The Golden Boy

I was born in 1961.  It was a good year, right? Patsy Cline came out with "I fall to Pieces".  Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffanys", one of my favorites! JFK was president.

The really important year?  1968.  That's the year my little brother was born.  Now I was the 9th of 10 children.  Yep, Brian was number 10.  He was my parents "change of life baby" as they used to call them.  My mother didn't work outside the home after I was born, go figure.  My Dad, brothers, sisters and myself, worked in the local factories at the time.  W & S Laundry, Blackstone Potato Chip Co, Colby Glass and of course Miller Electric. Miller Electric was the big time, but you had to be 18 to work there.  They were union and they paid piece work.  The harder you worked, the more you made.  That's how many folks bought their first car, first house, paid for college for your child.... Woonsocket was a booming industry.  You just had to be willing to work for what you wanted.

I'm not sure when things changed, but somehow," the more things change the more they stay the same", does not apply here.  I grew up in a neighborhood that seems to have one of the highest rates of CANCER that I'm aware of in RI.  I'm not sure why.  We used to play at "City Dairy" and green stuff used to ooze up through the ground.  The elementary school I went to "Kendrick Avenue" was 1st through 5th grade and I'm not sure what grade we were in, but City Dairy was one of our field trips.  We would go there and have a tour and get our free carton of milk.  It smelled so bad in there. 

That was on Burnside Avenue.  Another landmark was Pete's bait shop.  It's still there!  We used to go in there to tap on the giant fish tank.  "Don't tap and scare the fish" was repeated to us over and over.  We always tapped. 

The mayor lived on the same street.  In an apartment.  I remember it well.  I thought those were the times of our lives.  The street was lined with tenements. Large apartments, five or six bedrooms for most.  All hard working families.  I have many fond memories of those days. 

Sadly, my little brother Brian passed in 1984 of Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma. After losing my brother David in 1974 to a car accident, this was too much for my mother to bare.  She died in 1998 of a broken heart. I'm almost glad she passed when she did, because she wasn't alive to see my brother Paul die at the age of 47, to see her first born die of cancer as well.  Then again this year, my brother Harold, also cancer.  I'm not sure what it was on that street, or if perhaps it was the "times", but I hope that whatever it is, is wiped out soon.

I digress.  My brother Brian was the golden child.  I remember the day we came home from school and I was told I had a little brother.  I wasn't sure how to take this.  Then he came home and I couldn't believe how little he was.  He was the cutest baby I had ever seen. I hadn't seen many at this time in my life, but I can assure you, he was adorable.  Dark hair, dark eyes and long dark eyelashes.  He was a happy baby too.  Always laughing and giggling.  I was standing by watching my mother change his diaper one warm summer day.  It was of course a cloth diaper and it had "ewww" stinkies in it.  My mother proceeded to squeeze the outside of the diaper and I was mortified.  What was she doing?  Well lo and behold, she came up with money.  Change.  I couldn't believe my little brother could poop money.  He was the "GOLDEN BOY". 

Of course I later learned he had a bad habit of swallowing things.