Adamsville South Monday, Summer 1957
[Click on the
headline to this sketch to link to a YouTube film clip of
Danny and The Juniors performing their classic At The Hop to
give a little flavor of the time of this entry-JLB].
Setting The Mood-
Peter Paul Markin In His Own Words
I, once a while back, was
asked, in earnest, what I meant by the “blue-pink western skies” that has
formed the backdrop for several of Josh’s sketches. Or rather the way I would
prefer to formulate it, and have taken some pains to emphasize it this way,
“the search for the blue-pink great American West night.” Well, of course,
there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my back (sometimes
right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised
turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that the
hitchhike road meant heading west.
So that night is clearly not
in the vicinity of the local Blues Hills or of the Berkshires since early
childhood ocean-fronted Massachusetts, those are too confined and
short-distanced to even produce blues skies much less that west-glanced sweet
shade just before heaven, if there was a heaven shade, blue-pink. And certainly
not hog-butcher-to-the-world, sinewy Midwest Chicago night, Christ no, nor
rarefied, deep-breathed, rockymountainhigh Denver night, although jaded
sojourner-writer not known for breathe-taking, awe-bewilderment could have
stopped there for choice of great western night. Second place, okay.
But no, onward, beyond,
beyond pioneer, genetically-embedded pioneer America, past false god neon
blue-pink glitter Las Vegas in the Nevada desert night to the place where,
about fifty miles away from sanctified west coast, near some now nameless
abandoned ghost town, nameless here for it is a mere speck on the map and you
would not know the name, you begin, ocean man that you are, if you are, and
organically ocean-bred says you are, to smell the dank, incense-like,
seaweed-driven, ocean-seized air as it comes in from the Japanese stream, or
out there somewhere in the unknown, some Hawaii or Guam or Tahiti of the mind,
before the gates of holy city, city of a thousand, thousand land’s end dreams,
San Francisco. That is where the blue-pink sky devours the sun just before the
be-bop, the bop-bop, the do wang-doodle night, the great American Western
star-spangled (small case) night I keep reaching for, like it was some physical
thing and not the stuff of dreams. And it started early.
*******
<b>The scene below
stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search.
Scene One: The Prequel- Adamsville
South Monday, Summer 1957
</b>
I wake up early, with a
sudden start like something hit me but it kind of missed, kind of just glanced
off me, something that felt like a pebble, maybe thinner and a little lighter,
but I don’t see anything out of my watery, half-closed eyes. And I don’t feel
anything around me in this feeble excuse for a bed that my father lashed
together out of old blankets when my previous mattress fell apart, something
like you see down at the Plymouth Plantation when the Pilgrims, a few hundred
years ago, made beds for their kids except not with the corn husking filler
they used. See, Ma and Pa couldn’t see their way clear to getting me a new one
since my younger brother, Kevin, really needed one for his “problem”. A
“problem” that I don’t understand about, and that nobody ever talks about, even
Grandma, and she talks about everything and will tell me anything, anything but
that, at least when I am around they don’t talk about it, okay.
Maybe, I wouldn’t understand
it even if they blabbed about it all day, but here I am with this low-rent
sleeping bag, our lord in the manger kind of a bed. And Kevin’s sleeping like a
king in the room across the hall all by himself away from this midget-sized
room that they must have thought of when kids were smaller than they are these
days, what with us drinking more milk with “Big Brother” Bob Emery every school
day when we go home at lunchtime. Ma says I should be thankful (including to
the Lord, as she always says, without fail) that I have any bed at all as some
kids in India don’t even have that. The reasons for that, I guess, are ‘cause
those people don’t thank the Lord, or at least thank our “the Lord.”
Darn it, I now suddenly
remember, whatever it was that hit me, maybe something from outer space, broke
up a nice half-formed dream that was just starting to get somewhere and that
was about being on some television show and winning something like a thousand
dollars and me getting to buy stuff for me and my friends like serious bicycles
or a big record player, and getting girls stuff too, like a box of candy from
the Rexall drugstore up in Adamsville Square, and just like that its gone,
gone, now long gone. Just like shutting off the television before the end and
the good guys, or whoever has the right to be on the right side of the law like
Maverick, wins; just like missing American Bandstand before Dick Clark gets to
the big dance off thing at the end where everybody’s jumping and grooving and
having a good time, the band is rocking, and the guys, especially the guys that
get the cute girls and not the left-over ones that they must just put on to be
nice, or something are smiling, smiling the smile of the just. Double darn it.
Ya, something’s out of whack,
something’s definitely out of whack, or it’s gonna be. Every time I have one of
these broken-up dreams something goes awry pretty soon only not today please,
and I am scared, no, really scared about it this time. Wouldn’t you be? I
suddenly notice something in a split-second that confirms this bad omen
coming-Oh no, not again, for the hundredth hundredth time this ratty old
summer, this boring never-ending summer that I wish would end so bad I am
praying, and praying hard, that it will be over and we can go back to the cool
air in Adamsville South Elementary School that we left the last part of last
month. I told you it was bad, bad as all that. I’m all sweaty, I feel under my
arms, underarms sticky, underwear, all cottony, sticking to me like it’s part
of my skin forever, eyes sticky and half shut from a nighttime’s worth of
perspiration, and maybe more than a night at that. I don’t think I took a bath
yesterday, did I? I sniff, no. Sticky, that me, that’s gonna be my middle name
before long if this mind-numbing weather keeps up.
Heck, I’m tired, tired to
hell and back, no, farther than that, of these half-sleep, restless nights; god
awful humid, sultry, breathless summer’s nights, no relief and no air
conditioning in sight. No air, no wind coming from the channel across the
parking lot from our house, or I should say apartment. No air, less than no
air, coming from Adamsville Bay, so still that throwing a rock on it would make
ripples all the way to Merrymount. And certainly no air coming from god
forsaken Hough’s Neck. I know that for sure, ‘cause I went over there, walked
all the way up to Rock Island and down that dusty dirt road all the way to Nut
Island almost before I realized that the air had died, or gone on vacation.
Ma, making fun of me and my
sweating every second of every minute of every day for about a week now, the
other day told me that this was my own personal preview of what it is gonna be
like for me in hell, if I don’t change my ways. Yes, ma. But that is just her
con, she’s always conning me and my brothers, trying make us do good by
bringing God, his son, his holy ghost, his mother, his father, his sisters and
brothers and whoever else she can conjure up using to make us do good, to do as
she’s says every chance she gets in order to do God’s work, but that’s
impossible using her tried and true method. She must have learned that “method”
from some priest over at Saint Boniface, or something. She sure didn’t learn it
from that cool doctor, Doctor Spock, I think was his name, that I saw on TV the
other day on that Mike Dowling, or one of them talk shows. He knows a lot about
kids, they say, at least that’s what someone said. I wouldn’t know, I ‘m stuck
with Ma, and that ain’t no nice to kids lady, nor does she want to be.
Saying all that ain’t doing
me any good, lying here in a pool of sweat, thinking about getting up. But I’m
getting mad, even though I know getting mad today is tempting fate, I guess I
was born mad, or got that way early because even though I know it’s gonna get
me in trouble , I’m mad . You would think that in the year 1957, in a year when
everybody else seems to have money and is spending it, that even in this woe
begotten tiny airless apartment filled to the brim with three growing boys and
two grown, overgrown if you ask me, adults; in this woe begotten tiny airless
room filled to the brim with two growing boys, one sleeping like a log,
sleeping the sleep of the just, I guess, across from me right now; in this woe
begotten no account housing project where you can’t get anything fixed without
about twenty forms and a six month wait and even then you have to wait, nothing
less. Even for a light fixture it takes a civil war. Christ, how long, in this
woe begotten town before we could have this “necessity,” air-
conditioning. Ma says we can’t afford
it, or whatever her excuse of the week is. “How about a fan, Ma?” Nope, can’t
afford the extra electricity ‘cause Dad just got laid off, whatever that means.
He’s always getting laid off so I can’t tell what is so different about this
time so that we can’t get air conditioning. Johnny Jakes has it, and his father
hasn’t ever worked. Can’t, for some reason.
Enough of this, I‘m getting
up, if only to splash some water on my face and get my eyes unstuck, or get a
cool drink of water to bring down what has got be about a 110 degrees of
temperature running through my body, maybe 115. Nah, that can’t be right, we
learned about body temperatures in class. I would have to be some alien from
outer space maybe. But I’m feverish, that’s for sure. Just then I am stopped
short by a sound, a familiar sound. A sound that if I had just one sound to
hear in the whole universe of sounds that I have heard in my long eleven year
old life it would be that one. The sound of fleeing this hellish, airless place
for parts unknown, any unknown. Ya, that old, sweet, lonesome, high whistle
sound that cuts me to the bone, that sweet old fog horn sound when the air is
like pea soup down the channel ‘cause that means a big old firemen’s red,
rubber tire-draped tugboat, or maybe two, is bringing a low-riding, rusty old
tanker, or some ship to port across the channel to the Proctor & Gamble
factory, the place of a thousand perfume smells, as we call it when the wind is
up and all the world here smells like a bar of soap.
If I live to be a hundred, if
I live to be a thousand, I’m always gonna watch, even if only in my mind, when some
old tanker comes down the line, dragging or getting dragged by that old tug,
whistling away, to keep river traffic away, and like it just as much then I
bet. I know what I will be doing this morning, or the first part of the
morning, heat or no heat, air- conditioning or no air- conditioning. I will be
perched on my very own private, for invited guests only which means nobody,
viewing stand at the little point along the shoreline that is my real home, or
the home that I wish was my home except maybe in winter, just across from where
the big boy boat will settle in.
“Hey, a boat’s coming in, I’m
off,” I yell to no one in particular. And from not one of those no one in
particulars do I get an answer. My brothers don’t suffer the sweats like I do,
they have their own problems which I already sense will be their undoing later,
but it ain’t the sweats and so they just sleep away. I rush, and I mean rush,
to the bathroom, use the toilet, splash that life-saving water on my face, it
always feels good, brush my teeth perfunctorily, and run down the stairs. “Ma,
a ship’s coming in,” I say excitedly, even though it’s about the hundredth time
I’ve seen one come in, to my mother who is distracted by something, as usual,
especially when my father is out of work, and especially today, Monday, when he
goes off in search of new work with a lot of hope about getting some job that
will keep the wolves from the doors, that is the constant phrase that he uses
to deal with the situation. I’ll tell you about him sometime but today I ain’t
got any time for nothing but my ship coming in, and that ain’t no lie either.
“Well, it is not our ship
that is coming in so don’t worry about it and just eat your breakfast,” she,
dear old Ma, blurred out, and then I know she is in a fit and even if my ship
wasn’t coming in I know the ropes enough to know to keep low, very low and out
of the range of fire that I know is coming from her direction. I go to the
cabinet, grab a cracked, slightly cracked bowl, get a spoon and go over to the
stove, take the cover off the pot, steam escaping, and without even looking
start dishing out my Quaker Oats oatmeal. Rain, shine, sleet or snow, summer,
winter, spring or fall that is my nectar of the gods. With a little milk, when
we have it, and even if we don’t a little Karo syrup, I am fortified for the
day. Ma, can be a pain, Ma and I have a thousand battles a week over two
thousand different things, and I know that already things are never gonna be
right between us, even if at times we have an armed truce but, mark this down I
always got my oatmeal, and always when I wanted it. I guess that put her on the
right side of the angels, a little.
A few gulps later, washed
down with about a half glass of milk, I am out the door. Hell, even my blessed
oatmeal gets short shrift when the tankers blow in. Now going out the door most
places that you know about means just going out the door straight. Bu in this urban planner’s nightmarish
hangover not at 666 Taffrail Road. First you have the obstacle course of
getting around the ten million poles and fences that are plucked right in the
“courtyard” when my mother and the other housewives in the other three units
that make up our mega-plex hang out their daily washing, or dry their curtains
or whatever people like my mother do to keep places like this from reverting
back to caveman times. Then I have to cross the parking lot, a lot filled with
all kinds of cars, for those that have them. These days we don’t have one, in
case I didn’t tell you before, because Dad is out of work so we are all reduced
to waiting for an eternity for that slow-rolling, seems never to be here when
you need it, Eastern Mass. bus that ambles on to Adamsville Square, making so
many stops that I usually just walk it, if I am in a hurry to get something,
even on a hot, sweltering summer day like this.
As I hit the already hot
asphalt of the lot I look around longingly at the vast array of cars; Plymouths
with fins that look like a fish; Chevies, my favorite, sleek and so, Timmy
McDevitt tells me, go real fast when you get onto Route 128 and let her rip;
Fords that look like something they want to use to go up into space with, and I
don’t know what else, but there are plenty. Finally I get to the lower parking
lot that’s for guests or people who don’t get a parking spot in front of their
house, or maybe just run out of steam before making the turn into hell-bent
Taffrail Road. I don’t know and I am now passed that spot on the move along the
fence anyhow to get to the little opening that will take me to my grand viewing
area. I’m okay though, I still hear the old tug whistle coming up the line so I
have some time to wait.
I get to my little sliver of
land, just a little jut out of the shoreline, covered with old, oil-slicked
quarry rock probably from the ground around here about a million years ago,
‘cause this town is known for its granite rock, cause it’s a granite city, even
though the real work done around here is over at the Five Rivers Shipyard that
is just across the bridge from the Proctor & Gamble factory, and where even
on this hot, god forsaken morning I can faintly hear the sounds of metal being
banged by hammers or whatever they use to put the ship together, and the
flashes of welders’ torches as they put that banged metal in seamless
water-tight condition.
I also notice some empty beer
cans, cigarette butts, chip bags left haphazardly all over my viewing stand,
somebody last night, or the night before, must have said the hell with it and
got out one of the sweltering houses and came over here to get whatever little,
little breeze that could be eked out of the windless night. I rule the day here
in this spot, especially when the boats come in, no question about that, but
what others do at night I have no control over. I just wish they wouldn’t leave
a mess on my sacred site.
But that is all so much
made-up irritation, probably ‘cause I am so hot, for now I can see the first
glimmer of the smokestack of a ship coming up the line. I wonder whose oil it
is, Esso? Texaco? Shell? Esso has been in the lead this year, and they are
bigger ships and ride real low in the water coming in, and real high going out.
I can start to see specks on the bridge, human specks that are busy doing the
work of preparing the ship for the dock.
I wonder, wonder a lot, about
these guys and the work they do and whether they like it and like being on the
sea and whether they ever have any trouble like in stories that I read down at
the Thomas Crane Library attached to the school, and where they have been and
what adventures they have had, and where, and with whom. Maybe that’s the life
for me. And I wonder about the girls they know from all over and whether they
are nicer than the girls in the "projects" who are beginning to get
on my nerves, for some reason. At least I don’t know what to do or what to say
around them, or what they want me to do, or want me to say. I hope this is just
being a boy kid and that it goes away, and I hope it a lot.
Oh, there she is, an Esso.
The tugs are in position, gently nudging her and getting her ready to go
dockside, tie up and unload. Wonder how long she will stay? Usually its takes a
couple of days and then they are gone, sometimes in the middle of the night and
they are not there in the morning depending on the tides and the traffic on the
roads, oh, ocean roads, that is.
Hey, it’s almost lunchtime,
guess I’ll go home and eat and go down the cellar, maybe to try to cool off. I
know one thing now though that kind of had me worried and kind of bothered me
for a while 'cause I am just a kid. I now know I will always take time to watch
the boats as they blow in, and dream about catching a boat out, wherever I am.
Maybe, that is an omen, a good omen, about my future. I'll let you know.
