New Earth

 

From his office window, Haskin Flagg could see four sixth graders hacking away at the frozen Wisconsin ground, their picks having difficulty making dents in the rock hard earth. Flagg smiled. He knew that morning the student's teacher Mr. Peterson had asked his students from the University Campus Elementary School the question, "How deep is the frost line at the end of January in this part of Wisconsin?" Mr. Peterson was a skilled motivator of children and his students would surely chip at the soil until they found the answer.

Watching the students working together reminded Haskin Flagg of his old Hood Street friends. There were the sons Hood Street sent to war who never came back, whose tragic early deaths had made Haskin fully aware for the first time of his own mortality. There was his friend Clause, the German kid who died in the Battle of the Bulge, and George Cudjour who was killed in the South Pacific. He also remembered Happy, so sweet tempered but intellectually incapable of serving in the war or even to attend school. Flagg was sad to realize that of his best Hood Street friends only Happy was still alive. So much promise in those lost bosy, so little fulfillment. Who could have foreseen the tragic fates that lay ahead when they were just boys walking along a dusty Hood Street on summer evenings so long ago? Life is full of lessons, including some you regret having to learn. We all spend our time chipping at the rock hard ground of experience, looking for answers.

Haskin sighed and turned away from the window and returned to his desk. It was time for Flagg to prepare for his own class. Yesterday his student Florence Williams had asked the question, "When did the Great Depression end, Mr. Flagg?" He had answered her with the glib response, "When World War II started." Later, he reflected that he respected his students too much to leave them with such a shallow explanation, so he had read up on the history in order to give a more complex explanation today. But not one directed just at Florence Williams, who had asked the question, but at the rest of the class as well, presented in a way so that all the students could absorb the answer, even Grey Edwards, the kid in the bib overalls who sat in the rear of the classroom.

Despite the need to focus on his lesson plan, Haskin found his mind drifting back to Hood Street. So many fleeting, but precious memories like blueberry picking with his grandfather, the unfinished foundation in the space in front of the small shack-like house across from his grandparent's, the ride in the Essex, his first job in the majestic Capitol Theater, all his now vanished friends. He shook his head, "Just memories, fragments, nothing more." Perhaps those memories would come more alive the next time he went to visit his brothers Walter and Robert in Springfield. He looked forward to making a sentimental journey strolling down Hood Street, visiting again the scenes of his boyhood, where he had lived before his academic career had led him to icy Wisconsin.

Of course, he knew that things would be different after all these years. When he finally arrived back in Springfield that June, he told his brother Walter of his plans to visit Hood Street. Walter was not supportive. "You'll be disappointed Haskin," he warned, "It's all changed, I drove past Gramp's house a few years ago and I hardly recognized it, the whole street's been paved. Personally," Walter added, "I never look backward, it's not worth the time." But Walter was an unsentimental realist, and he had no sense of the romanticized view his older brother had of old Pine Point.

So the first day he was back in Springfield, Haskin made his brother drive him to Hood Street and leave him off at the top of the street where it connects with Bay Street. He told Walter not to linger, that after he was done exploring the old haunts he would simply walk up Boston Road to Breckwood Boulevard, which he knew was once known as Harding Street. Slowly he walked down Hood Street, now paved, but with all of the original houses still standing. Some new houses had been shoehorned into some of the larger lots, houses built on spaces that had mostly served as large gardens for the residents of the houses beside them.

Flagg thought, Within every house, a dream. Behind every door, a story.

So many stories, an unraveling tapestry of sorts. The death of Clause and George, the first ride on his shiny red bike down Hood to Fisher Street and Nathaniel, the small swamp that had once been near the end of the street. Who still remembered such things? Much new earth had been dug, or paved over, since the days of Haskin's boyhood. New earth and pavement over old memories.

Soon he stood before number 124, the house his grandfather had built so long ago. and he realized that Walter was right. Although the basic outline of the house was still there, it had been "improved" almost beyond recognition. At least the majestic catalpa tree was still there, on the front lawn where his grandfather had planted it, although the tree was now gnarled with age. 

Yet, just the fact that it was still alive felt somewhat reassuring that the world of his youth had not completely disappeared. Slowly he cut across Dorman School and then headed up Old Point Street past the Pine Point Cafe, then on to Boston Road, where an artist calling himself "The Twig Painter" was sitting on the sidewalk drawing a seascape. Passing the "new" Pine Point Library, soon he arrived at Robert's house on Breckwood.

"So wonderful to see you, big brother!" Robert exclaimed. "What have you been up to?

"Looking for ghosts," Haskin replied. "Looking for ghosts and having a hard time finding them."