The World at 3 MPH

“Nobody Walks in LA.” A song done by Missing Persons came to my mind today. I had to drop off my car on Broadway in Pawtucket to get some work done and walked the two miles back home. I never walk now and haven‘t for years. I drive the four blocks to the Pakistani store if I want Tic Tacs.

You miss a lot when you drive. I think most of us have driven routes so familiar that we can do it thinking about what we need to do tomorrow and pay no attention to what we drive through. I can.

But, walking back home, I got to see things at a slower pace and up close. I passed by an old cemetery that was populated by people whose first names that are never used now. Edwin, Jedidiah and there was one Percival that was buried there. These guys died before 1920. Then as now, you can tell who had some cash and who didn’t. The larger and more ornate the headstone, the more bucks. Then you’d see a crop of little limestone headstones with just the first initial of the person followed by the last name. That entire poor family was buried about 30 feet from a main road and train tracks. The last one died in 1902. The headstones were no bigger than desktop computer.

As I went on, I walked past the rail depot of Teknor Apex. They were using these huge vacuum hoses attached under the train that sucked out the powdered polyvinylchloride into three 100 foot silos. You see rusting steel latticework , old hurricane fences and dandelions sprouting up alongside them. For once I didn’t smell plastic. I could as a kid when air quality measures were a joke. Teknor Apex is probably that last of the old sprawling acreage type factories here. The other businesses I saw were smaller, hole in the wall types. I had no idea there was a small apparel shop dedicated to evening gowns for beauty pageants. That and someone still trying to make a dollar doing typing services. That was odd to see.

What I see driving around here but pay no mind to are the young mothers walking their little kids. I passed a few and they talk to you! “Good morning!” one Mom said and I halted for a half second before I responded, a bit surprised. Wow, people you pass on the road can sometimes greet you.

And the smells. The only smell I get in my car are stale cigarettes, transmission fluid leaking from a quart bottle and that faint hint of gasoline. On the streets I was walking I was hit with smells I knew as a kid. There is a house here where the same rhododendron I remember as a kid is still growing and it’s in bloom. I had forgotten about that creosote smell railroad ties have, but it was drifting up to my face as I was stepping from one to the other. Finally, when I reached my neighborhood, that house on Legris St still has that huge pine tree oozing sap, and that was fuming in the morning air. I used to walk by that each morning on my way to school a few hundred centuries ago.

There is a world out there within a two mile radius of this house, and I had forgotten about it.

(and on a happy note, the tire place called me to let me know that the price they’re charging me for two tires and an alignment, is actually pretty fair!)

Battle Hardened Kids

How Did We Survive?

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes. My Mom smoked. Then after birth, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints with bars wide enough to stick our little heads through and strangle on.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, no locks on doors or cabinets. I can remember as a kid the product “Janitor in a Drum” that looked like wonderful lime-ade that was under the kitchen sink cabinet. I never drank it though but it was accessible. When we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. My friends envied Evel Knievel and we built ramps to jump garbage cans with our bikes. More than a few of us landed badly. Cars of that time had no air bags whatsoever and the seat belt in the back seat was stuffed under the back cushion as it was an annoyance.

I drank the awfully chlorinated Pawtucket water from a polypropylene hose. Bottled spring water from Maine then? Never heard of it. Four of us would drink Coke from the same bottle and I don’t remember anyone contracting anything.

We ate those pink Hostess Snowballs, white bread and real butter and everything was full of sugar, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. Mom’s of that time thought we were “underfoot” and shoved us out the door at every chance. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. Trial and error didn’t kill us.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes nor video games at all. We had three major networks and fuzzy UHF channels. We had no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms. We had friends and imaginations instead.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We played in the dirt and probably had numerous microscopic thingys crawling on us from that. As kids, we all should’ve received Purple Hearts for wounds. I can remember falling off a 40 foot railroad trestle into a disgusting algae filled river. I was sideswiped by a moving car when I was eight while riding my bike. Mikey fell off his bike and smacked the pavement so hard he was knocked out.

We made up games with sticks and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out any eyes. The same goes for BB guns.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Everyone was not a “winner.“ Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. There were no “Thanks For Participating” trophies then. Imagine that!!

We fought one another. Boys vs. boys and girls vs. boys. There was plenty of equality between the sexes then when it came to dirt yard scuffles. Over some argument when I was nine, I had smacked Gail S. across the face. She responded by gut punching me when I wasn’t looking. I saw Carrie M. swing a pool skimmer into John’s face about something I forget now. Yes, we were a violent bunch of rug rats at times then.

None of us died, no of us became deathly ill and we had FUN.