My first home was the Charlesgate East Apartments in Boston’s Back Bay, almost within the shadow of Fenway Park. Whenever I take in a Red Sox game, I always look to see if there is a commemorative plaque. There never is!
From Charlesgate East we moved to Albany, NY, as my father, a manager with the American Red Cross, was transferred. Two memories. We got our first television set, and the one thing that could get me to bolt out of my crib at night was the commercial for the Mohawk Carpets. Indian tom-tom … dum-dum-dum-dum … “car-pets from the looms of Mohawk.”
By the time the slogan came on I was on the couch, seated next to my Dad. My mother would try to put me back to bed, but he seemed glad to have me there. Usually, he would get me a glass of ginger ale and let me sit with him for a while. My Daddy loved me, too!
My sister, Jan, was three years older. One day, she was having some friends over for a birthday party. As the prototypical younger brother, I was prepared to show off and to do anything possible to attract attention. “Don’t bother,” she warned me. “We’re just going to ignore you. I don’t care what you do. You can stand on the table and wiggle your penis, and we’ll just ignore you.”
Jan’s the one responsible for my nickname “Step.” She was the first born, and quite precocious, already learning to spell by the time they brought me home from Milton Hospital. My mother taught her that new baby brother’s name “Stephen” was a combination of two shorter words, “Step” and “hen.” I’m glad it was Step that stuck. (Of course, at Post Island where the requisite “y” or “ie” was added to every name, I became “Steppy.”)
After two years in Albany my father was transferred again, this time to the Red Cross’s national headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia where we moved into a complex of apartments called Belle View. This was classic suburbia of the 1950s, one step before home ownership. When out of town relatives visited we would dutifully tour them around to the various Washington monuments and nearby Mount Vernon.
Because the apartment buildings all looked the same, it was quite easy to become disoriented, so my parents made sure that I knew our exact address. Our first apartment was “Ten-oh-four Potomac Avenue.” (I’ve checked … there’s no plaque there, either. There should be, because not long after we moved out, a young man moved in who was a rookie third baseman for the Washington Senators. His name was Harmon Killebrew, and I have a signed baseball to prove it.)
I was always impressed with Harmon’s signature. After Ted Williams’s, it was the best in baseball.
We lived in Alexandria for eight years. Our lives were exceptionally white, middle class, and average, establishing the tone for my life. Time has been kind to both Charlesgate East and Belle View, and as I Google them these days, I am struck by the fact that I could never afford to rent these apartments today, whereas in the 50s it was quite affordable, even for a middle manager in a non-profit organization.
We bought our first home in a nearby development in 1958 and lived there only a couple of months until my father was promoted to a new position as manager of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Red Cross. This brought us much closer to family and the beloved cottage at Post Island, and I was all for the move, an enthusiasm not shared by my sister, who was firmly established with her friends at nearby Groveton High.
We moved in the middle of the school year (5th grade for me, 8th for my sister). After a few months in suburban Barrington, RI we moved again, this time to the East Side of Providence. A more significant change, a game-changer, was that my mother got a part-time job as a gym teacher at Lincoln School, an independent, all-girls Quaker School. Her pay was the source of a longstanding joke between my parents, but carried the benefit that her offspring could attend Lincoln, or the corresponding boys affiliate, Moses Brown, tuition free.
A Perfect Windsor
The summer preceding my entrance to Moses Brown was one of strongly mixed emotions. On the positive side there was Post Island, where I spent a carefree summer, ensconced in cousins and my pack of friends, a group that included Ricky Reyenger, Bobby Pearson, Dennis Coughlin, Brian Coughlin, Bobby Thomas, Dicky Rizzotti, Kevin Kelly, Bobby Tropiano, Billy Mahar, and David Lewis. My parents turned me loose on the Fourth of July and expected me back by Labor Day. The entire time was spent barefoot, and in the same bathing suit. There were family dinners on Saturday night–franks and beans, brown bread, fish chowder, steamed clams, corn on the cob, watermelon, strawberry shortcake. Besides those potluck dinners, I think I survived on Fluffernutters. Rickey Reyenger once ate seven of these … as a snack! … and Ricky grew up to be 6 foot-7 inches!
The garage at the cottage had been renovated as an extra bedroom and now served as a clubhouse for me and my friends. We could stay up as late as we wanted and sleep until the tide was in. The only negative, besides the Red Sox’s expectedly disappointing season, was the ticking clock, counting the days until school and … Moses Brown. I don’t remember talking much about it. I’m sure my parents were more concerned about my sister’s more awkward transition. But this would be different. This was a school for the rich and privileged, for the swells. Exceptionally average kids need not apply!
The world of Moses Brown was one of hard surfaces and few words. It was mandatory to wear sport coats and ties. I didn’t own a jacket or know how to tie a tie, but my mother got me properly assembled and out the door on that first day. My teacher, Mrs. Cullen, referred to me as “the new boy,” as she did with the other students new to the class. She persisted in this for the entire year. Relief came in the period for “gym,” when we got outside to race around on the banked wooden track. That part was fun.
Disaster struck, however, when it was time to change out of our gym clothes and go back to the classroom. I had forgotten how to tie my tie! Moments before, pounding around the wooden track, I had a fleeting moment of thinking I could hold my own in this new place. Now, as I watched my noisy, unfamiliar, confident classmates get dressed and head back to the classroom, I realized “I am not one of you.” I was panicked and humiliated, terrified of returning to the classroom with an untied tie. I might as well have pooped my pants.
My sense of impending terror was palpable enough to show, and a classmate named Curtis Mays asked if anything was wrong. I sheepishly told him about my tie. Hey, no big deal, he said, taking my tie, putting it around his own neck, and quickly tying a perfect Windsor, then loosening it so that he could slip the loop over his head. “Sometimes I don’t even untie mine. I just slip it on and off like this.”
Curt left Moses Brown for another school a few years later, so I lost track of him, but I hope he knows that somewhere he is enshrined in the Pantheon of Small Kindnesses.
Not sure if I told you, Steppie, that Curt and wife Ann and Paula and I became friends for a couple of years through mutual friends in the early 90’s. They were living in N Kingstown. We played some golf and partied occasionally. They moved to Denver soon after and we shared some emails over the years.
Surprisingly, upon hearing my song Suite Dreams Pamela And Johnny, he wrote to effusively proclaim that it was the best song he ever heard. Questioning his ability to rate music, he quickly retorted: I’m f—-ing serious. Wow.
Your Windsor tie story is better!
Stephen,
I like reading your writing and some other contributors also. I sometimes consider commenting but I usually don’t because the procedure for doing so is really pretty bad. In fact, it sucks. Maybe I’m doing something wrong as it takes me through a process like Silverback has never heard of me, even though I get the emails every day.
Dave Palumbo
Hyde Park, VT
Dave– Are reading on a phone or computer? I see an option to comment at the bottom of each piece, so you must be seeing something different than I am. You always have something interesting to add, so if there is a way to simplify I am willing to pursue it with WordPress. Tell me what you see. (This may be a duplicate response, as I am trying two different methods.)
Dave– Are reading on a phone or computer? I see an option to comment at the bottom of each piece, so you must be seeing something different than I am. You always have something interesting to add, so if there is a way to simplify I am willing to pursue it with WordPress. Tell me what you see.