Cambridge Days

We walked the ten blocks or so to catch the bus to Harvard Square and the subway system. It was a perfect fall day, cool enough to be comfortable and warm enough not to need a jacket. We emerged in the heart of the Square and all it's unique character, a mix of students, panhandlers, street musicians, academics and shoppers. It was noisy and cheerful and completely at ease with itself. We headed toward the river, past the small, shadowy shops and bright awnings, past the little German bistro my daddy used to take us to, past the record stores and art stores. The sidewalks were crowded with people and dogs and the streets were a perpetual snarl of traffic. Music of all kinds drifted out second and third floor windows and taxi drivers shouted at pedestrians in languages we didn't understand while the occasional junkie nodded off in a doorway. There were long haired hippies and crewcut professionals, women in starched shirts with ties and men in robes and long beards. There were beads everywhere and the scent of marijuana was in the air like cologne. There were shouts from various young men and women hawking the Boston Phoenix on the corners, people passed out flyers against the war, closer toward the river a young man stood on an overturned milk crate, preaching, protesting, pleading for someone to listen. His eyes were slightly glazed over and he was surrounded by pigeons and empty whiskey bottles. An old man passed us with a monkey in a shiny, miniature leather jacket perched on his shoulder. A young woman leaned against a lampost, a dog eared copy of the King James Bible pressed to her chest and a string of rosary beads wound around her hand. She blessed us as we made our way around her.

It was less crowded as we got closer to the river. The water was murky and still, tinged with a metallic gray and reflecting the high rise dorms of Harvard. Debris floated randomly along with the mild current and the city buildings stood sharply etched against the skyline. All along the river banks people were spread out - drinking wine from paper cups, playing frisbee, reading, sunbathing on old blankets spread on the new grass. Portable radios broadcast opera, the lone country western station and the baseball game in progress at Fenway Park. Couples strolled across the bridge holding hands, walking dogs and pushing baby carriages and we could see a denim clad, long haired woman in front of an easel, passionately sketching the horizon. This was Cambridge when I was fresh out of high school, artsy and intellectual, free spirited and casual, tolerant and color blind. The city opened its arms to everyone and invited them to stay and make themselves at home. It was a liberal hotbed of anti-establishment life styles and radical thinking, of flower children and protesters, of the fight for freedom and individuality. And the last time I was there, it still was - underground coffee houses still exist along with wine bars and very pricey hotels, handmade jewelery and leather goods are still for sale, there is still music from the doorways and windows and the dusty, dim, old bookstores have survived. Change comes to the Square but it's superficial, cosmetic, and overall unimportant.

Harvard Square was and continues to be - for me - the heat and heart of the city. It comforts me to know that it's still there, still as it was, still alive with a feeling of quiet revolution. The subways rumble beneath it coming and going in all directions, a maze of underground railways that extends far beyond the city's limits but always comes back to it's starting point, like coming home again after a journey and being glad to see all the familiar landmarks still as you left them.