The World According to Gillespie

VW BUS WAS PART OF THE FAMILY  This column originally appeared on Wicked Local . Sometimes cars become members of the family.   After two ‘63 Ramblers, a 1965 Chevy Bel-Air station wagon, a gas guzzling 1973 Ford LTD Country Squire Wagon, an old Dodge Pick-up, a Dodge Coronet wagon, a white Rambler American, and even a Triumph TR-4, my father finally brought home the car that would eventually serve as the Gillespie family vehicle:   a butterscotch colored 1973 Volkswagen Bus.   He had passed on the chance of getting a VW Bus once before, instead choosing a Dodge Pick-up truck purchased from Forge Motors on Route 18 in East Bridgewater.   “That truck had a crack in the engine and always overheated.   I tried to take it back, but Forge Motors would have no part of it.   The guy was a crook,” according to my father.   Roughly two years and three serviceable cars later, he finally took the proverbial bait and purc...

A DIFFERENCE IN HEROES This column originally appeared on Wicked Local . When I was 11 years old, I lived for the Red Sox.   I spent much of the summer of 1979 studying the 1 st and 2 nd Edition Red Sox Yearbooks as well as my prized 1978 yearbook from the summer before, and went through my baseball cards – both front and back – over and over again, rearranging them in every possible way.   I was acclimated into the reality of Red Sox lore by Bucky Dent’s home run the October before, and was crushed a year later when Haywood Sullivan let Carlton Fisk slip away to the White Sox and unloaded Fred Lynn, Rick Burleson, and Butch Hobson to the (then) California Angels.   My parents were happy to have me studying statistics and constantly reading about baseball.   There was nothing about it that could be considered harmful.   In fact, it was pure goodness.   Things are different in 2017.   My stepson is 11 years old, and al...

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GILLESPIE - GOODBYE TO GATES A retrospective farewell to Scituate's Gates Intermediate School. GOODBYE TO GATES The time has come to say goodbye to Scituate’s Gates Intermediate School.   As they say, all good things must come to an end.   In this case, that process has taken 100 years.   It’s kind of depressing to think that I have been alive for half of them.   On the other hand, it gives me solace to think that Scituate historian and daily volunteer at Gates, Bob Corbin, has been around for almost all of them.   I first walked into Gates during the late summer of 2002, having been granted an interview by former history department head, Norm Shacochis.   At the time I had reservations about returning to teaching, having independently financed and paid off degrees from Northeastern and Boston College only to find jobs in schools with teachers who referred to their careers as prison sentences.   When I showed up f...