All Names Changed

All Names Changed

      I grew up in a little Appalachian borough outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   As in most communities there were the haves and the have nots.   And then there were the bottom of the barrel.   In Lotsville the bottom of the barrel lived in a section of town called "The Blocks".   They were one long shack put together in apartments.   We didn't have the vocabulary but they were actually decrepit condominiums.   The Blocks were made of black barn board and every window was broken, most were covered with cloth.   The entire structure leaned North.   

      When folks talked about The Blocks it was always mean with jokes about rats and cockroaches.     When it was finally sold and burned to the ground the joke was that rats and bugs scurried in every direction.   The truth was probably less dramatic but it was a mean place to live.

     The Roads' family lived in The Blocks.   Johnny Roads was about my age, probably older because he was held back.   It seemed everyone who lived in The Blocks was held back in school at some time.   I was allowed to play with him but not allowed to go to his house.   Most of my friends were not allowed to be with a Road's kid so Johnny and I didn't hang out a lot.

     Johnny didn't do well in school and it was generally accepted that he was kind of slow.   We all remembered the day that Johnny had to leave our little four room school for a "special school".   We all said that he failed out of school.   The next Fall I ran into him at Joe's barber shop.   We were both getting our back to school butch.   I asked if he were coming back to school.   He said since he had read all the books in our school so they were sending him to a new school.   I dropped the subject.   This was all before I was ten.

     Fast forward another decade or so.    I had graduated from college and had just been married a week or so.    My wife and I were driving in the mountains and I was showing her some of the old haunts.   We stopped at a little stand for birch beer floats.   While we were sipping, two large, new trucks pulled in.    On the door was stenciled Roads Roofing.   In half-a-minute a brand new shinny convertible pulled in.

     I made no connections and ignored this group.   It would have stayed that way until the man in the convertible said, "Johnny, Johnny Villotti."

     Then my mind opened up to large parts of my childhood.   It was Johnny Roads and he and I had a 15 minute chat.   At the end of it he stayed and I drove away.   He stayed to give a bid and impart some directions to his roofing crews.   It seemed that things were going quite well for the kid that failed out of school.   He talked about how well he was doing with only a little hint of bragging.

     Since I was going off to Virginia to become a teacher, I never forgot that lesson.