Alfred Johnson:
CLASS OF 1964
North Quincy High SchoolClass of 1964
Quincy, MA
Atlantic Middle SchoolClass of 1960
Quincy, MA
Snug Harbor Elementary SchoolClass of 1958
Quincy, MA
Alfred's Story
Hi - I have just today (September 10, 2011) gotten back on Classmates. I have posted a ton of material via a 1960s NQ-oriented blog on the North Quincy Graduate and North Quincy Alumni Facebook pages. I will write more later but right now I am just trying to touch bases with people on this site. Did we have classes together at all? Later Al
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For those who need another space to connect with NQHS alum -I have created a "Tales From Old North Quincy" blog that I have linked to the "North Quincy Graduates" page on "Facebook". Or Google- "tales from old north quincy." The blog format is a lot more user-friendly that this site for my stuff. And no spam or pop-ups.
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In Search Of Lost Time - A Walk Down "Dream Street"
....with apologies to the great early 20th century modernist French writer Marcel Proust whose most famous (and massive) work I am stealing the title from in the first part of my headline. Apparently I will steal any literary tidbit, from any source and from any time, just to round out an entry in this space. I had also better explain, before some besotted, hare-brained, pencil at the ever ready, probable deconstructionist devotee, probably tragic childhoodÃÂÃÂÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂd as well, post-modern literary-type jumps on me I know, and I know damn well, that an alternative translation for the title of Proust's six volume work is <em>Remembrances Of Things Past</em>. But isn't this <em>In Search Of Lost Time</em> a better title for the needs of this space? In any case I promise not to go on and on about French pastry at teatime (which, by the way, brother Proust did do, for about sixty pages in the volume <em>SwannÃÂÃÂÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂs Way</em>, so there is the trade-off. Okay?).
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<strong>When you were a student did you ever sit on the main entrance steps of North Quincy High and dream of your future?</strong>
This now seemingly benighted entry, originally simply titled ,<em>A Walk Down "Dream" Street</em>, started life as an equally simple question posed to fellow classmates in the North Quincy High School Class of 1964 (although the question is also suitable to be asked of other classes, as well) in the year 2008 on the <em>Classmates. com</em> website. I had "discovered" the site that year after having gone through a series of events the details that need not detain us right now but that drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as "running" around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to), Bill Cadger.
Naturally, the question was posed in its particular form, or so it seemed natural at the time for me to pose it that way, because those old, "real", august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, natch) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence "real") is a place where Bill and I spent a lot of our time, talking of this and that.
Especially summer night time: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo, ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, be my daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in key turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Wollaston Beach night. Do I need to draw you a picture, I think not. Or for the faint-hearted, or good, denizens of that great American teenage night a Howard Johnson's ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to <em>American Graffiti</em>-like fast food drive-in, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night), fries and a frappe (I refuse to describe that taste treat at this far remove, look it up on <em>Wikipedia</em>, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, rounded, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, for that matter), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that "running around town, doing the best we could" of ours ended up mainly consisted.
Mostly, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Quincy-sized, non-world-beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that's not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21, weighty. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing, small or large take your pick, even breathe-stealing, North Quincy. Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).
The question, that simple question that I asked above, moreover, did not stand in isolation. As part of that search for "run around" Bill, for figuring out tangled roots, for hard looking at past, good or evil, for hard longing connectedness to youth, for bleeding rai...Expand for more
der red days I took advantage of the Classmate Class of 1964 message board to fire off, what now seems like an small atomic bombardment of entries about this and that, some serious, most whimsical. (They are, for the most part, still there if you are interested). Obviously though not every question I intended to pose there, or here, especially not this one, was meant to be as whimsical as the first one that I did about the comparative merits of the Rolling Stones and Beatles. With this long-stemmed introduction the rest of the 2008 original entry is (edited a bit) is, in the interest of keeping with its original purpose, posted below:
"Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row; of keeping one's head above water under the impact of young life's woes; of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless.
I will confess here, as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that family history-rooted, hard-crusted, incense-driven, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to the North Quincy High School Class of 1964 fold did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of months ago (December 2007) my mother, Doris Margaret Johnson (nee Radley) NQHS Class of 1943, passed away. For a good part of her life she lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Quincy. To my, and her, roots. As part of that experience as I walked up Hancock Street and down East Squantum I passed by the old high school. That triggered some memories, some dream street memories, that motivate today's question.
If my memory is correct, and I am not just dream-addled, I had not been in North Quincy for at least the pass 25 years and so I was a little surprised to see that the main entrance steps of the high school, and central to the question posed, were no longer there. You remember the steps, right? They led to the then second floor and were flanked by, I think, a couple of lions or some gargoyles. (I have since then, after viewing a copy of the 1964 <em>Manet</em>, found out that they were actually flanked by a sphere and a column on each side. I was close though, right?) I can remember spending many a summer night during high school, along with my old pal from the class Bill Cadger, the legendary track man and cross country runner, sitting on those steps talking about our futures. Now for this question I am only using the steps as a metaphor, so to speak. You probably have your own 'steps' metaphor for where you thrashed out your dreams. How did they work out?
A lot of what Bill and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls, the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember, please, those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Bill went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.
We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember the content of Bill's but mine went something like this. I had dreams for social justice. For working people to get a fair shake in this sorry old world. That, my friends, has, sad to say, not turned out as expected. But enough from me. I will finish this entry with a line from a Bob Dylan lyric. "I'll let you be in my dream, if I can be in your dream". Fair enough?"
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Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
Banks are failing. Unemployment is way up. Housing values are headed toward the floor. Retirement accounts are taking a beating. And that is only the grim news on an average day. Other days ratchet up the doom and gloom from there. The whys and wherefores of that news, however, is not what I want to comment on today. One of the very few virtues of growing up 'dirt poor' first in the old Germantown housing project and then in an old shack of a house on the wrong side of the tracks on Walnut Street in North Quincy, is that even now I am personally inured to the vicissitudes of the economy. Hell, when I was young hard times were the only times. I did not, except by rumor, know there were any other kinds. That came later.
All of the above is by way of making this point. I have been broke more times than I could shake a stick at, both by choice and by the fickleness of fate. I have been flat broke, dead broke, and every kind of broke you can think of. At one time I think I almost made a religion of it. I have been in the clover a few times too but that has always been a very near thing.
Let me put it this way. I have leisurely strolled across the Golden Gate Bridge. I have slept huddled, with a newspaper for a pillow, under the Golden Gate Bridge. I have eaten at restaurants where one does not ask the price, or need to. I have eaten gladly from Salvation Army soup lines. I have sat idly on hopeless park benches in nameless forsaken towns. I have sat idly, drink in hand, in some deck chair on some patio watching the surf rise and fall on the rocks at Bar Harbor. I could go on but you get the idea. Here is my accumulated wisdom though-it is much better to have the dough. But just in case the times get even worst than they are now I am keeping in shape. "Brother (Or Sister), Can You Spare A Dime?"
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