Boylston Street
A Jamaica Plain Essay
Unable to find even a minimum wage temp job in recessionary Boston of 1992, I gave up my apartment at 52 Boylston Street and moved to Washington, DC, with my daughter, who at least had been a part-timer at the Cambridge Street Stop & Shop, now the site of a Whole Foods.
In our Boylston Street days Whole Foods didn’t exist and we didn’t have to scout around for the nearest chain supermarket. We had Flanagan’s. Grocery shopping meant a short walk to the top of our street, where the green, black and white frontage of Flanagan’s came into view. It was particularly bright in the morning, when I tended to shop.
There were more trees around Jamaica Pond then. I went to the Pond and walked its reliable, friendly path many dozens of times. The Corridor Park was brand new. One night we flew home on our bikes in the dark along the pristine Corridor path after a Four Tops concert at the Hatch Shell. We stashed the bikes in our Boylston Street basement and hurried up the front steps to put the kettle on and talk about the evening and the music.
We took pictures of ourselves smiling in the kitchen with our orange-print curtains in the background and standing next to a big sink whose fixtures dated from sometime around 1950. 52 Boylston faces south, and I lugged a big old red recliner to the front porch, where I read on warm-weather weekends, bathed in light and warmth.
In winter our apartment at 52 was a cozy, crackling-radiator nest to which I rushed home at twilight from the Stony Brook T. I remember the chilly evening when, on my way home, I spotted a dog and heard the soft, loving voice of his young owner nearby. “Nicky, hey Nicki!” Suddenly the boy saw me. Wanting to recover from the shame of sounding soft in front of a woman, he made his voice low and stern and said to the unsuspecting Nicky, “you get over here right now.” Too late, kid (I didn’t say), I know you’re a sucker for him, and your secret is safe with me.
After 14 suffocating Washington summers we returned to Boston at the New Year of 2006. Realtors showed us six apartments, all of them in Jamaica Plain (once you’ve lived in JP you’re not likely to look for digs in Wakefield). I liked the one near Doyle’s but the area not so much. With a living room the shape of a corridor, the South Huntington Avenue place would have summoned all of my creativity as a decorator. When we got to one of JP’s last remaining triple deckers in the original dark brown on Paul Gore Street, I was queasy with desire. Yes! I want it! But the apartment itself didn’t infuse me with that feeling. It was something else. Standing on the corner of St. Peter, it was only steps from Boylston Street and therefore in enchanted territory. If I could not move back into 52, at least I would be close to it.
We settled into 83 Paul Gore Street and found the same lovable interior impediments we had known at 52: everywhere you wanted to put a table or sofa, there was a radiator, doorway or coat closet in the way. To someone who is happy living in Dallas, such things would be a total deal breaker. To the JP mind, they are a sort of congenital JP mix of nuisance and heaven.
Now back in Boston for seven years, I have stopped seeing Flanagan’s in my mind’s eye when I'm near the spot where it stood. I was just starting to accept the presence of CVS when it introduced those odious self-check out stations (“don’t remove anything from the bag! The weight is incorrect!”). Like a long-inconsiderate lover, I had missed my chance to tell Flanagan’s how much I loved it.
Our second time around we made many JP friends. We started our Neighborhood Dog Walking & Pet Sitting business at Paul Gore Street and couldn’t have asked for more dog-tolerant neighbors. Stocked with candy and stationed on our front porch Halloween night, we helped to make dozens of children temporarily happy. On summer evenings we spent more time on the Corridor than we had in the old days, greeting all the passing dogs, watching the setting sun turn the sky pink, and picturing the “Haf…” that had once begun the now fragmentary “…fenreffer” on the truncated brewery smokestack. Eventually we were able to walk by 52 Boylston without feeling a little stab of longing for days gone by.
Then one day on Boylston Street we saw one of those “proud to be a Boston teacher” placards in the window of what once had been our apartment. Look, I said to Simone, there’s one of those teacher signs in our window. Our window -- the one through which we hadn’t seen the outdoors for almost two decades. Okay, so we were never going to get over Boylston Street.
But you don't need to get over something that is so much a part of your life. On Boylston I have a good friend, a nice client with a beautiful dog, Zesto’s pizza on the corner, and something that was badly needed but non-existent in the old days -- City Feed. We have lost nothing – except our Paul Gore place that someone’s carelessness with a cigarette burned us out of.
Something we never did know in our two JP lives was the old trolley that once ran on tracks, now paved over, along Centre Street to Forest Hills. Now there is talk of bringing it back, but only as far as Hyde Square. Since the present terminus at Heath Street is not far from Hyde Square, it doesn’t seem a good idea. For the trolley to once again be seen rumbling past the post office, J.P. Licks, and the Monument -- now that is what trolley people dream of. But the life-goes-on reality seems to be that, 25 years ago, we got the Corridor Park and lost the trolley. I was able to see the Lincoln Memorial whenever I wanted for 14 years but I lost the pleasure of living on Boylston Street. St. Peter is rightly the street that should be closest to my heart, since it is where our good friend Patrick gave us ten days of comfortable shelter after the fire at 83 made us homeless.
In the meantime we have a dog walk tomorrow with the aforementioned canine beauty who is resident on – where else – Boylston Street.
