The Dystopian Expedition

By the year 2987 a crew of Dystopian Tx15's will embark on a cross galaxy archeological expedition searching for remnants of an ancient civilization. They're heading towards an uninhabited planet which harbors little more than architectural ruins long overgrown with botanicals. It sets hundreds of light years away on the outer spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The last to inhabit that planet vanished without a trace a hundred years prior to this expedition. And that is precisely why that distant planet is so commonly referred to as the late great planet, Earth.

Allow me a brief note on these Dystopian Tx15's, if you will. From our perspective they are little more than a footnote in science fiction theory. Well, to the lay person anyway. Anyone who keeps abreast of the scientific research at CERN knows that such an entity may well be a feasible idea by the year 2024. Not to the extent that the Dystopian Tx15's actually represent, but at least the beginning stages of such technology should begin to unfold by then.

Dystopian Tx15's are a perfect blend of human and robotic technologies. Their central processing units can calculate cause and effect and respond with an appropriate reaction to within one-one billionth of a nanosecond. Their probability factor ranges in the 99.97 percentile sector. In other words, their IQ's measure in the thousands. With a life span of somewhere in the vicinity of about 500 years, they make the perfect candidates to embark on such a cross galaxy expedition.

Once electromagnetic wave technology matures to the point where we can locate and utilize wormholes to transverse both time and space simultaneously, such an expedition will take about the same amount of time as it takes to walk from the Chute Library to the big clock in Everett Square. And those are two entities that you will actually see before this day is through no matter where you are right now.

Seems kind of far fetched, doesn't it? Think about this then. Imagine it's 1964 again and you're sitting at the booth just behind the front door of Vargis' Diner with your friends after school. All of a sudden somebody whips out a cel phone and starts texting to their cousin in New York. Then they point their phone at you and tell you to smile so they can take a snapshot of your face.

You tell me. What's wrong with this picture?

Back in 1964 if you wanted to make a phone call from Vargi's Diner you had to go outside to use the phone booth. And if anybody was going to see your smiling face just after your picture was taken then it had better be a Polaroid snapshot. Nobody in New York was going to see that picture until it arrived in the mail several days later. That to us was lightning speed.

When we were kids the only person we ever knew of who had a telephone that wasn't connected to a wall was Dick Tracy. Even the more basic things we take for granted nower days like microwave ovens and ATM cards were nothing more than science fiction fantasy back in 1964. If anyone back then ever told us that film for your camera and pay phones would soon be a thing of the past we'd have taunted and ridiculed them unmercifully.

Think back to when we sat there patiently staring at a little white dot in the middle of the TV screen for several minutes waiting for the picture tube to warm up. When the picture finally did come on we then had to twist the rabbit ears to get rid of the ghost, and then we had to fool around with the Horizontal Hold knob to get the picture to stop jumping.

You really don’t appreciate all that unless you’ve actually lived through the experience. That Horizontal Hold knob could get really fussy. I remember wedging a folded up matchbook cover behind it just to keep the picture from jumping. One micrometer either way sent our TV into a frenzy. It always seemed to go mental at the two-minute warning when the score was tied. That Horizontal Hold button has left mental scars that still torment me even to this day.

And those rabbit ears, how could you ever possibly forget about those? They sometimes wound up in the oddest position in the strangest place imaginable. I remember having to stand still in one spot holding them up over my head in one hand so my dad could watch Bob Copeland predict the weather.

We’re talking way before they added the UHF dial that gave us the additional channels of 27, 38, and 56. Before that all we got were five channels that went off the air before midnight. If it hadn’t of been for Channel 38 I’d have grown up without Willie Whistle. A childhood without Willie Whistle is like a bagel without cream cheese.

And let us not forget what we had to go through just to change the channel. You actually had to get up and walk across the room. Can you imagine?

I do remember when every so often a channel did broadcast through the night. It was a rarity. So what did they show? They showed movies. Yeah, that's right, they showed movies. So naturally I thought when the day did finally arrive that TV stations regularly stayed on through the night that they would show movies.

The last thing I ever expected was to have to sit through a feature length commercial that's trying to sell me a pill that will make me even more appealing than I already am (as if - right?), or yet another useless home study video course on how to pocket a billion dollars worth of real estate with no money down. Does anybody actually fall for any of this crap?

And how come if I'm paying for TV that I'm still seeing commercials? Wasn't the whole idea behind paying for TV so you wouldn't have to sit through commercials? Why should I have to pay for a commercial?

Don't get me wrong, I love all of this new technology. I'm just as addicted as the next guy. How could I not be? When I'm out on the road and need to phone home I don't have to pull over to the phone booth on Ferry Street in front Spencer's Sunoco anymore. All I gotta do is flip open my cel phone and I'm talking to that pretty girl who used to wink at me in Mr. Barbati's 9th grade homeroom at the Parlin. It doesn't get any better than that.

For me the age of technology began to emerge just when my big brother Billy got home from Vietnam. Shortly after that we played Pong on the TV. We stayed up all through the night bopping that square blip back and forth across the screen. It held us spellbound for hours on end.

Next thing you know we were hooking up a cable box to the back of our television set. And get this, we had a color TV. We thought we were the cat's meow, let me tell ya.

One thing I love about growing up in Everett is that as soon as somebody figures out how to buck the system, everybody else finds it out in seconds flat. We're like the kids in that movie, "The Children of the Damned." Once one of us finds anything out the rest of us learn it by intuition, especially if it has anything at all to do with getting something for nothing. Hopping over the stadium fence was a perfect example of that.

What comes to mind is how when we first got that cable box, all of my big brother Billy's friends crowded around our TV set to show us how to steal HBO. You had to attach a standard antenna wire of about a hundred feet long to the back of the box. After tuning the cable box to HBO, you started cutting about an inch off of that antenna wire until HBO showed up. Then you kept cutting off about one-sixteenth of an inch at a time until HBO came in as clear as a bell. And that in itself clearly defines what it means to grow up in Everett

I also remember this one day in my sixth grade class at the Horace Mann when Miss Blake said that the day would arrive when we would all have a computer in our home. So this happened sometime in 1963, shortly before President Kennedy's assassination. I was 11 years old.

No sooner had those words left her mouth did my streetwise skepticism kick in. I couldn't imagine a single reason as to why I would ever want a computer in my house. Where would I put it? Maybe I could find a spot behind my mother's wringer washing machine over there beside the kitchen sink - right?

Honestly though, what would somebody like me ever do with a computer? The last thing I need is a stack of punched cards piling up all over the place. Computers are for people who button their top button and wear thick rimmed glasses. You know what I'm saying? Maybe they'll be of some use to somebody who does a lot of book keeping, but what would an artist and a musician want with a computer? It didn't make sense.

Little did I know that a computer would become far more than a machine that spits out a punched card. Today I draw on my computer with a Wacom Tablet, and it's my sketch pad and charcoal pencils that have become obsolete.

I'm stretching two-dimensional characters into the third dimension and giving them believable human motion. I'm giving them hair that moves in the wind, clothes the flutter as they walk, and unique faces that can simulate every expressive emotion imaginable. I can even give them a unique voice unlike any other that has ever existed.

On my computer I not only write music, but test each bar of my score using any one of the 128 instruments you'll find in a philharmonic orchestra. Once my score is complete I can expand it across a countless array of channels to simulate surround sound. And once that's done I can sync it all up to a video track.

Miss Blake never mentioned that we'd be able to edit movies with our computers. She never said you'd capture full resolution video with a movie camera smaller than a pack of Lucky Strikes and then fine tune it on your computer with more wild effects than they ever used in Stars Wars. Had she said that than maybe I wouldn't have been so skeptical in the first place.

You can't blame her, though. It's not her fault. None of us ever saw this coming. Just as we still don't see what's up ahead. Who knows what the future will bring? If I learned one thing it's to refrain from using the word, "never."

My great grandfather couldn't imagine getting by without a root cellar, a horse buggy, and an outhouse. Now I can't imagine getting by without a computer. A hundred years from now what we call a computer will seems as clunky and as worthless as a typewriter. You mark my words.

I'll tell ya one thing, tho. Technology doesn't change who we are. All it changes is how we do things. It used to take me hours of thumbing through books at the Parlin Library just to find out something so simple as the population of Everett. I can do that now at the click of a mouse in seconds flat, and I don't have to wait for the library to open either. I can even pay my bills and check my balance at three o' clock in the morning. Banking hours are another thing of the past.

Regardless of all this technology, I'm still that same little kid who spent hours on end at Freddy's Music Shop on Norwood Street thumbing through the record albums for no other reason than for a leisurely afternoon's enjoyment. My record collection no longer takes up several shelves on a book case. It now all fits on one flash drive and my music collection is a hundred times larger than it's ever been.

So what was so good about growing up in Everett without all of this technology? Truth this, emerging technology was little more than a backdrop to our overall growing up in Everett experience. As little kids we did things that required near zero technology.

Remember how much fun we had with a broomstick and a pimple ball? Or with a giant empty cardboard box for that matter? Heck, you could turn an empty box into anything from a fort to a sled. And didn't we have more fun at the balloon breaking contest at the Park Theatre than anyone ever did playing Nintendo? You know we did.

What we had that far out shadowed any emerging technologies was the quality of people we grew up with. Everett people cared about each other. They talked to each. They listened to each other. And they never once hesitated to help each other out.

Nobody looked down their noses at the less fortunate. Nobody called anybody a free loader or a parasite just because their station in life warranted that they rely on a helping hand every once in a while to survive. We were our brother's keeper.

Store owner's let you run a tab if you didn't have the fifty cents for a loaf of bread when you needed it. And was mine the only family out there who would have gone hungry if not for a caring neighbor who so generously shared a couple of eggs, a bottle of milk, or a pot of spaghetti? I don't think so.

Okay, enough of my foolish love your fellow man shenanigans, let's get back to that crew of Dystopian Tx15's crossing the galaxy towards the late great planet Earth. If they're lucky enough to touch down amidst the over grown ruins of what was once our beloved Everett, I can think of a number of things I hope they unearth amongst the ruins.

First up, I hope they find a pair of popcorn box goggles. You know, the ones we made to watch the movies with at the Park Theatre. Not in a million years will they figure out why we made popcorn box goggles. It's rather difficult to scientifically pin down the how and why of something when the fundamental principle behind it was simply "because it was fun."

Next, I hope they find a section of that barn board fence at the end of what was once Cabot Court. That's the fence we hopped over to get into the EHS football games. Chances are they'll simply dismiss it as nothing more than what it is at face value, and bypass it in favor of something with far less significance to bring back to their Ancestral Museum of History.

Then again, they're technology being what it is, they'll have the resources to pull up anything that's ever been archived on our archaic internet. Look closer at today's illustration. If you click on it - it will pop up in full size.

Look at the large display screen just behind the Robot Girl's face and you'll see a replica of the "We're from Everett" blog page. So I'm thinking that maybe this blog will help them figure out many of those little idiosyncrasies about our lives growing up in Everett. It could happen. Never say never - right?

I also hope they find a Hoodsie cup. One that still has its little thumb shaped wooden spoon. Nothing says "community" like those free Hoodsies they gave out at the playgrounds on the Fourth of July in Everett. What that tells me is that the best thing we could possibly give our kids today is another Mayor George McCarthy. Heck, we could use a guy like that in the White House if you ask me. He's got my vote.

Another thing I hope they find is one of those backyard garbage cans we used to throw our garbage in. You know, the ones that filled up with maggots and smelled like a hundred people threw up all at once. Yeah, one of those, that's what I'm talking about. Then, and only then, will they fully appreciate the leaps and bounds we've made over the years in waste management.

Last, but not least, if they are to learn anything of any significance to pass along to our grandchildren's grandchildren, I hope they find out about the common thread that ran so true through our veins. It bound our hearts together as one. We were far more than just a community. We were a brotherhood. As they say, "You fight one kid from Everett and you've got to fight them all." If nothing else, tell them that.

Better yet, tell them this. Tell them we love them from the bottom of our hearts. Tell them the apple never falls far from the tree no matter how far across the universe they travel. Distance means nothing. Tell them they come from good stock.

Tell them that all they really need to do to successfully navigate this confusing maze we call life is to do exactly what we did. Follow your instincts. Talk to each other, listen to each other, and help each other out. Hold your head up. Walk Tall. And stand your ground. That's what we do, because, "We're from Everett!"

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Okay, I know, it's been ages since you've heard a word from me. Geez, I feel like the prodigal son. That's what my mother often called me because I'd go out at night and not come home for days on end. I ask your forgiveness. My present obligations require my full attention and my complete commitment. I'm still here.

To make up for lost time I've got a little something extra for ya. I've got two videos you can download. The first one is a drive along Broadway in Everett. This is a special treat for those of you who haven't been able to get back to Everett for quite some time.

This was filmed in July of 2010 and the amazing thing about this drive is that I made it all the way from Pope John to Everett Square before hitting a single red light. I kid you not. The video is a bit jumpy because I held a tiny video camera in the palm of one hand while steering the car with my other one.

You don't actually see much of the landscape because I had to keep focusing on the straight ahead so not to crash into anything. There's not much sound quality either. I had the windows rolled up and the air conditioner running. And I didn't do any narration. I didn't want to spoil the video, maybe next time.

This video weighs in around 26 megabytes because I kept it at the larger "640 x 480" resolution so you could see everything clearly. It'll download in seconds if you've got cable. If you're on a dialup you'll have enough time to watch a movie and take a nap while it downloads.

The second video is of me playing guitar. The guitar video is of a very low pixel resolution. It weighs in at only about 8 megabytes because it was taken with a toy Pixel2000 camera that recorded video on a standard audio cassette. Even on a dialup modem it should download in only a couple of minutes. If you've got cable it'll download faster than you can blink.

This was taken during the summer of 1980 some 31 years ago. I was only 28 years old. Man, where did the years go? I just turned 59 on Tuesday.

Don't worry, I'm not the least bit worried about growing old. Two people in my life have left me with two very good bits of wisdom that have completely erased my fears about growing old.

The first one comes from the father of my good friend, Dennis. Dennis grew up in Melrose, but we won't hold that against him. His father's nickname was "Boots." And one thing "Boots" often said was, "Old age is a privilege that is denied to many." No truer words have ever been spoken.

The second one comes from my very own mother. Her bit of wisdom was "Don't ever complain about growing old because once you stop growing old - you're dead." So if you put it that way, I'll just keep those birthdays coming - thank you.

Okay, that's it, I'm done. You know the routine by now. Click your "Right" Mouse Button on the underlined titles below and choose "Save Target As" to download these videos to your computer. After that just double click on them with your LEFT mouse button and they will play.

Drive On Broadway Video

Paul's 1980 Guitar Solo Video

Let me also thank Paul Baker for helping to keep the "growing up in Everett" spirit alive during my recent hiatus. Wasn't it just grand to relive the best years of our lives from a new perspective, from another neighborhood, and another generation for a change? I certainly thought so.

Thanks for sharing this special moment with me. Come back real soon, okay?

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