Under The Streetlights - Part 5

The more I write about growing up in Everett, the more I realize that no truer words were ever spoken than "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." That thought occurs to me every time I hear the laughter of children playing outside. Listen carefully the next time you hear that joyful noise and you'll relive the sights and sounds of your very own childhood.

From our perspective, the kids of today miss out on that unsuspecting innocence our society as a whole enjoyed back in our day. That is before they gunned down President Kennedy, started playing songs like "The Eve Of Destruction" on the radio, and televised the rioting in the streets at the democratic national convention in Chicago. From that point on nobody trusted anybody over thirty.

Untold evils have lurked in the shadows since the beginning of time. We certainly did not grow up in a tranquil utopia totally devoid of any violence or discord. That was just an illusion set into place by our childlike mindset.

We were well aware of the potential dangers that lurked around every street corner even back in our day. It just wasn't so prevalent as it is today because policemen didn't go to jail for arresting criminals back then, and the neighbors poured out onto the sidewalks as soon as they heard a kid scream.

So probably more than anything, what the kids of today are really missing out on is a court system that worked, and neighbors who cared about each other. For as they say, "the more things change - the more they stay the same." Above all else, kids are still kids in every true sense of the word. It's the world around them that has hit the skids.

Kid's still argue over who's got the fastest bike, the biggest dog, and the smartest dad. They still double dare each other, and they still "bet ya can't do this" each other. They still get all worked up into tizzy over something so trivial as a bottle cap and swear they'll never play with each other ever again for as long they live. That is until five minutes later when you'll see them doubled over in laughter together. Whatever it was that came between them happened so long ago now that neither one of them even remembers it.

That's what being a kid is really all about. Kids don't trouble themselves with the evils that lurk in the hearts of men. They're too preoccupied with things like if you got more french fries than they did, or whether or not Zorro can beat up Superman. That's what's important to a kid.

So it's not so much as being a kid that we miss, as it is being able to tune into that childlike mindset. You can still do that, and every so often you should. That little kid that you once were dwells just beneath the surface of that outer crusty exterior that encases your inner child. That outer shell is the end result of all those hard knocks you've gone through during your grownup years.

Once you get back in touch with that child within, you'll fall right back into your childlike mind set. Only then can you begin to pick apart that crusty outer shell, piece by piece, like an old scab. God knows how much a little kid loves to pick off a scab - right?

What I do miss is actually being there. I miss Arlington Street. I'd give anything to watch two kids go toe to toe over a foul ball. I miss waving to Cecil and Mary sitting out on their front porch and hearing them call over to me, "Are you being a good boy?" When I said "yes" they'd laugh and say, "Well, that's a switch."

I miss running down to Anna's Variety on the corner of Cherry and Ferry for a loaf of bread. As I hurried past Anna and Maxie sitting out on the sidewalk on fold-up chairs she'd say, "Just leave the money on the counter." If I didn't have any money all I had to say was "put it on our tab" and she did.

I miss standing out on Karen's front porch next door waiting for her to come out so we could walk to school together when we were in kindergarten at the Horace Mann. And I miss looking back at Carol sitting at her desk in our ninth grade homeroom at the Parlin and watching her stare off into space with that far away look in her eyes. What was that girl thinking about anyway? Whenever she caught me gawking at her she'd squint up her nose and smile. What a cute kid, I'm telling ya.

After all my travels and experiences over these good many years, what I treasure most are those simple pleasures that tickled my funny bone when I was a kid. I'm not just talking about those innocent times when we sat around on the curb outside the candy story divvying up M&M's. I'm talking about those devilish pranks we pulled just to get a good laugh at each other's expense.

You know, like telling Jacky his shoe's untied so I could poke him in the chin when he looked own. And punching Stanley in the arm whenever a "padiddle" went by. That's a car with only one headlight for those of you who are not in the know. Or asking Joey if he got that letter I sent him so when he said "no" I could stamp on his foot and say, "that's because I forgot to stamp it."

Now don't look at me as if I was the bad egg of the century. I was only passing along what somebody else had done to me. If somebody held me down on the ground and gave me fifty-two noogies you can be damn sure I was gonna dish out fifty-two to the next kid down in the neighborhood hierarchy.

That's just the way it was growing up down on Arlington Street. I'm sure it was all the same in your neck of the woods as well. Don't tell me you've never held out a deck of cards to one of your friends and asked, "You wanna play fifty-two pickup?" And don't tell me you've never told one of your friends that "The first sign of mental retardation is growing hair on your knuckles" so when they looked at their knuckles you'd say "and the second sign is looking for it."

There is no magic contraption that allows you to travel back in time, at least not yet anyway. The only way to get back to those carefree days of your childhood is to reminisce about them. When you do take the time out from your hectic schedule to do so all of your worries and your woes will vanish into thin air.

So now I'm mind traveling back to my childhood down on Arlington Street. You're more than welcome to tag along. All you gotta do is follow me through this perceptual vortex that journeys beyond space and time. Once we step out on the other side you'll experience the sights and sounds exactly as they happened some 45 years ago down on Arlington Street. Be careful when you step out into the middle of the street cuz there may be a car comin'.

Get a load of this, will ya? A classic game of stickball unfolds before your very eyes. That's Stanley winding up for the pitch. For a such a skinny little kid, Stanley had an arm on him like the bionic man. Franny's up at bat, and Peter's catching. That's me getting ready to book it home from third, as if that's gonna happen. Ten to one Franny whiffs it. When Stanley winds up like that nobody gets a piece of that ball.

By the way, we're not playing with a whole ball. I know what you're thinking. I knew it the moment I said that. You're thinking, "You're not playing with a full deck either." I know you kids from Everett like a book, trust me.

What we're playing with is only a half of one of those pink rubber balls we bought at Coppin's for a nickel. Coppin's was at the corner of High and Ferry right across from Vinnie's. It was more of a miniature grocery store than it was anything else, but they always had a box of those pink rubber balls on the shelf behind the counter.

They never carried much. They were always out of whatever it was my mother sent me down there for, so I wound up having to run across the street to Vinnie's anyway. That probably explains why Coppin's didn't last very long. I don't suppose you're gonna corner any markets by specializing in five-cent rubber balls. That's probably why they closed the place down to open up a Laundromat.

Getting back to those pink rubber balls, we'd cut them in half so they wouldn't sail out into the middle of the traffic on Ferry Street when you nailed them. They're not so easy to catch on a fly cuz they roll and tumble somewhat clumsily through the air. Whenever we did lose one up on somebody's roof we still had the other half. See, we're always thinking. That's our "Everett Ingenuity" kicking in.

That's my sister, Julie up on the front steps telling me it's time to come home for supper. As you can plainly see, I'm pretending I can't hear a word she's saying from way out there beyond the curb. That's Patty on her bike telling her brother, Peter, it's time for him to come home for supper, too. He's pulling the same stunt I am by pretending he can't hear a word she's saying either.

It's not breaking up our game of stickball that bothers me. It's what's waiting for me on the supper table that's got me worried. My mother was boiled dinner freak. While everybody else went home to pizza, raviolis, and fried chicken, chances are I had a boiled dinner staring me straight in the face. Man, do I hate boiled dinners.

I always said that when I grew up I was never gonna allow a boiled dinner in my house. As fate would have it, I grew up and married an Everett girl who likes boiled dinners. I can't win for losing, can I? Thankfully, she's not as much of a boiled dinner freak as my mother was, and she is a darn better cook, too. Not too many people can actually say that so I did luck out on that end.

It's getting late anyway and we've got a game of "hide-and-go-seek" under the streetlights to catch up on. So I'll meet you right back here on my front steps after supper. Don't worry. I'll even gobble down cauliflower if I have to, okay?

Enough already with the monologue, let's go find some Everett kids. I'll give you a few seconds to take off running. You ready?

"Three - two - one, ready or not, here I come."

I'm gonna start the night off by finding a few kids I've known since I was knee high to a grasshopper. We'll start with Dean up on Foster Street. If you stand here beside me at the top of Arlington where it intersects with Foster, you'll be looking right across the street at the front of his two-family. His house was the third one down from the Horace Mann playground. He lived up on the second floor.

Dean and I started kindergarten together. We had two Deans in our kindergarten class that year. The other one lived down around the Argyle Street area somewhere. That one grew up to be either a plumber or electrician for the City of Everett. I'm really not sure which. We were good friends back in kindergarten. I somehow lost track of him after that.

I haven't lost track of the one from Foster Street, tho. I probably remember more about him than he does himself. His father had a wooden leg. No, I don't know why. And his mother always reminded me of one those sweet grandmotherly types like Aunt Bee on Mayberry. He also had a younger brother, named Glen, who had a really happy-go-lucky personality about him.

One of my earliest recollections of Dean happened in the second grade up at the Horace Mann. Our teacher, Miss Martinelli, was absent on this one particular day so we had a substitute teacher. We've had this substitute before, and what a beast and half she was, believe you me.

For the life of me, I cannot recall that substitute teacher's name, but the image of that despicable scowl that had permanently taken shape on her face after years of carry around such a miserable disposition has found a permanent home in the darker regions of my memory banks.

Because we had no cafeteria at the Horace Mann, we sat at our desks and ate our brown-bagged lunches before going out to play at recess. Yes, some kids did carry lunch boxes, but definitely not any of the kids from Arlington Street. You'd never live it down.

Anyway, during recess Miss Martinelli allowed us to take turns to tell something amusing about our personal lives. Dean once told an entertaining story about the day that his father had replaced some of the woodwork in their house. Apparently, he and his little brother, Glen, were playfully running through the house, as kids so often do, when Glen accidentally ran head on into the frame of one of the new interior doors, knocking off a piece of the new woodwork in the process. Naturally, he wound up with a good-sized lump on his forehead as a result.

To comfort Glen, his father made a playful remark to the effect of, "Are you trying to help the termites destroy all my hard work?" He was only trying to make Glen laugh so he'd forget about that painful lump on his forehead.

Having received such a warm response from both Miss Martinelli, and from his classmates over that story, he felt compelled to share it with this substitute teacher, as well. Instead of a warm response she looked back at him with disdain and scornfully remarked, "Well your father's wrong. Termites chew. Did your brother chew the wood off or did he knock it off?"

You could feel the embarrassment and hurt in Dean's eyes when he somberly responded, "He knocked it off."

"Well then your father shouldn't have compared him to a termite. "Isn't that right?"

Dean sadly hung his head low and murmured, "Yes."

"Sit down then," she demanded. Then she asked, "Does anyone else feel the need to tell anymore silly stories?" Like you're gonna raise your hand after that - right?

I'll tell you one thing about Dean that anyone who knows him will verify. He's a good kid with a good heart. He has never hurt, or said an unkind word about anybody. It is his nature to share his joys with others. He likes people. He likes life. He's been that way since I first met him in kindergarten.

Because of the kind of person that Dean naturally is, the way that substitute teacher came down on him that day always troubled me. I never felt such a deep loathing for a person as I did for that teacher on that day. The way she hurt that kid's feelings still bothers me to this very day. It's gotta make you wonder as to why some people go into teaching if they don't like kids. That's like an atheist joining the clergy. You know what I mean?

So anyway, I got Dean's gools. Let's go find a few more kids.

Hey, you wanna meet one of the most avant-garde people you'll ever find in your lifetime? Okay then, let's take a walk over to Pleasant View Ave. Let me introduce you to the kid I shot in the backside with a BB gun.

Even after that, he stood up as my best man at my first wedding. If you think that's incredible, just wait until you hear this one. The girl I married was his girlfriend. I kid you not. I wound up with her because he asked me to give her a ride to visit him in the hospital.

Of course, there's so much more to the story than that, but explaining it that way makes it all that more amusing. Sadly enough, that girl no longer walks among us. That's a whole nuther story in itself. We won't dwell on that right now because it's way too heavy.

This kid's name is Jon. He's the only kid I ever met in my lifetime who spelled that name without an "h." His people also hail from Newfoundland. If you stand here at the corner of Foster and look down towards the bottom of Pleasant View Ave, his house is the second one down on the right hand side of the street. Well actually, it's the first one down because the triple-decker before it is really on Foster Street.

I first met Jon through his brother, Glen. Glen and I were in kindergarten together. We hit it off the moment we met. Glen and I hung around together in the lower elementary grades. That's how I first met Jon. Our paths didn't cross again until many years later when we both wound up together in Anthony Sarno's eighth grade homeroom at the Parlin.

That was my second year in the eighth grade. It was Jon's first. Having repeated the eighth grade I was no longer with Glen's class, but with his younger brother, Jon's. Glen was a more down to the earth kind of kid, and Jon was a bit of a weirdo from birth. Great minds think alike so that's how Jon and I became such close friends.

Even to this day it amazes me at what this kid could do with a Bic pen. I would liken his artwork to that of M. C. Escher's, with the strong surreal influence of Salvador Dali. His family moved to Reading after the ninth grade. Years later, when his parents moved to Tennessee, Jon stayed behind and eventually settled into Cambridge.

Jon is now into sculpting. I've not yet seen any of his work, but knowing him as I do, his work is both unconventional and masterful, I'm sure. That's just the kind of artist that he is. As they say, "When the weird gets weirder, an artist turns pro." That's Jon all over. He once plastered the windows in his car with rainbow decals so anybody who took a ride in his car would get drenched in color as they drove around. Yes, I'm serious.

We've shared a lifetime of laughs together, far too many to list here. We once had a competition going on between us to see who could buy the cheapest chess game. I eventually won when I found one at Brooks up on Broadway for sixty-nine cents.

I shall always treasure his friendship dearly. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of those lifelong friends you acquire while growing up in Everett. And besides all that, I just got his gools.

We better move along if we're gonna find any more people tonight. At the bottom of Pleasant View Ave, on the same side of the street as Jon, is where Ernie lived. Ernie's a few years older than I am. I've always looked up to this kid with great admiration.

What really astonished me about this kid was his uncanny talent for training homing pigeons. He was amazingly successful at it. Years later when Ernie gave up his paper route he let me add it onto mine. Thanks, Ernie. I needed the bucks.

I'm gonna take a run back up over the hill to cross the Horace Mann playground towards Dern Street. Before we go I'd like to point out Betty Ann's three-decker here on Foster that's right across from the Playground. Her backyard was always nicely decorated with all kinds of ornaments and things. Some kids criticized it saying that it looked as gaudy as a miniature golf course, but I always thought it was a very pleasant variation from the drab conventional.

Mary Ellen lived on Prospect Street right behind the playground. It's funny how I said that she lived behind the playground, because in all actuality, she lived across from the front of the Horace Mann school. We always looked upon the Foster Street steps to the playground as the front. Don't ask me why, especially when the school was facing the other way. That's Everett kids for ya.

There are three kids on Dern Street that I haven't seen since my elementary school days. They didn't go to the Horace Mann with me. They attended the Immaculate Conception on Summer Street instead.

Right on the corner of Dern and Prospect lived Donny. My funniest recollection of Donny is the day I let him cut my hair. Our mother's gave us five-dollars each to go get a haircut. This happened just a week or two before the end of our summer vacation. These haircuts were supposed make us look all snazzy for our first day back at school.

We came up with the wild idea of cutting each other's hair so we could pocket the money. We went down into my cellar and I was bright enough to let him cut mine first. After he saw what he had done to my hair he changed his mind about letting me cut his.

The whole time I was sitting there watching the hair fall I thought he was doing a great job. Bobby and Tommy were sitting across from us reading funny books and not paying any attention to us whatsoever. Bobby lived in the last house on the left on Dern Street just before you entered the backyard to the Parlin. He had a little dog named, Blacky, who followed him everywhere. Tommy lived right across the street from Bobby. Tommy's dad was the Chief of the Everett Police Department for years.

When Bobby and Tommy finally did lift their eyes up out of their funny books, they took one look at me and doubled over in laughter. My hair looked like it was chopped off by a lawnmower. I had bald spots and everything.

My mother went ballistic when she saw my haircut. I held my ground and insisted that the barber, had indeed, cut my hair. She was so furious that she started getting ready to march me back down to that barbershop. She was gonna tear that guy a new rear end, if you know what I mean. When I broke down and told her the truth she let me have it, but good.

She still marched me down to the Eagle barbershop on Ferry Street next to the Everett Springs Hardware to see if he could somehow repair the damage. The best he could do was to give me the shortest whiffle of my lifetime to try to hide as much of it as he possibly could. I wore a stocking cap for weeks after that to hide how silly I looked. So I just got Donny, Bobby, and Tommy's gools in one fell swoop.

Man, where does the time go when you're having fun? I better turn back before it gets any later. I'll tell you what. We'll take the long way home by going down around High Street to catch a few more kids along the way.

When we get to the bottom of Prospect we'll be able to see where Billy, and his sister, Donna, used to live on High Street. Billy was the electronic whiz of the century. Can you imagine building a device from scratch that would allow you to eaves drop on people who were whispering 50 yards away when you were only in the fifth grade? That's how amazing that kid was. Some of the kids you meet growing up in Everett are absolutely phenomenal.

It's really getting late now so I'm gonna cut through Janice and Sandra's backyard here on High Street to get back home. What the heck, they only live on the other side of the fence from me anyway. They used to hang out at Oliver Street Park with Jeanne, Patty, and Kathy. Kathy is Rosemary's sister. They lived on High Street, too.

Sandra went to the Horace Mann with my brother, Billy. And her younger sister, Janice, went to school with my sister, Julie. They also had two brothers, named Joey and Ray, in their family. And you talk about coincidences? Ray served in Vietnam the same time my brother, Billy, did. Okay Sandy, Janice, and Kathy, I got your gools. You didn't think I'd forget ya, did ya?

Which reminds me, Sandra once said that besides her mother, father, and the four kids, her mother's sister and brother also lived with them in the same apartment on the second floor of a rented house. Even still, she never knew that she was poor.

That says it all right there, doesn't it? You see, the reason none of us realized that we were poor is because we weren't really. Granted, we had holes in the knees of our pants sometimes, and the souls of our shoes flapped when we walked, but that doesn't constitute being poor to a kid. You can have a lot of fun with a shoe that flaps, unless of course, you're an old stick in the mud.

Okay, so maybe all we had for supper sometimes was a bowl of lima beans and a glass of water. I didn't know that was poor. I just thought that was all we had in the house to eat that night, and I was right. That's all we did have. I was still thankful for that big bottle of ketchup up in the cabinet. With enough of that you could make just about anything taste appetizing.

What was far more important than that was that we had a family sitting down to the supper table with us. Together we could laugh our way through just about anything. And when we stepped away from the supper table we had a world full of friends waiting for us outside to play "hide-and-go-seek" under the streetlights.

And guess what? They are still out there waiting for us right now. We don't need two nickels to rub together. We've got the best friends in the whole wide world. These are the very people I've been telling you about all along.

For those of you out there feeling like you're wandering around in the dark, looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, and wondering what this life is all about anyway, let me tell you what it's all about.

It has nothing to do with fame or fortune. Some people come into this world spoon fed notoriety and wealth, and they live a miserable existence. You can't buy what we have. It's that precious.

We've got each other. We've got memories that make us smile right down to the marrow in our bones. And we will never walk alone because we were born into a fraternity of camaraderie that we are so in tune with that we will never lose sight of who we are, what we stand for, or where we come from. That's us in a nutshell because - "We're from Everett!"