When PLUTO was a Planet

Maybe you remember. It wasn't all that long ago. Pluto was a planet. That's what we were told. Our solar system had nine planets. Our flag had forty-eight stars. Nobody owned two TV's. Not everyone had a car. And with that Babe Ruth curse still hanging low over our heads, the Red Sox couldn't win a pennant if their life depended on it.

It's hard to even imagine now how we could once walk into any corner drug store, sit down at the snack bar, and order a coke. There used to be more people lounging around in there at the soda fountain having a good gab for themselves than there were people picking up a prescription. And those who were waiting for a prescription didn't have to stand around in a mile long line for hours at a time waiting for a bottle of pills that cost a week's pay.

We take so much for granted. We never once thought that all of the corner drug stores would ever disappear, but they did. Sure, the big pharmacies stay open all night long, but they have to because that's how long they make you wait to pick up your prescription.

I'll tell you something else. Not once in all my years of doing business with Whitehill Pharmacy on the corner of Nichols and Ferry did they ever give me the wrong prescription. That's something I honestly can't say about the big nation-wide chain I do business with today.

And since we're on the subject of medicines, let me ask you this. How many times have you gone to the pharmacy to pick up the medicine that your doctor prescribed for you only to have the pharmacist tell you that he's got to give you something else instead? When you ask why, he tells you that "Your insurance provider insists that we give you something else."

In other words, it doesn't matter what my doctor thinks. All that matters is how much some insurance rep can scrape off the top to heap back onto the profit pile for his stock holders. They couldn't care less if I live or die, not to mention that I have no way of knowing as to whether or not that insurance rep has any medical qualifications at all.

What in god's name am I going to the doctor for anyway? I may as well cut out the middleman and go straight to the insurance rep and ask what ailments are on the pre-approved list. That way I can be sure not to catch anything that they won't cover. And they don't cover much believe you me.

Dental insurance? What is that? If you truly want to find out what dental insurance is then I suggest you dust off your ancient history book from Everett High School because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any information at all on that. The closest thing we've got today that even remotely resembles any form of dental insurance is a football helmet.

Unless of course, it's a dire emergency because they do cover that. They will cover a dental emergency provided that you broke your tooth by chewing on an iguana while standing naked at the bus stop on the corner of Union and Ferry waiting for the 110 Wonderland on the third Thursday of the month. Other than that you're shit out of luck.

Here's another thing. We just voted a whole new political party into power in congress. Why did we do that? That was our way of getting our message across loud and clear. We wanted a national health-care system just like our government reps enjoy. We wanted to completely dismantle the HMO system that undermines the oath of ethics our doctors and nurses were schooled into honoring. We also wanted to stop using our military might for nation building purposes (which presidential candidate, George W. Bush, promised he would never do). And we want those 38 million criminally insane illegal aliens who swear no allegiance to our country thrown out.

So what did they do? They allotted another 100 billion dollars to continue using our military might for nation building purposes. Where'd they get this money? They stripped it off the Medicare budget that's supposed to take care of our elderly. Now they're looking for ways to help finance our participation into the very health care system we told them to dismantle. If that don't beat all, they now want to take the Social Security funds that we paid into and give them to those criminally insane illegal aliens.

Does any of this make any sense at all to you?

I'm sorry, but there's one thing about my growing up in Everett that I'd like to straighten out once and for all. Apparently, everything I know is wrong. I'm not having any trouble with the lessons I'm learning through my life experiences. What seems to trouble me are all of those things they taught me in school.

I wouldn't mind if not for the fact that I suffered dearly for every one of those supposedly wrong answers I wrote down on my test paper. First, they made these giant X marks all over my paper in red ink. Then they stood me up to berate me in front of the whole class. To add further insult to injury, they made me take those papers home to get them signed by my parents. All hell broke loose when my mother and father saw that.

Your whole life changes when you flunk a test at school. They single you out from the rest of the class and hold you up to public ridicule. They use you to set an example to everyone else as to what becomes of those who don't follow all the rules. And that little mind game works. Believe me, it works.

There are two lessons they completely drilled into our heads at school. The first one was how to behave like mindless obedient robots. The second one was to only believe what you read in the textbook and not what you observed in your everyday life. Those who refused to submit to the rhetoric were severely punished. Not only that, but they even went so far as to ridicule anyone who would even remotely think about associating with you.

If Tommy so much as dared to spin around in his seat to talk about what happened on Zorro last night, as he so often did, Miss Blake would jump all over him. "Thomas Copeland!" She'd shout. "We become like those whom we associate with (she must have read that in a psychology textbook somewhere). Do you want to wind up like Paul Huffman getting bad grades and being shunned by your peers?"

"No, Miss Blake," he'd answer. What else could he say? If he were to defend my honor she'd come down on him like a ton of bricks. Make no judgement on Tommy. It's not his fault. Hey, we were just kids. Your teacher held the power to make your life miserable in the palm of her hand. They wielded that power like a loaded AK47.

Let's face it. Little kids are self-conscious to a fault. That is the time of our lives when we are most vulnerable. Even if it really was no big deal to everybody else, when the teacher stood you up to ridicule in front of the whole class you felt like the laughing stock of the century. They made you feel like you had the word "LOSER" written all over your face.

Even on your way home from school you imagined that everyone else was talking about how stupid you are. That's the last thing you'd want all of those pretty girls in your class to think. And that is precisely what you do think when one of them looks over at you, leans over and whispers something to her group of friends, and then they all look back at you and laugh. It makes you want to go through life with a bag pulled down over your head.

If that alone isn't enough stress to deal with, you've got to make up your mind as to whether you should tell your mother that you've got something from school for her to sign as soon as you get in the door or wait until after supper. That's where your street smarts come in real handy.

Never mind what they say in those Coronet Educational Films about "the right thing to do" or anything you've ever read about "responsibility" in a textbook. Trust me, if they can be wrong about Pluto being a planet then they can be wrong about anything. The right thing to do is to trust your instincts. That's what I did.

Nine times out of ten I did not tell my mother that I had something for her to sign until we sat down at the supper table. Yes, she got even angrier for my not telling her before this, but look at it this way. If I told her as soon as I got in from school she would have grounded me right then and there. I would have spent the whole afternoon listening to her rant and rave about how I better buckle down and pay more attention in school against the backdrop of all those giggling children out there on Arlington Street playing hot beans or stickball.

Doing it this way I still got to go out and play all afternoon. The only down side is that I added yet another lecture to the string of reprimands I was going to have to sit through that night. And yes, they'd tell me I was grounded and "Don't even think about going out to play tomorrow after school."

My dad's lectures were actually hysterical. I didn't dare laugh. He'd say, "When I was your age they gave me two double promotions." This is the guy who never got past the eighth grade and yet he's trying to convince me that he was some kind of child prodigy -- right? By his calculations he could have earned his Ph.D. by the age of twelve. Kind of makes you wonder as to why he dropped out of school in the eighth grade at the age of sixteen -- doesn't it?

Besides that, he claims he had hardships to endure when he went to school that were way beyond my wildest imagination. He had to walk barefoot through ten miles of snow uphill both ways lugging the equivalent of a sack full of coal on his back. I've often wondered what all that had to do with what I was going through. Even if he was a genius, what has that got to do with me? I am obviously not.

My mother, on the other hand, was more worried about what everybody else was going to think. "I don't want everyone to think that all my kids are stupid," she'd say. As if everybody gathered at the bus stop in Everett Square was talking about Paul Huffman's grades in school. I mean really. Does she honestly think that the Huffman's on Arlington Street are the center of everybody else's universe?

"Stanley next door always gets good grades and he's a year younger than you," my mother often said. What I want to know is, "What has age got to do with it?" By her line of reasoning everybody born after me must be less intelligent than I am. Man, there's gotta be a lot of really stupid people on the planet by now because I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer by any stretch of the imagination.

At any rate, I've been through this routine so many times now that I know it by heart. That is precisely why I waited until suppertime to tell them about that paper they had to sign for school. For you see, time really does heel all wounds. If I come home from school tomorrow without anything else for them to sign, they'll think everything is hunky dory again. So the idea is to come bubbling into the house as if I had a great day at school.

If I do that my mother will let her guard down and go easy on me. Chances are, she'll pardon my punishment with a stern warning, "I'll let you go this time, but if you come home with one more paper like that you'll never see the light of day again." And you know me. I'd promise her the moon and the stars if it will get me off the hook.

So it's like I said, if I do tell my mother about that paper she's supposed to sign the moment I get in from school I'm still going to have to listen to all those lectures. Except, of course, the one about how angry she is that I waited until suppertime to tell her about it. Taking all things into consideration, the worse thing to do is to tell her about it the moment I get home. I get one less lecture, but I lose that whole afternoon of playing outside.

Have you ever noticed how the kids seem to have a much better time than usual when you can't join in on the fun? Even still, it was a riot and a half to sit at the window and watch. I bit my lip sometimes so not to burst out laughing. I didn't want my mother to think that I was having a good time. She's liable to tell me to get away from the window. After all, punishment means not having any fun.

I never realized how funny the kids on Arlington Street actually were until I sat and watched them play from my second story window. You talk about the Little Rascals? Man, that was us all over. You would not believe some of the things I've seen from up here. Getting a bird's eye view looks nothing at all like what you see at the street level. Trust me on that one.

I saw Joey pick his nose and eat it. I watched Jacky pull Wayne down onto the ground so he could sit on his head and fart. And believe it or not, I actually saw David pick up a dog pooh pooh and throw it at his little brother. And you're wondering why they used to tell you to stay away from the kids on Arlington Street?

See all the fun I was missing out on? That was a heavy load for any little kid to have to bear for just a couple of wrong answers. All things being relative, some of those answers are no longer wrong. I'm saying that just in case this erratic government of ours ever gets the notion to recall all of our diplomas and demand that we all go back to school for re-education. You never know what these knot heads are gonna come up with next.

I can see it now. Some elderly guy down at the Golden Age Circle will get a letter from Ted Kennedy's office saying that he didn't spend enough time in school because he took the summer vacations off. And since his school days weren't extended from dusk until dawn, they've revoked his High School diploma. Now they're demanding that he show up at school or they'll file a complaint of truancy against him. Just in case that happens, I'd like some of those grades they gave me back in the old Everett school system re-evaluated.

To start with, there are not nine planets in our solar system, there's only eight. Pluto is not a planet. It's a cartoon caricature of a dog. If you don't believe me you can check it out on National Geographic's web site. I had Barry for science at the Fairfield Whitney and that guy owes me an apology.

Okay, I had Cecere for civics at the Parlin. He marked me wrong when I answered that the candidate with the lowest popular vote wins. President Bush proved my theory during the year 2000 election. So I did get that one right after all.

And another thing, I'm still a little peeved over getting marked wrong on that math problem that asked me to find "x." I found it. It was right there after the word "find." I circled it, drew an arrow pointing to it and wrote, "there it is." What more could they possibly want?

So there it is. Don't believe everything you hear on the news. Don't believe everything you read in a textbook. And by all means, don't believe everything they teach you in school. That reminds me of something that Mark Twain once said. He said, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education." But of course, we already know all that anyway, don't we? We learned it the hard way because, "We're from Everett!"

Where Have You Been?

Where in god's name have you been? I thought I lost you. Truth is, I've just experienced a series of unfortunate events that are really not worth going into any more detail than that. It never seems to fail that every time life seems to be going my way that something pops up out of nowhere and throws the whole kit and caboodle ass over teakettle.

The important thing is that you're here now. All that really matters is that we're back together again. So come on in and set a spell. We'll put the kettle on. It just so happens that Carol and I were just talking about you. I kid you not.

Carol was just saying how I better get back to the keyboard and write something before you completely forget about me altogether. And I was just saying, "Hey, I'm an artist. I don't feeling like talking to anybody right now." Artists get like that sometimes.

Artists tend to go off on a tangent from time to time and totally disappear from view. When they return it's as if they never left. They don't know what to say when everybody gathers around and asks, "Where did you go?" One reason is because they don't always remember where they went.

Artists need to break out of the habit and routine sometimes so they don't go completely over the edge. It's not as if they actually go anywhere physically. From the artist's perspective, it somewhat like waking up out of a deep sleep only to discover the world hasn't changed any, but their studio is filled with drawings, sketches, and paintings that weren't there before they left. Curiously enough, they all have my name on them. Maybe that fairy tale about the little elves in the shoe shop wasn't such a fable after all. You never know.

Back in my glory days at Everett High I used to venture away from home for weeks at time. As far as my mother was concerned, I had virtually disappeared from the face of the planet. There were in fact, two very different explanations for my having disappeared at the time. Those of you who partied with the hippies up in the back hills of Glendale Park certainly knew the first explanation only too well. You were right there along with me.

As soon as I showed up at home my mother would say, "Well, well, the prodigal son returns. Where have you been?"

"Nowhere special," I'd say.

"Who were you with all this time?"

"Nobody."

"What were you doing?"

"Nothing."

"For cry's sakes, Paul. You mean to tell me that you've been gone for three days but you didn't go anywhere, you weren't with anybody, and you didn't do anything? And you expect me to believe that?"

"Yeah," is all I'd say before collapsing on my bed and falling asleep for the next day and a half to recuperate from not having gone anywhere, or seeing anybody, or doing anything.

If you grew up in the forties you're probably thinking, "You owe your mother some sort of an explanation." If you grew up in the fifties you're probably thinking, "Wow, I'd never get away with anything like that." And if you grew up in the sixties you're probably thinking, "I know where you were, dude. You were party hopping."

That's exactly the first explanation of where I was back in my high school days. I was out party hopping. We'd start partying up in the back hills of Glendale Park on a Friday night. Every couple of hours or so you'd hook up with someone else and venture off to another party somewhere. You'd vaguely remember seeing the moon come up and the sun go down a couple of times in your travels. Three days later some girl you've never seen before in your life comes up to you and says, "I had a really nice time. Thank you."

That's about all you remember. And now your mother's hanging over you like a rusty ax shouting, "I want to know where you've been." With your last exasperated gasp you moan, "So would I."

You're right. I do owe my mother some sort of explanation. The truth is, there's so much to tell that I'd need some sort of database to compile and organize all this information into an orderly fashion. The closest thing we had to that back in the 1960's was a ledger. So where do you list sitting around in a circle with a weird looking bunch of social misfits laughing hysterically at the sidewalk? Is that a credit or a debit?

The other reason I used to disappear is because I really did need to get off by myself from time to time. I'd pack up my guitar and my duffel bag and thumb a ride up to Gloucester. Then I'd book a room in the Vista Motel that looked out over the crashing waves and draw and compose until I fell asleep. I was off in my own little world.

So how do you explain all that to your mother? If I told her about the party scene she'd have gone ballistic. If I told her I went off to a motel to draw she'd say, "Why would you throw your money away on a motel when you already have your own room?"

There comes a time when an artist needs to get away from the hustle and bustle of the every day world to get creative. There's nothing worse than getting knee deep into one of your masterpieces only to have your mother storm into your bedroom and shout, "Go down to Anna's and get me a loaf of bread."

There's a lot my mother wouldn't understand. When it comes to being an artist, there's a lot that most people wouldn't understand. It's nobody fault. People think one way and artists think another. That reminds me of the time my mother went ballistic because I had a girl in my room after school one day. You could just imagine what was going on in her one track mind.

What happened was that I got to talkin to one of the girls in my class during a study period in my junior year at Everett High. We somehow got on the subject of music. What a big surprise - right? She had just started teaching herself how to play guitar and said that she was dying to learn how to pick the lead intro to the Rolling Stone's song, "Tell Me You're Coming Back to Me."

Back then I was a big Rolling Stone's fan and could play anything the Rolling Stones could dish out. When I told her that, she begged me to teach her how to play that riff. So we made a date to meet after school and go back to my house so I could teach her that.

We had a fun afternoon in my room. All we were doing was playing Rolling Stone's records and I was showing her how to play different guitar riffs from some of their songs. My mother was out in the kitchen the whole time. Yes, she was pretty and yes, I wanted to jump on her bones, but I didn't. I was a good boy that whole afternoon and kept to my word. That in its self is a major accomplishment coming from an Everett kid, let me tell ya.

After she left my mother had a cow. "Don't you dare ever bring another girl into your bedroom after school," she shouted. "I've never been so embarrassed in all my life. I'm probably going to get a call from that girl's parents saying she's in a family way and they're going to want to know why I didn't do anything to stop it. You've put me in an awkward position."

My jaw dropped. I mean honestly. How could she possibly think we were rolling around in the hay with her not more than ten feet away? She could hear everything that was going on in my room. So I asked her, "Ma, did you ever hear more than a ten second span when I wasn't strumming on my guitar?"

"No," she answered thoughtfully.

"Well, then when, in god's name, did I have the time to get that girl in trouble? I mean really. If I could get a girl in trouble and play guitar at the same time I'd be famous. I'd be way beyond anything you ever saw on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour, I can assure you of that."

You've got to look at from my mother's point of view to understand where she's coming from. She comes from a generation who thought it was inappropriate for a girl to call a boy on the telephone, let alone spend an afternoon alone in his bedroom. And I'll be honest with ya. She's not too far off the mark. If she hadn't been home that day things might have gone quite differently.

It's all the way you look at it, isn't it? That's what an artist does. An artist must look at everything with a fierce intensity so as to capture the image in his or her mind's eye with accurate detail. They don't judge. They just capture the moment with their mind's eye so they can recreate the scene on canvas. My memory banks are filled with millions of random images of growing up in Everett.

The amazing thing about your mind's eye is that it not only captures the image, but also the motions, the sounds, and the scents of the moment. Every little thing I do conjures up yet another barrage of memories from those golden days of my youth growing up in Everett.

Every time I pop into the local grocer for some odds and ends I think about the time Stanley's mother sent me and him down to Vinnie's on the corner of High and Ferry for a jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise. We were in the first grade at the time. All the way down to the store we skipped and sang "Hellmann's mayonnaise" so not to forget what it was she sent us down there for.

As you might of guessed, when we got there we forgot what it was we were supposed to get, so Stanley bought a box of Cheerios. Needless to say, his mother sent us back down to the store to bring those back to get the mayonnaise. Everything went smoothly the second time around because his mother called Vinnie while we were on our way back to tell him what we were supposed to get in the first place. So much for the attention span of a couple of first graders - right?

Every time I step into my kitchen I enter into a world of wonder as compared to the kitchen I was accustomed to as a little kid down on Arlington Street. When I get hungry now all I gotta do is grab something, throw it in the microwave, and I'm chowing down in three minutes tops. Even mashing it up so I can eat it without teeth is no big deal. All I gotta do is throw it in the blender, push a button, and bingo bango, it's liquefied in seconds flat. When I'm done I just throw everything in the dishwasher and I'm out of here.

We didn't have a blender or a microwave growing up. Nothing cooked in three minutes flat. It took a half an hour or more to warm the oven up. If you were in a hurry you had to settle for a piece of toast. That was the only thing you could conjure up on such short notice.

If you wanted to liquefy anything you got out the cutting board and sliced, and diced, and chopped, and smashed until your arms got sore. By the time you were finished preparing your food you were too wore out to eat it. The labor involved with preparing the most simple of things just wasn't worth the effort half the time so I ate a lot of toast.

I didn't put it on a plate, I put it on a napkin. And I didn't butter it either because I didn't want to have to wash the knife afterwards. The only dish washer we had back then were our own two hands. That's probably why so few of us gained any weight back then. It was too much work.

The only riddle modern kitchenry hasn't yet solved is the noise factor. Maybe it's me, but whenever I get something to eat in the middle of the night I make an ungodly racket. My mother used to come charging out into the kitchen out of a deep sleep thinking something came crashing through the roof. Here it is some forty odd years later and my wife does the very same thing.

I can't help it. Trying to quietly get a fork out of the kitchen drawer is like playing with pickup sticks. And it never seems to fail that when you're trying your damnedest to be real quiet so not to wake anybody up is when the fork slips out of your hand and crashes back in on top of all the other utensils. Either that or it falls on the floor so when you bend over to pick it up you whack your head on the opened drawer. Now everybody wakes up because they can hear you out there in the kitchen holding onto your head doing that "ooh eeh aah" step dance.

Even stopping to fill up with gas conjures up the memory of a long gone era. Stopping for gas today is a very impersonal experience. You pull up along side of a gas pump that looks more like a vending machine than it does anything else. You don't even see a human being. Nobody shows up to check anything. If you do happen to run into a problem you've got to stand in line and wait your turn to try to talk to somebody who barely understands what you're trying to say.

If all goes well, you don't even have to look at another human being. All you gotta do is slide your card, fill your tank, and you're gone. If you need your windshield cleaned you've got to do it yourself. And that only happens if the attendant thinks to put any water in the tub where they keep the squeegee, which is a rarity in itself.

Remember what it was like to stop for gas when we were kids? Your dad pulled into Spencer's on Ferry Street and nobody had to get out of the car. They pumped your gas, checked the air pressure in your tires, checked your oil, and washed your windshield. After having spent a whopping seventy-nine cents to fill your tank they gave you S & H green stamps, a lollipop, and sometimes a free trinket or some such to thank you for your patronage. Tell that to your grandchildren and they'll think you're pulling their leg.

Hearing the teenagers clowning around outside really triggers an avalanche of memories. It reminds me of my brother, Billy, and his friends hanging out on our front porch. Whenever they got bored they started ragging on each other. And it always escalated into that proverbial "no go" zone of ranking out each other's mother.

We're talking Everett kids here. Outsiders call us dirty fighters. Listening to the things these kids used to say about each other's mother would make no wonder. They'd laugh it off as if it wasn't really getting to them, but before long they'd be wresting each other to the ground out on the sidewalk.

I used to hide inside the front hall and peek through the mail slot in the door to listen to these comedians to go back and forth on each other. I'd have to bite my lip so not to burst out laughing because if my brother, Billy, caught me he'd send me back upstairs. I couldn't risk that because that was the only place where a third grader could get any real sex education back in 1961.

The one I'll never forget is when Donny said to Artie, "Hey, I saw your mother yesterday."

"Oh yeah, where'd you see her?"

"She was running bare ass down Arlington Street with a mattress on her back yelling "curb service!" What a smack across the lips Artie gave him for that one. I can still hear the "whack" of the back of his hand even to this day.

Every time I hear a comedian tell a fart joke on TV it reminds me of the time that me and Jacky totally lost it down at Whitehill Pharmacy on the corner of Nichols and Ferry. We were sitting at the snack counter having a vanilla coke when this really old guy came hobbling into the store.

Every step that old timer took towards the pharmacy counter at the back of the store made him fart. And it's not as if this guy was squeezing them out either. He sounded like a string of firecrackers on the Fourth of July. We laughed so hard that the coke came running out of our noses. We got so out of hand that they threw us out of the store.

Tell me. Is there anyone out there who has never had something like that happen to them? No, I don't mean the fart thing. What I mean is doesn't it always seem like when you're with one of your friends in a situation when you should be on your best behavior that you get struck with an uncontrollable attack of the giggles? And the harder you try to stifle it the more out of control it gets.

It's been years since I've had a good laugh like that. That's probably because we tend to take life way too serious when we grow up. I honestly believe that having a good hearty laugh is just as cleansing to your soul as a good cry. You actually do need both. And we have all certainly experienced both of those extremes in our lifetimes because "We're from Everett!"

It's Only Money

Please try to understand. I'm from Everett. In my heart of hearts, I will always be a man of modest means. There's really no sense at all in taking me for a walk around the Madison Avenue side of the General Motors Building. There's virtually nothing at all on Fifth Avenue, or even on Bleeker Street for that matter, that I can either afford or understand. I certainly do not identify with any of the shops on Broadway, and I do not shop at Nieman Marcus. That is just not me. That is not how I grew up.

Have you ever shopped the stores in Manhattan? Do they make any sense to you? If so, then please bear with me, and if you would be so kind then by all means, try to explain it to me. They have a shop that carries about ten pairs of shoes, not styles, just pairs. Each one is aesthetically showcased in its own glass dome complete with 3 point theatrical lighting and costs in the vicinity of several hundreds of dollars.

The shop itself is larger than a baseball diamond and the ceiling rises above the ozone layer. Orchestral bells reminiscent of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata chime ever so softly as you step across the threshold. And the very moment you do, a regiment of clerks dressed in all the flair of Beverly Hills proper will alight upon you begging mercifully to satisfy your every footwear fetish. That is until the Everett side of you shows through and you boldly shout, "You got a public bathroom in here? I gotta pee my brains out."

They'll look at you as if you are the most uncouth hayseed to ever trod the boards, but don't let that intimidate you one bit. You're the real deal, not them. They are as phony as the day is long. Keep in mind that they work there. Chances are they can't afford to buy anything in that store either. No, they don't own the place. The owner is down in the Bahamas somewhere sipping on a Mint Julep wondering how the other half lives.

Who is the other half anyway? Well, I guess you could say that's us. We're the other half. We're from Everett. We go back a long ways. Now that I think of it, that's exactly what we do here, isn't it? We come here to go back a long ways. So let's do that.

With all their pomp and circumstance, what those high society sophisticates miss out on is how much fun it really is to drop the masquerade and just enjoy being yourself. That's what growing up in Everett was all about. We had way too much fun just being ourselves to waste any of our precious time pretending to be something that we're not.

What's the use in trying to put on airs anyway? Most of us barely had two nickels to rub together. Besides, we didn't have any real fancy shmancy shops in Everett anyway. We didn't need them. Heck, you could buy a brand new shirt and a string tie for school for less than three bucks at Gorins. And I'm talking a time when a wheat back penny, an Indian head nickel, and a liberty dime had real spending power.

When was the last time you saw a liberty dime or an Indian nickel with a buffalo on the back? I still come across a wheat back penny every so often. It's rare when it happens but I do get one from time to time. I'm always saying I'm gonna hold onto it but I usually spend it before I get the chance to set it aside in my penny jar.


My brother, Billy, was the one who got me hooked on the idea of keeping a penny jar in the first place. He kept an old pickle jar under his bed. When he got home at night he'd sort out his pennies and throw them in that jar. When times got tight and he needed a pack of Winstons he'd dip into his pennies. Of course, back then cigarettes only cost about twenty-eight cents a pack.

Another thing wheat back pennies remind me of is how I used to dash down to Cassie's on Ferry Street as soon as I got my hands on one. Those darn things burned a great big hole in my pocket. My brother, Carl, was an avid coin collector when he was a kid. God only knows how he did it. I couldn't care less about how rare my penny was knowing there was a wad of Bazooka bubble gum or a malted milk ball down around the corner just waiting for me.

Seems hardly worth getting up out of bed for a penny nower days, doesn't it? Truth is, when we were little kids you could actually buy something for a penny. And it's not just the fact that a penny had spending power that made the experience all that wonderful as it was that you were about to go get something that was yours and yours alone.

Hey, nobody minds sharing, but when you only have a penny everyone accepts the fact that you're not about to score anything big enough to break up and pass around. Even still, a penny was enough to calm a sudden urge to pacify your sweet tooth.

It didn't take much to get us all worked up and excited. Our expectations were small. They certainly had to be for the girls if they were gonna date us - right?

Hey look, I know everyone's different. And I realize that we all have a preconceived notion as to which personality types suit us best. But let's face it, girls are girls and guys are guys. We see things differently.

You think I've got a good memory? Just wait until you come up against an Everett girl. Man, they've got a memory that could rival the Encyclopedia Britannica. You'll find that out if you're ever so foolish as to call them on the carpet over something they said.

They'll come back at you and quote you verbatim over something you said twenty-five years ago. They'll not only remember the exact time and place when you said it, but they'll remember who else was there and what they were wearing at the time. Don't even go there. You can't win.

The first thing us guys from Everett learn about dating an Everett girl is that it is far easier to yes them to death then it is to argue with them. We're gonna go do what we want to do anyway so why bother fight about it? If there's two things a guy can't do to an Everett girl it's 1.) put his foot down, and 2.) look her in the eye when he's lying. As soon as he tries she'll snap him right back into his place so fast it will make his head swim.

It's like the time I called this girl I was seeing to tell her that I wouldn't be around on a Saturday night because all the guys were getting together to go see the New Way Sweeper's game down at Everett Stadium. She so sweetly replied, "Well, okay then. Just drop by the store (where she worked) sometime this afternoon because I need to tell you something." Sounds innocent enough - right?

If you've ever dated a girl from Everett then you already know what I was up against - don't you? I didn't at the time. Everett girls are so pretty that you just melt in the palm of their hands the moment they smile at you. Their secret lies within the same deadly seductiveness that a Venus Flytrap has over a fly. That's how they catch you so off guard. You can't possibly imagine the fire and the fury that lurks beneath those starlit innocent eyes.

So anyway, when I showed up where she worked later that afternoon, she greeted me with one of the most adorable little smiles you've ever seen in your life. She then excused herself, took hold of my arm and we stepped outside to have a quiet moment together. The "quiet" only lasted until she so gingerly closed the door behind her. From that moment on you could have heard her from the dark side of the moon.

There I stood with my arms crossed in the traditional stance of resistance taking it all in. I was determined to stand my ground. And even though it was a mild autumn afternoon, facing a barrage like that was like standing in front of a wind tunnel. No, I didn't get a word in edgewise.

After all was said and done, I distinctly remember the two of us strolling hand in hand back into the store. We had settled our differences. Apparently, it was I who had it all wrong in the first place. As it turned out, I was going to be available for Saturday night after all.

Please don't even ask how it is that we came to that conclusion. Everett girls have a system of deductive reasoning that gets as complicated as the wiring schematic on a CPU mother board. I got lost a long time ago somewhere between "you promised me" and "I thought you said." Had I not conceded we'd be standing there some forty years later still arguing the point. A guy can only take so much and Everett girls can be relentless to a fault.

So now we're standing in the middle of the store and this girl is telling me step by step what I need to do to get ready for our Saturday night out. At the time, my sister, Julie, was married to a guy named, Dave. They lived in Malden. On the weekends they'd let me borrow their Chevy Impala. So this girl tells me to go get Dave's car, fill it up with gas, and then go get my haircut because I'm starting to look a bit shabby. Do you believe that? And I'm standing there listening attentively. That's what gets me.

She wants me to take her to dinner, then to the drive-in, and supply the refreshments, if you know what I mean. So now I'm telling her she's gone way over my budget and she needs to kick in a little bit. Now she wants me to open my wallet so she can see how much is in there. This is my girlfriend I'm talking about, not my mother.

Sure, I protested, not that it did me any good. Like I said, we're talking about an Everett girl here. If she's not satisfied with what she sees in my wallet she'll make me take my shoes and socks off. There are no flies on these girls I'm telling ya right now.

Not until she's completely convinced that I'm not lying about how much money I have will she agree to kick in. And there's only one sure fired way of convincing her that I'm telling the truth and that is by telling her the absolute truth. You can't look an Everett girl in the eye and lie because it doesn't work. Take my word for it.

When she does finally agree to kick in it comes with more strings attached than an orchestral harp. And of course you know you're gonna have to pay it all back. Yes, with interest.

So finally, after going over an in-depth list of what each and every item is going to cost, and deducting the total sum from the amount in my wallet, she holds her clenched fist over my opened palm. Before she drops so much as a single cent into my hand she reiterates how soon she expects me to pay this all back. And as her fingers slowly begin to uncurl she tells me, "If you need more we'll talk about it."

Now this is what really blows me away about Everett girls. They come across with this Betty Davis tough girl image complete with all the rough edges. They will stand toe to toe with ya and never back down. But when you need them to come through for ya, man, do they ever. She dropped a couple twenties into the palm of my hand. We're talking 1969 here. A couple of twenties back then would get you the moon and the stars.

That's the way it is with Everett girls. You gotta play by their rules or you don't play at all. If you're not willing to hand them the reigns then it's never gonna work out. But let me tell ya something. It's all worth it. They are everything you could ever want in a girl.

When they wrap their arms around you, you feel like a man. They'll coddle you like a child, and they'll scold you unmercifully when you get a little out of control, but if you pledge your loyalty to them, and make good on that pledge, they will stand beside you through thick and thin until the end of time.

Thinking back on all that now makes me wonder about how all those relationships that were once so passionate came to an end? I know kids I went to school with who knew each other since kindergarten, started dating when they were at the Parlin, dated all through Everett High, and are still married today. How did they do that?

It's gotta be love. What else could it be? They are certainly not the norm; I can guarantee you that. Let's face it, if you grew up with us during the hippie generation then you can count the people you know who never got divorced on the fingers of one hand. We mastered the art of getting divorced.

How often has this happened? You run into a kid you used to hang out with from high school. The first thing you ask is "So, are you married?" And nine times out of ten he'll say, "Nope, I'm divorced." If it happened recently he'll have this solemn look across his face when he says it. It if happened a while back he'll be grinning from ear to ear. It's almost as if he's bragging about it.

All this talk about "Love, Everett Style" has got me thinking about how today's topic all ties in together. For you see, one of the biggest things that tear people apart is money trouble. We have no choice but to vent all of our energy on the pursuit of money. If we don't, we'll wind up hungry in the middle of the street.

What people fail to understand is that money troubles are not always their fault. There are countless of unforeseen calamities beyond your control that could befall you at any moment. A sudden illness, a natural catastrophe, or the company you dedicated your whole life to could fold up shop and move south of the border in search of cheaper labor. Nothing truly makes you appreciate what you've got like having the rug pulled out from under you.

Money problems breed hardships. Hardships breed despondency. Despondent people have a harder time clearing the hurtles because they need a helping hand sometimes and nobody comes forward to give them that. Instead, they get ridiculed for not having their act together. Truth is, many of them did at one time until fate crept up and sucker punched them from their blind side.

If you ask me, money truly is the root of all evil. It turns siblings against each other and tears families apart. It's all so easy to laugh and say, "Hey, for the right price I'd do just about anything." And some people actually do go so far as to take a human life for money.

They tell me that "money doesn't buy happiness." I used to scoff at that one myself. Think about it though. Money can buy useful connections in influential places. There's no doubt about that. But if you've only got one life to live, do you honestly want to throw it away frivolously on a shallow and meaningless existence total devoid of any heartfelt emotions? Wouldn't you rather make this journey surrounded by people who honestly care about you? I know I would.

Hey, it's only money. You can't take it with you anyway. And here's another thing money can't buy. Niether the richest man nor woman on the face of this earth can afford to buy the memories you lived through growing up in Everett. Yeah, they can come here and read about them but they can't buy them because they're free.

They're free because they're priceless. They're priceless because their net worth supercedes any monetary value. They come from the heart. And they belong to us. And we openly share them with the whole wide world because that's just the kind of people we are. We're that special. After all, "We're from Everett!"

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Rearranging the letters in "SEVERE QUARTET" you will reveal yet another famous Everett landmark that I've often mentioned in my writings.
.

What's It All About?

One of the biggest fallacies I've ever heard in my lifetime is that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." I've watched people in their seventies at the local library sending emails, backing up their internet favorites to a disk, and believe it or not, hand coding web pages.

I almost fell out of my chair when this old timer turned to me and asked, "Do you happen to know the javascript that will mask my email address from the search engine spiders?" I looked back at him and said, "We've come a long way, haven't we?"

If I went back in time to catch up to this guy when he was in high school and asked him to list everyone he knows who can take a photograph with a telephone, he'd only give me one name, Dick Tracy. If I asked him what a scanner was, he'd tell me it was a radio for listening to police calls. And if I asked him what a spell checker was, he'd probably hand me a dictionary.

We'd be back at a time when having the most toys, the prettiest girl, and the coolest car was the "in" thing to do. Nobody even cares about that stuff nower days. We all want nice things, but nobody's got the time for a game of "one-upmanship" anymore. The way I see it is that if you've got more toys than me then good luck to ya.

There's just too much going on in the world today. Heck, I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with myself let alone trying to keep up with you, too. From the very first moment I peaked up over that crib rail down there on Arlington Street I knew I was going to have a hell of a time trying to keep up with the rest of you.

It's a fast world. Maybe that's why we trip and fall over absolutely nothing at all sometimes. Hey, the planet does revolve somewhere around 900 miles an hour. It's bound to trip us up every once in awhile regardless of what Einstein's theory of relativity says.

When you think about it though, back then we didn't need to go out and buy a special gadget every time we had a chore to do. It didn't cost us a fortune to satisfy our thirst for the easy way out. We used what we had and made those things do what we needed them to do.

Take that brick wall across the street from my house down there on Arlington Street for instance. A kid today would see that wall for nothing more than its face value. We had insight way beyond our years back then. Let me show how many different things we could do with that brick wall.

First and foremost, that was your batter in a game of "Off the Wall." And believe me when I tell ya, many a nine-inning game was staged right there on that sidewalk with that brick wall. Such famous Everett people as Charlie Johnson, Pat Hughes, and yes, even Paul Huffman played "Off the Wall" against that brick wall.

It was also our official catcher when we played stickball. Not one pitch ever got past that catcher. We even had a batters box drawn in chalk on the face of that wall so there'd be no arguing as to whether your pitch was a ball or a strike. So when you think about it, it wasn't just a catcher, it was an umpire, too. That wall has seen hundreds of baseball hours in its day, believe you me.

You know what else it was? It was a community message board. And you didn't have to sign up for a free membership to use it either. All you had to do was saunter on over there with a piece of chalk and you could upload your message instantly.

You should have seen all the messages people wrote for the whole neighborhood to read. Amongst my favorite were, "Jacky sucks," "For a good time call DU7-5555," and the world renowned, "F you." Come to think of it. Was there ever a brick wall in Everett somewhere that somebody didn't eventually write the "F" word on?

That brick wall was also the community sharpening stone. That's where you sharpened your wooden sword into a point when you played pirate. It's also where the neighbors sharpened their garden stakes to prop up their tomato plants.

And last, but by no means least, it was a target for those greasers back in the early sixties who threw their empties out the window whenever they came zooming down the street late at night in a stolen car. That did happen. See? Everett wasn't full of a bunch of "goody two-shoes" back then either.

On the other side of that wall was the American Storm Shield Foundry. That's where they assembled aluminum storm windows and doors. That wall enclosed a courtyard full of giant spools of wiring and boxes of all sizes. Late at night we'd hop over that wall and raid the place. Man, there was enough junk in there to keep a gang of little kids busy for days on end.

The spools that the wire came on were huge and made of solid wood. They were bigger than our coffee table. My dad had one out on our back porch for years. He, and his friends, Irv, Jack, and Wallace, would sit out there on a hot summer night blowing the suds off a couple and laying their spare change down over a hand of cards on that makeshift table.

Oh man, if I could only take you there right now. My back porch was up on the second floor. You could see forever from that porch. You could certainly see into the Irish nurse's back windows across the way in Gray's apartment building on Ferry Street. They used to lean out their windows in nothing more than their bras to hang their laundry out on the clotheslines.

Now you know why all the neighborhood guys gathered en mass on my back porch. If you look out over the railing you'd see all the bigger teenagers hanging out on my back steps down below. And no matter how much of a ruckus that bunch stirs up, a dead silence falls across that crowd as soon as one of those nurses hangs out one of those windows.

That's when my dad would turn to me and say, "Hey Paul, go in and get us another beer out of the fridge like a good boy." And they'd all burst out laughing when I'd say, "If I gotta go now I'm telling Ma why it's so quiet out here." That got him off my back, let me tell ya.

They played cribbage. To me, watching people play cribbage is about as exciting as watching paint dry. What I did like was watching the transformation that came over them as the empties mounted up. They'd drop a nickel and not even bother to bend over to pick it up.

As the evening wore on, and the empties piled up, they'd forget all about it as soon as it happened. If they did spin around to see where that nickel landed, I'd say, "Hey, I think that nurse is about to hang out that window over there." That always diverted their attention. On a good night I'd score a half a dozen nickels without even drawing a single card.

Okay, so you want some real entertainment? Come on. Let's go downstairs and hang out with the teenagers for a little bit. Just let me explain something to ya before we get there. You've really got to understand the kids from Everett to appreciate them.

We're not talking about Wellesley or Newton here. We're talking about Everett. You lock two Everett kids up in a room long enough and I'm telling you right now, somebody's gonna wind up with a fat lip.

I don't mean to give you outsiders the wrong impression. Everett kids love each other with a passion unequalled anywhere else in the world. They don't break out into a fistfight because they hate each other. Kids from Everett have this inborn trait that if they don't get into a good scrap every once in a while, they'll get all frustrated and depressed.

Just because somebody from Everett starts smacking you around doesn't mean he doesn't like you. On the contrary, that may actually be the start of something good. Think of it this way. They're not only famous for talking with their hands, they're also known for using the back of our hands when they want to make a point. You know what I'm saying?

Take a look at these guys. Let's start with Mikey. He's always got a pack of Lucky's rolled up in the sleeve of his tee shirt. Besides the one dangling from the corner of his lip, he's got another one waiting in the wings tucked up behind his ear. In one smooth motion he'll take one last drag before he flicks that spent butt halfway across the yard.

Watch what happens when he wins the kitty. He'll blow a smoke ring out of the corner of his mouth as he reaches across to cup the kitty. "Come to papa," he'll say with that big "you know what" eating grin.

"What do you think you're doin?" Donny snaps at him.

"What's it look like I'm doin?"

"You didn't even see my cards yet."

"I don't need to see your cards, man. I know what you got."

Mikey counts cards. He can sit there and watch the cards fall and figure out whose got what. And he ain't cheatin either. That's what pisses everybody off. Almost every time he takes the kitty somebody goes mental on him. It wouldn't be so bad if Mikey didn't twist the knife every time he won the kitty. Like that night he really hit a nerve with Artie.

That does it," Artie said. "I'm gonna learn how to count cards, too."

"Yeah, right," Mikey laughed. "As if a Trade School kid could count above ten without taking off his shoes."

Artie slapped Mikey so hard across the kisser that he knocked him all the way down the stairs backwards. And you don't honestly think Mikey just stood there and took that, do ya? Just because he was only half of Artie's size doesn't mean he was going to let Artie get away with that. They came to serious blows.

The whole gang had to jump in and pull them apart before they beat each other into a pulp. What you'd never suspect is that these two guys were the best of friends. Let an outside try to smack one of these guys around and they'd have to fight them both. By the end of the night they'll be laughing the whole thing off and needling each other over who got in the best shot.

It's times like these when a little kid like me gets to tag a few new words onto his vocabulary. Another good thing about when the tempers flare is that the kitty goes flying. After the teenagers cleared out I'd comb the steps with my fingertips to find the spare change they left behind in the dark. I make more money just sitting quietly in the background than I do on my paper route sometimes.

What a crazy bunch, I'm telling ya. I'd watch them standing on the corner having a contest to see who could last the longest while holding a puddle of burning lighter fluid in the palm of their hand. And they didn't just light their cigarettes either. They sparked one up. What a work of art that was. They did that three-fingered flick that popped the lighter open and sparked it up all in one motion. They were just too cool for words.

And you talk about brotherhood? When Billy's engine blew out in his Rambler American they were all down there together in my backyard knocking that thing apart. They worked from sun up to sun down, day after day, covered in grease and oil until that thing purred like a kitten. If one of them hurt, they all hurt. If one of them scored, they all scored.

They were the greasers. Elvis, the Everly Brothers, James Dean, and Bobby Darin were their idols. They combed their hair back every five minutes or so. And when they greeted each other they didn't just say, "How's it going?" They said,

Well, that's life.

What's life?

A magazine.

Where'd you get it?

Down the corner.

How much?

A quarter.

Well, that's life.

What's life?

There was this one time when the cops came down our street in the middle of the night to round everybody up. I was already in bed for the night when my room lit up with flashing blue and red lights that looked like a space ship was landing outside. When I looked out my window, I saw that the cops lining all the big kids up against the fence in front of my house.

One by one they pointed the flashlight in their eyes and questioned them. No matter what they said, the cop would say, "You're lying through your teeth." My mother went bonkers when she looked out and saw Billy getting pushed into the back of the paddy wagon with his hands cuffed behind his back.

They showed up in Malden District Court the very next day. Apparently, during a teacher's meeting up at the Horace Mann school one night somebody had vandalized all of the teacher's cars. Windshields got smashed, antennas and mirrors broken, and they even scratched cuss words into the paint on the hood of their cars.

The cops naturally assumed that these guys did it. When the judge heard that the only thing they had to go on was a sneaking suspicion, he threw the case out. "You can't prosecute these kids because you suspect them. You need proof," is exactly what he said.

Standing out on the front steps of the courthouse, my mother told Billy that he couldn't hang around with those kids anymore. "Be serious, Ma," Billy laughed. "These are the guys I grew up with since kindergarten. What am I supposed to say? He you guys can't come across the street to my house anymore cuz you're all bad kids. Get real, Ma. We're not guilty. We didn't do this."

"Well, the cops think you're guilty because of who you associate with," my mother scolded.

"Yeah, well that's their cross to bear," Billy shot back. "Nobody's gonna tell me how to live my life, especially not unqualified people who got their jobs through nepotism."

Later that night when they were all crowded around my front steps, I figured I'd find out, just out of curiosity, if these guys had actually done what the cops said they did. So I piped up and asked, "Hey, you guys made out like bandits today, no?"

Artie looked back at me and said, "We didn't get away with anything, kid. We were innocent this time. We may not be the next time around and the cops will look like they're just crying wolf. They don't stop to think before they throw their weight around sometimes. It doesn't take brains to become a cop. It takes connections."

Artie turned out to be the only one who stayed on the wrong side of the law after he grew up. Everybody else went on with their lives. It happens sometimes. Some people just get this attitude stuck in their craw and can't seem to shake it loose no matter how wrong it is.

In so many ways my generation, the hippie generation, was world's apart from theirs. By the time we were rolling doobies and playing guitar in the back hills of Glendale Park, they were off fighting in Nam. By the time we were all heading off to college, they were married with children. And for some inexplicable reason, by the time my kids were heading off to high school, that whole bunch had gone beyond the far horizon.

They remained friends till the bitter end. Well, except for my brother and Mikey who eventually had this big falling out that neither one would ever talk about. I never did find out what happened between them. At my brother's funeral Mikey came walking up to me with tears in his eyes. "I lost my best friend in the whole world before I ever got the chance to say I was sorry." That's exactly what he said. You could tell his heart was broken.

Donny was speechless. The tears in his eyes said it all. He reached out to me and shook his head with a sorrow so strong it was almost too much to bear. All he could muster up was enough strength to say, "It ain't fair, man. You know I mean?"

"Yeah, man, I know what you mean."

None of them lived to see the turn of the millenium. They were not only the juvenile delinquents of Arlington Street. They were the greasers from Everett. They cruised the Parkway with suicide knobs, fuzzy dice, and Chuck Berry blaring over their AM radios. They were the ones who yelled "Woo Woo Ginsberg" at the Adventure Car Hop for a free record. They were the Veterans who stepped up to the plate when duty called and shipped them off to fight in Vietnam.

It is virtually impossible for me to tell you about them without tears welling up in my eyes. They were more than just the big kids in my neighborhood. They were all like big brothers to me.

Artie taught me how to steal a hubcap with a single stroke of a screwdriver. Mikey taught me how important it was to move cool and slow when you wanted to score a chick. Donny taught me how important it was to keep aiming for the face whenever I got into a fistfight. And my big brother, Billy, taught me just about everything else I know. Perhaps the most important thing he ever taught me was "You gotta do what you gotta do."

If you ever get the chance, take a ride down Arlington Street sometime and take a look at the area I'm telling you about. That crowded little place is no bigger than the size of a small neighborhood playground. You could actually check it out on Windows Live Local. It's hard to image how many memories, and how much life has passed through that one little area over the years.

Just about everybody I mentioned here today is gone. What they left behind is a legacy of memories that culminates into a distinct characteristic of all that is American. Everything about them inspires me to write, and to draw, and to compose. Life would have been meaningless without them.

They were all an integral part of a much larger equation. An equation whose sum totals up into the extraordinary character and demeanor that so distinctly defines who we are. It's what makes us proud. It's what makes us Everett.

In my mind's eye right now I can see each one of their faces looking right back at me. I can see Mikey with that Lucky Strike tucked in behind his ear pointing at me and saying, "You know what your problem is, little man? You spend too much time with your head buried in that sketchpad. Get out and get some experience so you'll be able to deal with life on the street."

And then there's Artie. He was the first guy I ever knew who cut his name into his forearm with a razor blade. I'm seeing him right now with his hand on my shoulder and pointing into thin air with his other hand while teaching me his version of the facts of life. "Never mind the plate glass window, kid. The decal is too sensitive and you'll probably set off the alarm. Go down through the skylight. That's what I do."

Now I'm seeing Donny. He's pointing right at me saying, "Listen up, kid. No matter how big and how bad they are, you just keep aiming at their face. You keep tagging them in the face and you'll stagger them. Trust me."

And of course, there's my brother, Billy. Man, I could write volumes about this guy. Believe me when I tell ya, he's been gone for about 17 years now and it seems like only yesterday that he put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Don't be such a banana head your whole life. Follow your heart, kid. Everything you need to know is already inside you. You're a special kid with special talents. If you follow your heart you'll do all right. And don't ever forget that no matter what, like it or not, you gotta do what you gotta do."

So that's it right there, isn't it? Like it or not, you gotta do what you gotta do. There's just no two ways about it.

Let me tell ya something. There comes a time in everyone's life when they question what this is all about anyway. Make no mistake about it. It's all about people. It's all about how they share their experiences with each other. It's all about the memories. And it's all about life.

In so many ways we are so lucky. We can be thankful that God dropped us off on this corner of the planet and gave us the opportunity to share this journey with such precious people. We are far more than just passing acquaintances. We belong to a lifelong fraternity. We belong because -- "We're from Everett!"

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Rearranging the letters in "ENLARGED SQUEAL" you will discover a spot in Everett where you'd hear that if you tried to cross the street without waiting for the light to change.
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Extra Special News Bulletin

Last Friday they pulled all my upper teeth out so I'm a little behind schedule getting this message out to you. Please forgive me for that.

Last Wednesday, I recieved an email from Wendy Wilson. She's a representative of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in Washington D.C. The NIAF is a non-profit organization serving as a major advocate in Washington, DC for nearly 25 million Italian Americans, raising the prominence of all things Italian in American culture and society, and making "Italian American" part of the national conversation.

Each year, the N.I.A.F. honors Italian Americans who have made significant contributions in business, media, military, education, entertainment, humanitarian efforts, etc. Each honoree is recognized at the annual NIAF Gala, where a 3-4 minute video provides highlights of his or her life. The videos are produced by MVI Post in Metropolitan Washington, D.C. and emphasize the impact each recipient's Italian heritage and values made on their journey to success.

Past honorees and invited guests have included Tim McGraw, Robert De Niro, Lee Iacocca, Giorgio Armani, Al Pacino, Andrea Bocelli, Nicolas Cage, Tony Bennett, Alan Alda, Joe Montana, John Travolta, Paul Tagliabue, and Roberto Benigni.

During this year's annual NIAF Gala in October, our very own Everettite, Ellen Pompeo, is being honored with NIAF's Special Achievement in Entertainment Award. Wendy emailed me to ask if I might have any historic photographs or videos of Everett, preferably that focus on the Italian-American influence of our city's culture. Apparently, they are still compiling their video project for Ellen Pompeo's presentation.

If anybody out there has anything they think might be helpful to Wendy's project and are willing to share, please contact Wendy Wilson at "wendywoo@verizon.net" You can read more about this prestigious honor at http://www.niaf.org/events/gala_2007.asp

Let me share with you a brief excerpt of the email I recieved from Wendy...

"Paul, I spoke to Mr. Parisi at the Everett Library. When the Everett Historical Society closed, it bequeathed its photos to the library; unfortunately, the library doesn't have a scanner. Mr. Parisi is exploring options to send me some of the town square and Ellen's h.s. yearbook photo. I may ask if we can use your photo entitled "End of the Line" - as the script is still in progress, I can choose whether or not to say much, if anything, about Everett ... but I would like to."

To which I responded "...The people of Everett are a proud lot who whole heartedly support each other whenever one of their own rises to such notable recognition as Ellen did. I'm sure they'd greatly appreciate being mentioned."

So by all means, if anybody has any thing they think may be of interest to Wendy, please contact her and let her know. This event is scheduled for the Weekend of October 13th so she's running on a tight schedule.

Even if you don't have anything to donate, shoot Wendy an email and let her know how proud we are that one of our own is being recognized with such an honorable distinction. I'm sure it would be an unexpected pleasure for Ellen Pompeo to hear that her fellow Everettites are cheering her on. It will certainly gladden her heart to know that the "We're From Everett" spirit is still very much alive.


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ALSO IN THE NEWS

Both my Guitar music site and my Synthovan music site have been moved over to blogger. You'll find links to them on my profile page. I've migrated them over to blogger as a convenience to those of you who really enjoy them. The EZ-Folk site now requires you to sign up before you can download anything. This way you won't have to sign up to download any of my music files. I've been working on some new guitar compositions and hope to post a whole new collection in the very near future.

The "We're From Everett" chat board is in the works. I'm just a little slow right now while recovering from my recent surgery. Also, the EHS Class of 1971 web site should be up and running before November.

That's about it for now. I gotta go take a nap. Z-z-z-z-z-z!