Family Snapshot

Hot sunny days often bring back memories of those lazy, hazy, crazy, summer days of my childhood growing up in Everett. I'm not talking about anything spectacular, mind you. I'm just talking about the kind of day that passes by without batting an eye.

Right in front of our six-family on Arlington Street, the city planted a maple tree that now blanketed the facade of our house. It acted like a giant sun umbrella that filtered out the hot summer sun and allowed those soothing gentle breezes to blow in from the east during the late afternoon.

Looking out of the second floor living room window after poking a few holes through the screen with a pencil to occupy my idle mind, I can see Mikey Smith down below on the sidewalk. That kid may as well move in. What the heck, he's here every day anyway.

He's leaning up against the maple tree with a Lucky Strike tucked in behind his left ear. The sleeves to his shirt are rolled up, and he’s got a whole pack of butts tucked into the crease of his right sleeve. Mikey had long, straight, reddish blond hair that fell across his entire face. He keeps jerking his head to one side to throw his hair back. He reminds me of that tough-guy cigarette smoking angel in the 1987 movie, "Made in Heaven." His voice even sounds like him.

Just in case you didn't know Mikey, this kid was a genuine human being. And just because he never grew to be any taller than knee-high to a grasshopper didn't mean you were gonna shove this kid around. He could fight. Believe me, Mikey could hold his ground.

It was tempting to go a few rounds with this kid even though he was seven years my senior. He quickly taught me that there was indeed some truth to the old saying, "Never judge a book by its cover." Our match was all in fun, but as they say, "Many a truth plays out in jest." If I learned anything that day, it was that having this kid at your side in a scrap was no liability.

Okay, so what's he doing out in front of my house on a hot summer day? He's with his best friend in the whole world - my big brother, Billy. These two were inseparable. You can't have one without the other. That's just the way it was.

On this day, Billy stood beneath that spreading maple out front washing and waxing his prized possession - a 1962 Rambler American with a six-cylinder engine and a three speed manual transmission. That was as close as he ever got to his real dream. What he really wanted was a Rambler 400 series convertible.

As I understand it, he got this little number for a song. It needed an engine. He bought it anyway. For the first six months it set up on cinder blocks in the backyard while he transformed it into a lean mean street machine to chauffeur his chick around town.

That's back when Billy was dating a girl named, Ellen, who always wore a leather jacket, sported a beehive hairdo, and was forever saying, "Up your nose with a rubber hose." She irked the living daylights out of my mother. My mother was tickled pink when they finally broke up.

They've got the radio blaring out on the sidewalk while they work. Well, not blaring in the sense, as you would think today. Blaring back then meant you could hear it when you hung out of the window above their heads, but it doesn't make the glass in the windows vibrate or anything. Then again, neither the Everly Brothers, nor Del Shannon, ever wrote anything with that much of a booming bass beat.

Off in the distance I can hear the ice cream truck getting closer. Another telltale sign is seeing my brother, Carl, and his two friends, Franny and Peter, zooming by on one bike to catch up to the ice cream truck. You heard that right - one bike.

Remember how three kids could pile up on one bike to coast down the street? One kid sat across the handlebars, another stood up as he peddled, while a third kid rode on the seat with his legs spread out so the other kid could peddle. You can do that with these bikes because the frames are so strong and heavy. They've even got luggage racks over the back fender. Yep, fenders - remember those?

As I understand it, my brother, Carl, was the first successful infant brain operation at Children’s Hospital. He was only six months old when it happened. His four-year-old brother, Billy, tried to pick him up out of the crib to give him a hug. It proved to be too much for the little tyke. His baby brother fell over his shoulder, smacking the top of his head down onto a hardwood floor.

Because of that injury, Carl suffered with from daily seizures throughout his entire life brought on by Grand Mal Epilepsy that resulted from that injury. He did his damnedest to enjoy his life to it’s fullest in spite of it all. Hardly a day went by when he wasn’t rushed off to the hospital in an ambulance. Even still, he marched in many an Everett Fourth of July parade carrying a big bass drum with the Statesman Drum & Bugle Corpse.

Now that I’ve finished going off on that tangent, I better get back to focusing on that ice cream truck. Don't worry about me - I'm getting an ice cream. There's no doubt about that. My brother Billy always has a pocketful of change. You can hear it jingle when he walks.

When the ice cream truck pulls up out front I'll just run out and say, "Billy, quick, I need a dime." He'll say, "Oh, you big pain in the ass," but he always flips me a dime. Hey, isn’t that what being a big brother is all about?

I know exactly what I'm getting already. I'm getting a "push-up." That's my favorite. Remember those? For those of you who have never had a "push-up," I'll tell you about it. "Push-ups" are my second favorite food in the whole world - second only to Malted Milk Balls. These were ice creams that came in a tube that looked like a toilet paper "doot-da-doo."

So what's a "doot-da-doo?" That's the cardboard cylinder on the inside of aluminum foil or toilet paper that you can hold up to your mouth and shout "doot-da-doo" as if you were playing a trumpet.

At the top of the tube was a paper stopper you pulled off. First, you licked the ice cream off that paper stopper before you threw it away. Then, you pushed up on the stick handle to expose that tube of ice cream inside. The more you ate, the more you pushed up on the stick to get more ice cream.

When the ice cream was all gone you wound up with a neat little plaything because the stick that ran up through the ice cream had a cardboard washer on the end of it. The point on that stick protruded through the cardboard washer. Turn it upside down and you could spin it on the kitchen table like a top. "Push-ups" were three novelties in one. You got the ice cream, the doot-da-doo, and the spinning top. Who could ask for anything more?

Today I'm heading out with Jackie to the field behind Spencer's Sunoco down on Ferry Street to grab some grasshoppers. We need those to feed that preying mantis we caught yesterday. That thing is huge. We've got him locked up in large pickle jar with some grass and twigs to make him feel right at home.

Bumblebees were also fun to catch because they don't sting. I caught so many bumblebees in a jar once that the jar hummed like an electric motor. They only lasted a few days even though I stabbed holes in the cover with a nail. Hey, you win some - you lose some.

Across the street I can see Stevie doing his yo yo tricks with his wooden Duncan yo yo. This kid has mastered that thing. He can do the "Walk the Dog, Around the World, Over the Waterfall, Shoot the Moon, and Rock the cradle," all in one motion without skipping a beat. The kid is phenomenal. I couldn't even get that thing to come back up to the palm of my hand.

I just want to get going before my mother and father make me go down to the Stop and Shop in Glendale Square with them. My father drives so slow that it's embarrassing. I usually slink down into the back seat so no one sees me. Don't get me wrong. I am not ashamed of my parents. I love these guys. It's just embarrassing when your father drives slower than the people walking along the sidewalk.

My mother and father are two very funny people. They fuss and fight all day long, but in a funny sort of way. They remind me of Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows (Ralph Kramden and Alice) in the Honeymooners. They are hysterical sometimes. My dad's always telling my mom that he's going to trade her in for a younger model. And she always comes back with, "You wouldn't know what to do with a younger model."

Tonight will be a fun night. I love hot summer nights at home with my family. It’s nights like these when my dad gets that crazy urge to send us out for ice cream at Ski's down at the corner of Chestnut and Ferry. My mom will protest and say, "What's wrong with you, Bill? We can't afford that." And he'll come back with, "Oh what's the difference, Grace? We gotta live." I love this guy's line of reasoning.

Another fun thing about spending hot summer nights with my family is hanging around with my big sister. My big sister, Julie, treats me like I'm the only other human being in the whole world. From the very moment I could breath, she was always right there looking after me. I could write volumes about all the memories we shared together. She was a best friend, a surrogate mother, and a trusted confidant all rolled into one.

I vividly remember as far back as her wheeling me in the stroller up Arlington Street, down Foster Street, and all the way up to the top of High Street to see the Fourth of July parade on Broadway. I still remember getting that lollipop with a looped rope handle from the clown we saw walking on Foster Street that day. He was on his way to join the parade when we ran into him.

Before I could speak whole sentences, she taught me how to spell, "hot." I used to nod my head and say, "H-O-T, hot!" She also taught me how to spell, "LaRosa," by teaching me how to sing along with the spaghetti commercial. When I got a little bit older, She taught me all the latest dances, like the twist, the shout, and the monkey. We used to dance to the radio in the kitchen. We had a blast.

Julie was also my TV buddy. We sat and watched everything together. Every afternoon we laughed at Soupy Sales, and then cheered the contestants on during Gene Rayburn's Match game. And we never missed a single episode of Dean Martin's Variety show either.

Remember Dean Martin's show? He used to always tell his pianist not to speak because the studio was obligated to pay him $50 per word if he did. Dino would ask him a question and then shush him up before he could open his mouth.

We rolled on the floor laughing when Lilly Tomlin dressed up as a cheerleader on Rowin & Martin's Laugh-in. She did a hula type dance making an outline of the shape of her body with her hands while singing. "Touch - de touch - de touch - de touch, " then waved her finger at the camera and sang, "No-no-no!"

Because of a mime comedy sketch we once saw on television, whenever my sister and I tried to explain something to somebody and had to focus on the word "but," we'd spin around and point to our rear-ends when we said it.

Another thing we enjoyed doing together was stretching out on the couch to watch the Boston Movie Time in the late afternoons. Because of those fond memories, I still love to watch some of the old classics we watched together, like the original "Cheaper By the Dozen," and Mickey Rooney in "The Strawberry Blonde," and of course, "King Kong."

I did one thing to my sister that I will never be able to explain as to why I did it in a million years. This happened when I was in kindergarten. On this one particular night, the whole family sat around the living room watching television. I walked up behind my brother, Carl, and tapped him lightly on the head three times with a light bulb. He turned and looked at me as if to say, "Are you alright?"

After that, I walked up behind my brother, Billy, and did the same thing to him. By this time, my harmless antics caught the attention of the whole family. Finally, I walked up behind my sister. After two light taps with the light bulb, I came down with considerable force on the third tap, smashing the light bulb into smithereens on top of her head. Hundreds of tiny shards of broken glass entangled into her long brown hair.

My mother spent the better part of that evening carefully brushing the glass out of her hair. I certainly got a beating that night – let me tell ya. And even to this day, I have no idea what possessed me to do that. I wasn't even mad at her for anything.

You'd think she'd stop being nice to me after that - wouldn't you? She didn't though. She kept right on being the kind of big sister everybody prays for - go figure.

Things didn't really change much when she started dating. Many times, she took her little brother along with her. That's how come I knew about yelling out, "Arnie Woo Woo Ginsberg," at the Adventure Car Hop up on route one in Saugus to get a free record. The golden age of carhops was long gone by the time I became a teenager.

Out of all the guys she dated, the one that made the biggest impact on me was "Dave." Dave was a tall, handsome kid that wanted to become a disc jockey. He constantly honed his speaking skills using a small portable open-reel tape recorder. One day, after buying a better tape recorder, he let me have his old one. I was in seventh heaven. I've been obsessed with recording sound ever since.

Julie didn't focus all this attention on her little brother because she was obligated to. She did it because of reasons that I wonder if she truly understands herself. Trust me, nobody understands what's going on inside this complex person like I do. And that's the truth.

My sister is both fiercely independent and ardently loyal to her family. To say that she would lay down her life to protect her own is an understatement. The influential impact she has made on all of our lives has instilled that same sense of pride and loyalty in our whole family.

If I ever needed anything, and it was within her power to give it, I only needed to ask. Such is true with anyone that offers her their friendship and loyalty. But let me warn you, if you crossed her you would never survive the wrath.

It's no surprise that she grew up to become a nurse. Taking care of other people comes so naturally to her. She took a leave of absence from her regular job to care for my big brother, Billy, around the clock when he fought his battle with cancer. She stood right there beside him when he said his final good-bye.

Us kids fought like cats and dogs sometimes, but we would lay down our lives for each other if an outsider stepped into the circle. We were a family of modest means, but we were rich in love. We stood by each other through thick and thin. We still do.

I've said it many times before. It was the people that made growing up in Everett so special. What made it so extra special for me was having the kind of family you could cling to when the going got tough.

I've heard so many nightmare stories about families that break apart over jealousy and who got what from whose inheritance. Isn't that a pity? I cannot imagine turning my back on the very people who made my life worth living over something so trivial as money. Sure, money's nice, but it can't buy you the very thing that your family gives to you for free.

Knowing I had such a tight family back home gave me the confidence I needed to get out and experience the world around me. My siblings prepared me to deal with the many different kinds of people I would come in contact with in the outside world. Because of them, I had a happier childhood.

In a nutshell - that's us. We're the Huffmans.
And "We're from Everett!"
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