Northern Blvd

I walked that road so many times in my life. Beating sun and battering winds, rain, snow, fog, sleet, hail.

In the winter it was complete desolation, there was no one around, more than half of the houses shut down for the summer. Just little summer shacks all boarded up for the season.

There would be the raggedy men, sneaking to the point to drink or drug deal or smoke some weed or look at some porn mags in their cars, but they would stay away from you if you stayed away from them. . . but it could be a bit of an ominous feel.

Always an ominous feel to that Island for me.

There was a family of I guess schizophrenics, or on some sort of spectrum. The family had something of a compound of properties, and they would rent out the habitable extra shacks to transients in the winter or poor folks in the summer.

One of the sons was prone to walking the entirety of the boulvard daily, hourly.

He was always wearing heavy coats all year long as if he was constantly cold. He had a shock of black hair, and black eyes, and glasses and always a beard in either scruff or full grown. I never got very close to him to really get a look.

He would write letters to the presidents, and to some of the ladies on the island. I recall he wrote my mum a few times, and she would wait on him at the Island restaurant where she worked.

The owner would always give him coffee and breakfast or whatever he asked for which was but little.