A Walk Through the Neighborhood - or a Memory Stew

When I started this blog, I had intentions of countering all these Crisco, corn syrup, and margarine laced recipes by pursuing another of my grandmother’s routines.  Taking a walk.  The 8 month delay of those intentions suddenly ended on Sunday night when I found myself at the start of a week at Mt. Pleasant Ave. 

 

Sunday was actually the perfect kickstart to this dusty inspiration.  It was one of those perfect, almost summer evenings.  My weeklong companion, Nutmeg, was still unsure what to think of me… so I figured we should explore the neighborhood as the sky slowly ebbed into magical golden cotton candy stretched across the blue.  

I turned left at the bottom of the driveway, walking up towards Main Street.  This is not an unfamiliar path to me – nor, I suspect, to many of this blog’s readers.  So many summer morning/afternoons took these first steps in flip flops, clutching a plastic bucket or shovel, a towel wrapped around our shoulders, anxious to kick off those shoes and sink toes into the sand of Eagle Lake.  Or at the opposite time of the year, bundled up in a snowsuit, mittens, gloves, and hat.  Dragging an inflated snow tube or toboggan across the street, passed the embankment, and up the hill to see if the sledding could get you as far as the frozen swamp.  Both walks made you forget it was a golf course.  Because who cares about golf when there is swimming or sledding to be done?

Nutmeg and I did not take the shortcut through the parking lot of the former Jefferson School that would bring us to Eagle Lake.  I imagine the administrative offices have no need for the playground that was often a distraction from our destination.  Nor would my furry companion if it was even there.  So we walked along Main Street. 

There were many mornings I would drive to work and see my grandmother on this very path.  Sometimes she would see me and wave as I sped by in my car – something I actually got to do to my aunt as she passed me.  Holden is like that.  Or maybe… maybe it’s because I was following my grandmother’s steps.  She always knew someone wherever we went.   And it always made me feel good knowing that – that no matter where you go, there is a chance to find a connection or commonality.

So I passed the school and the house that was once a veterinarian office.  I honestly couldn’t tell you when that business went away, but I do remember going there with my grandfather to get Abigail, the poor dog who suffered my toddler pinches under the kitchen table.  I passed the white gothic looking house on the corner of the street that will take you to Eagle Lake if you don’t take the school parking lot shortcut.  The mill buildings that always signaled the anticipation of arriving at Ma and Bubby’s.  The antique store that was closed, but in which my affinity for old things had to look, and coveted some bar accoutrement that could easily have belonged to Don Draper… or Vinny Brennan.

I turned the corner onto Princeton Street.  There was a graduation party happening that Sunday night.  I could hear the teenagers playing volleyball - or whatever silliness the liberation from high school provided - well before I passed the house.  I wondered if that senior had lived in that house all his/her life.  If he/she had walked this street and knew it in the sappy sense of nostalgia I did… and I realized that the senior wasn’t even born when I was the child walking around this block.  But I didn’t think of that as an oh my God, I’m old… just a progression of time that had already manifested itself in the weathered paint on houses I knew, overgrown vegetation, and cracks in asphalt I remember seeing repaved many times.  This walk was very timey wimey, so indulge me.

Anyway, just about the point I got to the house where those teenagers were making happy noises of celebration, I noticed the last street light flicker on.  I am always awestruck by watching street lights come on.  It’s probably because I love the in between times of night and day – twilight and (when I’m awake for it) dawn.  Something magical.  A thinning of perception maybe.  And… I realized the first time I ever noticed a street light go on or off was on that street.  Maybe it was even that very street light.  I was 19 at the time.  And it’s… just one of those things that you go through life not paying attention to… or taking for granted.  That street lights will always be on when it’s dark.  And somehow turn on without anyone looking.  They don’t suddenly go off in the middle of the night.  Except that one (or one of its close by neighbors) did a February evening as I was driving with a car full of cousins back to MPA from my grandfather’s wake.  I’m sure it could easily be explained as a burnt out bulb… but I always remember that.  I think of him every time I see a street light suddenly go off or flicker on.  And… not so very strange that I should think of him that night.

I can’t deny a little water in the eyes as I followed Nutmeg towards St. Mary’s.  The church to which I am most connected, even if not by faith.  So many weddings and baptisms (indeed my own), anniversary parties and showers in the hall… and sadly, the more recent occurrences … funerals.  The parking lot was vacant, but I remember getting out of the car in my Easter best, following my grandfather into the church where he always sat at the edge of the pew so he could pass the basket.  The rectory where once upon a time I remember Christmas caroling with my parents and some collection of aunts and uncles.  And the priests rewarded us with a box of chocolates to take back to my grandfather.  

Then we were back at Mt. Pleasant Ave.  The post office, which was the most common reason to walk down that street.  I don’t remember much about the post office.  It’s a post office.  But just before the corner where one crosses the street is a bridge over the Asnebumskit Brook.  So many stones have fallen from my fingertips into that brook.  An urge that I still feel in my palms and prompts my eyes to look for obliging stones nearby.   

The last stretch is so familiar, tread so many times in my childhood, after filling my stomach with a Christmas buffet, walking to see my uncle’s house in the various progresses of construction… I could probably describe it, smell it, feel it without taking Nutmeg down there.  The houses are more familiar to me than those in any neighborhood in which I lived.  Even if the one that was built underground now has an above ground story and its stone wall is no longer a dare devil attempt to walk with balance.  The Christmas lights turned on inside a living room of another house.  Not that I don’t turn on my Christmas lights all year long, but these… well… made me smell the turkey on my clothes.  The bear at the bottom of Mr. Novak’s driveway.  I looked up to his windows and wondered if he would know who I am.  The baby he held so many years ago.  The daughter of a daughter of one of his very good friends.  

I thought of the neighborhood in the days when he and my grandparents were my age.  When the outdoor fireplace grilled hamburgers and the bourbon sloshed in glasses as they sat in lawn chairs.  As I walked back towards the golf course and saw the (relatively) new condos made to look like the old hotel and the lights that came on in the clubhouse, I thought of those nights my grandmother told me about.  When my grandfather would go up to the bar and bring a half full glass home.  Of the bartender who would bring my grandfather a set of keys and the request to get someone home safely.  Of the concerts – Tina Turner – who apparently rocked me out my mother’s womb.  Of the fire.  The wedding receptions.  And I see the hill again where we raced in our sleds to get to the edge of the swamp.

So many memories in less than a mile.  I wonder how many of us have ghosts there – happy ghosts – but a piece of us that will always live on Mt. Pleasant Ave.  I felt like I was walking with them, as well as Nutmeg.  Even the ones I didn’t know – Rose Alba and Frank and Rhea and Lee Michael.  So much of our family is embedded in the air there.  Laughter and love and sorrow and childhood joy echoing through the years into the twilight of a June evening.