Few people in the Boston area (including commercial establishments) clear snow and ice from their sidewalks. I grew up in The South (well, Baltimore, but that is south of the Mason-Dixon line), where people were more considerate of one another in this way. Of course, snow was rarer there than it is here, so shoveling one’s sidewalk, in addition to being The Right Thing To Do, was considered to be an important emergency measure.
My father always hated Boston. He hated the very idea of Boston. In his image of Boston, the weather was cold and the people snobby. He had never been to Boston, and he never wanted to go. His idea of the kind of place he wanted to go was Tahiti. He compromised and moved to Florida. Unfortunately, both of his children ended up living in Boston. My father is buried under the mounds of snow but below the frostline in Lexington cemetery near Boston. I think he would be appalled if he knew.
When Dan and I were living in Cambridge, my father had a meeting in Boston in January. After the meeting was over, he came to visit us. The next morning, I asked him what he’d like to do. “I’d like to go to Harvard Square,” he said.
“But, Dad,” I objected, “it’s hard to park near Harvard Square. We’ll probably have to walk a couple of blocks. And it’s really cold out. Also, there’s a lot of snow and ice on the ground, so it won’t be a pleasant walk.”
He persisted. “That’s okay. I’d really like to go see Harvard Square. Maybe there’s some place there where we can go get a cup of coffee if it gets too cold.”
That sounded okay to me. So Dad and I piled into the car, and we were early enough (and this was long ago enough) that we got a reasonably good parking spot on Brattle Street only a block or two outside of the Square. When we got out of the car, it was cold. It had snowed earlier that week or the last, and the snow was still about a foot high and old enough that it had gotten grey and dirty. Most places had not shoveled their walks (an endearing Boston-area trait: Why shovel, when you’ll just have to do it again next week?) but the steady stream of foot traffic had beaten down a path along where the sidewalk lay buried. The path had turned to ice.
We slipped and slid into the Square across the ice and dirty snow, and found a place where we could have a nice cup of coffee. Then we slipped and slid back to the car and drove home again.
The next day I asked my Dad what he’d like to do. “Let’s go into Harvard Square again,” he enthused.
This seemed really wrong to me. This just wasn’t like him at all. But despite my objections, he insisted. Finally I said, “Dad. It’s dirty. It’s icy. It’s cold. I know you don’t like this kind of stuff. I just don’t get it. Why do you want to do this?”
His reply: “I want to make sure I get all the details absolutely right, because my friends back in Florida are never going to believe this when I tell them about it.”
