Am I the only one who knows West Roxbury is the shape of County Roscommon, Ireland? Did someone show me a map or did I imagine it in a dream? Thirty years later, in that self-absorbed frenzy of mid-adulthood, I still hear the voice which told me so, its faded Celtic lilt apparent even after fifty years in America. Those little morsels of questionable wisdom I gleaned from the everyday folks who inhabited that five-block universe at whose center was the Park Street Bridge. And it wasn’t just the Irish. I was at the counter of Steve Slyne’s Deli ordering a Roast Beef sandwich when an old Greek lady told me that chewing gum while cutting onions will keep you from crying. Another time I was in line at East’s Drug Store when a well-dressed man of some Arabic extraction informed me that wearing neckties too tightly could cause a stroke. I may have balked at the time, but I was relieved the following year when told that the school uniform at Don Bosco Tech required only clip-ons. Yet none of us would ever be taught what we could learn for ourselves. The West Roxbury of my youth was an … Read more

If you ever question whether kindness in the world has—at least some bit—increased since the days of your youth, then consider this: as a child, there was a boy in my neighborhood who, due to a hideous birth defect, was known as Freak Nose. It wouldn’t happen today—it could never happen today—because if any kid suffered one-tenth the abuse he did, the school authorities, Department Of Social Services, local police and maybe even the ACLU would be involved. But it was the 80’s, before the anti-bullying movement and before teen suicide awareness, a time when such pathological harassment was seen as normal grade school teasing. For Freak Nose, the only thing worse than the era he was born in was the place he was born into. Boston was then, in many ways, still a hardscrabble city and a strain of blue-collar cynicism ran through the soul of every resident. Whether it was from the climate or tumultuous history, children were as harsh as their parents and in that small universe of street corner bravado there was little room for differences or disabilities. From the back or side, Freak Nose looked like any boy his age, with big feet, a mop … Read more