for people in another country. Let's focus on rebuilding the quality of life for Americans. Everybody else can take a number. If it really is all that important to you, then by all means, renounce your citizenship, go there, and serve them.

We are very serious about improving the quality of life for our veterans. You've got your work cut out for you, believe me. We want to restore our quality of life to the point where our children can play out on the sidewalks again. That's a big order to fill after the mess you've made out of our country, I know. This should give you some indication of how much work lies ahead of you.

What you have so conveniently forgotten is that your greed has blinded you to our true sense of patriotism. We love this country and everything it stands for. Today we celebrate a rebirth of the consciousness that fired the shot heard round the world. When those fireworks light up the sky tonight they do so in a new spirit of patriotism not known in this country for a very long time.

Let me remind you of that flag waving patriotic spirit that filled our streets back in September of 2001. Nobody dared insult the flag back then, now did they? They knew better. Show them that spirit again. Let's blanket this land with the red, white, and blue.

Let's send a message of unity to our elected officials that they simply cannot ignore. Tell them it's time to roll up their sleeves, ball up their knucklebones, and start taking care of their own. They will listen. They have no choice. Collectively, we out vote everyone. We have the power. Now, let's make it work.

There is no reason, whatsoever, as to why our children's children shouldn't enjoy the quality of life that we so enjoyed when we were growing up in Everett. Let's work together to give them that. They deserve that because we love them with all of our heart, and we love our country with all of our soul.

God Bless America!

Love it or leave it!