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Signs of Life in the Square
by Dermot Whittaker
Near Harvard Square, on the grassy spot in front of Grendel's, it is possible, after two or three beers, to drift off on a
busy, spring afternoon in Cambridge. The neighborhood has changed over thirty years, no doubt, but they still come here to
sit in the sun and forget -- the old man in wool suit coat and tie, the bare-legged coed, the starched junior editor and the
rumpled photo copier on their lunch breaks, serious skateboarders, pretend hippies, college spouses with their precocious
kids in dark colored socks. A few feet away, the traffic on J.F.K. inches and steams toward the permanent snarl of the Square.
You could almost doze off; but certainly no fewer than two beers will do it.
Lie on the worn grass, eyes closed, and sniff the exhaust. You may be startled by a gentle rain, greasy and odd-smelling.
To your right, a pigeon, its entire blue head covered in mayonnaise, sends the condiment flying as it pecks with fury at a
pita sandwich. An omen, you think, difficult to read. Are you too near the trash can? Will any decent musicians bother to
show up here today? Or is this a portent of greater compass, involving the whole of the Square?
The Nineties came and went, and Harvard Square is still thriving, business-laden, and glitzy. Cover the place and you'd have
a shopping mall with no parking. Because of the nearness of the colleges, you come here for a really clever postcard or a
sweatshirt for your visiting grandchildren. Old residents have given up joking about track lighting and salmon interiors,
and moved to Northampton or Peterborough.
You are in luck today: a couple of Berklee students decide to perform jazz standards as a trombone duo. They are gotten up
like beboppers, but they are shy beginners, steering clear of the Maginot-style concrete benches where too great an audience
might gather. The young woman plays melody near her music stand on the sidewalk while the young man covers the bass notes
in the alley.
They're going over with you and the lunch set. Someone drops a bill in their case and right away the playing becomes louder,
more confident, joyful. This is true of any but the veteran street musicians: money is silent applause. A sort of mental case
comes along and leaves his dollar, sings with the brass unsteadily, though loudly, them sways on, mercifully, not before uttering
these words -- "The trombone is very difficult. It's a chromatic . . . wind . . . instrument you use your MIND to play."
You and the other listeners take this message in stride. The unspoken rule in this place is "Don't stare." Don’t be
a tourist. Ignore anyone roller-blading between your legs. "Oh, was that a snake that young man was wearing? I hadn't
noticed." Sit very still in Harvard Square and witness an endless parade of self-consciousness, much of it joyless, and quietly
feel yourself reacting. Ever so slightly, the eyes squint, the lips tighten. For every outré beatnik there is a normally dressed
young man or woman, doubting extravagantly, wearing a smirk or furrowed brow. This scene exists to give the people's columnists
in Boston a collective coronary.
What point is there, you wonder, in an assault on Brattle Street with the Allman Brothers on the boom box in one hand and
a lit, fragrant Honduran in the other? What is likeable and honest about Cambridge seems everywhere in retreat. Even in Central
Square, where the music and ethnic food are good, the six-year-old desperado, outfitted with toy pistols and plastic Viking
helmet, has been evicted from the old Woolworth's -- it's gone. Once moored quietly around the University, the disheveled
used bookstores could no longer stay afloat. They've left port for cyberspace or Somerville, or gone to the bottom.
It really isn't Cambridge or Harvard but this carnival-vortex of Harvard Square, complete with actual jugglers and magicians,
that disappoints you. Is Au Bon Pain readying fried dough to serve in its waiterless café? You hoped to find, somewhere, the
semblance of a seedy but intellectual backwater. After such a circus, you leave perturbed and saddened, even if you only came
for a postcard. For a change of scenery, you can stroll through the quieter Harvard campus. Thoreau, the man who thought personal
economy the soul of philosophy and ostentation its opposite, roomed not far from these gates. But how encouraging is it to
emerge from the University precincts and meet with so many windows full of expensive junk and sweets? Can you help looking
around for signs of something else?
Old timers from the Sixties still swear by the double cheeseburger plate at Charlie's Kitchen -- but gone is the wiener schnitzel
mit Jello (today's flavor: red) at the dark and pokey Wursthaus. The old timers will cheerfully tell you of a day when
Harvard Square was rattier and quieter, with the smell of mothballs from the Morgan Memorial in the air and the cheap coffee
Hayes Bick open all night (except, they all add, for the hour it took to hose it down). You'll tell the old timers a tale
of your own college town with its run-down, unfinished life, where you stayed until it began to go the way of this place:
first tidy, then cute, finally nauseating. Is it the work of the academy-as-wealth-machine? The inevitable spite of failed
bohemia? The lure of money?
When the greasy pigeon leaves you, it flies high to where banners on the buildings read OFFICE SPACE FOR RENT, while new construction
goes up all around. You hear nervous rumblings about real estate and remember the same noises twenty years ago. Candidates
and columnists are positioning themselves to address people's recriminations by ascribing The Blame while sunnier climes forever
beckon Massachusetts industry.
What might the Square revert to if the bottom really fell out? You look about for signs, and hope.
Copyright, Dermot Whittaker, 2006. |
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