Saturday, August 15, 2015

GYPSIES, TRAMPS and THIEVES...


Well, I’m not so sure about the gypsies and the thieves, but definitely tramps – a whole collection of ‘em.
          

This photo was taken in the back yard of my parents’ house up in the West End of Portland, Maine. I think it’s the fall of 1956; if so, I am ten years old (I’m the fourth from the left, white shirt, string tie and mustache).
          The Gang – a motley collection of best friends. We all went to elementary school together at the McClellan School – we walked along brick sidewalks to school every day, came home for lunch, walked back in the afternoon. We played together after school: rode our bikes together in a loose pack down to Dudley-Weed Drugstore for popsicles on hot days, went trick-or-treating on Halloween, climbed the monkey bars and gave the swings a workout, roller skated, hop-scotched and jump-roped in the schoolyard, shimmied up street poles and twisted the street signs around (our worst offense, I’m sure).
          Some of our fathers were doctors; some were civil engineers, bankers, teachers, lawyers…our mothers were, mostly, “stay-at-home moms,” although we didn’t call it that back then – it was simply a given, a natural state of affairs in the decade after WWII.
          Our parents were all friends. They partied together: I remember a progressive party they had: one house for cocktails followed by a walk through the neighborhood in their formal dinner clothes to another for appetizers and more cocktails, a third stroll to a third house for dinner, down the street to the fourth for dessert, a final trek to the last house for coffee! They took us caroling through Portland’s West End at Christmas time (with an upright piano in the back of a pickup truck and the rest of us walking in the street, singing; a light snowfall made the whole event even more magical) and they went sledding with us on the Western Prom.
         
We were all friends – both parents and children.
All the parents are gone now (save one, who is 100 this year); all of these tramps are still alive as far as I know, although we seldom see each other.
Yesterday, I had lunch at a low-key restaurant in a nearby town with two of the other Tramps in this photo who are up here for the summer months – the second from the left (M., in tuxedo and high-top sneakers) and the fourth from the right (P., underneath a broad-brimmed hat). We ate and talked, caught up on each other’s lives, congratulated ourselves for being in pretty good shape as we push into our 70s (I was the only one with an Artificial Body Part!).
We laughed and wondered, waded in and out of various childhood memories – most of them happy (one of them this gathering of hobos); we’ve sorted out the troubling ones, packed them into handkerchiefs, tied them onto gnarled poles and moved on…


…still tramping together after sixty years!

20 comments:

  1. What a wonderful 'feel-good' accounting of your young years. So much of it sounds so familiar to me in regard to my own young years. And I've kept in touch through letters & email with several of the young rascals I ran around with back then. What fun we had doing simple uncomplicated fun things together. And I remember progressive dinners, too. And 'Penny Hikes' and 'Scavenger Hunts' & neighborhood softball games where children & parents alike participated. I almost feel sorry for the kids today who will never really know those same simply joys - at least not quite the way we did.

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    1. You used two of my favorite words, Gail -- "uncomplicated" and "simple." I agree -- completely!

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  2. It seems a happy time and great to have caught up with some of the old gang recently.

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    1. Very happy time -- amazing that it was as if we'd never been apart! Have you had that experience?

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  3. I was 10 about that time and there were quite a few children in the neighborhood at that time. We didn't play together in big gangs, however, and parents usually socialize with their old friends form outside the neighborhood. Our mothers were just called "housewives."

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    1. Housewives -- exactly! There was the beginning of "unrest," though -- wives who had worked during WWII and discovered that they liked it! The beginning of the women's movement, I think.

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  4. Reunions with old school friends are fun, with all the shared memories, even if the same old stories come up again and again. I see you do mention bankers, just once.

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    1. Oh, Jo -- you SAVED me! I guess I wasn't totally off-theme after all!

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  5. Either way, gypsies too or not, I adore that photo, what a great time indeed, and your title is perfect.

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    1. The Tramp Theme was due, I think, to our parents' collective sense of humor -- they were a fun bunch, overall, and most of us inherited that sense of play!

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  6. Now I have an earworm of that track by Cher! A very enjoyable post with some lovely memories.

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    1. Not the song I'd like crashing around in my brain -- I'd even forgotten that's where my post title came from! I'd prefer to think of it as a Shakespeare quote, but...guess not.

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  7. Great memories and how wonderful to have had friends whose parents were friends. I remember when those progressive dinners were all the rage, but in our neighborhood nobody dressed up for the occasions.
    I have a couple of friends from first grade and when we get together, it's as if we've never been apart. There's a 2 minutes adjustment period when we look each other over for an "age ravage" check and then we're off to the races.

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    1. I get it, Helen -- we, too, do a quick scan of faces, hips and knees...but after that, it's as if we talked just yesterday. Now that's some kind of magic, I'd say!

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  8. I think in grade school I dressed up as a tramp a few times for Halloween. Actually I'm sometimes mistaken for an old hobo nowadays too.

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    1. I understand, Mike! My cousin John and I have threatened for YEARS to abandon this life and "ride the rails!" Visions of resting in boxcar doorways while clacking our way across the plains!

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  9. What a lovely group of young rascals. its nice to remember the freedom and lack of organization for children ub earlier times.

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    1. I know -- how did we ever survive childhood, anyway? I swear we were happier, more creative and far more interesting than today's organized youth!

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  10. Like Little Nell, I started singing that song too when I read the title. Now, please tell me how anyone got that upright piano onto a pickup truck. I don't know anyone who has friends like that anymore!!

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    1. We THINK they rolled it right out the front door, across the porch and across a ramp into the bed of the truck! We were too young to notice, but that's the best approach we can think of -- and they, of course, were well into the "nog" by that time...false courage leads to success!

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