A funny little story played itself out for me not too long ago. The whole thing began over twenty years ago…
I visited my Aunt Sandra in Boston, Massachusetts in April of 1987, during spring break of my first year of art school in Dover, New Jersey.
I remember it was a great trip; I’d never been to Boston before, and it was awesome visiting my Aunt and checking out the town. I remember strolling around Cambridge during a beautiful spring that year. It was also amazing for me to see where my Aunt worked at the publishing company Houghton Mifflin.
I remember us taking a trip via ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Also, I remember walking by myself in Boston, going into an old graveyard, looking up and realizing I was standing on Paul Revere’s grave. A second later, I felt like I was punched in the nose- and I actually bled on his tombstone!
Other than being smacked by Paul Revere’s ghost, it was a great visit, and during it, I had a camera of some sort and snapped a bunch of photos. Of course, these were the days long before digital cameras, so when I was ready to leave, I left the film rolls with my Aunt so she could later develop them and send the prints to me back in Jersey.
And that’s where something went off the rails.
I must have given my Aunt my dorm address at the art school. The dorms were really an old farm that dated back to the early 1800′s. Some students lived in a big house converted to dorms called ‘The Mansion’, while I lived in another building called ‘The Carriage House’ because in the old days that’s what it had been. (Despite the names, life in the Carriage House was actually a bit more luxurious than at ‘The Mansion’ because we had slightly more individual space, and *gasp!* our own kitchen, as opposed to hotplates in our rooms. Ah yes! The glory days of youth!)
But at some point I moved out of the dorm and in with my long-haired ‘hippy’ friend Mark at his parent’s house in Hackettstown, NJ. Once there, we proceeded to turn the house into our recording studio; the basement den became the recording room, various rooms became booths and control, and we were soon recording crazy all-night sessions of Mark’s band ‘Perhaps?’ and later our own recording project called ‘The Zoom’. (Someday, the master tapes of all that stuff WILL surface again, once they fall out of whatever pile of stuff they got lost under! There’s a number of songs we recorded I really want to hear again, including a tune called "Just The Other Day" featuring me fumbling on drums, bass and harmonica, and my buddy Mark’s quite good guitar and keyboard playing.)
But you can just imagine how our crazy living arrangement eventually ended up; even Mark’s freewheeling parents got fed up with screeching guitar amps and a full drum kit shaking the house at all hours, and pretty soon we had to shut things down and I needed to find a proper place to live again. I ended up moving in with my to-this-day great friend Mike Milo and some other guys after we found our own house to rent in Randolph, NJ.
Right. So what of the Boston photos?
At some point during my moving around, the letter from Boston was forwarded to Mark’s house (my former temporary address), and he set them aside, meaning to bring the envelope to school. But somehow that never happened, and the letter, much like the long lost master tapes, ended up buried under a stack of something. In the shuffle of school and life, it got forgotten about completely. We graduated in 1989, I moved to California in 1990, and Mark and I lost touch as tends to happen with even the best of friends.
…fast forward twenty-some years later, and my friend Mark is making a move from New Jersey to North Carolina -now with his own wife and kids- and as tends to happen with major moves, piles of things that have sat wherever they sat for 20-some years get shifted, and… voila! Out plops a letter addressed to me from my Aunt, still unopened after twenty years.
During much of this interim, I hadn’t heard from Mark in ages, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, we’d recently managed to reconnect via email. So Mark says to me, "Oh, by the way, I found this letter addressed to you from twenty years ago." Of course he’d opened it- who wouldn’t? "It’s from your Aunt. Pictures from Boston and stuff. You want it?"
….!
So he mails the letter to me, and like opening a minor time capsule sent twenty years ago, I finally got the letter and pictures from Boston in 1987!
Here’s the letter, and a few of the photos: (Click on these to see any image enlarged, and/or to view them all as a slideshow.)
The original envelope, complete with Mark’s 20 years later comment.
The accompanying letter- I also love the dated look of the 24 hour photo label.
Mark’s letter- classic understatement! I still await the comics and MP3s of the recordings Mark managed to save. The other half of the missing stash I have… somewhere. Maybe in another 20 years…
Probably on Martha’s Vineyard.
Okay, this photo of me waited 20-plus years to come to light, so please, go ahead and laugh!
My Aunt- I think we were at the dock on the way to Martha’s Vineyard
… and there it is! Moments after I took this photo I was gushing blood all over Mr. Revere’s grave. Weird, but true.
Overlooking Boston. I wonder how much of the skyline has changed in the twenty years since.
My Aunt and a friend of hers.
Okay I looked it up: this car ferry between Edgartown and Chappaquiddick (along with On Time I and III) is still in service.
My Aunt, and again, I’m not sure exactly where. Possibly on or on the way to Martha’s Vineyard.
Definitely Martha’s Vineyard.
Heh. Those ‘old’ cars were new then. The Hampshire House in Beacon Hill. My Aunt reminds me that we went there to see the original bar that Cheers is based on- I remember that!
) On the remaining days,the others took their kids skiing, while Leila and I did our own thing. 
