In My Life I Loved Them All

I find myself in the late 50’s and early 1960’s this morning, transported by the Everly Brothers “All I Have to Do Is Dream”. Those days, when I was a boy nearing the age of 12. I found myself wandering about and around this thing called life.

My life had always only revolved around my parents, Dave and Willa Sheehan and my, year younger, brother named Christopher James (Hank*) Sheehan.

1959, arrived and I was old enough to branch out and away, to be with my friends, from the Sunset Avenue area of my small town of West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Chris Cross, Jerry Krebs, Bobby Shurtleff, Ed Chauncey, Carl Holmgren, Robert Webster, Artie Barros and my brother Chris formed the early circle from which all things fun and good emanated. We were surrounded by some older guys, Harlow Woodard, Paul Uravich, Bobby Ross, and an Ohlson (Bruce or Tommy) nicknamed Swede, that helped to melt together all the answers we would need to exist in the next few years to come.

I learned the answers to many questions, how to smoke, and to embrace a few curse words that still strike fear in young men’s hearts, learned to laugh and become part of a brotherhood, that taught me how to act and think and stretch for lines outside the tiny, sheltered box into which we were born.

Besides becoming more proficient at baseball, these times together also introduced the subject on most of our minds, GIRLS. We, but I really mean me, learned about girls. Seems that they weren’t soft boys (bet that’ll raise up some hackles) but rather had different body parts, beautiful hair and Siren voices that had begun, already, to attract me to them. Most topics when with the guys, was what one did if they found themselves alone with one of these goddesses, and a new vocabulary to use came into being. What was a boy to think?

I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine, what did that feel like? I was the dreamingest boy on Spring Street, that’s all I had to do, is to dream dream dream. The next song “Let it Be Me”, melodically led me to eventually making contact. She was Mary, I even gave her a friendship ring, we went our separate ways, but can say we are still friends these many years (60) or so later. It was, dare I say, “Bye Bye Love”, and onto “When Will I Be Loved.”

Another year or two and my circle of friends had expanded, mostly young men, following the boundaries freshmen and sophomores had set for them by the upperclassmen. Forrie Broman, Jimmy Wolfsberg and Eddie Sinkevich were among the leaders, always well dressed, down to their polished penny loafers and above all else, to me, the first West Bridgewater High basketball team I watched, but I was not alone. My friends, Chris Cross and Wayne Dufault and David Carlson became groupies, and I along with Jim Tsika and Bruce Julien played a game with which we had fallen in love. After backing up the Warren Brothers (Jim and Dave {Jimpa and Fats or Fitz}) and Ray Ohlson and Artie Barros and a guy named Jim Cheyunski, we came into our time. We’d come a long way from Freshmen Coach Leveille saying we looked like a herd of pregnant goats, to fairly good rebounders and shooters. Dave Soderholm was our leading shooter, and he was fast, wicked fast, a slick ball handler and passer. Of course, he could jump like a kangaroo while guys like me would always be “ground control to Major Tom”, he often came off as arrogant, but always complimented when a play went well and though we travelled different paths, always made me feel that I was better even than I thought.

We all had something to bring to the team, I wore different hats (literally), Dave Carlson and that knee up deadly shot from the left or right corner, Wayne Dufault, dragging his right foot on the floor for pregame warmups, Artie Barros and his patented turn at the top of the foul circle for a shot that never missed, that lefthanded off the backboard on a fast break that Fitz always made. Also, one of my favorites, my brother Chris making a right-handed hook shot for two points and smiling down the floor and the coach taking him out saying “ sit down, you’re no Clyde Lovelette”. We still laugh about it today. I often remember those days as I watch today’s games college and NBA.

It was unforgettable, from the ranking on each other when we’d screw something up, back to the quiet chats in the shade of the trees at the edge of Sunset Avenue School on a hot summer day after hours of playing baseball. We’d have made a trip to Poole’s market and brought back penny candy, Orange Crush or Robb’s Root Beer and Twinkies or my favorite Hostess Sno-Balls and a cold Pepsi in a curved clear glass bottle. The roots of who I am and still becoming were deeply planted there, in the soil that’s now someone’s backyard, and in the shadow of two water towers, trying to hide from us these some 60 years later. I remember you well and always.

“All these places have their moments

Of lovers and friends I still recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life I loved them All”

I have so often heard the expression I’ve moved on and to me has always connoted a feeling that the past, somehow, should be discarded. I so disagree, rather than moved on, I have simply carried the memories with me, and are as much in the present as they were then. For a few moments those who have left us are present in my heart my mind, and until I rejoin them in God’s heaven will be carried by me who moves along only with and by God’s Will.

• My brother, Chris, once, with that metal strip on the edge of an old wooden ruler, carved the name Hank into his arm, because he thought it was a cool name and he wanted to be nicknamed that. As our family grew, our sweet sisters called him Kiki, at the time unable to say Chris. Kiki stuck, but Hank, like the scratched in tattoo on his arm faded away, but as you may have guessed remains with us, in my memory.