Dance With Me

The world seemed a whole lot larger when I was a little kid growing up at the bottom of Arlington Street. Granted, my frame of reference was somewhat limited back then. Even so, the observations I made through that limited frame of reference are the ones that guide me throughout my adult life. The things I learned after I grew up only add a flair of sophistication to those initial observations.

Today's topic came to me during a recent browse through a local antique shop. You know you're getting on in years when the things they're calling "antiques" are the very things you took for granted when you were a kid. I still can't get over the fact that they're playing the Rolling Stones at the grocery store.

That first hit me a couple of years back when this old codger was standing next to me at the vegetable bin in the grocery store. I could of sworn that old guy was several years my senior. It's funny how young you feel when you're not looking into a mirror.

All of a sudden he turned to me and said, "Do you believe they're playing "Satisfaction" at the grocery stores now? I remember when my dad used to yell, "Turn that god forsaken crap off!" As it turned out, that old codger was a few years younger than me. Go figure.

As I walk up and down the isles browsing at all of these so called "antiques" random memories unfold in rapid succession. The first thing to catch my eye is one of those toy drinking birds you'd see every now and then up in somebody's kitchen window. They looked like a skinny red stork that bobbed up and down into a glass of water as if actually drinking from it. That's all it did for hours on end.

My good friend, and fellow E.H.S. classmate, Frankie, lived at the corner of Foster and High. His mother had one set up in their kitchen window for years. So now that little random tidbit of information sets me off on another whole tangent.

Frankie and I have a funny history. His dad owned the plumber's shop on the corner of Villa and Ferry that eventually became Lenny's Auto Repair. God only knows what it is today. Frankie used to play tag rush behind the Horace Mann with Jon, and David, and I. He once fell over the front of his bike and had to get a metal plate put into his head. He did survive that sure enough, and went on to become a successful businessman in his adult life.

One incident with Frankie that really stands out happened during my junior year at Everett High. We're talking the 1969-70 school year. My girlfriend had just broken up with me so I was sort of down in the dumps over that. On this one particular day, another girl I knew from my Junior High School days at the Parlin stopped me in the corridor for a friendly gab.

Everything was going just fine until somebody suddenly kicked my books out of my hand from behind. My books and all of my homework went flying across the corridor. I lost it. Without even thinking I swung around and socked the kid who did it in the mouth, knocking out one of his front teeth, and seriously cutting my knuckle in the process. It wasn't until after I socked him that I realized it was Frankie who did it.

We both got expelled for fighting and had to show up at Leo's office a week later with our mothers to get back into school. What really took both our mothers, and Mr. Leo, by surprise is that neither one of us had any qualms about shaking hands and letting bygones be bygones. After all, we were good friends.

What they wanted to know was how such good friends could possibly ever come to blows like this. That's one thing grownups will never understand. Just because I'm mad at you right now doesn't mean I'm gonna hate you for the rest of my life. Kids don't hold grudges. They deal with it and move on. If grownups could only learn to think like a kid the world would be a much better place.

One of my paper route customers also had one of those drinking birds out on her enclosed front porch on Walnut Street. That customer, and her enclosed front porch, made an effectual impression on me. It was the quaintest little porch, and so nicely decorated that it had such a cozy welcoming atmosphere about it. I loved stepping inside that porch on cold winter mornings to drop her newspaper onto her white wicker rocking chair.

She often set out a brownie on a plate for me on top of this adorable lamp table next to that rocking chair. Hung on the wall beside her front door was a plaque with an illustration of a woman wearing an apron bending over a hot stove. The verse beneath it read, "The hurrier I go - the behinder I get." She was such a pleasant customer that I have never forgotten her. I probably never will.

Every time we go browsing at an antique shop there's always something that catches my eye and inspires me to hold it up so Carol can see it from across the room as I shout, "Hey honey, will you look at this?" And that's exactly what happened as soon as I spotted a book full of S&H Green Stamps. You want to talk about an avalanche of memories? A book full of S&H Green Stamps will do it every time.

In my mind's eye right now I'm seeing my mother sitting down at the kitchen table by herself after we've all settled down for the evening. She had a small table lamp that gave off just enough light to illuminate her little work area without disturbing the soft romantic ambience she so enjoyed in her quiet solitude. With the radio turned down low, WHDH played those romantic ballads she so enjoyed, like "Love Letters in the Sand," by Pat Boone, "Can't Get Over Losing You," by Andy Williams, and "Sixteen Tons," by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

In a world of her own she sat and pasted those S&H Green Stamps into books in hopes of cashing them in someday for that flowered set of egg cups, or a four-slotted toaster, or maybe that new set of canisters she's been eyeing for quite some time now. A simple pleasure, for sure, but one that was hers and hers alone. Everybody needs that. Everybody needs to unwind at the end of each day. That is especially so after spending a hectic day chasing after four kids.

Just about every gas station and grocery store participated in the S&H Green Stamp incentive back in the day. My mother had shopping bags full of those stamps. There was once a time that if somebody didn't participate in the S&H Green Stamp program, than they didn't get her business. No picture no play, as they say.

Bread Boxes are another item that keep popping up every so often in these local antique shops. Does anybody store their bread in a bread box anymore? When we were little kids just about everybody had a bread box on their kitchen counter. It certainly removed the riddle as to where everybody kept their bread.

The only thing a bread box really did was to help control the bread crumbs. Whether or not it actually kept your bread any fresher than just whipping it up into the cupboard is a mystery. They were great if you had limited cupboard space. It did add somewhat of a flair to the counter top, especially if its design scheme didn't conflict with your canisters.

Perhaps the invention of the microwave oven was what doomed the bread box as a common household item. Once we found out how fast we could pop things into the microwave, and wolf them down before running out the door, we definitely needed one of those. The only logical place to put one was right where the bread box used to be on top of the kitchen counter. So it became good-bye bread box and hello fast food, indigestion, and cholesterol galore.

That's why I say that a casual stroll through your local antique shop may be a treasure hunt for some people, but to me it's like time traveling back to the simpler days of my youth growing up in Everett. And that is especially true whenever I come across one of those bins full of insignificant odds and ends.

Dig in under all of the clutter and you're liable to find things like a roller skate key, a rubber sink stopper, and the spindle to a 45 rpm record. Now there's a few items that were once permanent fixtures in our everyday lives. You hardly ever see any of those things outside of an antique shop nower days.

And now that I think of it, another item you'll often find in those bins full of insignificant odds and ends is a church key. For you younguns out there, I'm not talking about the one you use to unlock the front door to a church. What I'm talking about is a bottle opener.

The sharp end was primarily used to cut two triangular holes at the top of your beer can. One hole to guzzle through, and the other one so the air pressure pushes your brew out through the guzzle hole. The blunt end popped the top off of your Coke bottle. There was once a time when you could die of thirst without a church key. Pull tops and screw caps put an end to that.

They've got record albums galore in these antique shops. They're fun to thumb through even though I haven't owned a turntable in decades. It's funny how when I was a kid these antique shops focused more on the 10 inch - 78 rpm record albums from the thirties and forties. Now they're stocking up on the Beatles, the Supremes, and the Moody Blues. If that doesn't scare ya, I don't know what will.

Another item that keeps popping up are those kitchen clocks that looked like Felix the Cat. Remember those? The tail swung from side to side, and the eyes rocked back and forth in momentous rhythm. We never had one of those, but I did know several people who did, including Marjorie up at the top of Arlington Street, and my best friend, Joey, who lived in Henry Gray's apartment building on Ferry Street, where the Irish nurses also lived.

Sometimes you'll find clothes like wedding gowns, and military uniforms, from an age long gone by. It makes you kind of wonder how people could've stood to wear some of these outlandish fashions. I suppose it's all they had. One thing that hasn't changed in over a hundred years is what they hung them on. For the most part, they're hung on wire coat hangers.

So it's not so much the clothes that are triggering my bouts of nostalgia as it is the wire coat hangers. Back in our day we had a hundred and one uses for a wire coat hanger.

I can't count how many times we used one to replace the broken antenna on our TV. They also worked great as an antenna replacement for your car. I did that to my VW Beetle back in my Everett High School days. It sure beat forking over a saw buck for a new one, let me tell ya.

Wire coat hangers held my tail pipe together, kept my passenger door from swinging open on left hand turns, and were great for fishing lost jewelry out of a drain. Bend em up just right and lock em into your electric drill and you can stir a can of semi-gloss paint in seconds flat. You'd do well to keep a couple of extra wire coat hangers in your tool box. They're easy enough to come by. They throw them away by the dozens at any dry cleaners.

Here's another classic item for ya, remember that index card rotary Rolodex you used to see on just about every office desk you ever went into? That's another item that has gone the way of all flesh thanks to computers. They've also got AM transistor radios galore. They make a great conversational piece, but are virtually worthless in comparison to today's technologies.

I still remember my first transistor radio and how I loved to drop it down into my front pocket, run the earphone wire up through my shirt, and then stroll along Ferry Street listening to Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg on WMEX. That Adventure Car Hop jingle still resonates in the back of my head even to this day. Some things just get lodged in your memory banks and you can't get them out.

Now here's something I never thought would become a collector's item. It's an MBTA subway token. They're selling these for a couple of bucks a piece. Do you believe it? I wish I had stocked up on those tokens when they were only a nickel. I suppose Charlie will never get off that train now (Kingston Trio song - remember?).

Speaking of records, you'd be hard pressed to walk into an antique shop today that doesn't have at least one old record player in its repertoire. Is there anyone out there who doesn't have at least one fond memory of a record player in their lives? You know I do. I've got a million of them.

Our first record player was a cloth covered Silvertone. I'm not sure when my parents actually bought it. It was already here when I arrived on the scene. It had a metal turntable with a felt covering to protect the records from scratching. The spindle was built right into the turntable. All you had to do was twist it up to play 45's, and then just twist it back down to play an album.

This thing was so old that it could only play one record at a time. It didn't have a mechanical spindle where you could stack up to five records in a sequence on it. That kind of technology didn't come out until long after they marketed this baby. You also had to place the needle on the record by hand. If you didn't lift it off when the record ended it just went round and round amplifying that scratching sound through its built-in 3-inch speaker.

It had three speeds, 45, 33-1/3, and 78 rpm's. We never used the 78. We wore the 45 to a frazzle after the Beatles showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show. And just to give you an idea of how far behind the Jones's we actually were, we still had that Silvertone record player when my big brother, Billy, came home from Vietnam.

I remember this one particular day sitting up on the couch when my legs were so short that my feet barely stuck out over the edge of the cushions. We had just finished eating our Sunday dinner. Billy headed out onto the opened road in his Rambler American. Julie went over to Martha's house. And Carl ran up the street to Peter Hughes' house. So just my mom, my dad, and me, stayed behind to leisurely while away that warm summer afternoon.

We had every window in the house open. That gentle easterly breeze barely moved the curtains as the sunlight trickled in through the venetian blinds that were drawn to half mast so you could still see the leaves quiver on the maple tree outside of our window. Our initial intention was to gather around the TV to watch "The Strawberry Blonde," on WBZ's Boston Movie Time.

All of a sudden my dad gave a bit of a coy grin to my mom. He had this funny look in his eye. Then he said, "Hey, I've got an idea." With that he left the room. "What is that man up to now?" She said with somewhat of faint smile. I just shrugged my shoulders because honestly, I hadn't the faintest idea.

Minutes later he came walking back into the room carrying that Silvertone record player. "So you want to hear some music?" My mom asked. "Yeah, there's something special I want to play for you," he winked at her.

He reached in under the end table where they kept their record albums. As soon as my mother saw which record he was reaching for she smiled and said, "What are you getting romantic all of a sudden?" "Yeah, why not," he smiled back.

The record he was about to play was "their" song. It's called, "Let the Rest of the World Go By," and was written in 1919 by Keirn Brennan & Ernest Ball. This record was recorded by Dick Haymes in 1944. It has since been remade by dozens of performers including Mitch Miller, Glenn Yarbrough, and Willie Nelson, just to name a few.

As boring as that music was to me, it magically transformed those two grownups whom I had only formerly known as mom and dad, into a couple of giddy love birds. He reached out and took hold of her hand. "Dance with me," he said ever so softly. She couldn't resist. He held her in his arms. She laid her head on his shoulder. And they danced.

I'm telling ya right now, for as long as that record played they didn't even know that I was sitting right there in that same room. And when the music faded, they looked deeply into each others eyes, and then he kissed her.

You know what I figured out right then and there? I figured out that my being here was no accident. Before these two people became mom and dad, they were somebody else's kids. Once their eyes met they became inseparable.

They had a life before this one filled with noisy kids, unpaid bills, and what's for supper. Hey, and you know what else I figured out? Some people do spend their whole lives together. They did.

So the next time you go browsing at one of those local antique shops, keep this in mind. You're not just looking at a bunch of old discarded junk. Sure, maybe most of it has little monetary value, but every piece possesses its own unique history. Chances are that at least one of those random pieces of junk has touched someone's life in a monumental way.

Maybe that old rotary telephone was the one on which somebody found out that they had just became an aunt or an uncle for the very first time. I remember the day that happened to me like it was only yesterday. It happened on a rotary dial telephone up on the second floor of that six family house on Arlington Street. That was more than 40 years ago now. That tender moment still brings a tear to my eye just the same.

Away from all of the politics, and the hustle and bustle of the maddening crowd, lies the other side of this life. It's the little things that seem so trivial at the time that grow to become your most treasured memories. We have known such tender moments because, "We're From Everett!"
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