Who am I?

I was born in 1965 in Brighton, Massachusetts, a happy child, the second of three brothers, each born one year apart. We lived in a house owned by my grandparents on my mother’s side. When I was two years old, we moved to Brookline. We lived on the first floor of a triple-decker house on Boylston Street. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, my father worked as a machinist in Natick, about twenty miles west on Route 9. I remember seeing him hitchhiking to work on days when the car was broken down.

My father was only twenty-one when he and my mother were married. At the age of twenty-three, and with three kids to feed, he became over worked and depressed. Unable to cope with all the sudden responsibility, he developed a drinking problem, and as the property value rose in Brookline, he had trouble earning enough to stay in the neighborhood. So we moved into a federally subsidized housing project in the predominantly Irish Catholic slum known as Whiskey Point. As the Irish came to Boston in several waves to find work, many worked in Boston, and lived in The Point.

There was a lot of tension between the rich neighbors, and the Point kids, and even though I was only about five years old, I could see that I was being treated as an outsider because we came from the Chestnut Hill area. I can remember trying to join in as we sang songs on the school bus. I figured I would fit in better if I adopted the ways of the Point Kids.

“ Oh we’re the boys from Whiskey Point, we’re never very clean,
We never wash our hands or face; we never wash our knees,
We hang around the corner, a’spittin’ at the Jews,
Oh we’re the boys from Whiskey point, a’ who da hell are yous?”

This old song was probably written in the 1800s, when the Catholics were just getting established as a community, and were building lots of churches. There were more than a few churches and synagogues burned down in those days. I guess the bigoted sentiment carried over into the 1970s.

I had several Jewish friends though, and was secretly ashamed as I joined the Point kids in the anthem. But I believed that the way to gain respect among these guys was to be meaner and tougher than the next guy. I had my hands full for the first four years or so, winning fights after school, publicly humiliating the bullies, but eventually, the beatings ceased. I guess I was getting pretty good at defending myself. Eventually, I could be seen with anyone I cared to without rear of reprisal. I even managed to get some of the “nerds” accepted into the fold.

In fifth grade, I was put into what was known as an “open” classroom. There was no assigned seating; in fact, we all sat on the rug that was at one end of the room. The teacher would tell us what kind of project we would be working on, and then we would be free to go wherever we felt comfortable to do our work. Roberta Snow was our teacher, but she let us call her Bobbie. I remember thinking that the school year would be easier than the old fashioned, structured classes I had been in before. Hippies were running this class, I thought, and we would be able to get away with all kinds of pranks and stunts.
Soon I had befriended the most outrageous kid in the class, Chris Guttmacher. He had long hair and his jeans were always tattered and hanging down low. Chris was more concerned with comfort than fashion. Most of us kids in The Point were into the latest music, Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back,” or whichever disco was being hyped on WRKO, radio. Chris had somehow found out about “Acid Rock,” as it was often called back then. Emerson Lake And Palmer, or The Who, or Aerosmith. He listened to WBCN when Charles Laquidera was shocking the conservative listeners with his hatred of authority and conventional thinking. With Chris’s propensity for saying exactly what was on his mind, and vast repertoire of subversive slogans, he found himself in trouble with the school and we were often in the office to discuss whatever transgression we had committed with the principal. I was usually impressed with the style in which he would enrage the teachers. He was much more clever than I was, and this mattered a great deal in the competitive world of school. I had always been the class wise ass until I got Chris onto the Point Kid’s “cool” list, and I felt like I could learn a bit from watching him.

Chris’s father was a psychiatrist, which most of the Point Kids found to be ironic, as Chris was not considered “normal” by the mostly Irish though-guy part of the class. But his father made sure that there would be no stifling of his son’s freedom of expression.

I remember the day Chris swore about something during lunch, and Mrs. Regalino, “the Italian with a little nose,” as Chris used to call her, over heard it. Mrs. Regalino was not liberal, by any means, and we all resented her disciplinary style. “He just doesn’t know when to quit!” she said. To which Chris replied, “ Neither do my parents, maybe its hereditary.”
They called in his parents for a conference, and for the rest of the year we had a graffiti board on the wall on which we could write whatever we wanted. It was supposed to provide us with a place to vent our frustrations without disrupting class. When it got too full to write on, we covered It over with paper, and started a new one For the first few days, it was filled with angry writing, mostly for shock value: “Smoke Pot,” “Mealy Sucks,” the ubiquitous “fuck you,” but as we all shared in the experience, the writing became more meaningful, more relevant to what we all dealt with as a group. Chris was so smart and funny in some of his social commentary and entries that nobody made fun of Jews or nerds for the rest of the year. Chris suddenly became a sort of leader. We couldn’t wait to see what he would write next. He could express our feelings of early adolescence without hurting anyone’s feelings. We watched as Chris wrote expressions like, “Pimples, blackheads, warts, and welts,” or “Subvert the dominant Paradigm” or just “I’ve got angst in my pangst.”

He would just write the thoughts without any worries about whether anyone else would understand it, or even read it at all. Interestingly, we all got the idea as it usually connected to some shared experience we were going through. And soon everyone tried their hand at it.
A wave of free speech washed over the whole class at this time, and news of the success of the experiment reached the ears of the principal, Mr. Cote. He came in one day to see the board, and was so angry about it that he made us cover up our newfound voices again and agree to “keep it clean” from now on, NO SWEARING!

Mr. Cote was our common enemy and this really united us students, though we did stop the profanity, for the most part.

In the summer, Chris’s family used to housesit for another psychiatrist’s family who lived in Lennox Mass. I wouldn’t see my best friend for a month or so, and it was both a surprise and an honor when one day Chris called from Lennox to ask if I could come out and stay with them for the summer. I assumed His parents were looking for a friend to keep him from being withdrawn and lonely. I remember my father standing beside the car as I got in when Mr. Guttmacher came to our apartment building to pick me up. My folks didn’t want me to invite him in; they were embarrassed by the squalor of the projects. My father seemed so cordial and polite as he was shaking hands with Mr. Guttmacher, thanking him for taking me for the trip. It wasn’t like him at all. He seemed to feel subordinate to the very professional Mr. Guttmacher, and it bothered me to see him acting in an unfamiliar way. I thought my father knew everything, or at least could tell you where to find the answer if there was something he didn’t know.
During whole ride to the Berkshire Mountains, it was silent except when we passed a beautiful scenic vista at which point Mr. G. said, “That’s a sight!” I didn’t know what to say to break the ice, and neither, apparently did he. It surprised me to think that his intervention was responsible for Chris’s unbridled extroversion.

My father got a job at M.I.T. as a technician when I was in seventh grade, and our lives became a little more comfortable. And then, when I was fourteen years old my parents announced that they were going to have another baby. They were overjoyed. In 1979, I had a new baby brother.

My father made a good enough salary to raise four children in Brookline. He had no incentive to go to college because he was working and doing what he thought was the best thing for my brothers and me. I was encouraged to go to college, but at that time in my life, it seemed really important to make money. So as soon as I could, I got a job. I worked at a gas station for a while so that I made a good paycheck to contribute to rent and bills at home. I eventually dropped out of high school and went into the construction trades, working for heating and air conditioning companies. I figured that I would be a professional musician.
I would still run into Chris in the neighborhood and we tried to start a band. Chris was a great drummer and had a drum set in his bedroom, which you could hear all the way down the street as he played along to Thin Lizzie or 10 cc albums at top volume. I did not realize at the time, but Chris was expressing himself as effectively with his drums as he did on the graffiti board, and probably with the same purpose. He had an acoustic guitar and I could pick out melodies and join in. But after a while we seemed to lose the rapport we had always enjoyed. I figured it was due to my being the working stiff character that was my everyday role. I think he was worried that I reverted to the same kind of judgmental views that had kept the Point Kids on the other side of the fence. Eventually, Chris became timid and reserved around me, and I thought that he finally had out grown me intellectually. We stopped getting together soon after that, and drifted apart.

I had been playing the trumpet in the school band for two years by this time, and I found that I could really escape into the world music. A few of the local kids started a jazz band after school at my friend Nate’s house. Nate played the saxophone and his father played the piano. I remember his dad said that I had good tone, and that I could really express myself. I told him that I was not so much expressing myself, but I was expressing everything else to myself. I felt that I really had nothing to say.

But this is the nature of expression. I thought I was playing the music I wanted to hear, and Nate’s father must have shared the same kind of feeling at some point, and recognized it in my music. I was not playing to impress anyone but myself, so I never expected it to mean anything to anyone else. For the listener, music is good only if the person playing it conveys some common emotion through it. If the listener feels it too, then it’s really expressing the sentiment of both the musician and the listener.

I found out that there were other kids who played music when I started high school so I made sure to let people see me around with a guitar. As I suspected, several people, guys mostly, wanted to start bands. I had been playing for three years and even though I had learned on Chris’s right-handed guitar, (I’m left handed,) I had a little repertoire of stuff I had composed. One day there was a jam session up in the Fisher Hill estates hosted by Fred Richardson. He was one of the kids who regularly appeared at these after school jams, but went to a private school. As we assembled in the basement of Fred’s house, I realized that his family was the richest of any I had seen. Fred’s uncle was Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General who was famous for having gone against the direct orders of President Nixon when he refused to fire Archibald Cox, during the Watergate fiasco, in the early 1970s.

I remember Fred’s girlfriend, a cute Jewish girl from Newton named Lisa. She and Fred went to the Commonwealth School, a private school down. I had heard the place referred to as the “pressure trap,” as it was a very demanding school. Lisa was small, with frizzy hair and little round glasses. She would sit there as we tried to learn our set list, sighing visibly to show her disapproval. One day when there was a lull in the noise she said to Fred, “Can we do something else?” I took it personally because I had written almost all our stuff. I said out loud to Fred, “Can’t you keep her out of here when we rehearse?” I was sure the blue-collar language of my lyrics had made her hate me.

We called our band “Forever Endeavor,” and had a little wagon, (“the band wagon,”) that we would load all the equipment into. We played in Harvard Square where I had a job as a “scooper” at Emack and Bolio’s ice cream shop. We’d play for a while and then Larry, the other creative force and guitarist, would take all the equipment back to Fred’s house, and I would be right there ready for work.

One night, Lisa walked into the store. I took her order, and as she handed me her money, she included her phone number. The next day I gave her a call and we got together at my house. I remember her; looking around from the corners of her eyes, visibly nervous, trying to keep me from seeing her disgust and fear she felt within the cinder block walls that I called home. She told me that she and Fred were breaking up and she wanted someone to talk to about it. We had a nice time talking and met again several times, and before long, I fell in love. One night, Lisa said things were over between her and Fred, so I tried to steal a kiss after saying goodbye that night. She let me kiss her, but she shook like a leaf in my arms. I recognized her fear. I had seen it in Chris’s eyes when we first used to run into each other in the school office. I did everything I could to make her feel secure; I didn’t kiss her again for the whole time we dated.

As most of the kids I knew went off to college, Lisa included, I lost track of the more affluent friends and found myself in a hostile world of construction jobs for the next five years or so. I still had musical projects with Larry and would see Fred from time to time. I had found a good job fabricating dust collection systems in Allston for wood working factories all over New England. We would fabricate the system in Boston, and then we would ship the whole thing in pieces to whatever factory had ordered it. We would then take a truck for the week and drive out to the factory where we would install it. It was a tough job as it required lifting the huge, four foot diameter piping and giant fans that suck out all the saw dust from the saws and lathes, and assembling them on-site with a crane and three or four workers. I would come home on weekends and hang out with the old friends that were still around.
I had the good fortune to be allowed to sublet an apartment from a friend of my family who had gone to Germany to attend school. His father was the trustee for the rent-controlled building. It was a three-bedroom apartment, right in Brookline Village, for two hundred bucks a month, and I was taking home a lot more than that. At work, we got fifty-five bucks a week expense money for motel rooms and food when we worked out of state, which was most of the time. I would bring a tent with me in the summer time and camp out in order to keep the expense money. In total, I was taking home about five hundred dollars a week, and I rented one of the rooms in my apartment to any one of my friends who needed it for a hundred dollars a month.

Things were great! I let my beard and hair grow long as I saw no one but factory workers and my old pals, and they knew I was a slob anyway. We would all meet at my place on Saturday night, and cook a big dinner and eat, drink, smoke, and have long discussions about life, politics or music.

It was on one of these Saturdays that the doorbell rang, and I, being drunk and in mid-sentence, let one of the other guys answer the door. I heard a woman’s voice ask for me, which was totally unexpected at that time in my life. My pal John Tescher let her in and directed her to the living room where she stood and tried to pick me out of the crowd. It was Lisa! She couldn’t recognize me with my long hair and beard. I jumped up and said hello. She took my arm and pulled me out to the kitchen where she gave me a long hug which she would not let me loose from. She started crying, so I sat down and she sat on my lap and continued to cry. She said that she was just so happy to be home, and that she didn’t want to separate again.

We had corresponded by mail while she was in school, and I would see her when she was in town. We would go out to a movie or have dinner, but I had no idea she liked me that much. Within a week or two of her return, I proposed, and we were engaged. Her parents went into therapy immediately upon hearing about it.

She was Ivy League educated and Jewish, and I was neither. But we held our ground and dated for the rest of her vacation. Soon she had to return to New Mexico where she was working on a Masters degree in history. But we had plans to get together over the summer.
A few months later, I got laid off from my job as the economy in the late 1980s ravaged the manufacturing industry. Lisa came home for the summer and I got this great idea to go back with her to New Mexico and maybe go to school myself. While she worked for a while here in Boston I set about getting ready for School.

I found that taking my G.E.D. test was quick and easy to get through, So when the time was right, we got all our stuff together and packed it all into a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle that Lisa had bought from some friends in New Mexico and drove across the country to New Mexico. The drama made me fall even more deeply in love.

We got settled in Las Cruces and I enrolled in New Mexico State for a one-year certificate program in Welding Technology. However, I knew that college was going to be more demanding than high school and that I was going to be paying for the tuition myself. So I applied myself as best I could, and with the work ethic I gained in the trades, I was able to give my best effort to my studies. The support and encouragement of instructors gave me the confidence to complete my first year of college in May of 1994, with a 4.0 grade point average. I never felt better in my life. I recognized that what I had gained was not just more knowledge, but a sense of fulfillment and the freedom to explore my potentials in an environment where such pursuits are respected.

I believe that I could not have seen this success had it not been for that fifth grade class and all the lessons I took from that group of Jewish, Irish, Black, Blue-collar, Rich kids that opened themselves up to each other back in 1975.

Lisa and I never got married, I assume there were some things I couldn’t understand that she needed to feel comfortable. Things from her background that I still don’t have, and may never have. But if I had not had her trust and friendship, I don’t think I would have ever gone back to school.

I’ve spent the last few years doing welding and welding inspection jobs, but I feel a need to develop my intellect, and to meet people other than those in the welding trade. So I recently enrolled into school again. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can be sure I won’t be hanging around the corner spittin’ at the Jews.