This cute kid could cut choo!
I have street cred. Yup, true. OK, fine, so western Massachusetts in the 70's, where I spend my first 7 years, may have been a magnet for spelt eaters and veganistas, and of course, people who left the big city to make their own goat cheese or whatever. But at age 7 I was yanked-YANKED-from my idyllic small town existence and tossed, fresh ground peanut butter sandwiches and all, into that mythical place that Matt and Ben kindly made famous South Boston, or "Southie" as the locals call it, and now, every Hollywood producer, apparently. ( I'm sorry but they're from Cambridge-Cambridge! Eye rolling is not enough to express how goofy that is ).
Holy crap! Here I was, spending my days lollygagging around my neighborhood with my pals, a mix of pungent white trash street urchins and the children of well heeled liberal lefties with entire libraries attached to their house (awesome-right? An entire library!). I was surrounded by hippie culture. Isn't it normal for your parents to ask you to pass the joint to the dude across the room? No? Oh. Well, still. It was a pretty nice place to be. Lots of "gatherings", where I ran around with a dozen other kids, all of us dirty with matted hair, wearing corduroy bell bottoms and t-shirts that had glitter rainbow iron-ons. Don't judge-you know you had one too. (For those of you born after 1975, google "Iron-ons" and maybe even "Unicorns"). The parents, in that hippie way of theirs, left us on our own to "find ourselves." The 70's were the best!
So then, I arrive in South Boston in the 70's. Busing. Remember that? Fun times. Trying to block it out. I moved in to a 1 bedroom apartment on East 7th Street. Trees? None. Cars? Lots. Nice people? Not a one as far as the eye could see. I realized very quickly, after my very first friend stole all my quarters from my bank and then another nabbed all my treasured tiny glass animals, only to break them on the cement a block away, that I had better get tough-fast. But what could I do? Where I came from, we all sat in circles and sang Kumbaya all the time. No, that actually isn't true. Tough kids are everywhere, and I had dealt with my fair share, but I was not prepared at ALL for life on the mean streets of Southie. And if you don't know about Southie, I have 2 words for you-Whitey Bulger. This was a tough guy from a tough town. And this trickled down to the very littlest. Four year olds could shake you down for money. By 6, most of the kids on my street (almost all poor), had figured out how to scrabble to get what they needed. It took me years to figure out how to negotiate my way around, and by then, we moved across Boston to a place that was completely different-Charlestown. You know, "The Town" (thanks again, Affleck!) Sheesh-what the fuck were my parents trying to do to me?
I never did manage to fit in in either of these places, and when I meet people now and they ask where I'm from, I usually say Charlestown since I lived there the longest, and then they go into "oh yeah, do you know blah blah blah?" and I have to patiently explain that I am from these towns, but I am not "from" these towns. And they know what I mean instantly. In Boston, it matters.
(but sometimes I just nod, and act like I spent my whole life in Charlestown and am most definitely a "Townie". In which case, I could kill you in under 3 seconds with my bare hands. Like I said, street cred.)
Holy crap! Here I was, spending my days lollygagging around my neighborhood with my pals, a mix of pungent white trash street urchins and the children of well heeled liberal lefties with entire libraries attached to their house (awesome-right? An entire library!). I was surrounded by hippie culture. Isn't it normal for your parents to ask you to pass the joint to the dude across the room? No? Oh. Well, still. It was a pretty nice place to be. Lots of "gatherings", where I ran around with a dozen other kids, all of us dirty with matted hair, wearing corduroy bell bottoms and t-shirts that had glitter rainbow iron-ons. Don't judge-you know you had one too. (For those of you born after 1975, google "Iron-ons" and maybe even "Unicorns"). The parents, in that hippie way of theirs, left us on our own to "find ourselves." The 70's were the best!
So then, I arrive in South Boston in the 70's. Busing. Remember that? Fun times. Trying to block it out. I moved in to a 1 bedroom apartment on East 7th Street. Trees? None. Cars? Lots. Nice people? Not a one as far as the eye could see. I realized very quickly, after my very first friend stole all my quarters from my bank and then another nabbed all my treasured tiny glass animals, only to break them on the cement a block away, that I had better get tough-fast. But what could I do? Where I came from, we all sat in circles and sang Kumbaya all the time. No, that actually isn't true. Tough kids are everywhere, and I had dealt with my fair share, but I was not prepared at ALL for life on the mean streets of Southie. And if you don't know about Southie, I have 2 words for you-Whitey Bulger. This was a tough guy from a tough town. And this trickled down to the very littlest. Four year olds could shake you down for money. By 6, most of the kids on my street (almost all poor), had figured out how to scrabble to get what they needed. It took me years to figure out how to negotiate my way around, and by then, we moved across Boston to a place that was completely different-Charlestown. You know, "The Town" (thanks again, Affleck!) Sheesh-what the fuck were my parents trying to do to me?
I never did manage to fit in in either of these places, and when I meet people now and they ask where I'm from, I usually say Charlestown since I lived there the longest, and then they go into "oh yeah, do you know blah blah blah?" and I have to patiently explain that I am from these towns, but I am not "from" these towns. And they know what I mean instantly. In Boston, it matters.
(but sometimes I just nod, and act like I spent my whole life in Charlestown and am most definitely a "Townie". In which case, I could kill you in under 3 seconds with my bare hands. Like I said, street cred.)