The only thing between me in Charlestown and Eddie Shore and the Bruins in the Boston Garden back there in 1935 was the Warren Avenue Bridge
One day in 1943 a telegram came from the War Department about my friend Joe Berrett who I last saw throw a football 95 yards on Stackpole Field.
It was to be an eventful day, that hot August Saturday in 1936 in Saugus, Massachusetts.
It was the mother I first noticed, not the daughter, no more than 3 or 4, at her heels.
It all came back to him in a maddening rush, the face in the window and the lady with the frail arms. At the moment his body felt hollow, his head light.
This star reconnaissance began on the fourth of July, the quick morning soft as a fresh bun, as warm, air floating up the stairs and coming across my bed in the smell of burnt cork
The letter came on a Saturday morning delivery and lay unopened for two days of rushing around, special errands, preparation for a graduation, a grandson’s varsity football game, a dance at the club.
Ray Canfield, with one bad arm but at the wheel of a Rapid Transit bus for his twentieth year, and nursing a life-long love of dogs, saw the mutt down beside the Cliftondale bus shelter, in the lee of a strong, breezy November rain coming close to sleet.
They had gathered in a sequestered section of grass, the flock of Canadian Geese, in East Boston’s Suffolk Downs Race Track.
As all accidents are about to happen, or strange encounters take place, fate stands at the edge of the road waiting to announce itself, an unseen signpost, an unseen hitchhiker.
