Bereshit, or "Prologue: Bellevue Hill" (6/8/2009)

A century ago, Bellevue Hill afforded the best views in Boston. On a spring day after a long New England winter, you could ride the steam train from downtown to Highland Station. If you’re chipper – and why wouldn’t you be – you can walk that mile up Park Street. If you want to conserve your energy, pay a quarter and ride that shuttle up, up, up 347 feet.

There’s a water tower there; looks like a turret. "This is the highest point in town," the tower keeper would brag, bounding out to greet you.

"Look, to the northwest! There’s snowcapped Monadnock, sixty five miles away in New Hampshire. Live free or die, those folks say.

"See in front of it? That’s Mount Wachusett, a lonely drumlin where that little girl, bless her, disappeared some hundred years ago. Probably abducted, she was. Or killed! That poor mother, though… Some say you can still hear her voice on the wind, calling…

"See downtown, the gold dome of the State House! We have the oldest Constitution in the world. We had our act together seven years before those nitwits in Philadelphia pulled it off. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a pine cone on top; supposed to remind us how important our lumber industry is.

"And east, across town, Castle Island and Dorchester Heights: if you were here in March of 1776, you’d have seen the Redcoats flee in those frigates. Take your tea home, George! Don’t tread on us!"

A century on, the trees have obstructed the view, and there’s no real reason to scale the last hundred feet, save curiosity or seclusion. A barbed-wire fence blocks off the summit now; after those terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, West Roxbury might be next. The standpipe still stands – hey, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places – but few locals know and fewer care.

I grew up a quarter mile from the tower and only once or twice felt the need to visit. Still, the hill’s height affords a few advantages. Major thoroughfares criss-cross it on all sides, meaning that public transportation into town, particularly from the city’s most suburban neighborhood, is plentiful. There is apparently a “Bellevue Hill” aura that is supposed to impress people who don’t live on it, though at 28, I have yet to see anyone’s jaw drop when I told them I lived there.

The last advantage, though I didn't see it as one, was the waves.

You see, our house was about five blocks down the hill from the water tower, and though not the highest point, we were still some 250 feet above the city and the satellite dishes which beam Boston TV to the masses. Up high, the airwaves were freer and reception comparatively sound. Since we could get the major networks with relatively little interference, we didn’t need cable. And so, in 1986, my parents made the first decision that my siblings and I rib them for today; they deep sixed the cable box.

No Disney Channel, no ESPN, no NESN. My beloved Fraggle Rock was gone; for 19 years, I was slave to network TV.

We had one of those old clunkers encased with faux oak and equipped with different VHF and UHF dials that we had to – thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk – change by hand. After the initial shock wore off, which was softened by the introduction of Nintendo, the standard nine channels (on a good day) usually sufficed. The Red Sox or Bruins were on once a week, usually Fridays, and the Saturday morning cartoon lineup of Garfield and U.S. Acres kept me attentive on days with no hockey practice.

With no Disney Channel or Nickelodeon (I never knew what you couldn’t do on television) my access to kids’ TV was limited. And so, when ABC aired the occasional Peanuts special, I jumped. I wasn’t going to miss Charlie Brown, thank you very much. Years later, I could still recite much of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or protest with the most adamant among them that Woodstock never should have won in "Race for your Life, Charlie Brown." He built his boat 10 feet from the finish line, for Pete’s sake.

But it was "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown" that set my compass.

You see, in "Bon Voyage," Chuck and friends jet to France on a two-week exchange spurred by a mysterious letter and – like everything in Europe – a deep, mysterious history. In typical Peanuts fashion, the invitation’s translation gets jumbled, Charlie and Linus are relegated to a stable behind a country chateau, dodging a faceless Baron who – are you channeling Herod now? Good. – threatens “drastic steps” if they aren’t out. Of course, being a kids film, all becomes right with the world after Snoopy rescues the baron’s niece from a fire, and international peace ensues. Kind of like the Marshall Plan, costarring Woodstock.

Charlie Brown’s Europe enchanted me. His trip to the chateau – which comprises almost half the movie – was the classic European adventure that I still want today. A jaunt across the pond to Heathrow – England! I live in New England! It couldn’t be that different .... Wimbeldon … A double-decker bus across London ... Eurail to Dover … Hovercraft to Calais ... Rental car through back-country France … Doris Day on the juke box … Sheets of continental rain … Medieval, small town squares which still exist because they weren’t important enough for the Nazis to torch … Ordering a baguette in jumbled Frenglish …

Ironically, my first European road trip, from Frankfurt to Passau, was remarkably similar. But that was years off. I asked my dad if exchange students really existed. They did, he said.

At six, I knew it. When I grew up, I was going to be an exchange student.