Growing up in the big city was fun and dangerous. I was recently in a conversation with my wife, I started to talk about all the things I did/remembered growing up in Dorchester Massachusetts
Snow Daze:
I miss the snow..no I don’t..yes I do…..no I don't….Yes I...........
I seem to have this argument with myself every now and then about snow. Since living in the south, the closest thing to snow is when our freezer has “over freezed” and needs to be thawed…
…..I need to get a hammer and take a few swings and the ice globs and the bits of artificial snow go flying.
Not much snow in the south.
Up North, in the winter, snow was part of your life. You worked, went shopping, played in the snow and took advantage of snow days…
As a kid the snow days off of school were the best. I remember listening to the local radio station when they would call out the closed school names in alphabetical order..it was like winning the lottery when you heard your school named.. We celebrated like all kids did and do to this day
The snow was fun. I remember having one of these as a kid...
Sharpen the rails on that bad boy and find a nice icy hill. You will get your adrenalin fix for the day!
Snow day celebrations were not only for the school kids.
Do not try the following at home. These things were done by a professional city brat.
As I got older, in my early teens, sledding became boring..so we went down town and started to grab the bumpers of salt trucks as they slowly drove through the crowded streets in the snow…
The truck would swerve in the snow and we would too.. when the driver knew we were on the back…he would halt and we would take off like the little buggers we were. It was fun, but looking back..it was also a little dangerous.
I might add that snow days were a lot more fun than what I now get down here…potential hurricane evacuation notices..
Forget about sledding and find a closet! (In the middle of the house is best).
There is such a thing as a free lunch:
So Ed Gorman and I at age 15 decided to go downtown for lunch. We picked a nice Boston
...........no money.
That only seemed to become a problem at the end of our lunch when we were handed the bill. We knew the restaurant layout well and knew what to do. I went first to the bathroom and yes, I crawled out the little window they had leading to the back alley..Ed followed right behind…
This and other restaurants have caught up to our antics and have since made a few changes to their bathroom window decor .
I still look back and chuckle a bit about this but I also feel guilty about it as well. If I were in Boston
Taken for a ride:
So I lived near a laundromat and was with friends 10 miles away in another neighborhood,. It was time to go home but I didn’t want to walk. One of my pals suggested I call a cab…ok, but again, I had no money. ( A recurring theme in my childhood) He suggested a plan that would help him take out some trash while I received a ride home.....huh?
So he put some light trash in a garbage bag (no food stuffs or used cans of chef Boyardee) ..called the cab company and said I needed a ride to the laundromat 10 miles down the road.
The cab came, I got in with the garbage bag and told the cabbie I have to meet my mother at the laundromat with this bag of laundry and away we went. Got to the destination and I told the cabbie to wait while I go inside to get the cab fare from my mother, I will leave the laundry bag in the back until I get back “no problem kid” he says. I get out go to the front of the laundry place and run like there is no tomorrow.
down a back street to my home…What a twerp I was.
I really did some stupid things..Like go to this abandoned chocolate factory....
I remember looking down and seeing telephone polls in the water - they were placed there to try and discourage cliff jumping. I think about this trip often and the hair stands on the back of my neck when I think about looking over the edge.
I often wonder what growing up in my current home town of Crawfordville would be like? Many would say that I would have been brought up southern style so my antics would not work down here..The local cab company is one vehicle owned by bubba and he knows where you live and just try and stiff Myra Jeans restaurant out of a lunch! They don't even have a bathroom window!
Now take into consideration not all Yankees have a childhood like mine. It could have been worse for me, all in all I did turn out to be a good guy. So if we meet in the future, lets do lunch, it will be on me, I will need to check out the bathroom first.
