I was about 14 when I began to explore my blue-collar neighborhood on Newell Terrace, where Dickey Barrett my secret crush practiced his basketball hoops. There was Concord Avenue and then the intersection of Garden St where the fire station light flashed as I carefully crossed that wide street and discovered the outer world beyond, like The Harvard Coop in Harvard Square, Cambridge where the greatest books in the world were sold. But I get ahead of myself.

Garden Street stretched out for a few miles and in those days that seemed like a vast world. I passed the homes of the academicians, the Harvard and Radcliffe professors who taught at those colleges. I babysat at some of those homes with their high ceilings and hi-brow books and appreciated how respectful of me they were when I babysat for their children. I graduated from my babysitting jobs when I was about 15. By that time I walked to the end of Garden street and encountered Harvard Square.

I could observe students of every shape and size who were in college. That galvanized me to be ambitious about my own scholarship at the private parochial school I attended. I studied even harder than I had before. The boys in the square were beginning to look at me, really look at me, and that was a morale booster. Maybe boys beyond Dickey Barrett with his froggy voice would like me. Would want to be my boyfriend.

During High School I had a scholarship to a private girls’ school, Mt Trinity Academy. I managed to meet and date boys. My main source of candidates came from B.C. the boys’ Catholic school run by Jesuits who ran the dance on Friday nights.

My girlfriend and I would usually get a ride home from some boy or other.Sometimes we’d be necking in the car, then I’d go to confession on Saturday and the priest would absolve me of my sins. That was a big relief.

Then one day when I was a high school senior I was walking in the Harvard Yards and a tall blonde handsome boy by the name of David Vitz asked me my name and where I went to school and he told me he was a Harvard freshman on the hockey team and would I Iike to come and watch him play.

He had broken off with his long time girlfriend and was now looking for love in the right places. He drove me home in his red mustang. I couldn’t believe it. I went to the hockey games where I was surrounded by Radcliffe girls and Harvard boys and I wasn’t even in college yet!

My high-school goody-goody girlfriends were all astonished and certainly jealous. He even let me wear his silver necklace with a Harvard Hockey medal on it. We went steady for a year.

A long way for me to roam, from my childhood street Newell Terrace to Harvard Square! Oh, to spend one’s teenage life in Cambridge Massachusetts.