It was in the sweaty summer of 1952. The Boston Red Sox were well on their way to finishing 6th in the American League. Only the Saint-Louis Browns and the Detroit Tigers offered a more pitiful set of players than our favorite Bosox.
As it had been written in a poem long before, “There was no joy in Mudville, or Boston, etc.” for Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio and Jimmy Piersall could not keep up with the fast moving competition, i.e., the Yankees, the Indians and the Chisox. That was, indeed, the over-riding bad news from our New England region.
But, there was still a tiny element of good news to whet our appetites, or my appetite, at least. I had successfully managed another year of academic learning and social experience at l’Ecole Saint-Louis, a quiet school, which was neatly tucked away in a residential neighborhood on Boisvert Street, off West Sixth Street in Lowell’s Centralville region.
That, my friends, was the seventh grade, which everyone in my circle of acquaintances claimed to be the toughest of all elementary school grades. According to folklore, it was that one that could make or break the aspiring student. How? Why? I could not answer.
Even today, I still scratch my head wondering from where this piece of cherished conviction emanated. Who had created this local belief that tended to frighten all sixth graders? It seemed that even in 1952, there lurked a bogeyman, who preyed on the whims and fantasies of youth.
Clearly, I needed to work out a summer program of fun and discovery with scheduled activities at Nick’s Happy Hour at Lakeview and some baseball practice at Richardson’s Park, up the street, off Hildreth.
Life was loaded with mysteries. Usually, we referred to this park as “The Mayflower”, but why? No one ever asked why this large, grassy territory loaded with tennis courts, baseball diamonds and a wading pool had two official names. The other being Richardson’s. Maybe, there was a story there?
Since I often had gone to the lake with my cousins, Richard and Florence, it made perfect sense for me to walk over the Merrimack River on the Aiken Street Bridge to check out the plans that Richard might have already concocted about out next swimming adventure. Surely, we could all hop onto the Lakeview Avenue bus, on my side of the river, and find ourselves at the Lakeview drop off point after a twenty minute bus ride. That was something to check up on .
But as I approach my cousin’s tenement on Austin Street, I saw him standing outside, on the pavement, distressed over some event, an accident, maybe?
Apparently, a ten-year-old boy, who was cousin Richard’s Austin Street neighbor had gone off with friends the previous weekend on a warm summer day to enjoy the calm of a few relaxing hours at this pleasant lake in Tynnsboro, Massachusetts.
There were two, fresh water lakes, Lakeview and Red Bluff, each located about five miles from this boy’s inner-city surroundings where large, decrepit, three-story, gray, clapboard buildings constituted a busy neighborhood of mixed, retail businesses and high density, human housing structures. Only Charles Dickens could have done justice in describing such environs as he had done successfully in his stories about dally life in industrial London in the 1840s.
Curiously, Mr. Dickens had visited such dwellings during a visit to our Spindle City back in the mid-1840s. He must have felt very much at home, again, walking through these urban living quarters highlighted with scattered debris of broken bottles, empty tin cans and yesterday’s tattered news stories. Finally, the area’s cobbled-stone streets must have added an authentic twist to his daily constitutional.
This young boy’s family lived in cramped quarters within the poverty-stricken, racial, ethnic confines of the surrounding, gray, retail/tenement architecture. Perhaps, it was no wonder that such a vigorous and energetic young man might be tempted to launch off on a bicycle excursion to enjoy a variety of affordable refreshments by the lake’s tree-studded shores. Much that was verdant and alive was not found near his home. All that he had sought was an afternoon of relief from the city’s clammy, stagnant air, which was so amply provided for in his home grounds, i.e., his murky, Moody Street/Austin Street ghetto.
But, since I seldom went to play with my cousins on Austin Street, the street decor was far too depressing, I know of this story only through the description that Richard related to me a day or two after the tragic event occurred.
Apparently, Olivier (a pseudonym I gave him) had been swimming in the cool waters of the lake in the general vicinity of Willowdale Beach, which marked the southern end of that lakeside retreat area. In contrast, and at the northern end of the lake, there stood Nick’s Happy Hour, a well- frequented tavern and restaurant equipped with an inviting, wooden wharf extending well into the lake’s shinny surface. It was at Nick’s lounge and bathing area where I had made my first attempts at swimming and simple water sports.
Private homes in the area also had rowboats, canoes and wharf entry slots adjoining their terraced grassy backyards facing the waters’ edge. Olivier had been resting near a craggy, makeshift, granite wall that acted as a breaker to any serious waves impacting the property’s stony edge when, without any warning, the wall’s very foundations were loosened by a wave, thus toppling the massive stonework onto the unsuspecting lad. Several thousand pounds of rubble crushed the vital organs of the energetic Olivier. His life was snuffed out in an instant of Mother Nature’s fury. At this point, Richard’s dreaded tale had made me weak and, even, nauseous.
As I reflected upon this lesson, I was patiently relearning one of life’s central themes:
“Beware! There are hidden forces that can sweep away the moment and change your life and everything you cherish in a split second. Life can be a dizzying crap-shoot! And, you cannot always be ready for all eventual events. So, be extra careful.”
This Olivier/Willowdale tragedy soon had become emblazoned forever onto the very fiber of my existence! Nothing would ever again be safe in this unsafe world!
In that split instant, Olivier learned about the strength and buoyant force behind those very same waves that had calmed, cradled and nourished him many times in summers past. For me, however, Olivier remained someone that I never knew personally. Yet, over the years, he maintained an eerie and foggy presence in the sepia images of my youth.
XXX-But like many other cases, much else of daily life is also a curious and surreal picture show that blends the ordinary with the bizarre.
Franz Kafka might have inspired portions of this tale from the summer of 1952.