BACK TO RANDOM CRAP MENU

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

I get this feeling. This feeling in my stomach. It won't matter if my hair turns gray. It won't matter how many babies are born, or how many shitty houses get nice muted-color aluminum siding stapled onto them. No matter how many awards are issued, how many restaurants are opened, how many roads are repaved in the nice neighborhoods, or how many local business-sponsored pretty tapestries are hung from antique-esque light posts in the thriving downtown beer-drinking district. No matter what, my proverbial equatorial toilet water starts flushing the wrong way the further up 495 I get. The closer I get to Haverhilll. The closer I get to my hometown.

Haverhill, Massachusetts is a part of me, irreversible, immutable. I am a native son. I can prove it. My grandfather owned 3 gas stations there over the course of his life, and sunk his boat in the murky Merrimack right in front of the Crescent Yacht Club. I once drove an '81 Chevy Malibu through a self-serve carwash bay on River Street, going maybe forty or fifty MPH. You'd think a car that heavy couldn't leave the ground, but you'd be wrong. I once almost got beat up by 11 or 12 Puerto Rican kids who thought my friend was picking on their cousin. I wish I had had that kind of cousin arsenal. At the venerable institution Haverhill High School, I got punched in the guts once by a kid I'd never seen before. I later got my face slammed into the edge of my locker door in the F-wing, one of the less popular fighter craft from the Star Wars universe. Josh got kicked in the face once in the school parking lot, but I missed it. Shit. About 90% of the girls I ever knew well revealed they'd been either raped or molested at one point or another. I knew a black kid who insisted on calling me "Thomas". I never minded, because he somehow made it sound cool. I knew a girl who none-too-subtly reenacted the fake-orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally". Since she reenacted it during English class, it seemed pretty all right with me. A Dominican kid I had gym class with informed me once that short girlfriends aren't bad because "We all the same size in bed, right?" We were fourteen at the time. Maybe you had to be there. The aforementioned '81 Malibu got stolen out of the commuter rail lot in Bradford and used in a house robbery. The cops found it a week later in the middle of a street with the doors open and the engine running. I found cheap costume jewelry under the seat when I got it back. SCORE! I once got chased by a pickup truck on a remote utility road in Bradford. It was just like Stand By Me, except without the dead body, the train tracks, and of course, the bonding friendships that would last forever.

My neighborhood is expanding. The woods where I rode bikes in, walked around in, hoped to find pretty girls in, hid from big kids on ATVs in, looked at cool stripped and burned Chevy Novas in - those woods are all gone now. There are absurdly large houses there now. I assume it's the only way the developers can make back their money. Build Bigger. If there's a stupider, more wrong-timed thought floating around planet Earth right now, I can't imagine what it could be. Build Bigger. Bigger houses than average Haverhill folk can afford, that much I'm sure. Apparently, Haverhill is a suburb of Boston now. I never knew that.

Haverhill's a big fucking city. 36 square miles, I think. Lots of open space waiting for big houses, some pretty fishin' spots (not that I'd recommend eating the fish), the birthplace of both John "Greenleaf" Whittier, Rob "Greenleaf" Zombie and Archie "That Fuckin' Comic Character", home of a piss-poor castle, a llama farm, and something to do with Hannah Dustin I'm just not quite sure of right now. One time I counted all of the Dunkin Donuts ("Dunkin Donutses"? "Dunkins Donuts"?) and all of the Baybank ATMs in Haverhill and the immediate surrounding area. I think I came up with like, 13 DDs and 8 or 9 ATMs. That seems excessive. Then again, counting doughnut shops and cash machines is a little excessive, too, in it's own way. I've heard that Dunkin Donut parking lots never need to be plowed, because they're so busy, the snow never has a chance to hit the ground. Suburban folklore. Like a hook-handed killer stalking campers in the woods. Well, there was that molester guy that killed a kid near the castle a bunch of years back. Winnekinni Castle. The castle was named in honor of some people who weren't allowed to live in Haverhill anymore. They were forced west, killed, or worse, forced to act like white people. "Winnekinni" is an Algonquin Indian word that roughly translates to "Screwed-Out-Of-Our-Beautiful-Valley". Originally named "Pentucket" (Algonquin for "They Took It"), the town was later renamed "Haverhill". Erroneously thought to be named after the powerful local Haver clan, "Haverhill" is actually derived from a popular Northeastern salutation newly-arrived colonists used to greet neighboring Indians: "We have-yovr-hill. Fvck offe." - Tom Dec 6, 01

You got Haverhill down pat. HHS, class o' 1962

- Steve, June 19, 02

BACK TO RANDOM CRAP MENU

BACK TO MAIN PAGE