If you know me, I lovvve to tell stories. I probably have a few hundred of them and some of them I would tell only to a certain trusted few who would understand. Who would get it? Anyone who gets sick, black humor and had to have lived with silly absurdity at some point in their lives...and knows that a certain kind of humor can make ludicrousness tolerable. Mainly my audience were the late teens I would work with and I’d entertain them with what growing up in the 70s was like. And how we got away with stuff that would get us arrested today, or at least sent to a psychiatric hospital. Topics I won’t elaborate on here just yet would include: murdering gerbils, beating the crap out of a Hasbro Inch Worm rider toy, spitting in Johnny’s mouth (not me but an older boy at the time), RJ’s bold joke of whipping his dick out in class when he was 13 or ramming a goat’s heads into a cement pillar. Bet that last one piqued your curiosity.
And no, I wasn’t the lead star in all of these stories, but I did witness them.
****
Also, I love to hear stories, if they’re good enough. An old friend, who was lucky enough to travel the world had grown up in Plymouth and the Cape and he had plenty of stories. Probably the most eye opening one to me was his time he spent in Berkeley CA living next door to the Peking Man House and w/o knowing that a cell of the Symbionese Liberation Army commune was living there. They’re the ones who kidnapped Patty Hearst.
Barn held various jobs as a teen and one at his aunt’s general store in downtown Plymouth. This gave him some experience in retail and then he was sent to another aunt’s store for one summer in Nantucket.
“I didn’t want to go.” he tells me. “Nantucket in the 50’s was a desert, nothing happened there at all, but I was a nephew in a traditional Italian family and you go where you are sent to help out relatives.”
He looks at me, “To you..Nantucket is a paradise, a destination, billionaires live there. It was never like that in the 50s...it was a lonely outpost no one knew about...and because of that, many Hollywood stars would vacation there. You could disappear there and the locals left you alone.”
“But with every cool place where artists, stars, actors and writers live, it gets exposed when word gets out and then everybody wants to go there and fucks up forever, the vibe.”
His aunt had a general store in Siasconsett, on the southeastern side of Nantucket. Barn lived with her and every morning, would ride his bike to the store which was all of 40 yards from the beach there. He would clean it, stock shelves and occasionally run the register as people came in and out during the day.
“My aunt told me when I started that certain people would come in and if I recognized them, to shut up, act like I didn’t know them.” To tell the truth, there were Hollywood stars who came in I never recognized at all.”
“Then one day, as I ran the register, this guy comes in, buys milk, eggs and bread an I rung him up and off he went”
“My aunt then asks from one of the aisles with a mile wide grin, ‘You know who THAT was?’”
“Who?” says Barn.
“Ray Bolger” his aunt tells him.
“Who’s Ray Bolger?” asks Barn.
Hearing this I say...“Yeah, who’s Ray Bolger?” as I am just as clueless.
Barn goes on. “Ever see the Wizard of Oz?”
“Yeah, prob 50 times.” I say.
“Ray Bolger was the Scarecrow...look it up one day!” he says.
He explains…
“Ray Bolger, I found out quick, did summer stock theater on the Cape and at Priscilla Beach Theater in Plymouth back then. When he wasn’t on stage, he hid out on Nantucket but was close enough to head back to do shows.”
“There were a bunch of others who came through that store but they have no relevance to you, just old 30’s and 40’s actors and actresses...but I know you KNOW that one!”
****
After a bit I chime in about an autobiography I had read, The Summer of ‘42 that was set in Nantucket in those older times.
“Herman Raucher?” says Barn. Raucher was the author.
“What...you meet HIM too there?” I ask.
“No, but the oldsters on that island know that story well, once it came out and putting two and two together, they figured out who the protagonists were.”
Summer of ‘42 was an autobiography of a 15 year old Raucher when he was vacationing there with his parents. He recounts how he became enamored with a young married women, Dorothy. She was in her 20s who was vacationing there, alone, as her husband was overseas fighting in WW2. The two eventually meet and struck up an innocent friendship. One day, she receives a telegram telling her that her husband was killed when his plane was shot down over France. That night, she seduces Raucher and sleeps with him.
Within a day or so, she had left the island but left note behind for the young Raucher which I will paraphrase.
“I’m sorry...I can’t explain why I did what I did with you. When I got that telegram, I needed someone...anyone..to be with..I was so struck with loneliness. I hope I didn’t harm you. When you are older, maybe you will understand.”
Raucher never did have bad feelings about her or the event. In fact, he looked back on it with happiness as any teen boy would feel at first being laid. It was such a perfect memory he wrote that book about it and it hit hard on the NY Times best seller list.
Raucher never did see her again and I mention that to Barn too.
“Oh! But he DID meet her again, in a way.” Barn tells me.
“Over the decades and because the book was a bestseller, Raucher got letters saying she was the real Dorothy that he had known. But the letters were so vauge or full of blatant inaccuracies that he dismissed them...until he got a letter one day that stunned him. Raucher said it was so full of detail of her summer home, the times and their very quick relationship that he knew this was THE Dorothy.”
She had moved on. Got married again grew old and had grankids when she finally wrote to him because she was fully aware that it was HER in that book. She finally reached out to him.
“I peddled my bike by that summer house many times when I worked in that store and had no idea of it, or what it would represent one day.” Barn says.
I might tell the story of Barn and the Patriarca family when he lived on Penn St that was by Atwells Ave when he taught at RIC.
Or I could explain how a goat’s hardened head was used as hammer by a friend once. If I feel safe about it, perhaps I will.
Jeez, did I grow up with some pretty bizarro types then. Well, the mafia story will be funny and...more normal than some of the other tales I was witness too.
