Me and Keith Partridge in the Basement
An obsession with music is born
I can see her in my mind’s eye, this little girl, surrounded by a toy drum set and school desk. Just beyond her is the workbench where her father tinkers with his electronics. She’s humming music from “The Partridge Family” and drawing pictures.
She always has her back turned. I never see her face. Just a little girl wearing a red plaid Polly Flinders dress and hair ribbon, playing day after day all by herself.
This is in the basement of a three-decker house in Dirty Old Boston. Jamaica Plain to be precise, in the early 70s, the last time everyone thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Something about the bend of her head and her complete solitude fills me with deep sadness, even though she’s still humming happily and completely engrossed in drawing yet another picture. Even by age four or five, she knew how to amuse herself.
The little girl is me. I still feel sad for her sometimes.
Many of you know my mother didn’t have much use for me when I was a kid. Most of the time I was relegated to the basement to play in my father’s workshop. It was preferable to being upstairs with my mother, but I wasn’t allowed to do that anyway. I counted the minutes until my father came home and my mother…
