Drive About, Spring 2016

Another drive about as Beth collected appraisal pictures and I went along. It looked like the first day of spring, burgeoning and lovely. My father died on the last day of winter in 05, which seemed appropriate.

Down Rt 3 to I-95, which is still Rt 128 to me. Took the exit onto Rt 2A/Marrett Rd, heading towards East Lexington. Passing close to where I grew up.

For instance, the Old Res (for reservoir), Threw a lot of rocks into that thing. It represented semi-wildness in my cultivated childhood. It became a town swimming hole at some point but that usage seemed wrong to me. Too civilized. Passed the store where I used to get comic books and the usual oddlots of candy. Now a paint store. There are now also places where I can get a fresh BMW or have a laser scrape my face potentially fresh face. Progress.

Further on, the busy intersection of gas stations, convenience stores (not called that in the day), and so forth. Considerable so forth, in fact. A daunting number of large houses have been squeezed in behind the Dunkin' Donuts. My goodness. My former home just visible above thru the winter trees.

Somebody left coupons at our store to a Sports Barber Shop here. There used to be a pharmacy at the location. Free haircut, were I inclined. Beth thinks I’m absurd for abstaining, but see: it’s gonna be talkative stylists hepped up on local sports, and there’s something about a towel on my head and a scalp massage. Sitting in front of a mirror whilst hirsute machinations occur is travail enough, don’t add to the list.

So anyway. On to Mass Ave, within sight of the convent where I worked thru high school. It was a French-Canadian order, they were just enduring modernization (younger nuns opting for less tonnage in regards to their habits), and Catholicism was mystery to me then. Unlike now. The place now serves the assisted-living community, of which I am not, to the depth of Republican soullessness, a part.

Got pix of a comp near the bike path. The path is a stretch of paved intent running from Bedford to Cambridge. Formerly, trains ran all the way to Concord, with a northern spur to Billerica. Such modicum of individualism has been displaced by the three car garage.

Next we took the contrary route back 2A. Past, for instance, the site of an ice cream stand of much enjoyment, as the lad I was. Now part of the Minuteman National Park, the stand has been removed, and more emphasis has been placed on the fact that Paul Revere was captured at the site, on the fateful night (hardly a man is now alive). Pix taken.

Then on to Rt 2, the vital artery to Cambridge/Boston and the palooka world of valid employment. Route 2 has been receiving a quick, perhaps vicious, update from the country road that wandered to the western end of the state to a sluice that pours workers of the world to and fro, poor sods. Where quaint Concord and Lincoln meet, a swath of hillside has been transformed into condo heaven, a hillside sliced free from consideration and replaced by bonded construction of delirious intent. Irony Inc decreed this must happen maybe one mile from the vapid sanctity of Walden Pond. You know, where the guy wrote “Amplify! Amplify! Amplify!”

Past Walden, and over the culverted Sudbury River, Emerson Hospital, where I was born, and my mother died (not the same day). Dad died across the street. Looping around the famous rotary in front of the Mass Correctional Facility, we bended toward West Concord. Formerly the working class side of Concord, but real estate prices make that a memory.

Heading to Maynard on Rt 62. Maynard remains a working class town, but shows earnest in upgrading. It nestles around the Assabet River which, with the Sudbury, joins the Concord, eventually. Found all necessary comps.

Homeward, oh. A gas station in West Concord was removed for the flowering of a new bank. Next to old bank. Thru Concord. Bang left past the Colonial Inn, once owned by Thoreau’s father. Monument St past the Old Manse of Hawthorne’s mundane writing career (mundane, of the world). Past the real estate prices and horses swathed in blankets. Some real world, no doubt, exists beyond the palaver. I mean, we saw crocus and daffodils.

Dropping her report off meant we could side trip to Wegmans. Nothing egregious about the store but the crowd overwhelms me. Where should I put my piddling cart amidst the thronging? We escaped with provender and victuals. I hear the cat snore behind me as I write.