***An Old Geezer Sighting In North Quincy-Another 50^thAnniversary, Of Sorts –With A North Star-Gazer In Mind    

A YouTube clip of Johnny Cash’s I Still Miss Someone to set the mood for this sketch.

 

My old friend Peter Markin and I have over the years sat down in some locale, in the old days usually a bar, and told each other stories, some true, some stretched.  I first met Markin  down at the Surf Ballroom in Hull in the summer after we had graduated from high school (he from Hull High) when we chased the same girl on the dance floor (a girl who eventually dumped both of us, me first). One afternoon last fall over lunch I told him the story of my 50^th anniversary “jog” around the old North Quincy cross-country course which I had done a few weeks earlier. He insisted on writing something up about the event. He did so but left the piece in a folder and forgot about it until now.  Since this site was created to propagandize such events we both thought it would be an appropriate place to tell the gruesome tale. Here are Markin’s recollections from that afternoon:   

Writers, or at least people who like to write, know, know deep in their souls, or hell, maybe only know by instinct that some things should not be written. Or if written then discarded (and in the age of cyberspace one can just press the DELETE button, praise be). That was my initial response when my friend from the old days, Alfred Francis Johnson, hell just Al which is what everybody except nerdy girls called him, when he insisted that I write a little something for him. That “little something” that he was all exercised about was “jogging” in the fall of 2013 on the old North Quincy cross-country course in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the last time he ran it as a member of the team in 1963. Jesus.

Yes I know, although these days the media and others on slow news days are prone to commemorate all kinds of anniversaries of events including odd-ball years like 30^thand 40^th, this was a weird request. But that afternoon Al argued his case as he does when he is exercised about something and I had to hear him out. He said that if he had actually run that course after 50 years of statutory neglect I should tout that fact to all who would listen.

Al had told me previously that he had taken up jogging a few years before to while the time away and keep the extra pounds off. I remember looking at him then like he had three-heads. I said that personally I would have a hard time running one hundred yards (or meters, whatever the short distance is they run these days) without crying out desperately for oxygen and many other medicals services.

Al then went into high gear. He mentioned that a few years back, it must have been about 2010, he had written a sketch about his current running prowess to commemorate the 50^thanniversary of when he began running as a sport. Yeah, it was 2010. He had run a mile over at some practice field, the “dust bowl” he called it which gives you an idea of the condition of the track to prove that he was not over the hill, or something like that. Yes, I know again, like this was some fleet-footed ancient marathon feat worthy of notice. His point was that the sketch which he wrote was well received by the AARP-worthy audience in need of elderly care he was addressing thus throwing down the gauntlet about my ability to match that result. No sale, brother, no sale.

That negative response on my part set him off, had him seeing red. He went into his classic “you owe me” rant. That “you owe me” stems from way back in the summer of 1964 when we first met down in my hometown of Hull which is about twenty miles south of North Quincy. We had met at the Surf Ballroom where there was a weekly live band dance (rock and roll, of course, now called classic rock, damn) and I “stole” a girl from him that we were both interested in. The girl eventually faded but our friendship began. And with that little tidbit he won his argument. Not on the merits of his case, and not even to shut him up, but because I told him that if I wrote something now about his silly anniversary then next year, next summer, I would get to write the real story about the 50th anniversary of the night that I supposedly “stole” that girl from him. And that will not be pretty, brother, it will not be pretty.

So here goes.

Al had mentioned to me before, maybe several years ago, that this North Quincy cross-country course had a storied past. The reason for that distinction was that his best friend, his running mate in both senses, running around the track and running around town, was Bill Cadger. Bill was a great runner who over his career won many races on the course and for many years held the course record. Al stood in his shadow, stood deep in his shadow. That fact is neither here nor there now, except that this course of two and one-half miles which they had run together in practice many times was laid out along the streets of old North Quincy in a way that Al had not noticed back in the day when he was seriously try to run the thing. There were many landmarks of his youth as he ran it this time, this time when he was running, oops, jogging slowly enough to see things. To reflect on things, to remember. And those recollections, that filler, is what I will finish this sketch with. Except to now tell anybody who will listen, anybody who wants to know, that yes Al finished the course, and did not, I repeat, did not need medical attention, none.

The first part of the course started on the side of the high school, the East Squantum Street side. Just seeing the old high school again reminded Al of the tough times he had getting through the place. Not academically, not even socially, except a little, a little shy and unknowing about girls, no knowledge shy with three boys and no girls in the family to ease the way. And a deep-crusted Catholic studied ignorance of things sexual, how to deal with the subject, okay. He was moreover, and Bill too, which is why they got along, filled with all kinds of teenage angst and alienation, feelings of being isolated, and feeling out of sorts with the world. He said he laughed as he thought about that, thought about how someday, now someday he might get over that angst and alienation. Yah, Al said he had to laugh about that, about how they all said back in the day he would get over it when he got older. The only thing better now was that he had a small handle on it, and some helpful medication.

The first leg continued down East Squantum onto Bayfield Road, the cross street before strewn with houses of relatives, some that he liked and some, who later when he joined, joined with abandon (as did I), the “youth nation” that was a-borning in the late 1960s shut their doors to him, called him renegade, called him in the parlance of the times, “red,” “commie,” and “monster.” Jesus. But those street also had houses filled with budding romances, or flirtations in that close- packed community, romances and flirtations. Flirtations that he, girl-shy, had trouble picking up on when the boys’ “lav” Monday morning before school bull- sessions (emphasis on the bull) and he came up on the radar as someone that Sally, Susie, or Marie “liked” on that preternatural teen grapevine that had Facebook beat six ways to Sunday. He wondered as he passed some cross streets after Bayfield what had happened to Sally, Susie, and Marie. Did they too fade from the town’s memory like he had, Had they, like many in their nomadic generation, shaken the dust off of the town unlike their parents, his parents, and definitely his grandparents who stayed anchored to the town and took a certain pride in that fact. He had to laugh again, why not, he was moving slow enough to laugh and look and feel something about things, that even now it always came down to girls, oops, women, even after two marriages and a million short- haul things. And he still was trying to figure them out. Jesus  

 

The second leg brought him along what is now Quincy Shore Boulevard, along the ocean, along the one piece of geography that has defined his life; the old days remembrances of running along in the beach sand, a task too tough now with those wobbly knees and aching ankles, with Bill running a mile ahead, and him, Al, getting all red from the sun; summer afternoons spent on the beach between the Squantum  Yacht Club and the Wollaston Boat Club the “spot” to hang in waiting around for, what else, that certain she you had had your eye on in school, or just what came in on the ocean; Saturday night parking steamed cars with the roar of the ocean drowning out love’s call; end of night stops at Joe’s for burgers and fries to placate a different hunger. Thoughts of  later walks (not runs, hell, no) along Pacific beaches, Malibu, Carlsbad, LaJolla, Magoo Point, with love Angelica, Angelica from Indiana and ocean-deprived, her almost drowning in some riptide not knowing the fierceness of Mother Nature, of Uncle Neptune when the furies were up; solo walks, lonely walks in the 1970s when the booze and dope almost broke him (and he called me, desperately called me for help, and I said “I’ll meet you in Malibu and we’ll get you dried out, brother”).

Much later solitary walks along endless Maine beaches trying to figure out what went wrong with that second marriage, and why his current relationship had run out of steam several years before. Simple stuff as the rush of the foam-flecked waves called out for serenity. As he made the third leg down Atlantic Boulevard  heading back toward  the school he laughed again, twice laughed, first that he was going to finish running the whole course and secondly that no matter what somebody better make sure that he was not buried in some ocean-less place like Kansas when his time came. He had come from the muck of the sea and let him lay his head down there.

As Al travelled that last leg, the leg that brought him to the corner of his old neighborhood he cringed, cringed at the thought of all the misbegotten things that had happened in that vanished shack of a cramped house that he came of age in and of his estrangement from his family, a shame, a crying shame (and I, Hull–born twenty miles away from the same kind of neighborhood, with the same family grievances will not go into detail about that here -see we do not “air our family linens in public,” got it). But he also had a certain nostalgia, a certain sadness as he remembered the various generations of cats that helped make life a little bit bearable when cursed mother got on her sway, father silent, silent as the grave. Joy Smokey, Snowball, Blackie, Big Boy, Sorrowful, Grey Boy, Calico, and many others. Making him think too of later manhood long gone beloved Mums who had helped him get through drugs, booze, depression, angst, a bad marriage and about seven other maladies. And just then recently gone and still filled with sorrows and sadnesses his companion shadow Willie Boy as he shed a tear for him, and them all.

Then past Atlantic Street onto Newbury Street and remembrances of many miles walked getting up the courage to talk to Lydia the first girl he fell hard for, and wonder, wonder too what happened to her, doing well he hoped. And last stop before the finishing hill and kick to the line Grandma’s Young Street house, savoir sainted (everybody agreed, sainted especially with devil Grandpa) Grandma who saved his tender teens from total despair, from starvation too and blessed memories. And regrets, regrets too that he had not been better at the end for her. Sorrows there, joys too.

Ah, streets, all known streets, all blessed streets (not church-blessed but still blessed), all ocean-breezed streets, all memory streets, as he chugged up that Newbury Street hill which led back on to East Squantum and the school. A hill where in memory time, fifty- years ago time, he would put a rush kick to the finish. This day he ambled across the ancient imaginary finish line, fist in the air like some Olympic champion. Done.