Kirkland Road 1939-1989

Kirkland Road 1939-1989

Number Sixteen
is the house in question
at the left hand corner
as you look toward
the dead end
past its central tree and
moveable street sign
on the wrong side
of Kirkland Street
as Mrs. Ellis declared
from Francis Avenue
the correct side
of Kirkland Street
however near Somerville
to its rear and its right

In March between  the curbs
was a four inch deep puddle
encircled by thick ice
cars did not break

Number Sixteen
held the Leontieff
family of three
the Missus the Professor
and daughter Svetlana
The Professor noticed
the toddler from
Number Fourteen
on his walk to work
in the big white stone
Littauer Center for
Public Administration
by Kirkland Street's final curve
into Massachusetts Avenue
walked her the three blocks
past Divinity Avenue
site of sexy poem by
ee cummings involving
an automobile and
a virginal girl*
Oxford Street
and Kirkland Place
to which Number Fourteen
mail frequently went

Three or so years later
the Leontieffs were leaving
house to be sold
Neighbors were asked
in that Nineteen Forty Four
or so whether it would
be all right if Negroes bought

All seven houses had connecting
fences running behind cutting access
to the dead end where fathers parked
Chevrolet Dodge Plymouth
piling snow in front
where kids tried to sled
and build igloos
The fences separated
Kirkland Road from both
Irving Street and Sumner Road
excepting rare intercourse
with Billy DeSimone behind
Number Fourteen
where the tree roots
opened the stockade fence
site of the single row
Victory Garden
and the garbage pail
with its step on cover
still used in the Seventies
Steve McCormack lived
on Irving Street too
but went to Shady Hill
played cap pistols and
miniature cowboys and horses
under his front porch
facing Kirkland Street

The girls spoke to Line Dots
who appeared In a parking lot
over the fence behind Number Fifteen
so named and teased
for pale blue eyes
with dots in them

Lilies of the valley
grew between Fourteen
and Sixteen in shade
where Mz Irish learned
to return the tennis ball
against green shingles
and hard dirt
There was a tall slim
pear tree between
Fourteen and Twelve
in shade and
Fifteen had a grassy
back yard in shade
with a sturdy see saw
made by Professor Doctor
That yard blended into the
Mz Robinsons over whose
short brown wooden fence
children sometimes climbed
from a driveway on Sumner Road

Behind the end was a fire
Attorney George fought
with a garden hose
across the fence
with a man on the third floor
who came out on the roof
who may have died then
And Tony was so afraid
coming home to the
thirteen fire engines
filling the street
Mz Irish was called from her tub
by Missus and ran to the
front window to see
up the hall opposite
to the direction little sibling
used to chase her
penis aimed

Number Fifteen with its
Professor of Medicine
at Tufts University
its Missus teacher at The
Beaver Country Day School
who taught us to knit
spring green wool
in the bedroom
where the alcoholic
welcomed visiting
Number Fifteen also had
daughters Betsy and Nancy
then ten and five or so
ex Jewish Atheists
who had a farm in Naples Maine
with its own pond canoe
and Nineteen Twenties
Model Something wooden
station wagon Ms Nancy
was allowed to drive
They ate anchovy paste
in the kitchen before dinner
and Betsy cut cucumbers
so thin all there was
to a sandwich was bread
It was required
that children at night
go downstairs and through
the kitchen and
a roughly constructed
way toward the barn
should they need to pee
that they dump lime
into one of the two holes
in the wooden seats

They said O K
to Negroes
but five years later
the couple divorced
because Missus
School Marm ran away
with a lady teacher
with whom she lived
for many years
until alcohol
spoiled that
daughter finding her
going to the bathroom
in the linen closet

Number Fifteen was frozen inside
parents upright in separate chairs
absorbed by uncomfortable
chamber music
Attorneys Tony and George
listened in their studies
but said hello if children came along
After the divorce  a charming and warm
alcoholic mother and her same age daughter
came from Cheyenne Wyoming
Ms Irish had to be told
what kind of sickness the mum had
and that alcoholics were
usually charming people

Number Thirteen held
the two Misses Robinson
one of whom sat in
an ample wicker armchair
wearing white flannel
accented in pink
while the other wore
unremarkable house dresses
and bustled out of the
morning sunny front room
to which she had brought
Nancy and the former toddler
born thirteen days apart
fond of visiting and
receiving such treats
as American Red Cross
tin buttons with folding ends
could be pushed
around a vestment
Nancy and Mz Irish
attended the Farrar Street
Nursery School near which
e e cummings lived
as Thomas Wolfe had rented
a room at Number Forty Eight
Kirkland Street pale ochre
with brown shutters two houses
in from the corner of Sumner Road
and the mailbox Mz Irish ran
all the way to posting
acceptance to Bryn Mawr College
On the proper side of Kirkland Street
ran Irving Street and three or four houses
in on the left Julia Child came to live
and cook an enormous woman
pointed out to Cousin Paul
by Missus Fourteen
as were B F Skinner
whose Julie went to Shady Hill
pleasant and quiet
whose Jake to Browne & Nichols
was thin and teaseable
had a soprano voice
and John Kenneth Galbraith
to Mz Irish walking up
Kirkland Street as Harvard Economist
Professor Author and Important
Person to John FitzGerald Kennedy
lived on Francis Ave

The ladies said O K
from the house which
would belong to the
sister of Donald Regan
Important Person to
President Reagan
who became blind
because she cried so much
on the decease of her mum
She didn't care to take care
identified her clothing by tags
with shapes or some such
the Negro girl told the
Irish Catholic girl when they
were in college
or after

Number Eleven with
rarely seen
Mister and Missus Cote
and their own garage
near the solitary street light
which shone in the bedroom window
of the Irish girl growing up
so she could check for monsters
and blindness under the bed
upon which Missus read aloud
Stuart Little Greek Mythology
Uncle Remus The Wind in the Willows
Mary Poppins The Wind on the Moon
in which Dinah finds a ring around the moon
on a day when she had been bad
and is doomed to be bad
for a whole year
Bad Tuesday and Bad Wednesday
were favorite chapters

Mz Irish moved to third floor
privacy in high school
from which she heard the hours gong
saw one of the four clocks atop Memorial Hall
site of SAT Exams musicales and memories
of Harvard's Union Civil War Dead
The tower was in flames
against that October sunset
to be rebuilt some forty years hence
too small for the nobility
of the original
an insult to Mz Irish
a tribute to the financially
rigid university
This fire had to be pointed at
wordlessly with fingers
by younger siblings
returning from a movie
at the University Theater
as they passed the firefighters
next door sitting out in chairs
smoking cigarettes by Quincy Street
with the Swedenborgian Church
and its tempting three foot high
stone wall which ended
in somebody's driveway
along Kirkland Street
the other end of Quincy
where Mz Irish got off the bus early
taunted by Black Maria
blaming her white skin
because the white drunk
kept haunting
"Would you love your father
if he was drunk?"
This by the skinny iron
black uprights of the fence
and gate to Harvard Yard
opposite The Crimson's
"President Lowell
objects to Erection in
Harvard Square"
pillbox

As the Congregational Church
on Gloucester's Middle
and School Streets
next to Central Fire Station
burned to the ground
and the Lorraine Apartments
and the Temple
for which Mz Irish filled
the bed of her husband's
pick up truck with a closet
full of spare winter coats
for him to take down town

Number Fourteen had wooden doors
between the living and dining rooms
Sixteen and Fifteen didn't
The street lamp was across
from the house high tree
growing in the street
between Cote and Fish
with its moveable traffic sign
black on white
probably warning
about the tree
on its octagonal cement base
a child could roll on edge
And didn't Number Ten
have a fine locust or two
dropping such flowers
in the ivory spring

The Cotes had the only
driveway on the road
which Missus Fourteen rented
when she got a station wagon
in about Nineteen Fifty Two
and she lost and found
her tiny engagement
diamond in that driveway
in the grit by the door
in that green Chevvy
we spilled the open can
of white paint in the middle of
identical to Missus Schrafft's
in Gloucester whose son Pat
was fond of spinning it
round and round Grant Circle
until police came
or tearing through Wheeler's Point
chased by guys in another car
terrifying Joan Carrigan with him
or driving crazy in Gloucester
and whipping across the town line
to safety in Rockport
Mz Schrafft's wagon
had a dent in its green roof
Pat shot a one hundred
and ten pound deer
on Wingaersheek
and sent everyone its photo
and was fond of repeating
"There's other gears"
"My back teeth are floating"
Pat went to Florida
on the GHS 1957 football squad
in which Peter Hickey stopped
at the ninety-five  yard line
losing the championship
earning the title "Wrong Way Pete"
making his law enforcement career
in Lanesville an impossibility
Patrick left great nephews
who played Mites ice hockey
with Mz Irish's grand sons

The Cotes said O K
to Negroes in Number Sixteen
leaving unknown folks
at the Somerville end
later occupied by
a black professor
named Gates
behind which on Irving Street
the younger siblings
when they were not
burning tin soldiers
used to visit
Harvard's Tom Lehrer '47
Phi Beta Kappa in Mathematics
who wrote lyrics such as
"Don't solicit for your sister
That's not nice
Unless you get a good
percentage of her price"**
who would play on summer evenings
with the Irish Catholic Dad's
attempts at Rachmaninov
while he used every glass
and dish in the house
the family in World War II
Gloucester Snobbe Area
called Annisquam where fire fighter
Dexter Sargent at the corner
of Walnut and Leonard
told how you came back
from the war and couldn't walk
through yards anymore
didn't know the neighbors

Perhaps Lehrer's house was
the site where Mz Irish boyfriend
walking to his room on Harvard Street
whose landlady forbid girls
saw a heating tin coffee pot
in the  window had to walk in
say Hello and take it
was still in the attic
when Missus Fourteen
sold the home
Later that boyfriend
took a sunny first floor room
opposite the Lehrer house
and that is where Mz Irish
was delightfully taught
the beauty of the naked body
in action having relinquished
virginity on the living room couch
looking into his blue eyes
as he searchingly carefully
insisted

Beside the Lehrer house
was a short gray wooden fence
said Kilroy Was Here
and next to Kirkland Street
looked like a slum
with its black steel
fire escapes and trash cans
The fronts were a line
of townhouses and or
apartments stuck to one
another with three front walks
behind low hedges

There was the big square
white house with its
big square green fenced yard
and underground garage
off Kirkland Street at that
proper corner of Francis Ave
Attorney George growing up
in East Cambridge wanted to buy
but Missus from Fitchburg
said No to that and to
the Town of Concord
as the Cadillac he promised
his mother a ride in
was pretentious
as summer in Annisquam
too expensive
uttered "O George!"
when he pronounced the rental
"O George!"
to the purchase of a
sailboat for Mz Irish
announced at dinner
at the Bagleys

Attorney George brought
Mz Irish to Fenway Park
and Braves Field and to
James W, Brine's in Boston
for a dark brown glove
which lasted until the next millennium
and to Pigeon Hollow Spar for a mast
Mz Irish became Mel
after 1949 star pitcher Parnell
and Maria became Mike then Mikey
Attorney George also took Mz Irish
to The Boston Garden
where he and Tony had season tickets
in a box two rows in front of
Milt Schmidt's wife who dyed her hair
a different color every year
They watched helmetless
Terry Sawchuck in goal
who bragged about
his hundred stitches
Mz Irish had a crush
on Montreal's Real Chevrefils
from his photo in the program
and to this grandmotherly day
listens to the National Anthem
with emotional respect

There was a painted board
attached to the wall in the pantry
by the window toward Number Fifteen
which could be pulled parallel
to the floor for little ones
to eat at
Mz Irish and little sibling
fought over the top
of the milk bottle
and The Golden Plate
until sadly the latter
fell to the kitchen floor
during a battle
Sent to her room
"I want my daddy!"
"Everything was fine
until you came home!"
or "I lost my needle"
"There it is!"
"O Good!"
"Ma!  He went in my room!"
There was the day Mz Irish
left her roller skate
by the front steps
for little sibling to step on
and have to go to Dr. Ganz'
house by the Common
and Concord Ave
Then there were the times
in our father's study
in the same sunny corner
each holding an end
of a baseball bat
She let go
He got a black eye
He stabbed a pencil
in her palm
Three pieces of lead
The point came out
thirty years later
The others absorbed

In those summers of open windows
Tony and Evelyn had a patio built
and put a play house in it
which doubled for outdoor
furniture storage
there was a stockade fence
where there hadn't used to be any
guarding the back steps
to the kitchen and cellar
The family spent a week
in Hyannis and when Evelyn
drove to Provincetown
her accelerator foot
went down up down up
When Professor Doctor
drove to Naples
he explained how to
decelerate before
rounding a curve
then increase

Atty George played
the third floor upright
with Tom and the pianists
who had moved with
two grand pianos
into Number Fifteen
before the quiet son of
Carl Van Doren
whose autograph
Irish Mama sought
on his thick book
and brother of
Charles Van Doren
famous for cheating
for six or eight weeks
on an intellectual
T V Game Show
whose cousin Peter Van Doren
had a family the Irish girl
spent lots of time with
married in Manhattan
before Doris Kearn Goodwin's
husband Richard lived
at Number Fifteen

And the Fish Family
with its seldom seen son Eliot
who may have had to do
with Philips Exeter Academy
at Number Twelve and the Irish Catholics
at Fourteen who mimicked
the Negro Family
with Lawyer Fathers
up from poverty
Antonio de Jesus Cardozo
orphaned at seventeen
in the Cape Verde Islands
coming to California
visiting Portugal frequently
bringing little flags for us
and wooden hens with polka dots
He had to do with the Credit Union
in Inman Square and Tufts University's
Fletcher School honored him
upon his demise at a ripe age
Attorney George joined a firm
at Four Brattle Street
Sullivan, Doran, Lordan and Hanify
before creating his own firm
at Seventeen Dunster Street
Tony and George also
shared an office
at Two Pemberton Square
a four or five storey
yellow brick with curves
and polished mahogany
across from Mz Irish's daughter's
Office of the Attorney General jobs
up so high the harbor was visible

Wife Evelyn from the
Belmont end of Cambridge
from the Negro neighborhood
had many siblings including
Uncle Robert doctor from New Jersey
who told that doctors sometimes
allowed deformed babies to pass
including Aunt Reba who
seeing the Christmas cards
taped to the door frames
in the front hall shouted  "My!
What lovely potatoes!"
Episcopalians at Christ Church
across from Cambridge Common
later to Central Square's
elegant brick AME Church
during the decade of consciousness
who as children only had to attend
Christmas and Easter
in new and fancy dresses
with patent leather shoes
while Mz Irish had only
sturdy brown tie shoes
until seventh grade
dancing school
when she was the sole
girl in brown Stride Rites
Maria also had  a grandmother
who was fond of resting her eyes
She tried on a hat in Filene's Basement
and a lady told her
"That doesn't become you"
to which:  "And who
Asked you?"
She was nearly white
and her husband coal black
which seemed a curiosity
spoken of to Missus Fourteen
Tony made the breakfast
wore an apron over his suit vest
saw us off to walk to bus or trolley
That was unusual too

Both Mums were College Graduates
Boston University's Evelyn
forever on the telephone
with The Boston Gays
or The Cambridge Community
Center Mz Irish went to once
surprised to discover so many negroes
Radcliffe's Jane going to lectures
exercise classes reading
planning to write a detective
story with one of the several friends
she kept until death
Five or six mornings a week
in her long bathrobe
after breakfast Jane used to
carry the black telephone
TRowbridge 6-7519
used so often to call
next door to
KIrkland 7-1035
from its nook by back stairs
to the kitchen table
beside her pencilled list
and dial Saul and Danny
father and son
to ask what meat and
produce were good today
Saul went to the sellers early
The order would be delivered
in a cardboard box
out of a wooden wagon
with large wheels
pushed by a retarded youth
Danny and Saul had adopted
it seemed from the streets
At the market there was
a lady who could not
use her arms due to polio
used to sign checks
with her toes
The street the store was on
was named after a soldier
and once the girls ventured
to its next corner coming upon
a frightening guy with
a loose rubber arm
and a meat hook for a hand
Of course Maria was unafraid

It was Evelyn who
had to fight for membership
in the Cambridge Skating Club
who asked
"Why is it always Melissa and Maria
Or Melissa and Nancy?
Never Maria and Nancy?"
They tried while Melissa sat
on the porch where
the toddler drained
her first beer
while Attorney George
put up the green and white
striped awning
behind the hydrangea
porch where Mz Teen Irish
forced boyfriends to wait
with her under the light
while rumpled Attorney George
in flannel pyjamas came to unlock

But the pair wasn't a pair
Evelyn also told us
not to stir the pot
counter clockwise
so the ingredients wouldn't separate
told Mz Irish to wash
behind her ears
The attorneys' daughters
got their first and second
puppies together and the
Christmas Raleighs
they tried to ride in the basement
outside Number Sixteen's
European Wine Cellar
later to the Somerville end
of Irving Street where it met
Beacon and the end of
Francis Ave through the
red wooden NROTC area
up and down a delivery ramp
resembling a half pipe
then through to Divinity
and Oxford's Aggasiz Museum
with its rideable stone rhinoceroses
They visited the glass flowers
And they walked down Oxford once
to a tiny store and bought
football cards which came with gum
They played with cap pistols
and holsters or those games
where ninety per cent of the time
is spent defining your imaginary
character Nancy outshining the others
claiming to be the most nimble
Nancy also told Mz Irish that
the page of typewriting
made at Four Brattle
was not words

At the Somerville corner
was a houselot sized field
with unclimbable trees
and longish grass
where they spent little time
Sometimes the girls went to the attic
of Number Fourteen with a candle
and a jar of water which did once
have to be used when the fire
fell above little sibling's ceiling
They wrote in a red scrapbook
in blood naming The Forlum Club
probably a misreading of
a morning Herald or
evening Globe headline
The club also had meetings outside
in a space meant for trash cans
with a door and plenty of room
and its two members found an open can
containing a thick white substance
told little sibling it was milk
and he drank what may have been oil
And there was the time
he locked himself in
the  upstairs bathroom
at Number Sixteen
and firemen brought a ladder
Carol Linda ate a penny
and the X-Ray was displayed
in a store window in Harvard Square

Evelyn took them to buy
their college typewriters
Maria's pale blue
Melissa's pink
with twin tin tan cases
whose aluminum rims
clicked together for carrying
Maria's was dented
Melissa refused to trade
sister like
both daughters in the same class
at the Harvard gestated
Shady Hill School
with the three daughters of
Mrs. Ellis of Francis Avenue
with whom they never
travelled to school

Missus Fourteen lived there
fifty years Attorney George
after ice skating at the MDC rink
from which he had had to bring
his middle aged daughter
for stitches in her chin
who had been smiling
"Falling is O K" to a watching child
neglecting her own tumble
in Somerville where he liked
bringing roses for the ladies
dying from a stroke
on the eve of
his grandson's tenth
birthday as Mz Irish
was preparing supper
the telephone cord
reaching from the wall
hanging over the stove
Evelyn died a two year death
of lung cancer while
the girls were in college
never having smoked
of course
Tony remarried
to the vicious outrage
of his elder daughter
settling in a little house
at Fourteen Paul Revere Road
at the edge of Lexington
by Arlington
An unknown purchased
Number Sixteen
A Harvard Newspaper Man
from Georgia bought Fourteen
trying to modernize its character
by adding skinny blinds
removing Missus Fourteen's
evening custom of pulling dark
green shades during the war
then pink designer curtains

During The Sixties
the sort of lower class
Savenors who owned
and worked at the market
down Kirkland by Somerville
rented rooms to Hippies
who shared their morning sun space
with Mz Irish who welcomed them
to her Number Fourteen
sunny afternoon steps
to the unspoken disgruntlement
of her private folks


They all said O K
and only once did
Irish Catholic daughter
call her friend Nigger