Last week Joann came down and brought this photo of all the neighborhood kids eating watermelon in our backyard in the summer of 1964.
The photo got Bette and Joann to talking about all those “kids” and remembering what it was like on Newport St., where the families were big, the houses small, and money was tight. But somehow life was OK. In fact, Bette says those were some of the happiest days in her life.
All the neighborhood mothers seemed united. The rules for the neighborhood kids were the rules, like somehow the parents had gotten together and made a pact, written a special code of conduct for that one block of that one street. Values, punishment and rewards seemed consistent from family to family. Talk about a tribe.
Yet those same parents sure acted like kids, turning cold, unfinished basements into party spaces. Staying up late drinking beer and playing bridge on Friday nights. And let’s not forget that one father who put firecrackers in an outhouse during a summer vacation when we all migrated from Boston to NH. Sometimes we kids felt like the parents, yet we didn’t know what the rules were suppose to be. So we just ran wild too.
On weeknights the mothers often were out the door as soon as fathers were home and kids were fed. I remember my mother taking evening sewing classes and making us such beautiful outfits. The hounds tooth skirt, coat and matching hat for Easter was one of my favs. We couldn’t afford Filene’s but Bette made us originals.
See the 1964 watermelon photo has been good for Bette and all of us.
A good photograph is a wonderful distraction. It takes you somewhere else, far from the ‘mom-is-dying” reality. Photographs trigger all kinds of memories, mostly good, some not so good, but now is the time to talk about those too. Tick tock.
So forget about baking brownies. Dig through those old photo albums and bring one really great picture.
