A visit home

Boston gets in your blood.

I grew up west of the city, in Stow, Mass., played in the woods a lot, went to college up in New Hampshire, and picked apples for a summer job before moving to Montana 20 years ago, away from the rush, from all my family, my friends, all the people I love. The mountains were calling.

Even though I grew up 30 miles west in the country, Boston was always home.

I remember coming back to Boston to visit friends in the city that first year after heading out West. I stepped off the curb to cross the street, and the car sped up, horn blaring.

But another time, on another visit, many years later after a 2,800-mile cross-country trip, there I was in downtown Boston at rush hour, stuck in traffic in my old VW camper bus, looking for Congress Street, where some old high school friends had started a business. I was lost.

A young business man in a fancy black car yelled to me, “You need help?” I told him where I wanted to go. He told me to follow him. I chased him around the horse-and-buggy streets, then he waved goodbye, pointing to the street sign.

As a high-schooler we used to take the train from Alewife into South Station, then hop the ‘T’ over to the North End to buy explosives. We’d sit on a park bench at some basketball court and a man would silently approach, take our cash and order for fireworks scribbled on scrap paper, disappear for a few minutes and reappear with paper grocery bags. Back in Stow we’d light off the bottle rockets, marvel at the spinning shower of sparks from the Killer Bees.

I vividly recall going into Boston on Patriot’s Day as a young boy, standing on the curb and handing water in little paper cups to the marathoners pushing back the pavement. It was a thrill to think that somehow we were helping.

Back in the sixth grade I won two tickets to a Red Sox game by entering a raffle that the Boston Globe had sponsored, guessing correctly who would hit the first home run of the season and where it would land. (Dwight Evans, right field.)

For some cursed reason, I could not go to the game, and my father gave the tickets to family friends. I thought that we should sell them, but my dad told me it was better to just give them as a gift. I remember thinking at that young age: oh, that is what it is to be generous.

We watch the Red Sox in Whitefish. My friends back in New England are always surprised that there are a wicked ton of us transplants out here. (I met a girl in Montana from the south shore of Boston, and now she’s my wife.) Like immigrants to the city, we left our homeland because we came here seeking something fresh. A new start.

When my brother-in-law moved out here, we’d watch the Red Sox and Ian would wear actual red sox and never wash them for the whole series. We’d boil hot dogs and heat up Boston Baked Beans and put a cold 12-pack of Sam Adams to chill on the porch in the cool autumn during the playoffs. These were more than games. They were a connection to home.

Just a couple weeks ago, I got to see the real thing. It had been a long time since I’d been at Fenway Park and I was back in New England with my own young family on spring break to visit our parents. My old buddy Jay had an extra ticket to the opening day game and there I was, sitting high above home plate with my high school homies, drinking $8 beers, giving each other grief for getting fatter at 40.

The only bomb we were worried about was a home run by the Orioles.

Driving to Logan Airport that next Monday, listening to the radio — two explosions have gone off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

“Oh great,” I say. “Security is going to be a bear.”

I say it without thinking, without imagining the potential human toll. What surprises and disappoints me the most now is that I said it because it did not surprise me. A bomb going off on a busy downtown street seemed to me, at that instant, almost routine.

We live in a different world.

In the airport, the news scattered and rumors flew. On the plane, marathoners with bright jerseys and medals around their necks walked through the aisles. There was a look of sadness in people’s eyes, but our 1-year-old made people laugh as he crawled under the seats.

In the air, I looked out the window, cars streaming through the Central Artery, the water and the buildings all disappearing as the plane pushed west.

I love Montana. I love the people and the wilderness and the bears and the fish. I love the big open sky and the jagged peaks and the snow.

But when you ask me where I’m from, where’s home, it’s still Boston.

— Brian Schott is a freelance writer based in Whitefish, and founding editor of the Whitefish Review.