Memories, particularly of my dear friend Beth.

You know I had a few different ideas as to what I was going to blog about. I have been blogging for about ten or eleven years. Actually I'm not really sure how long it's been. It could be a bit longer but I really can't remember. I'm not as much of a wise ass as I used to be though there are times when I just want to let 'er rip and just say what I want to say. I would do it much more in the old days at Spaces and most of those friends from the Spaces days are still on my friends list but the just don't blog any more. Two people in particular still visit here and once in a while somebody from the old days will pop up out of the blue. I want to thank Nookworm and Suzie in particular because they always show up. Thank you ladies I really do appreciate your visits and comments. You two are always there.

I was checking out the stats and I noticed a blog from 2013 that had six comments and I haven't had six comments in quite a while. So I checked it out to see if there, by chance there was a new comment and there wasn't but there was a comment from my dear friend Beth. She was always so kind to me. And I always went out of my way to be nice to her as she was one sweet lady. We became good friends and we spoke on the phone often. I always wanted to meet her in person and she always spoke to me of wanting to come up to the Boston area. I had always said to her that I would love to show her around if she ever came up here. Why she took to me I really don't know, but she was always incredibly nice to me and the only conclusion I could come to was that she just was an incredibly nice person. I grew to really love Beth. I think she got a big kick when I went off on some tangent and may have used some less than nice language. I would have loved to meet her in person and if she ever did come up here for a short period of time she would have been more than welcome to stay with me.

 Now as close as I am to Boston driving there can be a big pain in the ass, depending on what time you go, but once I get in there I always marvel at what I have so close to me. I never really appreciated what I have just four or five miles from my front door. I drove by Harvard University every day when I went to work for eleven years, not to mention M.I.T. For years, going back to the 1960's when I would go into Harvard Square to buy records at the Harvard Coop (short for cooperative) because they had a huge selection of music and I would hang around on the Cambridge Common, because it's a nice place and I could possibly buy a certain organic substance, which is now legal here, but back then was considered as bad as heroin. I am, after all, a child of the sixties. But I have digressed.

As I said, just before I started this edition of my ramblings I checked to see if I had any new comments and I noticed that a blog I had written in 2013 had a few extra views so I checked it out and there were no new comments but there was a comment from Beth mentioning how she wanted to visit the Boston area and I remember telling her on the phone that she was more than welcome to stay with me or she could stay in a hotel that just opened at the time literally five minutes from my front door. It's a great place to stay just outside of town and you could get into Boston quite easily with public transportation or as I said earlier, depending on the time you could be there about seven minutes by car. Now once you were in town it probably would take longer to get where you want to go because Boston unlike New York has only one section where things are laid out in a grid the rest of the city is a tangled network of streets that were laid out, as the legend goes, based on the cow paths because we are talking about the 1630's. In fact there are four roads in this town that date back to 1630 as this is the fourth oldest English settlement in the country, both here and Boston. One road in particular, Mystic Ave, which runs directly into Boston used to be called the highway into Boston. As you drive down Mystic Ave, so named because it goes by the Mystic River the same river used as the title of the Clint Eastwood movie Mystic River, though there's nothing mystical about the river. The name is derived from the Wampanoag Indian word Muhs-utug which means "big river", which it really isn't. It flows from two lakes in the west part of town and joins the Charles River and they both flow into Boston Harbor. If I remember I will video a drive down Mystic Ave because you can see some of the buildings in Boston in the distance. Now this isn't a particularly beautiful road as it is lined with car dealerships and car repair facilities, medical buildings, plumbing supplies buildings, sub shops, your typical little corner stores and other buildings that I really don't know about and Arlene's and my favorite local restaurant that I have mentioned many times in the past including my last blog, Raso's but we are talking about a road that is coming up to be almost four hundred years old. That's old when you are talking U.S. history.

But once again I have digressed. I really do miss my friend Beth. I hadn't thought about her for a bit but seeing her comment made me think of her again. Why she took to me I don't know. In my earlier days of blogging I was a bit more of a wise ass and why someone as sweet and kind as her would be the last person I would think would be drawn to me but I guess you never know. I do really miss her she never said anything negative to me or anyone for that matter. She was kind, gentle and very sweet and I wish she was still around. I would call her. She probably would have been the only person who could have told me to just shut up and it wouldn't have bothered me.

I miss you my friend but I am glad and grateful for all her visits and kind comments and wonderful conversations. And also to the two or three people that still come here to read my rambling, particularly Nookworm and Suzie. 
Thank you my friends.

I'm outta here.