13 Stages of Christmas

 

 

I'm out of Christmas stories so I'm re-posting this one.

1-5 years old

You're too young to understand the concept of Christmas. Toddlers enjoy the pretty lights, the gingerbread cookies and popcorn ball treats, the songs and carols and everything fun about the holiday but they don't quite yet understand the power of Xmas. To young kids, Christmas feels like a second birthday except the gifts are doubled, there is no blowing out of birthday candles or parties with ponies taking embarrassing dumps in the backyard. At this age the toy or the box it came in is just as fun to play with. Chewing on the Christmas light cords is fun because the dog showed you how to do it.

6-8 years old

This is the Christmas sweet spot. The age when anything...any gift, magical event, or wish is possible thanks to a fat man living up north in a house full of midgets making toys strangely identical to major manufacturers (yet no one seems to mind). The holiday also includes the greatest gift of all — a week off from school and the constant torture of teachers, bullies and the inability to take a dump for eight hours a day because no one would dare use a bathroom at school...under any circumstances. This is also the age where breaking your new toys can be fun too. This was hard at one time because Tonka made their toys out of real metal then. You kids have it easy today!

9-12 years old

Santa was a lie! You had an idea a few years earlier but now all signs point to your parents shoveling you bullshit for the first decade of your life. What else have they been lying about? Oh just tooth fairies, bunnies delivering chocolate and your uncle who stopped coming by the house a few Thanksgivings ago. He’s not in the Peace Corp, he’s in jail, but they won’t say exactly what for. Maybe lying to his kids about a jolly fat dude with a perverted sounding “naughty” list and a tooth collecting broad with more singles than a main stage stripper on a busy Saturday night to dole out. This is the age where you begin to play the same game back to your parents by ever so deftly manipulating them into getting the gifts you want. This is especially easy if your parents are divorced. You can really haul it in! Simply make them work against one another to compete for your love and approval.

13-20 years old

It’s not about asking for toys anymore, you're a teen, it’s about getting gifts to elevate social status. Designer clothes, expensive kicks, flashy tech gear and maybe even a car if you’re old man is willing to finally give up his beater of a ride, fork over the keys and buy something built in the 2010s. If in college, you loathe yourself for getting so excited over a Christmas gift basket filled with stuff you need at your dorm. You just kissed your parents for the thoughtful gift of bulk toilet paper and rolls of quarters to do laundry. You also realize that getting any clothing is a great gift because you didn't have to buy it yourself. That Merino sweater your GrandMom got you at a eleven years of age wasn't such a sucky gift after all.

21-25 years old

You’re out of college. You’ve got a job. It’s now your responsibility to buy gifts for your entire family. Thankfully, Jesus invented gift cards (it’s in the New Testament) so gift buying is a cinch. Unfortunately, you spend the day after Christmas in return lines because your family has no idea what clothes you wear, your actual size, what music you like, and that you haven’t read a book since Lit 101. And seriously, what the fuck is a compact disc? You also discover that the Chinese are heathens and don't celebrate Christmas and mercifully keep open their restaurants on Christmas night so you can escape your family and go get drunk with your other 20-Something friends. You won't feel like a loser alcoholic because the place will be packed with others running away from their families as well.

25-30 years old

You’re in a long term relationship and you're already spending the Xmas money you don't even have on engagement rings and first homes. The holidays start feeling really different, since you don’t spend them with your own family anymore, but with her family, her friends, and maybe if there is time you can swing by your parents house to visit your Mom who’s pissed you’re not spending the holiday with your family and an old man who has been drunk since his work Christmas party in early December. Stopping by with the right excuses may lessen the jealousy of your parents. Remember to leave the girlfriend home at her parent's place as your Mom never did like her. Realize as well that come December 26^th, Christmas never happened as you are back to your regular workaday world and have to deal with that reality.

30-40 years old

This decade sucks one massive Yule Log. You’re married, you’ve got kids, and those kids demand toys considered “hot ticket items” which oddly get released the week before Christmas by Hasbro who has been hyping the shit out of them all season. So you're traveling in circles around the state just days before Christmas, sometimes even across a couple state borders, to find one stupid Hatchanimal. As you frantically search each store hoping for a miracle (does Home Depot carry toys?) the only thought circling your head is your kid's disappointment because the toy isn't under the tree. You've failed as a parent. You SUCK. You’ve given them love, a home and attention but couldn’t deliver a fucking toy every other kid will get and then wave in the faces of your kids. Hopefully the arresting officer will go lightly on your situation after you punch a Maryknoll nun who was buying a cart full of Hatchanimals for the orphanage. It’s a Christmas miracle you didn’t knock out her two front teeth.

40-50 years old

You've got kids in their teens and early 20s. The toys turn into gadgets and the holiday morphs into an event exorbitantly more expensive than ever before. As if footing the bill for six years in college and another year “finding themselves” wasn't enough of a gift. You don't like anything about the holiday — even the songs you've heard a thousand times each December for the last four decades. Now they annoy the shit out of you on the first note. The Classic radio stations you love now play this crap 24/7. Also the decorating, the traffic, the commercials and those Charlie Brown specials you adored in your youth but now feel like PSA cartoons about the dangers of bullying in school. Seriously, if ever there was ever a cartoon kid to load up an AK-47 and then shoot up his school, it's Charlie Brown. A mindful jury would exonerate him.

50-60 years old

You didn't care about Christmas till a week ago. Your wife (if you're still married) does all of the shopping, you only have to buy for her, and yet you still manage to screw that up. Your kids visit for a couple hours, just to collect their gift cards and eat, and then shuttle out the door to visit their future in-laws because they are “splitting time” between families this year. You’d all celebrate together but your in-laws are fucking bragging loudmouths. Do you really need to hear about their three-week vacation in Italy? You know they'll rub your face in it. You're also not allowed to eat half the food on the Christmas table because of high cholesterol or that just-starting heart failure you've been diagnosed with. You sneak to the buffet table in the other room alone where you can to shove all that wonderful salami into your mouth. As long as no one sees this, it can't hurt, right? You end the day in a drunken sleep.

60-70 years old

The holiday is slightly more enjoyable. You're older now, semi-retired, and living off a smaller salary so no one expects absurdly expensive gifts from you. There are also grandchildren. It's fun to watch them open gifts, get excited for Santa and get wrapped up in the festivities like your kid's did — and you — did so many decades ago. It's also enjoyable to witness your own children, now grown, slowly lose faith in the holiday while chasing down the newest piece of crap toy for their kids. You're laughing your ass off, chugging spiked eggnog and grinning “Welcome to the Club” with a warmth that’s probably thanks to the brandy spiked chocolates and double rum cakes. If there is one thing to celebrate during the holidays, it’s booze-infused baked goods. What's neat at this age, you can complain of feeling too cold or tired and your kids will drive you home and you get to avoid all the ugly family drama.

70-80 years old  

 You don't notice, or care, it's Christmas time. Many of your friends are dead, all your kids are gone during the holiday, visiting your grandkids or just refusing to spend time with a miserable old bastard like you. The good news is no one expects shit from you as far as presents because you're living off a pension or meager social security benefits. Retirement? Ha! Bigger bullshit than Old Saint Nick. Your family would rather you not buy them gifts anyway since you're terrible at buying them. It's because you always left it up to your wife. You on the other hand buy gifts that have no relevance to the recipient at all. “Ohhhh, a compendium of Persian history, three volumes....uh...thanks..” Where is your wife? Well, it depends which wife you're talking about. Also, you spend at least five minutes Christmas day thinking about your impending death. You're really old now, how much time do you honestly have left? It's enough to kill your mood at the Christmas dinner table.

80-90 years old — Christmas? You call this shit Christmas?!? When I was a kid, THAT was Christmas! You refuse to be present at the Christmas that's going on now and prefer to speak of ones that occurred right after WW2, like from 1945-49. Each Christmas you manage to live to see keenly reminds you of the next one you, by probability, won't see. The Social Security mortality tables sure shores this truth up.

The Cemetery Ahh! Finally Linus's speech in Charlie Brown's Christmas Special has come true! “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men. That's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.” Except the last Christmas your kids visited your grave was over five years ago and when they did, they both yelled at the ground below their feet about how you fucked up raising them. Oh well, perhaps that sparrow that likes to visit you by landing on your headstone will come by or maybe that homeless guy will lean against your stone, to sleep off his holiday drunk again. 

 

 

 

Big Frog, Little Pond

 

“I didn't go to college and I turned out fine!” said a short, grizzled co-worker I once knew. She betrayed her envy easily with that comment. I had gone to college knew it's worth and was trying to explain that to her before a particular nerve in her was rubbed the wrong way. I didn't feel like pursuing our argument as it was going to annoy me eventually. There are molehills and there are mountains and fighting over molehills I thought a waste of time. I let her plant her flag of victory on it and she stoked her pride for a few. “Fine...you win.” It costs me nothing to do that and avoid twenty minutes of misery over basically nothing. You know what I'm speaking of. It's called...”It's Not Worth It.”

Though her raising the issue gave me a thought in one way. Not one of the people I knew was in the same occupation they chose when they were in college. Each one, either through economic changes or individual decisions, had gotten out of their chosen career and moved onto onto some pretty different occupations.

**

Frank B I knew in high school. He was affable enough, though a bit too eager to show you how smart he was at times. That wasn't deniable, he was intelligent. It's when someone rubs your face in it for his own personal joy is what's annoying. “OK, you win too” But that didn't happen often enough for you to dislike him.

As teens, you mercilessly judge each other's appearance via gossip and behind their backs. It's par for the course and still happens to this day. Frank, unfortunately for him via dumb genetic luck, was born with a sixth finger on his left hand and it wasn't a workable one either. It sort of hung there, useless. His face was sort of...lizard like. In that his eyes seemed to have that perpetual “I'm high as shit” squinty-slit look. It didn't help that his glasses magnified that either and if you met him, you'd try not to stare too much out of etiquette. I never understood it but there are people who have “flat” hair. You could wash it with an industrial de-greaser, blow dry it and still it wouldn't poof up. Poor Frank had that hair.

On the nicer side, he was socially apt. He could move through the various cliques in school and was open hearted without any motive for duplicity, vs many of the kids we all have known in high school. In short, he was trustworthy and had little desire for back stabbing that teens do to move up the ladder. A kind heart.

In the last few months before graduation, those of us who applied were accepted to various colleges and I was off to RIC. Others, with better scores and much more money than my family had were off to Harvard, Yale or wherever their Dad's attended for easy, legacy approved short-tracked acceptance.

One day in class, Frank mentions to me he got into MIT.

I was astounded. I knew MIT had an acceptance rate of less than 10%, perhaps lower. He had told me his SATs and other test scores, plus his high school record was sharp enough to get him in. I sat there, still amazed by this as I had never known anyone in my life that had gone, or was going to MIT.

“You smart, brainy little fuck” I thought to myself.

I think all teachers, administrative types and schools do the following. They always praise that particular year's graduating class as “The best class we've ever seen!” Why do I think that? Because I've attended other graduations and you hear it mentioned each time.

One time in a stairwell at school I came upon Frank, the assistant principal and a biology teacher who were all gushing over the Frank's successful admission to MIT. I also noticed Frank's face as it beamed with the praise he was getting. Ah, why not beam? MIT said they wanted him. He had demonstrable talents and did the work to attain this. I on the other hand was happily satisfied with my A- or B+ grades. I could have done much better but I never saw the payoff of knocking myself out each time for “school,” so most times, I did “well enough” but never had that motivation to do it all the God Damn time.

“Does not fully apply himself though is easily capable” was written on my report cards over the years. Yeah, want to know why? I never saw the payoff worth the effort. I did those profit/loss statements in my head and found that the loss was a bit too much. Struggling to “win” all the time in the Pawtucket school system didn't seem like much fun to me. Add to that I wasn't getting much praise for wins anyway. The simple behavioral reward system didn't pay out much in my mind.

I digress.

So, we all graduate and disperse into the Four Winds. I had not met many of my high school crowd after that.

Two years later, at my favorite Quickie Mart, I was gassing up my car and thought I had recognized the person on the other side of the island.

“Frank? “ I said.

He acknowledged me but was very cool to me as well. In that he was not very forthcoming about what he was up to in life. You do that to me and I go into detective mode, I will get it out of you somehow.

After a few pointed questions he confesses. He was booted out of MIT for academic failure. It wasn't due to partying nor personal problems, he just couldn't hack it. MIT throws a world wide net for applicants and the Best of the Best come. So, instead of competing and winning in a small high school, he was now competing with the world's smartest kids. The competition is ruthless there as the kids pit everything on graduating in the Top 10. Against that, he didn't last long apparently. He told me he was working at a BlockBuster video store now with no idea on what to do next. It's a heavy blow to take really, being washed out of the Best Technical School on the Planet when you were promised by others you were a Golden Boy.

**

I haven't seen him since but have Googled him and I was astonished what profession he took up.

He's a Unitarian Universalist minister in Reno, Nevada. Wow, how the hell did that happen? I have no idea really. How does a MIT wash out with an obvious brain end up in religion? There's a deeper story there that I am not privy too. But still, it's a marked change. People's lives sure can take some very different paths and their decisions make perfect sense to them at the time.

Did my life end up where I envisioned it when I was eight teen? Not by a long shot. My idea was that I'd be a bio major, end up in the applied science business world somewhere, married with 2.4 kids. However, I had no idea at eight-teen of the changes that were to come that effected the path I'd take. Life course corrections, outside pressures and plain ol' “I don't like this anymore and I'm changing” happens. Oh, add to that my own damn personality, how I view the world and how that effected my decisions, for better or worse. Did I and others “just wing it?” No, it's more of playing it by ear as you can never tell what the future brings.

As we were asked in kindergarten, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Kids answered, “A fireman! A policeman! A nurse! An astronaut! A mommy!”

Too bad there isn't a Hogwarts “Future Occupation/Life Sorting Hat” that tells you what you will be.

“Arrrghh...hmmm...Tommy...you're gonna be an “environmental” supervisor at a landfill!”

“Little Nicole, you'll be a principal in the Chicago school system, but your married life and youngest child will be joke!”

“And who do we have here...Bobby! Well, you'll be in the Job of the Month club and an aspiring alcoholic!”

Had they placed the Sorting Hat on me...”Hmmm...HA! You sure ain't gonna be no biochemist! You're too dumb with math and everyone close in your life is gonna suck the time right out of you! You're gonna be a in home nurse for over a decade!”

And had they put that hat on Frank in May of 1982...I'm sure he'd be astonished at what it had to tell him as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ein Deutsches Erntedankfest

 

 

It says: A German Thanksgiving

My Thanksgivings are held about 100 yards from the original one in Plymouth due to a friend living right next door the the Plantation. It's close enough to hear the farm animals make their noises. The cow goes “moo!” We even could have wild turkey for dinner as they are numerous as pigeons there. I once saw a line of turkeys walk through his yard and I tried to get up close for a better look when he warned me not to.

“Donnnn't do that!” he says. “That one's a male, the rest are females, it's his harem!”

He tells me turkeys can fly about ten feet up and some yards laterally. Usually to get into low tree branches to escape predators. In other situations they fly at a threat and use their feet as weapons.

“That 20 lb bird will try to land on your head and he'll tear your scalp and eyes up with his talons!”

So I back off. City boy learns a lesson about cute, cuddly, real wild turkeys.

Not that it matters, we won't eat wild nor store bought turkey. Either he buys a mess of Chinese food or I'll pre-order a pile of various BBQ meats, beans and cornbread from Wes's Rib House and take it out there for T Day. Sometimes we do both.

After which, feeling like bloated pigs, we sit in the living room drinking the nicer stuff. I like bringing Grand Marnier and he always has a case of Asbach Urlat Brandy available. So we sip our drinks like snobbish gentry, burping and farting and acting like the swinish men that we really are. There are times when I can be well scrubbed, dressed up nicely and usually get through a finer event w/o picking my nose if I have too. But if with just “the guys,” different story there.

Asbach is a high quality German brandy and he'll special order it out of a local liquor store. It's OK I guess, I'm not a big brandy drinker. Though I am assured by the fact it does not sear your throat as you drink it down as most cheap alcohols will. The stuff is “smooth” as they say. I had asked him why this kind of brandy? Why go though all that effort?

“When I was in Bremmerharven, Germany, just after the war, WW2 mind you.”

“Yeah, I know which one...I'm not an idiot! Germany was a tip off!” I tell him.

He goes on.

“Bremmerharven was one of the major U-Boat ports and the Allies bombed the shit out of it. When we were docked there, most of the city was smashed...square mile after square mile of busted brick and dust.”

“On leave from the ship, you could find some places open for business, even if half the building was busted and burnt. The city was smashed but even so, people still scraped a life out of it still. One place was a great restaurant missing it's north facade and roof, but the family refused to leave, they kept it open as well as they could.”

“And what was great? The US dollar went sooo far in the German economy then! God! I lived like a king there for a while! I could get a four course dinner, dessert, beer all night and a glass of Asbach brandy...my bill came too...$1.25 in US currency! It was THAT lopsided! The owner's eye's bugged out when you paid in US dollars and not Deutschmarks. They wanted the dollars soo bad!”

“Then I get an idea. Since I could speak some German, I ask the owner if he has contacts in the city for the real good liquors, the high quality stuff and I tell him I, and the other officers of the ship, including the captain, were willing to pay him extra, in dollars, if he can get his hands on as much of the stuff he can find.”

He tells me he and the officers stuffed the ward room and other spaces on the ship with case after case of German liquors. brandies, cordials, wines, schnapps and more Jagermeister than you would ever care to drink.

“It cost us nothing...really...compared if we had to buy that stuff in London or Paris.”

I say to him, “And that's where you got the taste for Asbach brandy.”

“Yep, I was a young man then, an ensign, unrestricted surface warfare officer, having the time of my life in post war Germany...spending nothing and getting it all.”

The brandy was a happy memory for him.

**

On a Thanksgiving day in Bremmerharven, the ship's men wanted to do something for the orphans of that city, as there were more than a few of them. B. tells me they had a small PX onboard the ship, selling cigarettes, candies and...ice cream. So the men piled their change together to buy ice cream for all the kids at one of the Catholic orphanages there. They brought them to the ship and herded the kids to the mess hall, along with them was the young son of that restaurant owner who scrounged up all that liquor.

“You should've seen their eyes when we plopped the dishes of ice cream in front of them. They hadn't seen that stuff in years! We then went back and bought out all the candy and bagged it up for them to take home to the orphanage.”

A couple of days later, when the ship was due to leave, the owner of the restaurant comes to the dock with his son and manages to get B. to come down to speak with him.

“Ron, the guy begged me in German and broken English to take his son, to take him to America, get him out of the wasteland that Germany had become. He then started to shove the dollars we gave him for the booze at me. I had to tell him we could not take children on a 'ship of the line,' a warship.”

“God, the guy had tears running down his face, but still, there was no way I could put a German stowaway child onboard. How the hell am I going to explain that? I was the lowest junior officer on board then.”

“That day bugged me for the rest of the trip till we got back to New York you know.”

“That next Thanksgiving, I was stationed in Norfolk, and I decided to mail that Dad four $10 bills. It was a good chunk of money back then, even to us Americans. I had remembered the address of the restaurant luckily.”

“A few months later I get a letter from the Dad, thanking me profusely for it. His son was nine years old then and told me he spent the money on clothing, shoes for his son and other things the family needed.”

I asked, because I suspected, “How many years you do that for?”

“Till the kid was 18, so nine years.”

“What happened to the kid?” I ask.

“He's a optics technician, for Zeiss International last I heard. The kid made it.”

**

Later on I ask, “What were you paying that guy for the brandy then?”

“$10 a case. A lousy eighty-three cents a bottle.” he says.

“I now pay $400 a case. Twelve bottles...it's suits me for a year abouts.”

“You spend $400 on brandy?” I'm surprised because he's a worse skinflint than I am.

“No...I spend $400 on memories and that's worth it to me. Like I said, I was a young man then living like a King and I celebrate it still.”

 

 

 

Pascoag...

I'll tell how sneaky DEM game wardens were, say back in the early 80's. I was watching J rip up a small pond with a semi-auto 22lr, completely against the law mind you. We were about 1/3 of a mile from Connecticut and near as we both figured, way the hell out there. And we were, in a sense. Buck Hill, Burrillville is the Last Stop before Thompson, CT and there ain't much there either.

I saw this other hunter stroll towards us, completely in camouflage, hunter's orange and carrying a pricey over/under shotgun. I glanced away to watch J spray the water, little geysers shooting up and when I turned back to our hunter friend, he was stripping off the camouflage, revealing a RI DEM's Officer's uniform underneath it.

“IF any of you guy's paperwork is wrong...I'm gonna fry ya in court!”

Well, weren't we surprised, more so J who had the rifle. Lucky for J he had the Hunter's Safety ID, wasn't drunk and shut his mouth for once. The warden couldn't do a damn thing to me as I was not armed, nor had any booze. He seemed adamant to get us on drunk hunting.

These guys have the same power as a RI Marshall I suspect. The guy went thoroughly through my car hoping to find shot snow leopards, 15 deer and perhaps some other protected species shot up by a 22.

Nope, not a one. Not even an empty beer can.

He finally wrote up a summons for J to appear in court for “skipping 22 ammo off a pond” which what he was doing, violating his hunter safety card and whatnot. The guy finally asks us, “What the hell you guys doing out here? Yer all the way from Pawtucket!”

J says, being the dick he could be, “What? We gonna shoot up the Blackstone River? Think the Pawtucket cops won't mind that?”

I then try to backwalk this, I tell the warden that there really is NO where for anyone in our part of the state to go shooting, except for approved ranges and that's no fun. You can forget Massachusetts, they want all sorts of paperwork and double that if you're an out of stater. So, we drive all the way out here to do it. Where we found out that we were not particularity well liked as we weren't from Burrillville or that part of the state at all. They can tell that fast.

That part of the state really is “out there.” I once walked the last so-called range of mountains in Buck Hill, the Benson Mountains...which are really hills but you know... At the top of it, I looked east and could see the morning sun, the pond and all I heard was the wind. There was no one but me out there. It was one of those moments when you could drop your radar, social defenses, worry and anything else connected to humanity. I felt great for about 30 minutes, calm and knew I was the only person on Earth...for a bit anyways. I've known others who get the same feeling on a isolated beach, woods or say just a crop of breakwater rocks jutting out into the bay. Be alone, quiet in a place of beauty. The problem occurred to me was that I'd have to walk off those hills back to my car drive home, joining humanity again.

**

Burrillville Floyd

I never met him. But I was working with a girl, Laura, in my first real job who grew up between Pascoag and in Chepachet. After I got to know her better she told me those stories we city folk want to hear, the weirdos who live in the woods and small town life in general.

Floyd, she told me, lived in a broken down RV on a small plot of land his Dad bought when land out there was worthless. Floyd inherited it, parked his home there and blew off the denizens of Pascoag proper. At the time? Floyd probably was around 50 years old then when I heard about him in 1987.

Laura fills me in...

“He'll come into town once a month, with a huge backpack, and first hit up the Post office as that was his only address, get his food stamps, SSI check, cash it then go shopping. He'd stuff his backpack with the food and hang out a bit by the Commons. Then he'd hump it all back home, unseen for another month. They tell me he bought ten bags of Circus Peanuts with all the other stuff.”

“SSI? What was wrong with him?” I ask.

“We don't know..naturally weird, f'ed up as a kid, from what they tell me, he got a job after highschool here, saved money for an RV then took off once he bought it, to his Dad's plot in the woods and there he stayed. But he managed to pull it all off.”

I got to know Laura after a few years and you learn about people...you pick things up. I came to find she was sick of Burrillville, Gloucester, Foster and all that. She wasn't hoping for NYC where there are things to DO...but she wanted to flee her hometown instead.

Laura, was no nonsense, not given to much emotional display except for a smile. She was methodical, careful and almost a bit shy to take risk. She had great brown eyes that were symmetrical and eyebrows that dropped off a sharp angle by the outer part of her face. She wasn't obese but was born with an ass that said..CABOOSE! It wasn't her fault and the rest of her was normal but it was a never ending complaint of hers.

She did open up at times, but you had to read between the lines for her personal story.

She had told me of a story from her high school years where she accidentally came across a dating couple she knew of in school, banging on the lawn of some house near the town center at 2 AM.

From Laura's assessment, she retold that story as if the girl was a major slut, harlot and pig. I began to wonder if she was jealous because she had that boy and not Laura. The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, you know? Why were you so invested in that episode from ten years earlier?

Another story she let slide was another town harlot who gave birth out of wedlock. This seemed odd to me because this was the late 80's, teen girls were popping them out w/o Daddy's being around like link sausages. Laura never came off to me as a Fundamentalist Xtian and had little desire at all for any church. Where were these Anti Sex League beliefs coming from.

I did find out though, a few years later.

Laura did manage to escape Pascoag, via being hired by Norwegian Cruise lines as a waitress. She told me stories about how you NEVER book a room in the bow of the ship nor aft where the engine is. She enjoyed it but due to it being a slave's job, she got sick of it in time and come home to live in North Providence.

I had learned all of this because we dated a bit, due to a chance meeting I had with her in the mid 90s after she quit Norwegian.

“So you got out of Pascoag finally?” I tell her.

“Yeah....” she trailed off then asks, “Do know what it's like to grow up in a small town?”

“Laura, I'm a Pawtucket kid...all the forestry we ever saw was green lawns and starlings.”

She looks at me and realizes I haven't a clue.

“You grow up in Pascoag, Chepachet...Foster...everyone knows you..and you end up being judged, pigeonholed...forever..by these same people. You'll never escape it nor will they change their view about you. Then never forget about who you were when you were young.”

So she was fleeing a judgment...

She manage to open up about who she was in Pascoag and it wasn't something awful at all. She was labeled a Prude, mostly by the other teen girls. She had gone a date at 16 with a boy she liked, who seemed stable as well, and it was going well when one night, the two are making out like bandits when the boy, of course, wants it NOW. He tries but Laura has to sort of fight him off. He's horny as hell so he tries again in a few minutes when Laura has to nearly shout at him to “Cut it OUT!”

I get it. Here's a young teen girl who feels too uncomfortable, not ready...not enough time has gone by for for it to “feel right” to her. As for teen boys, I get it too. You are turned on and the RPM's are at 6,000.

So like everywhere else, people talk. The boy tells of this and it spreads that Laura is “no fun.” Her social rank fell more than a few rungs. 

“I couldn't get a date for years after really...because they all were convinced I wouldn't put out, even if I was really in love.” “Once you're pigeonholed in a small town, there you will stay, forever convicted. I couldn't leave on my own because I didn't have the money, I had to live at home...so I was stuck for years.”

I tell her that in my town, Pawtucket, all you had to do was change a school and you'd be in a different universe...to start it all over again as if you just came off the ship.

“Well, I did do that finally..I hopped on a ship and sailed away instead. Some get out by joining the Army, I did by joining Norwegian.”

A reverse Hester Prynne finally escaped.

**

I hadn't been in Pascoag in 30 years I think. I know of a few who blew off city life to buy a home out there and enjoy it, but they enjoy it as older, slightly worn adults who like peace and quiet now. And if you have the bucks, you can purchase a wonderful home on Wallum Lake that will afford you killer views of Benson Hills I spoke of.

I had driven out there to check an idea out the other day. I had forgotten how far off it is and how some things are STILL the same. Others aren't, mostly the newer homes that have sprung up over the years but there are places that I long had forgotten about that lept forward in my mind when I saw them again. Down by Chepachet way, I had forgotten all about that Stephen King cemetery, Acotes Hill. Now there's one Olde New England cemetery that looks like it should, old, creepy and haunted. Maybe Floyd is buried there?

One tradition remains. I drove up on Buck Hill to see that game preserve J got busted at shooting into the pond then and I found it w/ no problem. RI DEM had put up a nice wooden kiosk thing with rules, regs and such under a weather proof, polycarbonate shield. It was full of bullet holes. I guess DEM still isn't well liked out there. 

 

Click for Larger

 

 

June 1992 Stories

 

 

Here's another story about riches and my past. It'll wander as it will and I'll try to tighten it up. Hell, I said I'd upload my life here and here we go again with another installment.

**

"A pavenu is a person from a humble background who has rapidly gained wealth or an influential social position; a nouveau riche; an upstart, a social climber. Generally used with the implication that the person concerned is unsuited to the new social position, esp. through lacking the necessary manners or accomplishments."

...the kind of person who tilts the soup bowl to his mouth to loudly slurp the last of it down. Me for example.

Back when I was at Rhode Island College, our crew adopted these three girls to our group. Pamela was a damaged self-esteem tart who had the luck of being pretty (but never believed it herself), Kathy was “large boned,” and I do mean large boned, she was a stocky and solid girl who wasn't obese. The last was a Guidette from North Providence who held her cards close to her vest, as I came to find out later. She was the smartest of the three, even with her late 80's stacked up hair that was glued in place by ½ a can of AquaNet. Add to that her six pleated capris and screaming hot pink shoulder padded shirt. Mineral Spring fashion for women in the 80's was something else! All three shared an apartment near the worst part of Olneyville.

They all were lower middle class. It's why they ended up at RIC, a college for those who hit middling to maybe high SATs but are poor. You know what the tuition at RIC was in 1987? You're gonna puke when I tell you. $1,000 a year. That's it. That'll hardly cover the books needed for a nursing student now.

Kathy and Pamela (Guidette opting out) went with a friend of ours to a high end al fresco cucina on Atwells ave. It was pricey and the only one who could truly afford it was my buddy. The two girls on the other hand could not but didn't stop them from ordering a bevy of appetizers, drinks and large entrees. When the bill came, Big Boned Kathy starts throwing many bills on the table and my friend notices it's way to much.

“Hey, 20%..that's enough of a tip..you threw down......35%!” He was the type who could do math in his head. When it came to money, he suddenly could to calculus using Roman numerals.

Kathy then says, “But I want to feel rich! I got paid today! Besides, the rich give HUGE tips!”

“NO THEY DON'T” says my buddy. “They're RICH because they don't waste it! And you ain't one of them!”

Later they end up at a club downtown and Kathy still is spending like a sailor, top shelf liquors and heavy tipping. My buddy stuck to his Amstel beer and hid in a darker corner while the two girls danced.

So a week later my buddy gets a call from Kathy, complaining that the other two are on her case over her not being able to come up with all her portion of the rent.

“Gee Kathy, I wonder why? I saw you dumping 20s like it was toilet paper....So what do you want, better not be a loan!” He preemptively shot that idea should Kathy float that balloon by him.

“What do I do?” she asks.

“Well, either you find more money or get those two the carry you for this month and pay them back quick! They'll hate you until you square it with them though!”

Kathy was just a spendthrift. All the best all the time, till the money ran dry.

She got the cash, by begging others she knew for small loans.

**

A few years later. B and I were invited to a summer night party in a field in Foster, RI. Kathy's Dad owned a house there and apparently he and Kathy had reconciled due to Mom's death a half a year earlier. Her parents had divorced long ago and Mom had custody of Kathy, and went on a years long demonization of Dad, who, in Mom's mind, was the cause off all ills. So after Moms death, Dad and Kathy buried the hatchet after some long talks. Guidette and Pamela were there as well.

I had brought a case of Molson Ice beer w/o knowing really just how potent it was. It drinks easy you know, goes right down. Big mistake. The next morning I sort of find out how silly I was the night before...and what came out of my mouth.

So I get to meet Kathy's Dad. He seemed unassuming, sort of looked like a TV repairman really. He had a light voice, not much eye contact and seemed like no threat at all. Everyone that night took turns hanging out by the three fires that were built in the field, drinking and partying. For some reason, my buddy B spent a lot of the night talking to the Dad in the house.

I got progressively drunk from the Ice beer. I knew I didn't have to drive home that night so I felt safe, but Ice beers can kick your ass fast and it did mine. I end up at a bonfire and find Guidette and we sit down with one another, talking and I start being goofy with her, leaning into her, lightly punching her arm with the Marco/Polo game. I'm violating her personal space in order to steal a few kisses. She may have given in a bit just to placate me or whatever, just kissing, but when I ran my hand up her shirt...

“STOP!...NO...Ronnnnnn....NO.”

“No?” I sheepishly say. I had that stupid boy's grin on my face, I knew it was there, I could feel it. I was being amorous and not malicious, to me it was just playtime.

“I'm drunk and just having fun.” I say.

She kneels down, grabs my forearms with both of her hands and shakes them a bit, to get me to focus through my now double vision eyes.

“Look...Lookit me...I know you are having fun...I know...You're a guy and that's the way...but if you want to fool around, go see Pamela or someone else.”

So what do I do? I stand up and go looking for Pamela.

I go back to the house and B and that Dad are at the kitchen table, talking still. I pass B and he leans over to me whispering, “I got one hell of a story to tell you tomorrow morning.” I had no idea what he was getting and and who cares, I can hear Pamela's voice in the other room. She's on the phone, having meltdown #309 with boyfriend #23. All her self doubt was in her voice when she was on that phone. All those years of being told she was never good enough and you could tell the boy on the other end was negging her ruthlessly, pushing those buttons. Once off the phone and she calms down some, I sit with her talk and either because she's pissed off at him or just too raw emotionally, she responds to my playfulness Guidette had shot me down for. A replay of Marco/Polo and successful kiss stealing.

We continue to play for a few minutes when I, being drunk and horny, reach up with my hand to the back of her neck and sort push her head to my lap. She got the message and shot to her feet.

Now that she's standing up, mad, she yelps out.,”Ooooooh....I've HAD it with guys tonight!..You're ALL the same!”

I sit there sort of hurt and complain to her..”I ain't that bad...You know me!”

So she has to backtrack it and says, “Ok..Ok..I know you're not a bad one...no...but you all think with your DICKS!”

I'm sitting there and think, but don't dare verbalize, ”What's wrong with that? It's so fun and girls are better than amusement parks.”

But I finally do say that, in a...softer way. “Well, I can't help it...You girls are sooo FUN....You're FUN! You were ALWAYS fun!”

At least she knew it was a backhanded compliment and didn't slap me. She then seemed to look at me in pity, it was a knowing look, because being a woman, she knew me inside and out easily after these years.

“Sighhhh...Ron...at best, you've got a good heart, you are pretty open and easy to read, not hiding much...but you treat a lot of girls like they're toys.”

“Wow...Guidette sort of said the same thing to me about thirty minutes ago.” I tell her.

The Molson Ice had removed any filters I would've had. I tend to say a lot of risque things anyway when I'm sober but now with booze? Thinking on what Guidette said, my drunken mind thinks Guidette's opinions are germane now.

Pamela finally asks, “What did Guidette say?”

I honestly tell her what happened.

“I tried getting with Guidette but she said to come to you for it”

That's when Pamela crushed two plutonium atoms together between her fingers and pure gamma rays shot out.

“She said WHAT?!!”

Whoops! Well, I was 0-2 so far. Pamela storms out, I assume to find Guidette. Damn Molson Ice really made my playfulness come out...and social skills trot away. Great, now there will be a fight between those two until they can patch things up in an hour, circle their wagons and blame me for it all to begin with.

I leaned back onto the couch and passed out. I'm too tired, too drunk and too careless to care now.

The next morning I awaken to Kathy and her Dad arguing out on the lawn. B comes in, “We gotta leave NOW.”

He goes on..”I asked something of Kathy, something her Dad told me last night.” I figure it had something to do with that “story” he was going to tell me this morning.

So, I get up and we head out the other door, get in the car and take off.

Driving down Rt 6, B asks me, “Hey, what would you do if you inherited $89,000?”

I say, “Well, I'd blow and party with 10% of it...then bank the rest like a mean ol' miser.”

“Uh-huh...just like I thought you'd do...guess who inherited $89,000 from her Mom?”

It takes a few seconds but I get the right answer...”Kathy?”

“Yep, nearly 90k and she burned through it in a year, her Dad told me the whole family story last night, the poor guy was looking to unload...decompress...tell his side. All these years he was made out to be the bastard. I think now, it was the women in the family who were the real bastards, white trash swamp yankees.”

“What did she blow it on...in a year?” I say surprised.

“Cruises, a new car, restaurants, a newer pricier apartment...I don't know...ten pairs of Skechers? No natter, it's all gone now..and she's been hitting Dad up for money now.”

Apparently that was what the lawn fight was about, Dad ripping his daughter up and down for blowing $89k. B. had let slip to Kathy's face about her wanting money from Dad. Apparently she wasn't too pleased with Dad spilling his guts to B. Kathy was now exposed.

That, was 1992. I haven't seen the girls since. Well, I saw Pamela at Snooker's pool hall one night. She was working as a bar maid and we had nearly run into one another. The conversation we had was a bit awkward, more on her part. I knew she felt vulnerable because I knew her and her past but I wasn't holding that against her. I never made any mention of it. At 29, she seemed a bit care worn with a tired face that betrayed too much experience. That fresh and confident/hussified 21 year old I knew was gone. There was no more grinding us guys in some dark nightclub now, wanting us to pay attention to her, chase her, want her. Our attention confirmed to her that she was a good person with some desirable qualities, even if on occasion she put out to get it that confirmation.

“Please tell me you like me.” Was all she ever wanted.

Now her life was going to work, home and then work again. Full time adult life had taken over. Bills to be paid, rent to be paid. Her biological clock running out already.

As to where Kathy ended up I can't say. But what I know of people, they don't tend to change too much. The personality gets a bit tweaked as they get older, but it's the same song just at a lower volume now. I can see her wheeling and dealing to make enough bucks to run her household still.

The only one that did “make it” and perhaps found some happiness, was Guidette. She had taken over the management of a women's clothing store on Mineral Spring and in time, gathered the money to start her own Nawt Providence Guidette Boutique. I'm sure she's doing well with the local clientele Nawt Providence provides. Perhaps I've seen the mascara, accessories on the girls in front of the Pavilion at Scarsborough beach, where the Nawt Providence girls glue their hair in place, wear full makeup and strut and vogue around in sting bikinis but NEVER dare go near the water. They were there in 1992 and I bet they're still there today.

1992...I was 29 then...damn. What I didn't know then was that I was about to become “nurse” for most of my 30's to sick family members. But hey, my 20's were pretty fun and how fast they all so went.