Harvard Square - 1967

Let me tell you about Harvard Square, the Harvard Square that was.

The Men of Harvard Square.

First there were the men of that spring and Summer of 1967. I don't remember all of it, the names of all the men. There was David and J.R. There was the guy who sold marijuana to the kids at Holyoke Center; there was the guy I met at the Cinemateque in Boston and we pretended we were in our own private Andy Warhol movie.

There was Vernon. Vernon was a tall man, lanky, maybe he had a beard. He was married to a woman who was bent at the middle; half her body went to the side, as if she had no waist, just a hinge. And not much of a torso between her hips and her head, long hair hanging down. I don't remember her name. I don't remember how I met them.

The funny thing about all these people I met, spent time with, in Harvard Square, in their apartments, on the streets, down by the river, smoking dope down by the river, in the park, the funny thing none of them knew each other. I even went back and asked (via Facebook, how else?) the ones i could find, David and J.R. if they had known each other then. They had not, or if they did, they did not remember either.

David was a bear of a man, who lived in a spacious airy Harvard Square apartment with his mom and Dad.  And his mom was Maggie of Maggie and the Beautiful Machine - an exercise program on public tv. She was gorgeous and fit; she was friends with the likes of the Chambers Brothers, and when they were in town, playing the Club 47, she held before and after parties in the spacious Harvard Square digs.

David's father was an M.I.T. professor; also a big bear of a man.  Maggie did her own thing, and I could not imagine anyone in the circles I had left behind, Methuen, the church, the Greeks, having a mother anything like her.

J.R. was small. His father was said to have been a colleague of Timothy Leary at Harvard working on L.S.D.

None of these men were romantic interests. Except I did have a little thing for Vernon. I told someone in the Vernon crowd that, "I have a thing for Vernon." They said, "Not good. Vernon is in love with his wife."

Ok, that was that for romance.

Besides I was too busy fantasizing about my "beautiful man" of the Coop, he of the mellifluous voice ordering books over the phone.

The buildings of Harvard Square. 

The Coop of course, go in the front door where they sold the clothes with the Harvard insignia on them, and ordinary clothes too, mostly of the preppy variety. Then you could go out the back door across Church Street and re-enter the store there, upstairs to textbooks where Jane and I and Mr. Lister held sway, up through the record department to get there, the escalator, with never ending theme of "A Man and a Woman" playing below and me in my little information box with my phone above.

Holyoke Center, the modern building on Mass Ave. where the kids from the suburbs hung out and bought dope from the guy who sold dope and sometimes snuck behind a pillar to smoke and sometimes asked for "spare change."

Brigham's and Bailey's (which Jane declared had the better sundaes) and of course Dunkin' Donuts.

Elsie's the delicatessen, and the hofbrau where Billy and I took the folk singers, Sandy And Jeannie Darlington, in high school, and some other famous sandwich shop.  Around the corner, Brattle St, with the Brattle Theater which always showed Casablanca or so it seemed, and even now shows Casablanca, downstairs the scented candle shop and everything smelling of scented candles, a warren of little shops and the Casablanca bar and other exotic seeming shops. Design Research with modern designs and, I guess, research, and Merimekko, with their bright simple designs, which Jane always wore. Hers were mostly in a purple or mauve tone.

The Cambridge Adult School where I took creative writing in the evenings and my teacher whose name was Ken thought I was a pretty bad writer, and maybe I was. (I wrote pretty much the same way then that I do now. More about that later.) A pharmacy, and down the street the Old Burying Ground where people have been buried since forever, many Revolutionary soldiers, local luminaries and of course Harvard Presidents.

And the Out of Town Ticket Agency, that used to be in the middle of the street, then they ruined Harvard Square. Then the ticket agency closed.
 

Harvard Yard.

You cannot "Pahk Youh Cah in Hahvahd Yahd."  You have to park in the street and walk. Harvard is everywhere, and it's also a big enclosed area, with administration buildings, classrooms and dorms. A Library, a museum. Harvard Yard.

And then there is Radcliffe.