| I aspired to be one thing: a great kid. What else | | | | immediate neighborhood, but you'd have been an allies |
| besides a pre-cop or pre-fireman might a five year old | | | | against children from another neighborhood. |
| be? Among my early career paths, a polite kid rode a | | | | In all sports, a child played on his neighborhood's teams. |
| superhighway to preschool success. Behavior I took | | | | We played what we called Park's League. All but the |
| for granted at that time, was taught to me by my | | | | smallest neighborhoods had a football, baseball, hockey, |
| parents. These lessons became habits. We might | | | | and street hockey team. We managed this, created |
| have been the farm team for Bill Sykes's ragamuffin | | | | schedules, championships, try-outs (you played on your |
| pickpockets, but at least we addressed an adult in | | | | team, if you made your team). Older kids, high |
| conversation using their last names preceded by Mr., | | | | schoolers, usually tipped the balance. Oakvale, our |
| Mrs. or Miss. Why? It's simple. Appearance was more | | | | neighborhood had 3 starters on Framingham North, and |
| important than content, hence the oft spoken "I stole | | | | one starter on Marion HS (the Catholic HS). We were |
| Mr. Smith's hose." or, "I broke all of Miss Hutchins's car | | | | a good team. I played second base, making the team |
| windows with a bat." or, "Msgr. O'Brien would kill me if | | | | in fifth grade. We were a very good team, but never |
| he knew that I stuck hosts I stole from the sacristy | | | | won a championship in baseball. |
| and put them on the windshields of the cars in the lot | | | | If God had decided to create this place, he'd have |
| before Mass." | | | | dropped the entire sprawl exactly where it was, on an |
| We knew how to speak to adults. | | | | old orchard. My neighborhood always smelled like |
| As times have changed I notice among my own | | | | apples. |
| children the unwillingness to properly introduce | | | | The most important lessons we learned growing-up in |
| themselves, mumbling instead of speaking and never | | | | this environment were taught by our parents and |
| offering to an adult males a sticky five year old paw. | | | | neighbors: |
| Never, except for their teachers have they called | | | | - Be a good kid; |
| anyone Mr., Mrs., or Ms. The kids don't steal or | | | | - Be loyal to your family and your neighborhood; |
| randomly vandalize property, either. Yeah, it's a | | | | - Hate a bully...beat him senseless ganging-up on him |
| trade-off. | | | | until he changed his ways. Never tell on him. |
| Take these little kids we were and drop them into the | | | | - Never tell on anyone. The neighborhood can take |
| postcard perfect New England town and you'd have | | | | care of itself. |
| Burt and I (quaint New England humorists) in fifty years. | | | | - Right or wrong, a kid from your neighborhood could |
| Put them instead in the stubbornly dieing mill towns, | | | | ALWAYS rely on you to support him against |
| where time had simply raced past the hand-made | | | | outsiders. If he was wrong, and the 2 of you took a |
| shoe industry, and you got us instead. | | | | hellacious beating, the neighborhood would square him |
| Our town, more like a small city, housing 75,000 people, | | | | away for his sins: getting you beaten-up, and whatever |
| had by the early sixties become more a bedroom | | | | he had done to ignite the initial problem. |
| community to Boston, than a stand alone industrial | | | | - BIG LESSON: DON'T CRY, WHILE or COMPLAIN. If |
| center. Many of the factories, Dennison Paper, General | | | | you kept your mouth shut endured what you had to, |
| Motors, the women's prison and other large employers | | | | and solved your own problems, you'd rarely have to |
| like them, still remained, but by the eighties they would | | | | call upon your neighborhood for support. The same |
| be shuttered. | | | | was true of your parents. Retribution from the |
| Route 9 divided Framingham; North housed the middle | | | | neighborhood, or your parents could be swift and |
| and lower middle class; some pockets becoming more | | | | severe if it turned out that you could have dealt with |
| established and wealthier, but far more of the | | | | your own problem. Maybe that's one reason I'm such a |
| neighborhoods seemed stuck in that post-WWII sprawl. | | | | crummy patient today. |
| South of Route 9 is where the poor lived. Framingham | | | | I slipped and slid quite a bit here. I'm trying to sketch the |
| was an enormous spread of houses, one atop the | | | | framework of the first of my 2 part childhood. I find |
| other yet at the same time, subdivided into separate | | | | lessons today in many of the situations that delved in |
| and distinct neighborhood, each with too many kids; | | | | my early years. God, bless us all; my parents and |
| each bordered by 5-9 neighborhoods just like it; each | | | | those kids were your angels. It's humbling how often |
| with its' own playground. The boundaries between | | | | they were right. We are His kids; some of us had the |
| neighborhoods were natural: streams, hills woods, | | | | additional benefits that came of a rough and tumble |
| ponds, an aqueduct, railroad tracks, and busy streets. | | | | youth. |
| You'd not have been friends with every kid in your | | | | |