Oncoming Traffic

The fine line that separates right from wrong grows wider as we shift from one side of the road to the other. That is precisely how we travel along this road we call, "life." We bob and weave from one side to the other to get out of the way of oncoming traffic.

That natural instinct of survival was one of the first lessons I learned as a kid from playing out in the middle of Arlington Street. In this instance, however, I'm referring to "oncoming traffic" in a more philosophical sense rather than its literal interpretation.

The "oncoming traffic" I'm talking about is comprised of people's attempts to enforce their will upon you. That's the kind of "oncoming traffic" we deal with in the course of our everyday lives.

We all claim to stand our ground for what we believe, but we don't always do that. Many times we just go along with the status quo because it smoothes out the bumps in what could easily become a rough road ahead. You'd be crazy to do otherwise.

Some battles aren't worth the fight. Others are, but we just grow tired of fighting sometimes. Just coping with the people around us every day has its own form of battle fatigue. We sometimes grow tired of mustering up all of the energy, and enduring all of the stress that it takes to put up a front.

Some people are vigilantes over the most simple of things. Others are completely indifferent to the most controversial of things. Either way, there are times when we feel like giving ourselves a good swift kick in the ass for having gone along with the status quo. We later resent having let our guard down to take the easy way out.

About forty-eight years ago, or so, I was sitting with a handful of the neighborhood kids at the top of the Horace Mann school playground steps that let out onto Foster Street. The father of one of our friends recently lost his bid in a local election. I'm not sure now if it was for the Board of Alderman or the Common Council. All I remember is that he lost.

That kid wasn't amongst us that day. He was, however, one of our regulars. He played stickball, and tag rush, and rode his bike around with us just about every day of his life. He was one of us.

So anyway, we were sitting there having a game of knockout when this other kid, named Tommy, piped up and said, "Hey, did you guys know that Bobby's father lost the election?"

"Yeah, we knew," I said throwing a trump on his queen.

"So what did ya think?" He asked.

"What did I think about what?"

"About him losing."

"Hey, you can't win them all." What else was I supposed to say?

"Do you think he should have won?" He then asked.

"Yeah, if he got the most votes, but he didn't. So I guess he should have lost."

"My father said he lost because he's stupid. And Bobby's just like his father. He's kind of stupid, don't you think?"

"I don't even know his father."

"Yeah, but what bothers me is that everybody else is gonna think we're stupid for hanging around with him. We ought to get out of here before he comes around so he doesn't tag along with us."

"Nobody's gonna think that, "I protested.

"Come on, let's get out of here." With that he hopped on his bike and said, "Come on before he gets here."

Everybody else got up and hopped on their bikes, too. And because they did, so did I. Just as we took off down Foster Street I looked back over my shoulder and saw Bobby coasting across the playground. He was calling and waving to us.

"Hurry before he catches up to us," Tommy laughed.

We took off like a bat out of hell down Oliver Street. When we reached the corner of Cottage Street Tommy looked back over his shoulder at the rest of us and triumphantly announced "We lost him. Whew, that was close."

Bobby never knew we did that. He always thought that he just happened to have missed us that day. I know it doesn't seem like much, but I never forgot that.

I don't care how many fights you've lost in your lifetime. Nobody ever beats you up as badly as you beat up yourself. A guilty conscious is the heaviest burden you'll ever carry through life. Tommy wasn't the guilty party that day, I was.

It wasn't until about a week or so later that I found out that if Bobby's father had won, Tommy's father might have lost some of his political clout within the City of Everett. Because Bobby's father lost, Tommy's father sighed a bit of relief.

Tommy was belittling Bobby to mimic how his father was badmouthing Bobby's father. It's only natural that Tommy would mimic his father. Little boys idolize their fathers.

A few days later Bobby caught up to me at the Horace Mann playground. And I'm telling ya right now; a guilt streak ran right through my veins. He never knew that, of course, but deep down inside my head hung low. I really valued this kid's friendship. I should have stood up for him. I felt like such a heel.

You'd never suspect any of this by our conversation that day. He just rolled up beside me innocently enough and asked, "Hey, where's everybody been?"

"You know summer," I kind of shrugged. "Everybody goes on day trips, and family cook outs, and things like that. It's hard to get everybody together anymore."

"Boy, I'll say. I haven't seen anybody in about he week, " he said somewhat nonchalantly. You could tell that he had no clue as to what was really going on.

"I'm sorry to hear your father lost his election." It seemed like the appropriate thing to say at the time.

"Oh, that's no big deal," he smiled. "My dad didn't really want to run in the first place. He only did it to piss off Tommy's father. They don't see eye to eye at all."

Unlike Tommy, Bobby carried none of the repercussions set in motion by the political rivalry going on between his and Tommy's father. Bobby was indifferent to it all. It made no impact whatsoever on the way he felt about Tommy. As far as he was concerned, they will always be friends.

If that's not enough to shed a commendable light on Bobby, then wait until you hear this one. By the time I got into Everett High, Bobby and I had gone our separate ways. There was no rift between us or anything like that. We just sort of drifted apart as did many of us from our elementary school days.

Our paths crossed from time to time at football games, parties, and things like that. We always exchanged pleasantries, of course, but that's about it. We never made any plans or anything. He went to Pope John and I went to Everett High. By the time I graduated from Everett High I hadn't seen Bobby in a year or two.

After a couple of years out of high school I started dating a girl from Reading on a somewhat serious basis. Let me be more frank than that. We were engaged to be married.

One night while out with a group of friends hooting and hollering, and driving kind of crazy as younguns so often do, I broke the front axle on my Volkswagen bumping over the railroad tracks in Reading. I had to walk about a half a mile to a phone booth to get my car towed.

It was going to cost me in the vicinity of about Three-hundred bucks to get my car back on the road. That was a shipload of money back in 1972. It was going to take me some time to get that kind of money together. Needless to say, I was going to have to hoof it for a while.

My fiancé was frantic when I told her about my car. She accused me of making up this phony excuse to take some time off to think things through. I had done so much talking about never getting married when we first started dating that she was afraid I'd get cold feet before the big day.

She made me give her the phone number to where my car was garaged to prove I wasn't making this all up. After verifying my story, she wanted me to agree to take the B & M up to her house in Reading after work everyday just to prove that I was still serious about getting hitched. You talk about insecure? That takes the cake - no?

My logic was that if I had to do that everyday I'd never get the money together to fix my car. It was going to take me a month or more to pull this off as it was. Man, was I stressed.

So anyway, I was hoofing it up Broadway one day after work when this car cruised up along side of me. "Dude, you need a lift?" It was Bobby. And like I said, I hadn't seen him in a few years.

"Man, do I ever." I hopped in.

"Where's your wheels, dude?" He asked. So on our way up Broadway I unloaded him.

"How much do you need?"

I thought he was asking as a courtesy. I needed another hundred bucks so that's exactly what I told him. What he said next really threw me for a loop.

"Dude, I can loan you a Hundred. You can pay me back like twenty bucks a week."

"You're not serious?" I couldn't imagine him actually making this offer.

"Yeah, dude, I'm serious if it'll get you back on the road. I'm willing if you are."

"I don't know what to say." I didn't either. He kind of caught me off guard. I never expected this.

"All you gotta say is yes or no, dude."

So I said, "Yeah, man, I'll take it. I really appreciate this. And I'll stop by your house every Friday afternoon to make my payments. I won't let you down."

"I know you won't, dude. I know you're good for it. We go back a long ways. I trust you."

He swung by his house, pulled up along the curb, and ran inside with the engine running and the door wide open. A few minutes later he came dashing out of the house and jumped back into the driver's seat. He slapped five twenties into the palm of my hand and said, "There you go, dude. Go get your ride fixed."

You should have seen the look on my fiancé's face when I pulled into her driveway two days later. I hadn't told her about the loan yet so she wasn't expecting to see me for quite some time. And yeah, she was ecstatic, but she tried her damnedest not to let it show. You know how girls are - right?

So now you probably have a better understanding as to why I've carried that guilt trip all my life. If I ever told Bobby about that he'd probably say, "Hey, we were just kids. Forget about it." That's the kind of guy he is.

Those are the kinds of friends you make growing up in Everett. I can honestly think of about two or three people who I haven't talked to in years, but know I can still call on in a pinch. If you can say that about just one other person in your lifetime then your life is complete. That's what's so great about the friends you make growing up in Everett.

Bobby is one of them, and Tommy is not. That's why I got so mad at myself. That was one instance when I should have stood my ground. Chances are that neither one of them would even remember that incident, but here I am carrying that heavy cross anyway.

There are other, but far less serious incidences that come to mind. You know, like how your mother insists that you always wear clean underwear in case they ever rush you off to the hospital. There is no point in arguing with her over that. Where would it get you?

She is right about wearing clean underwear. The alternative is rather disgusting. Using an emergency trip to the hospital as a basis for her theory is rather extreme, don't you think? My only hope is that the last thing the doctor looks at when they rush me into the Whidden ER with my arm hanging off is my underwear.

The truth is, you really can't get out of the way when your parents come down on you. Let's face it, their word is the law for as long as you live under their roof. Sometimes they are completely in the wrong, but they make so much of a stink about it that you just have to grin and bear it.

That reminds me of the time my dad came steaming into the living room to lay the law down on us kids for once and for all. Man, was he mad. What happened is that when he reached into the refrigerator to quench his thirst for a tall glass of cold buttermilk, all he found was an empty cartoon. He took an absolute cow and a half.

"Let's get something straight right here and now," he yelled holding up that empty cartoon. "Nobody touches my buttermilk. You got that? There's plenty of Zarex for you kids so keep your paws off my buttermilk."

As if anybody with a normal IQ would ever drink buttermilk, you know what I mean? That is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most repulsive concoctions on the planet. I only tasted it once in my lifetime and that was one time too many. Buttermilk tastes like somebody hawked a looey in your mouth.

Sure, I could go toe to toe with him over this one. I could have easily challenged his shameful display of selfishness if I wanted to, but what would be the point? Truth is, it was he who drank all the buttermilk in the first place. Nobody else could even stand the smell of that God forsaken stuff.

I didn't even see the point in getting into all that rhetoric about fatty acids and cholesterol. Anyone who would put something like that in their mouth in the first place obviously doesn't care. That's probably why my father no longer walks among us.

I'd be completely within my right to stand up and shout, "I did not drink your buttermilk!" Instead, I just looked back at him and said, "Okay Dad, you're the boss. From now on nobody goes near the buttermilk." Nobody would ever go anywhere near his buttermilk anyway.

Doing it this way he gets to feel like the king of his castle who just laid down the law. And we were more than willing to comply with his demands. This is a win-win situation here.

Nobody had to get all hot and bothered. There was no need for confrontation. Why even bother to stand your ground? It only took but a brief moment to put all of this behind us so we could go on with our lives. You know what I'm saying?

Say what you will, but there does come a time when you simply must put your foot down. Like when your crotchety old great aunt with the hairy upper lip bends down to give you a great big smooch. Yuck! If playing the shy card doesn't work then just go ahead and run right out the back door. The spanking you'll get later still isn't as bad as picking gray lip hairs out of teeth, trust me.

And sometimes a little confrontation can be fun. Like when your brother comes out with something really outrageous and tries to pass it off as a known fact. We were playing on the swings at the Horace Mann playground one afternoon when Carl came out with, "Hey, did you know that every time you learn something new you get another crack in your brain?"

"Where in the world did you hear that?" You didn't think I was gonna let him off the hook after coming out with something so bizarre as that, did ya?

"It's true," he insisted. "Two scientists said so."

"When were you ever talking to two scientists?"

"Why don't you just shut up?"

I got him, didn't I? Well this is one time I'm not gonna stand idle and let somebody roll right over me. Don't ask me why, but here is where I've decided to take my stand. You get sick and tired of getting out of everybody else's way after awhile. There comes a time when you want to be the pillar that they slam into.

"No really, where did you hear two scientists say that?"

"I saw it on TV?"

"On what show?"

"I don't remember now."

"Well, you know what I think?"

"No what?"

"I think you should just erase that tidbit of information because it's dumb. Besides, if it were true your brain would be as smooth as silk."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

That eventually escalated into one of those pushing matches that go back and forth until both parties get bored out of their minds with it. And that only happened because I chose to take a stand when I should have just let that trivial thing flutter by like a dandelion in the wind.

That's what's so crazy about all this. Some of the things we let roll like water off a duck's back are crucial. And yet some of the things we stand and fight over are so insignificant that they couldn't even ruffle a feather. Go figure.

So that's why I made the analogy between "oncoming traffic" and the way people come at you sometimes. When you don't expect it you wind up feeling like a fawn caught in the headlights. And that is especially so when you have no idea as to what they're all worked up about. Other than that I can't think of any other way to describe it.

Even Einstein couldn't tabulate a theory that encompassed everything, so don't expect to find the answers to all of life's mysteries here. I've sat in the classrooms of such distinguished science teachers as Louis Picardi, James Micarelli, and Murrio Vultagio, but have only just begun to scratch the surface of Parallel Universes.

Some things defy definition. When they do we call them peculiarities. We've sure had our fair share of those growing up, wouldn't you say? I suppose that's to be expected when you take into consideration that - "We're from Everett!"

Growing Up Resourcefully

Ever notice how nothing ever works the way you expect it to? I've been fighting with that "We're from Everett Archive Guide" since the very first day I set it up. After I'd post a few blogs I'd hop on over to update the Archive Guide.

When I tested it everything worked fine. I'd go back a few hours later only to find that all of my new postings were gone again. For some funny reason it would never let me post anything beyond Thanksgiving of 2007.

One of my graphic design professors at Endicott College defined "insanity" as "doing the very same thing over and over again and not understanding why you keep coming up with the same result." That completely explains what I was going through with that "We're from Everett Archive Guide."

Just for the record, I finally sorted it all out. It's not that I was actually doing anything wrong, mind you. God forbid that I should ever do anything wrong. After all, I'm from Everett.

It took me a while, but I figured out that they didn't originally design Blogger for the way that I use it in the first place. Leave it to an Everett kid to bend and break something to suit his needs - right?

That reminds of the time back in my Everett High school days when the muffler burned out on my Volkswagen Beetle. I took it down to Spencer's on Ferry Street. He wanted twenty-five bucks to replace my muffler and change my oil. Can you imagine? Did this guy think I was made of money or something?

Do you know what I could do with twenty-five bucks back in 1969? I could fix my own muffler, change my own oil, fill my gas tank, string my guitar, get a pack Winstons, buy a six pack, take my favorite girl out to the Meadow-Glen drive-in, and stop in for bite to eat at Howard Johnsons afterwards. I kid you not.

We didn't have money to burn back then. What am I saying? We still don't have any money to burn, but we burn it anyway. They've turned us into a "throw away" society. They've conditioned us to throw everything way as soon as we're done with it. That is supposedly for our own convenience. What a load of hogwash that is.

They did that to us so we'll keep throwing our money away on all of their worthless crap. That's what that is all about. They want you to think that you're out of touch if you don't have the latest cel phone that plays games, sends text messages, takes pictures, downloads mp3's, and tells you the weather. Give me a break.

My cel phone is so complicated I don't even know how to do half the things it's supposed to do. All I want to do is make a phone call, for crying out loud. Why, in God's name, would I want to play a game on my cel phone?

If I wanted to play a game I'd stand out on the middle of the sidewalk on Arlington Street and yell, "Hi oh Stanley, coming out?" We can just walk across the street for a good old-fashioned game of "off-the wall." Why should I fork over Two hundred dollars for a virtual reality game when I can have actual reality for nothing? It doesn't make any sense.

Check out those new video game commercials. They're trying to convince you to drop a Five-hundred dollar bill so you can stand on a footpad and swing an invisible bat to play baseball with a cartoon. You gotta be kidding me.

Let me tell ya something. If you want me to let go of a Five-hundred dollar bill you're gonna have to come up with something original. You know what I want? I want a time machine. So if you ever come up with a stationary mass temporal displacement unit, give me a call. You'll get my money. No questions asked.

If I ever do get my hands on one of those time machines I'll show you how do live on less than a nickel a day. No foolin. And all I gotta do is take you back to the golden age of growing up in Everett to show you how we did it. If we acquired anything growing up in Everett it was an inbred tendency towards a good old-fashioned resourcefulness.

You think I'm full of what makes the grass grow green, don't cha? Okay, that does it then. I'll show ya. Just step on through this portal and follow me down the old nostalgic trail. I'm taking you back some forty odd years to the Everett I knew and loved.

Inflation has absolutely nothing at all to do with it. What I'm gonna show you is how we didn't just throw something away because we were finished using it for what it was originally intended for. They always said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." Back in our day we found more ways to use common everyday items than you could shake a stick at.

Tell me something. When your mother finally broke down and bought a new kitchen broom what did you do with the old one? Did you throw it out? Not on your life. Where do you think we got our bats to play stickball with? You guessed it. We used that old broom handle.

That doesn't mean we threw away the sweeper part at the bottom either. That's what my dad used as a whiskbroom to sweep out the floor of his car. You just saved yourself a sawbuck right there with a free stickball bat and a whiskbroom.

Hey, and how about those wire coat hangers? Remember those? There are more uses for a wire coat hanger than you can imagine. The ones you got from the cleaners had a cardboard pant rod along the bottom. When you snapped that off you had two perfectly formed hooks on each end of the coat hanger. All you had to do was bend the handle straight and you had yourself one handy dandy tool indeed.

With that contraption your dad could retrieve your mother's wedding ring from the trap down in the kitchen sink drain. He could also snake out the toilet when she dropped one of her earrings down in there, too. Wire coat hangers are worth their weight in gold.

You're probably still thinking that the number one use for a wire coat hanger is to hang up clothes - right? No way, dude. I don't know how many times I used one of those to replace a hanger on my tail pipe. I've even snapped off a small straight piece with a pair of diagonals to use as a drill bit. I still do that.

Now, my good people, it's time to tell you what the number one use for wire coat hanger in Everett is. Survey says - "ping" - antenna. You read that right. How many of you have never used a wire coat hanger as a radio or TV antenna? Anybody? I didn't think so. And they worked, too. I even used one on to replace the antenna on my Volkswagen.

Let me ask you something else? Have you ever broken the needle on your record player on a Sunday afternoon when all of the music stores were closed? You didn't just sit there staring at your stack of 45's like on a bump on a log, now did ya? Of course not, all you needed was one of those stickpins that came with your new shirt.

My mother saved every one of those stickpins whenever she bought a new shirt. All I had to do was to saunter on over to her Singer sewing machine, drop down that little utility door, and I'd find at least a dozen of those stickpins in the tray right there.

Now all I had to do is grab a pair of pliers and bend that stickpin to about a sixty-degree angle. To hold that pin firmly in place I'd have to wrap some Scotch tape around it. The one caveat I should tell you about is that you really don't want to do this if you're a serious record collector. After so many plays that pin will ruin your records. It was okay for a day or two, but any more than that and you'll get a permanent skip in your records.

Remember how aggravating it was when your favorite record got a skip in it? It went something like this. "You hoove got that magic ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta" until you stamped your foot and then it went "touch." You could drive everyone else in your house, as well as your neighbors, up a wall if you wanted to be a real jerk about it.

Sometimes a skip in your record was easily repaired. All you needed was a little extra weight on the playing arm that housed the needle. Placing a couple of brass washers on top of the arm just above the playing needle worked wonders. Try it sometime.

Tin cans also have a hundred and one uses. All you need is two tin cans and a length of bare wire and you've got yourself a walkie-talkie. Tell me you've never done that. If not, then what are you waiting for?

In the meantime, stamp a couple of tin cans down onto the bottom of your shoes so you can clank your way up and down the sidewalk. That'll drive the grownups completely out of their gourds. What can be more fun than that?

My dad often used empty tuna fish cans for outdoor ashtrays. Makes sense, don't it? Why throw a couple of bucks away on ashtrays if they're only gonna get ruined by the weather anyway? You also didn't wind up with a bunch of dirty and smelly ashtrays hanging around outside. You don't mind throwing something away that doesn't cost you anything.

Lighting a firecracker under a tin can to see how high it blew was always a favorite pastime of mine. They're awesome for BB gun target practice, too. And then there's always the possibility that you could round up enough kids for a late afternoon game of kick the can.

Another common household item with many uses is the proverbial drinking straw. Hey, even before we drank anything with it we'd aim it at our brother or sister and tried to bop them off the forehead when we blew the wrapper off of it.

In my book, the number one use for a drinking straw is as a spitball shooter. My mother used to buy a bag of those split peas. They were as hard as a rock and they'd go a serious distance with great velocity and accuracy. I've even knocked pigeons off of the clothesline with those things.

Speaking of drinking straws, do you guys remember those flavor straws? Were those awesome or what? For those of you who don't know, flavor straws had a strip of flavoring down through the middle so when you sucked your milk through it you got strawberry or chocolate milk. I only had those once or twice in my lifetime, but they were so good that I've never forgotten them.

We also used straws as arms and legs on our Mister Potato Head. No, we did not go out and actually buy a Mister Potato Head kit. We sat down at the kitchen table and fashioned a little man out of a common potato using random household items.

We poked birthday candle holders into it for eyes. We used a corn cob holder for a nose. The leafy top of a celery stock made a funny hairdo. And you could jam a large button into each of its sides for ears. You don't have to go out and spend a fortune to have a good time on a rainy afternoon. There's no need for it.

That's exactly what's wrong with the world today. They've got us thinking that we need to spend money that we don't have to occupy our time. Only on the TV commercials do you see everyone smiling and having a good time playing video games.

Go watch somebody play a video game sometime. They get this mean look on their face and then they start swearing at the television. They don't look like they're having a good time. They look like they're mad at the whole world. They're frustrated.

You want to see two kids having a good time together without dropping so much as a single penny? Okay then, sit them down at opposite ends of the kitchen table and give them a book of matches. Now step back and get ready to watch a good old-fashioned game of tabletop football.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. You gotta pay for the matches." No way, dude. When we went down to the corner store and dropped twenty-eight cents down onto the counter they not only gave you a pack of Winstons, but they handed you a complimentary book of matches to boot. Nobody paid for a book of matches back then.

Just look at those two kids playing tabletop football. Do they look anything at all like the kid who's playing the video game? Of course not, they're having the time of their lives. They're not off by themselves killing imaginary people. They're competing against each other, and laughing, and talking, and interacting with one another. They're bonding.

Back in our day the teenagers made their own jewelry. The guys made these awesome rings by filing down heavy bolts. They weighed a ton so they easily doubled as a formidable weapon in self-defense. Getting slugged with a fistful of those suckers is like getting hit across the head with a rock in a sock.

They also made wrist bracelets out of dog chains. Granted, they did pay for the dog chain, but in comparison to an equivalent piece of finished jewelry the cost was negligible. Besides that, making your own jewelry engages you creatively, and it rewards you with a sense of accomplishment. That's something you don't get when you go out and buy something impersonal at the store.

Hey, wait a minute. You're not gonna throw away that dirty clip clothespin just because it fell in a puddle and got all muddy, are you? I'll take that if you don't mind. I could really use one of those.

Man, I could be here for a month of Sundays coming up with different uses for an old clip clothespin. Let me start by clipping a baseball card onto the spokes of the bicycle tire. Now I've got this real cool "rat a tat" sound as I glide down Arlington Street. Cool, huh?

Need I even mention the awe inspiring matchstick shooter? Is there a boy amongst us who did not stand proud as a peacock on the day that he made his first successful matchstick shooter? And is there not one amongst you who did not get called on the carpet when your mother discovered that every single box of stick matches in the cupboard was gone?

There are so many ways to bypass spending any extra money that it's almost sinful. For example, let's just say it's a hot summer afternoon and we're leisurely coasting down High Street on our bikes. It just so happens that I've got a nickel in my pocket and I'm as thirty as a camel. How about you? Wanna share a coke?

Tell you what. Let's pop into the Summer Street Market and get a coke, all right? After that we'll coast down to Oliver Street Park. We can cool off in the shade under the trees that poke through the fence and down our coke.

Guess what we forgot? We don't have a church key (that's a bottle opener to all of you squares out there). So what are we gonna do, go back to the Summer Street Market and buy a church key? Don't talk so foolish.

Take a look around. What do you see? We're surrounded by a chain link fence. The twisted points at the top of the fence are perfect for popping open a bottle of coke. The total cost of our refreshment is five cents. We didn't sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting for somebody to invent screw-off caps. We used our inbred Everett resourcefulness. There's no flies on us.

And when we're done with our coke let's save the bottle cap. Some kids collected bag loads of these things. Besides flicking them at each other you can use them for all kinds of decorations. For one thing, you can stick them between the spokes in your bike tire as reflectors.

Since we're focusing on our resourcefulness, let's talk about the million and one ways to use an old cardboard box. You don't need to drop a five-dollar bill on something to store your memorabilia in. Sewing kits, baseball cards, photographs, old letters, recipes, and God only knows what else will fit perfectly down inside an old shoebox.

If you can get your hands on an old refrigerator box you've got yourself a playhouse, a fort, or a makeshift storage closet for the back hall. How much would buying any one of those objects set you back? They'd cost you quite a bit, no?

Little kids always have more fun with the boxes their gifts come in than they do with the actual gifts themselves. And you don't need to wait until winter to go sledding down a steep hill with good strong cardboard box. You give an empty cardboard box to a kid and the world is his oyster.

Even Mother Nature provides far more than just the bare essentials to nourish our existence. She gives us free toys to play with. Take those seed pods from the maple trees out in front of our houses for instance.

Those things fascinated me from the very moment I saw one twirl to the ground like a helicopter. I ran right over there and threw it back up into the air to watch it fall all over again. A few minutes later I was up on my second story porch with pocketfuls of them. I spent the better part of an afternoon launching a battalion of seedpod helicopters towards the unknown perils below.

You didn't have to wind these things up, stick batteries in them, or nothing. Mother Nature thought of everything. All those things needed to unleash their magic is the touch of an innocent child's hand.

Another great thing about them is that you'll never have to run back out to the toy store when your supply runs out. These things actually do grow on trees. There are a bazillion of them everywhere. Trust me on that.

And when you finally do get tired of throwing them over the railing of your second story porch, you can split the ends of them wide open with your thumb nail and stick them on the end of your nose. Tell me you've never done that.

Mother Nature has a whole slew of fun and exciting things to play with. Like those long green things we called "Indian Cigars" that fell from those giant trees. All we ever did with those things was throw them at each other. If nothing else we wore ourselves out in a fit of laughter chasing each other around with those crazy things. Sounds like more fun than a video game, doesn't it?

Hey, and what about collecting chestnuts? You must have done that a few times in your life, I'm sure. There was a huge chestnut tree down at the end of Pleasant View Ave. Some kids said they made necklaces and things out of them. I've never done anything like that. Mostly I just collected a big bag full of them and left them out in the back hall until my mother got sick and tired of looking at them.

So what fun was that? Well actually, it was the collecting of them that was all the fun. We had fun running around, laughing it up, trying to get the most chestnuts, throwing them back and forth at each other, and just spending a carefree afternoon together as friends. That's what that was all about.

And what about those reeds on the Forsythia bush, huh? All you gotta do is strip all the buds off with your thumbnail and you've got the most viscous whip of the century. Getting whacked by one of those will sting to the high Heavens. And the sound they make when you whip them back and forth all your might sounds like something from outer space. I love those things.

One of the best toys mother nature ever gave to a kid was a puddle. And the best thing to do with a puddle is to stamp in it. You can sneak up on your best friend on his way home from school and get him soaking wet with a strategically planned stamp in a puddle. Entire stamp wars have broken out over a good puddle.

Come to think of it, I didn't even mention any of the neat stuff we used to find in the trash. With all the stuff we found in the trash we built go carts, skate boards, and things that were so weird that they defy definition. Treasure hunting through the trash was a blast.

My point is that we didn't sit around wishing and hoping for money to fall out of the sky to have a good time. We took common everyday items and sprinkled them with a little imagination. And we really shouldn't have to go time traveling to experience that. Those common everyday items are still here all around us just going to waste.

We need to stop bellyaching about how these kids today don't know how to have a good time. If we want to do something constructive we've gotta stop ranting and raving about, "When I was your age" the next time our grandchildren start pouting about having nothing to do. We need to show them how much fun actual reality is as compared to virtual reality.

We ought to take them outside and do some of these childish things with them. We need to show them how much fun we had just by enjoying each other's company. Showing by doing is the secret behind sharing the knowledge you've gathered from all these years you've spent on planet Earth. Actions do speak louder than words.

In the process we'll get the opportunity to relive the joys of our childhood. That's what's wrong with us old codgers anyway. We forget to act like a kid every now and then. And we ought to know better because - "We're from Everett!"

What a Day for a Daydream

Let me tell you about the weather where I'm sitting right now. From time to time the sun keeps peeking out from behind soft puffy white clouds. A gentle cool breeze rustles the maple leaves to the rhythm of the swaying stalks in the opened field across the street. And we've got every window in the house wide open.

You can hear the birds chirping back and forth to each other. And there's a cricket out there somewhere who seems to be calling desperately for someone to love to no avail. I know what he's going through. I've been there and done that back in my school days in good old Everett, Massachusetts. Don't worry little guy. There's somebody for everybody. Don't ever give up.

Every so often you'll hear the buzz of a random insect. And fading off in the distance you can hear the Doppler swoosh of a car passing by. It kind of reminds me of what Ferry Street used to sound like on a summer afternoon in the late 1950's.

By this time each year we're usually sweltering in the heat, but not today. It can't be any more than about 76 degrees outside. What a beautiful day to behold, I'm telling ya.

You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the first day of summer vacation when I was a little kid living down on Arlington Street. I'd lean out our second story living room window on my elbows watching the leaves on the maple tree wave back at me. It's almost as if they were welcoming me home after a lengthy absence.

They always said, "there is nothing quite like a kid eating a Hershey bar," but verily I say unto you, "there is nothing quite like that first day of summer vacation." All the drudgeries associated with school feel like a million miles away right now. Everything about this day feels so right.

Come on over here and take a gander out the window. Let me show ya what I'm talking about. If I could bring to life the sights and sounds of Arlington Street when I was a little kid then you'd know why I was so gung ho about bringing the "We're from Everett" experience to the World Wide Web. This is an experience everyone should witness at least once in their lifetime.

There was so much going on outside my window on any given summer's day it was like watching a three-ring circus. Not a day went by when there wasn't some kind of game going on up against that Storm Shield building across the street. That brick wall was perfect for pitching pennies, or as the backdrop for a good old-fashioned game of off the wall.

That wall was also known as the site for many a good toe to toe scrap. At any given moment we could sit here and watch two kids go back and forth poking each other in the chest while shouting, "You cheated!" "Did not!" "Did too!" "Did not!"

Almost completely unnoticed in the background walks Mister Nester. He goes door to door selling insurance. I think he was the only insurance agent on the planet back then. Everybody knew him and everybody bought their insurance from Mister Nester. The guy had the market cornered in our neighborhood.

Keep looking out this window and something's gonna happen just about every other minute to divert your attention from whatever you're looking at. I can guarantee you of that. You're also gonna see some of the most colorful characters on the planet. We've got one of everything in this neighborhood, let me tell ya.

We also had this guy named, Ernie, who frequented our neighborhood. Maybe he came to yours, too, way back then. Whenever any of the grownups wanted to buy something that was a bit beyond their means to pay for in cash, they'd say, "I'm gonna call Ernie and see if he can get me one of those."

Everyone held Ernie in the highest regard. He was probably the most trusted traveling salesman on the planet. That's actually what he was. My parents furnished our lives through this guy. So did just about everyone else in my neighborhood.

Ernie would come to our house and sit down to a cup of coffee with my mother and father at the kitchen table. They'd go over his books and work out a payment plan for whatever they bought. They'd pay this guy about five or ten dollars a week. Because of Ernie, many of the less fortunate families could afford luxuries that were normally beyond their means.

This guy wasn't peddling any second rate merchandise either. He only dealt in name brand quality merchandise. If you saw anything in any of the stores that caught your fancy, chances are that Ernie could get you the exact same item at a better price. This guy was awesome.

He was the first form of time payments anyone ever knew. And if you skipped a payment because you were a little down on your luck he didn't ruin your credit score and tarnish your reputation. He just tagged it onto the end of your payments without charging you an extra cent.

Honest guys like Ernie were eventually replaced by revolving charge cards that bilked you dry with punitive fees and compiled interest that wind up costing you more than the merchandise you bought in the first place. You skip one payment and they'll ruin your financial reputation for life. And we thought the future held so much promise - right? That just goes to show ya that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

Every time a car comes down the hill you're gonna hear somebody shout, "Car's comin!" With all the kids in our neighborhood there was always something going on out in the middle of Arlington Street. And sometimes it was just as much fun to sit up here in the window and watch it all happen.

Watching the teenagers gather down on my front steps was always entertaining. Once they got their quota and the streetlights came on they'd head on down to the "corner" as they called it. They hung out in front of Manny's variety. That was the store on the ground floor of Henry Gray's apartment building down on Ferry Street. Before Manny's it was "Cassie's." Tommy Gear eventually took it over and turned it into Tee Gee's sub shop.

From my frame of reference, the best I could describe as to what the teenagers actually did while hanging out on the corner all night was to practice looking cool for whenever a girl walked by. To look cool back in the early 60's you had to follow a strict routine, or so it seemed. Here's what I gathered from my observations.

Cool guys greased their hair back on the sides, but had this dangly curl that bounced on their forehead whenever they jerked their head, which was like three or four times a minute. You had to keep a Lucky Strike tucked in behind one ear. Don't ask me why. Anything with a filter and you'd look like a banana head. Only a sissy would toke on a filtered cigarette, or so I was told.

Cigarettes played a large role in coolness. Actually smoking them played somewhat of a minor part in the travesty. How you lit up your cigarette was very important. Striking the match on the sandpaper without tearing it out of the matchbook was ultra cool if you could do it with one hand. They also had this one two fingered flip thingy they did with a lighter that ranked right up there.

Learning to talk with a lit cigarette dangling from your lower lip was also very sheik. And the way you threw your cigarette away meant everything. If you couldn't flick that thing clear across the pavement and out into the middle of the street you were a loser. It's as simple as that.

It was the act these teenagers put on that entertained me to no end. Every one of them tried to become the personification of the James Dean stereotype. They all had a proverbial chip on their shoulder, and they wouldn't dare let their guard down. That wouldn't be cool.

You should have seen the way these guys came down on me sometimes because I wasn't cool like them. I'm sitting here laughing to myself thinking about that pleasant summer afternoon I spent sitting out on my front steps drawing a maple leaf. Believe me when I tell ya that I wasn't only striving for realism. I wanted this drawing to look like a photograph.

I used every tool at my disposal to achieve that goal. Q-Tips helped me soften the edges of my leaf to simulate those soft hairy points. Wrinkled up tissues helped me fabricate the leathery texture on the topside of my leaf. And I actually rubbed sand into the lead dust I smeared on my onion skinned drawing paper to achieve the stubble on the stirrup at the end of the stem.

My brother's friend, Donny, came walking up to me asking, "What are doing here all by yourself, kid?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm drawing."

"Let me see that," said Donny.

"Hey, this is great stuff, kid. What I want to know is if you can draw this good why are you wasting all this time and effort on a stupid leaf? I'm really worried about you, kid. I'm gonna tell your brother what you're up to. This ain't normal. You should be drawing naked girls."

"I do that, too," I answered.

"How can you draw a naked girl if you've never seen one?"

"I'll bet I've seen as many as you have."

"Oh, is that so? So where have you ever seen a naked girl?"

"I know where Billy hides his Playboy books." That made him laugh until I said, "So I've probably seen more of them than you have."

"Hey, I've got my own stash too, kid," he said as matter of fact.

"Yeah, but knowing you all the pictures are probably stuck together."

"You know something, wiseguy? If you weren't Billy's little brother I'd smack you right across the lips." Man, he was pissed. Lucky for me Billy came outside at that very moment.

"Your little brother's got a fresh mouth," he snapped at Billy.

"What did you say now?" Billy looked at me as if he was about to bat me around. After I told him what I said he burst out laughing. They needled Donny over that one for weeks.

Aside from watching the teenagers try to look cool, it's just as much fun to watch the littler kids like me living out our fantasies. We're talking an age gone by here. Now I know why Mrs. Day used to sit and look out her front window for hours on end. This was real entertainment.

They've got these phony reality TV shows nower days that supposedly give you a true to life glimpse into a celebrity's personal life. What a bunch of hogwash that is. For one thing, how many of you live in a twenty room mansion with an indoor pool? Maybe of few of you out there do, but the rest of us are just average everyday people.

You know what kind of reality TV I want to see? Show me the life style of a cashier from Walmart, or a housepainter, or a garage mechanic. Show me somebody who has to count their pennies to pay their bills and put food on the table. Show me some real people for a change.

My life is nothing like Hulk Hogan's, or Lindsey Lohan's, or Ozzie Osborn's. Is yours? That is precisely why Mrs. Day sat at her window watching us kids play all day. She had the best reality entertainment ever. And she didn't have to pay a monthly fee or sit through a lot of misleading advertisements either.

Now that's another thing. Remember when we used to scoff at the idea of paying to watch TV? I thought the idea behind paying for TV was so you didn't have to sit through the commercials. Advertisers financed free programming. Now they've got us paying to watch their advertisements. It makes no wonder our elected officials thumb their noses up at us. We're natural born suckers.

By the way, do you honestly believe some of these TV commercials? If I ever said some of the things that they say on these commercials nower days my mother would wash my mouth out with soap. Have you seen that pill commercial yet that's guaranteed to enlarge a certain part of a man's anatomy? You gotta be kidding me.

If that don't beat all, one night on late night TV I saw two girls advertising edible panties. Now there's a combination for ya, huh?

The way I see it, if you take one of those pills and it really works, you might get too big for your own britches. That's not a real problem anymore because now you can whip off your britches and eat em. Now you're free to go walking around Everett to show off your new body part. And you won't have to worry about the cops busting you for indecent exposure so long as you don't go anywhere near Dunkin Donuts - right?

Okay, now that I've finished go off on that tangent, let's get back to watching us little kids play out on the sidewalk. Ever notice how the girls never get into any argument over the games they play? You don't hear two girls yelling back and forth over somebody stepping on a line during a game of Hopscotch. And when was the last time you saw two girls go toe to toe because one of them skipped a beat doing that salt & pepper thing they do with their jump ropes?

You know why that is? That's because girls admit it when they screw up. They don't have all of the hang-ups that us guys do. If one of them steps on a line they turn to the other one and say, "Your turn." If one of them trips up on their jump rope they openly admit, "I'm out." A guy wouldn't admit he screwed up even if they caught it on instant replay.

As soon as a handful of boys gather around to buck up sides for a game of stickball an argument breaks out. First they'll argue over whether the fowl line should be Cecil Johnson's car or the streetlight. Then they'll argue over whether to use a trashcan cover for home plate or that broken record album. They'll have three or four different arguments before anybody ever gets up to bat.

On the very first pitch they'll argue over whether it was a ball or a strike. And then the comments from the peanut gallery start. People start yelling out from their second story windows. Somebody calls out, "That was a strike." Then somebody else yells out from their front porch, "No it wasn't. That was a ball."

Now you know why it takes until the streetlights come on to finish a game of stickball. I've never played a full nine-inning game of stickball in my life. These games go on and on until it gets too dark to see the ball. We spend most of our time arguing over something stupid, and getting out of the way of cars coming down the street. It takes four solid hours to play about sixteen minutes of stickball.

When girls play house they live an entire pretend life in under an hour. They get married, set up house, have children, and then their kids grow up and give them grandchildren all in the same amount of time it takes a handful of boys to decide whether not that ground ball was fair or foul. I kid you not.

Another thing that's a lot of fun to watch is when little kids go off on one of those crazy excursions they get into from time to time. You know, like when somebody spots a shiny quarter down in a sewer. They all crowd around and keep coming up with some of the craziest ideas imaginable on how to get that quarter out of that sewer.

You'd think these kids have never seen a quarter in their lives by the way they carry on. One of them will run home and steal the curtain rod from his living room window as soon as his mother turns her back. Next thing you know, four or five kids will lie face down on the ground trying to hook that quarter with the end of that curtain rod. You can actually hear their voices echoing down through the sewer.

"You almost got it. Be careful now. Turn it to the left. Easy, go easy. Aw, you lost it. You almost had it. Here, let me try."

After about two and a half hours of that they'll go home empty handed covered with dirt and smelling like you know what. When their mother asks what they've been doing to get all smelly and dirty like that they'll say, "Nothin." If you go back and take a look down that sewer you'll not only see that quarter, but now you'll also see somebody's living room curtain rod all bent up and twisted.

Tomorrow's another day. If they don't get that quarter today you know that they'll be back at it again tomorrow. It'll be days before they finally give up on that quarter. And you can bet your sweet life they'll crowd around when the city workers show up a couple of weeks from now to clean out that sewer. Come hell or high water an Everett kid is gonna wind up with that quarter eventually. You mark my words.

So that's what life on Arlington Street looked like when I was a little kid. When school let out for the summer we were as free as a bird. There were no more pencils, no more books, and no more teacher's dirty looks to break our stride. We roamed the city streets on our bikes. We sat on the curbstones eating our Hoodsies. And we played hide-and-go-seek until the streetlights came on.

It's funny now that I think of it, but I can remember sitting down to the kitchen table having a heartfelt gab over a cup of tea with my mother when I was about 16 years old. She was reminiscing about her golden school days on Bell Island in Newfoundland.

"If given the opportunity," she said, "those are the days I'd want to go back to. Back to my junior high school days innocently flirting with the boys and having pajama party sleepovers with my girlfriends." And I can still remember that far away look in her eyes when she said it.

I suppose we all have a favorite time we like to look back on. Man, I've got a million of em. Ha cha cha cha! But I'll be honest with ya. If given the opportunity I'd like to go back to when I was about five years old before I ever set foot in school.

I'd like to go back to when Santa Claus knew my name, I couldn't get out of bed fast enough to catch the Easter Bunny in the act of spreading colored eggs all over my living room, and I knew for certain that Superman could beat up Zorro. Man, I was so innocent back then that all you had to do to shut me up was sit me down to a tall stack of Ritz crackers and a big glass of milk and I was in seventh heaven.

So not to burn my bridges behind me, if you do happen to get one of those stationary mass temporal displacement units before I do, and you're willing to share, I'll take any time zone from my childhood growing up in Everett.

Those were the best years of our lives. They're our most treasured possessions. And I wouldn't trade a single one of those memories for all the gold in Fort Knox. Those high and mighty celebrities got their fancy schmancy mansions and all, but we've got something they could never afford to buy.

We've got the best friends in the whole wide world. We know each other, we care about each other, and we love each other. And we don't know where they come from, but "We're from Everett!"

Under The Weather

It's been a long time, huh? Please forgive me for such a long absence. I've been a bit under the weather, so to speak. We've had a rough go of it over the past couple of weeks here in the Midwest.

Torrential rains, flash floods, and power outages have really turned our lives upside down. Even my hometown made the national news. I can think of better ways to make the national headlines other than to have the Wabash River make a right turn into my living room.

We expected the worse when the firemen came banging on our front door in the wee hours of the morning last Saturday to evacuate us from our home. The floodwaters had surged to an inch below our doorstep. Our only option was to run towards our car in water up to our shins with only what we thought we'd need to survive. You don't get any time to hem and haw over anything. You just grab and run.

That's when you learn which of your things are really important. You'd be surprised at how fast the things you thought you could never live without suddenly become worthless. I mean honestly, what good are they if you wind up six feet under?

By nightfall the floodwaters had drastically receded. Not a single drop ever entered into our house. Many of our neighbors were not so lucky. In our neighborhood alone more than twenty-four families had lost their homes. The good news is that there was no loss of life. We've got our local fire department to thank for that.

You get a little gun shy every time you see a dark cloud after something like that. I used to love rainy days because they instilled a melancholy sense of creativity within me. Now they scare the living bejeezus out of me. And even as of this writing the thunderstorms just keep on truckin.

Let me give you just one word of advice. If those storm clouds turn a dark green and start swirling in a circular motion, high tale it on out of there. You're not gonna like what happens next.

I've seen a lot of things that I never dreamed I'd ever see in my lifetime. Things I've seen on TV before, but never right outside my front door. Things like people being rescued from their homes in a rowboat. Cars submerged up to their windshields in raging waters. And non-stop torrential downpours for two straight weeks in a row.

So you think you've got problems sometimes, but no matter how hard life comes at you there's always somebody somewhere who is far worse off than you. It's times like these that teach you to count your blessings. Your whole situation can change drastically in the blink of an eye. Take nothing for granted. What's here today could be gone tomorrow. Make every moment count.

Speaking of problems, it has occurred to me that one of the reasons we look back on our childhood growing up in Everett with such a heartfelt fondness is because that was a time before we had any real problems to deal with. I suppose it's easy to say that now that we've left all of our childhood problems behind. At the time, we thought we'd never survive.

I can remember my mother rolling her eyes at me saying, "Problems? You wouldn't know a problem if it snuck up behind you a bit you on the ass." Come to think of it. Old Elliot said the very same thing to me one night down in Glendale Park.

That was easy for them to say. They weren't the ones who had to keep ducking behind parked cars every time that big kid from High Street came thumping down the sidewalk. He kept telling me that if he ever got his hands on me he was gonna pound me into the pavement for absolutely no reason at all. How was I supposed to reason with a nut like that?

That kid was so big that his opened hand was larger than my entire head. I was afraid I'd wind up on the dark side of the moon somewhere if he ever slapped me across the face. I didn't dare leave the house without a rock rolled up in a sock. Sure, it's the dirty fighter's way out, but what chance did I have against a mindless gargantuan like that?

Another thing they didn't have to worry about is that book report that was due tomorrow on a book they hadn't even looked at yet. Remember suffering through that kind of stress? As much as I knew that book report was bearing down on me I just couldn't bring myself to buckle down and get the job done. I didn't even have the smarts to whiz through that book so I could fake it.

Some tasks are just so repulsive that you choose to face the consequences instead of just doing what you're supposed to do. It's virtually impossible to spend a whole week's worth of afternoons reading a book filled with "thou" and "thee" when there's a stick ball game going on outside.

And besides, what twelve year-old kid cares whether or not John Alden ever gets the chance to jump on Priscilla's bones? They can unknowingly pass each other on ships in the night until doom's day for all I care. I certainly cannot believe that somebody actually sat down and wrote a 120-page poem about it.

This poem was published in 1858. It's the fictionalized account of a 1621 love-triangle involving three Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. If you have ever read any of Longfellow's drawn out poetry then you already know how they are filled with run-on sentences and passive verbs just like this sentence, which was the norm back in the 1800's. You could yawn yourself to death just trying to get through the first page.

So here it is 1964, and they expect a twelve year-old kid who's already seen "Goldfinger," "Psycho," and "Bikini Beach" at the Park Theatre to get all worked up over a bunch of Pilgrims sailing around in a boat. I don't think so. Seeing Annette Funicello in a bathing suit far outweighs anything the Pilgrims throw at you. And that is precisely why I can't bring myself to buckle down and crack open that book.

Don't worry about me, though. I'll survive. I've mastered the art of standing in the isle with my head hung low while the teacher goes up one side of me and down the other. It's become my modus operandi, especially with literature teachers.

For the life of me I cannot remember the name of my literature teacher at the Parlin. She looked a lot like that actress Sandy Dennis. The only two things that really stand out in my memory about her is that she was very enthusiastic about the "Up With People" movement that was going on amongst preppy college students in the early 1960's, and the fact that she couldn't stand the sight of me. What is it with me and teachers anyway?

Another thing that troubles kids is the fear that every one else in the neighborhood is gonna find out something embarrassing about you. Like if you're still wetting to bed when you're twelve years old for instance. I had to come up with a dozen different excuses as to why my mother kept a sheet of plastic over my mattress.

If that wasn't bad enough, my brother, Carl, and I got into an argument one afternoon so he blurted out to every kid within earshot that I wet to bed. To prove he wasn't lying he ran upstairs, grabbed the sheet off my bed, and hung it down over the railing of our second story porch so everybody could see the wet spot. I thought I'd never live that down, either.

Funny thing is, after everybody found out that I wet to bed, more and more kids told me that they wet to bed, too. Seems like everybody was waiting for somebody else to suffer through the initial humiliation before they'd admit to anything. So I guess that makes me the first kid on my block to come out of the closet in the bedwetting category.

And since we're on the subject of kid troubles, how about all those times your parents embarrassed the living daylights out of you in front of the whole world? Take my father, for instance. On the average, he drove around Everett at a speed of about six miles an hour. People walking along the sidewalk easily kept pace with us.

My friend, Nicky, and I had an entire conversation while he was strolling along Ferry Street and I was riding in the back seat of my father's car. Most times I'd duck down so no one would see me. That didn't always work because if you were walking along the sidewalk beside our car we'd never pass you by. All you had to do is look over your shoulder and you'd see me crouched down on the floor of the back seat. As a result, I grew up constantly listening to people ask, "Didn't your father get a gas peddle with that car?"

You want to hear a good one? The cops pulled my dad over one day for driving too slow down Union Street. That's a true story. They didn't give him a ticket or anything. They just wanted to make sure that he was all right.

And I know I've told you about this before, but another way my dad used to embarrass the dickens out of me was by some of the conversations he'd have with total strangers. Like that time that he and some old lady went on and on about Preparation H in the middle of the Stop & Shop in Glendale Square. I mean really. What can be more embarrassing to a twelve year-old kid than to hear your old man broadcast the virtues of medicine for your bum in front of a whole store full of neighbors? Has this guy no shame?

Another odd quirk about my dad is that he always carried a brown paper bag filled with pharmaceuticals wherever he went. The guy was a walking drug store. In that bag he carried Preparation H, Alka Seltzer, Aspirin, Pepto Bismol, baking soda, Hydrogen Peroxide, Mercurochrome, and bandaids among so many other things. And he never left home without that bag. I'm not kidding ya.

So naturally, everybody used to ask what it was that my dad always carried around in that paper bag. When I told them they'd break out in a fit of laughter. Can you blame them? Some people actually thought he was carrying around a bag of money. Now honestly, one look at us and you'd know we didn't have a big bag of money to lug around.

The only time my mother ever embarrassed me is when she'd come home from shopping after buying me some new clothes. While she stood there showing me what she bought I couldn't help but wonder "what was this woman thinking?" You'd have to see some of this stuff to believe it.

My mother was big on the likes of Tennessee Ernie Ford and Jimmy Dean. She thought that anything they'd wear was hot. Well maybe so in Oklahoma or Indiana, but it really didn't cut the mustard in Everett, Massachusetts, let me tell ya.

Can you just imagine running out into the middle of Arlington Street to play off-the-wall wearing one of those rodeo shirts with buttoned down pocket flaps and a string tie? You wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb or anything, now would ya? And if that ain't bad enough, she'd go so far as to buy me a pair of those clam diggers to go along with it. Now there's a combination for ya.

She'd actually hold these things up together and ask, "Now what's wrong with that outfit?"

"Ma, you're not serious?"

"Yes, I'm serious. Jimmy Dean wears shirts like this all the time."

You could understand it if she grew up in the Deep South or something, but she didn't. She grew up in Newfoundland. That's fisherman country. You'd expect her to come home with a pair of gators and a rain hat, but no, she had this Country & Western thing going on inside her head. Gawd only knows where she got that from.

So you can see where I'm coming from - right? We had problems galore when we were kids. If it's not one thing it's another. If it wasn't for some mindless gargantuan who wanted to put your lights out for no reason at all, then it was your teacher coming down on ya for not getting your homework done. And if it wasn't for your dad talking out loud in public about the medicine he puts on his bum, then it's your mother who wants to send you off to school dressed like Jimmy Dean. You can't win.

It doesn't just end there, believe you me. There comes a time when that cute little girl in the second row catches your fancy so you slip a note in her desk asking, "Can I walk you home after school?" You come back in from recess to find that note folded up in your desk. You tremble with excitement as you slowly unfold it to read her reply. Scribbled across the bottom it says, "DROP DEAD!"

I guess she wasn't all that impressed by my new school clothes after all. And to think, we had to go all the way over to J.M. Fields to find a shirt just like Jimmy Dean wears. Just wait until she gets an itchy rear end someday. I'll never tell her about Preparation H. She can just scratch herself to death for all I care.

Even if you do find a girl who lets you walk her home there's no guarantee that everything's gonna go your way. Like that time in the tenth grade I walked this girl home who lived down on School Street. We paused for somewhat of a romantic interlude right there on the sidewalk at the corner of Norwood and Broadway.

The moment was so right. We were so lost in each other that it felt like we were all by ourselves even in the middle of all the people and traffic going every which way in downtown Everett Square. We gazed deeply into each other's eyes. And just as our lips were about to touch for the very first time, a pigeon dropped a full payload right in the middle of my forehead.

Not only did it splatter all over my forehead, but it ran down along the side of my cheek as well. It looked like a giant boil had erupted on my face. You don't honestly think she was going to kiss me after that, do ya?

And grownups don't think that kids have any problems. Give me a break. Life is nothing but one long string of problems. The hits just keep on coming, one right after the other. It starts the moment you hop up over the crib rails and it doesn't stop until you're six feet under.

Just to prove my point, I can name at least six places in Everett where I ran into a problem when I was a kid. Two kids beat me up on Clinton Street when I was in the fourth grade. I forget why. At the far end of Foster Street a car hit me when I was going out for a pass during a game of tag rush. While riding my bike I got hit by another car at the bottom of High Street.

A dog chased me and bit me on the ankle one morning while delivering newspapers on Walnut Street. The bite was deep enough to require stitching. That was the only time I ever got bit by a dog on my paper route, even though I had been chased by many.

Somebody pitched a basketball into me once when I was up at bat. When the bat ricocheted off the basketball, it bounced back and whacked in me in the jaw. It knocked the wind out of me. I'm lucky it didn't break my jaw altogether. That happened up at the Horace Mann playground.

And last, but by no means least, I broke my own nose at the bottom of Arlington Street. We found this old cast iron kettle in the trash. It weighed a ton. The roof of the Storm Shield building across the street looked like a good place to whip this thing up on top of, in the mind of a ten year-old kid that is.

We tied a length of clothesline to the handle of that kettle and I swung this thing like David's slingshot. Instead of hitting Goliath right between the eyes, it caught me square on the nose on the third revolution. It knocked me out cold into the middle of Arlington Street.

So I suppose you could say that many of my childhood problems were of my own doing. But in all fairness, you could say the very same thing about the grownups as well. That just goes to show ya that no matter how old you get, you are still that same little kid inside.

Some of us never grow up. Some of us don't want to. And why should we? After all, our childhood was the best years of our lives, especially for us because - "We're from Everett!"