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You Can't Go Home Again
You Can't Go Home Again
Published by Swampy Meadows
05-11-2011
You Can't Go Home Again

BEVERLY HILLS (MI) -- Thomas Wolfe wrote the novel “You Can’t Go Home Again” back in the late 1930’s. The gist of his tome:

It’s impossible to return to the way things used to be because everything changes.

I recently decided to ignore Wolfe’s advice and made the 12 hour trek back home to New England. Mrs. Swampy likes to remind me that we have lived in our current house longer than I resided in my hometown of Leominster, MA. Okay, so Beverly Hills, MI is home; Leominster is my first home. Here is some of what I observed:

494 Pleasant Street

The brown, wood shingled house with the fence around the yard and the two huge pine trees out front that I grew up in is now gray and aluminum sided with a meticulously landscaped yard that features a deck on the side. I have to say it looks a helluva lot better driving by it now than it did when I was growing up in it. I resisted the temptation to stop and ask the current owners to come in and look around. The hill on Eugene Street that we used to ride our sleds down seemed surprisingly small and flat, compared to the way I remember it.

Why is that?

Bennett School

About a mile down twisting, turning Pleasant Street is the place where I first learned to play hoops -- The Thomas Miller Court at Bennett School. “T” as we called him was a friend of mine who organized the very first Leominster Summer Basketball League when we were in high school. I was captain of one of the inaugural squads and since we didn’t have any sponsors, our unit was simply referred to in the Leominster Sentinel game recaps as “The Meadows.” “T” ran the league until he died too young about 10 years ago, while waiting for a kidney transplant and they named the court after him. I just happened to have my hoop gear with me, so when I drove by early on Sunday afternoon and saw some guys playing four on four there, I had to stop and get in a few runs. Where the house I grew up in had radically changed, the backboards at Bennett School have not been switched-out in well over 45 years -- they are still the same perforated aluminum jobs that will soak up the hardest bank shots that I played on back in the day. The competition has changed a bit, tho, as on this day old pals Jackie Hazel, Mike Bangrazi and “T” were replaced by guys named Izzy, Jose and Juan. The fellas couldn’t believe that I had driven there all the way from Michigan -- you would have thought I said that I came from another planet. Once we started playing, they really couldn’t comprehend it when I banked in a three pointer. “Hey, they’re the same backboards I played on when I was your age” I told them.

Some things actually do never change.

Unfortunately Lein’s Variety, the little corner store across the street from Bennett School recently closed. That meant that I couldn’t open the big wooden door, enter the walk-in cooler and grab a cold drink after we played like I used to back in the day.

Notre Dame Prep

My alma mater may still appear the same from the exterior as it did when my brother and I both attended high school there back in the Sixties, but it’s all different on the inside. Gone are the Brothers of the Sacred Heart who ran ND as a Catholic college prep school, replaced by a run-for-profit administration. The big house the Brothers lived in now serves as a dorm for the guys who board there. And the student body? Instead of local kids from central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire it is made up primarily of stud, fifth-year senior ballers who literally hail from all over the world. One of them is Zarko Valjarevic a 6-4, 185-pound wing from Belgrade, Serbia who, according to my pal Matt Schwade at FlyerHoops.net, is being recruited by Archie Miller to play for UD. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this out until after I returned from my trip home, otherwise I would have stopped and talked to Zarko.

What is the over/under on how many emails UD Pride MB poster “UDfaninMass” sent to Archie and Kevin Kuwik before they actually called ND Prep about Zarko?

My guess is four.

Notre Dame Prep football field

If you head up the hill on South Street from ND towards Leominster you will come to the corner of Electric Avenue and South Street where Notre Dame Prep used to play its football games under the lights. Every year the guys who attended ND were conscripted into becoming candy salesman, the proceeds of which were intended to go towards building locker rooms at the football field. The candy sale was the inspiration behind my former neighbor Robert Cormier’s book “The Chocolate War” as his son Peter was a fellow Crusader. I didn’t realize that was the case until the Elder Swampette and I had the chance to chat with Mr. Cormier several years ago at a book signing here in Royal Oak, MI.

The football field has been replaced by condos, so the question remains:

What the heck happened to the money from all of those chocolate sales?

Whalom Park

Speaking of condos, guess what now graces what was once the site of “The Playground of Central New England” from my youth? You got it -- more freakin’ condos. I can still smell the onions grilling with the hot dogs near the arcade and hear the rickety wooden roller coaster carrying a screaming load of passengers around the park. Ask any kid who grew up here in the Fifties or Sixties about Whalom Park and they can all tell you stories of money spent on skeeball games, enjoying the rides or swimming in Lake Whalom.

Clearly, places don’t make up a home; people do. And one person in particular was the primary reason for the trip home -- my 90 year old father.

His mind, which allowed him to graduate from high school at the age of 14, is nearly as sharp as ever, if you overlook the fact that he can’t remember what he had for breakfast 2 hours earlier. The hands that healed literally thousands over a 40+ year career in medicine and taught me how to hold a golf club are much thinner now. My dad always had the softest hands because he washed them continuously throughout the day. The eyes that could spot a fly on a deer’s ass 200 yards away have both had cataract surgery. He can’t walk because of a busted artificial hip. His body is failing him and he will spend the rest of his life right where he is now…in a hospital bed.

The irony that a man who spent his entire career helping people get out of hospitals is himself now trapped in one does not escape him.

In spite of all that, the sense of humor is still present and he was almost as glad to see me as I was him. We talk. Reminisce. Watch the Red Sox. My Dad has a favorite saying “Old age ain’t for sissies” and he is not lying. When I tell him that his situation sucks he replies succinctly that “it surely does.”

Clearly, Thomas Wolfe didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. While it is impossible to go back to the way things used to be, I did get to go home and I am glad that I did.

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at: swampy@udpride.com
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  #1  
By Bud Meadows on 05-13-2011, 10:12 AM
Great story,Swamp. I made the same journey a few weeks before you did, and have the same memories. Having ankles made of puppy droppings, I didn't play any hoops. The only addition to your itinerary I made was the obligatory stop by our Mom's grave. I reminded her that 3 of her 4 kids were now older than her, and I'm sure she got a chuckle out of that. I also told her about her latest great grandson, and how much he looks like his Dad, her grandson Steve, at the same age.
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