15.} The Story of Cinderella {Told Backwards}

The following photos have been
lurking around my mind for some time.
Who took them why or when is a mystery.
A thread regarding them once thrived with several
people guessing in turn what it was they were looking at.
Allow yourself, now, to become enlightened here along with them….



Sadly, this building is Saint Alphonsus Hall which is
on Smith Street in Mission Hill in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
This cultural center was built at the rear of Mission Church
{The Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help}
many decades ago by selfless and
caring parishioners to benefit
community and visitor alike.


Each painted tile, engraved sign
and marbled doorstep led one through
vast rooms creatively defined by beautifully
handcrafted masterpieces of ceramic artwork,
velvet drapery and Broadway-type seating
forming shapes of acoustical design.
The Hall once housed a stage,
complete with scenery,

props and
lighting that
accorded many
community groups,

Mission High School

and grammar students,
assortments of assemblies,
activities, rites of passage, or
basement dancing on weekends.

The AL-Kev Teen Center

gave meaning to the footloose.
Superbly executed plays prevailed as
the mainstay from which secretly talented
'Hillites' entranced generations of audiences!
I believe caring, loving human beings some day
will or already have undertaken its restoration!
May those who destroyed it spend eternity in a
place similar to this horrifying defilement
of a community's soul in senseless whim
oftheir heartless, wanton barbarity.
Mere feet on the right echoes the
shell of Mission Grammar School rests

{Our Lady of Perpetual Help School}
behind wrought iron fencing planted between
two rounded gates forever closed under lock and chain.

Currently it serves as part of Boston’s Public School system.

It was operated by the nuns {The School Sisters of Notre Dame}
and was overseen by the priests {The Redemptorist Fathers}.
At left a softball diamond points toward the Tobin School.
Used by residents of the Mission Hill Projects across
Smith Street, sometimes kids from 'up the hill'
played ball ‘til safety dissolved in dusk.
There was a talent contest held in
Saint Alphonsus Hall during
my second month as
a Mission High
Freshman.
The Fall
of 1971
encompassed
an age in which
the old and wise
advised the meek
and isolated, the shy
and forlorn, or anyone
plagued by any fear to…
Do That Which You Fear Most!

Repeated
often enough,
all life’s hurdles,
gurus proclaimed,
phobia by phobia,
could be conquered!
I put a cassette recorder
by the TV to record a show
full of comedy for later review.
I needed some inspiration for a skit in
the school talent show I entered that week.
One consequence of doing this was nervousness
filled with trepidation generating great palpitations.
From out of the lucky blue came one of the most astonishing
and unpredictably creative comedy routines ever born on Hee-Haw!
At the time, I could only relate to it as 'maybe interesting to someone'.

Just before a shave,
a barber's customer bemoans,
“Say, I been having a ornery time
gettin’ the kids to bed ev’ry night!
You got any suggestions I kin use?"
“Why I never have trouble gettin’
my kids to sleep no more!”
brags the face-lathering actor.
“Tell me how in heck you do it?”

“Why, I just tell them a tall tale is all…”

“I dun that ‘til I’m blue ‘n’ the face an’ it still don’ work!”
The barber straps his straight-edge back and forth
across leather ensuring a shave close as can be.
“Well add a different twist each telling, don'
matter how many times repeated,
in sech a way they never
before heard told…”

“How ya go
about doon' that?”
“Well, you take the story
of Cinderella, for instance. an’
jest change it around a bit,
like maybe you tell it…
backwards!"


"Backwards???"
That’s right, ‘cept’n we
now make us a new character
an’ her name becomess... 'Rindercella'!
“That it? An’ all the kids’ll go to sleep after?”
“They’re so exhausted laughin' to very the end,
ever’ single one of ‘em drops one by one!”
The barber proudly boasts his certainty.
“Tell me one so's I can get an idear
what its’posedta soun’ like!”
"Alright, are you ready?”
His blade slices a path
of bare skin through
shaving cream up
the whole side of
his spread neck!

Once uton a pime,
in a coreign fountry,
lived a very beautiful girl
whose name was Rindercella!
Now, Rindercella lived with her
mugly other an’ two sad bisters!
An’ in the same coreign fountry

there dwelt a Prandsome Hince!

So this here Prandsome Hince?
Wanted to have a bancy fall!
So he went ahead to invite
the folks for riles amound…
especially the pich reople!
Rindercella’s mugly other
and her two sad bisters
went out to buy them
some drancy fesses,
you know, to wear
to the bancy fall?

Rindercella couldn’t go
because all she had to wear
was a buncha smelly old rirty dags!
The night of the bancy fall arrived, but
poor Rindercella just cat down and sried.
She was citting there, srying, when suddenly

'fore her very eyes ‘peard her Gairymudfother!
Then then he touched her with his wagic mand!
Suddenly from out of nowhere there ‘peard
a cig boach ‘n’ hix white sorses, you know,
that would take her to the bancy fall?
Then he says, ‘Now Rindercella,
you be sure 'n’ be home
'fore midnight, else
I’ll purn you into
A tumpkin!

When Rindercella
got to the bancy fall,
the Prandsome Hince met

her at the door, after all
he’d been lookin' out behind
a widden hinda the whole time!

Rindercella’n the Prandsome Hince?

Well they nanced all dight long...
And then they lell in fove… !
But the micglock struck bidnight!
Rindercella staces down the rairs’n
soon's she beaches the rottum,
she slopped her dripper…!!!

So next day the Prandsome Hince
traveled all over the coreign fountry
to find the girl that slopped her dripper!
Day’s end he ‘rived at Rindercella’s house,

Put it on the mugly other only it fid’nt dit!
Tried the two sigly usters but it fid’nt dit!
He slipped it on Rindercella’n it fit’d’it
‘cause it was exactly the sight rize!

So the next day Rindercella’n
the Prandsome Hince?
They got married and
lived everil after happy!
Now the storal of the mory is...
If you ever go to a bancy fall’n
wanna Prandsome Hince to
lall in fove with ya’?
Don’t fergit ta
slop yer
dripper!

I transcribed
and memorized it.
Doubts as to my very sanity
stirred my haunted shadow onto
the stage where we stood trembling
before hundreds of critical silhouette faces
made visible by tiny shiny strobe light eyeballs
blinking apathy on then off throughout my skit.
Cavernous multitudes of laughter from
School mates took me by surprise.
I was dumbfounded that even
the nuns laughed in tearful
delight when Rindercella
slopped her dripper!

Did they have no morals?

When it was all over I quivered
in dreadful fright at the realization I
may have to pay for this in coming years!
The foolish spectacle evoked ominous notions
of the kids I hoped someday to be friends with
in later years alienating me from their social circles;
acceptance and friendship rejected as latent ADD told
all I wasn't interested in them nor was I ever aware it did!

Truth be told, I nearly fell over as senior Janet Maher announced

I won First Prize of Ten Dollars! {and a very short-lived fame}

One could buy a brand-new Lee denim jacket for 5.99 then.
Another 2.99 put you in a pair of matching Lee jeans!
Music and bongs and far-out psychedelic stuff sold
at a head shop known 'by those in the know'
as George's Folly in Coolidge Corner
and a bus ride or long walk
over into Brookline!