My Friend Jimmy Hayes on Burnside Ave
Some of my earliest memories are of my first friend, Jimmy Hayes. He lived across the street on Burnside Ave. in Somerville. We used to go exploring, play pick up games of baseball, go to "John's Store" to get a bottle of Coke and a Ding Dong. Those days were magical for me. We'd play in the street all day and well into the night in the Summer time, and whenever someone would drive up our small side street, we'd all move off to the curb and yell, "ONE WAY!"
In 1977, we moved away, to "the sticks", as we thought of it. Actually, it was only to Lynn, but it seemed to my 7 year-old mind, that it was the farthest thing from Somerville ever. For years after that, I would get someone to drive me back there once a year to visit with my old friends Timmy, and Jimmy, and to dirty-look Scott, who broke my watch in a fight one time. (My sister Debbie, beat him up in revenge, then beat up his big sister too!)
Every once in a while, Jimmy would come to Lynn to spend the weekend. We had great times, but over the years, we grew apart, and then, by the age of 15, we no longer spoke. When I was 16 or 17, I rode my ten-speed all the way into Somerville, and triumphantly sped up my old street, going the wrong way. I was excited to see my old home again, and to catch up with Jimmy.
He and his family had moved away. Timmy didn't know for sure where. I was left to wander alone in the small back yard of my old house, looking at the tree where my sister Laurie got me and Ketna stung by bees because of her honey candy. Crestfallen, I slumped homeward, realizing that an era had passed.
The last time I went by there, I was just about to take off for my adventures in Fiji. The place had changed a lot in those intervening years. Gone were the low-income families that had populated the small neighborhood. Now, Harvard and MIT had bought up most of the real estate, making my beloved old slum into a pricey university setting. I almost didn't recognize it.
Last night, I had a dream that I was trying to find Jimmy. I was interviewing claimants to the title of my former best friend, and I was trying to think of the most inside questions only he and I would know the answers to. Sadly, the real Jimmy Hayes was nowhere to be found. I guess I must still miss him.
I'll probably never see him again, and, as happened for my mother and her memories of her own childhood on Shirley Ave., my fuzzy notalgia for the place will be all that's left, until that too is made irrelevant by the passage of time. But for now, I'll try to hold onto it, and maybe even get lucky enough to get in touch with Jimmy again someday, one way or another.
In 1977, we moved away, to "the sticks", as we thought of it. Actually, it was only to Lynn, but it seemed to my 7 year-old mind, that it was the farthest thing from Somerville ever. For years after that, I would get someone to drive me back there once a year to visit with my old friends Timmy, and Jimmy, and to dirty-look Scott, who broke my watch in a fight one time. (My sister Debbie, beat him up in revenge, then beat up his big sister too!)
Every once in a while, Jimmy would come to Lynn to spend the weekend. We had great times, but over the years, we grew apart, and then, by the age of 15, we no longer spoke. When I was 16 or 17, I rode my ten-speed all the way into Somerville, and triumphantly sped up my old street, going the wrong way. I was excited to see my old home again, and to catch up with Jimmy.
He and his family had moved away. Timmy didn't know for sure where. I was left to wander alone in the small back yard of my old house, looking at the tree where my sister Laurie got me and Ketna stung by bees because of her honey candy. Crestfallen, I slumped homeward, realizing that an era had passed.
The last time I went by there, I was just about to take off for my adventures in Fiji. The place had changed a lot in those intervening years. Gone were the low-income families that had populated the small neighborhood. Now, Harvard and MIT had bought up most of the real estate, making my beloved old slum into a pricey university setting. I almost didn't recognize it.
Last night, I had a dream that I was trying to find Jimmy. I was interviewing claimants to the title of my former best friend, and I was trying to think of the most inside questions only he and I would know the answers to. Sadly, the real Jimmy Hayes was nowhere to be found. I guess I must still miss him.
I'll probably never see him again, and, as happened for my mother and her memories of her own childhood on Shirley Ave., my fuzzy notalgia for the place will be all that's left, until that too is made irrelevant by the passage of time. But for now, I'll try to hold onto it, and maybe even get lucky enough to get in touch with Jimmy again someday, one way or another.
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