Dover-Foxcroft – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

A CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE, 1963

(A Little Out of-Season “Valentine’s Day Card” to… Ourselves, After Passing the 58th-Year-Anniversary Mark on July 31st, 2024)

What you’re looking at here is a clipping from our local weekly newspaper, The Piscataquis Observer (‘Piscataquis’ being the county of which my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft is the County Seat). The photograph here appeared either in early December, 1963 or December of the following year. It doesn’t matter which. The picture is of one big, fat snowman.

It had snowed throughout that day and evening, necessitating Foxcroft Academy to declare a snow day (which had pumped up the entire student body into an electrified state of positive energy). It had been a day of shoveling out walks and driveways, shouldering errant cars back onto roadways, sledding and tobogganing, building snow forts, and battling snowball-fight battles.

Sometime though, very late at night or in the early morning however, this snowman appeared— standing like some spooky traffic-cop-god manning the empty center of Monument Square. The snowing had stopped falling around 9:00 pm. The temperature had risen to about 40 comfortable Fahrenheit degrees, and the clouds above had swept themselves aside to reveal the black velvet, diamond-studded firmament overhead. The air that night was refreshing and sweet to the lungs. The world was a winter wonderland cliché. The town, silenced down and virtually emptied out by midnight, had become our personal playground. The snow which crunched under the soles of our boots was perfect snowman-snow.

Alone together in that perfect night, Phyllis and I began rolling our first snowball into the huge, legless hips of our Frosty the Snowman. And boy, it proved nearly impossible to upheave that second, even larger torso into place, but… love conquers all, doesn’t it.

Words can’t do justice to how happy we were, how amazingly content I was for a change. We were head-over-heels in love with love and with each other. Everything was perfect in my life! I mean, I actually had a girlfriend! A going-steady girlfriend! A high school sweetheart, and man oh man, was she ever sweet! We were going to movies. We were dancing at the Saturday night Rec Center. We were building snowmen.

I had a girlfriend who was a soda-jerk (I still hate that term) at Lanpher’s Rexall lunch counter who would personally wait on me (and maybe give me an extra ice cream scoop in my ice cream soda once in a while, if and when nobody was looking). And hell, I actually even liked school those days (mostly of course because she was always there). I mean, I had no idea what I ‘wanted to be when I grew up,’ but hey, I had blind faith that all would work out just great. And that Phyllis would be my future.

I was, and still am, a hopeless romantic.

So anyway— the snowman.

Building that snowman is a cherished memory for Phyllis and I. Despite the fact that when the photo was featured that Thursday in The Piscataquis Observer, the caption below it insultingly read, “Four students constructed this huge snowman in Monument Square.” I mean, come on! What four students!? There were no four students! What kind of low-lifes will just come along and, being total losers, find a museum-worthy work of art, and claim, “Yeah. We did that! That’s our snowman”? Damn. If they’d listed the names of those scumbag art thieves, I would have placed a big burning paper bag of dog-poop on their doorsteps at night, rung their doorbells, and run off to hide and watch those losers dirty their soles trying to stomp the fire out, heh heh!

But anyway… we know the truth.

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

Ours was an odd relationship though, for the first year or so.

For one thing, Phyllis was extremely shy and demure. A really old-fashion girl that way. (Oh yeah, we laugh about this today. Those who know her now would have a hard time picturing her as some 1860’s cotton-plantation-type Southern belle.)

During our hour-long phone calls, I’d end up doing all the talking and she’d be doing the ‘very-interested’-listening-thing, basically. Oh, I’d get the occasional little titter and monosyllable back… even a complete sentence now and then. But I’d know she was there, because I could hear her shy and demure breathing on the other end. And even though I‘d pretty much become the Penn to her Teller, that was good enough for me. Great even (because hey, I had a real girlfriend at last, you know?)

Another odd thing is that she would never let me take her picture with my little Kodak Brownie^©. In fact she didn’t want anyone taking her photo. Whenever I or anyone else pointed a camera in her direction, she’d either turn totally around or cover her face with her hands. Scoring a good snapshot of Phyllis became a challenging sport. You’d think she was in the Witness Protection Program. Either that or the movie star being hounded by the paparazzi (which in her life was all of us toting our cameras).

“**Do NOT click the shutter on that camera!**“

I remember her stepdad Elden, a wonderful man, giving her some sensible advice on my behalf. Something like, “Phyllis. Wouldn’t it be better for you if you did let him take your picture? After you’d had the opportunity to prepare yourself and look your best, rather than leaving him to run around showing all his friends and family the somewhat odd pictures he’s getting now?”

But no… she wasn’t ready to heed that that advice. Thank goodness for school yearbook photos.

“What did I just TELL you about *NOT* clicking that *SHUTTER!!!*“

She apparently had no idea how beautiful everybody else saw her as. I mean, I had this moment in the hallways of the Academy where a barely-known-to-me-farm boy came up to me between classes and demanded, “You the guy going steady with Phyllis Raymond?”

Not knowing if I was about to get into a fight or something, I said, “Yeah. Why?”

And he looked at me with the most hangdog look you could imagine and said, “Do you know how goddamn LUCKY you are?!” He said it like an accusation. But no, more an unhappy surrender. “’Cause I sure hope the hell you do!”

Apparently, he’d had his hopeful sites on my new steady for some time.

“Yeah,” I told him, “I do know. And no, I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

And honestly, with my track record and loose-cannon self-esteem, I was still bewildered about how the hell I’d ended up with one of the elite majorettes.

Well, other than my sparkling personality and my extremely handsome looks, I guess the fact that I was always hanging around with the popular Mallett Brothers and had taken her out on that Johnny Cash concert date hadn’t hurt matters any.

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

The Things We Do for Love

So after we’d got a few weeks of dating under our belts, I started hanging around out by the track after school, reason being: I loved watching Phyllis during her majorette practices. She was amazing. All of the majorettes were.

They actually did this one routine where they honestly tossed twirling, flaming batons way up over their heads and then caught them, all in sync, on their way back down. That blew my mind. I don’t know what they had on either end of their batons, but the flames sure looked dangerous. I really worried about Phyllis getting herseld a bad burn.

So anyway there I was, out there one afternoon watching them practice, when I was approached by John Glover, the Track coach whose team was also working out on the track and field. “You can’t be hanging around out here,” he told me.

“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t see I’m getting in anybody’s way or anything.”

“Because this is practice time. Only practitioners are welcomed. And since you’re neither a majorette nor a track star…”

“OH, come on. Really?”

“Really. Now on the other hand, I’m in need of a runner for the mile. If you care to apply, you can live out here and watch the girls over your shoulder all the time.”

Huh!

And so that was the year I went out for track.

I “ran” the mile. No runner, me– thus, the quotation marks. I was a jogger at best. And lazy, but I’ve already owned up to that in more than one of my previous blog posts. Plus, I found running really painful. And rather pointless, since the majorettes didn’t practice every afternoon like the track team did.

Now, obviously the difference between me and the other, much-more-motivated milers was how I “practiced.” Real milers would ready themselves for the next track meet by what seemed like running all the time. Three miles at a pop. But me? Hey, if I were readying myself for the mile run, I’d jog a mile. Maybe once, but certainly no more than twice a day. So…

When the starting gun fired on the day of my first track meet, we were off! It was a sweltering, hot day. Immediately I noticed one runner after another pulling past me like I was my old grandfather tooling down I-95 in his rattletrap pick-up at 40 miles per hour. And despite my better judgement, I (idiot me) began to succumb to the peer pressure. Stupidly, I accelerated. I passed someone. And then somebody else! And you know what? It was easy. Easy-peasey. I finished lap-one looking good!

At the end of lap-two, however, I wasn’t so pretty, quite honestly. But the track fans on the sidelines were cheering, goading me on. So I persevered.

But as I galumphed past them at the end of my third lap, my lungs were engulfed in flames!

Since there was no actual photograph of this event, I’ve stolen *this* appropriate one from the movie, *Platoon…*

And when I crossed the finish line, dead last… I simply collapsed down onto my rubbery knees, and puked my guts out.

Yeah. The things we do for love.

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

Going steady with Phyllis was a little tricky…

Like, one day after the final bell had rung at school, Phyl and I and the throng of all the happy-to-be-outta-there kids were marching en masse down the Academy driveway, headed for Lanpher’s Drug to hang out. I, the perfect gentleman, was of course carrying her textbooks (easy for me since I seldom brought any of my own home). (And backpacks hadn’t caught on back then.)

Now, whenever we were together, I had learned to make it a point to try to appear way more mature than my actual sixth-grade-level, Mad magazine mentality. Because I didn’t want to lose this one. So I always strove to never to let her catch me doing or saying things that would disappoint, or offend. Not an easy life for a guy like me.

So… while we were walking and talking quietly on our way down toward West Main Street’s sidewalk, way back behind us I overheard something that makes my teeth clench. Jim Harvey’s loud voice. “Boy, you guys shoulda heard what Tommy Lyford said to Ol’ Ma Gerrish in study hall this afternoon! That got a rise out of her!”

Damn it, Jim, I was thinking. Keep your mouth shut, why don’t ya! But of course he didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. And I’ve long forgotten whatever it was I’d said earlier that day to win the chorus of cheap laughs I’d got from my equally immature study hall audience, but whatever it was, Phyllis went cold. She asked me politely for her books back, and we made the rest of the trip to her house in dead silence.

Me, the scolded dog.

And for some reason Phyllis also did not approve at all of gambling… back then (which is a laugh and a half now, when you consider all the casino man-hours she’s since put in, altruistically helping out struggling casinos wherever she finds them). But even though I was aware of her sentiments, personally I thought gambling was a way to look pretty cooland manly back in those high school days. So any so-called “gambling” I did, I always tried to keep on the down-low.

(Did I happen to mention I had a reputation for being *****-whipped back then?)

So anyway, I was working at the Esso Station one Saturday afternoon, along with the boss’s son Jerry, a wise-ass little punk three or so years younger than me.

Business had slowed down for a while, so he and I were just leaning our backs up against the tool bench in the back of the grease-monkey-area and shooting the bull. We’d opened up the bay doors for the fresher air and just to watch the ol’ traffic slide on by. Eventually another car pulled in for a fill-up. It was Jerry’s turn to get it. He was outside there for a couple, three minutes, and then he came hustling back in with an idea.

“Hey, let’s pitch some pennies. Whattaya say?”

I said sure. I always kept a modest cache of pennies in my pants pocket, since we partook of penny-pitching often, to kill time. Penny-pitching was like a game of micro-horseshoes. You’d each toss your penny up against a nearby wall, and the one whose penny landed the closest to the wall won that toss and got to keep both coins. I know it sounds brainless today because they were, after all, only pennies. However, pennies were worth a little more sixty years ago than they are today, right? I mean, for ten pennies you could buy a cup of coffee anywhere.

But my point with all this is… penny-pitching is a form of gambling. And guess what! While I was bending over, picking my two pennies up off the floor, I heard Jerry suddenly yell out, “Hey Phyllis! Look what Tommy’s doing! Pitching pennies with me!”

Immediately I realized what had just happened. The little bum had set me up (again). See, (A) while he was out there pumping gas, he’s spied Phyllis down the sidewalk, walking our way; (B) Jerry knew how Phyl felt about gambling; (C) Jerry also knew that I was one hopelessly *****-whipped little puppy; and (D) he’d set the whole damn thing up, the bum, just to watch me getting put back into the doghouse.

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

But hey, in spite of all my little “transgressions,” we remained passionately in love and getting more serious about staying with each other for all time, in spite of her being Catholic and me, Methodist. That was only a problem for my mom however, not us. Secretly we were living on the energy of the dream-promise of… marrying, despite how young and star-crossed we were.

For Christmas for instance, I ‘d got Phyllis a gift that was actually a ‘secret code’ hiding in plain sight: Namely, a cute little charm bracelet. I allowed Ma to check it out– especially emphasizing the cute little miniature majorette charm.

However, just before I got that bracelet wrapped up, I nefariously slipped in the contraband. I quickly attached it to the bracelet, and then took off, spiriting my special gift across town where I delightedly placed it under Phyllis’ Christmas tree.

(ta-dah!) The $2.99 “engagement-ring” charm, oh my!

Ma would be so pissed…

I’d also bought her one of those little pink and white music boxes with the tiny pirouetting ballet dancer positioned in front of its little mirror.

All well and good.

But gawd, even with that done Ma, with her Pentacostal upbringing, still managed to be a problem. When she asked me what else I was getting Phyl for Christmas, I told her, “A sweater.” But before I could get the next sentence out of my mouth, wherein I would have described the sweater I’d ordered, she threw a fit.

“A sweater?! Oh no, you’re not!”

“What? What’re you talking about? Why NOT?!”

“Because it’s not appropriate to be buying a young woman clothing, that’s why! Not at your age!”

“What the heck are you…? WHY can’t I buy Phyllis a…”

“You know very well why!”

“Excuse me!? No! I don’t think so! So… tell me, why don’tcha! Why?”

“Because men buy sweaters for women because… well for one reason: sweaters accentuate their breasts! That’s why!”

“Oh! My! God!”

But believe me, I got it then. Ma was still living in 1940’s World. I could just imagine the image that was going round and round in her brain. Phyllis as some steamy Mae West, and me as some sleazo!

“Ma! You’re… nuts! The sweater’s not going to accentuate… ANYTHING! It’s the same sweater I’m getting for mySELF! For cryin’ out loud! It’s not lingerie! It’s a cardigan! Come on! Gimme a break!” This was so embarrassing for me.

And by the way, even though we’d been going together for months, Phyllis and I hadn’t yet arrived at that level yet. I’d say we were both on “second base,” no further.

And hey, I loved it, being right where we were. Just being with her was all I cared about. It was like she was an angel. And quite honestly, I would have blushed if someone had spoken the word “breasts” aloud in our company.

Consider for example, one Saturday afternoon I walked Phyllis over to the Center Theatre to watch the movie West Side Story. I was loving it at first. It was so Romeo and Juliet. But then, in my opinion, something occurred near the end of the show that shocked, especially considering I was sitting right there shoulder-to-shoulder next to my angelic girlfriend.

When Anita (Rita Moreno) goes to Doc’s place to deliver a message to Tony (Richard Beymer), the Jets pretty much maul her, with the dance choreography depicting this as a very graphically simulated gang rape!

I was beside-myself-horrified! It was way too realistic for my tastes let alone, I believed, Phyl’s. I was silently haranguing myself with, Omigod! What kind of a movie have I brought my sweet, little girlfriend to?! What must Phyllis be thinking about this?! Or about ME… for bringing her to this… violent, sexual thing? Sinking down in my seat, I hardly had the guts to even look over at her. And after the movie, I walked her silently home, barely daring to speak. I pretty much figured I’d blown it.

Yes. I know. It seems silly today, doesn’t it. But that’s just how respectful, how virginal and sheltered some of us were back in the early 60’s. No, not everybody of course. But… me, for one. Today it seems ridiculous, but back then I was sweating bullets.

Turned out it hadn’t bothered her much at all. It was a non-issue. No biggie. Phew! But I was such a silly worry-wart. With so much growing up to do…

Yeah, the “crazy little thing called love” was so awkward for me, but upon looking back it was unbelievably wonderful and magic too. So yes, I love harkening back to my courtship days with my sweet girlfriend, Phyllis. So idyllic. So many great dates, beginning with that big one, our first real date: The Johnny Cash concert in Bangor, Maine.

You know, a lot of the time I couldn’t get to borrow my Uncle Archie’s car and had to use my dad’s bulky new Ford Econoline van with the Lyford’s TV Repair logo on the back, along with its large inventory of vacuum tubes, soldering irons, toolboxes, and the oscilloscope rattling around in the back. Not the most romantic ride.

But those were the wheels that charioted us to The Mallett Brothers and Johhny Cash.

Funny thing about the van. Dad once joked that he couldn’t drive up West Main Street without feeling the steering wheel suddenly lurch a little in his hands, tugging the van in the direction of Winter Street, the street on which Phyllis lived. It was like a horse that “knew the way” he told me, and was challenging his decision to go “off-trail.”

Oh, there are so many sweet memories I choose to wallow in every so often.

Like the day Phyl and I, with our picnic lunch, bicycled the whole five miles out to Sebec Lake’s Municipal Beach for a day in the sun, with swimming to cool off. Jeez, talk about being head over heels in love! That was such a magic day.

And then, when I graduated from the Academy in ’64, Ma wouldn’t let me go to the graduation parties everyone else was enjoying, lest I get drunk or something. Who knows. Instead (and this was such a dumb-dumb, embarrassing idea) she made me “celebrate” at home, setting up what she called a “party” for Phyllis and I and another couple. I was as mad as a wet hen, as they say, but it was hard to stay mad with pretty Phyllis right by my side, as this photo shows. I was happy that Ma was slowly coming around and accepting the inevitability of… Phyllis and me.

**The wild graduation “party.” And look how slim we both were!**

It wasn’t such a bad evening after all.

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

So… summing this all up, I guess I’m trying to say that our “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” goes down in the scrapbook of our minds as that heavenly, magic period of our early innocent courtship. A period of incredible happiness and hopefulness and truly halcyon days and nights. I was so blessed to have that, just as I am blessed today (us having made a good dent in our 59th year of marriage and our at least 61 years of being a couple) to live my life with the most incredible woman I can imagine. She still drives me crazy every day– Still Crazy After All These Years…

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

And now, to end on a lighter note: alas: here is/are a look at those lascivious, immodestly infamous sweater(s) during our courtship (And please, for decency’s sake, do not scroll down farther if you’re under 21 years of age):

The garment as imagined by my mom:

**Mae West wearing Ma’s imagined Christmas gift sweater…**

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

And then, the reality…

**The actual shockingly UGLY Christmas sweaters**…

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THIS OLD GUITAR

I grew up in a home that had an old acoustic guitar just lying around in it. It was my mom’s.

Way back in the early 1940’s, she and some of her wild siblings and friends formed a locally popular country-western band that played at the area Grange halls. According to a 1999 article in Paper Talks: as dirt-poor as they were, Ma’s (Violet’s) older sister Elva earned enough cash by “cutting potato seed” to purchase a guitar for herself and one for her. They named themselves The Bar-K Buckaroos. Mom’s brother Chester, a born con man, acted as the band’s “manager” under the imaginative name Ace Dixon.

(A cherished Lyford family story is that our dad, Raymond, was smitten and became a big fan of mom’s during one of their concerts. Reportedly performing a popular song of the day called “Winking at You,” she came strolling down through the audience, coming to a stop right in front of him, and then personally serenading him with a few lines. {And winked at him!} And the rest is history.)

So anyway, the guitar. When I was in junior high, Ma taught me three basic chords, all in the key of C: C, F, and G7. I discovered that with those three, I could navigate my wannabe singer’s voice through most of the popular songs at that time. Eventually, however, I found that if I ever wanted to be able to handle The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” I had to familiarize myself with the A minor chord as well. I mean, anybody and everybody who was learning guitar that I knew wanted to play that particular song, it being so dark and cool.

Back in 1960 I had a friend who owned an electric guitar and an amp. I’d spend hours with him in his bedroom taking turns blasting his neighbors. We’d crank that amp up to a 7 on the Richter scale and let’er rip. This Wayne Smith was so much more talented than I was. (And if you’re wondering how good I was, my answer is: not so much. I think I got to be… promising, but that’s as far as I ever got.)

I’d learned the do re mi scale in C though, which enabled me to pick out the melodies of popular songs in that key fairly easily. So from Wayne’s bedroom, the neighbors got treated to my loud rendition of “Apache,” an instrumental made by famous by The Shadows in 1960, or The Ventures’ popular “Walk Don’t Run.” On top of that, and being nuts over Johnny Cash, I worked hard to learn to play the chords of his hits in his signature style while picking out the melodies to boot.

But like I said, “promising, but that’s as far as I ever got.” There are a couple of reasons:

(1) I’m lazy.

I’d already learned to play practically everything I wanted to play in the key of C. Trying to master playing the necessary chords for pop songs in other keys? Well, that was difficult, wasn’t it. Smacked of effort. So why bother? C was good enough for me. And besides, if I wanted to play songs in higher or lower chords… hey, that’s what capos are for, right?

So… laziness.

(2) I suffered from terminal stage fright.

Although in the safety and privacy of my room I practiced! practiced! practiced! like I was trying to get to Carnegie Hall (and had even begun to show some definite growth), the problem was this: the moment I’d feel a few eyes bearing down on me while playing, my brain would just fly right out the window.

It’s been that way all my life. For instance, as a kid I played a lot of basketball with a number of older kids. Every weekend after Central Hall Rec Center closed down at 10:00 pm, a bunch of us would rent the floor and play ball till 1:00 am next morning. I got really good at it too. I’d honed a hook shot that was deadly. I was hell on wheels.

Now of course, you’re probably thinking, Oh sure, in HIS OWN OPINION he was hell on wheels. So… how good was I really? Answer: good enough to make the starting five on the A-squad three years running. In 7^th grade. In 8^th grade. And in my freshman year.

Why?

Stage fright. Oh, I was just great during practices. And in each one of those three years, when the jump-ball tip-off signaled the start of first game of the season, I was right out there on the floor. with the rest of the starting team. But…

There’d end up being about 150 fans’ eyes gawking at us, but particularly right at me (or so I felt). Consequently, I became dazed, confused, and “frozen.” One of my teammates would shoot the ball over to me and guess what: I’d just stand there, watching the ball bounce off my chest and disappear out of bounds.

And after that happened twice, Coach would call me over to the sidelines, look deep into my eyes and ask, sincerely, “Tommy. What’s going on?!” And my answer (to each successive coach, three years running) was always the same: an embarrassed, “I… don’t know…” After which I’d spend the rest of the season warming the bench.

Sad irony: I was as bad at performing with the guitar as I was at basketball. And not only that but, yeah, up through my sophomore year in high school it was also that way when talking to pretty girls. Which sucked, but… it just was what it was.

See, this is what the ancient Greeks called a ‘tragic flaw.’

However (A) by 1962, I was still looking sort-of-hopefully toward my (possible?) musician-future-stardom with some degree of optimism, but (B) although I had no way of ever expecting the irony of it (nobody would or could have), the future-BIG-payday teased at by the windfall of Ma’s guitar wasn’t going to be about…

…me.

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

Now, I’ve mentioned in previous posts that my best friend throughout high school (and beyond) was a fella named Neil Mallett. He grew up in Sebec, Maine, located a few miles north of my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft. From kindergarten through eighth grade, Sebec kids attended school in Sebec. However, beginning with their freshman year, they joined us ‘townies by enrolling in Foxcroft Academy.

Neil and I were both enrolled in the College Prep curriculum at FA, so the two of us ended up taking all the same classes. Not only that, but Neil ended up sitting right behind me in pretty much every class due to the fact that our unimaginative teachers could think of no better way than alphabetical order to arrange our seating plans. This recurring proximity sealed our friendship. Consequently, I soon found myself becoming a frequent visitor out at his home in Sebec.

We didn’t have a lot in common at first. I lived in town in a house resting on a boring single acre of land; Neil lived in the country. Our house was boxed in by the houses of our many, many next-door neighbors. He lived in a not-at-all crowded, neighbor-filled-neighborhood. His homestead had all kinds of things mine didn’t. An old field truck that I could drive. A tractor. A huge barn. A flock of sheep. A big German Shepherd. At least four other brothers. A mom filled with spooky stories. Big country breakfasts every morning. And lots of fields with haying to be done.

It was wonderful. For me, a rural agricultural Disneyland. I wanted to live out there in Mallettville. I wanted to be a Mallett.

I stayed over often.

**Dumbass me.** **Notice the brown rectangular roof of the *very large building* down below in the upper half of the photo, for a sense of scale…**

All kinds of things happened out there. For one thing, I got fear-frozen up maybe 200+ feet up on the 260-foot, still-under-construction Telstar tower that was adjacent to one of their properties.

Practically all the boys from miles around felt compelled to climb that tower at one time or another. It was a rite of passage.

Another thing that happened is that I got to spend almost an entire summer haying out there. My God, it was hard, hot and sweaty work, but I loved every minute of it.

Now, harking back to the real adventure: one time out there, in the winter of ‘62, I got to talking about how much I was enjoying playing my Ma’s guitar at home. Neil’s and his younger brother David’s ears perked right up my descriptions. And so I got asked to bring Ma’s guitar out there for them to check out next time I came over.

So we made plans for that.

“It was a dark and stormy night.” Freezing, windy, and snowing. One of Neil’s older brothers pulled up in our driveway to chauffer the guitar and me off to Sebec. And since the entire rear window of the car was for some reason missing and the snowflakes were swirling around inside the interior, I wrapped the instrument up in an old blanket to keep it as dry as possible. It was about a 10-minute ride.

So anyway, the guitar arrived in one piece (and no worse for the wear), and we brought it into the warm Mallett living room. Everybody gathered around for my little demonstration. And believe it or not, even though I was among very good friends, I still got as nervous as hell while doing it.

Wow though, Neil and young David really got into the whole idea that with only three, maybe four chords, you could play “any song.”

***BOYS! Grow Giant Mushrooms in YOUR Cellar!***

Sounds pretty much like a pitch from one of those ads in the back of some 1950’s comic book, doesn’t it. But that is pretty much what I told them anyway. But of course…that turned out to be an unintentional untruth of course.

Anyway, it was a hands-on experience for them, each taking turns, trying out the chords, and immediately learning about the guitar-player’s painful fingertips. But I figured that, like most kids who just dream and dream of playing the guitar, that the nitty-gritty reality of the commitment involved would end up making short work of that dream. Besides, they didn’t even own a guitar.

But unbeknownst to me, the guitar I’d just handed over was like Jack’s magic beans in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Something immediately took root in these two guys. I mean, by placing that completely ordinary musical instrument into their sweaty little palms, I was unwittingly creating a monster. (Well, two monsters actually.) (And to be clear: I’m talking ‘monster’ in a good way… in a very good way.)

Because in a few weeks, they had a guitar of their own. And in a few more weeks, they had two guitars! And damn, they could both play them! Head and shoulders above what I was capable of. And on top of that they’d discovered they could sing as well, David assuming the lead vocalist role, and Neil backing him up with the harmony. They quickly assembled a playlist of popular folk and country songs and took them out on the road.

**This article from *Up North* (Jan/Feb 2008) by Shelagh Talbot**

Next thing you knew, they were performing a couple of numbers before the student body at Foxcroft. And were a sensation. Everybody loved their sound. Word got out. Their reputation spread. They were asked to perform gigs at Rec Center, churches, weddings, and grange halls just like my mom. And they had become… The Mallett Brothers.

(Yes, I know– right this very moment there is a nationally popular band called The Mallett Brothers [David’s two sons, Luke and Will] out there making a big, successful splash in the music world, but Neil and David were the original Mallett Brothers back in the 60’s.)

Before you knew it, they were even showing up on television— TV talent shows, performing in guest spots with other well-known local singers, and then (lo and behold!) they came out with their own television show!

Early in the 60’s I was fortunate in that, being such a close family friend and all, I was allowed to accompany them on their various grange hall gigs all over the area. I liked to think of myself as sort of their ‘roadie’ but, in reality, I was more of groupie, just tagging along for the adventure.

And then, in another blink of an eye it seemed, they began cutting a few 45 rpm records. And songwriting became added to the mix. That was a family affair, beginning with their mom, Pauline, who penned the song, “Solomon,” (the yellow label featured in the photo below). The Mallett Brothers were off and running.

These records found their way to radio stations around the state of Maine, got plenty of play time, and bolstered their growing popularity.

The 45 in the center is titled “Cole’s Express.” The story behind that one is that The Mallett Brothers got hired by a large firm in the small city of Bangor, ME, namely Cole’s Express. They were hired to sing their way north to south, east to west all over the state of Maine to promote Mr. Cole’s company. It was a lucrative deal.

Oh how I envied them, staying in motels, meeting all kinds of interesting people, and getting paid for doing something they were more than passionate about. The YouTube video below was recorded during one of their stops in Fort Fairfield, Maine.

But hey, one of the best and most memorable of the many gigs I got to accompany them on was on Monday, July 20th, 1963. This was during the total solar eclipse of that year, at the dead center of the eclipse path which lay smack-dab in Dexter, Maine. Dexter hosted an unforgettable 4-day celebration that included vendors, food, dancing, a talent show, and music.

Headlining the music on the stage that day was The Mallett Brothers. The weather was perfect. And a family of performers were so taken by David and Neil, that they invited us to come out to view the eclipse on their family’s farm. It was great. We got to watch the confused cows slowly heading in across the fields toward the barn only to stop and turn around when the sun came back out. And then we also got to hear the rooster crow an untimely cock-a-doodle-doo, announcing morning for the second time that day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here’s my point… well, at least PART I of my point (look for one other ‘Part’ of the point in this adventure). So many things subsequently happened only because there was this old guitar, a left-over relic from the 1940’s, left leaning up against a side of our piano in the family living room back in the mid-1950s. I mean, suppose my mom never received that guitar in the first place, and that there’d never been a little country western group called the Bar-K Buckaroos. Would I have taken that amateur interest in playing a guitar anyway? I don’t see how. At least not then. Would I ever get some other opportunity to learn about those three chords? Possibly. A lot of kids did.

On the other hand, I’m pretty positive I would have met and befriended Neil anyway though, thanks to the alphabetical-seating-order-fetish of those unimaginative teachers of FA’s College Prep classes. But there wouldn’t have been that particular winter’s night gathering in the Mallett living room, listening to me playing those easy chords.

In fact, minus the cause (the guitar) and effect (David’s and Neil’s early musical career) I, Neil, and David could all very likely be living lives in some alternative reality. I mean… horror of all horrors, what if I’d (haha) gone over there and, in an enthusiastically glorified and charismatic manner, shared with them the basketball path I was futilely trying to master, and had somehow tantalized and mesmerized them with the amazing scientific precision of that deadly “hook shot” I had honed so sharply? Might then Neil and David have put their creative energies into competitive sports instead? And might David and Neil have become famous brother-athletes on a national scale, like Peyton and Eli Manning?

OK, now you’re probably wondering what it is I’m smoking. Just being facetious. But yeah. Really. What if there hadn’t been that guitar at all, eh? Did the guitar have anything to do with me finding a permanent girlfriend? Yes!

Did that guitar have anything to do with David and Neil crossing paths with The Man in Black, Johnny Cash? Yes, I believe so!

But stay tuned to find out. Look for “This Old Guitar, Part II” in the next day or two.

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THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY

I still didn’t really have a lot going for me as a high school freshman.

Well, I had escaped my K-through-8 World. And that was pretty big. I mean, leaving all my embarrassing ‘dirty laundry’ behind me back in grade school:

Getting sucker-punched right off a playground swing seat by… a girl;

Nearly losing my manhood wrapped around a maple tree trunk with a bicycle crossbar between my Buster Browns;

Surviving the shame and trauma of “The First Kiss Gone BAD” Milestone”;

And of course, having barely escaped THE TENDER TRAP set by the two feral little vixens, Sandra (Dee) and Wendy (with my virginity still intact).

But at least on day-one at Foxcroft Academy, I was starting off all over again with a clean slate, playfully toying with the thought of becoming a monk in a monastery. Well no, not really, not seriously. That was just me being a drama queen. But hey, at least I wouldn’t exactly have to take a vow of chastity, would I. The universe seemed to have already conferred that vow on me arbitrarily.

But unfortunately being a high school freshman came with a curse: Health Class had clued me in to the sad truth of the matter that girls mature both physically and mentally two or three years earlier than boys. (And of course I was, like, Gosh, you don’t say! Oh wait… that’s right! Now you mention it, I do seem to recall two chicks named Sandra (Dee) and Wendy who’d definitely surpassed me in maturity.)

But here’s the thing:

(A) First of all, that implied that most girls my own age were only likely to find boys who were older than me (1) more attractive, (2) generally more interesting, and therefore (3) more compatible for dating (damnit!).

(B) I was now, a lowly ninth grader trapped in a grades-nine-through-twelve school building with not one, single, solitary female younger than me in a radius of two miles around in any direction. Meaning, that I was gonna hafta wait two frickin’ years before any female (who might [or even might not] find me (1) attractive, (2) interesting, and therefore (3) compatible for dating) would ever show up!

And (C) damnit all again, when you’ve got at least the beginnings of your hormones sputtering to life inside you, as I had, you just can’t seem to ever throw in the towel and give up trying in spite of yourself. No matter how hard you try.

So there it was, the writing on the wall: my chances for any ninth- or tenth-grade love life loomed before me like some pot-holed, dead-end street.

Yeah, and it wasn’t helping that I wasn’t popular. Plus, no successful athlete either. Me, still short for my age. And all in all… I’m talkin’ basically just some silly, frivolous little class-clown learning vicariously all about life through the likes of Mad Magazine and …

that quirky and very dated 1950’s sit-com, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. (About this: please understand that the irony of that show’s title was the fact that Dobie Gillis could never end up getting himself a girlfriend if his life depended on it.) (And if that scenario should sound somehow familiar, you’re probably thinking of my life up to this point in my story. In fact, I seriously considered titling this post “I, Dobie Gillis“).

All the beautiful babes on the show (like Thalia Menninger below, played by teen, Tuesday Weld) always ended up going for the filthy rich guys (like Milton Armitage, played by Warren Beatty [also below], or the popular captains of the sports teams).

See, like Dobie, I too was stuck obsessing over the bevy of out-of-reach, more-mature-than-me, high school dreamboats that were always whispering and giggling together in the cafeteria.

Well. OK. I did have that one and only thing going for me. The Charles Simic thing. Poetry. I’d been dabbling in doggerel (poetry written by dogs) ever since fourth grade. My rhyming-dictionary-brain could put just about any thoughts or sentiments into rhyme. In fact, by the time I’d got to high school, I’d already built myself quite a little reputation as the ‘Class Poet.’ (Also the ‘Class Clown,’ but that’s neither here nor there.)

So anyway, there I was, languishing in the leaky rowboat of my potential ‘love-life,’ adrift on a sea of study halls, and praying to Neptune that by casting my poetry nets and shiny little poem-lures, I just might beat the odds, just might luck out and reel in one of the more (alright, perhaps more desperate) physically and mentally developed trophies lurking out there in those shallows of academia…

Me, The Young Man and the Sea.

But it’s funny, isn’t it. How sometimes “The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”? How Fate and Serendipity can conspire by rolling the dice of your destiny behind your back?

What I’m hinting at is…

SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED!

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

In Lap Lary‘s biology class (familiarly called “Lap” because as the high school track coach, I guess he was known for making slackers run extra laps), I sat in a front seat. Sitting in the front seat wasn’t my idea. Lap [Fate] put me there to help me ‘pay attention.’ Yeah, he was very helpful that way.

I wasn’t at all thrilled with biology, but occasionally we had a lab that was actually interesting. Case in point, one day as part of a unit on the circulatory system, we were learning about the different blood types. The lab required us to pair up with the student seated next to us [Serendipity] and (and here was the scary part) draw a few drops of blood from each other. Those drops would then be mounted on slides to be examined under a microscope, and then ‘typed’ by us.

So the student seated next to me happened to be a girl. A girl I didn’t know. And I knew everybody else in that class because we sophomores had all been freshmen together. But this girl hadn’t been. I knew absolutely nothing about her. And of course, it felt a little awkward, being assigned some unknown girl as an instant lab partner, especially when I was expecting to pair up with one of my buddies.

But, whatever— I dragged my desk around so the fronts of mine and hers were touching and she and I were facing each other.

“Tom,” I said, by way of introduction.

Looking a lot bored, she responded, “Sue.”

She was very skinny, kind of plain, and seemingly freckled all over. I mean, if the school were to put on a play version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, she’d be a shoo-in for Tom’s girlfriend, Becky Thatcher. No Natalie Wood there. But of course, I was more a lot more Mickey Rooney than a Paul Newman, so…

“Can I ask how where you’re from?”

“Can you? You just did,” she said sourly.

“Yeah. OK. I’m sorry. None of my busin…”

“This class stinks.”

“Oh.” So. Neither a Natalie nor an academic, then. “OK.” I tried for a little chit-chat. “Yeah. And me? I’m not doing too hot at it right now. I”ll probably end up right back here in this same seat, same time next year.”

“Doubt it,” she said, rolling he eyes like she found my attempt at chit-chat boring. But of course she would, wouldn’t she, what with girls maturing a couple of years earlier than guys. Whatever.

Lap was distributing the lab kits: alcohol swabs, Band-aids, cotton-batting balls, the little silver cylinder that housed its tiny, spring-operated fingertip-nicker, and our microscopes. “Whattaya say?” I asked. “Wanna do me first, or should I do…”

“I’ll do you.”

“Oh. OK. Hey, You sound a little nervous.”

“You’re the nervous one here.”

She was right. So I decided to zip it. And we began. with her swabbing the tip of my index finger.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Minutes later, I was winding a Band-aid around it, not that I was really bleeding or anything. Just a couple drips. Turned out my blood is O-positive. Good to know. Then it was my turn.

So she laid her small, surprisingly cold hand, knuckles-down, in my open palm. I swabbed her fingertip, cocked the little silver doo-hickey, and asked, “You ready?”

“Whatta you think?”

Hmmm. I said, “O-kay.” Man, so far I barely knew what her voice even sounded like, she was so talkative.

Not that I cared. (snick!)

I already had the glass slide lying at the ready on a paper towel. So, like a cop inking a felon’s fingerprint, I turned her hand over and gently dabbed her finger (which was bleeding rather noticeably, by the way) on the slide, immediately thinking, Whoa, that’s a little more blood than I was expecting! Actually, blood was dribbling off over all four sides of the little slide. And when I tried to cap that slide with the upper slide in preparation for the microscope, Jesus, blood squished right out from between them! By that time, it was more than a little obvious that her bleeding was getting more than just a little out of control. My fingers were all bloodied.

“Oh my God!” I said, which is most always what I say just before a panic attack kicks in. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

Oh? ‘Yeah?‘ I thought. You are? I snatched up the dinky little Band-aid and, in trying to tear it out of its paper wrapper, nearly tore it in half! And Jesus, now the blood was getting all over both my hands and hers, not to mention the entire Band-aid while I struggled trying to remove its two little plastic tabs! Meanwhile, there was red Rorschach blot growing on the paper towel, just like my panic! Jesus! The Band-aid just wasn’t going to cut it!

I dropped it and pinched the tip of her finger tight to stanch the bleeding, leaned my big-bulging-eyed, panicked-face right up eye-to-eye with her calm face (jeez, how could she be calm?!), and whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on here!”

“I’m… Well, I’m kind of a bleeder,” she confessed.

A bleeder! Kind of?! Oh yeah, that’ was all’s all I needed to hear right then! (And she’d said it so calmly! As if she were just telling me her shoe size or something. JESUS! SHOULDN’T SHE BE PANICKING TOO?!)

“Mr. Lary!” I yelled over my shoulder. No answer. “MISTER LARY! We need HELP OVER HERE!” A second or two passed. Then from somewhere seemingly way too far off in the classroom behind me, I heard his bemused voice. “Be with you in a minute.”

In a MINUTE??? No! “NOWWWWWWW! RIGHT NOWWWW! HELP! WE GOT BLOOD HERE!” And then there he was! Standing over our double-desks and looking down upon the mess! “Oh wow! That’s… That’s a lotta blood!”

“I know I know I KNOW! She’s a BLEEDER, damnit!”

“Ooh! OK. Keep pressure on that finger. Be right back. Going for the first-aid kit!” And off he went. Leaving me holding hands with a dying sophomore! And by now, most of the kids were gathering around us, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and packing us in close, finding the two of us deliciously fascinating!

But… blood is a funny thing, isn’t it. For some, it just is what it is. For others, it’s just not so wise to let them catch sight of it. Take Ronnie, for instance.

Ronnie the big, brave football player. While peering down upon my partner’s little bloodbath of a desktop, his face drained of all color, leaving his complexion ashy, with an almost greenish tint. Then, like an oak… TIMBER! Down he went! Fortunately for him, someone caught and cradled his head before it would otherwise have bounced off the floor.

Lap had reappeared but, jeez, now he was on his knees tending to Ronnie! Me thinking, Let the lunk tend to his OWN self, why don’tcha?!

I found Sue looking at me, still all cucumber-calm. Which irked me, in my panic. “ Now look what you’ve gone and done.”

“Me?! You’re the one that stabbed me, remember?!” Wow. I hadn’t seen that coming!

“Well,, when you were stabbing me, mighn’t you have just given me a little heads up at least that you were a bleeder!”

“I’m not a bleeder. I just…”

“And you stabbed me first!

“I only…” And then this Sue that I’d only just met suddenly burst out laughing! I hadn’t seen that coming either.

Then, I don’t know why, but I started to laugh. And let me tell you, I really wasn’t in the mood for laughing, either. But too bad for me, right?.

And then her laughing ratcheted itself up a couple, three, notches. She was laughing hard now. Which was crazy, right? And next thing you knew, (I couldn’t help it) I was laughing my head off too! The two of us totally out of control. And what a sight that must’ve been. Two blood-blotched little mental patients strapped to the mad scientist’s blood besotted operating table and cackling it up hysterically! For a full minute.

We laughed our asses off.

She was lucky she didn’t bleed out…

After Lap had got Ronnie taken care of and back up on his feet, and Sue’s finger bandaged up tight and properly, the class was pretty much over.

While we were waiting for the bell (our desks now back in their rows, side-by-side again) I asked her if I could check out her finger once more. “Just to make sure there’s no blood seeping through that big fat bandage.” That almost started us up again.

But once again she laid her hand in mine. We were once again holding hands.

“Looking good now,” I reported officiously.

“So are you,” she said. “Well… I mean, honestly, you were looking pretty green there. I kept thinking, Oh, that’s all I need right now. To have, you know, this guy pass out on top of that guy, and then maybe the whole class going down like a bunch of dominoes.”

My God, she had such a very warm smile. And I was thinking, So that’s what her voice sounds like.

And then I realized that I was grinning like an idiot.

After a long awkward silence, I thought of something to say. “So, where is it you live, anyway.”

“Atkinson.”

“Ah.” Atkinson being a little village maybe eight to ten miles west from town. “So, I guess you’ll be… grabbing the bus home right after school this afternoon then.”

“Nope. You couldn’t pay me to ride that bus.”

“So how do you get home then?”

“Either one of my brothers or my dad. They’ll pick me and my sisters up tonight.”

“Tonight? Well, what’ll you do in the meantime?”

“Oh, just hang out. Like we always do. And whoever does pick us up, it’ll be after the game tonight.”

“The basketball game? Oh, you’re going to that?”

“Yup.”

“Huh! Yeah. Me too.” What was I saying? I wasn’t planning on going to any basketball game. “So… maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Yeah.” Still smiling. “Maybe you will.”

“Yeah. And I probably should, you know, check that finger again.” Oh my God. Had I actually said that? “I mean, ahem, you know. Make sure the bleeding has completely stopped.”

“OK. Provided I haven’t bled to death in the meantime.”

The end-of-class bell was ringing. “Oh please. Don’t do that.”

Out in the hall I watched her disappear in the hallway crush.

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

Feeling somewhat nervous, I stepped in from the December cold, paid my admission fee in the gym lobby, and walked into the clamor of refs’ whistles, the dribbling ball, squeaks of sneakers on the polished floor, and the occasional GHAAAKK! of the buzzer. The hometown-side’s bleachers were packed.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was feeding my angst. Just the uncertainty about whatever lay in store for me that evening, if anything at all.

I began scanning the crowd. I doubted she’d be there. Either way, what did I even care? I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. She was just somebody I’d… well, somebody I’d held hands with that morning. For a few minutes. That’s all.

But for some reason though, something had felt oddly intimate that morning. Hah. Two complete strangers with apparently nothing in common (one who would barely deign to speak to the other at first) being thrown together by fate (fate being in this case Old Lap Lary), and then… and then, unexpectedly, by some somewhat extreme circumstances…

Whoa, right there Trigger! What I just said there? Did sound just a tad bit similar to the opening line of Romeo and Juliet???

Nah. What was I, crazy? No. But damn! I was such a little romantic back then. I mean, did the expression ‘damsel in distress’ perhaps occur to me too? Oh, probably it did. Of course it did. And did my dumbass brain actually toy with the notion that… well, because our hands had spent a few moments clasped, and in blood, too… that we’d undergone some kind of ancient blood ritual? Like, we’d come out the other end as something like…?

OK, I’m not answering that.

Jesus H! That’s just laughable. Pure and simple.

But things like this sometimes make me wonder what my life would look like today if I hadn’t spent my entire childhood practically sneaking into Center Theatre and watching all those movies! I mean… I could’ve been an engineer instead of the bleeding-heart romantic English major I still am today! I could’ve had a simple, black and white life, a life where everything would be explainable by the precise arrangements of ones and zeros, instead of suffering all this messy angst of the heart.

Wait a minute. No. That’s unimaginable. Forget that.

Face it. Like Popeye the Sailor man, I yam what I yam what I yam.

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

Ah hah. She was there.

Fate? And Serendipity?

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

Hey, stay tuned for the ballgame and the rest of the story in the next installment.

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I, YOUNG CYRANO PART(S), THE LAST

Rites of Passage: First REAL Date

From the previous blog…

I discovered note-passing was very much akin to fishing. Because with note-passing, I could, and did, get some “bites.” I found that a really clever note or poem passed to some girl seated two rows or more away in study hall was somewhat likely to get my foot in the door at least, meaning that I could actually score for myself a sunny, pretty-girl smile sent my way from across the classroom now and then. Which, by the way, the first time that happened was when I realized that if I put pen to paper, and then let the paper do the talking instead of me, personally— why, my words on paper could boldly say what I didn’t have the little guts to say in person. Yes, that would be so much more do-able than trying to express myself out loud while gazing eye-to-eye into the face of some bewitching little Shirley Temple… only to discover that my tongue, like Elvis, had suddenly left the building.”

So… that’s when I became my own, one-man Cyrano de Bergerac. I became a cowardly little serial-note-passer in school. I mean, it was better than nuthin’…

So, you know when you’re out there on the lake fishing, and you’re getting pretty bored with all those little nibbles that keep stealing your bait? Or when you do land something, it’s always one of those little sunfish that nobody wants? And you keep dwelling on the depressing fact that you’ve actually never caught a decent fish in your entire life, and never will? But then, all of a sudden…

SPLASH!

You’ve really got something on the line for once!

Well, surprise of all surprises, one of my poem-notes snagged a popular cheerleader, if you can believe that. And cute? Oh yeah. And at first it left me thinking, What’s wrong with THIS picture? Because I mean this was the kind of girl that would make my little circle of cronies fall down and die in disbelief! And wonder of wonders, this girl already knew me and yet honestly seemed to like me! I mean, what was she? Crazy?

OK. I was a year older than her. Maybe it was that weighing in my favor. And probably part of it was because I was on the basketball team, even though basically all I did in that capacity was ride the bench. But, hey, maybe I just looked good in the uniform?

Anyway, her name was… no no, let’s not go there. Let’s just refer to her as… Sandra (Dee).

She went to our church, so like me she was a Methodist. Our parents knew each other and were good friends, so that made the process of me getting to know her even better a lot less unnerving. And her mom thought that the two of us as a “couple” were “cute.”

My mom not so much. She didn’t think I was ready for dating.

But this girl and I really enjoyed talking to one another, which to me was astonishing. We held hands! We ended up going on a couple of movie dates! I even, you know, “accidentally” dropped my arm (from where it was nervously resting up on the back of her seat) onto her shoulders, and… wow, she didn’t even mind! She liked it. And it was great, I tells ya!

I was head-over-heels in love. (Picture here a very anomalous Darth Vader here rasping, “The Crush is strong with this one!)

Of course now, as an adult, I realize I was only head over heels I a crush. But, man, I was on the phone with her all the time.
Not only was I happy. I was SOMEBODY!

And then one day on the phone, this girl let me know something: her parents were going away for an overnight that weekend, and she was going to have to stay home to babysit her baby brother. Excitedly, she told me she wanted me to come over to help babysit. I was dumbstruck! Yes! The whole idea seemed like a dream come true.

However for me, there was a fly in the ointment: that would be Ma.

Oh, I wanted to do this so badly. And no, I swear it was not for any of those prurient reasons you may be thinking of, as you will soon see. I just wanted to get to spend a nice long and cozy evening with my girlfriend. However, embarrassed and in agony, I had to tell her the truth. And it made me want to cry.

“I would so love to do this. I honestly really really would. But I can’t.”

“Oh? No? Why not?”

Jesus, didn’t I hate to have to let her in on this dark secret of my crummy little life. I mean, I was an eighth-grader already, practically a grown up for crying out loud, right?

“Because my mom will never consent to it.”

(long pause) “No? Your mom? Why not?”

“Because… well… you know…” Oh, I really so didn’t want to have that conversation.

(long pause) “Uhmmm… no. I don’t.”

I wanted to die of shame right there. It took a while for her to drag it out of me, but finally, and painfully, I managed to choke it out that… Ma didn’t “like” the prospects of… well, you know, what could, and definitely would in her mind, happen any time a boy and girl were left alone together. There. The secret was out. I was a namby-pamby Momma’s boy!

I wanted to run away and hide. And puke.

“I’ll tell you what,” she surprisingly said, still sounding cheerful and totally undeterred. “I’ll have my mom talk to your mom. My mom can talk anybody into anything.” And knowing her free-wheeling, fun-loving, mom, I didn’t really doubt that for a second. However…

“Sure. Any mom but my mom, that is. See, my mom’s never gonna buy it. So please. Don’t, OK? There’s no point. Just… don’t have her do that. Alright? It’ll just make a lot of grief for me.”

Of course it won’t. How could it?”

(Oh, let me count the ways.)

I was feeling about as small a gnat. And so very sad for myself! Because truth? I could see the writing on the wall. This little complication with Ma could mushroom out of control and spell the end of our little boyfriend/girlfriend thing we had going. And that’d just about do me in.

Still, no matter what, I couldn’t talk her out of having her mom call mine. So that meant that if I knew what was good for me, I had to face Ma right up front and give her the heads up about the soon-to-come phone call. And what it was gonna be about.

Ever hear the expression ‘mad as a wet hen’?

“Well, that’s just not gonna happen, I can tell you that right now! I’d never say yes to something like THAT! That would be just asking for trouble!”

This is how I knew it would go. After all, this was the woman who’d made Denny and I pledge that WE’D never get any girl pregnant… right after some high school girl who lived four houses up the street from us got knocked up.

(And me? Why yes sir, I took that oath with all the solemnity of saluting the American flag! Because I was a good little soldier. (Of course, being only six at the time, I had no frickin’ idea whatsoever what the hell it was I was pledging not to do.)

Yes, this was the woman who angrily sent me (at about the same age) to bed early one evening for interrupting dinner simply by asking out of curiosity, “Say, just what is sex anyway?”

This was the woman who would never let us go to the movies on Sundays.

This was the woman who refused to let us play with cap guns on Sundays.

In short, this was the woman who really made me despise Sundays! God, my life sucked! I mean, what was I? A damn eighth-grade little Momma’s boy, that’s what!

And of course the call did happen. And I spy-listened to it from the next room. Man, that was one long, long phone call. And I really wasn’t liking what I was overhearing of the debate on our end. But…

After she’d put the receiver back in its cradle, she called me out to the kitchen. Still the mad old wet hen, she informed me that OK, I could do what was being asked of me, but on one condition and one condition only. That being… that there would have to be a third person present with Sandra (Dee) and me at all times.

“You’re actually saying it’s… it’s OK? That I can go?”

“Well, it’s not what I want! At ALL! But…”

I was thunderstruck! So it was true then? There really was a Santa Claus? But boy, she was still pissed.

“But still… you’re saying… it’s OK though…?”

“Not OK at all! Not with me. And I really don’t appreciate being browbeat about MY own children by someone outside this family!“

Happily, it turned out Sandra (Dee’s) mom had already cemented the deal with the promise that my girlfriend’s best friend Wendy would be spending the night at their house. So… there you were.

“But… you listen to ME, Mister. There had better not be any… trouble resulting from this! Or I don’t know what!”

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

So there I ended up that Saturday night, sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by a ton of toys, and just having a ball with Sandra (Dee’s) baby brother. I loved him. It was a great evening we had going there. The TV was on and I was watching some of that too while rolling around on the floor with the little tyke. Couldn’t ask for a more fun night.

But then I was told it was finally time. Time for the little fella to hit the hay. Aw. That made me feel sad, because he and I were having so much fun. But… what were you gonna do? So Wendy, our third-wheel-in-residence, told us not to worry, that she’d take him upstairs. And up and away they went. So Sandra (Dee) and I were going to get some alone time. So we huddled together, cuddling on the couch.

Cuddling was such a new and welcomed step in my boyfriend-skills evolution. Another check-off on the old bucket list. And basically, it was just like being on a movie date. I had my arm around her, and we put our heads together and just watched whatever was going on, on the TV. And let me tell you: I was in seventh heaven right there! I was clam-happy! That was the life. What I’d been wanting and waiting for all along.

A real girlfriend.

At some point later, however, it occurred to me that we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Wendy, “our official babysitter.” One TV program had just ended, and another was starting up. The time was ticking right along.

Maybe Wendy’d gone to bed upstairs early. My curfew for that evening was 10:00. And there was still most of an hour left. I was glad. I was in no hurry to go home, that was for sure. I was having too good a time.

But then all of a sudden down the stairs came Wendy. She walked to the center of the living room and stopped right there before us, blocking our view of the TV. And she continued standing there.

I thought to myself, That’s odd. And it felt like she was… studying us… at least, to me it did. Standing there with her feet shoulder-width apart and her little doubled-up fists pressed into her hips, looking at us like some army little drill sergeant. I mean, why was her expression so serious… and maybe a little pouty? It felt like she was judging us or something. Like she was sizing us up, and what she was seeing was seemingly not meeting with her approval.

“What?” I asked her, thinking, UH-oh. Does she feel we’re being rude, cuddling as we are right in front of her? But my question just hung there in the air, getting no response.

On the other hand, I’d suddenly gotten this eerie feeling that there was some form of communication going on in that room that didn’t include me. I mean, first Wendy stared right at me. Then her stare swung over to Sandra (Dee). And her expression slowly morphed into a stern, but puzzled, look. It was giving me the distinct impression that Wendy was… soliciting a confirmation about something, but what?

And that’s when I felt my girlfriend hunch her shoulders beneath my arm, the way somebody does when they’re silently signaling, I dunno. Don’t ask me…

Wendy was shaking her head now. She seemed a bit exasperated by something.

“What?” I demanded a second time.

She sighed, did Wendy. And then, lamenting “Oh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!” in one of those What am I ever gonna DO with you? tones of voice, came over and plunked herself right down beside me on that couch! You wanna talk about confusing?

I thought to myself, I don’t have a clue what she’s up to, but at least she’s not blocking the TV anymore. But before I could even begin to get back into the television program, I felt Wendy elbow me right in the ribs, hard.

“Hey! EXCUSE me?” I said. That got no response. But then, after a moment, I felt her ramming me hard with her shoulder like she was trying to bulldoze me into my girlfriend seated on the other side.

“Hey! What… What’re you DOING?!” Me, eyeballing her now. “What’s going on?”

No answer. She was looking straight back at me, shaking her head and rolling her eyes, like I was some object to be pitied. By then, any thoughts of my girlfriend or the TV show had momentarily flown right out the window.

All at once, Wendy decided to sit straight up. No more bulldozing her bony shoulder into mine. And then the weirdest thing happened. Something that I totally could not understand at all. It seemed Twilight Zone-ish.

She reached down, took my wrist, and lifted up my left hand.

I was at a loss. I was like, “Uhhmmmm?” Then she softly clamped both of her hands, like a bracelet, around my wrist. And just… held my wrist tight.

NOTE: I can think of so many song lyrics that can perfectly express what I was feeling right then. Buffalo Springfield’s “There’s something happening here. But what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Or Bob Dylan’s “You know something’s happenin’, but you don’t know what it is… DO you, Mr. Jones.”

And then, slowly, gently, she began guiding my left hand straight across my chest.

“Uhhh… What’re you doing, Wendy?”

No answer. I didn’t feel comfortable with what was going on, so I began resisting. But jeez, she was stronger than I’d have imagined. For a moment, I found myself losing the arm-wrestling contest, or whatever it was we were having! Mostly because the whole sudden turn of events had taken me so completely by surprise. But the worst thing? I honestly had no frickin’ idea just where exactly my hand was being driven to, but… oh jeez, suddenly I did know, sort of: the destination appeared to be somewhere between Sandra (Dee’s) lap… and her chin! And the thought of that just scared the bejesus out of me!

“Hey, whoa! Whoa whoa WHOA! What’re ya…?” I hit the brakes and managed to yank my arm back. Thankfully, my hand fell safely into my lap. Oddly, I felt them both sort of ‘slump‘ beside me at the same time.

But I did not slump. In fact, my whole body remained hypercautiously coiled! I was a little man of steel! Stunned. Confused. Very very confused. Like, What the heck just happened here? And I felt myself grinning idiotically hard! A forced grin. Like… maybe I just hadn’t got the joke yet. In a moment, maybe they’d explain it all to me, and we’d all have a good laugh over it.

Maybe. But the three of us just sat there now in total silence. All of us just kinda vacantly staring down at our knees. Me wondering, Isn’t anyone gonna say something?

And then someone did. I heard my Sandra (Dee) softly say, “Never mind, Wendy.”

What? I thought to myself, ‘Never MIND??? Never mind WHAT?!’ But apparently, nobody was planning on divulging anything anytime soon. So, we all just continued sitting quietly for another little while. In a trance. Not moving for a bit.

Me, waiting…

Finally, Wendy turned to look at me and, with a frown, broke the silence. “Well, you’re a lot of fun, aren’tcha!” Then she got up off the couch and disappeared off into the kitchen.

Hmmmm…?

So I looked over to Sandra (Dee) to see if she had anything to offer by way of explanation. But all she did was turn to me with a blank look and say, “Ooops, I just heard the baby crying upstairs. I’d better go up there and check on him. I might be a while.”

“I didn’t hear him.”

“Yeah. But I did.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Yeah. He probably needs his diaper changed, you know?”

“Oh. Sure. I see.”

And no sooner than I said, “I see,” I actually was… beginning to see!

I was beginning the mathematical process of putting 2 plus 2 together. And oh boy, when the unexpected sum of 4 clicked slowly up into the display of my very-slow calculator brain… I was mortified!

My face was burning! Because I had just been slapped in the face with one very harsh reality! No wonder I’d been getting along so famously with Sandra (Dee’s) baby brother! Because compared to Sandra (Dee) and Wendy, I was a toddler myself!

I wanted to slap myself in the forehead! How could I ever have been so THICK?! There I’d been, all along, little virgin-brain me, imagining that all that wonderful hugging and cuddling was what people on TV or in the movies meant when they talked about getting to second base!

Second base? I wasn’t even the bat boy, for crying out loud! I had ZERO experience in the dating game, hadn’t I!

I didn’t belong in the dating game, did I!

God, no wonder, Wendy’s eye-rolls!

I mean, OK… I guessed they must’ve been thinking from the start that… you know… because I was a year older than them…

Hell, in reality? They were twenty years older than me! Apparently. At least!

Aw jeez, I’d just spent the better part of the night like a lamb in the den of a couple of she-wolves! And them hoping all along that I was really the big, bad wolf that they’d believed I was in sheep’s clothing…?

I was so embarrassed!

But still… it had felt so warm and nice, all that hugging and cuddling…

I mean, she must’ve felt at least some of that too… hadn’t she?

But whatever would’ve happened if I hadn’t resisted? I mean if I’d just let it go? How far would it have…?

Jesus. I wasn’t ready for this. My head was spinning.

You know what you want to do when something embarrassing like this befalls you? Run! And hide! You just wanna run away and hide! For months maybe!

So I forced a sickly smile. “You know… actually, it’s getting pretty close to my curfew. So… I mean, I guess I might as well take off now anyway.”

“Oh. OK. Sure then,” she said flatly.

“Uhmmm… I had a great time,” I told her.

“Huh?” she said, and yawned. “Oh. Yeah. Me too.”

Not so very convincing. So I did leave. Or… escaped, I guess. And began the long walk home. There was so much to think about…

But anyway. That’s the way the evening and the relationship ended.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

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

OK. First of all, allow me to freely admit that I dragged myself home that night feeling like a freak. And my pity-party dragged on for the next couple of weeks. I couldn’t see any humor whatsoever in it back then. Unlike today.

Today, this story brings me a big chuckle. It’s just one of those typical Rites of Passage stories that we get to look back on many years later from an entirely different perspective.

And, funny thing— while I was tapping out this memory here on my PC, a funny thought occurred to me. See, all of a sudden my mind had just made this spontaneous warp-drive-jump to something from an entirely different time, dimension, and universe. To something that connects to what had befallen me in this story. Something I’d only seen once, but it was quite unforgettable. About how “dumb” (“dumb” being the key word here) I had been for the past couple of weeks, right up until that evening.

A scene from a movie. The final scene actually. I’ve included the YouTube clip of it below for you to watch. And PLEASE. Humor me. Really. Watch this clip, I beg of you. Even though you may have seen it before. It only lasts for a minute and a half. It’ll be fun for you to see it again. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a kick out of getting the joke.

And with that, let me just say Thank you. For reading.

Adios. For now…

—Tom

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I, YOUNG CYRANO PART II

From the conclusion of Part I:

“Yes. A whirlwind romance. Lasted a couple of weeks. And then, poof! It was over. Done with. Gone with the wind.

Turned out I was kind of… boring, apparently.

But for me, it was plus yardage: I had had a girlfriend! It was kinda like me belonging to a new and exclusive club.

What would come next?”

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

Part II:

(just a little flashback tidbit)

Kind of… boring? Unlikely, but possible I suppose. But it did feel kinda like belonging to a new and exclusive club. My whole outlook and attitude had gotten a much-needed shot in the arm. Now I was a little more like…

So ME? Yeah. I’ve had girlfriends.

(I’d had that girlfriend.)

It felt like a major step in the ending of the sad little Charlie Brown chapter of my non-love-life. Like moving forward.

THE HERETOFORE IMMATURE AND ANNOYING LITTLE ME

I mean, like before Lynette, I was just another one of those immature and annoying lookitME! LookitME! little snakes-and-snails-and-puppy-dogs’-tails SHOW-offs, whenever some cute girl happened to be around.

For instance, up through third and fourth grades, I’d been Roy Rogers’ biggest fan. In fact my very first bedroom pin-up wall poster was Roy Rogers on his rearing palomino, Trigger.

I mean, I loved everything Roy Rogers. In fact, I wanted to BE Roy Rogers. So when I caught Roy doing some trick-riding on Trigger in one of his movies, I just had to emulate him.

Of course I didn’t have a horse. But I did have a bike named Trigger. So…

I lived up on Pleasant Street, a street that sloped gently downward past our house, meaning you could easily get a good down-hill coasting going on your bicycle. That slope became my training area. And the best trick-riding I ever saw in the Roy Rogers movies was him securing a firm, two-fisted grip on the saddle horn, while getting Trigger galloping at a very fast gallop. Then… wonder of all wonders…

Holding on tight and using that horn as a fixed fulcrum, Roy would launch himself right up out of the saddle, swing his hips and legs down to the left of Trigger’s flank, bounce his boots off the ground there, swing his entire body back up to sail right over the empty saddle only to drop himself down again (off to the right side this time), bounce his boots off the ground on that side, swing himself back up over the saddle once again, and then right back down to the left… and, you know, just repeat that flip-flop maneuver over and over a few more times, left and right, left and right before smoothly just dropping his holy little cowboy butt comfortably right back down in the saddle just like nothing had ever happened.

I know that’s all very hard to imagine, unless you’ve seen it done. But what might be even more difficult to picture is little-fourth-grade-moi coasting my bike at a good clip down over Pleasant Street’s little hill and performing that exact, same stunt! I mean it.

It took a month or more of practice. I had to begin first with the bike at a stand-still, me just holding onto the handlebars and practicing leaping back and forth over the bicycle’s seat. Once I got my balance down pretty pat, I began to up the ante by doing the same thing with the bike slowly moving. Then it was just a matter of increasing my speed day-by-day. And you know what? It became easy after a while. I got good at it. I swear I did.

And lo, Pleasant Street was suddenly blessed with its very own junior Roy Rogers Daily Wild West Show. I mean, damn, I was frickin’ rodeo-ready! (You remember how Tom Selleck was always saying, “This isn’t my first rodeo” on those idiotic Reverse Mortgage commercials? Well this was… my first rodeo, of sorts.)

So it wasn’t totally unusual for the occasional lucky Dover-Foxcroft pedestrian or automobile passenger to get to witness The Amazing One-Trick-Pony Cowpoke fearlessly barreling hell-bent-for-leather down Pleasant Street on any given day at any given time throughout summer vacation.

And I was so proud of myself. Not to mention magnanimously delighted to ever-so-generously perform this daily feat gratis (although I surely would’ve charged admission if I could have thought of a way to pull it off). But each and every time I was lucky enough to have an audience, I could console myself by just imagining all the exclamations of wonder going on inside the minds of those passers-by:

My God! Would you look at that kid! He’s not only BRAVE, he’s extremely SKILLED!

A kid like that? I mean, HE’S GOING PLACES, you know?

Well, all I can say is… you couldn’t PAY me to try something like that!

(And from all the sweet little back-seat daughters):

And he’s SO CUTE, too.

Heck, MY stupid boyfriend can’t do daring tricks like that!

I bet he’s got A ZILLION girlfriends, though!

(OK, yes, I admit it. I did seem to have a little of The-Christmas-Story’s ‘Ralphie’ in me back then.)

RALPHIE of The Christmas Story

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

So anyway— one late sunny morning, I was flying down the road for my third performance of the day. And just as I’d leapt off the seat to begin the ol’ left-to-right-to-left-to-right, a musical little voice off up ahead to my left cried out, “Wow! Look at you, Tommy!”

And of course I was going too fast to look at ‘myself,’ not that that would’ve made any sense, but I did look up and…

There she was! Betty-Jane Stanhope!

The very reason I’d been patiently sticking to Pleasant Street over the past week! So. She had finally, at long last, just happened outside while I was potentially enthralling the neighborhood. (I had such a crush on her.) (I mean, what boy didn’t?)

But as you will recall from a previous episode, I was pathologically shy around cute girls. Our eyes locked. And I froze. Which was when…

The handlebars suddenly strong-armed me, yanked me to the right! And WHOA! My rodeo-bronc-bicycle ka-thump-thumped! us over a shallow ditch, slamming my bum hard and pretty much sideways back down onto the seat! Somebody’s Then somebody’s driveway and lawn looked like they were flying beneath us like a rug being yanked out from under us! And Jeez, that damn maple tree trunk was coming at us like Casey Jones’ locomotive!

All that in a blink-and-a-half!

Oh. My. God!

Trigger tried to run itself right up the damn tree like a flag up a flagpole, I swear to God! The tree trunk’s roots were spread out at the base, curving out and down into the earth, providing a curved, though precarious, path for speeding wheels. So with a bone-jarring, ninety-degree change of direction, the bike went alley-oop-up! But not me.

Unfortunately, my body wasn’t built on wheels. I was a high-speed, arrow-straight vector!

Now, I swear there was a one-to-two-second, still-life Wile E. Coyote moment there… with my bike pasted to the trunk and aimed at the sky with me splayed-out-splat! like a June bug on a windshield!

Then after another blink-and-a-half, gravity deigned to peel the bike and I off the bark like a wet band-aid and dropped us in a heap onto the grass.

I mean, can you say “out-of-body experience?” Instantly transported to some Danté-esque alternate universe, I lay momentarily paralyzed and prostrated before the sadistic Pain Gods of the Gonads! Meanwhile I was being on-and-off flash-blinded in the pulsating strobes of the corpse-cold, crotch-to-brain aching!

I sorta came to fetal-positioned, sweating like a snowman in the desert, and struggling to roll myself over and crawl myself away from those torturous throes of…

“Are you alright?”

Ohmygod! There she was! Standing right over me! Staring straight down at me! At ME! What with my legs crossed bladder-tight and everything! Clutching my…

“Are you alright?”

“Unnngthhh?”

“I said, ‘Are you OK?’”

Me thinking, Oh please… just… go away! Don’t look at me! Go back inside your house! You shouldn’t be here right now. This is so… I’m so ASHAMED! I was longing to cry, but not in front of her!

I finished getting myself rolled over.

“Should I go get my mom…or… ?”

“What…?” I barely whispered, “No…no…”

“You sure?”

On my hands and knees now. Shaking. Still in a raspy whisper, “Positive.” And then, “Just… don’t!”

“Well… OK, I guess. But where are you hurt?”

Where am I…? Oh my God! Really? I couldn’t believe she just had to go and ask that! “My... knee,” I said, barely able to breathe, and wondering, Does she know? Does she know how it is with us boys? Hell, until that day, that moment, I didn’t even have a clue about just how bad the pain could really be (with, you know, ‘us boys.’) “Yeah. Think I… must’ve bruised it. My knee.”

The physical pain was so extreme, I worried about throwing up! But the embarrassment-‘pain’ was making me want to run away and hide my face. I mean, what had just happened was definitely not something you could just… explain… to a Betty-Jane Stanhope. The word, ‘unmentionable’ comes to mind. It was like… what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, you know?

All I knew for sure was that I was going to spend the rest of my life hiding from Betty-Jane. I was a pariah, even though I hadn’t learned that word yet.

But OK, somehow I did manage to get up on my shaky legs, get my bike up on its shaky wheels, and begin the Long Limp of Infamy back to my house. Thinking to myself (as much as the severe pain could allow me to think coherently), Well, Gloria Cole knocked-me cock-eyed off a playground swing seat, and now I have to accept it that Betty-Jane probably knows something horribly unmentionable about me that she shouldn’t.

The prospect of ME ever finally getting to become some girl’s boyfriend seemed a grim impossibility.

By the way, the bike had fared much better than I had. At least there was that…

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

But hah! Just imagine, though, how surprised I’d have been if I could’ve looked into some Gypsy fortune teller’s crystal ball and caught just a glimpse of the lurid, two-weeks-long, hand-holding affair I was destined to enjoy in fifth grade with my first real girlfriend, Lynette Barnes, the following year!

Although feeling pretty down and out, I somehow knew that I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel just yet though…

Stay tuned to join me in I, Young Cyrano Part The Last

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THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN… IN A CROOKED LITTLE HOUSE

1966.

The summer we got married.

At the end of July, the 30^th.

I’d just turned 20, Phyllis 18. Just kids really, like a lot of newlyweds. And no, it wasn’t a shotgun wedding. I got married because I was over-the-moon-crazy-in-love with my steady girlfriend of nearly four years. And in love with love itself, of course. Me, the hopeless romantic.

And you know, it’s not like we had any money to speak of. We just didn’t know any better. Phyl had just graduated from high school. And that August I’d be resuming my education as the now-married, man-boy, college junior. But we both had summer part-time jobs.

Her, clerking and soda-jerking over at Lanphers Drug Store and me, still gas-pump-jockeying across the street at Huey Cole’s Esso.

However, I’d also just lucked just out in securing a second additional job that summer, a very competitively-sought-after job in our little town. It was like winning the lottery. The ideal beach bum job.

Running the Municipal Beach Concession for the summer!

Of course when I signed on to that, I had no idea how much of eight-days-a-week work and responsibility it was going to require. Every week re-ordering the Styrofoam cups, paper plates, napkins and paper towels, cigarettes, hotdogs, hamburger, buns, chips and pretzels, sodas, candy bars, ice cream products, pastries, coffee and condiments— you name it. Plus having to show up there at such ungodly early hours some mornings to meet the various delivery trucks in order to get all those ordered goods inside and stored away. To pay the bills. To keep the books. To hire part-time help. And to always be doing those pesky bank runs back into town to keep myself supplied with the necessary stash of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and long green for making change.

A helluva lotta work. Especially for me, being one of the laziest little louts you’d ever want to meet back then. But guess what. Even if I had fully and completely realized beforehand just how much slaving away would be required, I still would’ve jumped at the chance to get it. Because the job came with one very unique and delicious perk. One of those offers you just can’t refuse.

It came with a quaint little rent-free camp! Right there smack-dab on the frickin’ beach!

And for me, the guy who’d otherwise have remained trapped and living under his parents’ thumbs at home all summer long? And for three whole months! An answer to a prayer!

Oh, I would be so envied.

And ta-DAH! Here she is. Just feast your eyes:

OK, “quaint” as my chosen adjective is a bit if a stretch. Kinda brings out the ‘bum’ in the expression ‘beach bum,’ doesn’t it. And how about those little luxury ‘yachts’ lying right out there in the front yard. Don’t they just have “poor man’s adventure” written all over them (provided I could scrounge up a couple of oars).

But to me? At that time? With my big-little-kid psyche peeking out through the eyes of my young-adult-looking boy-body? Jackpot! It was like I was finally getting that little “No Girls Allowed” clubhouse I’d dreamed of building back as a 10-year-old! I mean, weren’t the old bargain-basement Shangri-La sugar-plums just a-dancing around in my head.

But yes, that beach was mine, ladies and gentlemen! Day and night.

And then there was one other reason for me to feel happy about that job. Somehow my best friend, Neil Mallett, had always managed to skunk me by falling into so much better, and more desirable, summer jobs than I ever had. For instance one summer he landed two primo jobs. If I remember correctly (and I believe I do), during the daytime he was being paid good money for simply sitting in a chair in some underground Civil Defense bunker, just on the slight, off-chance that some major crisis alert might start blaring out over their Conelrad two-way radio, which of course it never did. So… you know, all I could imagine was him snoozing in some chair over there, and reading paperbacks.

But that was nothing compared to his night-owl job: being paid good money just to sleep, damnit! That’s right, you read that correctly. He was employed to sleep nights over at the Lary Funeral Home.

I’m guessing there must’ve been some regulation or other that required a living, breathing human being to be stationed on the premises at all times, maybe to alert the authorities if one of the corpses suddenly sat up, or perhaps it was to ward off the modern-day body snatchers. Whatever.

But just think how that had been leaving me feeling when there I was out there in the hot sun sweating my life away mowing cemetery lawns, or slaving on the 2:00 to 10:00 second shift (me missing out on prime dating time with my steady girl!) in the hellishly hot Guilford Woolen Mill spinning room, eh?

So anyway… you can perhaps see just how vindicating this might feel— me, suddenly emerging as The Cool Hand Luke of the Beach…?

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

So of course I moved right in immediately with all the necessities: sleeping bag, pillow and towels from home, stack of paper plates and cups, plastic ware, and my swimming trunks. And oh yeah: stupidly, with a box full of my college textbooks. Why? Oh, only because there was one rough-single-board shelf spiked to one of the walls, and I thought, Jeez, look. There’s a shelf. Oughtta have some books on that shelf. You know, for decor. For looks. (I mean, I wasn’t actually planning on reading any of them or anything.) Duh!

But turns out, the place obviously hadn’t been built by someone with carpenter skills. My shelf had been crudely nailed a bit crookedly to the crooked wall, so the books would slide off and fall to the floor in a heap every half hour or so (including in the middle of the night!).

Turned out the place did have a bed upstairs at least (Yay!) accessible by some rickety, cramped, and crooked little stairs. Also it turned out the place didn’t even have running water. So… consequently it also turned out the place didn’t have a bathroom either, which meant long nocturnal trudges across the cold midnight sand and up a little rise to the public restrooms in the parking lot. Turned out too the place didn’t have a phone jack, which irritatingly meant that to call somebody back in town I’d hafta dig up some coins and trot over to the lone phone booth located next to the concession building.

But guess what. It turned out the place did have electricity, so it wouldn’t be totally like Thoreau’s Walden Pond after all! Wow. That made all the difference in the world.

So yeah. I went to sleep that first night, a barefoot beach bum in his own little bachelor pad, happy as a hobo in an empty boxcar.

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

I can’t say the job didn’t have its stressful moments (OK, make that hours), but on the whole I was having a very happy summer. It was a social thing for me. I loved gabbing with the customers through the order/take-out windows, many of whom were re-visiting Foxcroft Academy alumni with whom I shared a common past. And then there were the visiting snowbirds from away, many of those with whom I was already acquainted as well. Plus I’d hired a couple of part-time helpers and had developed a good and friendly relationship with them.

But you know what the best thing was? I didn’t have a frickin’ boss! I… was the boss of me! Something I’d never experienced before (and, unfortunately, something I was never to experience again throughout my employable future). Oh yeah, I did currently have a boss at the gas station, but I liked him a lot, as everybody did.

So yeah, my summer of ‘65 was shaping up to be a pretty hunky-dory time. I loved feeling the dead cold sand under my bare feet on a hot night, while checking out the moon reflecting off the water. And my God, the stars! Wow. So unbelievably bright in all that darkness. And then of course there was often the music pumping out across the water from the roller rink off in the distance, soundtracking my halcyon nights. (Of course, I had to be learn to be careful and to watch where I was stepping at night while crossing the beach, as there was often the hazard of disturbing those… night-time lovers out there in the dark. Sitting together on blankets. Lying together on blankets. Not worrying about sunburns.)

And a big plus was having my BFF, Neil Mallett, come out and stay with me some nights. Yes, we’d been buddies since meeting each other for the first time in 9^th grade. Alphabetical order had seen to that: Lyford and Mallett. Since we were both taking the same college prep classes and since every single teacher back then lacked the creativity to try seating their kids in any configuration other than alphabetical order, Neil always ended up sitting right behind me in every class.

He and I had had so many experiences together. High school hijinks. Haying with his family on his farm. Playing our guitars. Double-dating, with his girlfriend-at-the-time being my girlfriend’s best friend. So yeah, the walks and talks we enjoyed together out at the lake felt so very comfortable in the days getting closer and closer to my wedding, after which poor Phyllis would have to join me in the ramshackle hovel I was currently calling home.

Something else: you never knew what crazy little ‘adventure’ might just pop up in your life, living out there next to the water among all the wealthy summer folks. I’ll share one with you right now in this post, and re-cap some of the other weird happenings in my upcoming Part II…

OK, one night, very shortly after I’d moved myself in, one of Neil’s-and-my leisurely night-time strolls got totally upended by something really bizarre. And later, it turned out that this particular little happenchance was really just the harbinger for a string of other unusual happenings waiting in the wings of the weeks to come…

So the road leading down to the Municipal Beach is known as Mile Hill. And as late at night as it was that night, close to midnight, there would be little or no traffic on it. Meaning that our world was deafeningly silent— the only exception being the occasional call of a loon.

Suddenly, however, that silence started getting ripped to shreds by some lone, unexpected racket coming from way up at the top of the hill: some vehicle roaring like a banshee with the pedal to the metal on a speed-limit-45 road, just a-barreling down in the dark like Robert Mitchum with his Ballad of Thunder Road’s revenuers hot on his tails. And gauging by the rising Doppler effect, we realized it would likely be on us in half a minute, or less. What the hell was going on?!

Now here’s the thing. Both Mallett and I well knew the geography all about where we were standing, which happened to be right beside the municipal boat ramp that drops straight down into the lake. Moreover, what was now weighing especially and urgently on our minds right then was the fact that Mile Hill completely dead-ends directly at the top the boat ramp. So of course normally drivers slow right down to make the left turn onto the rustic dirt road that accessed all of the many camps populating the waterfront, or simply to ease into one of the few available boat-ramp parking spaces.

But see, this car was a rogue fourth-of-July-rocket wannabe! Incoming fast! I’m talking Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen’s Hot-Rod-Lincoln”-fast!

Now, we’d sidled ourselves right up next to the boat ramp for a good view, and had just begun gawking expectedly up the road when… whoa-Jesus, here it came! Two demonic headlight-eyes looping ’round the bend and flying straight toward us like the proverbial bat outta hell, leaving us just enough time (say three seconds!) for our bodies to autonomically execute our twin-matador sidesteps! Whew!

Jesus H, but what a sight to behold! The car not plowing down our ramp but launching itself airborne right off the top of the it! (Now there’s an image I’ll never shake for the rest of my life!) And then of course The Big KER-SPLOOSH!– it doing its heavy, grille-first nose-dive like some breached killer whale disappearing back down into an ink-black sea! Only in this case (just for the blink of a second or two) bizarrely illuminating a thirty- or forty-foot arc of Sebec Lake’s floor bed with all its rocks and sand and small boulders off to each side… before buoying back up level on the water’s surface.

It was… magnificent!

After splash-down, the car had boated out quite a few yards but was now just sort of lolling in place out there, taking on water fast with both its front doors now opened, and settling down onto that sandy bottom. It wasn’t deep enough out there for it to sink totally out of sight however.

Its two occupants, after climbing out, were standing out there on either side now, armpit-deep and looking pretty confused and disoriented.

“What the hell were you thinking,” I yelled out to them, the two of us now standing atop the ramp, “barreling down here 70 or 80 miles an hour?”

They both gawked at us for a moment, motionless. Then they looked down and studied their egregious, opened-door car with the water up to the top of the steering wheel. And then back at us. “Where the hell are we?” the driver yelled back. A question that got Neil and I to share a frown at each other for a moment.

“You don’t… know?” Neil asked.

To which the response was, “This is the road to Millinocket isn’t it?”

“Uhmmm… no, not even close.” I said.

“This is the Lake Road,” Neil told them, “which is… well, you know, the road to the lake that you’re standing in at the moment.”

“Christ!” said one of them, hard to tell which one in the dark. “Well, I mean, the friggin’ sign said Millinocket. Comin’ through Dover, the signs… both of ’em… definitely both of ’em said Millinocket!”

“Oh, OK. Now I see what you did. You just missed the third sign. The one just before the post office. Would’ve been a right-pointing arrow. With Milo and Millinocket on it. You missed that one. And you were already on the Lake Road to begin with…”

“Yeah, and at your speed, it’d be easy to miss,” Neil said.

“So, you guys just gonna stand there all night?” I asked. “Don’t you wanna come in out of the water or anything?”

They did. They started wading in toward us. “Jesus, we gotta get this car the hell outta here! Hey, can you guys help us? You got a truck? With a chain, maybe?”

“No. But I do have a ‘50 Pontiac. With a straight-eight under the hood and a lot of power. But no chain. All I got’s a nylon rope.”

“That’ll work. Got get it.”

“No. It won’t. Rope’s too thin. It’ll just snap.”

“Better than nuthin’. C’mon, man. We gotta at least try!” They were pretty desperate. “We gotta get these wheels back on the road. Now! Please. You gotta give us a hand!”

I was actually starting to think about it. But by then I’d noticed two things about our guys. The first being that they were obviously drunk, big-time. That was obvious. No surprise. The second, that their faces now oddly seemed to be flickering on-and-off, blue. Took me a second to square that in my mind. But of course it was a patrol car having just cruised ’round the bend and slicing up the whole night with its blue strobes flashing.

So… yeah, this had been one of them high-speed chases you hear about. In a few more seconds, the cops had pulled in right behind us. “Well, I could try.” I said. “But the boys in blue here?”

“Oh… fuck!”

“Yeah. They’ll get your car towed right out of there in a jiffy.”

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

Oh well. It was just one of those odd but unforgettable moments like so many others that have inserted themselves into my life every now and again. Oh yes, my mind has so many such mini-‘adventures’ like this tucked away, little vignettes that have tended to sprinkle a little added spice into my life from time to time.

So Neil and I answered the few questions asked of us by the cops, and then we got to watch our out-of-town ‘visitors’ get handcuffed and escorted to the rear door of the waiting patrol car. But it was really getting late, so we didn’t hang around to wait for the tow truck to show up and haul the vehicle back out and onto dry land. We were tired.

And so off we went, strolling ourselves back across the cold sand in the dark, back toward my recent little home away from home.

It had been an interesting evening. To say the least. We both marveled over what it must have been like, barreling down that long hill shitfaced at such a high speed and then all of a sudden: WHAM!

I mean, try to imagine it! You find yourself unexpectedly diving nose-first while witnessing an inexplicable lake opening itself right up in your headlights like Moses’ parting Red Sea, and giving you a surreal and stunning glass-bottom-boat, freeze-frame flash of an unexpected lake floor!.

What a night. A night to remember. For them and us. But especially them.

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

Looking back on it now, I kinda picture that little happening as the opening scene of some 1960’s beach-party-movie. Or, better and more realistically still, the once Perfect and Proper Ceremonial Christening (like the bottle of champagne shattered across the bow of a new ship) that it was, of the beginning of my new life as the summer beach bum, with that unimaginable string of even more abnormalities that were waiting for me in the wings of the weeks to come…

I mean “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” But can you say ‘the bachelor-party-from-hell?‘ Can you say ‘the mental patient at the door?‘ See you in Part II…?

home

SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961

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.

The Meddibempsters of Bowdoin College, 1960s. Mr. Clay Bennett, 4th row (right). Strangely, James Howard, front row (alone), was also my high school English teacher at the same time…

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!

(OK. I admit it. This image of Robocop is a stretch, but (if you’d ever MET Officer Fair) it’s not that much of a S T R E T C H…)

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.

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THE BIZZARO DOVER-FOXCROFT FILES

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” Ever hear that expression? It’s of course a reference to the gigantic, wooden Trojan Horse that the Greeks used to trick Troy’s army, to win the Trojan War. Today in computer lingo, the word “trojan” (no, not that one, not the one with the capital T, on sale at the local pharmacy) refers to something similar. Namely a virus, some malware or the like that hackers use to nefariously upload little digital gremlins into your PC, tablet, or cellphone in order to gain control of your processors and access your private sensitive data, the effects of which can be devastating to the user.

And then there’s click-bait. Something that appears on your screen in the middle of your copying and pasting on Facebook or Instagram just to tempt, tempt, tempt your little brains out till you give in and click on that provided link, a link just waiting to escort you down some Alice-in-Snake-Oil-Land’s rabbit hole. Like these two that appeared recently on my cell phone:

(OK. I confess. I provided the little captions.)

Perhaps these two ladies are the loveliest beauties you could ever imagine. Perhaps not. No matter. Click-bait doesn’t always have to be the singing sirens that caused Odysseus to order his crew to ear-plug, blindfold, and lash him to the ship’s main mast to keep him from being tempted. Because hey, if not you, there’s still a couple trillion other redneck guys out there who, after a single glance, will start hearing “Hello, Dolly” playing in their small smitten brains. And they’ll click the bait for sure. But that’s not the point.

The point is the name of the town. Did you notice it? I did, first time I ever stumbled upon one of these ads because, hey, I live in the little town of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. A small hamlet you never hear anything about unless (A) you live here, (B) you live in New England, or (C) you have relatives who live here. Why? Because of its insignificant size and lack of relative importance in the Big Picture of things.

Dover-Foxcroft. Often simply referred to by its residents as just “Dover.” One of only a handful of hyphenated town names in the entire U.S. of A (only our rare hyphen is gradually disappearing thanks to computer algorithms getting confused by it when you try to have an order delivered from Amazon.com or Etsy). Population only a tad over 4,000. County Seat in one of the poorest counties in the state, maybe the nation. A simple little ville situated smack-dab in the geographic center of the state of Maine.

Just a tiny spider-webbing of streets, roads, and avenues whenever you look it up on MapQuest.com. Two traffic lights, six or seven churches, two groceries, half a dozen convenience stores, the courthouse, the hospital, the fire station, the schools, the Ford dealership, etc. She’s small, but she’s good enough for us. We like her. Dover’s my hometown. Where I live today and where I’ve lived practically all my life. And I’m 77. A homeboy.

But of course the thing is, if you don’t live in Dover-Foxcroft or one of the other surrounding tiny towns, you’d never have seen these particular ads anyway. Because these ads are targeted at our immediate geographical area and no where else. Well, on the other hand, you will undoubtedly be the lucky recipients of the exact same ads, the only difference being with the name of your town or city pasted over “Dover-Foxcroft.” Two dubious “perks” bestowed on us by computer programmers, whether we like them ot not– the wonderful “gifts” of A.I. and algorithms.

I admit I was really taken aback the first time I caught one of these “hometown ads” popping up on my PC. (Wow. That’s actually MY town right there. Wow. Hey Phyllis! Come look!) Now, a gazillion times later, it’s grown old of course, so very old. So, lately I’ve just been collecting some of them in a special folder, as a novelty, the same way I collect some of my favorite memes. Which are, I suppose, pretty much the same things, or at least close cousins to the phenomenon of hometown-click-bait.

BIZZARO DOVER-FOXCROFT, where all the women are strong and the men good looking

So. Welcome to that folder:

You’re traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Bizarro Dover-Foxcroft!!

So by the way, you in the market for a new pickup? I sure am! Guess I’d better hurry up and track down this unbelievable dealership deal. But I pity the poor souls who come here and don’t even have the wherewithal to purchase one of these vehicles though. I mean, whatever could they do when they’re in dire need of a set of wheels?

Maybe this one? There are just SO many unbelievable great deals here! Eat your heart out, Barbieland…

Oh wait. Here’s the Bizzaro-Dover-Foxcroft answer to that:

How wonderful is this. I mean, one way to make some cash would be great… but six? OK, I’m doing all six then. Life is just so…je ne c’est quoi here, gnome sayin’? But wait. What if it turns out that this free money isn’t all that much? Like maybe just a few piddling nickels and dimes so to speak? The ad doesn’t say.

Oh wait. I almost forgot. I’m a gambling addict. Of course! How could I have forgotten? And the word on the streets of Bizarro D-F (B-D-F) these days is that for some reason, it’s turning out that people in this particular Dover-Foxcroft (Piscataquis County’s Little Las Vegas) seem to be winning at an unbelivably higher rate than anywhere else in the country. It’s almost like one of those carnival barker’s promises: Everybody’s a winner!

Wow! But wait just a minute here! Three megabucks winners in this one town in the last six months??? I’m surprised I didn’t see this on CNN! But what the hey, it’s GREAT! This is definitely the place for me. With the nickels and dimes I’ll be hauling in from from the Six Ways to Make Money Without Getting a Job, I’ll nickel and dime myself into the Big Mega Bucks. Shouldn’t take too long, either. Then, yeah, I reckon I’ll buy myself a house and settle down.

So, let’s just check out the classifieds:

Whoa… You know, I was gonna splurge on a big luxurious mansion, but on second thought… why not be economical? Sure, these little babies are tiny, but there’s only me, right? I don’t need much room. And apparently the rent’s cheap enough. So yeah, I’m gonna do this. Then I’ll splurge on a big new Cadillac, like Elvis, and maybe get a super cool double-decker ten-room RV, and a small yacht to haul behind it.

But of course, I know I really should be putting a little nest egg aside, for unforeseen medical emergencies and my general health and stuff. I’m not in the best of shape. I’ve got a humungous beer belly that really bugs me. And I’ve been promising myself for years that I will go on that diet. But diets take a long time. And it’s hard to keep the pounds off after you lose them. Well, that’s what the people who really have tried dieting have told me. Sound like a lose-lose situation, you know?

Well whattaya know? Eureka! B-D-F has come up with a new and better way. A way that actually looks pleasurable and fun, according to the looks on this babe’s face. Oh man, this look a bit like some Sigourney Weaver scene from an Alien bloopers out-takes collection. Like the one where the Face-hugger shot low and missed its target…

Whatever. I really dig that “without surgery” part though. Doing that!

And speaking of possible medical emergencies, it’s comforting to know this B-D-F has such a large medical staff, considering its small population.

In R-D-F (Regular Dover-Foxcroft) our local hospital had only one actual M.D. on staff. They were supported by a handful of physician’s assistants, though. But listen. If you were to take a little jaunt over to scout out the reception area of R-D-F’s hospital and look around, you’d find, mounted on a prominent wall there, a display of professional portraits featuring their entire medical staff, a visual directory if you will. What you won’t find there however, is anyone as qualified (or healty looking) as our seven rave-review medical wonders, mounted on our wall over here on this side. Especiallythe cute one pictured above. Like that song from the 60’s by The Zombies: “She’s Not There.”

Thank God for portals and inter-dimensional mass transference. That’s all I can say.

Wow. I’m so impressed. Just look at all the things available in this Dover-Foxcroft.

It’s amazing! A veritable pot pourri:

Yeah, the other 30 lawyers here are losers…

Oh, I’m trying this one.

This place is incredible. You need it, we got it.

Uh-oh. But what do we have here, eh?

You know what almost creeps me out at first glance about this shot? It really doesn’t feel… all that welcoming… you know? It’s almost like these dudes have drawn a line in the brickwork sand they’re standing on, and are amused to find out if anyone is gonna dare to cross it or not…

But when you think about it, this is probably a very positive photo. Because let’s face it, when you begin preparing for your big retirement back in the universe of the regular D-F, you’ll find yourself buried alive under an avalance of paperwork, and will have to literally jump yourself through months and months of hoops. Only to try to get back what you’ve put into your own someday retirement, what you’ve earned by rights, and by law… even if the government seems to never want to give it back.

So yeah, I’m guessing what we’re looking at here is a good, positive, pro-active group. No, they really don’t come across as your basic CPA types. Instead, these dudes and dudettes seem to be radiating the repressed, and slightly defiant vibes of some new upstart gang in West Side Story, plotting to rumble The Sharks or The Jets straight outta town. Like maybe they’ve adopted the J. G. Wentworth battle cry: “It’s my money and I want it now!” With or without the government’s consent! Wow. A real get’r done group here, I’d say. But whatta I know? Like you, I’m just a stranger in a strange land here. And I really doubt that anybody would resort to anything like exerting physical force here. Because apparently there are many other… gentler ways to get those in power to see things your way in this world.

Trust me. You don’t want to mess with us.
Just sayin’…

For instance, it seems there are some agencies here that stand ready and willing to help you out at… well, whatever (if and when you feel you have the need). And it looks like they probably operate in ways similar to private investigators, or in other words, as simply benevolent researchers.

I imagine these guys just do background checks on those who are really the problem, even though they may not have realized it…yet. And then they put together a report, or dossier, if you will. And after the multiple back-ups are collated and stored for safe-keeping in different locations (strictly for quality control purposes, you understand) these friendly researchers could act as couriers, where they go and share the collected documents and candid photographs with the subjects of the said dossiers. Whereupon, more often than not, the subjects will then examine the collected contents at their leisure and, so inspired, will undoubtedly come up with surprising new and creative ways to alter, and even improve, their behaviors in ways that will benefit… well, everyone. Cooperation, you know, is a good thing.

(Oh, wait a minute– that sounds like blackmail. But as I said, Whatta I know?

But, man. You know what? I’m starving. All this ranting has made me hungry. I gotta look around Bizzaro Town here and find me something to eat. Something tasty. And inexpensive. Some of that delicious, gourmet, and inexpensive almost to the point of costing next to nothing Bizzaro-Dover-Foxcroft grub. Let’s see…

Ah, here we are…

Ah! Oh yes!

Hmmm… And I just happened to think. I wonder if this Dover-Foxcroft enjoys the same Annual World Famous Whoopie Pie Festival. If so, a whoopie pie would really hit the spot for a dessert to top off on right now.

Guess I’ll hafta ask around…

THE World Famous Annual Whoopie Pie Festival in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine

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