Boston--Assigment #119

Weekend Assignment #119: Boston! Home of baked beans and the Red Sox. Share some of your favorite (or not so favorite) things about this quintessential New England metropolis. From the Big Dig to local Founding Fathers, it's all up for consideration. For the purpose of this Weekend Assignment, you can consider things near Boston as well (in Cambridge or other nearby cities).

Extra credit: Did you ever want to go to college at Harvard?

 

I’ve been to Boston a few times, mostly when I was a child once when I was 5, the other time when I was 9.  Both times, my father had driven us crosscountry from California to Taunton, MA.  The first time we stayed there, we stayed at my aunt’s home, the second time, we stayed at my father’s aunt’s house.  It is all pretty much kind of a blur, but this is what I remember about Boston: 

 

I’m guessing that I’m 9, or 5 years old.  I remember being in a car with my parents, and a few other adults, and possibly a sibling.  We are driving along for a while, before I fall asleep.  When I wake up I find myself in an old fashioned looking part of town, down a particularly narrow road.  I remember cobblestone sidewalks, and little shops all in a row.  My mother was taking me there to buy a dress.  I still remember it—it was white with pastel colored flowers, and it had a white belt with flowers and tulips stitched on it.  I loved that dress.  I remember trying it on in the dressing room.  I don’t know what the dress was for-I think it was for a relative’s wedding.  Then, I remember walking on the cobblestone sidewalk, holding my mother’s hand. 

 

The only other memory of Boston is the airport.  I remember seeing a mural of hokey players in the airport.  It reminded me of my cousins who lived in Taunton, MA—they all played street hockey in the summer.  I still have cousins that live there in Taunton—lots of them.   My father’s parents first home was Taunton, and I can still see the huge covered porches, hot summer nights, the sounds of crickets, and those bicycle rides to the corner store where we could buy ice cream, and those long ropes of bubble gum.  Lots of cemeteries in Taunton—far too many in my opinion.  Just too spooky for me.  Every corner you would turn you would find yet another cemetery!  My cousins used to pay hide and go seek there, but they stopped after the police found a criminal hiding from the law there one year. 

 

Oh, and before I forget..  My cousins from there all speak like gangsters.  That accent just doesn’t go away.  I have cousins that lived there for 9 years, went back to Portugal, and they still have that accent.  It’s pretty amazing, like, even “WICKED COOL.”      

 

There I am with the long hair sitting in the front with some of my cousins who have that really "funney" accent.  See my cousin Manny, the John Travolta lookalike next to my grandpa...  HA HA...  That's what cool looks like, or did anyway... :)  circa 1979--Azores

 

Extra Credit:  Harvard?!  Nooooo....  I was never interested in Harvard.  I have cousins who went to Brown, and I had a friend who went to Princeton with Brooke Shields.