From April, 1971 to July, 1990 I lived in a house on Holbrook Road in Oxford, Massachusetts. Of course, I lived there with the other members of my family – various parents, brothers and sisters left the home and returned over the years to eventually leave for good and get on with their lives.
The house was not particularly small, but it wasn’t big. Holbrook Road began at Main Street and slowly climbed one of the largest hills in the town. The house was at a point about two thirds of the way to the top of the hill – exactly one mile from Main Street. You could go higher – all the way to the top – but you would need to take Fort Hill Road (so named for the Huguenot fort built atop the hill overlooking the town in the late 1600’s) to do so.
Starting at the bottom of Holbrook Road, one would pass Manny’s Disco – a boring looking square structure with a huge peaked roof. Manny’s was a very popular place in it’s day. Friday and Saturday nights were so popular at Manny’s that cars, trucks and motorcycles would overflow onto Main Street or into the neighbors’ yards. Continuing up the street and over the railroad tracks, the road begins it’s uphill grade, and one entered the shady, pine grove and the turn off for George Street on the left. The next landmark was [url=http://don.oninohana.com/bios/donhoule_22.php3]the bridge over Interstate 395[/url] followed by the mysterious Mount Pleasant street on the right. Holbrook Road crests at the bridge and then continues downhill for a bit, flanked on either side by fields filled with corn stalks or long green grass in the summer and left empty and brown in the winter. Starting uphill again, Chris Road branches off to the left. As a kid, I loved Chris road. First, I had a lot of friends who lived on that road – my friend Christian, the Costellos, Jason Visbeck and my sister’s friend Cindy all lived on that road. Second, the street was mostly unpaved, which made a great quater mile long place to do powerslides on our bikes!
Across from Chris Road lived the Dorans and their annoying barking dogs. Next to them, lived our neighbors, the Coffmans with their annoying yapping beagles and across the street from them, the Petersons who’s yard next to their house was dominated by a fenced area used to house their horse. There were a lot of animals in our area!
Approaching our house, one first encountered the slightly leaning, well rusted garage structure. At one time, the garage was probably well built, but I don’t remember those days. As I remember it, the garage was a rickety metal and wooden frame covered with some kind of white aluminum siding. There was no door – at least not one that closed, so leaves and sticks and animals would find their way inside. Like every other family with a garage, we used the space to store stuff. Since the corrugated aluminum roof was far from weatherproof, anything stored there eventually became garbage. Over the years, some of the siding on the building had come loose and fallen, lying unkept on the ground beside the structure. As a child, I discovered an interesting property of the white paint that coated these metal panels. If I licked my fingers and then ran them across the surface of the painted siding, I could use the old powdery coating to paint on the wooden framework of the building as well as the door of my mom’s car!
For quite some time, the family car (we had a series of station wagons over the years) shared it’s berth in the garage with our old tractor. I don’t know where that thing came from or what it’s original purpose was, but the tractor made a great toy for us kids whether it was running or not. The tractor was not a riding lawnmower or John Deere – it was a real tractor meant for working small fields and hauling loads of wood, dirt or a group of laughing children in the open trailer hitched to the back. I have some great memories of sitting atop the unpadded metal seat of that vehicle and making my way around our back yard with my siblings riding in the trailer. I can remember the sounds and smells and most vividly, the feeling of the black steering wheel in my hands. At some point, one of my brothers painted the tractor a deep, shiny blue. I imagine that he used cans of auto spray paint to cover the whole body and motor with color, leaving only the wheels and tires their original hue. Eventually, the tractor quit working and none of us had the know-how or the interest to get it running agiain. For many years, the tractor sat in the garage and made a great place to sit out of the rain and cold and talk with our friends.