After 65 years revisiting old Broad St. School yard- a Washington Park R...

Aug 14, 2024 I must have been not more than 12 years old when I last entered this abandoned old Broad St. School yard in the Washington Park neighborhood of Providence as an elementary school student. The building itself was condemned last year. So old Broad St. School is no more. It was here that I first learned in October 1957 that those awful Russians had just put SPUTNIK satellite into orbit around the earth. " BEEP , BEEP , BEEP " ... " We will bury you ! ", threatened Nikita Krushchev. But the ravages of TIME ! Circa 1970 I , then a healthy young man, could check out pretty teen age girls across the street from Broad St. School at Burns Bothers Donut Shop . Back then a little too young , these sexy " different flavor female " fantasy dates or life- mates along with my . morning coffee. But many years later, no doubt, TIME has done to their radiant adolescent charm what it did to this Broad St. School yard. One of THE GIRLS, I learned , has already died at age 62. I can only remember her at age 15-16-17 ( did she know some happiness ? ). Her lovely friend died a few years later. The charismatic, jovial then young man in charge of the coffee shop was a guy nicknamed " Chubby " . He died at the age of 50 of a heart attack.. I remember him as the catcher in local organized soft ball games. My family lived in this then idyllic 1950-1970 Washington Park neighborhood . We moved there from the Valley View Housing Project in Providence , R.I. ( for war veterans ) around 1953. By December of 1960 there were " The Nine of Us " : Ricky , Ronnie , Raymond , Robert , Adrienne , Rita, Stephen , Michael , and John. Children of Domenic and Janet .Rita and Stephen came in with Hurricane Carol in 1954. My emotions in that abandoned Broad St. school yard are best captured by Thornton Wilder's famous play " Our Town "