Return to Framingham, Mass--You Can't Go Home Again

[not2shabby]

Wow! My experience mimics yours pretty closely except I lived in Milford, Conn. until I was almost 13, then moved to Marion, Ohio in 1970. I went back one time around 20 years ago and tried to look up some old friends with no luck. You can't go back, things change and time marches on.

 

[Fred W]

Thanks for the great read, Hans. I can identify with you well, having grown up in the same area and at the same exact time.

Our childhood home was in Lexington, a Boston suburb inside of Route 128 (once they finished it), later dubbed Interstate 95. When my folks bought the place it was newly built, and all of the surrounding streets were still unpaved. All of the other houses on our street were very similar Cape style homes with younger couples starting new families, so we had plenty of other kids our own age to play with.

Because the grammar school was so close, all the neighborhood kids just walked to school everyday (unsupervised), and after school let out we'd all go home, change into our "play clothes" (remember when school clothes were too good to play in?) and would meet back up to have some sort of a pick-up game depending on the season of course, until the Mom's would start signaling us to come home for dinner, usually with a whistle or a yell.

The street right alongside our house was a nice hill, so all the kids would come there for sledding. We didn't close it down or anything, just one kid at the top and one at the bottom were the lookouts for cars, and when one came we'd all jump off our sleds until they passed. Lots of close calls as you might imagine. We'd be out sledding long after dark, until the whistles and calls for dinner.

As we got a bit older we would all ride our bicycles anywhere we wanted to go in the warmer months. Not just around the neighborhood, but all over town and further if we wanted. Parents weren't so paranoid about their childrens' safety as they clearly are today. Just be home for dinner or "you'll be in trouble," which really never amounted to much.

I've been back to my old neighborhood many times over the years. It's easy since we now only live about 45 minutes away (on those new interstates), up in Cow Hampshire. But it's all so very different now, it's hard to even reconcile what great times took place there in our past. Lexington has gone from being a suburb in the outskirts to "conveniently close" by modern metro standards. It has also become an affluent magnet town, which has really ruined it's character. We weren't affluent, just a bunch of blue collar kids with mostly good, hardworking parents. Our little old 3 BR cape house was bought by some rich yuppies back in the '90's, bulldozed and replaced with some huge monstrosity of a structure that nearly covers the entire lot. I don't see any young kids around anymore. I wouldn't even want to live there, nevermind raise my kids there.

You are spot on: In many ways, you just can't go back, even though your mind wants you to so very badly.

 

[Mr Bill]

I guess this makes many here FJRiends of a life time

I can't imagine why anybody in their right mind would move from Hillbillie country to Damn Yankee country, but you're still ok in my book Alan!

Is it the indoor plumbing?

 

[ionbeam]

I guess this makes many here FJRiends of a life time

I can't imagine why anybody in their right mind would move from Hillbillie country to Damn Yankee country, but you're still ok in my book Alan!

Is it the indoor plumbing?

Nah, there's way fewer Revenuers and the ones we do have are way less determined.

 

[Mr Bill]

Nah, there's way fewer Revenuers and the ones we do have are way less determined.

 

[BobbyBlue]

Thank you again Hans, We all get to go back a little with you and that is soooo cool ! As a GI brat almost every place i lived as a kid is either not there or secured for life behind a fence and the friends are scattered and long gone. We played hard and fast on base it seems. Good times. Thanks again.

Bobby

 

[SacramentoMike]

I know I've already posted on this thread, but it's evolved a little since then, and in a direction I'm liking, albeit not FJR-related.

Those nostalgic looks back and the old pics got me thinking back too, a long way back. To sledding in the winter--in snowy, hilly, Syracuse, to softball and football in the street, scattering when a car came along. We played on Buckingham Ave., where most of the cars that turned onto it only made it as far as their own driveway. In the winter, we'd hide behind a parked car or snow-covered bush and run out, crouching, to latch onto the big protruding chrome bumpers of the Buicks and Chevys that stopped at the stop sign, and slide along the snowy street. (We called it "hopping cars.") My mother never could understand how I wore the bottoms of my buckle galoshes so smooth so fast.

Playing all over neighborhood, unsupervised, all day long. And back out after dinner till past dark in the summer, coming home only when the parents would call. Or whistle. My dad had a very loud, distinctive four-note whistle he'd blast out the back door when we were needed. You didn't ignore it. I still get my (now adult) kids', dogs', wife's attention with the same four notes. Very useful anywhere--camping, Disneyland, Costco--anywhere. We'd jump on our 50-pound Huffy and zoom home and lean it against the porch all night. Lock? Why?

I remember running to the neighborhood store for a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and a pack of Kents for my mother. Total, 75 cents. No I.D. required. Mr. Bishop knew who they were for.

Anyway, thanks to Hans' post and some of the other pics on this thread, I've decided the next rainy day I'm going to get out at least one of those shoeboxes full of old photos and scan some of the best ones, and download them into the photo frame that now displays the best of our digital pictures from the more recent past. It's wonderful how much more enjoyment we get out of those pictures when they're displayed full time like that than we do from the ones on the shelf, folded into a dusty album.

 

[James Burleigh]

Thank you all for your nice comments. I'm glad you enjoyed my stroll down memory lane, as I've enjoyed reading your memories. Those were different times indeed as many of you have noted in describing your own childhood, when packs of kids washed through their neighborhoods unsupervised and carefree. Anyone else remember running behind the DDT fogger truck? That was great fun.

When I lived in Del Rio, TX, just before we moved to Mass., I could save up, find, or steal a quarter, then ride my bike to downtown and buy FIVE pieces of candy: Good & Plenty, Jujy Fruit, a candybar.... Of course movies were 75 cents.

Ah, nostalgia.... Why does it tug on us so? Is it because we were carefree, as in, "Please, Mr. Wizard!--I don't want to be a grownup anymore!"

Denver FJR, I love the quote about not missing our childhood homes but our childhood. That certainly rings true. And TripperMike, I like the comment that memories are just a thought away.

Mark, as for the cop's attitude, well, I didn't detect any attitude, just a matter-of-fact comment that pretty much things stay kinda the same around these parts.

 

[cota95]

Thanks for the great read! Interesting about no going back, which is true even though I only live 3 miles from where I grew up.

 

[SacramentoMike]

I just had an interesting experience, and thought about this thread again. In 1969 I came here to Sacto via Izmir, Turkey thanks to my uncle. It was a gorgeous day (again. Ho hum.) so I rode out to "Mather Industrial Park" (used to be Mather Air Force Base.) Wow, has it changed. There's still a National Guard unit there, but the hangars are mostly air freight companies, the old base housing is now just housing--and greatly expanded, there's quite a bit of industrial development, and the old munitions area, well, the change was pretty dramatic.

I haven't seen it since being discharged in January, 1972. Guess the AF left 10 or 15 years after that, and then development started up strong. But not around where we were (always in the farthest-away, most remote part of any base). The road dead-ended into the old security gate, but a rusty gate in the road kept vehicles back a couple hundred feet more, with a hand lettered sign saying "No Trespassing," and a County penal code section. The double fence was still up, still topped with razor wire, but the main gate was wide open. The security shack at the entrance was trashed and covered in graffiti. Beyond that was our old maintenance building, just a couple of rooms and the maintenance bay with a garage door on each end where we'd tow the bombs (nukes) in to work on them.

That place was trashed. Everything salvageable stripped, ceiling tiles and every other kind of crap strewn all over, windows and doors gone, asphalt and concrete broken with weeds coming through. It was a little sad, really, as much hassle as we'd been put through to keep it shiny spotless all the time and everything. And the bombs! We'd take some down to the flight line to load onto a B-52 for a couple weeks, then bring more for another plane and return the first ones for inspection and testing. If one had a tiny little scratch or bump, we had to take the most exacting measurements to make sure it was within tolerances--a couple thousandths or an inch or something. The ones below I saw at the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque after SWFOG last summer. Same kind we had there at Mather. These had survived a drop into the Mediterranean after a mid-air collision over Spain in the mid-60's. After that, they were never flown again--just loaded and ready. (FYI, these two would NEVER have passed our inspection.)

But Sacramento, and all of California, along with plenty of other states, took a gigantic hit when somebody decided we didn't need all those military installations anymore. We lost two AF bases and a major Army Depot here in town, for example. The local economy reeled for quite a while. Maybe it still is.

So anyway, back to the point of the post, and the thread--while the 320th SAC Bomb Wing Munitions Area was never really "home" to me, it sure was someplace it turned out I couldn't go back to. And 41 years is a hell of a long time.