Walden

I've always, for a reason, been attracted to the Transcendentalist writers. Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott and the rest of them. Over the years, I read them all. It's not particularity easy reading either. Back then, they wrote in a style that was exacting. Each sentence is packed, stuffed full of meaning. The words of the sentences are fashioned w/o mortar and there are no gaps as it all fits with precision.  It's that tight.  As you read, you have to bite off a piece and chew it carefully or you won't comprehend what the hell they're talking about. It took me, casually reading, Emerson's "Self Reliance," about a month.

I, on the other hand, write like I have an extra chromosome.I'm easy to understand unless my sentence structure leaves you going, "Huh? What?...He put up a first draft again!"

It's slow going for a 21^st century reader. Especially Emerson, like I said...He's like eating a whole rib eye covered in bread crumbs, butter and fudge. When you're done, you've just consumed 8,500 calories. You lie like a gorged seal on the beach, moaning for having eaten too many fish.

The first I read was Thoreau, his Civil Disobedience treatise, in St Rays. His complaints were slavery and the Mexican-American war which disgusted him to no end so he decided NOT to support the gov't and refused to pay, for six years, his taxes. Well, don't short Uncle Sugar or they'll come for you and they did. They chucked him in jail but someone (probably his aunt) paid the tax and he was sprung the next day. Being ripping pissed off about it all, he wrote that propaganda piece that went straight up the gov'ts ass a mile.

Yay First Admendment! What balls!

Thoreau, I think, coined the phrase about “marching to a different drummer” and that he did for all his life. What I liked about him, was his never-ending ability to give a real stiff, upright middle finger to those who didn't like the way he lived his life. He was a non-conformist w/o any regret. I'm no Thoreau...but...I do admire and have, in some sense, lived a life in a certain other way. If you read this blog, you can discern that I was, for the most part, something of a feral child who was left to his own devices due to a father far too busy climbing the corporate ladder and a mother who abdicated her role due to illness. I was let loose young and learned to like my freedom...very much, to the point of feeling abraded when others tried to put a curb on it.  There were a couple of instances when others, outside this family and feeling it was their duty to interfere, tried to "put me on the right path."  After I scrutinized those actions, most I found did it out of a religious bent and I REJECTED them and their actions outright. I had too many run ins with busy-body evangelical types. I found most of them to be unbalanced anyway. I witnessed the inner workings of their families, the rules and their kids...who were fucked up in their own way. 

Thoreau, probably sick to death of having to deal with the mighty, bustling city of Concord in 1845, gave them the finger as well and took off for the woods not too far out of town for two years to chill with chipmunks, squirrels and bunnies and wrote “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” That I read too and it's no travel journal. While writing about his journey, he has excursions into what he think life's all about (like anyone's figured that out yet) and other opinions of the fast disappearance of colonial New England to the Industrial Age. Thoreau could be preachy, selfishly focused on himself and hypocritical. He had his demons as we all do.  After two years with the sparrows and mice, he returned to the Megalopolis of Concord and wrote "Walden."

I've wanted to see it, where it happened, stand on the very ground where they were. To see where those left winger/no-good-radical-freaks were romping about and causing trouble for everyone. So I went finally.

Walden Pond. This is it. I didn't know it had a beach. There are warning signs all over begging you not to swim in it as kettle ponds are notoriously cold and deep. Walden is 100 feet deep in some places. There are no lifeguards to pull your silly ass out if you happen to swim through a cold patch and freeze up and sink w/o a sound.The water is clear, probably drinkable and the quiet is deafening.

This me holding Walden Pond beach sand. Now I can say I did it.

Great! What I want now is to be misdiagnosed for 8 months until they get it right, Lyme disease.

When you reach the actual spot where Thoreau's cabin was, there's this sign. It's the opening lines to “Walden.” That pile of rocks next to it is all the people over the years who have left them as mementos. They scoured the area so clean of rocks that I couldn't put one there myself.

Archaeologists found the site back in the 1940's. There's nothing there but sandy dirt.

It's hard to read but the stone says, “this is where we found the actual chimney foundation” and thereby nailing the spot where Thoreau's cabin was.

I stood where the front door probably would've been and this is presumably what Thoreau saw when he looked toward the pond.

This railroad is completely up to date and current. In his time, Thoreau would write about hearing the steam trains rolling by the pond and waving to the passengers on them. I remember reading the passages about this rail and it was weird to actually see it finally.

This is what his home looked like. They restored it and if you want to get an idea of how big it is? The shed in your backyard is a close approximation.

Spacious huh? I guess that's all he needed. A place to write, sleep and a battered old stove to heat the place and cook

I suppose, if you got this thing screaming hot, it would turn the inside of the cabin into Miami for a while

.

I'm sitting at the faux desk where Thoreau wrote. The real one is in Concord museum and I'm sure they wouldn't let me sit in that one.

**

Concord, MA

Well, let me warn you about traveling there. There are about 790 5-k bicycle groups tear-assing all over the town and roads, so drive carefully! There is no real 5-k event, just a ton of weekend warriors with their 10 speeds, mountain bikes, wearing their skin tight aerodynamic body suits. They travel in packs and have the airs of "this road is for bikes ONLY, you user of the gasoline engine!"  I guess I shouldn't bitch, I used to be one of them when I was on a health kick a while back. I never wore any protective equipment and probably looked like some guy who had to travel by bike, due to a DWI.

Other than that, Concord is old, very OLD! It's also very picturesque, post-cardy with many homes looking like what was described in any Nathaniel Hawthorne brooding novel. You can traverse the entire town in about 5 minutes doing about 20mph. I'd advise you DO 20mph, it's too easy to run over a biker.

**

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Thank god for GPS coordinates. I found all the graves where these Transcendentalist girl and guy writers are buried.

They're all up there, ontop of that knoll.

This is the Thoreau family grave. 

Henry himself! I guess back then, you bought a plot, then placed the major family name marker on it, buried dad and mom under that and any kids or relatives get tiny little stones. Henry got his and people are piling up stones and acorns on it. All those tree roots...they must have invaded his coffin and him. Henry is part of the trees, leaves and whatnot now.

Nathaniel Hawthorne of Seven Gables fame. What I thought was cool were all the pens people left on it. I won't get into it but Nathaniel was a depressed, worn out character who lived in the shadows of Concord. Well, when your great-great grandfather was abusing, prosecuting and hanging witches in Salem a while back, the family legacy is a dark one.There's probably a penchant via genetics for depression in that family as well. If ever read House of the Seven Gables, better not do it on a gray, rainy November day or you'll mop around for days. Nothing says Puritan Gray like that novel.

Louisa May Alcott. She wrote “Little Women” and was one of the very first feminists. Again, the pens left as a memento..cool!  See how Concord was a nest of liberal scum and villainy?

The Alcott Family plot. The big marker is for Louisa's dad, Bronson. He founded the very first hippy-dippy commune in the United States ever, call Fruitlands. Fruitlands didn't even have a chance. Bronson made sure that anyone that decided to come there could follow any whimsy, idea or whatnot to further their “growth” as a person. Also was the rule that farm animals were “people too” and could not be used for farm work. Well, when you have a bunch of diaphanous writer/artist types traipsing around the woods and NOT planting enough food for winter...you get the idea. They did try to plant some corn and such, but when you don't use beasts of burden to turn the soil and whatnot, you don't have enough to live through the winter. Fruitlands died as fast as it was founded. Had they marijuana, cocaine, amyl nitrite...they would've failed even faster.

The King Transcendentalist of them All, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He thought, "Screw the Puritans, Catholics and all of them...I will decide for MYSELF!" His marker is a strange quartz boulder. The picture doesn't do it much justice as it cannot pick up the weird bending of light within the crystal producing a rainbow effect.

Orchard House, where Louisa and her Dad Bronson Alcott ended up after the Fruitlands disaster. She wrote “Little Women” here.

This weird place is behind the Alcott home. It's where Bronson held his talks, salon and groove-vibe-hang loose think tank. This is is the very first Esalen type Institute of it's kind. The current Esalen is in Big Sur now, where Hunter Thompson, the Beach Boys hung out.   Primal Scream Therapy and Fritz Perls Gestalt psychology were either invented or practiced there. I have little idea what Bronson invented here in his backyard, I ought to catch up on him.

Anyways, it was cool to finally see where all these vanguards of American progressive thought were roaming around.

Boy's Bikes...

While digging through my shed, which I turned into a blackhole to toss anything into, I came across a part to an old bike I had as a kid. I was buried beneath so much crap I had forgotten about it. Also it came with one of those vinyl handlebar grips. Talk about time warping!

It looked like this except for the color combination. 

It was my favorite bike. Murray had built them so simply and tough that it was pretty much indestructible. I know, we boys treated them like dirt and tried to break them.

Some of you know Evel Knievel, that motorcycle daredevil who proudly claimed to have nearly busted every bone in his body by jumping things (buses,cars,etc.) with his bike. We kids, watching this on TV...just had to try this too! It was easy!

 We boys looked up to this fool!

We built a decent ramp on the street and lined up some smaller things to jump over. The boys, trying to prove “they weren't scared,” would hop over these smaller obstacles. But after a bit, you get bored with the small stuff. We raised the angle on the ramp, and put in place, on their side, garbage cans, the old aluminum ones. First it was just one, then two...then we tried three.

Well...that last one didn't go too well.

The problem with my street was that it was level. You really had to start a bit  back, peddle your ass off to gain the speed and hit the ramp at the right moment. So I, being all brave and full of it, promised to jump over a third can. I started back even further. I peddled and peddled, trying my best to get up to, what? 15Mph? Those gears on those bikes weren't built for speed! I hit the ramp, yanked back on the handle bars and shot up out of the seat to give some “oommf” to the bike. Everything looked great till I heard a dull thump, that was the sound of the third can crushing and then I remember seeing colors, lots of colors spinning all around.

What I saw were the colors of the cars, houses and other kids as I flew over the handlebars and came crashing down onto the asphalt.

“ARRRRRRRGHHHHH!”

Two bloody elbows, one knee and a nice gash on my forehead. I'm wounded! You know what ran through my mind a few minutes after this as I tried to calm down and staunch the blood? “Don't Go Home and Let Mom Find Out.”

If I had, I'd get the usual SALT rubbed into every cut I had. “WHAT did you do? The other boys were doing it so YOU had to do it? I'm NOT taking you to the hospital! (Not made up, I got that once!) What are you, STUPID?”

Gotta love Moms...they can really make you feel like a total heel at times.

I stayed away from home till the cuts dried over. The abrasion on my forehead would take some explaining though. So like a boy, I lied through my teeth about how I got that. I fell on second base at Dagget's ball field. That sounded a lot less moronic than jumping garbage cans.

**

One of the fun places to ride a bike was at a local mall. I didn't know it then, but we were mall rat kids at times back then. It was a strip mall with a Stop & Shop anchor, CVS, McManus restaurant and the obligatory laundromat near our neighborhood. We kids would zip in and out of the parked cars, ride up and down the concourse and generally piss off store managers and shoppers. Stop & Shop provided us with grocery carts. We rode by them, grab ahold and pull them as fast as you could, in order to aim them at the Fotomat kiosk and let go at the right moment. CRASH! Those teen girls who worked in them didn't like us all that much. We never, ever had the balls to aim them at some parked car though. Though a few did accidentally.  Damn wheels on them always pulled to the left.

We tried wind sailing once. I have to explain! Since we romped all over the mall complex, we'd find litter, milk crates and what not on the edges of the parking lot. It was just the detritus of Middle America shopping till it dropped.

One day was really windy and one of us found cardboard boxes up against the hurricane fence on the east side. We broke the larger ones down and used them as sails. We go to west side carrying the cardboard, peddle like hell with the wind and then let go of the handlebars. Riding with no hands was easy then. (I tried that in 2012 when I was on a health kick. I was 48 and nearly went over the handlebars again when I wondered if I could still do it). Anyways, we'd then lift up the cardboard above our heads and let the wind take you. This is how we city kids wind surfed.

Back behind the mall, there were the loading docks along Walcott St. For some reason, Jim and I, bored again, lifted out bikes onto the dock, which was about a good 100 feet long and we biked as fast as we could then jumped off the bikes at the last second before we reached the “cliff” of the dock. Yeah, we'd watch our bikes go sailing right off and bounce and crash into the ground. We probably did it 16 times in a row. Dumb huh? This is what you do at 11 when you're bored and you created your own entertainment.

**

I was hit by a car once...sort of...on an angle. Again, I was 11. Gee...that age had a lot of “stuff” going on with me! What's great about a bike and being a boy is that you can imagine you're flying an F-15. I was tearing up and down the sidewalks on my street, weaving on and off the driveways, into the street, back onto the sidewalk and the effect felt like flying.

A problem existed though, people parked their cars on my street and that blocked everyone's view at times. I was flying off of Mr Knight's driveway when, HOLY SHIT...a car was coming at me! You know how LOUD rubber car tires sound when skidding? I had turned my bike a bit and avoided the bumper but body-skidded all along the driver's side, whacking my left hand onto his metal side mirror,  then I and the bike hit the street with a whomp. 

Every.Single.Mom came out of their house hearing that skid. They see me lying there in the street and I look dead. My Mom and Dad came running over and as usual, Mom was in a panic and Dad took one look at me and figured out I was none worse for the wear.

Ahh..that poor guy..the driver. He was shitting his pants, apologizing profusely to everyone around him who looked like they wanted to lynch him from a tree. My Dad wasn't too dicked about it though, he knew I was guilty, partly anyway. After I was interrogated by him, he tried to calm the poor driver down, saying that I was a fool for not looking into the street with the view being blocked by a parked car. This was when you didn't sue the shit out of someone at the first chance you got.

My Dad let the guy go.

I stood there, bleeding from all four knuckles on my left hand feeling like a boob now that every neighbor was reconsidering the level of my common sense. Steel side mirrors..owww! It took the skin off every knuckle. I was a little more respectful of moving cars after that one.

**

I've owned several bikes since then. 10 speeds, mountain bikes but nothing compares to that Murray though. I miss it.

This is a girl's version of a Murray. You can tell by that lack of a crossmember near the top of the bike. Now why the hell did they design boy's bikes with such a high cross members? You girls know what it's like to fall onto that bar with your nuts? I'll give you an example. When you wake up in the middle of the night, walking to the bathroom and smashing the shit out of your shin bone on a chair or something, it sort of feels like that, except deeper...and it lasts longer.

"Gold Medal in 9th Grade Sports Goes Too..."

Stories...what can I tell you now..

Here's one.

I always sucked at sports due to having no coordination and when you have none, you don't get picked to play..hence no practice creating a vicious cycle. Fine, you guys be that way...sports bite anyway. Not only that, I couldn't even really get all that enthusiastic to watch it on TV. What I did like hearing on the TV was the Red Sox play by play from the announcer's box in the summertime. That would drift out of our windows as my Dad watched and I connected that with summer nights. That wasn't bad. But to sit down and try to get all emotionally involved in football, hockey or basketball left me bored to shit. I'd rather watch the Winter Olympics as they had some pretty WEIRD sports. That was interesting.

My friend M. once told me in college, as a bit of advice, while in bars, that I should learn the rudimentary aspects of it so I could converse with the guys there when the subject moved to sports. I never bothered too. When the subject came up, I fell silent.

Now talk to me about stock charts...and I'll be chew your ear off! Batting averages? Yawwwwn.

**

In 1979, Goff Jr High had gym class twice a week for us kids. I hated it, for stated reasons already. The other problem was that the class had about 60 kids in it as they lumped all the classes together in order to stuff it into the schedule. A Baby Boomlet clot was working it's way through system at the time there. The other problem was that, say, a baseball game we had, the batting line was about 25 kids long so by the time your chance to bat came up, it was time to go to the next class. That and having massive volley ball teams where the ball could never touch the court as every square inch was guarded by one of the numerous kids packed onto the courts. Every kid had a chance to play even if that meant stuffing the court like a subway platform.

In the beginning of June '79, Goff was getting lax. Summer vacation is on it's way, the last days of school are here and no one, including the teachers, seemed all that motivated to get much done. This included a Mr. Charland who was running out of ideas or games for us kids to play in. One he invented one afternoon was to take a hockey net, place a kid in front to guard it while another, about twenty feet away tried to throw a volley ball past the kid into the net. I and another played the first session of it and it got interesting fast.

My opponent was a natural athlete named Dougie Smith. This kid had trophy upon trophy in his bedroom in pretty much any sport and was well liked by the other kids in Goff as well. I, on the other hand, was known to Bite the Big One when it came to competitive sports so when Mr. Charland paired us off in this game, it was a forgone conclusion about who would win. Why even bother to watch?

But, I was an older kid by now and had paid some attention to sports teams, players and how they used their heads, strategy, to win a game. I still sucked at coordination but I manage to do one thing over and over again that worked great in this game Charland invented.

Dougie was guarding the net and when I raised my arm to throw the ball, he looked directly into my eyes and I figured that out. He knew, from past experience, that a thrower would look toward where he wanted to throw a ball. So I tried this on my first throw, I looked to the left corner of the net, but fired the ball to the right. Dougie lurched to the left and the ball whizzed by his right into the net.

Score!

I did this twenty times in a row and the kid never figured out how I was beating his ass at this. 20 to 0, a crushing defeat!

When we both walked off the court, the other kids started to console Dougie by saying..”Ah..he cheated...he did something illegal!

I overheard this and said. “If I cheated....then you are calling Mr. Charland a LIAR!”

“Huh? Whaaat? Duhhh?' were some of the kid's responses. I had to explain it to them.

“How could have I cheated? Mr. Charland was STANDING there the whole time WATCHING us!” I also beamed bold and then said “I'd change sides and do it again” if they wanted proof.

To Charland's credit, I have to say, he agreed and said:

“Ronnie didn't cheat.”

The dumbfounded looks some of those kids gave when Charland said this was surprising to me. I got confirmation from the coach! I won fair and square. But that wasn't enough, neither was Charland's judgment of the game either to some of the kids there.

“Let's beat his ass!” I overheard from a few. They were soo pissed that I, a perfectly useless sports player should thrash the shit out of one of their favorite sport's heroes in Goff.

Would you believe this went on for the rest of the day in the other classes I had? I had pretty much not given it much weight as I don't care for sports but...I was still pleased with myself, except I didn't treat this as De-Throning a local Hero Boy. Apparently I had, for a few minutes anyways.

One class, held by my homeroom teacher, Mr. O'Donnell, had to mention it to us all as we took our seats. “How the hell does he know about this? I thought. “Who cares?” I thought as a well. This news had gotten far ahead of me into other classrooms for the rest of the day.

I got sneers, threats and other mouthy BS during the class, to which Mr. O'Donnell had to interject to calm some of these kids. When the class was over, I had asked O'Donnell why there was so much consternation over this.

He told me:

“You weren't supposed to win.”

I didn't get that. “What do you mean “wasn't supposed to?”

I had to be told that I had upset everyone's certain prediction and had unseated a favored kid. I knocked his social peg down a few notches and for that, I must PAY in ribbing and insults and a possible bloody nose.

**

I still suck at sports. I suck at walking across a floor at times. I had once asked a Dr. about it since my balance was never that great anyway and had become worse for about a month during the winter. He had opined that perhaps, I had this syndrome or another, but more probably just plain genetics that wasn't about to allow me to rub my belly and pat my head at the same time. He added to that, “You're getting older Ron...everything about you gets slowly worse...including your coordination.”

Ahhh...but one time, for a few minutes....I shone like the sun!

Wonder if Dougie will ring my doorbell one day and smash me in the face...finally? 

75

So instead of a snarky, cynical piece today, I'll be happy. Why? It's 75 degrees outside! I'm sure everyone else in in agreement about moods today, hopefully. I know it wasn't a bad winter but winter is still, winter. When I can open all windows and see the curtains wafting in the first soft breezes of spring, that'll boost my disposition several points.

So, it got me to thinking, what else can boost my mood, if only for a few minutes? I was surprised the list is long. Then again, it's a matter of what you focus on all day long and the shit that life splatter on you is far too easy to zero in on.

Here's one. That first bite of pepperoni pizza that's been properly cooked. The crust has to somewhat shatter as you bite down and since I can be a salt freak, the sodium in the pepperoni goes off like a grenade! I love it! The other 45 bites are just an excuse to stuff yourself to the point of immobility. It's always the first bites that is the best.

Soda lovers, and especially Coke lovers will understand this. The first sip off a can, not bottle, but can of Coke and how it feels. I admit the can impart a slight aluminum taste but that's not what Coke lovers want. What we want is pain.

Huh?

When you sip that first sip on a fresh Coke, the carbonation hits the heat of your mouth and sizzles. For some reason I swear it activates, on a low level, nerve endings that alarm of pain. It's a bit of cold burning sensation if that makes any sense. The best part is when it hits the back of your throat and really starts to out-gas as you hold it there just for a second longer. The sizzling pain there is even greater. Feeling it slither down your esophagus is the last of it.

AND...most Coke adherents agree, the carbonation in Coke vs Pepsi is different. The best way I can describe it is that Coke, produces smaller bubbles. You'd have to be one of us to “get it.”

If they carbonated Syrah, Merlot or any other wine like Coke, I'd probably drink that too and sound far more convincing when speaking of Coke like a sommelier.

Anyways, I've always loved that first can opened up. Small delights!

There's a look girls can give guys that'll make us halt in our tracks at times. It's the “look back over her shoulder” glance. You don't see that flirt coming but it's devastating if done correctly. It has to have direct eye contact coupled with an easy, comfortable smile. It may last not even one second but wow! A second, even shorter glance over that shoulder only confirms and nails that message. I've always loved that look. It's an instant endorphine hit.

Arriving at the beach for the first time. That was always nice and it's not the sights, but the smells that can put me in a far better mood. I'm not talking about stinky clam flats (but perhaps a bit of that is there) but the smell of the ocean, salt marsh hay and god knows what else I pick up can alter my mood fast. After an hour of that and I can start sliding into that California-ah-who-cares-what-time-it-is state.

It can probably uncover every memory I have of the beach as a kid too.

I've always loved to sleep but what sucks about it is that your unconscious for most of it .You don't really get to feel it. There is, however, a brief time you do feel it, and that is the last few seconds when you are drifting, hazy and numb before you black out for the night. You can't force it but at times, I'm half aware of it and is the most comfortable place I've been. Since my mind is like a monkey in a tree, thoughts hopping from one branch to the other, even those same thoughts take on that dreamy state. I'll get very dreamy visuals of doing my taxes accompanied by a complete loosening of the entire world.

When I was a teen and had no problem sleeping to 11 AM on the weekends. I noticed I'd awake during that morning, numerous times, to get that feeling of slipping into unconscious again and again.

Now, being a full blown adult, even if I were to have three weeks off in a row, sleeping that late seems terrible waste of the day for me.

I've never had opiates due my hated of needles and blood born pathogens...and real, raw opium isn't around, but I swear if it puts you into that state, I can sort of understand why addicts have a hell of time stopping. That world you encounter is too good to leave.

What else? The ozone smell of thunderstorms, the sickly sweet scent of hurricanes. They do have one, it smells of tree sap. Think of 540,000,000 leaves being pureed into the air. The sound of a song where they install a halting, stressful moment it it when the whole songs stops, just for a moment and then proceeds again. Beauty! That and the rasp of guitar pick on the wound strings, small, subtle and hardly noticeable but wonderful again.

Lastly, and I could go on...is the surf of the beach. Way back in the Jurassic, when I was 25, I fell asleep on a dingy couch that was on the porch of a beach house in South Kingston. We had just come back from seeing the B-52's at the Windjammer in Misquamicut. The rest of the house inside, had every sleeping spot taken and D'Arby and I had to made do with a couch on the porch. The last thing that I heard, that lulled me to sleep was the distant thump of a wave hitting the sand. The first thing that awoke me, at a decent time too, was this alarm clock that spaced out it's call every twenty seconds, “THUMP!..............THUMP!.............THUMP!”

I awoke easy, pushed D'Arby's hair from my face and tired to ascertain where I was. The surf, smells and porch pinpointed me. “I'm at the beach...on a porch...it's Sunday...” and I couldn't have been more relaxed or comfortable with everything.

Life doesn't always suck...does it? And I can't think of too many cynical things about beaches, Coke, pretty girls or the riff to Whole Lotta Love.

Hell, it's 75 today...of course I can't.  

Ahh...Just Some Boys Having Fun

HONNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKK! HONNNNNNNNNNNNNK! This is how a certain local friend “knocks on my door” to get me to go outside, by leaning on the horn. I see the pick up, recognize the business logo on it and think, “Shit...will ya give me a minute?” I guess I can't come outside fast enough for him. I finally make it outside and it's M. I go over to talk to him and I see his right index finger is all bandaged up. I ask why and I get an odd story about fixing the air brake canisters on those big ass 18 wheeler trucks. I can't explain it entirely but for some reason, another mechanic was helping and pressurized the canister far too much and a component in it shot forward like a bullet, blowing the tip of that finger off.

“Here, look at the pics on my phone M.” tells me.

I look at the pics and I see this gross, mangled finger that's now a bit shorter than it should be.

“Couldn't they stitch the rest back on? I ask.

“The rest on? The rest was spewed all over the work bench! Hamburger!”

He then asks if I would go down the street to his brothers to “have a beer.” This means, “have 5 beers and 4 shots of Crown Royal.” I had just come out of work and was tired and all I wanted to do was sit and vegetate but you know how it goes, you get these pleas, pressures and cajoling to do it. I caved.

While over his brother's place, we brought up old stories and they reminded me of one I totally forgot about.

Dat Pempsey, a kid in our crew from long ago held a party in 1983 at his house when Dad was away and everybody showed up. M. and I showed up about two hours later as it was in full swing.

When we arrived, the entire front lawn, garden and garden wall was destroyed. It had been destroyed by a kid we nicknamed “China.” He had drove the car onto the front lawn and did about three or four “donuts” on it. The last one causing the car to slide too wide and slammed a raised garden wall, busting that all over the driveway. That with the flowers, dirt and such.

When M and I walked into the kitchen, the inside of the house was wrecked. Beer puddles on the kitchen floor, the living room furniture overturned and food splattered around. We found the keg and started drinking up quick to catch up to the rest of them.

About 20 minutes later, a pizza delivery guy shows up and he's swarmed by all the revelers and they yank the pizza boxes out of his arms and steal slices of pizza as fast as they could. The guy then says “It's $14” and my friend M. (who now has a shorter finger) grabs him and shoves him out of the house and into the driveway.

“$14! Hit the Road! Beat it! Go on...get the fuck outa here!” The others around him and me start laughing at his nerve. But the party was out of control long before we got there and it infected us. No Rules! No Laws!

The poor pizza delivery kid made a quick getaway while he could.

We then return to the house and as we enter the kitchen, M.F, another crew member, is tearing the door off of the refrigerator. He finally gets it to pop and then walks around the house with it over his head shouting and yelling quotes from Conan the Barbarian (Ok, yeah, if you're too young to get the movie reference, think of The Hulk on speed. That don't work? Think of a gorilla on speed then). He finally then walks out the front and throws the fridge door into the rock pile that once was the garden. He probably might have beat his chest after that.

Meanwhile upstairs, Tammy E. was vomiting all over Pempsey's Dad's bed. The boys had convinced her to do funnel shots. They put a regular funnel in her mouth, with her head tilted back and then dumped a red cup full of keg beer in. She does it and it all came back up quick. They convince her to do it again, three times in a row in fact, till she passed out on the dry side of the bed.

We then head downstairs and hear another loud THUMP and some kid we don't know is walking around with a toilet seat around his neck. He had ripped that off the toilet, wore it and in his drunken stupor went around saying, “Hey..I'm Shit Face! Lookit me! Mr. Shit Faced!”

When it was all over, the house was, as you can imagine, a fuckin' mess. A day or two later, we hear the police had investigated one date rape accusation. The kid accused had one of the local girls upstairs, trying his best to work her locks but she wouldn't budge. The date rape accusal was a ruse apparently to calm her folks down when she came home at 4 AM drunk, makeup smeared and looking like shit. Her Dad was livid that his 15 year old daughter was partying with the worst boys he knew about. So the girl had to think fast to divert any blame as fast as she could. The detectives on the case finally got the real story out of her two friends who were with her that night. There was no date rape at all. Her “fake news” didn't fly with the cops nor her Dad.

A few days later, Pempsey's Dad comes home, finds his yard and house wrecked beyond belief and tells his son, “Get the FUCK out of my house! Don't COME BACK!” Dat Pempsey then starts his life on his own by first moving into a friend's house. I hear he's a bartender down by the South County beaches now. I wonder if he remembers that night backin '83?

**

I had completely forgotten about that party. That memory of it started to come back to me as the others around the table were recounting their stories of it. By the way, I'm not making any of it up, I have corroborating witnesses. We then sort of look at one another when T says:

“God, we were BAD as teens. We didn't give a shit about anything, if it was fun, we did it!”

“Yeahhh...” we all admitted, sheepishly and with a sort of guilt pang added.

“How the hell did we get away with all that we did then? We ran Slater Park as a pharmacy. We wrecked how many cars? We were picking up those white trash skanks in Central Falls, Newport ave....” another asks.

I tell them, “Look, the laws were different then...any of us trying this now would be brought up on charges today.” I then also kinda admit I really don't know how we manage to avoid all sorts of legal matters, most of them anyway, about what we were doing then. Probably a long run of good luck to tell the truth.

Today..as adults..and while we were reminiscing, the phones started going off. Wives were calling. “When are you going to come home?” was the question. Finally, one by one, we all started leaving as they had work the next day. Things to do. Kids to get ready for school.

If you put us guys up against a wall, we, who were around the table last night and looked at us, you'd never figure in a thousand years we were like that at one time. Then again, put a bunch of any 48-55 year old guys up against the wall and we all sort of look like a bunch of harmless Andy Gumps whose social life revolves around the church, work and BBQs.

In truth....that's what we are now...but there was a time...