Ray in Exile

Down by the river, down by the banks of the river Charles
That’s where you’ll find me, along with lovers, fuggers, and thieves
Well I love that dirty water, ooh, Boston you’re my home

Some classic rock station was playing the Standells’ “Dirty Water” when we were driving back into town from dinner in Framingham to pick up a bag we’d left behind at the hotel, and there is nothing that makes the Mass Pike whiz by quite like blasting “Dirty Water” at full volume all the way down to the weird curly-Q Copley Square exit.
My usual smart-ass reply about where I’m from is that the town where you first got drunk, first learned to drive, first got laid, and had your first shitty job in food service is the town where you’re really from, and for me, that town is New Orleans. My dad was in the Coast Guard and got transferred from Woods Hole to New Orleans when I was 7, and right after, that through a long series of weird events, my parents called off their divorce and we all moved down there to be with him. So I spent only about 1/3 of my childhood in Boston and vicinity.
But if you’re born in Boston, it’s in your blood. The ties are too strong, even if most of them really are only second-hand. My father, Ray Sr., spent his entire life here in either the Merchant Marine or the Coast Guard; his father Brendan was a cod fisherman, pretty much living the life you see in movies like The Perfect Storm (pretty much the same boats too, only rigged as trawlers instead of swordboats). I mean, if your dad used to actually live in Chatham Light, you’re probably a native.
I managed to become a computer geek instead of yet another drunken Boston Irish sailor, but that was probably my mom’s fault. (Thanks Mom!)
One of my first multi-syllable words was Yastrzemski (but I still have to Google him to spell it right.) I used to have the most god-awful working-class Boston accent. I could take apart a lobster on my own by the time I was five. I first learned to build sand castles at Nantasket Beach.
And even though I didn’t even learn to drive here, the first time I did, I felt like my eyes had finally been opened. If you’ve never driven in Boston, you won’t get this, but if you have…well, you would hate me. Driving in Boston is exhilarating. It is liberating. Getting from the North End to East Boston at rush hour, I feel like I have found my calling. Boston drivers aren’t terrible drivers, they are simply operating on a different plane of existence, a higher, more abstract level of understanding that transcends lanes and laws and courtesy. Boston drivers rock like no other drivers in America.
So like my mother did to me when we moved to the bigoted, ignorant (and as I later found out, charming in its own right) swamps of New Orleans, I am doing my best to make sure that my kids know that part of them is Bostonian. They know when they get here that within the first 48 hours, we have to get pizza from the Pleasant Cafe in Roslindale, a family hangout on my mom’s side since she was a kid. The kids have got Make Way For Ducklings memorized, and they can show you on a map where it really happened. They know when we drive through JP that Daddy is going to point out Doyle’s Cafe yet again and tell them how the former owners are distant cousins of ours (rumored to be, at least, according to my mom’s brother John Doyle who is the family genealogist.). They can both take apart a lobster on their own. They know good chowder from bad chowder. And they’re Red Sox fanatics who know that section 14 in the grandstands at Fenway is one of the holiest places on earth.
We did the whole Esplanade Fourth of July fireworks with the Boston Pops last night, and the kids now agree…Austin fireworks really do suck. Sometimes I think the rest of the country doesn’t really get the 4th the way people up here do. After all, it all started up here. The Boston Massacre, The Boston Tea Party, “one if by land, two if by sea”, Lexington and Concord…. I know a few Virginians who might disagree, but to me, the American Revolution was always Massachusetts’ war. To be from Boston means to be connected to the Founding Fathers and the war of independence in a way that I don’t think people from Texas or California or Colorado can really understand.
I think my kids get it. I hope so. It took me forever to really get it, but now that I do, I miss this place terribly. This place where I barely lived at all, where I can’t get around half the time without a map, where I have trouble being understood now unless I remember not to say “y’all” all the damn time…this is really home.
Now I have to go. I’ve got a date with some Brighams.