Thursday, September 17, 2020

It's A Wonderful Day In The Neighborhood



When we were kids, the nabe was the thing.  Our relatives lived and died there, our best friends played there, our happiest moments were spent therein.  We met other friends at school, of course, joined sports teams comprised of kids from all over town, knelt at the communion rail with raw outsiders, but the neighborhood peeps reigned supreme.  Need someone to throw the old horsehide around with?  Trying to get up a game of three-on-three tag football?  Want a fellow fisherman to test the waters of the Shawsheen River?  Knock on a couple of doors and your wishes are fulfilled.

In high school, the world opened up a bit.  You met a wider variety of friend candidates, somebody’s father bought him a car, people began going to dances.  Still, when push came to shove, when there were battles to be fought or solace to be solicited, that small slice of land surrounded by the B&M Railroad tracks, Winthrop Avenue, Andover and Falmouth streets was our fortress.  A guy might be the Prince of Wales but if he didn’t live on Garfield Street he lacked a certain panache.

The old nabe; looking north down Garfield Street from Bill's front porch.

Time passes and people repair to far-away universities, to out-of-town jobs, to woebegone army posts, but they never forget the nabe.  Letters fly back and forth, the occasional expensive long-distance phone call is made, reunions are planned.  When there is a wedding to celebrate or a funeral to abide, the old faces are back to perform their responsibilities.  Handshakes all around, a remembrance of times past enhanced and occasionally misremembered with a smile.  And the inevitable but well-meant false promises to write, keep in touch.


The neighborhood is still there physically, but it is easing away from its old inhabitants.  It slowly fades, like a dream upon waking, and then, finally, it is gone to us, the houses refilled with new families which never heard of the glories of Leo Gervais’ variety store or the arcane exploits of the witchlike Grace Dineen.  Sometimes, we drive by and remember.  There are fewer trees now, the houses seem smaller, the distances from one to the other much shorter.  But where are the children, where is the raucous laughter, the streets teeming with ballplayers and jumpropers, the little girls chalking up a hopscotch box?  Does all this no longer exist?

It does, in fact.  It lives as long as one of us lives….as long as there is a single voice to tell the stories, glorify the escapades. exaggerate the wonders and lie boldly about the deficits of the Good Old Days when boys were tough, girls wore dresses and Garfield Street was the center of the universe.  Skoal!


The Facebook Alternative

Once upon a time, over the course of years, old friends traveled far and wide and often fell into darkness, never to be heard from again.  Addresses were lost, phone numbers haphazardly disappeared, names suddenly changed, and a great sense of  ennui covered the land.  But then one day, a wise man planted a single seed in fertile soil, watered it daily and watched it flourish and grow to the sky.  He named the mighty beanstalk Facebook and sent a memo to the world:

“Your old neighborhoods may be gone, but I have brought forth the opportunity for you to create new ones peopled with those you choose, unavailable to others.  You can converse with them instantly, send photos of the great grandson’s date for the senior prom, remind us of your recipe for Shepherd’s Pie.  You merely have to tolerate the occasional commercial message, not much to ask.  Hey, even in the old days those neighborhood stores had big ‘Moxie’ signs over the front door.”  And the people saw it was good.  Mostly.


The Virtual Nabe

Say what you will, little Markie’s Facebook has reinvented the neighborhood.  Grandma in Poughkeepsie is thrilled to be able to communicate instantly with grandson in Seattle.  Shy little Mairzie Doats can safely flirt with Bud the Stud 800 miles away.  Playmates can enjoy games together, cry on one another’s shoulder or refer a pal to the latest shenanigans on YouTube.  Hermits like painter Chuck LeMasters can exhibit their latest art pieces and never leave their properties.  Humanitarians like Storm Roberts and Anne White can show us what the beach looks like at sunrise and sunset.  Ubiquitous characters like Will Thacker can hop on stage with their straw hats and canes and deliver their newest comedy routines.  Yea, verily, the nabe lives!


I, myself, am not one to jump on the latest bandwagon.  Years ago, I was on my way out the door to the typewriter store to check the inventory when I got the bad news; there no longer was a typewriter store.  I went to Blockbuster video stores until they issued me a restraining order.  I had to be dragged into the computer age kicking and screaming.  After several years of considered abstinence, I decided to join Facebook only to procure new readers for The Flying Pie.  That didn’t work out particularly well, since most FB denizens prefer reading sentences to paragraphs, let alone epistles, but I’ve stayed nonetheless because I like the neighborhood my pals and I have created.  My sister, Kathy Scanlon, is always up early to say hello.  I’ve discovered a fellow football fan named Deb Peterson to share my Saturdays with.  Old Subterranean Circus customers come by to recall their pleasant memories of the Golden Age of Hippiedom.  Carolyn Holmes, Sherry Snyder, Lynn Maxwell and David Hammer invariably check in to say nice things about The Flying Pie.  Nancy Kay is always available to give me a hard time.  And George Swinford is unafraid to dispense fervid political advice, like it or not.

My new peeps are a varied and eclectic lot.  I can depend on Chris Thibaut for brilliant photographs, rely on Gary Borse for the latest interplanetary news, follow my old pal Bob Follett and his busy camera around Oakland.  And just this year, an old girlfriend of many names---we’ll just call her Patti Walker---magically appeared from out of the clouds to make sure I was performing to expectations.  There are no childhood pals, of course, like Jack Gordon to listen to Allen Freed with in my new neighborhood, no plasticman like Mickey Murphy to swing on vines with or Jim St. Hilaire to help me throw old televisions out the window when the Red Sox blow a three-run lead in the ninth, but all-in-all it’s a good little consortium, a colorful group with an appreciation for the glories of neighborhood.  And believe it or not, we’re thinking of getting together in person soon.  When the Covid clears up, we plan to rent an old school bus, paint it in psychedelic colors and drive up to Pennsylvania to visit the last resting place of our hero, Mr. Rogers.  It will, without doubt, be a wonderful day in the neighborhood.


What Do They Do On A Rainy Night In Bangkok?

BEFORE:

I am writing this on the morning of my first experience with Thai Massage, which is not much like the traditional massage at all.  Your average massage is a mostly pleasant walk in the park.  You lie on a nice comfortable table surrounded by exotic scents and New Age music while the clever masseuse tries to rearrange your frazzled body, placing all the beleaguered parts back where they used to be.  The worst thing that could happen is your massage therapist complains for the entire hour about her breakup with Maxwell, the love of her life, something which happens only occasionally.  Otherwise, you’re pretty safe.

In Thai Massage, all bets are off.  There is no table, you sit on a mat on the floor and the torturer burns sulfur to the strains of heavy metal music played by bands from Liechtenstein.  You are volunteering for this mission because aging bodies have a disturbing tendency to shrivel up, contract and become tight as an angry drumskin, in dire need of stretching.

Rather than using the civilized means of, say, Swiss massage----hands, fists, forearms and elbows--- the average Thai masseuse will also use legs and feet, “sometimes a combination of both to gain leverage as they initiate deep stretches of the client’s arms, legs, hips and shoulders.”  Oh-oh.  I hope they give me a Pain-O-Meter so I can plunk the magic twanger when my misery gets unbearable. 

If all goes well, I expect to report back to you later in this column.  If things go awry, I am prepared.  I have all my affairs in order and have just finished up tending to my Will.  My Facebook friends will be happy to know that I’m leaving my entire supply of skin tightener to Nancy Kay.  I also bequeath her my outstanding sense of humor.  You can’t have one without the other.

AFTER: 

Not so bad.  It was nice of Siobhan to have a squad of EMTs on standby and/or a pickup truck to toss the body into but it never came to that.  A brief review:

First, therapist Deborah Shahadey led me into an impressively large room with a well-padded floor, a vastly different chamber than the usual smallish rooms used for table massages.  She had a lifetime's worth of accoutrements and decorations installed here....lights, candles, visual treats available to the massagee lying on the floor.  It was chilly, so she put a blanket over me while I got acclimated, which didn't take more than a couple of minutes.

Since my lower back is the main issue, we worked on that this session.  In ninety minutes of stretching me in every conceivable way, Deborah used hands, feet, elbows, fists and a funky little machine that made funny noises.  She constantly asks you for your pain level from 1 to 10 and when it reaches 7, she eases up and lets the muscle relax.  After about four bouts with each muscle, the pain level is very low.  Onward to the next muscle.

The therapist in Thai massage seems able to locate soreness not found by practitioners of traditional massage.  Deborah says there's no fooling Thai, you discover every deficit.  I'm here to tell you she found plenty of mine and ran them out of town.  By the time I left, I felt like a mildly intoxicated rag doll, loose limbed and ready for action.  Good thing, too.  Later the same afternoon, Siobhan had scheduled a yoga class.  I hate to say this but sometimes you can be just too healthy.


That's all, folks....

bill.killeen094@gmail.com