THE GREEN BOX
JAMES F. MURPHY, Jr.
Copyright © 2013 by James F. Murphy, Jr.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1312-9
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper—without permission in writing from the author.
Dedication
For Margaret Ann – my mentor, best friend and loving wife.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the support of the Newton, Massachusetts Recreational Department for its part in the joys of my childhood and that of so many others. I offer my sincere gratitude.
Park Instructors: John Buck Donahue, Mary Feeney, Lillian Swartz, Betty Leary and Cal Scully.
Special Acknowledgement
For Sarah Elizabeth Murphy – editor, writer, poet and special pal – for helping to make this project a reality.
PROLOGUE
The first moment of spring comes in different ways to different people. For some, it is a square of moist, brown earth emerging from the melting slush of lingering March snows. For others, it is the crack of a bat and the sound of baseballs exploding in a corner lot, or the whiplash of a wet jump rope slapping against a cement sidewalk accompanied by the litany of: “Not last night but the night before/Twenty-four men came knocking at my door.”
For me as a child, it was the Green Box. It happened quickly, as quickly as the forsythia bush mysteriously transforming overnight to the color of butter. I’d be having breakfast, dreaming over the secret code on the top of the cereal box, trying desperately to decipher just what Captain Midnight was trying to tell me, when suddenly my name ricocheted off the clapboards of the house, “Sully, Sully.”
Jumping up from my chair, I’d see my friends, their feet sinking into the mud of the backyard, cupping their hands over their mouths, shouting, “Sully, Sully, the men are at the Park—they’re gonna paint the Green Box.”
That was it, spring—not baseballs, not jump ropes, nor snowmen with noses twisted and coal dust streaming from their eyes—it was the Green Box that brought my spring.
We would gallop to the Park, cutting through Mr. Casey’s backyard, pulling up like cavalry officers on a scouting mission, our horses breathless and sweating. Below us from our perch on the hill was a shiny green truck with Newton Recreation Department painted in trim, white letters on the driver’s door with a gold seal showing John Eliot preaching to the Indians and a date, too, that must have made my city the oldest in the world—or at least the country.
Two men were sitting inside, drinking hot coffee from cardboard cups, the steam from the coffee and the smoke from their cigarettes hiding their faces from us as we sat shivering on the hill above the Park, as quiet as birds, watching their every move. They stepped down from the running board, crushed their cups and discarded them into the rear of the truck, stretched a bit and walked over to the Box like those same cavalry officers inspecting a wagon train. There would be stooping, touching, picking at chipped paint, muffled conversation, heads nodding in agreement, and finally the walk back to the truck.
This was it. We looked at each other, pulling our knees up to our chins. This was it. But was it? No. There was more to discuss, more decisions to be made as they gestured and laughed easily in the early morning emptiness of the deserted park. When would they do it? We couldn’t wait forever. It was a school day. Already it was eight o’clock and school would start in 45 minutes.
Wait! They were beginning. Buckets and brushes were taken from the truck and carried over to the Box. One man did some scraping, while the other man stirred the paint—paint as green as the truck. Then the brushes were dipped in the bucket, and before our eyes the ravages and destruction of winter vanished and spring arrived.
It was late now, so we jumped the chain link fence, and ran up the hill on the other side of the Park, pausing once to see the Green Box, square and secure under a fresh face of paint.
All through the long day, I sat in the drab, dull classroom never hearing a word. All I could think was that tomorrow was Saturday. The Park would be open, and I would fly through Casey’s backyard and stand before that green shrine waiting for Miss Feeney, the Park Instructor, to open the Box. It would creak and squeak as it was lifted, and immediately the familiar smell of leather from baseball mitts, softballs, and chest protectors would awaken memories as the lid pushed back against the fence and the interior of the Box was revealed.
Parcheesi games, Chinese checkers, balls of all sizes, gloves, cards, gimp, paddle tennis sets, nets, catchers’ masks, bats, and so many other things that I always wondered whether they had been huddling together all winter in that Noah’s Ark or if they had been placed there just the day before, while I was in school. I guess I was always too excited to ask anyone, and now when I look back, I’m glad I never did.
CHAPTER ONE
Of course, it wasn’t just the Park that I wanted to see. Certainly the Park was important, probably the most important, but that was the larger part of it all. At my age of seventy-seven, I needed to capsulate, to focus on smaller objects that I could study closely, to pick and choose, accept and dismiss, and that was the reason that the Green Box had to be there. Because, after all, the Green Box had followed me all my life.
I turned the car right, off Newton Corner. George’s Café, Buddy’s Smoke Shop, Kennedy’s Butter and Egg Store, and The Five and Dime—gone—the block now housed the slick shops and boutiques for the smart, quick-stepping folks on the way up. Yuppies, they called them. Baby boomers. Now Generation-Xers.
The Paramount Movie House was a cement block without windows, up on Pearl Street, past the cul-de-sac of four neat, wooden houses that before World War II sported green, sharply cut lawns. On summer evenings teenage attempts at Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and The Dorseys poured out of brass, reed and drums from Joe McCarey’s house. “Joe McCarey and His Men of Music,” the combined ages of the “Men of Music” totaled ninety.
Channing Street to my left was utilitarian as a short cut to the Paramount. Movies changed every Wednesday. Schedule: Wednesday to Saturday—Sunday to Wednesday. Casablanca and Bogart, Blood on the Sand and Tyrone Power. Ronald Reagan, not so much as The Gipper, although tears rolled down my cheeks when he died among the white sheets and shadows of his hospital room, but the more shocking scene, when he sat up in King’s Row and gasped, “Where’s the rest of me?” And the dawning, and slow realization of all of us like a distant wave forming way out in the storm-tossed ocean, building and then suddenly crashing against the shore, “his legs are gone,” and the popcorn box poised in sweating hands. “They’re really gone. That bastard cut Ronald Reagan’s legs off just because he was in love with the doctor’s daughter.” And the word spread along the aisle, upsetting even Ralph and George, the two tough brothers from Rats Alley. Even young lovers responded momentarily by coming up for air and looking at each other in disbelief. “The doctor. I mean that guy is a doctor and he cut Ronald Reagan’s legs off.”
Rats Alley ran from the other side of the corner and up the hill behind the Y.M.C.A. The summer Ronald Reagan lost his legs, I spent the long, hot, muggy days with Ralph and George MacCann. It was exciting being with them because they were Protestants, they smoked, and they were tough.
Both were pale from cards and cigarettes and never leaving the house for very long periods of time. They didn’t play sports and every time I suggested a game, they’d say, “Sit down, for Chrissake and have a cigarette.” Ralph would turn the record player on and we’d