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Juiced, jaded, faded
Trekking up Mass Ave, through the soul of our city
BY MIKE MILIARD

Massachusetts Avenue, 15 miles or so of asphalt, snakes through historic Lexington and suburban Arlington, slices into the urban and intellectual cores of Cambridge and Boston, and peters out in the industrial lots of Roxbury and Dorchester. It wends its way past bars and nightclubs and churches and sex shops and funeral homes and frat houses and warehouses and restaurants and record stores. An old candy factory. A nuclear reactor. If it’s a bit much to call it our Broadway or Sunset Strip, it’s safe to say it’s just as teeming with life and local mythology. In 1978, Willie Alexander captured Mass Ave’s multifarious character in his song of the same name:

Looking lucid, looking juiced, looking jaded, looking faded on Mass Ave,

Looking hairy, looking hip in the mirrors before the Cantab.

Ooh, you might see a cat in a top hat or a wino or a blind man on Mass Ave.

You might see an old friend, or run from a ghost on Mass Ave.

Over the years, I’ve fallen in love with this street. Walking home drunk from the Middle East. Flipping through the $1 jazz bins at Stereo Jack’s or overpriced CDs at the old Tower Records. A cheeseburger at the Friendly Eating Place, the paper and a pint at the Plough & Stars. Waiting (and waiting) for the 77 bus. But even with the intimacy between us, I knew I could stand to know the street better. So I spent two hot summer days walking from Lexington to Dorchester.

WE’VE GOT HISTORY

THE BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY, proclaims the sign, perched atop a flagpole stretching dizzyingly toward the clouds.

As good a starting point as any.

It’s 10 am. The early-morning sun shines bright and hot, and Lexington Green seems to glow as two boys, one carrying a wooden sword, the other toting a toy rifle and dressed in a plumed cap, play Minutemen and Red Coats, killing each other over and over as they dart in and out of the shade. Tourists, listening to an old woman in colonial garb, cluster in a group near an engraved stone. On the far side of the park, a mother clasps her crying toddler’s shoulders and screams, "You’re going to spoil the day for everyone!"

On Lexington’s main drag there’s a shoe store (Michelson’s, est. 1919) and a drug store (Theatre Pharmacy, est. 1935), among other establishments right out of Thornton Wilder. And then there’s the caffeine: a Starbucks at 1729 Mass Ave; a Peet’s at 1749 Mass Ave; a Dunkin’ Donuts barely a block away from those. On the sidewalks, pairs of moms push strollers and sip tall iced coffees; a kid in a Ramones shirt on a bike nods hello as he passes. Such a friendly town.

Outside Lexington center, signs of civilization fade away. The air is heavy and humid, smelling of chlorophyll and thrumming with the summer buzz of crickets and cicadas.

Walking this wooded stretch, past roadside taverns, white-stone churches, and clapboard houses more than 300 years old, you get to thinking about history. About the gallant warrior farmers who drove those pernicious Brits from our blood-soaked soil. About what must have happened right here. For a moment, you imagine the air acrid with musket smoke, filled with fife and drum music, the clangor of gunshots and shouting.

On the sandy shoulder of the road, just lying there, is a large white plume. Three feet long. Just like one that might have been dipped in ink by John Hancock or Samuel Adams when they lived in this very town. Why is it here? What huge bird could it have come from? I can’t guess. Very strange. But not the strangest thing I’ll see on this trip.

MAIN STREET, USA

Something to know about Arlington: practically everything that’s not an ethnic restaurant — and those are legion — is old-fashioned. Not colonial old, like when the town was still called Menotomy, but more like a post-war cliché. A Pleasantville: the Brigham’s in Arlington Heights, serving up lime rickeys and orange sherbet. The Capitol Theatre, with its ticket window and wedge-like marquee. Stately Arlington High School, which looks as though crew-cut lettermen and ponytailed bobbysoxers should still be flirting with each other out front. The place even has a store that services typewriters.

It must be comforting to the legions of old folks who call the town home. Shivering in the arctic air conditioning of Johnny’s Foodmaster, I watch a man who looks like Jimmy Cagney arrange lemons and limes just so as dawdling seniors in golf shirts and polyester pants push lightly laden shopping carts. At the Regent Theatre in Arlington Center, a poster advertises that Mickey Rooney will be stopping by for three nights in September. "Let’s Put on a Show!"

It can make for some interesting juxtapositions. Not far from the Lexington border, an old woman sits silently on the porch of Sunrise Assisted Living, staring silently at idling traffic. A Virgin Mary statuette in the window to her left does the same. A souped-up car passes slowly by them both, hardcore punk blaring from within.

Yuppies live here, too, and Arlington Center is a mecca for out-of-town foodies. On the Ave, between Lexington and Cambridge, I count at least four Chinese restaurants (Jade Garden ... Tiki In ... Shanghai Village ... Great Wok), at least four Thai restaurants (Rama Thai ... Thai Moon ... Sweet Chili ... Thailand Café), at least two Indian restaurants (Punjab ... Bangalore Café), and one all-purpose Japanese-Korean-Thai restaurant (Asiana). And that’s not counting the innumerable Italian and Greek restaurants that form the bedrock of the commercial landscape.

Arlington is, after all, all-American — in all the new and old ways. It’s the birthplace of Samuel Wilson, the supposed progenitor of Uncle Sam. And if it’s got an unusual share of blue-hairs, that’s probably because the elderly have always done well here. Near the Uncle Sam statue at the center of town, there’s a plaque:

NEAR THIS SPOT SAMUEL WHITTEMORE, THEN 80 YEARS OLD,

KILLED THREE BRITISH SOLDIERS APRIL 19, 1775.

HE WAS SHOT, BAYONETED, BEATEN AND LEFT FOR DEAD, BUT

RECOVERED AND LIVED TO BE 98 YEARS OF AGE.

Not far away, there’s another memorial on a stone in front of a building:

HERE STOOD COOPER’S TAVERN, IN WHICH

JABEZ WYMAN AND JASON WINSHIP

WERE KILLED BY THE BRITISH, APRIL 19, 1775.

It’s now a Starbucks.

 

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Issue Date: August 5 - 12, 2005
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