Fountain Of Youth

In Part Two of my Back Down Memory Lane Road Trip, I venture to Barrington, Rhode Island--a small town outside of Providence, where we used to live long, long ago...

First thing I notice as my wife and I turn onto Fountain Avenue is that it's not at all like I remember.

The proportions are off.  Everything's too small. Like the last time I was here, I was a Lilliputian among giants. And now--60 years later--it's reversed.

For instance…

There’s the water-tower hill the neighborhood kids called The Mountain. As if it were as big as the Himalayas.

As a boy, I played on The Mountain with my friends. Hiked around the "woods" that surrounded the water tower. Pretended we were Daniel Boone. Overturned rocks looking for snakes.

But now?

It's puny. Barely even a hill. The so-called woods a handful of trees. Nothing mountain about it. How did I turn that into the Himalayas?

We pull up to my old house. Classic Cape Cottage--New England's crawling with them.

As I stand there unsuccessfully trying to invoke some deep-rooted connection, a man walks out of the house.

It’s the current owner, no doubt wondering who's this old guy snapping pictures of his property.

"Can I help you?"

I figure here goes—and give him the whole story…

My name's Benny. I live in Chicago. But I used to live here. In this very house. Way back when. In the `60s. And `50s. Yes. Think about that. I’m so old I lived in the `50s! My father was a professor at Brown, then he got a job at Northwestern--in 1966--so we moved and never came back. Until now. 

I fall silent. Probably more details than he needed. Or wanted. 

The Mountain…

He couldn’t be friendlier. Says he moved here five years ago. Seemed like a nice place to raise his kids. And, actually, he himself comes from Barrington, Illinois.

"Graduated from Barrington High?"

"Yes!"

"So, you're a Filly?"

"Yes! Well, the girls are the Fillies. The boys are the Broncos. How did you know we were the Fillies?"

"I don’t know, man. It's a thing with me. I know school mascots. I’m weird like that."

He asks if the neighborhood looks as I remember. 

"Not at all. Every thing’s smaller. Like the gully."

"The gully?"

I point to a barely detectable little slope in the road. "We called that the gully. Like it was a deep valley. Look at it. It's nothing. What's a matter with me? Why was everything so huge, when it's really so small?”

"You were just a kid--things look way bigger when you're a kid."

My wife and I walk down the gully.

I tell her about the Leahy boys—Bobby and Donald--who lived in a house at the bottom of the gully.

They were rough-and-tumble, like brothers can be. I was always a little worried they might slug me like they slugged each other. 

I wasn't the rough-and-tumble type. Didn't like to fight. Hated punching almost as much as being punched. Lost every fist fight I ever had--so I learned to avoid them. Fist fights, that is.

The Gully…

We follow the walk I took to school. Back then, it seemed like a trek. But in reality, it's maybe a quarter mile. Along the way we pass several telephone poles, still standing even though most, if not all, local landlines are probably gone.

I tell my wife about walking home one evening—idly slapping a stick against the telephone poles I passed.  And when I slapped this one pole, the lights up and down Fountain Avenue went out. Horrified, I ran home and confessed to my mother...

Mommy, mommy, I made the lights go out!

She laughed and said—oh, Benny, no, you didn't.

And she explained what she'd heard on the car radio. The eastern seaboard had been hit by a massive blackout, which had nothing to do with any telephone pole hit by me. It was the Great Blackout of 1965. November 9, to be exact. 

My wife and I cross Washington and turn left to the school. Only there is no school. Just a cluster of houses. First the building on Main Street in Manchester. And now West Barrington Elementary. Gone. What’s going on? The center cannot hold!

I see an insurance office. I think--if anyone knows what happened to the school, it'd be an insurance agent.

So I walk into the office. Sorta wary. Remembering ol' sourpuss in the coffee shop on Main Street. The one who told me things change, so stop blubbering like a sentimental old baby and get on with it already!

Inside the office are two men and a woman. Once again, I explain my situation. Used to live here. In the `60s. Came back to see how my memory of yesteryear conforms with the reality of today. But my old school is gone. What happened to West Barrington Elementary?

One of the men says they tore it down--in about 1984.

"Did you go there?" I ask.

"Yes..."

"You were a Bulldog?"

"A Bulldog?"

"Yes, we were the West Barrington Elementary Bulldogs."

"I didn't know that." He turns to the others in the room and asks, "did you know that?"

No one knows that. "How did you know that?"

For the second time that morning, I find myself saying--I'm just weird like that. Go on to explain I remember an old picture--circa `964--in which I’m wearing a sweatshirt that says West Barrington Bulldogs.

The other guy says I'm his age.  I ask for his name and tell him mine. Neither strikes a chord. I look at him as he looks at me, searching each other's face for signs of recognition. Nothing comes.

"Did you know the Leahy brothers?" I ask.

"Yes. Bobby and Donald.”

"Do they still live around here?"

He shakes his head. Both are dead. One in a motorcycle accident. The other from a heart attack.

That hangs in the air. 

"Well, I'll let you get back to your day," I say, heading out the door. "Go Bulldogs!"

As my wife and drive away, my mind swirls with many thoughts. Something eerie is going on. Not sure what. Clearly, it's related to my earliest days when I was living here. I was small and vulnerable. Everything seemed big and threatening. Like the mountain and the gully and those rough-and-tumble Leahy boys—may they rest in peace.  It's as though there's some residual fear in me left over from those days.

I remember that line from the scary movie. Where the teenager babysitter asks the operator to trace the threatening phone calls she's been receiving, and the operator calls back to say--the calls are coming from inside the house!

And--oh, my god, I'm the house the calls are coming from. Like It, where there's a monster, dressed like a killer clown, in the sewer. Only really, the monster is inside the kids who come back to their hometown.

You know, maybe I should cut back on the Stephen King books and movies.

On the way out of town, we stop by a lovely pond to watch the swans. I chat with a retired meat cutter who's also appreciating the tranquility of that spot. Says he rides his bicycle all over the area. Figures he's ridden more than 20,000 miles over the last few years. Gives me the names of several good restaurants for Portuguese cuisine in nearby East Providence. Nice guy. Enjoy our conversation. 

Yeah, Barrington's not so bad. Just different than what I remember.