A Boyhood Spent On Park Street Bridge
Am I the only one who knows West Roxbury is the shape of County Roscommon, Ireland? Did someone show me a map or did I imagine it in a dream? Thirty years later, in that self-absorbed frenzy of mid-adulthood, I still hear the voice which told me so, its faded Celtic lilt apparent even after fifty years in America. Those little morsels of questionable wisdom I gleaned from the everyday folks who inhabited that five-block universe at whose center was the Park Street Bridge. And it wasn’t just the Irish. I was at the counter of Steve Slyne’s Deli ordering a Roast Beef sandwich when an old Greek lady told me that chewing gum while cutting onions will keep you from crying. Another time I was in line at East’s Drug Store when a well-dressed man of some Arabic extraction informed me that wearing neckties too tightly could cause a stroke. I may have balked at the time, but I was relieved the following year when told that the school uniform at Don Bosco Tech required only clip-ons. Yet none of us would ever be taught what we could learn for ourselves. The West Roxbury of my youth was an … Read more