Manchester Redux

Manchester Redux

I wrote the story 'Paper and Fire' in February of 2008, and in that process, I went back in time to revisit the golden days of my youth in Manchester, Connecticut. The events surrounding the fire transpired over two days in 1960, but the fallout from those two days stayed with me through all of the years I lived with my parents on Parker Street. In going back to research and remember those events, I could not help but recall other people and places; people and places that played an important role in my personal development during those early years in Manchester. 
 
First, I thought about the people and places that formed the boundaries of my life before high school, the period covered by the years 1955 through 1964. That decade was a good period to be a kid in America, and in Manchester, as well. I traveled near and far on my bicycle and I never feared for my safety. The turmoil and change of the late sixties was still on the horizon, summers were for play and discovery, new and exciting opportunities were presenting themselves, and the intense competition that would leave its mark on later generations in a global economy was not yet evident.
 
The first thing that struck me when I began to think about those early days were the many names that came to mind, some I had not recalled in over fifty years. There were Marzialo, Spector, Hart, Vanderhof, Herman, Brett, Hindle, Meisner, Cherrone, Grey, Aceto, Saretto, Cushman, Lucas, Jeske, Howroyd, Stevens, Klein, Gryzb, Tuttle, Whiteman, Baldwin, Jefferies, Boris, Noonan, McCruden, Puzzo, Barnes, Felber, Cree, Tyler, Koplin, Erickson, McDonald, Lisciotti, Holman, Doughty, Lanagan, Brunoli, Chiaputti, Colangelo, Avery, Dumas, Rea, Van Camp, Norwood, Johnson, Davis, Del Greco, Nevins, Urbanetti, Thirion, Bruneau, O’Neill, Wydell, Zwick, McKay, Faulds, Petrone, Viera, Carson, May, Cataldo, McAdams, Blakeslee, Serrell, Roberts, Monette, Robins, Miller, Barton, Sliney, Platz, Conn, Tinker, Fitzgerald, Bucino, Denley, Hefferin, Starkweather, Kearns, Mitney, Manter, White, Cowell, Shorrock, Liske, Wallenburg, Talaga, Adams, Hamilton, DuPont, McInerney, Morehouse, Pavelack, Horton, Whitesell, Landers, Carlson, Kirk, Bradley, Hickock, Wychowski, Joiner, Smith, Bushnell, and (I’m sure) so many more in the recesses of my mind.
 
I attended Bowers Elementary School, and I still can remember the school song. The local schoolyards, and the houses surrounding them, primarily formed the boundaries of my world. To the west, there was the Bowers School (and its adjoining woods), and later, the Illing Junior High School was built. I can remember hunting for snakes in the old remains of ‘Vet Haven’, a post-World War II housing community. After the dismantling of Vet Haven, the city erected the new Illing Junior High School on its grounds. To the east were two elementary schools, Buckley and Manchester Green. To the north was Salter’s Pond, along with the fields and woods that extended to the east from the pond. To the south was Case Mountain, its great swath of wilderness and trails waiting for the young explorer to learn the mysteries of the mountain.
 
I was in the Boy Scouts for most of this period, first at Troop 152 at Bowers School, then at Troop 3 at the American Legion. Over the years, I went on many camping trips in all seasons and in all kinds of weather, and we traveled and saw many different sights as well. I enjoyed the time I spent in the scouts, and I made many friends, although I never rose very high in the ranks.
 
The change of the seasons determined the games we played, whether it was baseball, football, or basketball. In my early years, I played those games primarily at Bowers. Later, I made friends near Buckley and the Green, and my world expanded to include the games I played at those schools. Baseball games expanded this world further, and we traveled to Mt Nebo, Washington School, and Buckland to play against teams from distant schoolyards, and even other towns. 
 
In the summer, we swam at Salter’s, first at the pond, and then at the pool built later in the parking area. A dam formed the pond, and this dam had a long walkway built above that you could dive from into the water. On the side closest to the beach, a concrete projection called the ‘Keep Off’ jutted into the pond. To the east, upstream on the watercourse that fed the pond, hung a rope swing tied on a high branch of the same tree every summer. The tree, which stood at the water’s edge, was at the base of a steep slope from which people could launch themselves by the rope far out into the stream. We called the swing area the ‘B’, short for BAB (bare ass beach), and it was a great place to swim.
 
In winter, if the conditions were right, we skated at Salter’s Pond, and for several years we built shacks by the ‘B’ in winter, so we could have a fire and get out of the cold. In good winter years, Center Springs Pond would be open for skating, and no matter how many people were on the ice, you could always find a dark place at the edge of the pond to steal a kiss from the young girl skating with you, or the one who lost her grip when she found her self at the end of the skating line on ‘the whip’. Center Springs also had a grand hill for sledding or tobogganing, and I spent many a winter weekend there.
 
I learned to play poker at the picnic table of the Green School; someone had carved a bowl-like depression into the center of the hardwood table, and the bowl served as a place to deposit the antes and to hold the nickels, dimes and quarters that made up the pot. Adults make such a big deal about youngsters gambling, but kids learn important life lessons in these games, and kids should learn them early. We used to have elaborate baseball-card flipping contests. After a number of cards was determined (10, 50 ,100); one person would try to flip as many heads or tails as possible in the chosen number of cards. The second person would then go. If they bettered the number of the first, all the baseball cards were theirs. If not, the first person claimed all. I believe it better to walk home crying because you lost a hundred baseball cards than it is to lose something important later in life, when you have no experience with risk and loss. Everything in its time.
 
Thursday nights in the late spring and summer were the nights to walk to Main Street and cruise up and down the sidewalks. We met other kids and expanded our horizons, and I have fond memories of those trips on warm summer evenings. We would stop at Friendly’s Ice Cream on Main Street and mingle about in the parking lot. What could be more innocent than sharing an ice cream soda with a girl?
 
In those years, a pool hall existed in the center of town, the Red Sox Dugout. You went down a set of concrete stairs to a cellar below the Center Restaurant where eight pool tables sat between the cement pillars of the basement. The Dugout was a classic pool hall; it was dark except for the lights over every table, and stools stood at the walls around the periphery. The place had a terrible reputation with parents, but I played pool in the Dugout and remember it, basically, as a harmless environment. Gambling was common, cigarette smoking as well, but there were no drugs or weapons, and I spent some wonderful times at the Dugout as a teenager. I can remember the place packed with kids on a snow day, everyone flush with cash from shoveling driveways, playing 9-ball or pill-pool. The great Larry Lisciotti would play there, and I learned early what the beauty of raw talent looked like. Several interesting old characters made the place their home, such as Frank ‘The Bank’ DeVoto, who always wore a suit and a hat. There was another man who also wore a hat, who had a bad neck he could not turn or bend; they called him ‘The Broom’. Police officers would often stop down for a soda, or to get out of the cold or rain, and they would await their next call as they talked to the owner. The owner’s name was Don Fitzgerald (called Honey Fitz by some), and he sponsored a softball team made up of the many athletes who frequented the place. Don would take the team around the state to take on all comers, and the team played many benefit softball games at prisons around the state. The city of Manchester named the main softball field at Charter Oak Park the Don Fitzgerald Field in his honor. I wonder if the field still carries Don's name, or if the city has sold the name to someone else, someone more important in the corporate hierarchy.
 
The high school years finally came, and they were turbulent and challenging, as befitted the times. The names of people I knew and associated with grew. The country and society were changing, and new storm clouds were on the horizon. A distant war was coming closer, and I saw more and more kids in uniform around town, and read about them in the papers. Some soldiers from Manchester died, and some of them were my friends.
 
After graduating from high school in 1968, I also entered the Army, and I soon found myself in Vietnam. I served a year there, from June 1969 to June 1970, and then finished serving the rest of my Army career at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Eventually, I found myself back in the Manchester area, and I attended Manchester Community College and graduated with an AS in 1975.  
 
Occasionally, I hear from someone back east who tells me of the passing of an old friend from those days. When I look at the names I have included above, I see that time has taken its toll on my list of names. However, in the act of revisiting my past to write “Paper and Fire”, I could not help but to dwell on the death of my friend and ‘co-conflagrationist’, Ray Holman. Searching the web, I discovered Ray was a ground casualty and that he was killed by hostile artillery, rocket or mortar fire on June 16, 1969, in Quang Nam province in South Vietnam. He was a Marine Lance Corporal, he was half way through his tour, and the day of his death was nine days before I arrived in Vietnam for the start of my tour of duty.
 
The last time I had a Manchester address was 1985, and that was a temporary three-month stay before I moved to New Hampshire. My last regular visits to Manchester were made during the years 1985 through 1990, when I would come down from my home in New Hampshire to visit family or friends. I came down for every Thanksgiving Holiday to celebrate both the holiday and to enjoy the Manchester Road Race. The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving was the time to connect with old friends, those that lived in Manchester and those who were in town for the holiday. The two bars frequented by my friends, the Hartford Road Café and the Hungry Tiger, were always festive and crowded. The Manchester Road Race is run on Thanksgiving Day morning, and I joined my friends at the Highland Park Market to watch the runners as they went by near the top of a long hill, and perhaps drink a little champagne as well. In 1990, I moved west to California, and I currently live in Los Angeles.
 
Manchester seems a distant place to me at this time of my life. My friend Bob tells me the Manchester of today, “is not my father’s Silktown.” He has returned to his Manchester roots at regular intervals for a variety of reasons, and he tells me those visits typically engender a hornet’s nest of emotions in his mind. We had to come from somewhere, I think, and Manchester seems to me to be as good a place to be from as anywhere else does.
 
On one of those last trips to Manchester before I moved west, I stopped at Shady Glen for a cheeseburger and a coffee before driving back home to New Hampshire. Shady Glen was a noisy place, full of teens and families enjoying the signature burger or ice cream. At a small table on the other side of the restaurant, I saw Ray Holman’s parents. They looked old and frail as they sat and ate quietly, looking down at their food. I thought about walking over to say hello, but the restaurant was loud and the tables crowded around their area, and I somehow felt guilty and ill at ease. They paid their bill and left the restaurant, and I silently let them go. Today, these many years later, I wish I had talked with them.   
 
The deaths of my old friends in Vietnam, friends made during the time of childhood innocence, seem all the more tragic and forlorn. Therefore, in writing this story, I looked up Ray Holman’s entry on the Vietnam Memorial website, and followed that by visiting the entries for two other close friends who had died in that war.
 
There was Keith Miller, my friend from those summers spent around Salter’s Pond. He was a Marine, and he was killed on September 7, 1967 by small arms fire in Quang Nam province, South Vietnam. The record of his death that I read on the web said he was an E1, the lowest possible rank a soldier can hold, at the time of his death. It was clear Keith had a run-in with the Marine judicial system, and perhaps had a problem with accepting or questioning authority. Knowing first hand what the service is like, I consider that a badge of honor, a badge that his sacrifice makes all the more poignant. Rest in peace, my friend from the sunny days of our youth.
 
I also visited the entry for Victor Del Greco, my friend from the Green School days. He was in the Army, and he was killed on March 2, 1970 in Binh Dinh province by small arms fire. He was drafted into the service, and he served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, or the “Herd” as it was known, as an infantry squad leader. Vic received a posthumous promotion to Sergeant. I was serving in Vietnam at the time of his death. I am struck by the fact that today is March 2, 2008, and that the first time I visit my old friend on the Vietnam Memorial website is on the anniversary of Victor’s death in 1970.
 
I will raise one for you tonight, Victor, and for Keith and Raymond. In fact, I will raise one for us all, both the living and the dead. Here tonight in Los Angeles, I’ll raise my glass to Manchester, to the friends who made the experience what it was, and to the golden days of my youth. 
 

 
March 2, 2008
Los Angeles, CA