Hometown

I do not remember what it was that I was looking up one day but I came across some pictures, on the computer, of different towns and cities that you could pull up and check out. I was writing about Newport, R.I. and had found several pictures I could use in my story "Bodewel Manor" and I checked a little further and there was my old home town. I grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts some eighty-five years ago and I see these pictures are as old as I am. I am sure the entire city has changed by now, but then one never knows. I'd like to plan a trip back there and check it out.

I spent a lot of time at Lynn beach when I was growing up. We walked. Yes, just like the old sayings of long ago . . . 'we walked a mile....' and we did. It was depression years and no one could afford a car, even a tin lizzy. The bath house was huge and I do not remember using it very much. We were sand crabs and loved being out in the open, walking the beach or playing in the big waves.

I do remember City Hall and I bet that hasn't changed. It really was a very beautiful old building back then, so it has to be a relic today. As for the square, I think it is Magraine square and there was a department store there that I worked in selling handkerchiefs during our High school Christmas break. I must not have been a productive sales lady as I do not remember keeping that job for very long. What I do remember is the months, or more like a year or two, when I buzzed dishes in the huge cafeteria with hundreds of tables. My friend, Blanche, bless her heart, I haven't thought of her in years, was my work partner and we could fill a tray fast and high earning our twelve dollars a week from six a.m. to three p.m. every day. That job brings back lots of memories and some of them are written in my tales.

I wish I had found my old High School and the double Commons leading from downtown to the west side of Lynn where my old grammar school was located on Robinson Street. I do have a photograph of the house I lived in when I was very small but don't have a scanner to show you. Funny how the mind works and some of the street names come back naturally to the brain. Myrtle Street, Blakely Street, Wyman Street, Boston Street and I bet I could think a little harder and come up with a few more. We used to bounce a ball and put our leg over the ball and call out the names of the streets until we couldn't think of a name and then had to pass the ball on. Um. . . Bowley Avenue, Flint Street . . . I'm on a roll.

I hope you can think of the names of the streets where you played as a small child. I hope the memories are happy ones and that they make you relive a few golden moments and make those laugh lines worth while. Make today special, call or write an old friend or even a relative you haven't contacted in some time. I'm going to send a Halloween card and scare one or two with my ghostly presence.