Olympia Square

Two old pictures of Olympia Square, the top one seems to be the older picture with the lines above ground. My focus is on the triangular building in the top photo. I knew it as Frenchies Liquors.

My Mother used to rave about the Olympia theatre. It was a parking lot for the Hawthorne restaurant by the time I was young. On the right of the triangle building is Washington Street and up at the next corner was the Old Post Office building, bottom left on the post card, which also served as the Marine Corps Reserve Building in the 60's. I once watched a movie there narrated by Jack Webb about the Mighty Navy/Marine Corps Fighting Team. I watched with Mike H who was enlisting at the same time. I later met him after Nam at one of the Cronin Brothers establishments up on Union Street, the name of that particular bar escapes me. We sat together one night and roundly savaged the Marine Corps. I had been nursing a beer, broke, he bought all night.

Sometimes Nam is like a dream. Ethereal. Unsubstantial. I wonder if I were there at all.

Sometimes.

That night drinking with H sticks with me like a Nam memory. It looms more imortant than it was at the time. Finding someone who went through the same shit was huge then. It still is. I had the same experience at the traveling Wall. Seeing peoples name in stone makes it real. It's not all a dream.

Thanks Mike. Semper Fi.

Right outside of Frenchies is the last place I saw Jimmy B. He was waiting for the liquor store to open. At eight in the morning you could already feel the heat in store for the day. I was standing in front of Cal's after the night shift at the Boston PO. Jim was attached to a working I.V. complete with mobile stand and his stomach distended in the full malignant ripeness of liver failure.

Yet there he was at opening time.

One time, I watched him work a dentist on the phone for percodans. He was a Zen Master of bullshit, a National Treasure. In a half hour, he had miraculously persuaded the dentist to order 30 percodans and have them delivered, by cab, to our door. Jimmys shit was that good. He had superb upper middle class modulation and grasp of dental pain that was very persuasive. He gave great phone.

He was always hiding out, always on a scam. The Edward Norton character, Worm, in Rounders comes to mind. He died not long after that day in Olympia Square. RIP.