More Boston

Boston is a sports town, and I arrived at an auspicious time for sports. The Red Sox won the American League Pennant in 1967 - only to lose to St. Louis in the World Series (we called it the "Curse of the Bambino"). The Celtics had been great for a dozen years. The Bruins were on the rise behind Bobby Orr. The Patriots were marginal, but Joe Bellino, who had spent four years in the service after graduating from the Naval Academy, had brought charisma to the team, saving it for the success of the team today.

As good as the Celtics and Bruins were and as excellent as the Patriots would become, Boston was all about the Sox - the Red Sox. If ever there was a baseball town and a ball park that reflected the intimacy of a City, it was Boston and Fenway Park. I could actually go to freaking Fenway Park and watch the Sox. Un-fucking believable.

Boston was the Kennedys - in tragedy and embarrassment; racial animosity in Dorchester and Roxbury; sitting by the murky Charles River watching the coeds stroll by, on the way to class at Radcliffe. Some were lovely, but none were fooled by my amateurish bullshit. I had to go to BU to find such gullibility.

If you wanted tough, Boston had the Combat Zone. Right off the Commons, dangerously close to an ordered downtown. It was a scary place - Times Square North. Two buddies and I cruised it on foot in early 1968, trying to pick up a prostitute for a fraternity scavenger hunt. "Pick her up and get her to ride the subway back to Tufts" were the instructions of our pledge master at Zeta Psi. And we were to get her to agree to do this without showing her any money (they had stripped us of money and identification as we left the House).

We walked down the most corrupt looking area of the Zone, trying to find a prostitute. We stopped and asked what we thought were prime candidates:

"Are you a prostitute?"

They walked up to us, shaking their heads and laughing at our stupidity. "Too dumb to be cops," they chuckled as they ambled on. These ladies had skirts up to their crotch, tops down to their nipples, ratty black pattern stockings and elevator shoes. What did they expect for us to think? We had a Crocodile Dundee moment as they passed us: "If you dress like that down here, people will think that you're hookers." They went from us to the arms of pimple faced 18 year olds, fresh out of Basic, flush with newly acquired cash and determined to break their virginity before shipping out to Vietnam.

After 15 minutes of hustling, we finally got an especially played out, very stoned whore to listen.

"Don't laugh," we said in our best Bostonese, "it will be a bitchin paty."

"You'll have a pissa time."

"We'll give you a wickid lot of money when we get there."

She declined our invitation. We caught hell when we got back to the frat house:

"You guys are wickid wothless. They would have had a pissa time at this bitchin paty."


I loved Boston when I was a gleam in my father's eye; when he played where I later played, on the sidewalk in front of my grandfather's house on 347 Marlbourough St; when we both left when we were 8 years old - he to Prep School, me to exile in Washington, DC. I loved Boston as a teenager, lying in my bed in Bethesda, Maryland, listening to an obscure rock band sing their one hit wonder:

"I love that dirty water . . . oh, oh Boston, you're my home."

Heard at Fenway Park now after every Sox home victory. It all went full circle for me in 1967.

Gotta love that dirty water. Boston you're my home. Again.