John Regan Writing

Many writers worry about writer’s block and its inherent retardations on the creative process. The prudent writer surmises that if they can only defeat this demon and get the message on e-papyrus, the rest will simply fall in place.  Getting the words down is only part of the battle—the rest of the job consists of sales, marketing, showmanship, and networking and then getting up the next day and doing it all over again.  These are all things writers and creative types deplore; creative darlings should not have to sing for their supper.  However, writing is only part art.

I have several writer friends who have enjoyed various levels of writing success and publication and the one common theme I have learned from each is that it is hard work and most of the work takes place after the words are written.  For every Stephen King and John Grisham who have mastered the execution of the novel and have perfunctory posses waiting on their every word and ready to fork over $24.99 for the latest work, there are a million scribes blowing the bagpipes to It’s a long way to the top, if you want to write and working feverishly to court, dazzle, and maintain each and every reader.

And this raises the most essential question of all: why write?

The sole reason I put my words to paper and make an effort at such a painstaking endeavor is that I love words.  I have always loved words.  I have not always loved reading and in the last ten years have made up for many years of very little reading.  However, I have always loved words. My love affair with words began in Miss Moran’s English class in Junior High.  We had a vocabulary book titled Wordly Wise, which I still remember to this day and its trademark owl on the cover.  Wordly Wise made vocabulary sexy and was from where my schoolboy crush on the written word reared its erudite head.

In addition to Wordly Wise tasks, Miss Moran introduced us to ten new vocabulary words each week and made learning them as fun as playing tackle football on thick grass in early October.  On Friday, we were able to act out vocabulary words for the class and kids would shout them out. I distinctively remember when three kids were attempting to stomp (mainly in fake, professional wrestling style) a mud hole in a fourth classmate trying to bring the word “pulverize” to its vibrant fruition and the teacher stopping the stompers in their muddy tracks.  From that day forward, the acting out words activity continued but as long as there was no violence, be it real or perceived.

Still, I cannot hear pulverize and not think of that Friday afternoon. Other words Miss Moran introduced me at that tender age include lexicographer, lepidopterist, erstwhile, and bucolic.  Because I ingested these literary nuggets so early in life, they have stayed with me.

The conventional wisdom is that you have to read copiously and relentlessly for any hopes of being successful as a writer.  I know people who are never without a book and are terrible writers and some that read here and there and are great writers.  However, I am not rejecting the conventional wisdom. I wish I had read more when I was young. It would mean less trips to the dictionary to confirm whether I was indeed using the right word, using that right word correctly, and using that right word correctly and in its proper context. Reading, via the gift of experience, imparts these things to the writer free of charge.

I write because I love words. While I am reading more since the purchase of my Kindle DX, reading is still brain exercise for me.  It is sometimes enjoyable and rewarding but it is and always will be work rather than pleasure. Perhaps there are readers who read solely for pleasure, but that is not me.

I read to learn the tools of the trade and get better at what I do love doing: writing. However, I know I cannot simply write without reading—it is like eating food without exercise to burn it off.  I need to read to recharge my writing batteries—not to copy, or borrow, or steal but to learn.

All write and no read makes Jack a dull bard.

In addition to reading to fuel the writing, follow-up is what sells and moves the writing. I have not completed anything long enough to perform this follow-up, but I know it awaits me once I get there.

Karl Krishna lived on the last house on the right on Mayall Road, which abutted Monsignor McCabe Field to the East and the Warrendale woods to the North. Unlike Montana, a polluted stream rather than a raging river ran through these woods.

The woods and stream fizzled out as one walked East and then ended at black slate of a factory called George Moore. Nobody knew what they made in that factory or anyone that worked there. We never saw cars come and go and none of knew if it was defunct or still in business. Our parents simply said stay away from George Moore and while we were at it, stay away from Karl Krishna.

Near the end of the stream black steel rose out of the ground like half of a bomb shelter from the 50s. Local kids would drink beer and smoke pot on the other side of the steel bunker. It was a well known hiding place for beers on ice and since crime was almost nonexistent in the Warrendale of my youth, people could ice down a case of beer go play some basketball, football, or baseball and then return for a few cold ones after.

Monsignor McCabe field functioned as the hub of activity in the thickly-settled neighborhood of Warrendale where I grew up. Warrendale was a pleasant part of Waltham, Massachusetts and it bordered the cities of Belmont and Watertown—both a stone’s throw closer to Boston.

McCabe had two baseball fields, one basketball, a tennis court, plenty of extra room for football and other sports, and a two-foot deep pool that none of us ever swam in, but we would all dunk our heads under the water spout on hot days. After a game of sport, kids would jump the green fence, land in the pool area like stormtroopers, venture toward the flowing fountain of water, and dunk away.

The field was bordered by three streets on three sides (Mayall Road, Charlotte Road, and Candace Avenue) and a row of woods, a stream, and a creepy old factory called George Moore to the North. To get to Fitzgerald School, students walked down the hill of Charlotte Road (Eastern field border), which ended at the school parking lot. The parallel border of Mayall Road (Western field border) ended at the woods. Candace Avenue formed the Southern border. The field was literally and figuratively the center of Warrendale.

There were two baseball fields: Major Field and Minor Field. Charlotte Road and Candace Ave bordered the pristine Major field. On Summer nights people walked down Candace Avenue and could see the games played on the Major Field. Kids jockeyed for position behind the backstop and the chance to chance fate and lock their fingers in the metal cable squares and hope a foul tip did not bite them back. Major Field felt romantic and the “senior circuit” of Warrendale played there. The field was well-kept and had a lovely green fence that encircled the game. There was always a beehive of activity around Major Field and seldom any problems.

Minor Field was another story. It was by Mayall Road to the West and the woods to the South. Mayall Road has a tall imposing green fence, not a friendly one that beckoned climbing like the Major Field Backstop, and it looked more like a prison fence. The houses that lined Mayall Road seemed to be occupied with either people none of us knew or people that scared us in some way. The last house on the right on Mayall, just before the woods was the scariest of all the homes and the kid that lived there named Karl did not play any sports–he just crept across the field and went straight home. He had no friends and people used to be afraid to walk that path from the Minor Field to Mayall Road — something just did not feel right about it. Some kids would walk all the way around and exit via Candace Ave rather than venture down this dark path.

Monsignor McCabe was a strange place. It was all sunny and happy on three sides with a wonderful little elementary school right there in which the students took recess and gym right on the field, but it had a darkness that permeated its North border — something in those woods, something in that stream, and definitely something about Snake Rock felt eerie.

Some of the bad things that happened to me as a kid happened near Minor Field and most of the good things happened near Major Field.

Coming-of-age discussions took place among the boys who hung out atop the steel bunker. It was like a half exposed elevator shaft with sharp edges and a smooth top, which was perfect for sitting on and talking about the things that teenage boys talked about–girls, sports, beer, and lots of jokes and good-natured ribbing.

At 11 years old, Karl already had a receding hairline and slicked his black strands with dippity-do.  He carried a comb in his back pocket and a pack of smokes in the front with a zippo light. When school ended, all the kids except Karl walked up the hilly Charlotte Road and to the first bank of crossing guards and then made their way home to points East, West, and South.

There was nothing north of the school and adjacent field other than some woods, a stream, and George Moore.

At each day when the school bell rang, Karl slithered across the ball field all alone and went straight home to the last house on the right. At the end of the field there was a small path with overgrown trees nearly obscuring it and people often called it the scary path of the dark path.  Most kids took the long way home.  Even adults felt a chill as they got near that path and listened to their instincts and walked away.

At the end of school when most kids fanned out in different directions to walk home, Karl walked deliberately and with an adult gait straight across the field and then home, not to be seen again by anyone until the next school day.  Puffing on a Lucky Strike unfiltered coffin nail, Karl sucked it down to his fingertips and by the time he reached the foliage door to his private path flicked the residue into the woods.

Would-be friends who defied parental wishes ventured to the Krishna abode or its adjacent path agwould turn around and run away before they ever entered the Krishna House. Many did not even make it up the path and would run back to the comfort of the ballgame and the community comestible center known as “The Shack.” The Shack represented everything that was good and right with the world. The nearby path to Karl’s house was a different story.

The rumor was that he cared for his wheelchair bound mother, but nobody ever saw her.  In truth, Karl could have been living there all alone and nobody would have known. I heard stories about Mrs. Krishna but never saw her in the flesh.

Karl was what one would call a non-athlete. Sports were popular with most of the Warrendale kids but not with Karl. His house was right next to the Minor League field and he hated the noise the games made.  One Friday evening before the game, Karl loosed some of the bolts, nuts, and fasteners on the green team benches but not enough so anyone would know at first. About thirty minutes into the game Karl appeared up against the cable fence behind home plate and interlocked his bony, nicotine-stained fingers into the fence to watch his handiwork.

He pretended he was watching the game but he was really watching for the bench to collapse and could not peel his eyes away from staring at the green bench and its exchange of players every half inning. By Karl’s calculations, the bench would collapse around inning four and he hoped that some of the athletes he so despised felt some of his pain in a tumble to the rock hard dirt.

Kasper Insurance was playing White’s Garage in a six-inning contest. At the end of inning four, the Kasper Insurance team returned to the bench and it pancaked into the ground. While no bones were broken, the team was scared and sore and looked towards the spot where the boy in black was standing, the non-athlete who each fallen boy felt must have had something to do with the bench implosion, but Karl was gone. He had melted into the overgrown foliage that marked the entrance to the path and the addled kids needed to simply pick up the pieces.

Justice under God (JUG)

After the summer of eight grade, I worked my first summer job as a caddy at Waverly Country Club in Weston, MA.

In ninth grade I attended an all-boys private high school in Boston, which I did not want to go to and returned to public school one year later; however, the education was excellent and with 20/20 hindsight I wish I had toughed it out.

The school was called Boston Catholic High School.

Weston is and was the blue blooded rich town that comes to mind when many people think of Boston. And the image of ten kids from Warrendale pedaling their bikes 8 miles each way to carry golf bags for the rich members for four to five hours looks different now when I look back it from some perspective.  Many of those kids on those bikes who carried those bags became later  in life more like the golfers and less like the caddies.

I remember the last day of the fun Summer. It was the summer when the first FM Sony Walkmen came out. An FM-only Walkman for 80 bucks, 1980 currency and all the Waltham kids looked in envy at the Wayland kid who had the device.

On the last day I told some of my public school friends that I would be joining them for 9th grade at Central Junior High and instead I’d be attending an all-boys Catholic school in Boston and how I wished it was not so.

“Regan, you’re lucky that is a great school,”  a friend named Mike Lynch said to me.  Mike was headed back to public school and envious of my educational tract. He would have given anything to have such an opportunity and I would have given anything at that moment to trade places with him.  Yes, I would have traded in a heartbeat.

On the first day at Boston Catholic, my Mom drove me and a neighborh00d kid named Tom from Warrendale to the Waverly Oaks bus stop on the Belmont Line. From there, we took the bus to Harvard Square and then a train to the school. It was an hour trip.

However, the return trip involved getting of at Central Square station and taking the long bus ride from Cambridge to Watertown to Waltham–a Triple Lindy of cities with private school kids boarding and leaving on each stop. On many days, I did not get home until 4 p.m. and still had my paper route (I could not let go of the only thing I loved at that time) and had to sprint to get them delivered by five, dinner by 5:30 and then homework until I dropped.

I entered the non-descript brick building having no idea what awaited me.

“Hick, hick, hick,” the kids yelled as I walked down the hallway on my first day ever at a private school and my firs-t day at any school with a dress code or an all-boy contingent.

I had on my cherished flannel with a Who t-shirt underneath and cords. My mom bought me a bunch of Izods and polos for the prep school, but I clung to my Waltham roots.

“Looks like we have a hick here,” yelled Mr. Hughes, the history teacher who I intensely disliked right away.

The chorus grew louder and the chants of “hick” along with taps on the lockers followed me all the way to my locker. If my parents had been watching, they probably would have said I should I taken an Izod just in case. They must have known what snot-nosed, spoiled bastards these kids were and for some reason wanted me to bond with them.

That was the only day I ever wore a flannel on the school ground but often had one in my gym bag and would change after when we boarded the train in Dorchester for points west.

In every class on the first year, the first two months concentrated on how to take notes and how to read for comprehension; these skills I have kept for life. I did about five hours of homework each night and ten on weekends.

This was my course load in 9th grade. So grueling was the load, I still remember it to this day.

• Biology w/lab
• Geometry
• Latin I
• English
• History
• Music
• Religion

Also for Biology we had to read one book each month (Dune, Terminal Man, Fantastic Voyage and others) and take an exam.

Even though it was the hardest class for me and I busted my tail for a C+ and spent countless days after school getting extra instruction from Mr. P, I loved Latin.  Most evenings we would have to translate ten sentences from Latin to English and these translations had to be letter-perfect or Mr. P deducted points with a feverish glee.

In Latin, one student named Neil clearly struggled and was treading water with a D minus average. Instead of compassion, Mr. P called Neil “Nihil” — the Latin equivalent of nothing.  Neil got a 1.4 his first semester there and all the eggheads from Hingham ridiculed him daily and Mr. P added fuel to the fire and soon learned of the 1.4.

Neil, bloodied but unbowed, kept trying and after semester one started going after school with me and all the other students to whom Latin did not come as easily as a free throw in an empty gym.  Neil made it through that year and the school.  In ninth grade, he was tiny, frail, and bespectacled.  By senior year, Neil was big and strong and played hockey for the elite high school.

I am not sure how I feel about Mr. P’s taunts. I was also taunted by Peloquin for my occasional absent-mindedness (which today would be diagnosed as ADD) and called me “Spes” — Latin for hope and I am not sure if it was a clever jab at there being no hope for me or if he thought I was a “space shot” and that was the driver of my distraction.

Mr. P might have been mean and had strange methods, but he could teach Latin and I credit him for planting the seed in me to love words and seek out their meanings, usages, and etymologies.

When I look at the Facebook people that stayed at this high school I see Ivy League schools and titles like CEO. I am not saying I would have achieved either or if I would even want to, but it makes you think about the choices we make and how it affects our lives.

I wanted no part of it. I was enjoying public school and did not want to go to Catholic tract like many of the kids in my neighborhood.  In Warrendale, the kids either attended St. Judes elementary and then went to Catholic Junior High like St. Patricks in Watertown and then on to one of the Catholic, all-boys high schools in Boston.

I wanted no part of the private school, the collared shirts, or the khaki pants. I wanted no part of Catholicism and only attended CCD because I was forced. I like public school and my public school friends from Waltham, but my likes were not considered.

Long before the exploits of the Catholic priests of greater Boston, and one especially bad seed from our own church at St. Judes became front page news I had a bad feeling about these celibate clerics—something was just not right about the whole structure.

Unlike many of the kids in Warrendale—the slice of Waltham we called home and the slice where a very bad man of the cloth soiled the childhood and innocence of many of the children—I wanted no part of being an altar boy.  The mercury in my spidey-sense thermometer shot out and spilled on the sidewalk and the red cement told me to stay away.

When I got to the Catholic high school my sensor went off again when a red-headed priest named Father Francis Finnegan or “Finn” to the staff struck me as evil to the bone. It was more than the paper-thin veil he thought concealed his peccadilloes and proclivities, it was something darker. The stories he told, the glee is his eyes at bringing tall taboo tales into the classroom as window dressing to arrange around religion frightened the kids and a voice inside me said to keep away.

Years later when I read about horrible acts committed by Finn and how he was kept at the school for years and years, not unlike the priests all over greater Boston kept in their slots through an insular protection racket; I was not surprised in the least.

There was another priest at the same high school who coached a boys sports team and used to make each athlete wrestle him in just their jock straps. Under the cloak of camaraderie and dagger of espirit de corps, the predator played his victims like black and white keys on a Steinway. Although on this fractured keyboard, the victimized keys were all Irish, Catholic, and lily white.

It reminded of Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames and how evil presented itself through this character and how this evil fooled many, but not all.

At Boston Catholic,  an overfed portly teacher named Mr. Dempsey seized students by their zip down sweat jackets with one goal in mind–to ensure there was a collared, pressed, unstained, and eminently presentable shirt underneath. It made no sense to me that students were allowed to wear a sloppy zip-up sweat jacket as long as the shirt underneath met the school code.

Students who did not pass the Dempsey muster were subsequently JUGGED.

JUG stood for Justice Under God and was the discipline tool used at this school. First offenders were sent to the priest’s rectory to copy a page from a dictionary word-for-word and this took at least an hour per page. These priests knew every word and every space and every place on the page were a student might give into temptation and take the short cut and think they might get away with it.

I tested those waters and received the sentence of two pages, which due to my excruciating re-read and re-edit to ensure I missed nothing took me nearly three hours. Perhaps, this is why I ended up working as an editor reviewing words in excruciating detail for eight to ten hours each day.

I got home that day about 7:30 pm and delivered my papers in the dark. I received a stern warning from Waltham’s Brothers’ Gagnon to be home on time or surrender the route. After a month at this school, I handed the route down to a youth in waiting just like the former route owner (Tommy Silk) did for me. Tommy was a senior at the private school the year in which I was a freshman. Tommy welcomed me in his own way during the lunch hour.

The Boston Catholic school code book explained that students had five to seven classes per day and the remainder were Free Periods. Like college, if you had a free period first class, you could arrive late and leave early if last class was free.  Each student was given at least one free period during the three-period lunch hour.  Like the Happy version of the term, hour was used liberally.

This meant that unlike public school were lunch was your grade and you had your table with your friends, here it was a free-for-all of students from all grades and everyone one of them remembered what it was like their first lunch.

I entered the cafeteria and tried to find some of the students from my classes but either could not or all the seats were taken where they were sitting.  I saw senior Tommy Silk in his maroon Boston Catholic school jacket holding court with a table of seniors and feared the worst. I knew not to even attempt to sit there and as every table was full, I proceeded until I found one lone table of five seats facing the wall right before the serving line. I would later learn that this was called Loser’s Table.

I sat down and put my books in front of my chair. I got my lunch and returned and still nobody else at that table.

My hometown nickname and one that would follow me to this school was “Gordy.”

The loud cafeteria got quiet and then Tommy stood up and bellowed, “Hey Gordy, I see you are sitting with all your friends.”

Some friend Tommy was.

Kell & Mahoneys

When I attended college at St. Michaels in Vermont, the drinking age was 18. Truth be told, that was part of the reason I wanted to go there—that is, to enjoy this full-extension of adulthood that being 18 meant to me.

It was a funny time, because when I would come home from school I was no longer legal. In 1986, the age in which one can legally down a pint was 21 in all states except Vermont and Louisiana—the last two holdouts who only buckled after the federal government threatened to pull all highway funds if these wayward states failed to fall in life.

I found and still find it silly that a person can die for their country at 18 and has to wait until 21 to have a drink, but they can start driving at 16. If I had it my way,  18 would be the universal age to do both and all other things legal.

I attended a local college in Massachusetts for my first year (Stonehill), which was and is an excellent college but it had no weekend life and while I enjoyed much of my freshman year there, there as something missing.

I was friends with a Connecticut kid named Al and he used to tell me about St. Michaels and how that was his first choice but he did not get in.  When I told him that my Dad had friends at all the Catholic colleges in New England and I could have gone, he looked at me like I was crazy for not going. From that moment on, I wanted to transfer.

I kept my grades up year one and transferred from Stonehill to Saint Michael’s College.

In 1986, living my whole life in New England, I had never been on Vermont soil.  I took one trip that summer to the college to check it out (after I transferred) and went with my best friend Matt in his old white horizon.  Matt and I took a cruise through the St. Michael’s campus and then went into Burlington—the playground of 48 bars and restaurants for St. Michael’s, UVM, and other area colleges.

We pulled the car into some parking near Burlington’s Church Street and walked out onto the cobblestone courtyard and both were amazed at the beehive of activity on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. We grabbed an outdoor table at Sweetwater’s and ordered some beers and for the first time in years, pulled out our actual Massachusetts licenses for ID.

“You two are lucky—you just made it,” said the waitress.

“Made it” was code speak for making the staggered grandfathering phase of raising the drinking age from 18 to 21 in Vermont beginning in 1986. In 1989, the age went to 21 and in 1986 if you made the cutoff you were legal three years early, but if you missed the cut off by even one day, you had to wait three years.

One of my good friends at St. Michaels from Swanton, Vermont near the Canadian border missed the cut off by a few weeks and we used to have to sneak him into Winooski’s Kell & Mahoney’s (aka Kells)  or hope one of our friends were working the door.

The pints came at Sweetwaters and Matt and I clanked glasses.

“Regan, you made the right choice. I wished I could go to college up here, but they don’t have the program I need.”

Matt had just finished his first year at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL.  While it was a Spring Break hotspot a few weeks a year, the rest of the time it was pretty sleepy back in the late 80s.  It was also nearly all males and girls from nearby Stetson University had their pick of the Riddle.

University of Vermont, Champlain College, and Trinity College for Women were all right in Burlington and St. Michaels was in the next town, Winooski and about a 10 minute drive from town.  In 1986, it was Spring Break every night of the year in Burlington.  Bars competed with offers of dime drafts where you could get ten 6-ounce beers for one dollar.

You’d walk in and there would be trays and trays of beer everywhere and it was so cheap, everyone just grabbed a free beer and drank it. Other places offered quarter drafts and the local St. Mikes bar, Kell & Mahoneys featured the one dollar Bud Draft pint all the time.

When a New York businessman bought Kells a few years later, we warned him to not tinker with the sacrosanct $1.00 pint price. He raised it to $1.25 for a few weeks in 1988 and someone put a brick through the window. He quickly pit it back to $1.00 and apologized to every student for being so foolhardy to tinker with tradition.

Matt and I enjoyed several beers and a then each had a steak. My Dad gave me his credit card and said we could charge up to certain amount for a motel. Matt and I spent that amount on a fat bar tab and several hours soaking it all in at Sweetwaters.

“Regan, you can tell your Dad that Sweetwaters is the motel we stayed at.”

“He’s not an idiot Matt and he won’t care how we spent the money as long we stayed under budget. ”

After the trip I told my parents the truth that we decided to spend the money enjoying the town and having a great meal and they were OK with it.

My Dad was the Principal of Waltham High School, my high school and knew kids upside and down and top to bottom. There was never any fooling him, so I learned at a very young age to simply tell the truth.

Him famous words to my brother and I growing up were I trust you as far as I can throw you.

Later that evening, we reclined the seats and slept in the car that evening next to Clancy’s Pub in Burlington, our last stop that night.

But last call was many hours away and Matt and I were anxious to check out the town.

Matt and I alighted from our sidewalk seats at Sweetwaters. The setting sun and afternoon glow made the jaunt down the cobblestone path a fun one. We saw a green shamrock and the words “Clancy’s Pub” beckoning us to come down.

“Frank Finnegan is the name gents and what can I get ya.”

We grabbed stools and Matt pointed to the $3.00 happy hour pitcher sign and said, “one of those, please.”

Frank fetched two iced mugs from the freezer and sent them down the bar with just enough push so they halted in front of each of us, spaced perfectly.

At the bar was man who looked about 30 but he appeared to be a student. On my first meeting, I nicknamed him “The Man.”

Clancy’s was a small bar about 20 feet long and ten feet wide. It had cold, cheap beer and good music and the bartender Frank had a mossy green accent.

A few UVM students walked in and ordered drinks and a lankly one said he wanted a water. He motioned with his hands that he was the driver and therefore not partaking of the drink.

“This is a bar and you order a drink here.”  Frank stared down the string bean, “We don’t serve water.”

“Legally, you have to give me water for free.”

“Order a drink or get out.”

Matt and I enjoyed our beers and the in-house entertainment.

“Give me a fucking water  now, or I will ….”

Frank filled a glass and the stress ran away from the kid’s face.

Frank flung the full pint of water in the kid’s face,. “Here’s your fucking water, asshole.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” The soaked kid and his friends left.

“Can we have a couple of waters Frank — just kidding,” I smiled and saw Frank’s face light up also.

Matt and I downed the last of the pitcher and said goodbye to Frank and The Man.

Do you remember Matchbox City?

It was a state of mind created by the manicured cars, which were tenants of a glistening, glass display and the centerpiece of Bruce Pharmacy.  In addition to medicinal remedies and toiletries, this old-fashioned drug store in Waltham, Massachusetts featured a limited amount of toys and other trinkets for children, namely the Matchbox line of cars.

Flanked by Russell Stover candies and cold medication, the translucent marvel display held center court.  Meticulously designed and hand painted, the Matchbox cars were no cheap toy manufactured overseas in sweat shops; rather, each car was handmade and placed in its own signature showroom window by Bruce Almighty.

The beauty of Bruce Pharmacy, a locally-owned small business in Waltham, Massachusetts (circa 1940 – 1990), was that the ownership allowed children to hang around as long as they liked. Bruce must have been a kid at heart as he never uttered those crushing words to any penniless child, “Are you buying or just looking?”

On the contrary, Bruce sat behind the pharmacy counter and smiled at all the kids who graced his store. He saw them as a blessing rather than a hindrance to business.  Like the handsome cars in their spit shine glass cases, happy children set the mood of the store.

While the adult population window shopped on the sidewalks of the city, their offspring danced gingerly on drugstore carpet; like the pull of ions to a magnet, these chemically charged children rushed the glass showroom to drink it all in.

On the first of each month new cars appeared and others were freed from their glass homes to live new lives on the shelves of other stores in places the children would never find.  Bruce did not need to tell the kids what cars would go. The children knew most of the time by engaging their collective consciousness, exactly what cars would be sent packing. And the children knew in their hearts, which lucky modes of transport would enjoy another month of privileged shelf life.

Bruce could see the stare scars on the window glass.  Like footprints in freshly laden snow, eye indentations of the glass were visible only to the shrewd shopkeeper.  He did not need to watch the kids all day; instead, he could tell the car’s popularity by the condition of its corresponding glass container.

The majestic moment of obtaining a matchbox car and all its trimmings made all the waiting and endless staring worthwhile. On special occasions, like birthdays or for one little boy — Easter Sunday, parents accompanied their children to the glass display case and uttered the words that the young ears long anticipated, “Which one do you want?”

Receiving a matchbox back in the seventies was a far different experience than picking something off the shelf at the local mega store today.  The special care Bruce took in personally securing the vehicle in its little rectangular box went a long way.  With a celebratory touch, he made every matchbox purchase a grand event.

The glass showroom of cars created curb appeal inside a drugstore.  These cars were sought after items children desperately wanted.  The wanting, the waiting, the rejection, and the heartbreak made it all worthwhile when Bruce wrapped it up and then rang it up with his happy fingers.

Danny Hale was one very lucky boy in our neighborhood as his well-tanned grandfather: Alvin would buy him all the cars he could ever want. Dan had both Matchbox City and Matchbox Country.  These expensive, play-at-home games were cityscapes and country farms that opened up from a suitcase and then expanded into a working metropolis or the rolling hills of Vermont countryside, whatever Dan wanted on a given day.

The Regan brothers, my younger sibling Tim and I, did not have either play set but we did have Dan as our neighbor and childhood chum.  We would trade Dan rides on our seesaw for an afternoon negotiating Matchbox City or a relaxing weekend at Matchbox County.  The limits of our adventures were bounded only by our imaginations.

Both matchbox play sets were kept under lock and key in the perfectly painted red shed in the Hale backyard.  Alvin lived with the Hales and kept the rosebushes manicured and the grass, the greenest in the neighborhood.

While my Dad did a commendable job at upkeep for our house and yard, he had to work a job full-time and could never keep up with Alvin; nobody could.  But to the finicky eyes of Alvin, no playmates were good enough for his beloved Daniel.  He spoiled his grandson with every game and toy you could imagine, but really wanted Dan to use them all alone and not to have any friends over the house.

I distinctly remember the furrowed brow and look of suspicion when Dan would invite my brother and I over to feast upon his copious collection of cars and expand our playful imaginations into the matchbox state of mind.

John Regan’s first job was washing dishes at The Ground Round–a restaurant at the junction of Whitman Road and Waltham’s famous Main Street. Erected on the border of Waltham and Watertown and drawing employees from both cities, this landmark eatery doubled as a symbolic line of demarcation between the rival cities.

Regan’s best friend and Whitman Road resident John Wallace secured him the dish job and himself a promotion to the “floor glory” of Ground Round Bus Boy–a coveted slot with few openings (just ask Mark Mangenelli). Proud to be one of the first employees at the Waltham “store”- a term the Ground Round insiders used for restaurant, the employees loved Wallace and he thought naturally, they would all love Regan. The engineer-to-be calculated this equation incorrectly.

When Wallace vacated the dish pit after 10 months, he needed to find a replacement who could match his excellence of execution. Tears would be shed by many waitresses, because Wallace was that damn good. He never allowed the stacks to overwhelm him. John Wallace never allowed anything to overwhelm him.

Raised by the ruthless Jack Arthur Wallace–a man so cheap his hand came out instinctively for the quarter in change when Jack would have John pick up The Sunday Globe for 75 cents and carry that weight all the way back from St. Jude’s Church to Whitman Road–John had to be tough.

Wallace believed in training your replacement, so you could move up. At age 16, he had already mastered the people skills they teach in Business Schools and knew exactly how to deal with anyone in business–be it the CEO or the dishwasher. It was impossible to intimidate young John Wallace.

Where this confidence came from, I will never know ,because John is also master of the poker face and can go from hard-nosed all business to caring “great guy” in an instant, a skill/competency, which is difficult to teach.

On the contrary, Regan wore his emotions (and ketchup stains) on his dishwasher sleeves. He had no filter and said exactly what he felt, or more often wrote these feelings down. His words could stir emotions, sometimes the wrong ones.

On Regan’s first night washing dishes, everyone was supportive but not in a spoiling way. Washing dishes was hard work and to sugarcoat anything was counterproductive.

I believe washing dishes is a great first job for anyone–it is a true microcosm of life:

Sometimes things are slow, but then things stack up and you can get overwhelmed easily. Just when you think you have everything clean and your station in life tidy, they break down the line and throw everything but “the kitchen sink” at you. How you react to the rush and the end-of-life breakdown determines your success and station.

Washing dishes was where Regan first discovered how much he could be disliked. It was his first encounter with someone who did not like him and did not sugarcoat anything. The kitchen lead cook and schedule maker, Dave Logue was a gruff, hard-nosed sort who liked face-to-face contact and directness.

Logue disliked Regan.

Regan had a guilty conscience and was habitually fearful of authority. He tried to avoid all direct contact with Logue and those of higher rank at the hamburger hut. When he wanted anything–be it a day off or more fluids in the dish pit–Regan penned a note and stick it on the corkboard; whereas, John Wallace would go right up to Logue directly.

Brimming with an adult-like confidence, Wallace feared no Ground Round employee as they were mere rungs on his career ladder. Regan did not like Logue either. He preferred the clean-cut, “shirt and tie” manager John Golden–the pride of Watertown.

Golden was an athletic, clean-cut young man whom John aspired to emulate. On the contrary, Logue was a slovenly, mustachioed blue-collar fry cook, who loved to tell people his sheepskin was from the “School of Hard Knocks.” Logue could sense Regan was a younger version of Golden and despised him all the more.

Dave Logue liked John’s work ethic but hated his secretive nature and “in-jokes” with the erudite Wallace. The truth was it was hard to find a good dishwasher and Regan was a workhorse.
While Regan may have never replicated Wallace’s body of dish work, he was pretty close. He was not as neat as Wallace, but he was a good worker and many of the kitchen cooks (aside from Logue) took a shine to Regan.

While Wallace knew Regan was a strange bird, he loved his dark humor and they both shared a love of vocabulary and vernacular. The two would often make fun of all the Ground Round employees in a secretive codespeak, engineered so that others had no way of deciphering.

Regan and Wallace would retain this codespeak for the rest of their adult lives and enjoyed artfully wording something into a dialect only the could decipher–at least that is what they thought.

One day John’s notes had proliferated on the team board to the point that exacting action needed to be taken. The preponderance of paper messages was breaking the spirit of Fry Cook and Kitchen Manager Dave Logue. New ones were pinned onto unanswered ones from Logue , who often ignored Regan’s requests and just made the schedule as he pleased–saying figuratively, To Hell with him.

Regan knew his notes pissed off Logue , as Wallace had warned him ahead of time. Regan loved to anger Logue. However, Wallace loved to play both sides of a potential clash and relished the thought of instigating a potential skirmish on the dish front.

Conscious of Logue’s anguish over the penned requests, Regan stacked requests to “show up” the boss with his witty, tenth-grade prose, which poetically juxtaposed Logue ‘s cantankerous kitchen-speak.

This author dug deep into the archives and reproduced the below note:

Attn: Dave Logue or applicable managerial personnel

I apologize if the previous posting was at all unclear. I wish to request off every other Friday night (a Saturday substitution is permitted). I realize you are a busy fry cook, but please attend to my request in a tidy fashion, as we all love a clean kitchen and dishes promptly and properly washed.

John Regan

P.S. Some new kitchen aprons are in tall order.

A few days later, John Wallace watched as Dave Logue grabbed the totality of John’s handiwork and crumpled the paper (server bills, the back of food receipts, torn corners from cook and server schedules, etc.) into a ball of anger. Logue was ready to spit nails.

Regan used any available paper for his notes, regardless of what it did to others. Few things infuriated Logue as much as seeing the corner of one of his neatly arranged schedules torn off, flipped over and then transformed into a Regan riddle.

His notes had broken David Logue’s spirit. John Wallace watched Logue retreat into the back office and slam the door.

Wallace poked his head inside. “Is everything okay Dave, I heard some commotion by the team board.”

“Please close the door, John” Dave said. “I need to talk to you about Regan and his goddamn notes. I am going to kill him”

Wallace was not at all concerned about Logue’s mental health; he wanted to know what the notes had done to Logue’s constitution and drink in the degradation. Wallace loved to learn other’s weakness–their kryptonite, so to speak. The broken fry cook was holding the ball of paper and a few tears had streaked down his overtaxed countenance.

Dissolving into a puddle of defeat, Logue hoped Wallace might toss him a lifeline. John suppressed a smile and feigned a look of concern for the shaken fry cook. Wallace put his arm around Logue as if to say “all would be okay.”

Logue suddenly smiled, thinking he might have an ally in Wallace, turned and looked him in the eye.
Like the Devil incarnate, Wallace played Logue like a Steinway.

“Yes, you tell the fucking Regan if he writes one more note, I’m going to ‘wrassle’ it up his asshole.” Wallace internalized the sports double entendre and tucked it into his arsenal.

Logue said “wrassle” with a cigarette-laced, poverty-stricken twang that the millionaire-to-be Wallace abhorred, but kept this distaste masked behind the facade of ally.

Regan was first string in the 178 Pound class for Waltham High Wrestling. The sight of him entering the Ground Round, ten minutes late, sporting his maroon jacket with “Central Massachusetts Champs” in glossy script got under Logue’s skin. Those red-jacketed thugs had once pummeled the bespectacled Logue. The handsome Regan was a walking flashback of the past Logue never forgot.

“I will tell him right now,” Wallace replied. “I think I just saw him put on his apron and he was conducting a preliminary inspection of his workstation.”

“I’ll see to it that he gets extra dishes and the cooks break him.”

Wallace extended his hand and firmly pressed Logue ’s flesh, ceremonially cementing this deal of sorts.
A deal with the Devil was hatched.

“Thank you John.” Logue smiled and Wallace exited. As he closed the door, the look of concern was supplanted with a sinister smile. Wallace, in his button white shirt and smartly-pressed tie, edged toward John to tell him the “good news.”

Wallace devised an elaborate scheme to punish Regan for upsetting Logue, and moreover for feeling good about himself.

Wallace treasured his friendship with Regan, but did not want anyone to get too happy or too successful–he loved to take folks back down to earth.Years later when one of our friends reached epic success during the dot com bubble and the crashed and burned–the smiling, omniscient, and wise-beyond-his-years Wallace deadpanned: “Slow and steady wins the race; an object in perpetual ascent must eventually reverse its course and come to rest.”

Wallace needed to knock John off his high perch in the dish pit of the Ground Round, where John was starting to think he owned the place. Wallace took exacting measures to ensure nobody every felt too good, too fast or took short cuts of any kind.

John Regan was a bashful youth and a late bloomer when it came to relations with the softer gender. As much as he admired them from afar, and no doubt from the privacy of his upstairs bathroom, the thought of conversing with an attractive member of the opposite sex horrified him to the core.

So, it came as no surprise that reserved Regan was uneasy when his time finally came. She was a petite but bold redhead who took a strange fancy to this budding boy in 10th grade.
Intrepid Red saw right through her victim and went for kill with all guns ablaze. Disconcerted with this new status, Regan entrusted his best friend, John Wallace, with his secret.

It was a cold winter night in late February. Regan had received his first ever gift from a girl (other than the over abundance he regularly received from his mother and grandmother). It was a brand new leather belt—and no ordinary belt. This belt sported a shiny gold buckle that was emblazoned with the initials JJR in a stylish script.

John loved the belt–not the belt actually, but rather what it represented. Despite his uneasiness with his well-kept secret, he wore JJR every day. During the school day, John concealed his prize with the front of his shirt.

During Mr. Harrington’s Algebra 2/Trig class, Regan would steal a look at the brass marvel and thought he had done it in secret. However, the all-seeing, all-knowing Wallace had seen the stolen respite, and would (in due time) police the transgression.

Well, this night at the Ground Round, John used his new belt to support his checkered kitchen trousers. His apron conveniently covered the accessory. Wallace, of course, knew that the object was on his person, and spared no opportunity to let John know about it. It was a secret of course, so the chiding banter was emitted on a deliberately higher vocabulary plane that effectively guaranteed that the likes of the Ground Round rabble would have slim chances of comprehension.

On this night, Wallace noticed a distinctive change in John. He walked with a newfound swagger and to astonishment of all onlookers; he was even initiating conversations with the waitresses. Regan was on cloud nine and the sinister Wallace was about to take him down.

Enter Scott McGoldrick—veteran bus boy and and erstwhile svengali for Wallace.

Scott was in his first year at Northeastern Engineering school and was moving up to waiter. He would later train Wallace on his to drive from Waltham to Northeasten on cuthroat Storrow Drive and how to give “no quarter.”

Wallace idolized Scott and vowed to be just like him. And if Wallace respected or idolized you, you knew you were the real deal.

Scott had worked for the Ground Round since day one. Brash, yet charming, Scott always got his way. His quick decision-making and table clearing skills awed Wallace. The day Scott trained him; Wallace vowed to be just like him.

On this Friday evening, John was working alongside the master. A symbolic torch was being passed and few could see its historical significance in the Ground Round annuls. Scott had grown to like Wallace and indeed, he saw what others in that restaurant saw: that Wallace was the heir apparent to the bussing throne, an inevitable sea change of quality.

Finally, back to the infamous Friday night, enter John at the sink, blasting the stubborn melted cheese off the plates, wild abandon! Dancing around and keeping way ahead of the dish stack, John changed the trash liner and the dishwashing fluids without being asked. He put a broom on the kitchen floor and a smile on the face of Senior Manager, John Golden.

Even the kitchen sourpuss, Dave Logue commented John’s work was top-notch that evening. Regan was a happy young man and it showed in his work. About halfway through the evening, Wallace noticed that John had removed his apron, a not uncommon maneuver as the dinner rush winded down. What John failed to realize was that his shiny new belt was now plainly visible and Wallace seized his opportunity to bring some humility back to his “friend.”

While emptying his bucket at the sink the next time in the kitchen, Scott took notice of the belt.

He said, “Hey John, where’d you get that cool belt.”

Shocked–first that the belt was visible–and secondly that he lacked a prepared response for such as question– John stammered and could not get any words out. His face turned bright red, and the swagger transformed into timid, incoherent mumblings about receiving the gift from his grandmother.

He played completely dumb and acted like he was genuinely interested in the belt and its design. He asked John about the engraving, the leather, the clasping mechanism; where his grandmother bought it, etc., all the while with John cringing inside, hoping that Scott would just go away so he could don the apron again. No such luck.

A crowd of waitresses and short order cooks soon formed. Everybody wanted to know all about the belt. Regan was beside himself in embarrassment. He asked himself, what had he done to deserve this?

All during his trial-by-fire, John’s lone friend and support system, John Wallace was conspicuously absent. He wished Wallace would emerge and toss him a life preserver, to rescue him from this horrid mess, but Wallace was nowhere to be found.

Then, through the corner of his eye, peering in the bar serving window to witness his handiwork, Regan spotted Wallace. Now it all made sense. The devious smile said “I got you.” The sting of betrayal hit Regan hard.

In the 1970s and 80s, the paper route and paper boys and paper girls held together the fabric of my neighborhood and from what I am told from others, neighborhoods across the country. Due to factors both economic and fear-based myths of places being more dangerous than they used to be, the childhood carrier has all but disappeared into the lore of yesteryear, like soda pop fountains and soap box derbies.

In Warrendale, the slice of Waltham, Massachusetts I called home, the newspaper carrier function as the neighborhood’s polinating insect–dropping off papers, collecting tips, imparting joy and extracting the bounties of news, gossip, and connections to people of Warrendale.

When I was ten I watched a twelve-year old named Michael deliver the Boston Globe and News Tribune dailies (our Waltham paper) up and down the roads, streets, avenues and ways of Warrendale.

Mike always had a bankroll of cash for those all-important pizza slice purchases at The Shack at Monsignor McCabe Field.  Exiting St. Jude’s Church Sunday mass and walking towards Canterbury Road with my best friend Brian, we would stop and marvel at the Grand Torino wagon driving in the middle of the road as Michael and his helper ran off the open back gate and delivered the “thick as dictionaries” Boston Sunday Globes to the homes of Warrendale.

Some days the help was his sister Ann, or Leo from across the street. On this day, I did not see Leo (his trustworthy, unpaid apprentice) on the back of the tailgate with Michael and I just stood there on the curbstone hoping for something to happen.

I did not see Ann, either.

“Hey Regan–a little help here?”

I ran for the wagon and left Brian standing on the sidewalk like a roadside apple.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

That Sunday began my one-year unpaid apprenticeship with Michael and his coveted 72-house paper route in Warrendale. Back in 1977, there were no child labor laws or meddling arms of government to taint this relationship and I am glad to this day for my inauguration into the concepts of work, paying one’s dues, and training your replacement and most of all – customer service.

The paper routes in Warrendale were owned by a company called Gagnon News and routes like Michael’s were never open for application or without a carrier—they were passed down from one person who loved the work to another in an inevitable sea change of quality.

The first few weeks I walked the route with Michael and he showed me every house and dispensed instructions  like birdseed as he walked his beat.

For this house make sure you put the paper inside the back porch door. Always come back Saturday morning for this house for the woman and never try and collect Friday night because the old man does not tip.  Never roll up any papers or use elastics–if I catch word from one person you ever threw a paper, I will take the route back.

Once he trusted I would do a good job, he would let me take entire streets.  He slowly increased my share of the houses over the year and by mid-year, he would let me do the route entire days on my own. It felt good, but it still was not mine and I could not feel that pride of ownership that I so desperately wanted.

While neither Michael nor Brothers Gagnon officially paid me, Mike would peel a few ones off the thick, ever-present roll in his pocket if he saw me at the baseball field and say:

“Here’s a little something so you don’t have to ask your parents.  Keep up the good work; it’s almost yours.”

My Dad, watching the exchange and taking note of the notes passed, cautioned me to “not spend it all in one place and don’t screw this opportunity up.”  He knew I stood to inherit a veritable gold mine if I did a good job as an apprentice.

Dad knew the score.

During the last three months of the year, Michael let me assist and eventually take over the Friday night collection duties.  A weekly bill might be $1.64 or $2.44 (if they got the Sunday Globe) and there were various other  ”special rates” worked out by the Gagnons for different customers. There was no exact rhyme or reason to the rates–the paperboy’s job was to simply knock on the customer’s door on Friday nights (or Saturday mornings if nobody was home),  ring the bell and announce ourselves as “paper boy” or “collection.”  When the customer answered, we handed the slip of Gagnon paper to them and usually received a combination of dollars and coins.

Checks were accepted unless the words “Cash Only” appeared atop the collection notice. Deadbeats who bounced a check even once were forever restricted from writing one again to Gagnon News.

On Saturdays the carriers all over Waltham went to Gagnon News headquarters on River Street to take the money to a smoky room were two old lady Gagnons would take the money and hand the carrier back any extra owed to them. The office was drab and poorly ventilated and the ladies sat behind these iron bars. An onlooker might think they were gaurding Fort Knox they way they watched over the paper route money.

If I remember the crooked operation correctly, no kid could ever be trusted to count his own tips, so each carrier had to take all the money (and these folks knew exactly who tipped, who did not, and how much they tipped) and hand it all over to the smoke-stained fingers behind the bars and wait patiently while they counted the cash, looked us over like we were Dickens street kids, and gave us back any overflow and a meager amount of “pay” in addition to the tips.

It was the face of greed–doling out a few pence to the neighborhood ruffians. But even with Gagnon taking their substantial cut, it was a great money for a 10 – 13 year old to have each week and really great money come holiday season.

(early draft; to be continued)