Looking back to the days of my youth with the fondest of memories that it held is one of my favorite things to do. I love the days we would spend at Breezy Lake at the end of the street. We had Upper Dam, Middle Dam and Lower Dam, 3 nice sized likes. Breezy lake was Lower Dam, if I remember correctly. Many a Saturdays would be spent in the beach sand at a lake, casting a fishing pole out in hope of a Large Mouthed Bass. We used to skate the winters on the ice and even fell through one time, even if it was on purpose.
Life was simple back then in my little house in my little town on Benoit St. We would ride bikes up and down the big hill and play man hunt in the woods behind my house. We climbed trees and threw rocks, we snuck cigarettes, we were boys. It seemed we were always pushing our limits. We would stay out late at night and cause a ruckus, enticing the local police with our madness and enjoying the flight away from them. Old mills and mill houses made up our neighborhood. There was a Catholic Church at the end of the street. My mom went to that school when she was a kid.
Every day we would take the mile trek through the woods to school. The path passed through Upper Dam and we would walk across fallen logs and between rocks over the babbling streams that connected the lake to the others around. During the summer the older guys shot paintball guns in these woods and we would see who could find the most paint balls that avoided splatter. We painted the rocks and wrote out names up and down the path. I loved those woods and those walks through those woods with my friends.
Apparently at one time a train went through my town. We had train tracks running up over the lakes of my towns. I always used to hear stories of kids getting high and drunk and jumping off of the bridges into the river and dying a horrible death, victims of the jagged rocks that hid beneath the surface of the brown water. No matter to us, we took the horrific stories as urban legend and frequently stripped down to shorts and flew off of the iron tracks and into the murky river water. There were snapping turtles in these waters, my Uncle told me of people losing there whole fingers in the grips of the jaws of these ancient monsters.
We would skip school and pull out my friends canoe from his back yard and paddle out onto the lake listening to the Red Sox on the radio, catching pounds and pounds of fish only to get caught every time when my buddies mom came by with the afternoon paper. We were usually grilling fish having a grand old time when a loud scream would bring our adventurous day to a halt.
God I loved my little town and the all nighters with my friends. Chasing girls all night and day and romping around town like it was ours. It was ours. I had my first kiss here, my first fight, I caught my first fish and it was here that I learned how to break the rules. We were good kids who just wanted to play baseball and be us. When I look back at my childhood and my life on the ponds. I can always be grateful to my family and friends and community for the wonderful boyhood memories that built the man that I am today.
