Pages
Stay In Touch
More
© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte
Now that another summer is in the rear view mirror the kids are back in school and the leaves are falling. Summer went by fast! I asked this question: What was your favorite summer past time growing up in Somerville?
“We had about 25 kids lived in my street. We’d play Relieveo, Buck Buck, Dilboy pool, Woodstock Park leaders, and I used to jump around on my pogo stick.”
“On Heath Street and Langmaid Ave. neighborhood, we played hide and go seek every summer … for years. Both the kids my age, the ones 2-3 years older and the ones 2-3 years younger, probably about 15 of us. This went on for years, 1970-77. Great memories. We even hid on the roof of Belotti Olds – LOL.”
“I used to like to go to Palamacci Playground when they used to be open. Run by Somerville Recreation. They used to have activities, playday and contests. It was fun. I also liked playing games in the street with the whole neighborhood kids on summer nights. We played four corners, statute, red rover and hide and seek! We had a great time!”
“Going to Albion Park, playing dodgeball and jackstones. So excited to see who our park leaders were and we always had good ones, that I remember.”
“Woodstock playground, the trip to Paragon Park. Then moving up to Dilboy to play park baseball. I have to say as proud as I am to be a combat veteran, I’m even prouder to have lived and be from Somerville. God Bless Somerville. Now that’s my home sweet home. Just to have had Mrs. De Naro in my life was a major plus of growing up.”
My summers of times gone by involved making go carts, riding bikes and playing in the street. Ah, the good old days.
If you found this article of interest, please consider sharing it.
Hanging around on the corner of Bay State Ave with Teddy, Charlie, Jimmy, Norman and a whole bunch more. Going around banging street signs making a lot of noise. Playing tag football, wiffle ball, throwing baseball cards against the curb. Wish I had those cards today. Opening the back of Teddy’s Fathers truck and helping ourselves to cup cakes. Trum Field on the 4th of July, Going to the Mystics .
Four corners at powderhouse park
Thanks for sharing some memories of your youth. It prompted me to reflect on my younger days.
As a boy at our house in the Point of Pines, my brother and I would sometimes hoist ourselves up onto the roof and lay on our backs at night staring up at the blackened firmament, and the twinkling white stars that spread themselves out across that blackness. We didn’t have much factual knowledge of the cosmos. Just boys looking up at the night sky struggling to find constellations that we had seen pictures of in old encyclopedias.
We didn’t have fancy metaphors to understand the poetry of the sky. But we did possess a boyhood curiosity about the blackness hovering a million miles above our boyhood world. A world apart from homework, chores, and school bullies, as we just enjoyed our moments of togetherness. While we ‘explored the Universe’, my blessed mother was in the kitchen cleaning up after she had already made dinner for all five of us.
Around this time, astronauts made a trip to the moon which caught the collective imagination of everyone on the planet. We dreamed of being with them exploring the sky and planting our feet on lunar soil. We had recently got our color tv, as our whole family sat glued to the broadcast. In my youthful innocence, I shouted out, “Why aren’t they broadcasting the moonwalk in color instead of black and white?”
I can’t reminisce about that period without bringing up the time spent at the local beach which was a football field away. Summers were magical for this boy, his brother, sister and our local friends as we played the play of youth. Mom packed our lunches and filled up the thermos with some unique version of Kool-Aid brew, as she dragged the three of us along with oversized beach towels, and aluminum folding lawn chairs to the sandy playground at the foot of The Atlantic.
While my dad labored in the family butcher store a few miles away, his wife, and three children spread themselves on the hot sand, immersing ourselves among the hundreds of other sun worshipers.
Thank you
https://memoir1818.wordpress.com/