There are many beautiful old doors in Boston’s historic North End (aka the Italian neighborhood), but 160 Endicott Street is not one of them.

It is, however, a meaningful door in terms of my life story. I lived there in the early 1990s with my roommate Bridget, a friend from work. It was the last place I lived as a single woman. After that, I moved in with a boyfriend who I later married.

160 Endicott was truly a dump. It was the first floor apartment over a convenience store that I think was some type of front for a low-level gambling operation. Their most popular item was lottery tickets. They had a few dusty cans of soup and literally nothing else you would ever want to buy. The irony was the hand-carved sign, “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” They never had anything I needed. Not a tampon, not an Advil, nothing.

The apartment itself was totally unrenovated and smelled liked cats. The kitchen was horrible. The bathroom had cockroaches. The downstairs neighbors (who lived in an unfinished basement beneath the store) were always asking to borrow my car so they could drive to the dog racing track up north. But it was in a great location in the heart of old Boston and we could afford it on our art museum salaries, with absolutely no help from parents, which was my main objective in moving there. I really didn’t want to be beholden to my parents for anything. I needed some space from them and my troubled sister.

I took my kids back to visit in 2009. It looked much the same from the outside, but the store inside looked cleaner and nicer. New owners had taken over.

I didn’t ask to see the old apartment, but the green exterior bay window looked exactly the same. And the sign was still there:

The twenties are such a formative decade. So many forks in the road. Decisions made. Paths chosen. Roads not taken.

Memories of my time on Endicott Street include gaining a more visceral understanding of poverty (I thought our place was bad, until I saw how the people under the store were living); finally ending a longterm romantic relationship that had been going on and off for years; great authors—like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou—introduced to me by my roommate Bridget (a reader and a feminist); and food smells—especially Bova’s bakery, open 24/7. Not much in Boston is open all night…but Bova’s is. There are better bakeries in Boston’s North End, but nothing smelled as good as Bova’s at 3am.

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors