“It’s The Most Inevitable Time Of The Year”
It's “Back to School” time and I have often been surrounded by it.
It’s the end of the summer.
It’s the undeniable beginning of the autumn, the start of the fall. For some, this brings a frightening arrival at a new world far away from the one they had most intimately known. Summer’s departure is often that last glance to the connection to home. For some there is trepidation, for some enthusiastic anticipation. Personally, it was my first feeling of needing an escape from the familiarity of my home when I left for college.
I loved where I had lived. But, staying there was bad news. I had had multiple encounters with law enforcement in my youth. None that were violent, none that had involved vandalism. That sort of criminal activity just wasn’t me. But, I did find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time on more than one occasion.
So, I got hit with a bunch of underage misdemeanor charges - that all got tossed - and which provided me my first taste of the inscrutability of the legal system when I asked multiple court officers how it was that I was being charged as an adult for underage possession of alcohol when it’s not a crime for an adult to possess alcohol. I never got a straight answer on that one, most said, “That’s just the way it is.” One actually admitted, “You know, I have never thought of that.”
In any case, my reputation as a local troublemaker had been written in ink and I just thought, “I have got to get the fuck out of here.”
My first choice was Emerson College, and I got in. I wanted to go there. It was my ideal, known as a springboard to the entertainment industry which was all I wanted. I had a high school pal, named Rob, who got in, too. But, while my folks could afford the tuition at Emerson they could not come up with the room and board, I was the first of four children. The option of commuting from home was discussed… very briefly. I had simply no interest in hanging around.
So, I went up to Niagara University.
It wasn’t an enormously radical departure, but eight hours away felt alright. Nobody else from my hometown was going to be there, I was going to be completely anonymous. Nobody knew me. This was a new start.
My move-in day was not the classic unloading of a family station wagon or a rented U-Haul. I got on a plane in Providence, RI with two duffel bags. I flew to Newark, NJ and then onward to Buffalo, NY and then I took a bus to Niagara Falls, NY. I took a cab to my new home, the campus of Niagara University which I had seen exactly once before in my life. A guy called, Rich, was the first person to say hello.
And, here is where my move-in story ends. The gist of it is that I spent a year at Niagara University and that this guy, Rich, who I met first is still one of my best friends. The first guy I became friends with in my freshman dorm, this classic collegiate locale called Lynch Hall, was a guy from Long Island called John and he loved rock and roll music and sports as much as I did. He and I are still great friends to this day. I did a year in western New York and then, drawn by the foolish love that only teenagers know, I went back to Massachusetts.
I did some time at Umass-Amherst. That is a story all in itself, which will not be told in this edition but suffice to say, it was not for me. But here are the defining points. I broke up, predictably, with the girl. I felt lost among 25,000 students when I’d been comfortable with 3,500. I saw a fair amount of familiar faces from the area around my home, it was after all my home state university, and I fucking hated it. I stopped going to class and instead went on a daily basis to the bookstores in Amherst and nearby Northampton. Hunter Thompson once said that the greatest aspect of an American education is that it provides an individual four years to read.
I wasn’t familiar with Dr. Thompson at that point, but I most certainly embraced that ideal. I read a lot. And then, I went home. Not to Attleboro, MA which was a far too easy trip from Amherst. I went home to Niagara. But that is another tale and this one is about “Back To School.”
When I was a child the end of summer was Labor Day. It was when the pool closed. It was a week or so after doing “Back To School” shopping with my mom. I recall with retrospective fondness the day Ellen took me to get my new “Catholic School” wardrobe to head to Bishop Feehan High School (another experience I loved). At the time, being a product of the Brennan Middle School where I wore jeans and tee shirts, I dreaded it. Ellen, as she did all things, made it cool. We got the goods (corderoys -a couple of pairs that I actually still own and wear - and button down shirts and ties) and then she pointed out Levi’s jeans for my non school hours and said, “You’re not going to jail! Grab a pair of Levi’s!”
I have often expressed this on the “Konsideration” and those who knew her know, but Ellen ruled.
So, that was my first and most memorable “Back To School.” Returning to Niagara wasn’t the usual, “Back to School,” considering I’d already done it once and I did notice the freshmen and other transfers eyed my immediate familiarity with the campus and, “Welcome back’s” from freshmen year friends quizzically. While they were learning the Dining Commons hours I was at a keg party off-campus.
After my misadventure at UMass I spent the rest of my collegiate summers up at Niagara so once again, “Back to School,” wasn’t really in play.
It was always cool when the academic year arrived and the students enrolled in the traditional fall/spring semester got back. There was an undeniable uptick from the more casual energy that defined summer school when student attendance spiked but again an advantage to essentially having never left after May finals. No moving in hassles for me, just a lot giving a “Welcome” as opposed to receiving it.
I usually came back to Massachusetts once or twice a summer (usually around a Dead show) and in late August my regular weekly call home - which far prior to the idea of a “conference call” or “Zoom,” was my dad on the phone in the kitchen and my mom chipping in on the phone from their bedroom. Those calls which always were a jumble of voices until the authoritative voice of the Kahuna said, “enough!.” That was when my old man would say, “There’s a couple of extra bucks in your account if you need anything for school. That is NOT for you for to buy a round at the bar!”
And, so they got me through college. A 3.1 GPA, not bad for a decided fuck-up like me. But, let’s leave that one behind.
I lived in Cambridge/Somerville MA for 25 years and to say that Boston is a “College Town” is an understatement of the highest regard. Shit gets cuckoo in the Hub when the kids get back, that is plain fact. Having been a resident of this wonderful spot on our planet for multiple years I’d like to think I have seen it all, but nobody has seem it all. There are quite literally people from from all over the planet moving their beloved children to our wonderful region.
And, despite their advanced knowledge, they repeatedly prove they don’t have a fucking clue what Boston is.
Which is okay. Contrary to popular belief and big screen stereotypes we actually welcome smart people, and equally welcome with a smiling nod and roll of the eyes those folks who maybe “don’t get it.” Hell, we have come up with a term called, “Storrow’ing” for knuckleheads that didn’t figure that out (Insider: “Curse Revered”) that the Storrow Bridge is an unforgiving obstacle to a box truck questioning her stated height. “Allston Christmas,” a neighborhood wide free for all of discarded furniture and other ephemera as off-campus apartments are vacated and then occupied is a holiday that is enjoyed for an indeterminate time period by citizens far beyond the collegiate set. It is, in fact, such a beloved tradition of trash picking that even the local Stop N’ Shop supermarket chain commemorated with signature oversized shopping bags!
Now, I reside once again surrounded by college students but the University of Rhode Island is an entirely different animal. I have learned that they only students who live on the campus that I call a neighbor are freshmen and scholarship students (mostly athletes). Everyone else in the student body is scattered all over South County, living for the academic year in furnished vacation homes. I have often said that campus itself - which is beautiful, by the way - is such a ghost town after 5PM on a Friday that a tourist could be struck by a tumbleweed. One local said to me that URI is the biggest school in the SUNY (State University of New York, for the uninitiated) system and the plethora of Empire State license plates would make a strong argument for that idea. I actually realized the academic year was amping up when I recognized the empty parking lots I’d walked past all summer on my way to the on-campus bus stop were now increasingly occupied with Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania tags. “Back to School” for students technically identified as “commuters.”
They’re more visible in the spots you’d expect: supermarkets and liquor stores are dead giveaways and the buses run slower as they figure out their routes to and from campus. Social media also sounds the “Back to School” bell. “First Day of School” photos and shots of freshmen dorms abound, though interestingly, I have noticed pics of collegiate off-campus housing are a rarity.
The other thing I learn from social media is where the offspring of my friends are matriculating. By my count, for example, I have six friends who are sending children to the University of Vermont. I find myself wondering if they’ll ever cross paths. One year at Niagara I had a next door neighbor living off campus who asked if I had New Jersey roots. I told him my parents were from Newark and two months later my neighbor’s father and my own reunited for their first time over twenty years. I never underestimate the small world ethos - particularly in as age specific an environment as college - and this was long before the advent of the World Wide Web changed the world.
What didn’t change via the internet that at my age I have a bunch of friends who have sent kids who on to college. I have friends who have attended schools all over this great land. Even more so, I have those same friends who are sending their children to schools that range from the Ivy League to the local community college.
And, those kids are all experiencing the same first time away from home that my friends and I did. They come from different backgrounds and different locations with different interests and different skills, which is a wonderful thing. And one thing they have in common is that the “Kielty Konsideration” is always on their side.
But, then again, if you read this on a regular basis then you already know that.