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. 

 

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