I Have Stories

They were not really so nice…. just territorial

This is a picture of a small town in the late 60’s. Not my small ‘city’. ( No names to protect the innocent and not so innocent).

I was raised in a city near Boston.. much smaller than Boston -Here you described your neighborhood by naming the Catholic Church you lived near.

Neighborhoods consisted on single homes, triple deckers, with wood frames or stucco finishes.

Everyone knew their neighbors and could easily identify all the kids.

This came in handy -since we roamed free and only went home when hungry/thirsty or for bathroom breaks.

Playtime on weekends and summer was outside .. all day. Naturally, we explored and made forts and clubhouses out of refrigerator boxes and wood in our yards or driveways.

Girls were as wild as boys – we all rode bikes and jumped the dirt hill at the end of the street that lead to the marsh.

Our mothers did not like us going into the marsh to explore the weeds, foxtails and little frog ponds. But naturally, in groups, we learned how to keep our sneakers clean and avoid mud (and detection).
The dry reeds on the ground supported us and we learned to spread them over muddy areas and formed our own ‘Bat Trails’. Day after day we followed them deeper into the marsh. It was our routine and we loved it. Boys and girls played together in this endeavor. Whoever was around was fine.

We found a red vinyl car seat one day. It seemed really new and shiny and it became our couch. It never occurred to us to question why a pristine auto part just showed up .

It was ours and we had a ‘camp’ and a destination.

We did not realize how far we had wandered into the marsh and to us it didn’t matter….. until one day it did.

That was a the day we heard men yelling and arguing in the distance. It kept up until we heard the squeal of tires and a car roaring away on the highway nearby.

We did not know that this would be our last day on the ‘Bat Trail’.

We all went home and had supper, baths and TV .. our late Spring school night routines.

The next day , it rained hard and there was no outdoor play.

That night, our father came home at suppertime, as usual. It was unusually quiet, until it wasn’t.

Dad asked my sister and I … “Were you girls playing in the marsh yesterday?”. We answered honestly and he followed up with: “How far in were you?”. Truthfully, we had no idea – since the reeds grew very tall and were over our heads once we started into the ‘Bat Trails’ .

My mother looked nervous and asked “What were you doing in there?”. We told all. The trails, the red car seat, the club.

Our parents just looked at each other ,,,, and then they dropped the curtain.

” You were right outside of ” Bobby’s Barn”. Not sure about my sister,, but fear gripped me. We had been told never to go near there. We did not dare ask why not.

All the kids knew to stay away from there, either from their parents or by walking too close on the sidewalk outside and being yelled at by an old man in a dirty tee shirt.

( Bobby’s Barn) was a brick building with the front side on the highway and the back abutting the marsh. There was junk in the back of the building,, things like toilets, old wheelbarrows, pails, and wooden food boxes and bushel barrels. Our mother said there were rats there and we believed it,, and stayed away.

Our father usually yelled when he was mad ,, but he was not yelling . That, in itself, was scary.

He said we could never go back to where we were and that all the other kids were being told the same thing. He looked sad.

After supper he took my sister and I to the end of the block and we showed him the bike jump hill. Other kids and parents were there and all kids were told. “It is ok to go over the hill.. but then you need to turn around and come back. The end of the street and this hill is as far as you go”.

From then on we repeatedly jumped the hill for hours,, making it higher with mud and rocks.

One night right after the 4th of July, there was a fire in the marsh. Everything burned to the ground…. even the outside of ‘Bobby’s Barn’ was singed.

It was a loud and frightening night.

We did not play in the marsh after that and time went on.

Years later, we discovered the truth about ‘Bobby’s Barn’.

It was a front for gambling and fencing stolen goods and was run by the guys that hung around the the drug store and kept watch over over our neighborhood. They made sure that there were no housebreaks, or fights or stolen cars. They kept us safe. And they worked for a much bigger group out of Boston. It turns out that there were many of these places. One of the people involved was an infamous member of the Boston mob.

No wonder our parents were worried that night… they were given a strong message,

Evidently the red car seat had been stolen…..and people wanted it back.