A friend

During much of the 70s, Mark Wallace was in my inner circle along with George Hey, Steven Brenner, my brother, David Belcher, and the Mael brothers. We hung out daily. Played a ton of sports. Street hockey. Ice Hockey. Football. Water-skiing. Snow skiing. And basketball too.  Mark was a really good athlete–he was strong, persistent.

The Hey family

The following is mostly true embellished with a bit of my imagination. Upon entering the doorway, Joe Hey was seen strewn out on the low-lying sofa at the far end of the living room. The worn-down brown carpet was blanketed by empty coffee cups, smoked out cigggeetttes, chipped china, old newspapers, and a mostly empty

The real playground

We shot rubber basketballs at the Pond Street playground, and we played endless games of street football on the asphalt in front of our house, but the ocean was our real playground. We piloted 16-foot wooden boats in it pretending to be pirates. Waterskied on our neighbors’ boats in it. Swam in it. Fished in

The neighbors

Our family house was ideally situated at the intersection of Grovers and Sewall Avenue which blessedly formed a wide space to play football and street hockey. The Mael’s lived to our left on the other side of the tall hedges, and the Bernier’s (with the cool pool) on our right side. The Garfield girls–Bonnie and

English Lit

I am a Junior in high school sitting in English lit. Half bored, half interested. Listening to Mrs. Kenny (spellcheck please) go on and on about Moby Dick in depth. She was speaking about metaphor, allegory, and other lofty concepts. The poor thing, trying to awaken and engage the young minds of us suburban teenagers

Music and Moments

It was the summer of 74. I attended my first concert at Boston Garden; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. We sat in the dark together as these mystics with guitars lulled over 10,000 youth into a collective trance. We lit matches and held them high as a sign of solidarity, and just being plain cool.

Highland kids

We were an eclectic collection of youth that had a special connection to each other. We weren’t Clickers (Center kids), or Point kids, although we did have special guests from these groups drop by for the evening to hang and check us out. During our time spent there we picked up many talents, such as.

Cruising..

Town checks (cruising) during summer evenings consisted of several male friends jumping into my 1971 Chrysler as we started cruising at the top of the beach road that hugged the Atlantic Ocean. It wasn’t exactly American Graffiti but, our darn good version of it. Windows rolled all the way down, radio turned way up, we

Hanging out

It’s the height of summer, a Saturday night on the last week of July. I rush through our family dinner so I can hang out at Leo’s beach with my friends, many of which are already there. About two dozen teenagers have already staked out their spaces, a stone’s throw from the ocean. A cool

Three lives

I lived three lives in high school. The self that sat in classes with noisy, angst filled youth, as we wrestled with algebra, history, and literature. The 2nd self was my life at Grovers Ave, inside with family and in front of the house, hanging out with my Highlands friends. The 3rd self was spending