The Marvels of Every Day

Bill 

One can be optimistic and say that every new day has its astonishing moments. One can be less than optimistic and say that every new day has its challenges.  One could argue they are the same thing. When I talk of the marvels of my childhood in Jamaica Plain I am talking about the manner in which I experienced situations that to an adult would be mundane, not deserving of much more than a glance.

It was different for a kid. The world was new to us.  Everything in it seemed big.  We liked colors and sounds, we liked motion and energy, we liked to explore and to discover.  There are things that frightened us, some of us more easily frightened than others.  In spite of the risks, and there were many, we would venture out agreeably every morning ready to uncover the unexpected that was hidden within the mundane.  As a seven year-old I didn't just look, I also saw.  You never knew when the neighborhood would deliver up the unexpected delight.  Like an airplane where you would least expect it. 

Out and about in Jamaica Plain there were things I'd expect to see parked on the street. Cars, the occasional truck, maybe a motorcycle, but never one of these. The word spread about something unusual on School Street opposite the school.  When I first saw it, even at a distance, I couldn't believe it.  An airplane. There it was taking up several parking spaces right on School Street. Wait! What's the matter with the wings? Getting closer I could see the wings had been folded back on hinges.  Since I never knew wings could do that it was even more impressive.

If we kids used the word "awesome" then, it's the word we would have used over and over as we circled around this awesome machine, touching it, looking into the cockpit, checking out the wheels.  "Airplanes have wheels!" one kid kept saying, dumbfounded.   A whitish yellow color is the image I have as the sun highlighted the numbers painted on various parts of the fuselage.  I had never seen an airplane this close before but to have one on the street was almost surreal.  

Certainly, an airplane on the street is unusual but we loved any kind of vehicle that was out of the ordinary. The cliche of the young boy is that they love big machines. I filled that stereotype.  We must have had some sort of kid network because when any large or unusual vehicle showed up in the neighborhood, and even a dump truck would fit that category, we rushed to the site.  "Down the street. C'mon!"  There on Dalrymple were the trucks and a steam roller (Likely not powered by steam anymore.) and, we hit the jackpot, a bubbling kettle filled with simmering hot tar. 

My natural reticence prevented me from rushing that close to where the men were working but my friend Johnny had no such reluctance.  "This is so smelly!" he would yell, and he meant that in a good way, as he ran over close to the molten tar, each bubble releasing what we could only describe as "that tar smell." Soon one of the men would yell at us. "Hey, kid, get away from that." We begrudgingly moved to a nearby wall where we would stand to watch men and machines patch the street. 

It was all very noisy, noise and commotion that as an adult I might grimace and even curse at.  For a kid the activity would be nothing without the noise, the yells of the workers, the hissing of the roller, the added effect of steam rising from the hot tar on the street, the rush and clank of the truck as it moved about, we kids talking and pointing and thoroughly enjoying what to the men was simply another day of hard work.

There were times when I did get a sense of how difficult life could be for other people.  My family was not rich in any sense of that word. We rented, clothes were handed down, restaurant meals were not for us kids, but there always seemed to be enough to satisfy my needs.  It's true, I didn't require much but what I did need was there for me. I was one of the luckier ones. 

The rag man as my mother called him, or the junkman as others described him, or the man with the horse and wagon as I thought of him, may not have been so lucky. To see him and his cargo slowly creaking along the street filled me with astonishment.  "There's the guy with the horse," was the way Johnny described it.  The horse was great but I was more interested in all the stuff the horse carted around.

One evening, perhaps late in the fall, the air was chilly, I found the horse and wagon parked on my street.  I was coming home from somewhere, alone.  I stopped by the cart, its driver no where to be seen, off at some neighbor, perhaps, picking up rags or bottles or some old thing he felt he could sell or barter.  

It's quiet, the wagon creaking under its load, the horse taking snorty breaths, its hoofs clipping the street as it shifts position.  I inspect the wagon's contents amazed at how full to the point of overflowing it is, wondering how any horse could pull all of it: metal bins and pails stacked together, piles of bound newspapers and magazines, what looks like tied-together broom or shovel handles, discernible items of clothing along with bundles and bundles of rags.  There is metal I recognize as pipes, along with a few old iceboxes, maybe an old chair or table.  Some things I don't know what they are.  

In my mind's eye the horse stands there, stoic, unyielding; to my seven year-old self an enormous animal, a Clydesdale perhaps, it's eyes shielded with leather blinders, its body suddenly quivering from a fly that lands on its flank.  Even though I'm in awe at being so close to such a creature I also feel a certain sadness at the enormous effort it must require to walk the neighborhood streets, under the control of someone else, "Rags, rags, take your rags," pulling such an enormous load.  

Now, in the quiet of early evening, he turns for a quick look at me and then snaps his head back, his bridle and harness vibrating a moment or two before falling back into place.  I see the horse as tired, worn out, worn down.      

Out from someone's walk comes the ragman, holding in each hand a bail of newspapers, tied in rough string, for which he may have paid two or three cents.  He somehow finds room for them in the wagon before climbing up onto the wooden seat. Without a word or action passing between them, the horse responds and begins to move, making a slow semicircle, the wagon creaking in even more ominous ways than when it was standing still.  

Watching the horse and driver move up the street and disappear around the corner I felt something unfamiliar, a feeling there were things in life that could make me feel lonely, an awareness, however uninformed and incomplete, of life revealing itself to be more complex than I might know. It's a feeling I will have all my life, part of the very structure of my personality.  However overstated that may be to some people, it's an accurate impression of what I felt standing there under the darkening sky watching that man, his horse, and my childhood shift toward something else. Maybe it was as simple as realizing that not everyone's days were so full of marvels.

Then there was the day I got to ride in a convertible. I think the car belonged to a relative who was visiting the family of my friend, Roger. The driver was friendly, some young guy who had a car without a roof.  With excitement and enthusiasm several of us piled into the back seat.  It was a brief ride, up School Street, down Washington for a block and then back around to School Street again.  Brief but unforgettable.  By comparison, my father's car was dark and cramped.  "Don't open the window!" was a command I heard a lot.  "Stay away from the doors!" was another.

In the back of the convertible it was all open sky and wind in our faces.  It was driving by familiar places but seeing them from a different perspective, not tiny rectangles from a backseat window.  People looked up at us, some spontaneously waving, caught up in the image of a convertible full of laughing kids.  I didn't really know what freedom was but if it were anything, it was this moment, moving in the open, sky and clouds just above my outstretched hand, streets and sidewalks gliding by, my hair full of wind, thrilled by every moment.  Then it was over.  My days of convertible riding were done. I never rode in one again. I've never forgotten the day I did.

Although I never noticed if the streets in my Jamaica Plain neighborhood were particularly clean or not, occasionally a tank truck would come with a rig on the back spraying water all over the street.  Maybe it had something to do with keeping the dust down.  We kids didn't care.  It was a truck with water coming out the back. We weren't going to let something like this go by.  So we chased it.  One hot sunny morning several of us are running behind this vehicle as a misty spray mixes with trash and dirt on the street making an even worse mess.  We didn't care.  We liked mud, and we liked water, especially spray.  It was cooling but you didn't get soaking wet.  We kept at it for a block or two until the truck turned a corner or abruptly turned the spray off.  The fun was over.

For me the best machine of all was the one that cleaned out the sewers late in the summer. It was similar to a tow truck but instead of a winch and hook it had a claw-like contraption. Once the sewer cover was off, this scoop device would be maneuvered over the opening and then lowered down.  The four open blades would close around the debris below and then be raised up.  The best part came as the claw swung over to a nearby dump truck, its blades closed tightly on muck and gravel and who knows what else, dirty gloppy water splattering onto the street.  Then the claw would open and with a wet splop the sewer debris would drop into the bed of the truck.  

Absurdly I could watch this for hours.  It was a rare occurrence.   Either the sewers didn't need much cleaning or I just kept missing the claw when it did show up. I always kept my eye out for one of these cleaners whenever I was out in the neighborhood.  The few times I spotted one I thought it a small miracle.  There was something about the motion of it, the claw opening and then coming up from the sewer gushing water and debris until it emptied into the nearby truck. Then again and again.  I'd even follow it down the street to the next sewer to watch the process all over. 

Summer warmth was not the determining factor why those months were particularly memorable. It was the light. There was something very special about going in for supper in July and then coming back out again when it was still light to be with your friends, to take up where you left off.

After supper was often the best part of a summer's day for me.  For one thing the edge would be off the heat.  For another, the slanting evening light was different from the earlier daylight, especially the way it would outline our bodies as we ran around, our hair almost on fire as it caught the sun.  As the light began to fade we'd lose the details of things around us.  The trees would blend into the darkening sky, the greens and the reds became variations on gray as the shadows took over, my friends' voices took precedence over their faces.  "It's getting late," someone would say.  No. It was just a summer's night.

Winter nights were very different.  In January and February the call to supper was essentially the end of the day.  Only a little TV time ws and bed remained.  

In Boston in the middle of July it didn't get dark until 9:30 or so.  Even though I barely noticed the passing of hours, weeks or months, I first got an inkling that time was passing, and there might be something sad or slightly anxiety-producing about that, hearing my mother say, "Once the Fourth of July comes, the summer is over."  It wasn't over for me, I thought. I have all the time in the world.  Of course, I didn't.

It sure felt like I did.  Especially on a summer's evening when I would be down on Dalrymple Street playing tag, running around. The part of the street just where it made a left down to Boylston was a favorite mini environment for me.  It was L-shaped, the stairs leading down from Adams Circle came out onto the L.  There were sidewalks and driveways and parked cars, places to run along, up or behind.  This was especially important when a game of hide and seek would begin to come together mid evening just as slanting shadows appeared from a sun low in the sky.  Dusk was one of the few times I even noticed the sun and only then because of the glare.  The growing darkness did add much drama to our games, especially hide and seek.

There is something about the act of hiding, being aware someone else is looking for you, trying to be so still, all your senses heightened, until you suddenly bolt, running as fast as you can back to the safe zone, usually a telephone pole or the bumper of someone's car, yelling as you got there, "My gools, 1, 2, 3!"  If the person who had been looking for you made it back before you did, he or she would yell, "Billy's gools, 1,2,3!" and you were out.  

Gools, or is it ghouls?  What is that all about? It's an odd word but has been used by kids in the Northeast as the name for safe home in games since the 1870s.  Perhaps a variation on the word goal. 

We'd use "Eeny meeny miny mo...out goes Y O U" to choose who would be "it" before the game started.  I found it exciting the few times I was the gools keeper.  I'd cover my eyes with my arm and
count to fifty giving the other kids enough time to run and hide. One minute you'd have all these kids around you and the next there'd be no one there. You were suddenly alone.  Obviously not really alone.  You knew the kids were out there, close by. I'd yell, "Ready or not, here I come."  At any moment some kid would be running at you trying to touch the gools before you did. Fun but tense as well. You wanted to spot them before they could run home but you didn't want to venture too far away from gools.  I remember looking for one kid I thought was behind a car.  In a sort of crouch walk and as quietly as I could I circled behind the car only to discover no one was there. Realizing gools was empty, two other kids came out of nowhere almost in unison yelling, "My gools, one, two, three." I didn't want to be called a "gools sticker", someone who never ventured more than five feet away from the gools, so more kids got home than I got out. Thinking back on it, being the seeker was nerve-wracking.

The excitement and perhaps danger of the game went up a few notches when some of the older boys joined in.  When I say older I mean kids who may have been the brothers of the kids I played with, maybe two or three years older than I was.  Sometimes one of those "big kids" was my older brother. 

Being older they were not only more experienced, but stronger and quicker.  They played rough, not thinking twice about knocking down some younger kid as he ran to gools. You had to give your best effort, play smarter.  With the older kids involved, I found I'd be totally immersed in the game, thinking of nothing else.  My intensity wasn't so much about winning but looking good in front of the other kids, not making a stupid mistake.  It also had to do with being out there in the dark, essentially on my own.  If I won it was because of something I did, not my parents, not my friends.

Up in someone's front yard, behind a bush, in the dark, I'd hear another kid nearby behind a car.  "I'm going," he'd whisper.  Running feet followed by a commotion up by gools.  "I tagged first."  "No, you didn't." "Yes." "No."  While that's going on I run behind the car, then dart across the street hoping the telephone pole will give me enough cover.  Another kid runs in. "My gools, one, two, three!"  I'm thinking, "Am I close enough to make it?"

It's an older kid guarding gools.  I've seen him knock one of the smaller kids to the street.  I don't want that to happen to me. I'm one of the last kids out in the dark.  Other kids are yelling at me to "get home."  I'm feeling pressure to abandon my stealth strategy and just make a run for it. The bigger kid is about ten feet away from gools, looking down the street.  I go for it.  He spots me but instead of running to touch gools he sprints toward me.  I can't get around him. Instead of knocking me down he takes a swing at me with his fist, trying to whack me on the shoulder.  Somehow he misses.  I'm past him.  "My gools, one, two, three."  Circumstances prevailed. I made it. Kids are yelling, clapping.  It's a fleeting moment but it feels so good.

That may have been the real reason I enjoyed these games so much, the feeling I had of independence, brief as it may have been.  Hiding behind that car I was in my own world, making my own decisions, but also involved in a specific social way with other people. I think now it's a certain mix of independence and dependence which determines one's level of happiness.   People need both solitude and social interaction. Pairing both qualities in the right proportion is essential, and difficult. No one wants to be lonely nor do they want to be with people to such an extent that they are overwhelmed with obligations. It's about balance and well being. 

Occasionally, in those evening games, by playing hard, committing to what I was doing, being thoroughly involved, trusting my own skills, allowing myself a realistic view of the situation, merging with the environment I was in, I attained a sort of bliss. Always many variables to coordinate. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, life is so enjoyable.

Then the excitement would end.  It's getting too dark, kids are losing interest, mothers are calling for them to come home.  I can still hear their shouts.  "I gotta go. I gotta go home.  My Ma is calling me." A few other kids would leave voluntarily not wanting to be playing when their best friend was called home.  Suddenly there would be too few kids to maintain the game and it would collapse.  That particular summer's day had ended.  I was sweaty and still charged up.  I didn't want to leave.  "Stay just a few more minutes," I'd plead.  To no avail. Tomorrow will be another day but all the things that had come together to make this day special might be scarce tomorrow.   I didn't want to take that chance which is why I was so reluctant for this day to end.  Things are going so good.  I'm engaged. I'm having so much fun.  It doesn't make any difference. Time and darkness win out.  I head up the stairs to Adams Circle. As for tomorrow, I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed. 

  

I wasn't always with my friends. Sometimes during one of those summer evenings I'd found myself alone in the house.  I felt alone at any rate.  My older brother was most likely out with his friends. My mother may have been in the yard with my younger brother.  One particular time late in the summer of 1952 I was watching a TV show I had never heard of with a character I knew only from a funny book. Superman.

It was strange and odd, and sort of fascinating.  The show starts on another planet, Krypton.  A child is born but based on all the camera shake and smoke and noise his home planet is not in very good shape.  He's put in a rocket which blasts off toward where I live. Not Jamaica Plain. Earth. 

The kid is found by a stereotypical midwestern couple who soon figure out this boy is, well, super. It's always fun to watch a kid your own age bewilder the adults.  Before moving on to Metropolis (New York City? Los Angeles?) his mother admonishes the now young man to use his powers for good.

He does, saving a guy who falls from a blimp.  Not a plane but a blimp.  (The producers must have had free generic blimp footage rather than pay for similar airplane footage.) He parlays that into a job as a reporter for the Daily Planet while being introduced to Jimmy and Lois and Perry White.

It's all in this episode, Lois' suspicions, Jimmy's goofiness, even running into the storeroom, one hand opening the shirt revealing a glimpse of that large iconic S, that last furtive look around, before bounding off into the sky, the most famous super hero of all. "Look, up in the sky..."

I sometimes think this was the most influential half hour of television I have even seen. The fact that I watched it by myself meant I could comment out loud, gasp when necessary and be totally drawn in by the fast paced story.  It had all sorts of things a kid would love, dials and gauges, smoking rockets, sound effects, mystery and suspense, secret identities that only I as a viewer was in on.  It may not have been the best Superman episode, (That probably would have been "The Stolen Costume.") but on that summer night I felt I had just seen something very special.

Because of the mood engendered by the episode, I remember walking out of my house afterwards, climbing on to the wall by the Mendell school and going over to the school yard.  I was still under the influence of the show, thinking of all the ramifications. It took a long time for that expansive mood to fade on that summer's night.  I wasn't jumping off walls pretending to fly or running around with my arms outstretched; I've always been more subtle than that.  Still, thinking about what I had seen I was beginning to realize the transformative power of the imagination.  To this day, that is one thing that has not faded.

As a kid I lived in a time when some things were fading.  There were still milkmen but in trucks now, not horse drawn wagons as in my father's time; the ragman I saw less and less, radio was still big but television was a new technology that would have profound effects on society.  With all of these changes I sometimes wonder if I had been enveloped in a time shift the evening I saw the man coming down my street to light the gas lamps.

Did Adams Circle still have gas lamps that needed tending as late as 1952, 1953? (I know that some areas of Jamaica Plain still have gas lamps for antique atmosphere but they are all automated.)  The lamp consisted of a tapered metal pole on top of which was a glass bulb. Inside was a cloth mantle, the part of the lamp that glowed when the gas was lit.  On top of the glass was a cover probably designed to let fumes and heat escape.  The lamp lighter would put a small ladder against the pole, climb up, raise the glass and then light the lamp, maybe make a few adjustments and then climb down.  I realize now he had to come back the next morning to extinguish it.   

There's a nip in the air.  I'm standing nearby as the lamp is lit.  When the lamp lighter is gone I walk nearer to the lamp now aglow with a shadow-softening light, stand there a moment aware of how quiet it is, glad to have that soft light on my face.  Winter is coming, school started a long time ago, summer is far in the distance.  Soon snow will pile around this lamp, at night a spot of white.  I move away from the light of the lamp post walking toward my house also glowing but with light from electricity.  I move toward my own future, away from the old lamp post, as it was right to do. 

The perfect moment of my childhood summer  in Jamaica Plain began with a theft.

There was a variety store at the corner of Boylston and Amory. It's where we would go if we wanted our favorite candy bars, usually a Hershey bar, plain, without those annoying, hard to eat almonds or a box of Good & Plenty, not so much that they were good but there were plenty of them.  On several trips down to the store we noticed boxes of cookies piled on the glass counter just as you entered.  A plot was devised.  Johnny was to go in alone to engage the guy behind the counter in conversation.  This was not witty repartee but things like, "How much are the Charleston Chew bars?" or "Do you have small bottles of tonic in here?"  I would come in a moment later, sidle up against the counter and casually swipe a box of cookies.  In a moment I'd be outside the store walking briskly up Boylston.

Johnny ran up to me as I turned up Boylston Place.  He was very excited as I showed him our stolen booty which I had hidden under my shirt.  "I don't want the cops finding it," I told him. Just before the stairs up to the schoolyard we jumped over a few low bushes on our right which led to a side yard right below the Mendell School wall. Near the wall was a small two car garage, our destination.

Entrusting the box of cookies to Johnny, I used the sill of a back window as leverage to hoist myself to the roof.  Johnny tossed me the cookies before scrambling up himself.  The roof was flat, covered with some sort of grey shingles, a bit springy.  Sitting cross legged in the middle of the roof Johnny and I tore open the cookie box to enjoy the wages of our sin. ( I do have to say we once attempted restitution.  I recall one of us finding a quarter on the sidewalk, a small fortune to a seven year old in 1952. We decided to go back to the store and, this time, buy a box of the cookies.  On the way out, after we paid for them, we put them back on the counter.  Then we walked home ridiculously proud of ourselves.)

As karma would have it the stolen cookies were nothing special.  Some sort of plain flat biscuit, what today we might call a tea biscuit.  If these cookies were offered to us at home as part of an assortment we'd definitely ignore them, grabbing instead a chocolate chip cookie or a sugar wafer.  Even though they were somewhat hard, they were sweet; even better we could have as many as we wanted, eat the whole box if we chose, and we did. When we finished with the cookies we just sat there.  No school. No parents. Nothing to do. Little to say.  Trees all around us, their canopies filling with the airy sound of the breeze, the gently eddies passing through in a deep satisfying sigh.  

Even today, looking for a way to detach from some anxious situation, I look back to that moment. There I am, my younger self, cookie crumbs littering my shirt, succumbing to feelings of peace and contentment.

I am back on that roof now. The noise of the kids in the schoolyard, the sound of someone hammering a few blocks away, a truck down on Armory, these circumstantial sounds begin to fade. Johnny feels the moment as welI, looking off into the middle distance, his own thoughts for company. I lie back, spreading my arms to take in as much of this peacefulness as I can. I look up through the canopy of green leaves to the patches of blue summer sky beyond. The bower of leaves scatters the sunshine, the dappled light sparkling in the breeze.  Entering a state of well being, I close my eyes and surrender myself to the universe.

Looking down on this person I once was, I see a young boy, eyes closed, an empty cookie box on its side near him, those sun-spangled shadows dancing all about.  Now silence.  Bliss.  A moment tinged with marvel.  Sweet, corrupt, timeless.