7 June 2026
I went to the Dorchester Day Parade, or at least I went to Dorchester Avenue to enjoy the street while it was closed to vehicle traffic. I carefully packed my bag with skates and water et cetera. I walked over Ashmont Hill thinking of various people I knew in various houses. New walls added here, another floor added at one two story.
At Ashmont Street and Dorchester Avenue the police had road blocks and people being waved up side streets. I could see the convenience store that used to be my dentist, and the traffic island that used to have a great stone horse watering place. Across Dorchester Ave was a building that had my insurance company four decades ago, and before that the same dentist. Next door was a pharmacy once and that’s were I bought the model of the Clearmont steam engine that I got again a year or so ago, for old times sake.
I sat down at Ashmont Station and put on my skates and happened to overhear a woman explain to a black man that a parade was going to happen, but first there was a 5k road race that would go down the road toward Saint Greg’s and the beginning of the parade at Lower Mills. So, I took to the street.
There was a scattering of people all around, but no large crowds. No buses came in and out of the Ashmont Station roadway and bus terminals.
I gazed up at the house were the Quinn sisters lived next to Sandy MacDonald all those years ago.
Sandy MacDonald’s old house, a three decker, was at 1956 Dorchester Avenue, I think. There is a new three floor built there, but it is weathering faster than the buildings next to it. Cheap paint? Inexpensive wood? Quickie construction? I know not.
Past Nishan’s Meat Market where I worked for four years every Saturday while I was in high school. When I go in the supermarket now, I always step over to the newspaper rack to scan the headlines. During the four years in high school, I can not remember ever once stepping over to look at the headlines of the news back then. As a teen, I just wasn’t interested.
Past my parent's old house, I lived there from 1954 to 1968. My parents stayed at the house till about 1991.
So, I have a history there. Once a large crowd gathered there for Dorchester Day and the parade that would pass by. But now, I sang to myself, “What if you went by two thousand two Dorchester Avenue and there was nobody there, just a grey first floor, and a gray second story.” Those words may have a date with Songer to make an AI song. Acoustic please, dance-able.
I skated past the big lawns of whatever the institution was that I found a lost squirrel in and brought home to live in my room without a cage.
At the corner of Gallivan Boulevard and Dorchester Ave I skated past a house were a young twenty-something woman had jumped out a window and killed herself landing on the pavement. Her boyfriend or partner went down to the bank in Adams Village with a gun and got shot dead by an off-duty cop who halted his robbery. I think that was 1974.
I looked towards Mr. Barnett’s house near Gallivan Boulevard. The crossing islands are gone. I remember having valentines under my hat crossing the street when I was about eight years old. My hat blew off, and my Saint Valentine’s religiously themed cards scattered on the street. The ones with imitation lace paper cost a nickel. Others, the more common variety cost three cents. The class made the cards from cut up Christmas card illustrations and paper cut in to hearts.
I looked quick to ‘wiggles’ house across from the Civil War graveyard. She was in high school and had a young woman’s body that little kids like Billy MacDonald mocked as she walked home from the high school with us behind. I remember going to deliver at her house years later. Oops, I thought, it’s wiggles.
I looked over to the very old small graveyard and thought of stories of some kid taking a bone out of a broken tomb. There are some Civil War graves there I believe I remember. When I was ten, eleven, twelve, there were lots of stories about kids doing daring, irrational, things to prove…. I don’t know what. I was never sure if a boast or story was true. What did I know.
Then, Carney Hospital. I looked to my left and thought of the ‘Carney Fair’ held each year as a fund raiser for the hospital and events I had experienced at that summer nights festival I cherished as a child. There were mechanical rides, games of chance, cotton candy, the smell of popcorn. I bought my first Superman comic book on the way home from the Carney Fair with funds I had wisely not spent. Superman lost his powers in that episode, too near kryptonite. I remember he had to walk. I have that episode in another edition on my bookshelf today.
Looks like the darkened windows of the hospital and the empty parking lot signal that someone could not make money in medicine. Imagine that? How many times have I been in that hospital over the decades? Dozens of times I am sure.
I looked across the street and remembered a kid who had moved from Beale Street to across from the Carney Hospital and he had a Viking ship model that I was fascinated by. He got in trouble burning a car years later. In order to help a friend collect insurance money the Viking ship owner took the vehicle in a mock theft and pour gasoline on the vehicle and threw in a match. The fire exploded with the fumes and burned off the arsonists eyebrows. The firebug fled the scene, but cops stopped him a few streets over with a gasoline can and burned off eyebrows. One can not make this stuff up. What a Viking.
Labore Nursing school, where my daughter learned her trade. Must be close, if the hospital is gone. How can they not make money?
Dorchester Park now has a handicap access ramp at the north end, and I saw a few people along the walls of the park. The old stone walls that were put in by Fredrick Law Olmstead who designed parks and public gardens a hundred and fifty years ago.
I looked up to the large grey granite rock visible from the street. I have climbed that rock, and probably every other large rock in the park.
I think I was on that rock with Frank McNamara when the first revived post ww2 Dorchester Day Parade happened in 1963. I thought it was later than that, but…. Perhaps Frank and I did not want to be in the parade with our Troop 99 because we did not want to march down the street with the little cub scouts. I was still in the Boy Scouts in February 1964 because I can remember going winter camping and singing Beatles songs that were new. I think we quit in the summer of 1964. I can’t quite remember marching in past parades, although, perhaps that’s when the Den Mother criticized the motley crew “We look like Joe’s Army.” Or was I up on the wall in the park behind bushes?
A man was sitting in a lounge chair and listening to a song by America on a sound system. I stopped to listen leaning against the old stone walls I had walked on as a child coming home from Saint Greg’s elementary school. Half a dozen police vans with blue lights lined up to move north.
But, what was the song? I looked up the band America, one song title “Nothing So Far Away as Yesterday” - The song came from Toto with the line “I stopped an old man along the way
Hopin' to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies He turned to me as if to say
"Hurry, boy, it's waitin' there for you"
And now, I’m the Old Man. But, I am on the high inline skates. One hundred and twenty-five centimeters. That has to count for something, and it does. A higher center of gravity. Cuidado! I had to be careful on the street with bumps and unsmooth spots. Life, or death, on skates.
At the front entrance to Dorchester Park there is a new narrower entrance than when I was a child marching by each day to school. The officials, lord preserves of fishes and loaves, must block the entrance to stop vehicles of youthful miscreants. Or the wayward of any age, I guess. The park was the wilderness of my ten-year-old youth. But, I had no car then, and I have no car now. But, I have wheels, on my feet.
I thought of hearing Robert Ransom singing “Hey there, you with your nose in the air, you’ve got me dancing on a swing…” in parody of the Rosemary Cluny song of the 1950’s.
Then I gazed up at Saint Gregory’s Church. Gold letters. A story of a bombing and rebuilding. I received my First Communion in that church. I was Confirmed in the Catholic faith in that church. I was married in that church in December 1968.
Then over to Saint Gregory School. I looked up to the Virgin Mary statue and the flagpole and thought of the pleasure of getting out of class for five minutes to take down the flag at the end of the school day.
A bunch of young girls were on the lawn in front of the school, perhaps waiting to get in the parade. I was in front of the room were I began first grade in September 1955. I remember distinctly learning the letter “d” which the nun introduced with a ‘drum’ association. Also I remember the letter “x” which the nun introduced with a story about a girl running from a snake as her brother kicked sand at the snake with a sound of “x.”
A line of trucks with blue lights were ready to go down the street to announce the parade’s beginning.
As the police trucks and big vehicles moved forward a little I had the front of Saint Gregory’s Church to myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment