Lost In Boston

My first time ever in Boston was in the middle of a road trip back in 1990. My best friend, Lu, needed to get to Lenox, Massachusetts, for his second summer away from university as a boys’ camp counselor. I needed to get away after a non-stop year-and-a-half of classes and work, and I had suggested the road trip to serve a dual purpose: get him to Lenox, and get me on a vacation.

As university students, we had become adept at finding the cheapest way around things. The previous summer Lu had boarded a Greyhound bus for Lenox, and endured a 26-hour nightmare of multiple stops, changing buses and sleep deprivation. But it only cost him about a hundred bucks! I proposed we split the cost of gas, despite the fact that it had peaked at an outrageous $1.16 per gallon that spring, and he suggested we sleep at a youth hostel along the way, where the cost was about $10 for each of us, plus a couple of house chores we had to do to earn our keep.

When the semester ended near the end of May, we both went home to spend a few days with our families, and then it was time to travel. I’ve always been drawn to the open road. If I hadn’t discovered the field I’m in now, I probably would eventually have pursued a career as a truck driver or something. It’s probably why I went for – and have held – the job I have now. However, now that I have seen the dangers with which it is fraught, and the amount of under-the-table diplomacy it involves, the career of freight hauling no longer holds any allure. Regardless, I have always been drawn to the open road. And so it was that I lobbied my buddy for us to avoid the speed and convenience of Interstate 80 and opt instead for the quaint solitude of US Route 30, to which we had easy access because it runs right through our home town. He agreed, and off we went.

Nine hours later we were only half the distance we could have been on the interstate, and we were both getting pretty tired. We consulted the hostel guide and found that we were only an hour or so away from one in (Upper Sandusky?), Ohio, so we headed there.

We paid our ten dollars and were told that the kitchen needed cleaning. One would think that two former military guys like us (he was in the Marines, I the Air Force) would be no strangers to kitchen duty. Well, we weren’t; but it doesn’t mean we liked it. I’m sure I did more, but all I remember was polishing the toaster which I recall was so disgusting when I picked it up that I wondered why no hostelers before us had been tasked with cleaning it. Then it dawned on me that perhaps they HAD been! YYIICCHH!!

The next morning Lu asked if we could just hop on the interstate for the rest of the trip because the camp was only open during the summer, and he didn’t want to miss it. We were in Lenox by nightfall. Lu introduced me to a couple of the friends he had made the previous summer, and they showed us where we could bunk for the night. It was a fairly rustic cabin, and I gather that Lenox is considerably farther north than any climate in which I had existed in the prior two years. Or maybe it was just a freakishly cold night for late May. Either way, the blanket the guys gave me might as well have been a sheet of facial tissue for as warm as it kept me. Needless to say, I got no sleep that night for fear that if I did sleep, I would have been found blue and lifeless in the morning, huddled under that paper-thin patch of cloth.

In the morning I bid farewell to my buddy and headed south. The rest of my trip had me destined for Long Island, New York to visit my friend, Linda, who had just been graduated from my same course of study, and had moved back home; and then for Washington, D.C., to visit my friend CJ whom I had met and befriended in Great Falls, Montana while I was in the Air Force. You might think I’m protecting her identity by using only her initials, but that’s what she goes by. CJ. It would seem awkward to me to call her by her given name.

But first I wanted to spend some time in Boston. I looked for another youth hostel and found one listed in the guide book, located right smack in the middle of downtown. I followed the directions in the book and… they were useless. The highway exit the book told me to take didn’t exist. I could see from the highway above the surface streets one or two important-looking colonial era buildings, historical relics of our nation’s birth and infancy, but I could find no logical route to get down there. I took the next exit I came to, figuring I would hit the surface streets, find my bearings and go around the block to get where I wanted to be. That's when I learned there's no such thing as "going around the block" in Boston. Instead, I wound up on an entrance ramp BACK onto the highway! It quickly became like that nightmare where you are unable to find something important, and no matter where you look, it’s not there, and you’re forever hunting for it to the point that you want to scream. And scream I did!

I doubled back and found the same exit and, after making the SAME STUPID MOVE that got me back on the highway again, I returned and tried something different. That put me on a side street that took me to the edge of downtown. I pulled into the parking lot of a body shop or auto mechanic’s shop and asked the grimy, yet kindly employee standing just outside the building for directions. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the essence of how he told me to get back to the city center (imagine the thickest Boston accent you’ve ever heard): Yeah, you go don tuh thuh cona theea and turn left. Then, when you get to where Bruno’s hot dooawg stand used ta be, you make anutha left…”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not from around here. I don’t know where anything used to be.”

He looked at me blankly for a second, and then he said, “Oh. Okay. Then turn arond heea, go ten, fifteen blocks chroo Jamaica Plain and Roxbury, theea…”

I offered my thanks and drove away. I eventually found my way back to city center and decided that the only way I was going to get to see anything or find the hostel was on foot. I parked somewhere – I don’t remember if it was on the street or in a parking garage – and with guide in hand, I set out to find the hostel.

I found the intersection nearest the hostel. It was a street on two levels. I walked to where the little map showed me the hostel was, in the middle of the block. The address didn’t exist. I made my way down to the lower level. The address didn’t exist. I spent an hour of the time I had hoped to explore this American Revolution Era city looking for this stupid youth hostel which, as far as I could ever tell, didn’t even exist!

The exercise in futility over, I said, “Screw it!” (I didn’t REALLY say “SCREW it,” but you get the picture) and I vowed never to return to the stupid city of Boston. I hopped back in the Jeep and continued south, and spent the night at a sleazy motel in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

It wasn’t until 2004 that I returned to Boston – this time on business, and I had locals to drive me around – and I learned that, especially in the summer, it is an incredibly beautiful place with wonderful old buildings and not ungraceful new ones, and large, green, quiet parks all over the place. And I can’t forget to mention the historical buildings and locales, and The Freedom Trail, a line of red paint or red paving bricks in the walks, which leads you to notable historic locations throughout downtown.

And then, Wednesday night, I finally met a friend in Boston: Mr. Schprock. He met me at my hotel, and we walked about 7 miles to Faneuil Hall marketplace where he suggested any number of restaurants and left it up to me to choose. I deferred to his knowledge of which place was true Boston dining and, in a very slight Boston accent he said, “That would be Durgin Park.”

We paused to try to avoid the direct gaze of a staggering drunk homeless (I think?) person who appeared to be sizing me up 1) for how much money he thought I might give him; 2) as an out-of-towner; b) to locate the softest part of my skull where he could bash it in for however much money he thought he could take from me. He never even so much as looked at Schprock. Just me. Maybe he doesn’t like tall, slim, thick-haired men.

He must have overheard us because, as we headed for the Durgin Park, ahead of us so did our new friend who also made a bee-line (okay, a heavily pollen-laden and substantially inebriated bee) for the men’s room. I swear he must have eavesdropped on our conversation, because that was the first stop I wanted to make when we got to the restaurant!

I went against my usual tradition of ordering anything formerly hoofed and instead went with the broiled seafood platter. And then I proceeded to talk Mr. Schprock’s ear off while we discussed every topic from writing to the macro-economics of the nation of Burundi. It was a great evening, even though we encountered not even one stripper – at least none that we know of. For those of you who have ever wished to meet him, he’s everything you would expect. For those of you who hate him, he’s really a nice guy. And when he walked me back to my hotel (had he not, I’d be lost in Boston again!) and we said our good-byes, we shook hands as friends.

(If you see Mr. Schprock, he’s very self-conscious about the ear thing. It landed right in his plate, and he ate it without even realizing it. So try not to mention it. And don’t stare. It’s rude.)