Summer 1963Dedham, Massachusetts
43 Coronation Drive
Summer 1963My parents moved to Boston (Dedham) at the end of the year. My father left AC (Spark Plug/Electronics) and joined Nortronics. I drove the new Corvair with my mother. The girls flew. This was a serious trip across Christmas break from school. The trip was uneventful until we got to Syracuse. We spent the night in a motel when the snow started. In the morning you could only find the car because its lump was smaller than its neighbors. We went to bed with 55 inches of recorded snow on the ground. We woke up with 72 inches. To you who do not know, these are not just numbers or statistics. You cannot plow snow this high. You have blowers that blow it over the wall. The city looks like a white maze of vertically cut ice and snow. You cannot see around corners. The walls are at least 6 but more likely 8 feet tall. The entrance to the motel had been 'plowed' and there was about 3 feet of snow across it. We got the car uncovered as the parking lot was cleared. We smashed through the entrance wall into the great white unknown. The streets were clear and we entered the freeway. It was not clear.
We passed many stranded motorists sitting on the roofs of their cars. My driving terrified my mother but she kept her mouth closed. The alternative was to be one of those sitting on their roofs. The car was loaded and the Corvair could drive through almost anything. It was a 1962 Mazda with the 102 HP engine and the little handle in the dash for a shift lever. We passed a snowplow and were doing just fine – if you can handle spending a great deal of time looking forward out of the side windows. We finally got to the mountains and had to stop. We pulled over at a rest area. Well, at the exit entrance as the parking lot was full all the way to the highway. We had breakfast and waited for the plows to do their work. There were people huddled in blankets who had barely made it to the stop during the night. We did not have the victim mentality and left as soon as mother thought it was safe. The remainder of the trip was uneventful. I shall never forget the walls of ice and the people waving for help from the tops of their cars.
We did register my sisters in school. I went with them and my mother. Kathie was unhappy because she was in the high school in Wauwatosa but relegated to the junior high in Dedham. Ninth grade in different areas went to different schools. In any case, while registering the counselor had difficulty with the name Wauwatosa. To cover himself, he asked if that were not where the Blackfoot Indians lived. Kathie retorted: no, they are farther west – but we keep a good watch out for them. The guy never missed a beat, he just kept writing. We had trouble not laughing out loud. In case you do not know, the Blackfoot are in South Dakota, most notably around the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore.
When in high school in Wauwatosa I had build a multi-level HO train set with a double figure eight track and a small switching yard. It was not landscaped yet but the tracks were laid. The movers smashed the train layout. My father refused to have it recovered. It was discarded. This is what my father thought of things that were valuable to me.
The spring is better continued under the 1963 – UWM section.
I left the dormitory and flew back to Boston. I shipped my belongings through Greyhound. My mother would make the flight arrangements. Somehow she did not understand that when the dorm closed, I had no home. I rearranged the flight from Milwaukee to Chicago to the day the dorm closed. That gave me about 30 hours to spend in the Chicago airport. I then walked the entire O’Hare airport from one point around the perimeter back to where I started. This took a couple of hours. I tried sleeping at the end of a wing in the chairs that are designed to keep you from sleeping in. The guard did not bother me. He would today. Oh. You know that the O’Hare field 3-letter designation is ‘ORD’. Did you ever wonder where that came from? My friend Bob Beeman tells me that it came from the original name of the airport: Orchard Field.
It was an interesting flight. I sat next to an attractive young woman. Married and going to Halifax to live with her husband in the service. She had a nice dog. When we got off. Oh. In case you do not remember, they had gangways to the flights in those days. A gangway is a set of portable stairs. When you exited the plane, you were exposed to the elements. Also people met you on the ground around the gangway. I saw my family. I was introduced to the dog and the woman introduced to my somber family. The woman needed a home for her dog, as she could not keep it on base. My family would not take the dog. We had a dog. Or as it turned out we did have a dog. It had been run over by the Dedham City garbage truck that day. This is why my family was so somber. I was angry. We could have had a nice dog to replace Skip. All because my family would not tell me in public about the truck. As it turned out neighbors were actually angry with us because our dog had survived the truck for so long. The Dedham City Garbage Truck drivers delighted in running over dogs.
Boston was interesting. Only every third person had to stop for a stop sign. There were other strange things about the driving. This is the only place in the USA that had green flashing lights. These were at the entrance to fire stations or similar entities that would have the lights change to red suddenly.
Traffic circles were rampant. Called ‘rotaries’, you had to learn how they worked or you could go in circles for a long time.
I went down to get a driver’s license. I saved my pennies and had the necessary $8 in hand. They had an oral test. I had been warned and knew the answers verbatim. I passed the tests. They asked for $10.50. I complained that everyone in my family had gotten one for $8. They told me that since my birthday was in April, I had to pay a penalty. I kept my Wisconsin license. They told me I would be caught. I told them to try it and left.
I think it was good that I kept the Wisconsin license. When I returned to school, they charged me out of state tuition. My father was very angry with this: it was my fault for telling the school my parents’ new address. The school forms required a parental address. Not my fault. Several years later when I enrolled without my parents’ money, I had an incident with the admissions office that insisted that my parents’ address was the proper address. At that time I had worked Wisconsin Civil Service for a couple of years and had never left Wisconsin other than to visit my parents. I had even roomed with the Milwaukee registrar, Dr. Peter Chinetti, one semester. His name came up in the incident and the woman objected to me calling him Peter. But she capitulated after making me run around the city, including the capitol building. But I ended up paying resident tuition, as I should have. If I had lost my Wisconsin license, I do not know if I could have carried that off.
My sisters had written me about how people went out for donuts rather than hamburgers on Friday nights. This sounded sort of wimpy. When I got to Boston I found out that it was not. This is one tough city. Stay away from King Pizza and stay away from Mattapan. They also warned me about the milk shakes. Milk shakes? This is shook milk – maybe with a flavor added. If you wanted a milk shake, you asked for a frappe. I could do this but a frappe was still to close to a Boston milk shake. I discovered the Friendly Ice Cream parlor. They had Awful-Awfuls. These were real milk shakes. I had one every chance I could. Vanilla. Malted.
I tried to get a job for the summer on my own. I read the want ads. It seemed the best jobs were in the newspaper want ads since I did not know my way around the area. Several companies were looking for walking salespersons. I scheduled two appointments. The first was for World Book Encyclopedia. The concept was that the people got a free set of books if they signed up for the update service. This was a dime a day – for ten years. This was a lot of money. Most people did not want to pay $365 for a free set of books. I left and went to the next appointment. This was the same deal for Colliers encyclopedia. This office was in Park Square. Park Square is a dirty little triangle containing the Greyhound station and a couple blocks from the Boston Commons. Same deal but this was it for the day so I accepted a tryout. I went with the manager and a salesman to an outlying suburb. Even further out than Dedham. I went with the salesman all day. Well most of the day. We were arrested late afternoon. We had turned down an invitation to an all-girl party at one of the houses. We got chased out of a couple of apartment complexes. We were arrested because the car was stolen. As it turned out the plates matched another car with out of state plates. I don’t think so. Few states have that close of a numbering system that that would occur. We got out of the police station about 11 pm and ended up back at Park Square at about midnight. They would not let me out in Dedham. We got downtown and they offered me a position giving away books. I needed to return to their office by eight the next morning. I let them know that they were crazy. It would take me until three to get home on the bus. It would take me from six to get there by eight. If I were lucky, I would get a couple hours sleep. They could have done this and let me off in Dedham. I would not work for irrational people.
The trip home was something too. Remember the song by the Kingston Trio popular about that time? It is about the Boston MTA raising its price a nickel and poor Charlie was doomed to ride it forever because he had no more money. From where I was, I knew how to get to Forest Hills (end of the MTA train line) from the Winter/Summer station. To get there I had to cross the Commons. My sisters had warned me about the Commons. One person per week that year was found dead in the commons. One of my sister’s friends had lost her mother that way. I asked a policeman for the MTA station and was told it was below ground next to me. I went down and found a trolley going to Forest Hills. I rode it to the end of the line. They wanted another nickel. I did not have another nickel. I did not know where I was and it was three in the morning already. I told the driver where to get off and left. He probably could have cared less at that time of night since his primary concern was how long it would take to see his own bed.
From there I started walking and discovered that I was just in another part of the Forest Hills station. I started walking down Washington toward Dedham. I got quite a ways when I was accosted by a group of drunks who had just left a bar. One asked me to drive another home since he lived near me. I tried but the guy insisted he drive. We had an interesting drive him. We took a shortcut across the high school football field among other strange ways. He would not follow my directions to get home and objected strongly to my pulling on the steering wheel to avoid the lampposts. He kicked me out of the car about 3 blocks from the house. I always wondered if he made it home in one piece.
Here is where having a nice sister really paid off. Our family was never a good family. Jeanne was always the closest to our father. When I left home, he started on Kathie. Jeanne was the first daughter. First daughter is always daddy’s girl. This is not the point here. At various times through my life, my sister Jeanne came through as a valuable friend and ally. She came through in Boston.
I think of myself as pretty selfless but I accept the criticism that I am selfish when it came to my sister. I don’t like it and it may be late, but Jeanne really helped out at times. Boston was one of these. She introduced me to her friends and the local church crowd. Many my age.
I also hogged the Corvair that summer. By now Jeanne had her driver’s license. The 102-hp, black Corvair Monza had replaced the 1960 gray Corvair as my mother’s car. Of course, I learned how much was lost due to the abuse of the paint and the accidents at trade time. If it came to money, my father made sure I knew about it but this is not about that.
My mother was very generous with the use of her car by us kids. Jeanne conceded the car to me almost all summer. Thanks, Jeanne. Thanks, mom.
Through a friend of Jeanne’s, Pete, I got a job at Rustcraft greeting cards and met friends in a church group. The job was second shift, which was great as it reduced the time I was exposed to my father. It was my job along with one other guy to restock the shelves with new cards. There were ten guys doing this during the day and two of us at night. We always wondered what the day shift did since we always got the bins empty and left them full. Then we had to sweep the floor. We did not have a moments rest. I made few friends at work because of my self-righteous attitude. The cards came in packages that were worth $3 each. In those days there were nickel and dime cards. These packages came in boxes of uniform size and these boxes went in numeric order on the shelves. The women then took an order and with shopping carts retrieved the packages for the order. They then put these in a box ready for shipping. Defective packets were placed on the nearest empty space on a shelf. At the end of the night we stock boys retrieved the defective packages into a box and took them to the incinerator. There was a company store where you could buy cards at half price. The reason for the defective package? Some really were torn or defective but most had a card stolen by an order woman. With a card stolen, the package was defective. There were two departments. I worked in ‘everyday’. The other department was ‘seasonal’. We did not share people or inventory and knew little about each other. I resented the theft. Some women told me that all women were not thieves. I never knew which were the thieves. I let my feelings about theft be known as we threw out an irrational amount of inventory. I guess my ethics were not so good although I did not look at it that way. At the end of the summer, I took home a large box of defective packets rather than have them burned at the incinerator.
This was an interesting summer. We lived in a suburb called something or other circles: 43 Coronation Drive. The entire neighborhood was circles and this was sort of a diagonal. I saw most of eastern Massachusetts at night with a girl I met at work. Sheep roamed our neighborhood at night. Imagine driving up to the house in this little Corvair, dead tired and seeing a gray cloud in the middle of the road by the driveway. Hmmm.
Pete was an interesting guy. There was a story about him that was legend. Pete had a Scout with a mattress in the back. He was reputed to sleep around. Mostly on trips to the Cape. There was a drive-in theatre down the street from Rustcraft. As the story goes, Pete was informed that one of his girlfriends was to be attacked by someone that night. Pete also had a Harley. Pete’s friends had Harleys. They all went to the movie that night. During the intermission, the girl walked to the refreshment center. On her return, a man left his car and attacked her. Pete and crew assaulted the man, chained him to a log at the back of the theatre, shot him, and then drove over him with their bikes before leaving the theatre. This is folklore but the man was killed as described (it was in the local newspaper as a gangster-type murder) and his assailants were unknown.
The Midwest states (except Illinois) have basically honest governments. Not so on the east coast. The license plate fiasco is a good example. In 1962, the state put out bids for paint for its steel license plates. All of the low bidders were disqualified and the high bidder got the bid for black plates with white letters. As it turned out, the black oxidized and the white fell off. The state initially replaced these plates but found that it was happening to all of them. They then told people to repaint the letters themselves. New pltes would be needed for everyone in 1963. The bids went out for the 1963 plate paint. The same company got the bid also being the highest and the others disqualified.
I met a girl at the church group. Her name was Elaine. I learned a lot about differences in culture in Boston from the Midwest from her. I learned that wearing hair in curlers was acceptable on a date in Boston.
Elaine had never been downtown Boston. She worked near Fenway Park but had never gone the extra mile to downtown.
Elaine and I went downtown one Saturday to walk the freedom trail and see the sites. You had to get a map from City Hall. It is closed on Saturdays. Leave it to Boston. In any case we started walking. We could not find station 13. We tried for an hour and then went on without it. Others tried to help but no one knew what we missed. In 1976 they bricked the walk so that the bicentennial crowds did not need a map. Good idea. I never did find out what we missed. It was the one after Paul Revere’s Silver shop. Or maybe before it.
Elaine and I went down to the Cape. Cape Cod. We saw Plymouth and Provincetown. We also saw a lot of commotion as we approached Hyannis. Sirens, helicopters, commotion. As it turned out, that was the day that President Kennedy’s baby was born. The boy was premature and rushed to the hospital in Boston where it died of hyaline membrane. I understand from Amy (1997) that hyaline is no longer a lethal problem.
On either that trip or another trip to the Cape, there was a solar eclipse. Total, I think. In any case, the Corvair was black and made a good mirror to watch the eclipse. Many people went blind that day.
Elaine and I had arguments over the hair curlers and so we soon parted. Before we did, her sister in second year algebra presented a problem from class. Here is the problem:
5 men were stranded from a shipwreck on an island. The island had one monkey and one coconut palm tree. They collected all of the coconuts that day and placed them in a pile to be sorted the next day. During the night, the first man got up and placed the coconuts in 5 equal piles. He had one left over and gave it to the monkey, who carried it off. The man went to bed having hidden his coconuts. The second man awoke, placed the 4 remaining piles back into a single pile and then sorted them into 5 equal piles. He also had 1 left over, gave it to the monkey, who carried it off as the man hid his pile and returned to bed. This process was repeated for each of the 5 men during the night. How many coconuts were there originally?
This problem was mimeographed (you know – purple ink) and I took the sheet home. I left it on the kitchen table. Since I worked second shift and this was Friday, I got up late and saw my sister and father poring over the problem. He assured me that the problem was unsolvable because of some numeric situation with powers of 4 and 5. Since the problem had been given to a second year algebra class, I presumed it did have a simple answer and I found it a few hours later. My father was pissed. He thought he had been had. He had been but not intentionally.
In 1989 we moved to Florida and I found a Friendly's Ice Cream in
Orlando. This Friendly's had no idea what an
awful-awful was. But then we are a thousand miles away from
Boston and it is 30 years later.
Oh. Another Florida-ism. I was sitting at the counter right next to the cash register and the checkout line started forming behind me. I guess everyone decided to leave at once. Floridians are remarkably rude and would not let me get up to get in line. I mean when I attempted to stand up, they crowded closer around me to prevent it. After about ten minutes of this, the checkout girl-woman took my bill as I sat. I was amazed at the reaction to her doing this. The next man in line threatened all sorts of abuse to the poor cashier. She shrank and almost cried. I should have spoken up: no one deserves that kind of abuse. He intimidated me also. The rest of the crowd drew back a little permitting me to stand up -- they wanted no part of this but obviously supported the man and his anger rather than the cashier. As he left, I apologized to the poor woman and told her that I appreciated that she had done the correct thing. This man typifies Florida manners.
Somewhere during the summer, I ended up with a large quantity of free tickets to the local amusement park. I invited a group of the gang to go with me to use up the tickets. I used them myself. Every one came but no one would ride the rides. I thought they were chicken. I do not know what they thought. You go to the park for rides, right?
The end of the summer came with a bang. My father started a
new job in New
Jersey and the move was on. He
started his job in New Jersey. My mother
flew down weekends to find temporary quarters. On one of these
weekends, my sister Jeannie got very drunk. My father had a
cupboard for his liquor. While my mother was in New Jersey,
Jeannie got very
drunk. I left to get my mother
at the airport. The girls had
worked very hard to be assimilated into the Boston culture. Now
they had to start over.
When I arrived back from the airport about midnight with my
mother, Pete’s car was out in front. My mother went into the
house very angry. She came back out even angrier. Pete went
home. Kathie had called Pete because she could not carry Jeanne
back upstairs
by herself. Jeanne had thrown up
all over the room, herself and all over Pete. They
had tried to wash off in the shower. After we got my mother
settled, everyone went to bed. The
next morning, we kids confronted my mother. We told her that my
father was not to know. When I was a senior in high school, my
father had me committed to a mental hospital. We were afraid he
would do the same to Jeannie. Kathie and I could not let this
happen. I presume my mother told my father, as
she did not keep secrets from him. This issue never resurfaced to
my knowledge.
Bostonians were very friendly to you. But they were friendly as to a stranger and not as a friend unless you had the accent. Kathie and Jeannie had not picked up the accept but as this was their major years in high school, they had worked very hard to adapt to the new social structure. They had warned me when I arrived of this situation and I worked hard to pick up the accent. There was a surprise going-away party for the girls. I was invited as most thought I was native Bostonian as I had indeed picked up the accent. Not quite. At the party, which was in someone’s basement, some newcomers arrived indicating that there was another party down the street. It cracked me up. I collapsed on the stairs in a fit of laughter. Someone asked, “what’s with him?” Someone else answered, “He does not know the difference between potty and pawty”. This cracked me up even worse.
The day before the move was my last day at work. That night
when I got off work, I drove
downtown to the Greyhound
station that was in Park Square. Just as I drove up, an unmarked
police car screeched to a stop in the
middle of the street. This was
midnight – no other traffic. The
two plain-clothes men jumped out of the car with their guns drawn and
ran into
the station. I had three boxes to
ship. Heavy boxes. I took the first into the station and
went to the back to the package delivery counter. I left the box
and
returned to the car for the second box. Now there were police
cars
circling the
station and some commotion in the Greyhound cafeteria. I returned
for
the third box noticing
that there were not so many police cars now. I paid for the shipment
and turned
to leave. I noticed a man with a
newspaper sitting on a bench watching me. This was easy to notice
as it was the middle of the night and few people were sitting or even
standing for that matter in the middle of the bus station. Oh,
there was the residue of the crowd off to the side by the entrance but
otherwise, it was a normal middle-of-the-night empty. This man
perturbed me.
I walked
to the front of the station to the closed travel counter and picked up
some brochures. I noticed that the man with the paper had gotten up and
had walked somewhat towards me. I also noticed the original
policeman standing by the front door; looking around the station.
I caught
his eye over the brochure I
was reading and approached him. Just as I got to him, I ran out
the
door. The man with the newspaper ran out after me. The
policeman
followed him. As my pursuer saw he was being pursued,
he ran the opposite direction. The
policeman returned to his post and I drove off. End of
story? Not by
a long shot.
As I drove away, I noticed a Cadillac following me. If you remember from grade school, Boston is at the end of sort of a peninsula. Sort of because Boston is really a giant landfill with the River Charles on its north side. Cambridge is across the river. The streets make no sense except to a cow. Washington Boulevard, which starts as a two-way street in Dedham becomes one-way as it enters Boston at Forest Hills. OK. There is no parallel street going the other way. I never did figure out how to get home in Dedham from downtown. Tonight I went up to Fenway Park and came back down highway 1, the VFW Parkway. The Cadillac followed. I started running red lights. So did the Cadillac. I hoped to pick up a policeman. No such luck but I did lose the Cadillac. I thought.
The next day the movers came and emptied the
house. Our street was the innermost circle inside and
the outside circular street was the boundary for the forest at the
bottom
of the Blue Hill. That afternoon,
I needed razor blades as mine had been packed. I walked down to
the drug store where Pete was the soda
jerk. I ordered my last Vanilla
Coke. While I was there a couple
other kids came in and huddled with Pete.
I walked back home. I waited until ten and walked back to the
corner to meet my girl friend
(not Elaine, this one I had met at Rustcraft). Someone followed
me through the woods. It was pitch dark but I knew someone else
was in the woods
with me. My girlfriend arrived
from work. Her friends let her off
at the corner. I scared her half
to death as I walked out of the woods. We walked together for our
last time. A couple of friends of Pete’s and mine drove up and
offered a ride home. We refused. They persisted. They
ruined our night but I left her of
at her house and accepted the ride home. They told me that
someone had followed me that afternoon and was again
following me that night.
My sisters had the Corvair off at some dance. My father had the Oldsmobile in New Jersey. My mother was sleeping. We talked in the kitchen. Pete arrived about midnight and they discussed the Cadillac parked near the drug store all day. My sisters came home and commented on the Cadillac down at the drug store circle. We were worried. Everyone went home.
The next day, we left for New Jersey. We left the house late
and Pete
followed discretely behind. My
mother hated Pete. From her view,
I understood. When we got to the
airport I drove in circles while Pete parked. When I saw him at
the entrance, Jeanne and Kathie got out
and went to their planes. My
mother thought she saw Pete but we started our trip to New
Jersey. I explained the situation to my mother
on the way. She worried about the
girls. I knew they were safe. I worried about being
followed. This story continues but not in Boston. We were
out of there. An interesting town but I would not want to live
there.