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During this past Patriots football season, I went to my parents’ house a lot for Sunday dinner after the early games in Gillette. I wanted to make sure that I spent time with my mother as much as I could while she was going through her cancer treatments. My parents now live one town over from where I grew up, East Boston. But the drive from Gillette to their house didn’t require that I drive through my old hood. So one night after Sunday dinner I decided to drive through my old Eastie hood. Friends, family and people from work had been telling me how much Eastie had changed but I didn’t have any reason to go back to see for myself so I didn’t really know how much. I started property hunting recently and I would occasionally come across some new developments and highly priced homes in the old neighborhood which shocked the shit out of me. And when I finally spent the time that night to drive up & down the old streets and around & around the old blocks that I knew so well as a kid, I really didn’t recognize the place I spent the first 21 years of my life. I mean I was happy to see the old place looking all shiny & spiffy as shit now. And there were faces of people who I never saw when I was a kid. It was…different. And I have to say, I was kind of sad. My rough & tough hood has a special place in my heart but this wasn’t MY Eastie. It felt like someone else’s. The third floor apartment in the old three family house that shook every time a plane took off or landed in Logan that I grew up in was still there. But even that old house looked different. On a street I no longer recognized. I guess there comes a time when you just can’t go home again. And I found that time.
You ever go back to your childhood neighborhood decades later? Did anyone want to kill you too???
Until next time. Always take it there.
T
T-blawg 