Spanish views from a small town

A few days ago, I saw on a Facebook page about Boston, that they were asking where readers would go if they had twenty-four hours in Boston. Is it possible to choose? I would go to my old haunts in Jamaica Plain. The triple decker where we used to live. I've seen pictures of it on Google Earth, and the cherry tree is gone. They've re-done the front porches, and the bushes and roses are gone. It looks tattered now. Or it did, when Google sent its car around.  There are trees lining the street, now, to protect some of the houses from the afternoon glare. I would go down the street to the old Seaver School, where I attended kindergarten. It's long been converted to condominiums. I still remember the class I was in, with books lining one wall, desks and small chairs, an emergency exit door with glass panes, where the play kitchen was set up. I envied the play kitchen, but a group of friends had a monopoly on it, and would only sometimes let me, the outsider, play, if I asked ni...

A piece of my childhood died yesterday. Anthony Martignetti, of West Roxbury, died at age 63. I didn't know him personally, but I, and everyone from a certain age up, knew him as the boy running home on Wednesday because Wednesday was Prince Spaghetti day.  The commercial was filmed in 1969, in a North End that was still redolent of working class immigrants, and close-knit families. A North End where Italian was more common than English, and small squares reminded one of quiet corners in a European city. The  commercial shows a boy running home through the streets of Boston's North End, past the Haymarket vendors, past what seems to be the John Eliot School, through probably the Paul Revere Mall, and up a dead end street to his apartment in an old tenement. As he runs, the scene sometimes cuts to his mother's kitchen, where she and others are preparing vegetables and a large pot of spaghetti. Meanwhile, the voiceover talks about Boston traditions, and ends, as Anthony ente...