Independence Day

 

Once upon a time there was a storyline, an agreed-upon narrative.  We may have had different ideas about America, but I think we made some basic assumptions.  Of course, that’s hindsight.  Looking back, with a more jaundiced eye, we see it colored by class, and race, and money.

I spent part of every summer at my grandmother’s place on Salters Point, in South Dartmouth, below Cape Cod.  On the 4^th of July, old Major Codman blew on a conch shell, and all the kids lined up in costume, for the Horribles Parade.  I quite honestly hadn’t thought of that in many, many years – it just popped into my head, unbidden.  I remember my sister, one year, with an old 78 tied on her head, and a smooth beach stone taped to it, probably six or seven years old, going to the parade as Rock’n’Roll. 

Some years later, driving down from Canada, I crossed into the U.S. and found myself along coastal Maine, another place I’d spend summers, with each of the small seaside towns having at least hung bunting up, for the 4^th, but more usually decorating the volunteer fire department’s pump truck, for a one-vehicle parade.  I got as far as Hancock, where there’s a small village square on Route 1, actually a triangle, where the old Bangor & Aroostook crosses the highway, and in that grassy triangle is a modest obelisk, inscribed with the names of Hancock boys who went to war in 1941.  My uncle Charlie’s name is on there, and his close pal Hugh Joy; they came back, after the war, and started a garage and repair shop together.  The names of the men from Hancock who didn’t come back are marked with a small star.

I lived in Provincetown, out at the end of Cape Cod, for almost fifteen years.  They had a pretty sizable parade for a town of three thousand people.  (That’s the number, year ‘round - in the summer season, July and August, it seems like ten thousand people.)  Anyway, the fire trucks and the EMT’s and the cops, and school floats, and the VFW, and a marching band, and drag queens and local businesses and just people playing dress-up.  It’s colorful, and fun, and expressive.  I like to think it celebrates an America we’re all a part of. 

Going back, again, to when I was growing up, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, of my childhood was perhaps a parochial place, the college presence well-established, but not so you really noticed.  I didn’t.  Harvard Square, for me, was about the Brigham’s ice cream and the Woolworth’s Five and Dime.  Woolworth’s had a lunch counter, and notions – thread and buttons and needles, potholders and aprons – and in the back they sold goldfish and guppies, and you could carry one home in a plastic bag (very carefully), to put in the aquarium. 

I clearly remember the narrative changing.  Down in Greensboro, North Carolina, four young black college students sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, and when they ordered donuts and coffee, were refused service.  This turned into a nationwide boycott, and in Cambridge, we stopped getting hot dogs at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. 

Four Young Men in Greensboro

Salters, and Hancock Point, and Provincetown, these places conjure up what we imagine to be small-town virtues, and even the Cambridge that I grew up in seemed pretty small to me.  I don’t think that means unsophisticated, but in our minds, at least, it probably stands in for less complicated or adversarial.  The world is confusing, and threatening.  We can take refuge in easy answers, or simple storylines, a sanitized, imaginary past. 

I want to think we’ve outgrown that, that generic refuge.  I want to believe we can tell ourselves more complicated or ambiguous stories.  America is large, it holds multitudes.

Deadlines

Somebody famous, Sir Walter Raleigh, or one of those guys, on his way to the block, said there was nothing like a date with the headsman’s axe to sharpen your wit.

Which got me thinking about deadlines.

Both literally, and otherwise.

For instance. We here, at SleuthSayers, all collaborated on a mystery anthology last year – titled Murder, Neat – with each of us contributing a story. I, of course, dragged my feet until the last minute. I had a title, and the set-up, which is nought but bare bones; I didn’t have a clue what kind of pickle I planned to put my guy in, let alone how to get him out of it. And then, the deadline loomed, and it was like that old joke, “With one tremendous leap… Off to the races.

In another case, though, I missed the deadline for the Black Orchid submission, at the end of May, this year. I think I can explain the difference. With the Murder, Neat story, “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” I had a tight internal timeline – the arc of the story itself is only a couple of hours – and a single setting. It was a physical trap, with the clock running out. In other words, writing the story was like winding a watch. But the Black Orchid novella was a bigger, shaggier animal. I wanted the story to open up, across a wider canvas, I wanted you to breathe in, and fill your lungs, to feel the whole of a landscape. I wanted that room to breathe, myself, to give the story interior space, as well as outside. From my immediate perspective, I don’t know whether I’ve pulled it off, I’m still too close, but my point is that one kind of story benefits from pressure, and another doesn’t.

Harper Barnes

It’s partly about narrative compression.

What is it you want to say? Say it, and get it done. This is what newspaper people always tell you. Lead with a jab, soften ‘em up with some combinations, finish with a roundhouse punch. Decades ago, I wrote a movie column for an alternative Boston weekly, the Phoenix. Often as not, I was turning in my material right as the paper was going to bed, locked in for the press run. I remember, one night, I was there in the empty offices, in the Back Bay, me and my editor – Harper Barnes, a real newspaper guy, who’d made his bones with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – with me at a borrowed desk, pounding out copy on a big Royal manual, the floor shaking, I was punching the keys so hard. Typing MORE at the bottom of each page, full caps, yanking them out, never a backward glance, and on the last page, typing em-dash, 30, em-dash. Old newspaper thing, from the days of movable type, to let the typesetters know they’d hit the end of the copy. (Even if the Phoenix was photo-typeset.)

Were those columns back then any good?

I’d like to think they were literate, at least. I’ll tell you this. Banging on that typewriter, handing my pages across the desk to Harper, no hesitating, no second thoughts, no sucking on my knuckles for inspiration, nothing but my ass in that hard chair, I felt like I was Jimmy-God-damn-Breslin at the New York Post taking on Carmine DeSapio and Tammany Hall. That good. Never be that good again.

- 30 -

How to Vanish a Car

Previously, David Edgerley Gates mentioned the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge. That brought back memories of the theatre and a sports car. Don’t worry, I can connect the two. I can even tell you how to spirit an automobile out of a closed parking lot.

Brockton Historical Notes of major importance
1896, Brockton became the first city in the country to abolish railroad grade crossings. 2011, Brockton doubled the city's Santa Claus hat-wearing record. (source: Wikipedia)

In the 1970s, I lived in the scenic town of Brockton. For those who might not know Eastern Massachusetts, Brockton’s an industrial site south of Boston, having neither the charm nor historical significance of surrounding settlements. Brockton was named after a British Army officer, Isaac Brock, known for ignoring United States sovereignty, kicking Detroit’s ass in the War of 1812, and never setting foot in the village named after him. Naming the hamlet after one of our nation’s enemies was considered a step up since previously the burg had unimaginatively borrowed the name of a neighboring town.

Once known for shoe production, Brockton’s major output has been Brockton Girls.™ As explained to me, Brockton girls are known for their toughness and making roller derby dames tremble and cry like third graders. Seriously. It should be noted that no wussy member of Daesh/ISIS has ever tangled with a Brockton girl and lived to tell about it.

[Brockton letters of complaint should be addressed to Velma@idontcare.com]

This cultural background should give you an idea why I liked visiting Cambridge, Boston, Plymouth, Buzzard’s Bay or pretty much any place other than Brockton.

The Cambridge Culture

After David Edgerley Gates’ article, he and I exchanged notes about the Orson Welles. I asked if he remembered the Exeter Street Theater, my other favorite movie house. David wrote:

I started writing movie columns for the Cambridge Phoenix in late 1970, which is when the Orson Welles, WBCN, and the Tea Party were just getting legs. Boston Tea Party was one of the two big clubs that headlined live bands, aside from theatrical venues. It was started by a guy named Ray Riepen from Kansas City, who also began ’BCN and the Phoenix. Ray brought in a guy named Harper Barnes from St. Louis as editor of the Phoenix. and it was Harper who hired me. I was at the Welles a lot over the next three years or so, the theater, the restaurant, and the film school– there was some talk about my doing a course (film appreciation, something along those lines) but we never firmed it up.

I remember the Exeter well. My family took me when I was little because it was basically a high-end art house and by myself later. That's where we saw Olivier’s Richard III.

My neighborhood theater was the University in Harvard Square (later renamed the Harvard Sq.), sometimes the Brattle, and very occasionally the Eliot, which was further up Mass. Ave. past Porter Sq. and the Sears, so North Cambridge and off my turf. I took the subway downtown all the time, probably from the time I was 8 or 9, to the theaters on Washington St. A misspent youth.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The Orson Welles, the Exeter, and the Brattle were everything the local Cineplex wasn’t. They offered film festivals and celluloid that had withstood the test of time.

My date loved noir and particularly Bogart. If Bogie hadn’t died when she was about seven, Wendy might have arm-wrestled that bitch Bacall for him.

My car at the time was a Saab Sonett III, which looked like a baby Corvette in peculiar green. It was a cute little car. The sobriquet ‘Sonett’ had nothing to do with music but came from the Swedish phrase “Så nätt!” which translates “So neat!”

Despite the fact its roofline came only to my belt buckle, the car easily accommodated my long legs. It attained much better gas mileage than my Land Cruiser and Saab’s front-wheel-drive made for good road-handing. But…

It had frightfully expensive mufflers that rusted out between car washes. With its little Ford V-4 engine, I could buy off-the-shelf Pinto and Mercury Capri parts, but changing the Nº 1 spark plug meant loosening the damned engine mounts. Worst of all, it was a crash magnet. Bostonians are infamously terrible drivers (think citywide dodge’em bumper cars) and they seemed to target the little machine.

The Sonett Saves the Evening

Near the Orson Welles Cinema was a large walled parking lot next to a dry cleaners where I usually parked. This particular evening, we attended a Warner Bros. film festival of World War II propaganda cartoons, Bugs Bunny takes on Hitler, and the like.

The parking lot looked unusually empty, but I didn’t pay particular attention. We strolled to the theatre, enjoyed the show and left around midnight. When we arrived at the parking lot, we were shocked to find a heavy chain across the entrance.

What the hell? Then we saw it: On the back wall hung a sign that said the lot closed when the cleaners closed. After so many years, it seemed selfish to ban visitors from a public lot after hours, but it was their property and perhaps they’d endured problems we didn’t know about.

Damn. I inspected the chain, secured by sturdy bolts. The threads hadn’t been peened down and simple wrenches could have undone them, but I carried no tools in the car. We were nearly an hour away from my house in Brockton and more than an hour from Wendy’s home in Plymouth– 45 miles. A taxi wasn’t feasible. We weren’t even close to a hotel.

We debated options, none of them good. We might have found a pay phone, but we were desperately short of change. No cell phone of course… early mobile phones were just hitting the market, briefcase-size units affordable only to the wealthy.

A fun evening appeared ruined. Worse, we looked forward to a miserable night if we couldn’t find a motel.

And then an idea struck. The back of the Sonett featured kind of a hatchback with a floor covered by heavy carpet. I pulled out the carpet and the floor mats as Wendy climbed in the driver’s seat.

She let in the clutch as I positioned the carpet and mats over the windshield and roof. I raised the chain… it cleared the hood. Wendy eased the car forward. I hefted the heavy steel segments to bypass the wipers. The car inched ahead until the chain met the floor mats covering the upper windscreen. The links tightened. I forced them up.

The car crept onward. The chain, now taut, remained an inch short of clearing the glass; it had maxed out. Still pulling up on it, I put my body weight on the car, cursing the heavy-duty shocks I’d installed.

But as Wendy edged the Sonett ever forward, the swept-back windshield and my muscling the chain up while forcing the car down brought the steel links up to the roofline.

Carefully, ever carefully, its fiberglass top protected by the carpet, Saab slid under the chain. And then…

The worst had passed. We were on the down slope. Now it was a matter of protecting the paint and rear window as the chain slid away.

Whew! We were ebullient, exuberant, joyful to be on our way, but grateful and well aware of our blessed luck and fortunate outcome.

Even so, we would have loved to be flies on the wall (or pigeons on the pavement) when the mean parking lot owners returned and found the vehicle missing. They must have scratched their heads wondering how we spirited that car out of a walled parking lot.

What magic tricks have caught your fancy?