No Pedigree..Just a Mongrel

 St George's School of Middletown 

I never mingled with the rich until my brother got jobs at RISD and The Trinity Rep theater, which put him in constant contact with RI's wealthy. Prior to that, the only “rich” I came across, were owners of plumbing/electrical shops or say a kid, whose Dad owned an heating oil company. And even with those contacts, it was just an acquaintanceship. Mostly I’d just hear gossip about what the family owned, where they lived and it wasn’t Rumstick Point in Barrington, but perhaps the nicest neighborhood in Pawtucket, Country Side. Which is, in comparison, Section 8 to the Hampton’s.

I attended St Raphael Academy which had some of those kids, and perhaps a bit more. That school had students that were on welfare and kids whose parents were millionaires. Where did I fit in? Lower, barely middle class by a hair.

Once, after returning from Christmas break in 1980, we all talked about what we did over that vacation. A girl who sat in the next row, near me, and who I barely knew, said she and her family spent Christmas Eve and Day in Paris. Dummy me asks, “Paris, Texas?”

“No...Paris Paris..you know...the Seine...The Louvre...France.”

in my shock, I blurted out so that nearly the whole class hears it…

“You spent Christmas in PARIS?!!!”

She and the whole class got real quiet. I guess I broke a rule about not talking openly about the rich kids there. But being 15, it was a shock to me. I never knew anyone that rich before. I knew no family that could fly the entire family on December 23 into Paris and with enough money to stay at a nice hotel, for days.

I wasn’t to come across the rich until I attended a wedding in Watch Hill of an old friend. She wasn’t rich but the soon to be husband’s family came from old Protestant money, the good kind of money. You can’t be hardly be bothered with anyone with “new” money. It smells bad and they don’t get invited to the old money country clubs.

At the reception, I found my assigned seat and things were going well until I got up to hit the bathroom. When I returned I found this guy sitting in my chair, hitting hard on the girl who was seated next to me, a friend of the bride. Most times when faced with that, I take affront because it’s such bad manners so I tell the jerk to vacate the seat he stole. But this was a wedding reception and I wasn’t going to cause a scene so I just glared at him till he finally turned around and gave me a look of “Yeah? So what?”

“Wow, what a complete selfish jerk.” I thought. And the girl he was working on was Plainest of Janes you ever saw.

I found an empty seat at a table with people who I didn’t know. They were much older and I had asked, politely, if could I sit there. They were accommodating after I told them why I was banished from my original seat.

So, now that I am there, we have to chat.

I am asked which side of newly married couple I know and I said “both.” We knew each other for several years and got along great as friends. I then asked them what their relationship was. The response was a varied mix of either related, work, neighbors and such. I then made the mistake of asking the older man, who was very congenial, what he did for a living.

“I’m the financial director for Moses Brown.” he tells me.

A women, across from me, tells me she was on the Board of Trustees of St. Georges School in Middletown.

Then, I am asked, what I did.

Fuck…

I tried my best I guess, to sound more important than I was, but the Sears half cotton, half nylon old suit I wore probably gave me away as soon as I sat there. Plus the Florsheim shoes I wore said they were NOT made in Italy.

“I..uh...work as a behavioral therapist for company attached to the Providence Diocese...ReFocus Inc.”

The Moses Brown finance guy, who was still nice to me, says, “ReFocus...I don’t know them...but I do personally know Bishop Gelineau, do you have a working relationship with him?”

Double Fuck…How can I answer that?

“Uh….no. I work more with the operational side vs. administrative.”

“Operational…” Moses Brown guy says.

He wasn’t smarmy saying it, but the lilt in his voice told me he knew exactly what old money family I came from, which was none. After admitting what I did for a living, he had me pegged.

So, feeling about one inch tall after that, I remained respectful but got quieter, lest they find out more about me and my filthy background about growing up in..ugh...Pawtucket.

Dinner came, I ate, kept up some small talk and finally, thank god, the usurper who stole my seat left after striking out with Miss Plain Jane.

I returned to my spot and back to my tribe, telling them the story of just what happened. I then learn the newly minted husband’s family was up to their neck in the private schools in RI in one form or another. That would explain things. I then asked about the jerk who stole my seat. Plain Jane tells me he was the son of one of the rich ones there.

That figures. No etiquette, no social awareness, just plain spoiled rotten.

**

Of the art exhibitions and showings I attended at RISD, the East Side Providence parties, the events at restaurants I could never afford (Thanks Trinity Rep for paying for it via my brother!) and the argument I was privy to at one of those East Side residences (The wife was loudly excoriating her cheating husband and how the marriage therapy wasn’t worth it at all and finally, how he should just go back to that “lil’ slut”) and the various trust fund young adults I would meet, I figured this out about most of the rich.

They’re just as fucked up as anyone else is.

But their money papers it over rather nicely.

I am from Pawtucket. I grew up here and live in it still. I am too shabby and do not posses any pedigree to get me into, at least, an inferior country club.

OK, fine.

But it was interesting to see how the upper crust lived for a bit.

Nazi Dicks

 

 

This really happened...

 

I debated whether I should use his real name since he’s long since dead. Personally I wouldn’t mind sullying his name even in death, but his kids are still alive and the abuse I’ll fling may strike them even though they had little to do with what happened. Even so, I didn’t like them much either growing up, but I’ll leave them out of it.

I’ll say this: He lived very near Hamlet Street.

The Nacht family was a boisterous family of mainly boys whose Dad (who I intend to besmirch) was right-wing conservative in the 70’s when the entire nation was leaping Left after the shit show of Vietnam, Nixon, Agnew, Watergate and when hat ugliness that came to light. Anyone in the late 70’s who pubically supported anything conservative was shamed to keep their opinions to themselves as any defense of Nixon et al was not going to go over. They had nothing support their beliefs as the entire right wing managed, on their very own, to be seen as a huge joke. See a vision of Nixon, after his resignation, walking alone on a foggy beach at San Clemente...with a metal detector.

In the summer of ‘78, most of young teens here had longish hair, were discovering pot, girls and lived to ape anything coming out of LA as it was seen as height of “cool.” Being cynical, hip, mouthy and telling adults to shove it up their ass was in...and we got away with it. By that time, the capitulation of the adult world was apparent by their total failure to demand any respect, after we kids saw what kind of world they wholly screwed up. All Holy Institutions of America were being seen as covered in shit...and we kids didn’t do it.

And I was a big one to point out adult failings as I never would automatically respect anyone older than me unless they proved they deserved it...weekly. The suspected child toucher (and later confirmed) down the street? Fuck him. The Dad who beat his kids in the front yard? Fuck him. The arrogantly proud white trash loud mouths on the other street, whose Dad belonged to the “Job of the Month Club,” fuck them too. I had opinions, just like everyone else did.

And I wasn’t the only kid who had this particular disposition. Most of us kids pissed on many things held Holy by the adult world, like government, the church, business world...all those things held in high esteem by the end of the Eisenhower era...and whose honor was destroyed by their very leaders.

If you want proof of this, watch the first few seasons of Saturday Night Live. They shit on everything held dear in America. The show was #1. We kids watched it and agreed.

Enough of the history lesson, back to Mr. Nacht.

Mr. Nacht, who we really didn’t know except through his kids, as we sometimes hung out with them, probably didn’t like us anyways on first look. We looked ratty, sort of hippy-ish and were untamed and disrespectful. Out in the street we reverted into being more feral as many of us were that to begin with, due to our family upbringings. (That’s another topic! I wonder why so many of us kids on these two blocks here were so bent in one way or another).

One morning, Jimmy and I were tooling around on our bikes, talking to Mr. Nacht’s son Paul, just in front of his house when Jimmy said something (I don’t remember, but knowing Jimmy, it was probably insulting) when Mr. Natch, loudly told him to “Get the hell out of here.” Upon hearing this, and leaving, I managed to mouth, what I thought was under my breath, “Ahh..fuck this..let’s go,” when he yelled again to take my foul mouth and beat it too.

OK, I get it. Some people find cursing highly offensive. What I found offensive was the feeling he was trampling all over my First Amendment right to say “FUCK!” if I wanted too. No joke, that’s how insolent I felt. I felt authoritarian type families were seriously mentally ill. No joke there either. The Nacht’s, especially his Dad, viewed everything as top-down and orders are given from on high and WILL be obeyed, no matter how irrational or wrong (and how many grown ups had I come across who were appealing examples people?).

I once saw something at Chicago’s O’Hare airport while waiting for a connector to Portland OR. As I sas in the pre-boarding area, a man and his son where checking two long, black cases that both had large red tags on them. I knew what those cases were, they were rifle cases. I guess he and his son were flying to some hunt and brought their own firearms.

As luck would have it, they were on my flight and in the seats just ahead of me. After a bit, I started listening in on them as their accent was pure south Midwest, maybe Oklahoma? It wasn’t much about what they were talking about but how the son talked to his Dad. “Yes, sir, No sir, I don’t know sir.” It was the Dad setting the topics and tone of the conversation and the kid just followed along w/o offering any thoughts of his own really. He wasn’t scared just that he seemed so well trained in ‘knowing his place.’” Privates don’t tell Captains what to do or think! I’ll say it again, I knew, as a kid, that many adults were just plain wrong or worse, malicious. Why “Yes sir” that?

I digress...back to Mr Nacht.

Then another altercation happened a few weeks later that confirmed that my estimation of Mr. Nacht was a Grade A asshole.

Jimmy and I were at Jack’s house, which was right across the street from Mr. Nacht, talking about President Carter (What about Carter, I do not remember) when we heard Nacht start opining loudly about what he thought of him.

“Carter? Carter? This country’s going to hell! We need as STRONG leader! Democracy put him in for God’s Sake...it failed! It would be better if we had a dictator!” There’s a pause when then he felt justified and safe in saying his next thought.

“Germany had it right! They put in a…” and he shut up.

Jack, Jimmy and I just stared. We couldn’t believe he had the balls to praise Hitler.

At 14, I was quick. There were times when situations just appeared before me and I could ad lib and sub-reference like Robin Williams. Now Mr. Nacth just provided with an opening for me to kick open wide and go to town.

So I say caustically as I can...

“Hitler!? Hitler? MY Dad fought in that war! He was THERE!!”

That was a total lie. My Dad was in the Korean War and way too young for WW2, but so what, I felt justified putting down this crypto-Nazi who lived among us in any way I could. Claiming my Dad was a veteran of the European theater seemed just soo perfect in claiming social credence beyond measure. I knew this and played it up.

Mr. Nacht, now realizing just what he had said, in public, and also hearing my condemnation by using the holy virtue of my Dad the American Patriot, spun his head around and he quickly went back into his house.

I felt elated and validated in what I had done and knew that this guy who I thought was a total jackass..was a jackass.

I felt so brave and validated that I walked across the street, up the porch and knocked on his door.

Paul, his son, answered.

I say loudly to him, so that my voice carried into the house, “I want to talk to your DAD!”

Paul had no idea what was going on. Soon the other two older brothers come and feel something ugly is up. All three start circling their wagons, defending the family’s honor, although against what they had no clue.

I can tell Mr. Nacth is in the kitchen, as I see a piece of him.

“Come OUT here Mr. Natcht!” I yell, standing tip-toed trying to see him past his son’s heads.

A few seconds later, Mrs. Nacht comes, corrals her boys into the house and firmly shuts the door in my face. WHAM!

I turn around, completely delighted in what I had just done and probably with a mile wide smile on my face as I look at Jimmy and Jack. Of course I had one, I just socially convicted, condemned and executed, pubically, a 40 Something year old guy who I didn’t like and who spilled the fact he liked Nazis. God, could I wield social POWER like a baseball bat when it fell my way.

“What an asshole!” I say, loud enough for the neighbors to hear as I descended the stairs of the porch.

**

I never saw him again, ever. Though years later I heard he got busted by his wife fucking around with another women. Many arguments and a final divorce eventually happened.

Once, a few months later that Nazi event, as I happened to be walking to school, Paul up with us, (Mr. Nacht’s son, remember?) and he asks and as if knowing the answer already...

“Your Dad was really in WW2?”

I then realized he had heard the whole story and I never admitted that my Dad wasn’t. Paul didn’t threaten me nor do anything to defend his Dad on that walk to Goff that day. For the rest of the walk he just got quiet and remained so

 

Glo Stick

 

 

I had seen Robin before, but just from a distance at keg parties in the woods or very briefly coming out of a Quikie Mart. Our respective teen clans didn’t cross much, but I knew of her. Finally, at one time at our hangout she was all of five feet from me. She turned to look directly at me, as she could feel me staring at her. In three seconds she made her decision which was “No” and turned back to her girlfriends to continue talking.

Robin was a cheerleader at Shea High School and moved through the various teen hangouts, cliques in Pawtucket like a Hollywood star being seen in in all the right places. Being that popular required of her to at least put in a showing at the more cooler hangouts on Saturday nights. Pasquale’s lot is a hundred yards from McCoy stadium and was one of those spots. It’s a dusty dirt lot wedged between trucking companies. That’s how ritzy it was. I and a few friends were hanging out there as the One Way in Slater Park was finally busted, being the Open Fair of Illicit Drugs that it was for so long. Our Slater Park friends scattered to various other lots, corners or fields to do what we teens did best, which was to waste time.

I looked at Robin because I could see, even in the darkness, her form, her facial profile and a waterfall of dark brunette hair and it hit me how pretty she was. That hair was accented by a long, purple Glo Stick she had bent into a headband for her hair, pulling it back but leaving a healthy amount of bangs to spill across her forehead. The Glow stick thingy cast a faint purple light that sheened off that black hair of hers. It was reminiscent of a dark-light poster you’d see from the 70s.

She was one of those girls who was born pretty. Everything she was was symmetrical, proportionate and in place and had eyes that were round, big and inviting. Years later I saw a picture of her when she was six. She was a cutie then and probably could have done local TV commercials for toy stores or say kid’s clothes. She probably learned early on she was destined for a top slot as as everyone commented on her positively. You girls learn earlier and quicker than the boys.

I probably was obvious as hell when I stood there staring at her. I myself could feel it. There’s a disarming hypnotic feeling a guy can get while watching a pretty girl. I tried to describe that feeling to some other women I knew at times and failed. You gotta be a guy to know it. I’ll try again. Think of the feeling of “Oh...Wow” when you see something unexpected. It’s a feeling of astonishment and being dumbfounded at the same time, plus that testosterone that makes you zero in on details in seconds. When she turned to me, I knew I had that silly boy grin on my face, my head probably a bit askance and my posture too relaxed and motionless.

I felt disarmed, entranced, a loss for words and my reaction was just plain gawking. I run the risk of being accused of the “male gaze,” but every guy is guilty of doing this, and rather innocently too. There is no political sub-routine running hoping to pay her and all women 30% less for the same job guys do.

I suspect she sized me up like this. “Who’s looking at me? Hmmm...not six feet yet, not particularly buff, kinda skinny really...is wearing an army field jacket...knows too many of the punks from Slater Park as they all wear those field coats, wearing Timberland hunting boots..yep, definitely that crowd from Slater...working class background...No...not date-able.” As in “No means or future to own a home on the Bristol shoreline.”

She recognized my look of affection for what it was and quickly sought to end any hopes of mine that this would progress another second. So she spun around back to her friends, quickly severing her eye contact with me and shutting me down. I felt a bit miffed. It was a silent rejection. Oh well, that feeling will fade away in 10 minutes.

But I continued to sneak glimpses of her w/o getting caught doing so. It’s a pleasing feeling to watch a fetching girl. To translate to you women, think of the first really nice day in June and how you feel. You are savoring that all is well with the world.

**

Robin had married a sort of HS football star in her mid 20s. The wedding photo, which I saw in the paper, oozed “They’re the perfect couple! Look how beautiful they are!” You see those kind of pics on Facebook now. Where the couple or family, are all dressed in a matching white combination with pastels, and are set against an incredibly clean and organized background that speaks of...”Normalcy, Hope, Paid Bills and A Promotion Set to Happen Soon.” Nowhere is there a hint of any kind of perilous mental illness or secret drinking.

Well, as I heard it, Robin’s marriage lasted six years when she discovered her best friend, also married, was schuttping her FootBall husband.

I suspect boredom got ahold of the husband who wanted something other than sameness. This happens to wives as well. I have heard from numerous women this: “I love him, but I am not in love with him (anymore).” Time passes, things change and repetition slyly creates a rut without you noticing it, till you do a year and a half later when you’re deep in it.

The divorce was slightly ugly, with Robin taking the role of the faithful but underhandedly discarded wife. She reveled in victim status for the longest time I hear. The sting of that faded with time but never left her entirely. Everything was supposed to be “Happily Ever After” and jasmine. I suspect she believed in the Princess Fairy Tale they tell all little girls and Robin had actually attained it, only to see that story change on her and turn ugly. This wasn’t supposed to happen to pretty girls who won.

**

Let’s jump ahead about 41 years and to Gregg’s restaurant/bar, on 44 in East Providence, June 2024.

**

I rarely drink now as simple beer can have me begging for a bed so I can go to sleep. It’s turned into a sleeping aid for me. But hey, I’m old now and I can fall asleep just about anywhere and at anytime. Leaning my head back on the headrest of my car seat works wonders in time travel. I swear I just want to nod for five minutes after I pull into my driveway and then when I wake up, mouth open and drooling, forty minutes have passed by.

But there are times I want a beer and a burger/fries NOT made by me so I go out and keep the Trazodone/beer effects to a minimum. One beer and that’s it.

I was sitting at the bar in Gregg’s, chomping away when Robin and two of her friends come in an made a beeline to the bar. She sits one seat away from me and the girls start banging down their Margaritas, laughing about their liquid lunches. Robin has no idea who I am though, but I recognized those eyes and that hair.

They are talking of people I sort of know and I finally insert myself into their conversations by saying, “Do you know So n So? You do? What ever happened to him?”

Robin gets curious and asks my name and when I tell her, she thinks for a few seconds and admits she doesn’t remember me. I tell her it’s of no consequence because the two of us roamed in different but occasionally over lapping social circles. But this time around, we two are having the conversation which eventually cuts out her friends.

Then this transformation occurred. She had moved her seat to the empty one next to me, faced me and I was drilled with direct eye contact the whole time we were talking. She flipped that ponytail of hers, her hair seeming far too dark as I remember it (hair dye and well covered roots) and she’s quite open and happy to chat with me, with the pony tail swinging which I quickly notice when it does.

Then that three second long touch on my right forearm as she kept speaking to me.

Yep, I had thought so, you’re hitting on me.

I sat there and thought this: “Now, after all these years...now the cheerleader is interested in me….But I see she’s now a 58 year old divorcee who has put on an extra 40lbs, with crow’s feet and sun damaged skin. Your thighs look wider than mine and you’re not the girl I remembered from so long ago at Pasquales. Plus, your flirtation is a bit too vigorous, like a car smashing into a wall. Too bad you didn’t come on to me like this 41 years ago.”

“Desperation” I thought next.

Now before you women freak and scream “superficiality!” Don’t forget I’m now 60 and just as ugly as age will make me. I have a nice pasta belly, white hair, wrinkles, the beginnings of a turkey neck and I can’t cum like I did when I was 19. Yeah, I just said that, but I’m old and don’t care anymore. What reputation do I have to protect? HA!

OK girls, we equal now? Being old and slowly falling apart? I admit it.

To be fair, she knew how old she was, was probably lonely and realizes how troublesome it is to find a mate at this age. And her looks, which once were hot, have long since left her. She long ago had entered that state older women call “being invisible.” it explained the too dark dye job and the tight jeans meant for a women younger than her, trying to stave off invisibility as well as she could.

I did what I could to not respond to her interest as nonchalantly as possible. I let any enthusiasm for me die on the vine of it’s own accord. Why? I just wasn’t interested and no spark had formed in me.

I finished up my lunch, paid the bill and stood up to leave when I said to her, “Robin, you don’t remember but in July 1983, I first met you at Pasquales lot.” She perked up a bit as she was trying to remember. I walked away but stopped and looked back at her again, feeling a boyish smile spread across my face, remembering that night in ‘83. She responded with a similar one. I lingered a bit looking at her and that old wonderment was rising in me again and I saw her responding to my bygone memory of awe.

Validation. It spread across her face. She wasn’t 58 at that moment anymore. For several seconds, she was a 17 again, with a purple Glo Stick in her hair, when everything in her life was just right.

 

 

Pop Tarts

 

 

The blueberry harvest is coming to an end in Maine. When it is finished, all the legal/illegal migrant labor will head off to the next area in the US where another kind of crop is just about ripened. I had never known migrants went as far north as the Maine coastline to rake blueberries. To me, migrants mean forever stooping Mexicans picking lettuce heads in California’s Central Valley.

Shows you how much I know…

I’ve been to Maine twice. As a kid visiting Portland and Sebago Lake and as a young 30’s guy skiing down SugarLoaf USA out in that thick and overgrown western part of the state. In the Carrabassett valley, our little tour bus had taken a stop at a Quickie Mart on the way home and a local wanted to sell us a German Shepherd/Wolf dog hybrid. I had looked in the back of his cabbed pick-up truck to see this dog. Once it noticed me, it fixed it’s eyes on me like the targeting avionics of a HellFire missile. I read his face and I swear it said that if I put one finger into the open crack of that back window, he was going to cruelly snip it off with his crossbreed teeth.

It was in Portland as an 8 year old that I discovered rock candy and Kellog’s Blueberry PopTarts. My Dad, infuriated with driving the jammed streets bitching at the other tourists, had pulled over and we all went browsing the stores in hopes the traffic would lighten up when we got back. In some store, my brother had found a non descript box marked “Rock Candy!” He pulled out a string of huge, clear crystals of sugar. We had never seen anything like this before. After begging Dad to buy it, he relented but told us not to eat it till we got back to the car. Once back in the car, I luxuriated in the sweetness of it and it’s bizarre shapes. Candy created by NASA scientists it looked like, perfect latticed prisms on a string. Now that I remember it, we two in the back seat were quiet as church mice while we ate it and I figure my Dad’s proscription to wait to eat it made sure he’d have a quieter drive.

Today they have all sorts of flavors of rock candy and I bought some a few years ago to relive that Portland memory. It took me 10 seconds to be repulsed by it. “Ughh! Gawwd! TOO MUCH SUGAR! Auuughh!” I never finished it.

At Sebago Lake, which is shockingly cold in late July, my Mom had brought some small snack items along. I watched her open a package and hand me this square thingy. It smelled like pastry and was dry and easily crumbly. I had asked what it was and she said “a blueberry PopTart.” I had heard of blueberries but never actually had any until that day. So I bite into it.

“POWWWWWW!” My mouth lit up with this intense flavor which I immediately liked. I had never known any fruit could be this nice, as I thought most fruits sort of sucked. (As a kid, I pretty much hated anything plant based, except oranges, those I loved).

After asking a bunch of questions I learn blueberries were grown right in the state we were in but along the coastline, the good ones anyway. At 8 I learned of high bush vs. low bush blueberries...how the hell did my Mom know anything like that?

**

I’ll call him Ray as he looked pretty close to Ray Walston. He was a nurse at a facility in Pawtuxet village and he and I began to know one another after some doing on my part. 

 

Ray Walston (Mr. Hand)

 

He was raised in Aroostock county Maine, about as far north as you can get and about as far from any urban sophistication you can get as well. He had that typical New England standoffish-ness but multiplied by 10. I knew it wasn’t plain rudeness as I recognized the attitude. Add the fact northern rural New England produces these kine of people that are even more unconvinced of your authenticity. After 10 years of closely watching you, maybe then they’ll trust you and open up.

When Ray and I sat beneath a tree in the back, I would talk to him and all I got were four word responses at best, mixed with a strange accent. He’d answer my questions fairly truthfully but never elaborated on them. I wondered if he thought I was far too gabby and wished me to shut the hell up.

The breakthrough happened when I learned he got his nursing degree through the US Navy. I had a best friend who spent his life in the Navy and I could talk with some credibility on the whole experience. Once I mentioned Navy ports such as Rota, Doha or say Diego Garcia, he opened up like a book finally.

Growing up in northern Maine was incredibly insular but you didn’t really know that, he said. The only idea you had of the larger world was TV.

He had gone to the regular schools, worked on farms, froze in the winters and hunted with his Dad. After graduation, he was expected to find a full time job and do what everyone else did, work. However, he tells me there were no longer any good jobs around. There was lumbering, if you could find it, farming but that was tight as Maine’s soil totally sucks for large scale farming or some other piddly service job that paid nothing. The most coveted jobs, the ones his Dad and Grandads had, were in the paper mills. But they were leaving one by one for cheaper labor elsewhere, till they eventually vanished.

Ray tells me, “I had seasonal jobs in farming, tourism...picking crops, that sort of thing...none of them paid.”

I asked what he picked and tells me “I used to rake blueberries in August.”

I light up and tell him how I loved blueberries and he agreed but gave me a more knowing look about it.

“You ever rake them?” he asks.

“Nope...wouldn’t know how.” tell him.

“You gotta be strong, and being young helps, but it destroys your spine in time if you keep at it, never get out of it. You work 12 hours rain or shine, constantly bending over, standing up and repeating that all day.”

He goes to tell me it was in a blueberry field was where he made his decision to flee Maine and join the Navy. He had been told by some of his teachers he was smarter than your average bear and would benefit from further education. But how do you pay for it and there are no fabulous universities in Aroostock county.

But the US military would educate you if you qualified.

He signed up and left.

I asked him if he ever went back to Maine as to hear him tell it, it was the last stop before you fell off Edge of Earth.

“I have visited...relatives, friends...I miss the quiet, the very slow pace of life...but there are still no jobs there to this day...it’s the Nebraska of New England you know...so very little there. But you know what? I’ll probably retire there, everyone ‘goes home’ in time.”

“The blueberries.” I tell him.

“Yes, there are those, but you can’t pay the rent with them. When I go back home, retire, I’ll have the money this time.” 

 

South American migrants in Maine...see the cowboy hat no real Mainer would ever wear?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Low Bush variety and tiny, the best. Not those blueberries the size of  your thumbnail you get in Stop & Shop.

Probably takes a while to fill one of these, but you have a field boss telling you to "hurry it up" I bet too

 

 

Memories Again...

 

 

I’ve been on some sales job interviews back when you answered ads in the ProJo, sent in a paper resume and went through a tiered interview process. Two of those I tried for stick with me to this day. IDS Financial (now defunct) and Corey & DeWyre Insurance (also now defunct).

IDS was a firm that sold retail finance packages to anyone who had some retirement savings socked away. The trick was to convince those people to let IDS manage them. At the time, the early 90s, wasn’t such a great time to be investing in the market short term but if you were in it for the long haul, perhaps it would pay and it usually does.

Roy Halston

The guy who headed up the local IDS office in Providence, the sales manager, looked like Roy Halston, the designer. Every hair of his was in place, cleanly shaved and wore what I thought was the latest in men’s fashion for 1992. I could not identify the cologne he was wearing which was not noxious, he used the right amount. This guy’s airs tole me he knew he looked the part and played it. He oozed confidence to nearly seeming smug. You don’t get to run a sale’s office unless you’re the Top Dog in sales, repeatedly, and this guy must’ve had the interpersonal skills to read and then persuade people to make them part with their cash numerous times.

“That’s a European suit...where did you get it?” he asks me when I met him for the first interview. I was surprised he knew that it was. Euro suits have two slits in the back instead of the American single cut. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth that I bought it at a re-sale hole-in-the-wall shop in N. Providence. I didn’t know it was of Euro design till I had it tailored to fit me when the guy asked my if I knew that I had that kind of suit.

“Men’s Warehouse.” I lied as I answered the manager’s question. It was an evasion to hide how cheap I was. I wasn’t about tell him I spent a whole $50 for it.

“Really? I didn’t know that chain sold those kind of suits from Europe.” he says.

I sat there, looking around his office and was surprised at how austere it was. The desk was just, what seemed, a high quality dining room table. There were no pictures on it or piles of paper to process. Just a phone, a yellow legal pad and my resume. The rest of the office had a few plants, a small couch and just his awards and licenses on the wall. Very sparing I thought. What I was to learn later that this was a “fashion,” the office décor of successful finance types.

He goes on to tell me I would be selling $20,000 to over $2 million worth of product. The compensation would be a sliding percentage by commission. The more I sold, the higher the percentage.

“We have someone here who once sold $8 and half million dollars worth of our financial packages to one person. The company awarded him a 4% commission on that, $340,000 for two days work. That person was me.” I guess that’s one of the reasons he ran the office. When he told me that, he seemed rather proud, a bit too proud.

He goes on..

“Our process here is to throw the net out there, bring in applicants, you’d be surprise at what walks of life they come from. We hire only 2% of them. I and the home company in Chicago will decide on the final hires. Do you have any problems with taking tests?”

“No” I tell him.

“Great, let’s get started!”

I go into another room and the secretary brings me a booklet full of questions. She tells me I have a whole hour to finish it, where upon they send it off to Chicago and I’d be brought in for a second interview to discuss it and perhaps more.

I start the test and I realize it was a personality inventory. In college and at an old social work job, I immediately recognized it for what it was. What I couldn’t ascertain, was what it was measuring. You can tell what kind of test it was but not necessarily what it was assessing. The tests are designed like that and I won’t go into how they do it because it’ll take a whole ‘nother page and it would bore you. There was one test I saw, being designe, where it was looking for any psychotic personality traits and asked: “Does peach pie come out perfect every time?” Yes or No. Ah, one day I’ll explain it…

Since I know what this test is, I begin to feel annoyed that I’m being probed for something I cannot figure out and deeply too I bet. So I start purposely answering the questions in any damn way I want, randomly. All of them.

Two weeks later, Halston guy brings me back in for the second interview.

“We got your results back...they couldn’t make heads or tails of them so they put it to one of the psychologists..he says you’re “foxy and dodgy...squirrely...not easy to get a fix on.”

I sat there with my poker face saying...”Who? Me?” But I was kind of surprised that they figured out that much. That my intentionally trying to avoid an honest assessment of who I was was showing up on the test. So what, I wasn’t happy this corporation was trying to sneak a deep peek into me and purposely threw the test like a rigged mafia boxing match.

Halston goes on, with an annoyed look on his face. “We need people who, on the surface, are honest, open, seemingly free of deceit...a...”look” or “countenance” they have…that on first look engenders trust in the customer. First get the customer’s trust, then persuade them to purchase.”

He was saying I wasn’t it. No problem. I wasn’t interested when I had found out a few days after the test, had I passed, that I’d have to spend a month in Chicago for training. Training meant this in sales circles. I’d be intensely competing with others from across the country picked for those few 2% job openings. The contest can be ruthless and I’d be going up against people who had few ethics or morals. So I shook Halston’s hand off I went.

**

I saw it again at an insurance sales jobs I went to in Milford MA, the austere office with the expensive Ethan Allen like dining room table for the desk and an office with little else in it. I began to wonder why these sales guys decorated like this as  seeing this was becoming common. It spoke of Puritan restraint to me, denial of self and the world. Or that’s what they wanted everyone else to see and think.

The sales manager this time was very polite, much older guy. He too was impeccably dressed and if he had any hair, that too would be in place. We sat and spoke of my background and he lit up when he saw I went to Saint Raphael’s. How he knew it I don’t know.

“You were taught by DeLasallians? They’re brutal! You have to be well educated if you graduated. This will help with the position we have.”

“I wasn’t in the top ten of the class...I was in the top 20%...which is OK I guess. Nothing stellar.” I tell him.

“No matter, you have the background to analyze...you have to have it spending time with them…they're like the Jesuits...Nuts.” he says. Later on in life, I’d hear that from others as well. DeLasallians were Jesuit-Lite and that true Jesuits could be wholly insane in their zealotry.

The position was to sell insurance products to homeowners and small businesses. He assured me that once I got going, that within a year I’d be making $50,000 as a fresh new comer, if I had the chops. In time as I learned, it would go up. What opened my eyes were what he called “residuals.” If the customer stayed with the company for years, I’d still be collecting a cut from their policy, as long as they held it. Every year they paid the insurance premium, 2% of that would end up in my pocket. So the trick was to sell as many and as expensive policies as I could.

The interview ended well and he walked me out. In the foyer, I shook his hand and told him the date for the second interview would work. I walked to my car and I noticed him watching me from that foyer, not leaving.

As I sat in the car, he comes out, walking a bit hurriedly to my car and I roll down the window when he comes. He then asks this odd question out of the blue.

“Have you ever, in your past, ever have to deal with some pretty unfair situations, where you had to struggle...thinking there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel? That it’s all for nothing?”

“Yeah, sure..medical problems in my family. I had to play nurse/psychologist/Dr/cabbie...only to know all these efforts will end in death due to their terminal illness.” I tell him.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he says and quickly turns and leaves.

I drive off wondering what the hell that was all about.

A day later I get a curt call cancelling the second interview w/o explanation.

Years later, I was talking to a sales manager at an Irish pub and I told him the same story.

“That was a trick question.” I was told. “He wanted to know if you’ve ever dealt with ugliness...and if you had, he knew you didn’t have that silly optimism other people have who lived an easy, charmed life. He wanted sales people who were perpetually assured of success as their lives so far, have given them that. He wanted people who never had been exposed to adversity. What you’ve been exposed to...has changed you in ways you probably can’t see and it can be a determent in sales.”

I guess he wanted unfailingly happy horseshit people who exude bright sunny, springtime mornings. That ain’t me, I know otherwise how life can be.

 

If I Get in A Goofy Mood

 

 

I stood outside of the Celtic, having a cigarette when I see his youngish women, perhaps late 20’s approach. She had disheveled but clean hair, far too loose jeans that sort of ballooned as she walked and a soccer team T shirt of some European squad I never heard of. She had come from the direction of the 95 overpass over Route 1 that leads into Attleboro and I had heard, from the firemen that used the bar as their clubhouse, that there were homeless encampments all along the highway in the woods there.

She came straight for me, making eye contact and when close enough she asks:

“Can you give me a ride to downtown Attleboro? I have an appointment at 11pm.”

“11 PM? What business has appointments at 11?” I think

I then figure this out. She’s one of the homeless from the highway that just wants a ride. I stood there, immediately disappointed by this request because my plan that night was to sip beer, chat and otherwise be left alone and be brain dead for a bit. This was “my time” and wanted to ratchet down some w/o people needing something from me. Shuttling the homeless wasn’t in my plans.

So how do I get out of this w/o seeming like a bastard?

I then put on an act that I am deaf. Since I had worked with the deaf population for a good time back in the 90’s, I can do a very good impression of them.

So I say, in a mangled, fumbling voice the deaf have IF they can speak, sounding a bit like Marlee Matlin from the movie Children of a Lesser God, and signing with my hands, I tell her this:

“I cahn’t hear any-think be-cawse I am defff thinth birth. You haf to th-speak tuh me wif thine langu-adge u-thing your handz. Do you know A eth L? (ASL)”

Homeless girl just stared at me for a good three seconds when she leaned into me close and responded like this, loudly, thinking that’s all that was needed.

“Can you give me a ride to downtown Attleboro? I have an appointment at 11pm!!”

“What?” I say and sign to her. I tried not to laugh because she thought the cure to my deafness was to shout at me. She tries again...

“Can YOU give me...Oh the hell with it…”

Off to our side was Becky and a few other girls from the bar laughing, after watching this show I put on. I then turn to them and protest, “Th-stop laffin at me! It’z not nithe or rite! I can’t halp that I’m deff!!!”

Homeless girl just looked at me and the girls like we were nuts. She finally gave up and went on her way.

“Yayyy!” I get to finish my butt and go back inside to sit down and sip my beer in peace.

**

Every summer I keep all the windows and doors in my house open. I like the breeze, fresh air and the openness. It also is a nice invitation to a few in this area who have known me to pop by if they do. The problem is that others I do not want to talk to feel I’m inviting them as well. Particularly salesmen.

One day some one knocks at my door and I go and see. It’s a young guy, perhaps 22, dressed sort of like a Mormon, in a white shirt, black tie and slacks. His hair is close cropped and he’s carrying an iTablet.

While at the door I just look at him through the screen, silent and wait for him to tell me why he’s here.

“Good Morning Sir! Have you noticed that your neighbor across the street has solar panels on his roof?”

“Oh Christ.” I think, a solar salesman.

I didn’t plan my next reaction, it sort of just came to me, quickly and out of nowhere. I then start rocking on my feet like a guy I know at work who does the same out of boredom or habit. I raise my hands and fold them together and press them against my chest and let my face relax, become almost loose. I now look half aware and dense.

“..and if you allow us to do a FREE inspection of your roof and power requirements of your home, I’m sure we can find the perfect system array for you that’ll get you off RI Energy’s grid!” The commission seeking sales kid tells me.

He ends his sales pitch and I let a good 15 seconds go by in silence when I say, as if my tongue has swollen two times the size in my mouth….

“Do you wan to meet my doggie? He ith down thtairs in da cellah….his name is Debby.”

I tried hard not to laugh to myself when I told him the male dog’s name was Debby.

The poor kid then comes to a slow realization that he’s talking to a old adult with retardation.

“Is there anyone else here…” the kid asks.

“No...juth me ‘n’ Debby...do you want to meet him? He iz a good doggie...he only bit my face once!”

I love how people’s eye contact can be sooo focused when they’re in a situation they never had before or seen. This poor kid was locked onto my face the whole time I was acting it up.

“Uhh...umm...I’ll come back...OK…?” the kid says, backing away a few steps before he turns around, lest I let my Debby “meet” him.

As the kid walks away, I open the screen door and wave to him and say...”Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!” far too many times.

Cool! That got rid of him...now back to my audio editor to fix up the Grateful Dead catalog I stole off the internet.

**

I was fourteen when this occurred and it was more out of desperation, short temper and apparently it became real bad timing when it was over.

For some reason, we were getting sales calls all afternoon. Roofs! Siding! Built in pools! Credit card offers! You name it. This was also the time when they used real people to sell you stuff on the phone vs. the robocalls they use today.

I had been answering the phone all day and was getting sick of it. Finally, around 6pm I got a call and without ever finding out just who was on the other end I start a tirade.

“Listen you cocksucking son of a bitch! We don’t want your fucking useless wares or shit! Take your phone and shove it up your ass till it comes out your mouth ….so FUCK OFF!”

And I hang up the phone hard.

Sixty seconds later the phone rings again.

I pick it up and this time I normally say “Hello?”

“Ronnie? Is this Ronnie?” It’s Mary (my grandmother).

“I think I dialed the wrong number….Someone was yelling at me!”

I had happened to see the clock on the kitchen wall which said 6PM. Yep, every day for years Mary has called at 6PM to talk to my Mom. I stood there feeling the blood rush to my face and blush like I’ve never blushed before, hoping to God she didn’t recognize my voice from earlier. You don’t...you never...say words like that to your church-going Irish Catholic grandmother...ever. I had now done that.

I turn and say..”Mom...it’s for you” and I hand it off to her and slink out of there fast.