Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut...

From Wikipedia:

Roger Williams Park, in ... Providence, Rhode Island, is an elaborately landscaped 427-acre city park and is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. ... The land for the park was a gift to the people of Providence in 1871, in accordance with the will of Betsy Williams, the great-great-great-granddaughter, and last surviving descendant of the founder to own the land. It had been the family farm and represented the last of the original land grant to Roger Williams in 1638 from Canonicus, chief of the Narragansett tribe. The family farmhouse (built in 1773), known as the Betsy Williams Cottage, and the Williams family burial ground (including Betsy's grave) are still maintained within the park.

The park also contains seven lakes which comprise approximately 98 acres. ... The park was designed by Horace Cleveland in 1878, and was constructed in the 1880s. Many of the roads, bridges and sidewalks were built by the Works Progress Administration from 1935 to 1940. Currently it contains the Roger Williams Park Zoo, the Roger Williams Park Museum of Natural History and Planetarium, the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center, the Japanese Gardens, the Victorian Rose Gardens, the Providence Police Department's Mounted Command center, the Dalrymple Boathouse and boat rentals, historical tours, a Carousel Village for children that includes the "Hasbro Boundless Playground" which is accessible for handicapped children, the Temple to Music, the Roger Williams Park Casino, large greenspaces, and many miles of walking paths.

Generations of Rhode Islanders have spent at least some time at Roger Williams Park: taking their children to the zoo to pet the farm animals and pose on the dog statue "The Sentinel," snapping wedding or First Communion or Confirmation photos in the Japanese Garden; riding the carousel or attending an Independence Day band concert at the Temple to Music, with its Greek columns (and, sadly, a white "canvas" that made it victim to graffiti artists). During the Gilded Age anyone who was anybody appeared in evening dress and furs and jewels at the Casino. The Zoo, from its beginnings as a "menagerie" with one building to the sad traditional zoo of concrete and chain link enclosures, became eventually one of the finest animal collections in the country.

I discovered the Park as a refuge when I got my drivers' license; after college classes I would flee to the zoo, which was free back then, and walk through the farm exhibit and through the grasslands to visit the Roosevelt elk. I'd always drop in at the Victorian Bird House, the original menagerie building, a steel-and-brick edifice with Crystal Palace lines and a soaring ceiling, with its free-flight cage in the center, and a flock of budgies singing and chattering in a smaller enclosure right in the front. Sometimes I would go into the museum, which still looked as it had at the turn of the century, with wood-and-glass display cases of butterflies and of minerals, all labeled by hand in brownish ink, a gallery of taxedermied wild animals from the Eastern Woodlands of New England, and a two-story foyer with a sarcophagus next to the gift shop.

On one of those post driver's license days, both my friend Sherrye and I found ourselves with a free day, and we decided to have a picnic. We had sandwiches and drinks, whether from home or a shop I can't remember, and for a snack, very clearly remembered, a bag of popcorn. I had a special place I liked, near the museum; if you parked out at the road at a tree I had "bookmarked" in my memory and headed down a grassy-and-root-gnarled slope to a certain spot under the trees, when they were in leaf you were unable to see the road at all, just the old bricks of the museum rising up behind you and the boathouse before you, across the lake, all canopied in sagging maple limbs and oak branches. It was like being in a time machine; when there was no traffic was passing to break the spell you almost could have been in the park in any age, even in the 1910s with horses and carriages winding down the park roads, or the 1920s with huge Deusenbergs and Pierce Arrows bringing excited children to play.

We stretched out our picnic blanket and had our lunch, luxuriating in the cool breeze, lazily looking up at the leaves fluttering above us, and talking about what we always talked about: television and books, Sherrye's pesty older brother, our parents and how weird they were sometimes, the usual teenage stuff. Lunch finished, we opened the bag of popcorn.

Suddenly a bright-eyed grey squirrel appeared, posting himself several feet from our blanket, looking at us in anticipation, his little nose working rapidly. "Oh, how cute!" was the watchword, and of course we tossed him a kernel of popcorn, watching him take it up in his dexterous little black paws and nibble on it. When he finished it, he scampered out of sight and when he reappeared he wasn't alone.

We laughed. "He brought a friend." Each received a kernel and we watched them eat and tossed two more.

Except suddenly there were three, and we tossed a third kernel.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fourth furry shape appear. A fourth kernel was tossed.

After that it was sort of like the Sorcerer's Apprentice; somewhere out of sight Mickey Mouse in spangled robes was raising his wand and Deems Taylor was conducting the orchestra. As if by magic a fifth squirrel appeared, and a sixth. We really didn't mind initially, and flung each of them a kernel and then another, each time aiming well away from our picnic spot, but when numbers seven and eight materialized we started looking at each other. We were both too well-versed in the reality of life, especially Sherrye, who entered college knowing she wanted to become a nurse: sure squirrels were cute, but they were still wild animals with the usual wild animal ticks and fleas, they were rodents and did bite if provoked, and they occasionally carried rabies. This could be a problem.

So when number five (or maybe it was number two or number six, since by now with eight squirrels to keep track of it was impossible to tell each little identical furry grey creature apart) was emboldened enough to come to the edge of the blanket until he was shooed back, and then turned right back around and approached again, one of us turned to the other and said, "You know, I think we'd better go," and our little time-travelling luncheon was swiftly concluded. We snatched up the trash and the bag of popcorn, shooed the squirrels with a flick of the blanket, and dashed back to the car with at least one of the squirrels in hot pursuit. We sprang into the car and shut the door and then laughed and laughed.

Even today, I can never see squirrels without thinking of that funny picnic under the trees, and wondering just how many we could have gathered if we'd been crazy enough to have stayed on. I think I'd rather not know the answer!

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.