***An Old Geezer Sighting-Another 50^thAnniversary –A Run For The Roses  

 

I first met my old friend Peter Paul Markin down at the Surf Ballroom in Hull in the summer after we graduated from high school (he from Hull High) when we chased the same girl on the dance floor (who eventually dumped both of us, me first). Recently when I told him one afternoon over lunch the story of my 50^th anniversary “jog” around the old North Quincy cross-country course in the fall of 2013 I insisted on his writing something up about the event like he had done with other stuff I told him. Until now it has been a book sealed with seven seals but I thought this site would be an appropriate place to tell the gruesome tale. Here’s Markin’s recollections from that afternoon:    

Writers, or at least people who like to write, know, know deep in their souls, or hell, maybe only know by instinct that some things should not be written. Or if written then discarded (and in the age of cyberspace one can just press the DELETE button, praise be). That was my initial response when my old friend from the end of our high school days, Alfred Francis Johnson (hereafter just Al which is what everybody except nerdy girls called him refusing to play to that three-name thing like he was descended from Mayflower people or something), asked me to write a little something celebrating a 50th anniversary that he was all exercised about. I figured that the subject would be, knowing Al, some political event, the historic civil rights March on Washington, the fall of the Diem regime in Vietnam that led to all hell breaking out there, and here, or the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination that brought about a sea- change in American culture, brought down the “nights of the long knives” that we are still fighting a rearguard action against. But no Al had nothing so exalted in mind. What he wanted was to commemorate, if that is the right word here, the 50^thanniversary of the last year that he ran the storied North Quincy cross-country as a member of the North Quincy team. Jesus.

Yes I know, although these days the media and others on slow news days are prone to commemorate all kinds of anniversaries of events including odd-ball years like 30^thand 40^th, this was a weird request. But Al argued his case as he does when he is exercised about something and I had to hear him out. It seems that he had actually run that course this fall [2013] after 50 years of statutory neglect and so had wanted to tout that fact to all who would listen. He said that he had taken up jogging a few years previously to while the time away and keep the extra pounds off and somehow expected that would soften me up. That explanation however left me non-plussed even though I personally would have a hard time running one hundred yards (or meters, whatever the short distance is they run these days) without crying out desperately for oxygen and many other medicals services. So I was ready to give the devil his due with a pat on the back, see you later and move on, especially that move on part.

Al then went into high gear. He mentioned that a few years back, it must have been 2010, he had written a sketch about his current running prowess to commemorate the 50^thanniversary of when he began to run as a sport. He had run a mile over at some practice field, the “dust bowl” he called it which gives you an idea of the condition of the track, then and now, to prove that he was not over the hill, or something. Yes, I know again, like this was some fleet-footed ancient marathon feat worthy of notice. His point was that the sketch was well received by the AARP-worthy audience in need of elderly care he was addressing thus throwing down the gauntlet about my ability to match that result. No sale, brother, no sale.

That negative response on my part set him off, had him seeing red. He went into his classic “you owe me” rant. That “you owe me” stems from way back in the summer of 1964 when we first met down in my hometown of Hull which is about twenty miles south of North Quincy. We had met at the Surf Ballroom where there was a weekly live band dance (rock and roll, of course, now called classic rock, damn) and I “stole” a girl from him that we were both interested in. The girl eventually faded but our friendship began. And with that little tidbit he won his argument. Not on the merits of his case, and not even to shut him up, but because I told him that if I wrote something now about his silly anniversary then next year, next summer, I would get to write the real story about the 50th anniversary of the night that I supposedly “stole” that girl from him. And that would not be pretty, brother, it would not be pretty.

Al spent the better part of an hour telling me the story of his “mock heroic” run, including some back story information about that “historic” mile run at the dreaded “dust bowl” in 2010 to add, what did he call it, oh yeah “color.” Mostly though what he had to say was filler, you know, stuff, supposedly profound stuff, about memory, aging, mortality and other such lofty sentiments as he jogged along. After all how much can one write about an old geezer going at snail’s pace, sweating, swearing and huffing and puffing. Maybe a quick paragraph and done. As usual I only listened half-heartedly once I saw where he was heading so some of the material I jotted down may be off but here is the gist of it:

The year 2010 was decisive for Al ’s return to the running roads and fields. One day, one January day while he was walking along the Charles River in Boston he remembered that it had been 50 years before that he had first started running, running to get out of the cramped tiny single family seen-better-days house that he shared with three brothers and his parents, running to chase the blues away, running to get rid of about sixteen tons of thirteen year old teen angst and alienation, hell, running just to hear the sound of his feet setting a beat on the road and his breathe becoming steady after the first huffing and puffing. That angst running for the heck of it eventually led to a high school career in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track where he had successes and failures like a lot of others who pursued sports at some level. The up and downs of that career need not detain us except to give reason to why he was commemorating some woe-begotten anniversary. After high school he had given up running and went on to pursue more natural things like wine, women and song, including “stealing” a couple of young women on his own, a little dope (actually sometimes a lot of dope when hippie-dom was in high flower, some counter-cultural things, a tour in the army, work, seven kinds of work, some marriages and other relationships. You know an ordinary life, lived well or poorly but lived as time marched on.

Later that month Al had an epiphany. He had been back in his old North Quincy hometown on some unrelated business when he decided to walk around some of the streets adjacent to the old high school. While doing so, while taking this memory walk as it turned out, he walked past the old track (that “dust bowl” of blessed memory) where he had practiced long ago and that is where the idea of seeing whether he could still run a mile took form. A couple of weeks later, weeks when you and I and any rational AARP-er would be in sunny Florida or sunny some place Al was ready to run for the roses out in the frostbitten air.

Naturally he had picked a day and time when every dog-owner in the area was walking his or her day so he was to have no private agony as he ran his laps. From his description of the thing it was clear that he was foolishly ill-prepared to do a mile having not practiced, or even run except for a wayward bus in twenty-five years, and it was a close thing that he actually finished the distance. I will spare the reader the medical details and just note that the one funny thing Al said when I asked him his time for the mile was that information was top secret in the interest of national security. But enough of ancient filler.

That haphazard run got Al back to running, or rather jogging is the better term on regular basis. Jogging to get out of the cozy single- family house in the leafy suburbs that he shared with his third wife, jogging to chase the blues away, jogging to get rid of about sixteen tons of sixty plus years of angst and alienation, hell, jogging just to hear the sound of his feet setting a beat on the road and his breathe becoming steady after the first huffing and puffing. Now you have to know this about Al, despite his quirky nature he is intensely committed to a sense of history, to a sense of memory whether for large events or small. For example, when he talks about John Brown and his heroic raid in 1859 (date provided by Al as I did not remember it) at Harper’s Ferry you would think he had been there as an eye-witness he gave so much detail, stuff like that. So naturally when the small anniversary of his last year of competitive cross-country running came up of course he was going to commemorate it, although this time be better prepared than that ill-fated mile on the dusty old track.

Al had mentioned to me before, maybe several years ago, that this North Quincy cross-country course was storied, although not his story. The reason for that distinction was that his best friend, his running mate in both senses, running around the track and running around town, was Bill Cadger. Bill was a great runner who over his career won many races on the course and for many years held the course record. Al stood in his shadow, stood deep in his shadow. That fact is neither here nor there now, except that this course of two and one-half miles which they had run together in practice many times was laid out along the streets of old North Quincy in a way that Al had not noticed back in the day when running the thing. There were many landmarks of his youth as he ran it this time, this time when he was running, oops, jogging slowly enough to see things. To reflect on things, to remember. And those recollections, that filler, is what I will finish this sketch with. Except to tell anybody who will listen, anybody who wants to know, that yes Al finished the course, and did not, I repeat did not need medical attention, none.

The first part of the course started on the side of the high school, the East Squantum Street side. Just seeing the old high school reminded Al of the tough times he had getting through the place. Not academically, not even socially, except a little, a little shy and unknowing about girls (now called young women, thank you), no knowledge shy with four boys and no girls in the family to ease the way. And a deep-crusted Catholic studied ignorance of things sexual, how to deal with the subject, okay. He was moreover, and Bill too, which is why they got along, filled with all kinds of teenage angst and alienation, feelings of being isolated, and feeling out of sorts with the world. He said he laughed as he thought about that, thought about how someday, now someday he might get over that angst and alienation. Yah, he said he had to laugh about that, about how they all said back in the day he would get over it when he got older. The only thing better now was that he had a small handle on it, and some helpful medication.

The second leg of the course went down Bayfield Road, a road strewn with house of relatives, some that he liked and some, who later when he joined, joined with abandon (as did I), the “youth nation” that was a-borning in the late 1960s shut their doors to him, called him renegade, called him in the parlance of the times, “red,” “commie,” and “monster.” Jesus. But that street also had houses filled with budding romances, or flirtations in that close- packed community, romances and flirtations. Flirtations that he, girl-shy, had trouble picking up on when the boys’ “lav” Monday morning before school bull- sessions (emphasis on the bull) and he came up on the radar as someone that Sally, Susie, or Marie “liked” on that preternatural teen grapevine that had Facebook beat six ways to Sunday. He wondered as he passed some cross streets off of after Bayfield what had happened to Sally, Susie, and Marie. Did they too fade from the town’s memory like he had, Had they, like many in their nomadic generation, shaken the dust off of the town unlike their parents, his parents, definitely grandparents who stayed anchored to the town and took a certain pride in that fact. He had to laugh again, why not, he was moving slow enough to laugh and look and feel about things, and about that dog ahead who for a time was moving faster than he was, that even now it always came down to girls, oops, women, even after three marriages and a million short- haul things. And he still was trying to figure them out. Jesus   

 

The third leg brought him along what is now Quincy Shore Boulevard, along the ocean, along the one piece of geography that had defined his life; the old days remembrances of running along in the sand, a task too tough now with those wobbly knees and aching ankles, with Bill running a mile ahead, him getting all red from the sun; summer afternoons spent on the beach between the Squantum  Yacht Club and the Wollaston Boat Club the “spot” to hang in waiting around for, what else, that certain she you had had your eye on in school, or just what came in on the ocean; Saturday night parking steamed cars with the roar of the ocean drowning out love’s call; end of night stops at Joe’s for burgers and fries to placate a different hunger. Later, later walks (not runs, hell, no) along Pacific beaches, Malibu, Carlsbad, LaJolla, Magoo Point, with love Angelica, Angelica from Indiana and ocean-deprived, her almost drowning in some riptide not knowing the fierceness of Mother Nature, Uncle Neptune when the furies were up; solo walks, lonely walks when the booze and dope almost broke him (and he called me, desperately called me for help, and I said “I’ll meet you in Malibu and we’ll get you dried out, brother”). Much later solitary walks along endless Maine beaches trying to figure out what went wrong with that second marriage, and right with the third. Simple stuff that the rush of the foam-flecked waves called out for serenity. As he made the turn for home, the fourth leg down Atlantic Boulevard  heading back to the school he laughed again, twice laughed, first that he was going to finish running the whole course and secondly that no matter what somebody better make sure that he was not buried in some place like Kansas when his time comes. He had come from the muck of the sea and let him lay his head down there.

As Al travelled that last leg, the leg that brought him to the corner of his old neighborhood he cringed, cringed at the thought of all the misbegotten things that had happened in that vanished shack of a cramped house and of his estrangement from his family, a shame, a crying shame (and I, Hull–born twenty miles away from the same kind of neighborhood, with the same family grievances will not go into detail here -see we do not “air our family linens in public,” got it). But he also had a certain nostalgia, a certain sadness as he remembered the various generations of cats that helped make life a little bearable when cursed mother got on her sway, father silent, silent as the grave. Joy Smokey, Snowball, Blackie, Big Boy, Sorrowful, Grey Boy, Calico, and many others making him think of later long gone beloved Mums who had helped him get through drugs, booze, depression, angst, a bad marriage and about seven other maladies, and recently gone and still filled with sorrows and sadnesses his companion shadow Willie Boy shed a tear for him, and them all.

Then past Atlantic Avenue and many miles walked getting up the courage to talk to Lydia the first girl he fell hard for, and wonder, wonder too what happened to her, doing well he hoped. And last stop before the finishing hill and kick to the line Grandma’s Young Street house, savoir sainted (everybody agreed, sainted especially with devil Grandpa) Grandma who saved his tender teens from total despair, from starvation too and blessed memories. And regrets, regrets too that he had not been better at the end for her. Sorrows there, joys too.

Ah, streets, all known streets, all blessed streets (not church-blessed but still blessed), all ocean-breezed streets, all memory streets, as he chugged up that hill. A hill where in memory time, fifty years ago time, he would put a rush kick to the finish. That day he ambled across the ancient imaginary finish line, fist in the air like some Olympic champion. Done.

********

After Al had finished his story, his ordinary man down memory lane story, I asked him how long it took him to complete the course. (Al had told me at an earlier time his course times from the old days and I suspected that he had kept the time. I knew my man.) He replied that in the interest of national security that tidbit shall remain top secret. Some things don’t change. We both laughed.

Well I suppose since I wrote this sketch that I should wish Markin a happy 50^thanniversary and I do so here. But remember brother that other 50^thanniversary coming up next summer, and that story will not be pretty, no not at all.