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North Common, 1960s

August 14, 2025 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

North Common, 1960s

By Leo Racicot

Not every kid can boast that his front yard was a nine-acre park. I can. Our house was right across the street from North Common, a charming expanse of green in summer, white in winter. All my sister and I had to do was cross Fletcher Street and we were there. Nice, too, was having the school and church we attended, Saint Patrick’s, within walking distance. We owed our perfect attendance records to the nearness of both. How could we be late if where we were going was a ten-minute walk away?

In those days, North Common had monkey bars, two swing sets, a large sandbox and an oval-shaped swimming pool. (Actually, it was more of a wading pool but to a child’s eye, it was an ocean). We had to be careful where we stepped; there were times when the bottom of the pool held broken pieces from glass tonic bottles (soda was called ‘tonic’), cigarette butts, rusty nails. You could cut your feet if you didn’t watch where you were stepping. I loved splashing around in that pool for long hours on hot summer days. The Common also had trees with big holes in them, to be explored, like places out of Tolkien. I remember Joe climbing inside one and crouching there. There was a nice baseball playing field close to the housing projects and usually, a game was going at dusk that was fun to watch, if not to participate in. I never was much for sports. One time, my classmate, Tony Archinski, asked me if I wanted to go ice skating with him at the wintertime rink. I was excited, and my mother even went out and bought me a new pair of ice skates down at Lull and Hartford Sporting Goods Store on Prescott Street. But I’d never done ice skating before, and every time I tried to do what Tony did, down I’d go on my butt. Tony never did ask me to go ice skating again.

As I’ve mentioned before, all-American gal, Margaret Kennedy, she of the ruddy outdoors complexion and th bright emerald eyes ran the North Common Day Camp. We were all a little bit in love with Margaret. She showed us how to make gimp necklaces and bracelets (I was better at weaving the butterfly stitch than I was the square knot), hammer out ash trays, make potholders to bring home to our folks, play Duck Duck Goose and box hockey. The best games ever,

In winter, after the first good snow fell, out would come the sleds and tobbogans. Some kids turned a big piece of cardboard into a coaster. The long hill leading from the street just across from Quality Donut, run for years by John Apostolos, all the way down to The Morrill School made a perfect “run”. What a blast.

Not every memory of sledding is a good one: when Diane was four, our mother let the two of us take our sleds over to the Common, with our cousin Eddie, who was older. I didn’t realize Eddie and I were to keep an eye on Diane. We were too young to watch her. She climbed on her sled steering it toward a bench, steering it straight into the stone leg of the bench, splitting her head wide open. I’ve never seen so much blood, heard so many blood-curdling cries. Eddie scooped her up and carried her into the house. Papa came home from work and brought her to the hospital where it took 27 stitches to seal the wound. She had the scar that ran up her forehead into her hairline the rest of her life.

Nana took me one time to play on the swings. I stood up on the swing and was pumping too hard, trying to reach for the sky, lost my balance, fell and sprained my ankle. Nana was never allowed to bring me over to The Common by herself again.

I most remember autumn days on The Common, the burnished leaves on trees, the boys playing an impromptu game of football and letting me join in. I was big and good at tackling. Nowadays, when I watch the over-muscled, overpaid professional players, I think back on the simpler days of football games of the ’60s. The game was less complex, less influenced by media, less a steroidal-beasts battlefield. Play was playful, and the uniforms were the colors of the season.

For the boy that I was, The North Common fostered dreams. On its wide acres, I used, in those days, to dream I’d become a football player, or an Olympic swimmer or an acrobat or a knight of The Round Table slaying dragons. Or…a writer!