Our Hidden Agenda

To an outsider, the kids from Everett are an absolute bewilderment, to say the least. From a distance we look like we move in tandem, talk in rhythm, and are all of like mind. I've often heard it said that "If you fight one kid from Everett, you've gotta fight em all." They talk as if we were an army of robots unleashed on this planet to achieve a hidden agenda.

I can see where an outsider might get that notion. Like clockwork every Saturday 900 of us hit the sidewalks and dutifully marched towards one specific objective. Once we reached that destination we stood in line waiting our turn to do exactly what everyone else was waiting in line to do. And that was to enter into a relic we cherished almost religiously, known to the world as the Park Theatre.

As soon as those doors swung wide we frantically scrambled to get our hands on one box of popcorn and one box of Junior Mints. We gobbled down the popcorn in seconds flat so we could tear the box into a pair of goggles. Then we gobbled down the Junior Mints in one fell swoop so we could tear the end flaps off the box to blow through it like a whistle.

When the lights dimmed and the curtains drew back, we sat glued to the screen watching whatever Hollywood had to throw at us through our popcorn goggles. Before the main feature the lights came back on and the popcorn goggles came off. When our host stepped up to the mike and shouted "Hi kids," in unison we yelled back at the top of our lungs, "Hi Leo!"

There was truly something extra special about that man. Because of him we yelled and screamed in mindless ecstasy over something so simple as somebody trying to break a balloon. We didn't realize it at the time because we were just little kids, but that man was indeed, the Pied Piper of Everett.

Nobody else ever captured the hearts and minds of a whole city full of kids the way that man did. And for no other purpose than to be in his presence, did we make that pilgrimage almost religiously every Saturday afternoon throughout our childhood.

He passed away more than 40 years ago. You won't find a plaque in his honor at city hall, or a school bearing his name, or even so much as a street corner for that matter. And yet he contributed more to the welfare and the good of the children of our community than anyone else in the history of the City of Everett. Even after all these years we still feel the effects of his goodness right down to the marrow of our bones as if we had enjoyed them only yesterday.

His memory alone is enough to edge your eyes with tears. And not only because we miss that warm glow he ignited in our hearts, but also because he gave to us one of the very fibers to that thread that runs so true through our veins that binds us together for all time. He personified what growing up in Everett was all about.

Down on the corner of High Street and Ferry stood a little variety store called, "Vinnie's." Unlike many other corner varieties of our era, it did not have a snack counter to sit at to chat with your neighbors. What Vinnie did have was an extensive deli counter offering a wide selection of fresh cut meats.

I can picture him now in his white apron chopping off a leg of lamb with a big butcher's knife and slapping up on the scales. He'd roll it and wrap it in about four and a half yards of white wax paper and then bundled it up with a heavy twine. After that he'd carefully slide that into yet another brown paper bag before thanking you ever so politely for your custom.

It became almost a cliché in our neighborhood that if you couldn't find it anywhere else; you'll probably find it down at Vinnie's. Having grown up in Newfoundland, my mother knew the delicacy of vinegar flavored potato chips decades before you could ever buy them in this country. After having inquired about them at every other store in Everett, she found them at Vinnie's.

For those of you who had never shopped at Vinnie's, he looked a lot like Groucho Marx, including the mustache and glasses. He was a soft-spoken gentleman who knew every one of his customers personally. And as was so common in our day, he never refused anyone should they ask if they could put that on their tab.

When my great uncle Ed died, Vinnie showed up at the funeral. And when he found out how much I liked to draw, he often took the time to look over my work and make constructive criticisms. I learned a lot from that man.

Vinnie was an exquisite artist. He painted landscapes and street scenes. His mastery of light, shadows, compositional elements, and his blending of analogous colors rivaled that of the old masters themselves. You could see it in his paintings. They were all on display on the shelves that circled the walls up high in his store. None of them were for sale. If you praised one enough he'd just give it to you.

I have no idea as to when it was that Vinnie closed up shop. I suppose we could look it up in the city archives if we really wanted to. Come to think of it, I never knew his last name, whether or not he had a family, or where he lived for that matter. I was so very young then that I never thought to ask.

What happened was that I pulled into the Flying A gas station down on Ferry Street to fill up my Volkswagen Beetle. Would a real hippie drive anything else? I just happened to glance across the street while they were filling up my tank, checking my oil, and washing my windshield. That's when I noticed that Vinnie's was gone.

When I got home that afternoon I asked my mother if she already knew that Vinnie's was closed. She took one look at me and asked, "What planet are you on? Vinnie's been closed for years."

"So what happened? Did he retire?"

"I have no idea," she said ever so nonchalantly as she went about her housework.

It was decades before I really got over the fact that Vinnie's was gone. Don't ask me why because I hadn't stopped in there for years. You have no idea how much that bothers me.

After all he had done for me, my family, and our whole neighborhood for that matter, you'd have thought I'd have the decency to stop and say hello every once in a while. He at least deserved that. Instead, I just went on about my business.

Sure, my life had changed drastically in a few short years. I moved up from a tricycle, to a two wheeler, and then to a Volkswagen Beetle. I went from thinking that girls had cooties to where I couldn't bare to be without one. And I went from playing "hide-and-go-seek" beneath the streetlights on Arlington Street to partying all night with the hippies up in the back hills of Glendale Park.

I'm sure there was a corner variety store in your neighborhood that was once just as much a part of your lives as Vinnie's was to ours. Not once did I ever stop to think that as my life was going through these drastic changes, that so was my neighborhood all around me.

I suppose I should have seen the writing on the wall, but I didn't. I somehow thought that Vinnie would always be there. I should have known better. After all, it's been years since that Hoods milk truck came rolling down the street to deliver fresh milk to everyone's doorstep in the morning. From that alone I should have known the world had begun to change.

All of a sudden the post office stopped making both a morning and an afternoon mail delivery. The Boston Globe and the Record American no longer had a morning and an evening edition. And our doctors stopped making house calls.

The next thing you know they stopped handing out S&H Green stamps. Then they stopped stuffing Cannon towels down inside the Tide box. It didn't take long before the old "the customer is always right" philosophy got thrown to the wayside. And who ever thought that a gallon of gas would cost more than a meatball sub?

We've got no one to blame but ourselves. We let them get away with it and we never said a word. People tend to have their way with you unless you put your foot down and put a stop to it.

Going on in the back of my mind all this time are the sights and sounds of all my neighbors down on Arlington Street. You'd stop and talk to at least a half a dozen people before you made it down to the corner to hop on the Everett Square Trolley via Chelsea Street.

This wasn't just the "How are you?" and the "fine thank you" trivial chatter that casual acquaintances so commonly trifled with. These people knew you since the day you were born. They knew your family. They really did care about you.

I can still hear Mary Johnson's voice from up on her front porch whispering, "Psst, hey Paul. Martha's crouched behind Mister Bowser's car," when we were out playing "hide and go seek" under the streetlights. It makes you laugh to think that she was tattle tailing on her very own daughter. She always felt sorry for me cuz I was the littlest kid in the bunch at the time.

If you want to bust a gut then pull up a chair and take a look out my living room window at the kids playing stickball down on Arlington Street. Don't expect to see any stickball going on. What you'll see and hear is Jacky and Joey going back and forth for an hour and half over whether or not Stanley "ticked" it or "whiffed" it.

After Jacky lost the argument he lifted his leg to fart at Joey and shouted, "There's a kiss for ya." His mother stormed out into the middle of the street, grabbed a hold of his ear, and then dragged him kicking and screaming back into the house. You could hear the sound of that strap whacking his fanny all the way down to the corner of Ferry Street.

As I sit here in the quiet repose of my little home office typing my brains out, I'm mind traveling back to a time when a dozen or more grown ups crowded into our tiny little kitchen down on Arlington Street. Well into the night all the women sat around talking about Jacqueline Kennedy's wardrobe. And the men sat around the kitchen table playing cribbage and blowing the suds off a couple.

If only I could share with you the sound of their laughter, the smiles on their faces, and the smell of those home made brownies my mother had going on in the kitchen stove, then you'd see what it was that made Everett so special. And then you'd understand why the people from Everett tug at my heartstrings so.

Something inside of us died when they killed our president. For those of you who were born after the fact, believe me when I tell you, President Kennedy captivated the imagination of our whole generation. We worshiped that man. Regardless of all the hype they came out with about him after his death, President Kennedy represented all that was good and decent about America.

He was the first president to sympathize with Dr. Martin Luther King. And what Martin Luther King was telling us is that the time had come to put our differences behind us. In the peaceful tradition of Mohandas Ghandi, he was trying to persuade us to reach out to each other, to love one another, and to work together to make this great nation of ours the promise land it was always meant to be.

Too bad we didn't listen. They killed him before we got the chance to really get to know him. It's gotta make you wonder as to why they always kill the ones who come out and tell everybody to love one other. Why is loving one another such a threat?

My generation arrogantly believed that we would be the ones who would shed all of the nonsensical rhetoric that enslaved the common people. In the end we got lost in the shuffle and just shuffled along with the lost like every other generation.

We thought people like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan preached a heartfelt philosophy with an important message behind it. We eventually woke up and found out that all they were really doing was trying to make a buck. I realized that when Peter Fonda started hawking Time-Life records on late night TV. This is the rebel Easy Rider we're talking about here.

When you go to the Rolling Stone's web site it's one big advertisement to buy this and buy that. Even Rex Trailer doesn't share anything with you on his web site. All he does is push you to buy his DVD.

I can't count how many people have written to me about how good it was for Rex Trailer to show up at the stadium for all us kids on the Fourth of July. It's not as if he had done that out of the goodness of his heart or anything. He got paid to do that.

That is not to take away from all the good clean family entertainment that Rex Trailer provided us with for so many years. The point I'm making is that he did it because it was profitable for him to do so, and not because Everett meant anything special to him.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing at all wrong with making a buck. At least share something of value with us to sweeten the pot for God's sake. The days of thinking we're gonna flock to your door because you're some kind of prima donna has gone the way of the wringer washing machine. Who needs ya?

So what it all boils down to is that some people step into the limelight because they get paid to do it. And then there are those who shun the pedestal in lieu of becoming an integral part of their community. That's what people like Leo, and Mary, and Vinnie were all about, as were people like Lenny, the singing bus driver, Rosie, our world famous cabbie, and Anthony Sarno, my eighth grade homeroom teacher.

With all the commotion going on all around us, we've lost track of what it was that made our lives so special. If any or all of the above mentioned people were to show up here today, they'd look back at us and say, "How did everything ever get so out of kilter? Why did you let go of each other's hand? Why didn't you put your foot down? You're better than that. You're from Everett."

And they'd be so right. We are from Everett and we are so much better than that. We're known to do some crazy ass things sometimes, but it is true that if you pick a fight with just one of us, you gotta fight us all.

That doesn't mean that we all believe the very same things. We don't always agree, but that doesn't change how we feel about each other because we're one big family. And like one big family, we didn't initially choose each other. Fate brought us together as a community. We bonded. We formed a peaceful coalition and we committed to it. We've gone toe to toe amongst ourselves at times, but when push came to shove, we stood beside each other.

That's what made growing up in Everett so special, and that's what makes each and every one of you so special. Don't ever forget that. That's who you are.

It makes no wonder why you stand out in the crowd like a beacon in the night. Your hometown is the only community in all of America with a bicameral legislature. That says something significant about your tenacity right there. Now you can go tell all those fancy schmancy prima donnas to stick that in their pipe and smoke it.

We're choosing a new president this year. From all the politically motivated forwarded emails I'm getting I'd have to say it looks as though we've got about a 50-50 split on the upcoming elections. And yes, I'm a registered voter and yes, I'm gonna vote.

What I'm not gonna do is tell you who I'm voting for. That's why there's a curtain on the voting booth so you won't know. I'll tell you this, though. From what you're telling me, each and every one of you has committed to the candidate of your choice out a genuine love for your country. You are truly concerned about the future and have made your choice based on your individual frame of reference.

Because of that, none of you on either side of the coin are wrong. Exercising your right to vote is the only rational choice to make. Just don't let your politics divide you. My dad voted for Nixon (God only knows why), and my mother voted for Kennedy. After all was said and done they still went on with their lives together as one.

The loser simply must be a good sport about the whole thing and throw his weight behind the winner so everyone can push in the same general direction. And that is precisely what we're going to have to do here if we're ever gonna get anywhere.

Okay, so let me get down off the soap box a minute cuz we need to talk. I've got a whole slew of unfinished business to tend to and I need to ask for your patience. I just don't want you to start thinking our "Growing up Everett" project is falling apart if you don't hear from me for a week or so.

Promise me you'll check back every few days just so I'll know you're still out there. I do check my comments, my emails, and my hit counter every night before I go to bed. So don't ever hesitate to hit that email button over there in the right hand column. If you write to me I'll write you back.

I had this funny thought just the other day. Wouldn't it be great if we could plan a giant get together someday down at Glendale Park? Imagine having the opportunity to come together and meet up with each other just one more time? It's food for thought. Think about it.

Thank you for sharing this moment with me. You'll never know how much I enjoy our little chats. I missed out on telling Leo, and Vinnie, and Mary how much they truly meant to me. I'm gonna make damn sure that I don't miss out on telling you. I've learned my lesson well.

Above all else don't ever lose touch with who you are, and where you come from. Together we form a lifelong fraternity of family and friends who share a common trait. And put simply enough, that common trait is that "We're from Everett!"