After reading Ralph Ayers' column a few weeks ago concerning earlier times in the Port City, I was compelled to respond.
First of all, let me comment on Ralph's opening phrase about my beloved Patriots. I've been a season ticket holder since 1980, having missed a total of three regular season games (two were attending weddings and one was due to a hospital visit for a clogged artery). No, I won't get over their loss to the Giants! But by the time the 2008 season rolls around, I will have learned to live with it.
Although I have not been blessed with Ralph's longevity in this fine city, however, I have been very fortunate to have enjoyed many aspects of Newburyport, being brought up on Hancock Street in the heart of Joppa.
Things such as ... walking down to the seawall on Water Street, which was just an iron railing at the time, and catching minnows to go fishing with, or flounder fishing with my stepfather off Woodbridge Island, back when you could fill a five-gallon bucket of flat-backs, or biking out to the Artichoke for some afternoon fishing, or having a hand-made soda either at Izzy's or Saunders Drug Store, pepper steaks from Tony Baker's, candy beads after school from Pattow's Market on Prospect Street, collecting returnable bottles and cashing them in for 2 cents each at "Shootzies" Market, which was right next to March's Hill, and buying a Coke from him (Dave Shutz) ... for 8 cents, saving your paper route money and thumbing up to the Port Recreation Center on Storey Avenue, aka the "Rec," and bowling a few strings for 10 cents a string, then going upstairs to go roller skating for the afternoon or, if we didn't have any luck thumbing up High Street, bowling at Dominick's in Market Square, or taking in a movie at the Port Theater (I saw "Ben Hur" there for the first time) or, if we were really flush, buying a fresh-made "bee's nest" at Hicks Bakery on Purchase Street (I still remember the aromas oozing from that building), ice hockey games at Gus Berry's Pond on South Pond Street and Johnson's Pond, on Rolfes Lane, and the big thrill of going to Pines Speedway in Groveland on a Saturday night to watch the stock car races.
These are just a few of the thousands of things I did in my youth. It was a simpler time back then and we didn't need much money to amuse ourselves.
We didn't need computers and your mom didn't need to call you on the cell phone to remind you that supper was ready. When the street lights came on, you knew it was time. Besides, in the winter I always wanted to be home for supper on a Saturday night. After a long day of either ice hockey or sliding down March's Hill, sometimes on a piece of cardboard if you didn't have a sled, I would walk into my mom's kitchen, where a pot of home-made beans was cooking, with home-made bread. Another aroma I will never lose!
I guess my point being, having grown up with six brothers and two sisters and a saint of a Mother that always somehow put food on the table, clothes on our backs (she sometimes made our Easter outfits by hand — who does that today?) I can look back on what some people called harder times with a profound appreciation of my childhood for having grown up in a simpler era where you knew all your neighbors by name from Hancock Street to State Street.
So I thank Ralph for reminding me of happier and less stressful times and, although I have moved on from Hancock Street, I will always be a "Joppy-ite" at heart.
Tim Fowler lives in Newbury.
