Expanded Reprint: (H)Motel 128

Talk about traveling in time. When I saw this postcard I was "Little Rosie" again, as in the "Rose is Rose" comic strip, about eight years old and watching the world from the right-side backseat of our black 1958 Chevrolet Impala (oh-so-imaginatively dubbed "Blackie").

My dad's youngest sister had married a man who was in the home construction field. Later in the 70s when the housing boom died in New England they moved down to Maryland, then to Florida. But at this particular time, the early Sixties, they lived in Peabody, Massachusetts along with their adopted daughter. My dad's youngest brother worked with him at the time, and he, his wife, and his son, a couple of years older than myself, lived nearby in Beverly. Before my mom got a part-time job to supplement our income and we could go to more "touristy" places, our yearly vacation consisted of spending a week with each family.

Each household had its own charms. Dad's brother lived in a place that was right on the street, like photos you see of English homes: a sidewalk, a step, a door, and you are in the house. The land sloped precipitously down at the back of the property, so you had to descend a long wooden staircase to the back yard to play with the English springer spaniel, Jeff, who ate Cocoa Puffs for breakfast and was that great miracle to an allergic kid, a pet dog! My aunt didn't buy groceries at any old neighborhood store like we did: she shopped at an "exotic" supermarket called an "IGA." Dad's sister had a modern, all-electric ranch house with a refrigerator built directly into the cabinets (it seemed so odd to find the milk right next to the cabinet the cereal was kept in). But the big hit here was the big inground pool, which my uncle seemed to clean more than he swam in. My cousin and I would have been in the pool all day if our mothers had permitted it, slathered in layers upon layers of Coppertone. Both aunts took us to that most exciting of all places, a real shopping mall, Northshore--oh, not enclosed in those days, but a mall just the same, with all those "foreign" Boston stores: Jordan Marsh, Filenes, Marshalls. After one vacation week my tricycle came home with us from Jordan Marsh.

Aside from vacations, though, every month or two from early spring to late fall we'd wake up early on a Sunday morning and "go to Massachusetts." Originally this was a longer drive before Interstate 95 was finished. Dad would swear all the way to Dedham because U.S. 1 was clotted with small towns, traffic lights, and "Sunday drivers." And there was the big glittering attraction of Jolly Cholly's amusement park in North Attleboro, with its huge clown logo, enough to leave a youngster with eyes big as those proverbial saucers pleading "Can we come here some time?" You could smell the hot popcorn and peanuts, and the sharp sugar tang of the cotton candy all the way to the street.

Dedham was a relief because that's when you reached Route 128 (otherwise known as "the New England Circumferential Highway"—don't worry, no one actually called it that; it was just so designated on the map). It was one of the first freeways in the area and once you got on you didn't have to worry about a traffic light (except for one stretch of road almost to Peabody). Being on 128 was almost like being home. We'd get on at Exit 63 and I would spend the time counting up to Exit 32, which was where we got off. We locked our doors as we drove past Walpole where the state prison was. We'd crane our necks to try to see the tall tops of the television towers in Needham, where Channels  38 and  56 sent their signals out to the greater Boston area. We'd marvel at the huge Polaroid plant. We passed all the towns with their wonderful English-sounding names: Burlington, Dedham, Lexington, Concord, Needham, Wakefield, Wrentham. Dad's longstanding joke along this route was "You Needham? Just Dedham or Wrentham!" which probably makes your eyes roll now but was high humor to a six-year-old. We passed tempting places like big drive-in theatres and Pleasure Island, the big, big amusement park that had live stage shows with favorite celebrities—Lassie, the Lone Ranger, Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody had appeared there, not to mention Boston kids' show icon Rex Trailer.

The H(M)otel 128 was the sign that you had really "arrived" at 128; it was set right on the intersection of U.S. 1 and Route 128, and the sign for it could be seen from all angles on the road. Although the post card above shows the name as being "Motel 128," the tall sign always indicated they thought more of themselves than your typical cinderblock motel with the flashing vacancy sign. The first letter was definitely shaped like an "H," but so written and colored so that an "M" appeared as well. At that point I had never stayed in a motel that I remembered; we'd gone to Florida when I was three, but all I remember was being hot on the train and playing in the sand, not the motel. And I'd never stayed at an honest-to-God hotel which of course had fantastic things like bellboys and a fancy restaurant and elevators and big, long hallways with moulding and wallpaper and carpeting, like the places rich bachelors lived on TV. What now looks hideously dated, with cookie-cutter pseudo futuristic furniture and bad color combinations, was back then a glimpse of opulent paradise and modernity, of that other world out there that only existed in the square boxed screen of the television, and the gateway to adventure west and north of Boston as well.

Summer Twilight

We dreamed of air conditioning, like in the movie theatre or in the department store, cool and soothing over our warm skin simmering in the humid evening air, slowly braising in the summer sun.

Instead we had to rely on what breeze the night brought us as the sun sank over the radio towers atop Neutaconkanut Hill, the sky turning from pale cerulean to a velvet navy blue, stars incandescing one by one. We fled the warm lamps and even warmer rooms—despite ceaselessly whirring fans and the occasional waft of air through a window—and instead emerged into the mosquito-ridden twilight, one from one direction, two from another; the composition of the crowd changed nightly.

It was summer in the 1960s. My godmother and her husband came out to sit on "the piazza," what they called their open porch, in hopes of a breeze. Other neighbors unfolded their canvas-and-wood or woven-tape-and-aluminum lawn chairs and sat in circles around citronella candles in back or front yards, still slapping at mosquitoes. Moths flew sorties around traffic lights topped with crenelated caps. If there was a baseball game on television or, even better, on radio, you could hear it through wide-open front doors and thrown-wide windows, the crack of the bat against the ball, the crowd roaring, the announcer shouting. If you were lucky the breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and played accompaniment to the crickets strumming their tune in the grass. In the lower part of Cooney Field, the usual complement of young men were playing a summer-long after-supper baseball game of their own. If it were a Friday night, Mom would put on a light duster and some sandals and walk the one block to Mary DiPrete's house so the two of them could sit out in the yard in metal lawn chairs to chat.

We kids were free to go anywhere close to home so long as our mothers knew where we were. We'd never heard of a "playdate." Asking permission consisted of "Hey, Mom, I'm going to Penny's house." "Okay, be home by nine o'clock!" It wasn't a long trip for me. There was a wooden gate always left propped open between my godmother's house next door and Victoria's house on the opposite side of the chain-link fence, so that Padina Lillian's mother, "Zia Maria" could easily visit with Victoria's mother, "Zia Maria Antonia" in the Adirondak chairs under the grape arbor in my godparents' back yard, where they would talk in Italian about the progress of their gardens—there were always tomatoes and zucchini and string beans growing throughout the summer in both yards—and memories of the Old Country. Children were welcome to use the gate as long as they did no damage, and I would slip through and walk respectfully out Victoria's side yard, across Fiat Avenue, and on to Penny's house.

Overland and Flint Avenues came to a point at Fiat Avenue, and it was on that isosceles triangle of land that my friend Penny lived with her mother, stepfather, two sisters, and baby brother. The lot was set up so that the only thing behind the house was the driveway, so the whole front yard was their back yard. On the Overland side of the street was a retaining wall, and here we all gathered: Penny and her sisters, Pauline from down the street, Armand and his little sister from across Overland Avenue, sometimes Barbara from over on Jordan Avenue. We'd play kickball in the street until it became too dark to see, and then perch on the wall in our shorts and sleeveless tops, most of us with Keds bought from the US rubber outlet store down off Harris Avenue, fidgeting, kicking our heels against the concrete. Behind us, there was a good chance Penny's grandmother Carrie would also be sitting outside, perhaps talking with a neighbor.

Since school was out, we would avoid that dreaded subject; most of our conversation seemed to revolve around television programs. Batman with Adam West was then popular and much wangling went on about who was the best villain, the Joker or the Riddler or the Penguin? The Penguin certainly had his fans; Burgess Meredith's comic opera portrayal and his "quack-quack" laugh was much admired. Catwoman also had her fans. The other topic of conversation was always Dark Shadows. Everyone—but me—loved watching Barnabas Collins the vampire, and the others of the horror soap, like Angelique and Quentin. The original storyline, more of a Gothic romance involving a governess named Victoria Winters, had long gone by the wayside as Jonathan Frid fandom came to the fore. I wasn't into vampires, but liked to punctuate the stories with wolf howls to add the appropriate atmosphere. Later I'd have my own foray into horror soaps with Strange Paradise.

Eventually Carrie would tells us it was time to go, or Penny's mother would call from the kitchen where the fan was running ceaselessly and the refrigerator dispensing endless supplies of Kool-Aid. We'd groan and moan and slip off the wall and slowly trudge toward home, stopping to watch the frantic flutterings around the streetlights. Tomorrow would be another night, but now it was time for a cool sponge bath or a shower and a humid trip to Dreamland under a summer sheet, the windows open wide so the symphony of the crickets would lull you to sleep.

They Shall Remain Nameless

Please don't feel bad if we've just been introduced and I forget your name. I can't even toss it off these days by saying "I'm having a senior moment." Truth is, I've been this way for years.

Perhaps the most embarrassing instance of this happened when I was of high school age and Mom and I set off one late afternoon to walk to the Gansett Bakery to get some Italian bread for supper. It was a nice spring mid-after afternoon, and we weren't in a particular hurry, strolling down Gansett Avenue, past the Santamaria house and Charlie's hedges, crossing Fiat Avenue where we could see Mom's best friend Mary DiPrete's house one home up from the corner, and heading past what used to be a candy store, which would be followed by Ragosta music, the Twin Florist, the storefronts where Joe's Spa used to be, Marcello's Restaurant, and finally the bakery beyond, next to the cleansers.

We'd just come abreast of the Twin Florists when I looked ahead to see a boy my own age walking toward us, someone whom I had once gone to school with, tall, dark haired, quite good-looking.

And I completely blanked on his name.

I kept silent as Mom and I continued on our way, and he continued walking toward us. Maybe, I thought frantically, he wouldn't remember me.

That hope was dashed when he called out, "Hi, Linda!"

"Hi," I said brightly, as we drew closer to each other.

And then I started to babble: "Hi, how are you? I haven't seen you since you went to Park View! Oh, and this is my mom!"

He held out his hand to my mother and said "Hello, Mrs. Lanzi." Great, he not only remembered my name, but he remembered all of it.

Like I was on strings and controlled by a ventriloquist, I continued to babble about school and the summer and God-only-knows-what for a few minutes and then he had to go, and we had to get going, and he walked on. Mom and I continued on past Marcello's where the delicious smells of bubbling tomato sauce, garlic, onions, and other Italian food for the dinner hour were already wafting out. Mom said, "He looked like a nice guy. What was his name anyway?"

I confessed, "I forgot."

Mom stopped and stared at me. "You're kidding me." When I looked at her mutely, she added, "You know a cute guy like that and you forgot his name?"

"Uh-huh."

She shook her head in disbelief, and finally the bell over the bakery door put an end to the conversation. Saved by the savory scents of lemon squares and fresh-baked bread and powdered sugar!

Yep, I did. And it hasn't gotten any better since.