The Hill

 

Since mid-December UMass has been a place at peace. 

 

 

Now they're baaack!

Cold cat and an icy mouse in front of Northampton's Forbes Library. 

 

I was surprised to see that this package store on King Street has gone out of business. It has been a liquor store, under various names and owners, for at least half a century. Good God, if I could have back even half the money I spent in that place over the decades. Those were the days when God was humbling me to raise me up. 

 

 

In better news, a new Oriental restaurant is opening a few doors down, apparently specializing in soups. 

I'll have to check it out and let you know what I think.

Meanwhile, I was pleased to encounter a celebration of a Tommy on Main Street.

 

 

Actually, I heard that movie was awful, but nothing with a Tommy in it can be all bad. 

A most chill-town business in Hamp is Shop Therapy, one of the last places around that still has a kind of counter-culture vibe. 

Their business is so good that they are moving to larger quarters - filling the long vacant space a couple doors down where Faces once was. It was getting pretty crowded in their current location, with aisles so close together you could barely walk down them. Meanwhile, the old Faces space has gone all psychedelic in anticipation of what Shop Therapy will do with their expanded digs!

 

Before I caught the bus home, I stopped at Filos for pizza. 

 

 

It has the best low-cost pizza slices downtown. Filos has also been extensively remodeled, so if you ain't been there in a while check it out. 

Here is the program from the closing of Springfield's Our Lady of Hope Church, where I made my First Communion. 

 

People identify me with the Pine Point section of Springfield (the late, much lamented Marilyn Vennell used to call me "The Mayor of Pine Point") but when my father got out of the military my parents were broke. Therefore we had to live in a house on Littleton Street owned by a relative until my dad got enough money to move back to their beloved Point, where both of my parents grew up. 

 

 

I have fuzzy little kid memories of Hungry Hill. In particular I recall my first day of kindergarten at Liberty School under Mrs. McMann. When we arrived, I remember being surprised to see half the kids there were bawling. "Why are those kids crying?" I asked my mom. "Never mind," she replied, "pay no attention to them." Of course if I could have foreseen the significance of that day, as the start of the dreary years of indoctrination that lay ahead, I would have been bawling right along with them.