Category: Hero Worship

The Rec Center over at Central Hall runs on Friday and Saturday nights. On Fridays it’s open exclusively to the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders; Saturdays, it belongs to the big dogs of Foxcroft Academy. Guests are allowed in only if one of our students has personally invited them, and secondly if the invitation has first been cleared with a faculty advisor of the Rec Center Committee (of which I am now a member— I’m the freshman class of ’64 rep) and a permission pass signed by our principal, is presented at the door upon entry. Yeah. We run a tight ship.

Now, I’ve never ever been a committee-kind-of-guy, but this Rec Center is one of the most important things in my life. I’d be so damn lost if we didn’t have Rec Center to look forward to on the weekends. But being on the Committee does mean that I have to man the check-in table in the foyer for a half hour one evening every other week. Because if someone without the official and required ‘invited-guest’ pass manages to slip on in past, me without me catching it (and immediately alerting the faculty advisor or chaperons on duty), I’d probably get kicked off the committee. And I don’t want that.

So tonight, here I am, happily walking the frigid little fifth of a mile in the snow storm from my house to Central Hall. And when I push my way in through the front doors, I check in with whoever is seated at the greeting table and then begin to clomp up the old wooden staircase toward the second floor, drawn forward by the tantalizing thrum of the muffled jukebox bass.

Forty per cent of the reason I love coming here every week is the music, pure and simple.  The other sixty can probably be summed up by the title of that 1940’s book (that I’ve never read) titled The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Because that’s me. Lonely heart. Lonely hunter. But a hunter who’s actually pretty pathetic at the hunting, if you wanna know the truth.

At the top of the landing, I stop to stare in at the dance floor, which I can’t really even see yet as it’s cloaked in total darkness. (Ah. It’s a slow one. Jim Reeves. “He’ll Have to Go.”) I’m not too crazy about bumping into anybody in the dark, so I’ll just stand here listening until my eyes have started adjusting to the change in lighting from the brightness downstairs.

Though love is blind, make up your mind

I’ve got to know

Should I hang up, or will you tell him

He’ll have to go?

When I can partially make out some of the shadowy, slowly-swaying couples leaning into one another in hugging embraces (oh yeah, that must be nice), I venture in. Stepping around and in between them, I hang a right and make for the coatroom door which, when I push it open, lets the lone, 60-watt, bare light-bulb-hanging-from-the-ceiling brightness flash-blind the dancers in the dark nearest the door, as well as myself all over again. The music muffles when I close the door.

This room’s the size of a really small office. And, as usual, there’re mountains of jackets and coats piled up here, there, and everywhere, right on the floor even. I unzip my parka, wiggle out of it, and bury it under a pile over in the far corner so I’ll know where to dig r it when it’s time to go. Then, it’s back out through the door. And the new song starting up is “The Bristol Stomp” by The Dovells.

The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol

When the do the Bristol Stomp!

Really somethin’ when they join in jumpin’

When they do the Bristol Stomp!

I drop myself down in one of the chairs over on the left side, the boys’ side, of the hall, and wait for my night vision to catch back up with me again. The dance floor is actually a basketball court with a hoop at either end, one fixed just above the coatroom door and the other, down at the far end, hanging just in front of the stage. The seats are lined up on either side, left and right. And it’s kinda funny, the left side by some unwritten law being the boys’ side. The girls all park across from us on the other side of the hall. 

I watch the couples gyrating to the peppy rhythm. “Bristol Stomp” is pretty lively and yeah, some of’em are really going at it. Me though, I’m pretty much a watcher, basically. Not that I wanna be. I don’t like to think about it too much, but each time the music starts up and the couples rise to meet each other out on the floor, our two segregated rows become, by default, the wallflower rows, I guess.

Yeah, we’re the wallflowers, the shy ones. The ones who are not part of a couple. Not really by choice exactly.

Oh sure, I mean physically…all we’d have to do is get ourselves up on our own two legs and just… walk over there. And just ask somebody, if you have the guts. But the thing of it is, some of us have learned that it’s a whole lot longer walk, plodding way back across the floor when somebody just looks right at you and says, “No.” Especially when a fool bunch of her girlfriends all bust a gut giggling like crazy just as you’re turning around and feeling stupid.

And…isn’t it dumb, and totally unfair how it always has to be the guy that asks. The girls can’t really get shot down, can they. Not when they never have tobe the ones asking. Well, unless it was a Sadie Hawkins dance, which we never even have. And then, too, oh yeah, it’s perfectly all right for the girls to just step right out onto the dance floor in two’s or three’s or four’s and start dancing up a storm together to rock’n’roll songs. But you’d never catch a bunch of guys doing that. It’d be pretty much frowned upon, you dig?

So… yeah, at least they have something they can do instead of just sitting over there like a bunch of morons. Like we do.

Anyhow, most of them left sitting over there in their own little Lonely Hunter Hearts row aren’t ones I’d even want to ask to dance with me. Why? Because stupidly I’m a movie-romantic.  See, I go to the movies every week on my allowance. Practically no matter what is playing. So I see all kinds: westerns, comedies, gangster-flicks, horror, sci-fi and, yeah, the love stories. I would never admit this to my buddies, but the love stories? For some reason, they really get to me. Basically, because I can’t help identifying so much with the male leads on the screen in all of those boy-meets girl plots. And then I just can’t help fantasizing all the time that some day, some girl, some Sandra Dee or Natalie Wood, is actually gonna take an interest in me.  And then… you know, we’ll get together. Dating. Somehow.

Problem is… it’s just never that day.

Oh God, you wanna know something embarrasing? My favorite show on TV (well, next to The Twilight Zone that is) is something titled The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. It’s a silly sit-com starring Dwayne Hickman as Dobie and Bob Denver as Dobie’s comical beatnik sidekick, Maynard G. Krebbs.

The weekly plot is almost always a variation on the same theme: Dobie has his heart set on Thalia Menninger, played by the gorgeous Tuesday Weld (one of the biggest reasons it’s a favorite show of mine) but she’s totally out of his league, see? Sound familiar? Yeah. The Heart of the Lonely Hunter? Story of my life.

P.S. you can add Tuesday Weld to my Sandra Dee and Natalie Wood list.

OK. Enough watching. I’ll come back upstairs here real soon, but as always, first I’ll just zip back down stairs to scout out which, if any, of my Maynard-G.-Krebbs pals have shown up.

The Rec Center is an entirely different planet downstairs. It’s well-lighted, and looks sort of like a little teen-age gambling casino. The card games always consist of poker, cribbage, and black jack. You can also sign out a chess or checkers set, and so usually there’s always one of those brainy games ongoing too, surrounded by its usual small handful of kibitzers looking on. Me, I mostly can be found playing cribbage or chess. But then too there’s the noisiest thing going down here: the ping-pong table.  Ping pong is fun.

So sure, I enjoy it down here and all, but I have to say it: my lonely-hunter heart remains up there in the romantic darkness of the second floor, with all Dover-Foxcroft’s Dees, Woods, and Welds practically living out there on the dance floor.

Part of my problem is that three-quarters of the kids who show up here on Saturday nights are the upper classmen. Well, mostly sophomores and some juniors. The popular seniors (and some juniors) what with having their driver’s licenses and their own set of wheel, have obviously discovered better things to do. Like ‘parking.’ Parking out on lover’s lane. Or parking in the public beach parking lot.

OK, ten minutes have gone by down here. I start to take a deep breath, planning to head back up there with my new New Year’s resolution to honestly ask some girl to dance, when the head advisor appears and pulls me aside. “Glad you’re here tonight, Tommy. Eddie hasn’t shown up. So, I’m afraid I’ve gotta ask you to pull a double shift at the check-in table.”

“What? A whole hour?”

“Yeah. Afraid so. 8:30 to 9:30.”

“But, jeez. That’s a lot.” Man, why does this always happen to me? I mean, I just knew, damnit, that between 8:30 and 9:30? With my luck, that’d be the exact same time that the girl of my dreams, whoever she might be, will show up, alone without a date, and would be looking over the dance floor… someone, anyone…”

“Yeah. But… what can I say? It is what it is. So, can you do this for me?”

“Well… sure. I guess.” Me thinking, Oh sure! But… don’t you see? I was planning to make my move!

“Thanks, Tommy. You’re a good man.”

And then he’s gone. With me glaring at his back thinking, Well why don’t YOU do it then! I look at my watch. Oh well, I’ve still got forty minutes or so left before having to man the table. And plus, after that, I’ll still have 9:30 to 10:00 at least. Anyway, I head for the stairs.

As I start jogging up, I’m hit by a very eerie silence up there. Which is odd. Because even if it’s them just deciding what next song to play, where’s the usual loud buzz of conversation? So I’m feeling that old movie line: It’s quiet. TOO quiet. And then too, jeez, what the hey? The lights are all on. Somebody’s turned the lights on! Is the Center what, closing early? Man, I hope not.

I sort of blunder in. Whoa! All the seats are empty! And what else!? I see everybody’s crowded around in a big semi-circle, facing the stage with their backs to me. But… there’s no one on the stage. I can see that! So… what’re they all looking at? Curious, I squeeze myself into the crush and worm my way in to the front. OK. So there’s some guy, some man, standing at the center of the semi-circle. And he’s got a guitar, and he’s talking. But I can’t hear him that well yet. So I have no idea what he’s talking about. But uh… he looks… and sounds… very familiar! But who in the…?

And then it hits me!

Ohmigod! That’s my French teacher there! Mr. Bennett! Reason I didn’t recognize him at first is I’ve never seen him before without a sports jacket and tie. And then again, too, I’ve always only ever seen him in the classroom, never anywhere else, so… well, he’s… out of context here. Especially holding a guitar. And look at him! He’s wearing a very cool ‘dickie,’ like a turtle neck, under his shirt… and he looks… I don’t know, just so surprisingly casual. And cool. And so what’s he doing here then? I mean, he’s not an advisor, or anything.

Mr. Bennett is a super-great teacher. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with French this year. English will always be my favorite class, but French is a close second. And it’s all on him. When he speaks French, he sounds so authentic. And he makes it fun when we practice those… nasal sounds. Like the on at the end of garçon: -ongh… gar  ’çongh!You almost have to wrinkle your nose to say it right. Fun, like I said.

And he regales us some with a few of the memories of his sojourn in Paris. And his recollections leave all of our heads dancing with sugarplums of, say, a bicycle parked on the grassy banks of the Seine, and a romantic afternoon consisting of a baguette, fromage Français, a bottle of wine, and… a friend. Heady stuff. And like I said, I love the class, even though oddly I’m barely passing it, thanks to all the strenuous French literature translation assignments, and the verb tenses. But all in all, I am in awe of this teacher, and I really can’t say that about hardly any of the teachers on the faculty.

And now (surprise) here he is suddenly playing the guitar in his hands, his soft beautiful chords floating around us, and now his voice beginning to sing… surprisingly… “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” And no, not like The Tokens sing it. The way he sings it, because he’s making it his own. And it is really working. My God, I love it. His voice is gorgeous.

I remember now hearing that he was a member of Bowdoin College’s highly regarded acapella chorus, The Meddibempsters, and his vocal training is so obvious. I mean, wow. He’s good. You can feel that everybody in this crowd, like me, is totally knocked out by his performance, and we all want an encore at the end of the song but, no, it looks like that one is all we’re gonna get. However, this little one-song concert is something I’ll long remember, I’m sure. And I’ve just made me a conscious decision: I’m gonna go back and spend a lot more time practicing on my guitar.

And man, I’m just thanking my lucky stars this thing didn’t go down when I’d be stuck downstairs, sitting at the check-in table. So happy I lucked out. But speaking of my check-in duty, it’s pretty close to that time. And since nobody seems to be in any hurry to start the Top Forty music back up again (everybody, content to just be standing around in a daze marveling that one of theirs teachers could be so talented), I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that I’m not gonna get to ask somebody for a dance, at least for right now. But there’ll still be that half hour left between 9:30 and 10:00 though. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky then.

Yeah. Right.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here I am, sitting alone at the table, loose-leaf notebook open in front of me in which I have to log everyone’s comings and goings. And it hasn’t exactly been busy. One set of parents popping in to pick up their daughter. That’s pretty much it, because it’s late. I nod at the guys continuously go back and forth, going up and coming down the stairs. And try rather meekly to engage the giggly girls who are doing the same in clever conversation as they flit by. The restrooms are down at the far end of the hall; that explains the majority of the traffic. Other than that, I’m spending my time contemplating what I’ll probably do after the place closes down. Play basketball upstairs with my brother and his buddies? Join a couple of my own pals and sneak into the movie theater to see who’s there? Oh well. I’ll figure it out.

(yawn) This job is so boring.

Until it isn’t.

The front doorsuddenly gets yanked open, letting in a rogue blast of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles four young men, not boys! Their faces rosy. And just bursting with energy. Talking loudly and animatedly about… I dunno, something. Fortunately the door manages to slam itself shut. These guys look like they’re freezing, like they’ve been walking outdoors rather than riding in a vehicle. And they’re too busy yakking to have noticed little me yet.

Even though they’re in their civvies, they’re all sporting their tell-tale Air Force parkas. So. They’re flyboys. Flyboys from Charleston Air Force Base, eight miles southeast from here, up on Charleston Hill. The flyboys? They aren’t too popular with the homeboys around here, as you might imagine. Not enough girls to go around… is the word on the street. But that doesn’t have much to do with me.

So far, they’re so wrapped up in babbling to each other, I don’t even exist. Whatever the topic of their animated excitement, it seems to have something to do with something outside. I decide to introduce myself. “Hi, guys!” They don’t hear me obviously. It’s like I really don’t exist. Before I get a chance to clear my throat and repeat my friendly hello, I hear one of them say, “OK. Let’s go!” And as if somebody fired a starting pistol, all four are swarming up the stairs!

“WHOA there!”  I yell (to no avail). I panic and find myself jack-knifing to my feet and bellowing, HEY! YOU GUYS!! I SAID, STOP!!”Miraculously, they hear that one. And freeze, up by about the seventh step. Then all four crank their heads around and let their eyes fall on me. Down here. In the foyer. I don’t say anything. They don’t say anything. A moment passes. They all look at one another. Then down they come. All four. To crowd around my dinky little table and lean their faces in at me with rapt interest. Like I’m a bug or something. One of them leans his face in too close, eye-to-eye, our foreheads nearly touching. His face is a blank. A big, blank poker face. “Well…?”

I find I have to swallow before I can choke out a response. “I’m sorry.” Jeez, I can barely hear myself. “But… see? This is a high school thing. Foxcroft Academy has…”

“A high school thing? So what’re you doing here, shrimp boat? You can’t be what, even in third grade yet? Right?”

I have to swallow twice this time. And I feel a drip of cool sweat sliding down between my shoulder blades. “No… uhmmm, ninth grade. “

“Oh, come off it! That can’t be right. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you show me some ID.”

OK, I don’t like the way this is going. At all. After all. I’m a little chicken-shit, aren’t I.  And I’m already wishing I’d just let them pass on by. With, you know,  me just ‘accidentally’ looking the other way. But now I have to say… something.

“You gotta be a student at the Academy, to come in.”

“My God. You really talk fast, don’tcha. I can barely understand you.”

“Or Be. Invited,” I manage to add.

“Oh, that! Sure. I know that! That’s OK. Because… I am invited, see? By… Jim. You know Jim, don’t you. Of course you do. Everybody knows good old Jim. Am I right?”

I haven’t been this frightened since that time on my paper route when I got cornered by a growling German shepherd for a half hour. I keep thinking, Where IS everybody? Anybody? Why hasn’t somebody just strolled by…?

“Well, see… you gotta have a signed pass.” I mutter. “Signed by the principal.”

Here, he shakes his head patiently, but with a big wolfish smile. “Ah! So you’re… the hall monitor. Oh my!” And then he does something I really don’t like.

He puts his hands on my shirt. I figure, Here we go. He’s gonna beat the crap outta me, but no. Instead, it’s like he’s just intimately… straightening my collar, and then dusting off my shoulders, like maybe there was something on them, like, you know, dandruff or something, but still all the while smiling at me, like I’m some little kid and he’s my dad, getting me spiffed up to get ready for school. It’s something that bullies like to do.

“You know what I’m thinking,” he says. I don’t say anything. I just wait for him to tell me. “I think… you and me? I think we’ve become friends. Don’t you? Don’t you feel that?”

I’m just looking down at the toes of my shoes.

“So what I’m thinking is, you’ve thought this whole thing all over, right? And because we’ve become such good friends now, you’re going to invite me to go… right on right up those stairs with our other three friends here and…  then… hey, it’s all good, right? Am I right?”

I nod.

“Can you just say it? That you’re inviting me?”

I nod.

“Then… please… say it.”

I am so ashamed. “I… invite you.” 

“Aw gee, thank you so very…”

Suddenly, the front door gets practically kicked open, letting in another rogue gust of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles …a cop. Wait, no, not just a cop. THE cop: Bill Fair!

When you think Officer Fair, think Alpha Wolf. Officer Fair is big. Officer Fair is solid.  Officer Fair’s face and neck are a lunar landscape of pock marks and scars. Officer Fair has… a reputation. Officer Fair can be frightening just to look at. I’m frightened just looking at him right now, and yet I’m so glad he’s arrived. It’s like the wind just blew the door in and (surprise) The Abominable Snowman is suddenly standing right in front of you… and studying you!

And Officer Fair has left the door wide open.

What I’m suddenly seeing is these four guys shrinking smaller and smaller. It’s unbelievable. They’ve become one big, cowering, little gang. If they had tails, you wouldn’t be able to winch them out from between their legs with a chain.

“Bill?” says the guy I just invited to go on upstairs. It rocks me that he’s on a first-name basis with Officer Fair. His voice noticeably shaky, he adds, “We didn’t mean nuthin’, I swear to God!”

“Honest-to-God’s-TRUTH, Bill,” whines another. “We just come in here to… find out what time it is! Is all.”

Officer Fair is a man of few words. Right at the moment, Officer Fair is a man of no words.  Officer Fair is known as a man of action rather than words.

“We were just leaving, Bill. Really. I’m serious.” All four of them are edging around him now, trying to inch themselves toward the open door. Officer Fair isn’t budging out of their way much, meaning they’re really going to have to squeeze themselves past him to get out, which turns out to be about as easy as being born.

“So… hey. Whattaya say, Bill. Please. We’ll just be on our way. Alright? OK?” If looks could kill, four coffins would be getting ordered from Lary’s Funeral Home right about now.

But then, in a couple of blinks, they’re gone. Just like that. They succeeded in squeezing their way past The Man, and he’s followed them out. The door slams shut. It’s over. Crisis averted. (Well, for me, but probably not for them.)

God bless the U.S. cavalry.

Jesus, breathe, Tommy!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so now that I’ve half-gotten my wits back about me, and I feel my heart rate slowly and steadily ticking itself back down to near normal… and even though I haven’t entirely stopped shaking yet, everything is becoming crystal clear now. Yup.

So, in retrospect it’s now so obvious that Officer Fair had been tailing these fellas before they’d shown up here. That they’d been on the run, running scared from him for whatever reason or other. And so they’d desperately crashed in here to get themselves lost in a very big building with a large crowd of people in it. Which explains why they so needed to get themselves the hell upstairs and out of sight as quickly as possible: to mingle in with the crowd or, even better, find some little cubby hole to disappear in.

“How’s it going? Did I miss anything?” asks my replacement.

I give him the look. “Well, it is now.”

He frowns. “Uhmmm… OK?”

So I suppose I oughtta tell him the whole frigging story. And I do. About how a squad of four soldiers barged in here and roughed me up but good! And about how, since no one was around here to help me out, I’d decided to string’em along as long as I possible could— you know, acting scared and all, but really? Just keeping them down here, on the bottom floor, with me. You know, so nobody else, upstairs, would get hurt, right?  And about how it actually worked. About how I was able to hold out just long enough for the cops to show up and kick the door in, rough them up, handcuff’em, and drag their sorry butts off to jail. And yeah. Now I suppose I’ll probably hafta go in and ID’em and all, in a police line-up or something. Plus, you know, then they’ll probably want me to testify against them in court.

Now boy, let me tell you, wasn’t he some impressed!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You know what? To heck with hanging around here for the last dance, especially since I probably would never actually get around to asking anybody to dance anyway. Shoot, I’m rounding up Richie and Dale. I’m gonna talk’em into sneaking into the movie theater with me to see if there are any interesting girls, that need to be walked home. And then maybe we’ll hit Rocket Lanes. Mostly pretty much so I’ll have enough time to wow them with my practically unbelievable story along the way. Yeah.