Number twenty-nine

I have a very cool co-worker named Willie. Actually, his name is Willie Williams and he went to Williams College in Williamstown MA and lived in Williams Hall on Williams Road. He's a few years older than I am and so got to live through more of the fun of the sixties than the tail-end that I managed to salvage for myself.

A few days ago, we welcomed a new co-worker, and I asked where this guy lived. Cambridge. Central Square. Oh really? I used to live in Central Square, on a street that very few people have heard of, even though it tees right into Mass Ave, the main drag -- Essex Street.

At this point, WW piped up, "Not number twenty-nine?" But of course, and that's how we discovered that we share a special connection.

He never lived there, but one of his closest friends is best friends with a man whose initials are CAT IV (son of CAT III, father of CAT V; the son is also known as Quint). Willie started visiting #29 in the early 70s before he moved to New Mexico for a while. Now, the best friend's son travels to Cambridge a fair amount and stays at Clifford's, at 29 Essex Street, so Willie continue to visit.

For my side, I blew into town in the fall of 1978. I'd dropped out of college, came to Massachusetts on a whim, and stayed in a friend's redone attic for a few weeks while I figured out my next steps. I eventually found a copy of the Real Paper and started reading ads for apartments to share. I remember visiting a lot of apartments, and finally found one that seemed reasonable, at 29 Essex Street.

What an amazing place. It was a classic triple decker. The landlord had rented out the back yard as a parking lot (eventually, the building was bought by a temp agency for the parking lot; the rent on the apartments was incidental). The back balconies had been falling off until the residents shored them up.

The three apartments were all shared by people who knew each other. The apartments' front door locks were all different; the back door locks were all the same. The two men on the third floor, Richard and Clifford, were ten years older than I was, ABDs in History from Brandeis. Richard was a waiter at a snazzy Cambridge restaurant. Clifford was making money by doing substitute teaching, driving a cab, and submitting to medical tests (early on, he was gone for a month, helping the medical community determine the effects of extended feeding through an IV. He was the control subject being fed).

But the person who decided I could live there was Charlie Reynolds. Charlie was delightful and perceptive and had lived there, but was too sloppy and crazy to be allowed to stay. (This is saying a lot -- both qualities remained in profusion after his departure.) However, everyone loved him, so he retained his key and came and went as he pleased. You'd come into the kitchen sometimes and there he was, calmly eating some cheese.

After a long discussion with Charlie, the guys decided that youth was one of those unfortunate things that most people grew out of, so they decided to take a chance on me.

I moved in to the front bedroom, a narrow room in which Clifford had built a loft bed with a single-sized mattress. I then went out and got a cat, Isaac, a playful kitten. And I got a short-lived job at the Boston Ballet, making costumes. (They hired me over the phone. They loved me, but ran out of money to keep paying me $3 an hour; fortunately, my rent was only $55 a month.) And I signed up for a car repair class, the best thing I could think of that distanced me from Swarthmore.

to be continued...