***Daydream Visions Of Adamsville Beach, Circa 1964-For “The Girl On The Rocks”-North Adamsville Class of 1964-Take Five   

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman       

I have been dedicating some of my sketches to various people. When I first wrote this one in 2008 I had not one in particular in mind, just everybody who had ever longed for the sight and sound of the sea whether living right next to the shore like I had many times in my life or some wistful forlorn landlocked child sailor dreaming of adventure out on the high seas from somewhere in Kansas, but when I recently rewrote it I did have the “girl on the rocks” in mind. That designation reflecting an image I have of an old female classmate who I “met” on our 50^th anniversary reunion Class of 1964 website in her high school days, her troubled high school days with family troubles very similar to my own, her own share of the then standard brands of teen angst and alienation, and her ambivalent attitude toward life.

For me as a troubled teenager going to Adamsville Beach helped calm my nerves, helped me forget the home life miseries for a while and to have some unarticulated oneness with the ocean, now maybe spiffed up with Zen significance but then purely to escape the household noise. For her, for the girl on the rocks, she felt that same feeling when she went to a local spot on the other side of the bay from where I would walk near her house at low tide and just sitting on those lonesome rocks listening to the waves spill by her on their way to shore.

So whatever else we, she and I, may agree or disagree on, whatever else including unfortunate distances may set us apart these days we are kindred in that good night. I did not know her at all during my time at North although I know I saw her around, had asked about her to guys who knew and found out she was “unapproachable” by raggedy guys from the wrong side of the tracks like me and left it at that and moved on to the next fantasy girl possibility as was the standard operating procedure then, and probably gave her one of my furtive glances that I was famous, locally famous, school famous for giving young women I was interested in at the time. I do not know her now much better after some sporadic communication, and after we have again lost contact, but I felt her presence very strongly when I was rewriting this thing earlier this year. So here it is.

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Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, and the Quincy Old Sailor’s Home (and cemetery about a quarter of a mile away, closed now but the final resting place for many a sea-faring man, known and unknown, resting place of many a man who dreamed in his youth of adventures on the high seas and got bilge, barnacles, some oil-stained stink, some humongous waves that almost capsized his ship, maybe an off-hand torpedo hit if he saw service during wartime, short rations, short pay, a couple of land-side jack-rolls when he was drunk and the “clap” more than once when he hit those woman hungry ports-of-call and in the end the sweet landward smell of fresh mown grass and a granite memory stone to while away eternity). Yes, those names and places from the old housing project down in South Adamsville where I came of age surely evoke imagines of the sea, of long ago sailing ships, and of desperate, high stakes battles fought off shrouded, mist-covered coasts by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And agile enough to keep it. (What would I know of the real sea work, the bilge, barnacles, some oil-stained stink, some humongous waves that almost capsized one’s ship, maybe an off-hand torpedo, short rations, short pay, a couple of land-side jack-rolls, and the “clap” more than once when he hit those woman hungry ports-of-call).

Almost from my first wobbly, halting baby steps down at “the projects” I have been physically drawn to the sea, a seductive, foam-flecked siren call that has never left me. Moreover, ever since I was a toddler my imagination has been driven by the sea as well. Not so much of pirates and prizes but of the power of nature, for good or evil. The gentle sea bringing passengers across great distances before humankind sought the speed of the air for such ventures and the angry sea spewing her refuge over the land, laughing at seawalls, break-waters, and levies when she had her wanting habits on. Leaving devastation as her memorial.

Of course, anyone with even a passing attachment to Adamsville has to have had an almost instinctual love of the sea; and a fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turns her back on us. Days when the fugitive waves respect nothing in front of them surging over crumbling seawalls, laying waste to helpless abandoned houses, and flooding roadways from Malibu to Adamsville Boulevard (oops, now Adamsville Shore Drive). And moonless nights when she shows her furious face to sea- craft from dingy to super-tanker leaving drowning men to ponder their lives in those long last moments. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But enough of those imaginings. If being determines consciousness, and if you love the ocean, then it did not hurt to have been brought up in Adamsville with its ready access to the bay and water on three sides anchored by its longest shoreline stretch, Adamsville Beach of blessed memory.

The glint of silver off the Long Island Bridge when the sun hit the steel structure at a certain time of sunny day, usually morning making one wonder if a second sun had appeared in the sky until one sights a maverick bus streaming along taking poor, misbegotten passengers to a night’s sleep or closed off doors to a room with no end. The early morning winter sun coming up over the horizon on the bay. The Boston skyline still showing the signs that the city is livable at dusk (pre-Marina Bay times when there was an unimpeded view). Well, I could go on and on with my beach view memories but the one thing that mattered for me in any season or any weathers was the word “escape.”  Adamsville Beach can serve as a metaphor for that idea. I do not know about you and your family but I had a very rocky time growing up and certainly by the time I got to high school I was in desperate need of a sanctuary. It is no accident that I (and my old running mate also in desperate need of sanctuary as well, Brad Badger) spent a fair amount of time there. It may be hard to believe looking at its disheveled  sands and tepid waves aimlessly splashing to shore seen with today's older eyes after recent trips there along its now hallowed shoreline and after having seen many more spectacular ocean settings but then the place provided a few happy memories, now old hazy, happy memories.

For the North Adamsville Class of 1964 one cannot discuss Adamsville Beach properly without reference to such spots such as Howard Johnson's famous landmark ice cream stand about half-way up the beach from the Causeway (where now stands a woe-begotten clam shack of no repute, serving half-hearted barbecued hamburgers and flown in fish to hungry patrons trying to enjoy the breeze if that is up that day). For those who are clueless as to what I speak of, or have only heard about it in mythological terms from older relatives, or worst, have written it off as just another ice cream joint I have provided a link to a Wikipedia entry for the establishment below. Know this: many a hot, muggy, sultry, sweaty summer evening was spent in line impatiently, and perhaps, on occasion, beyond impatience, waiting for one of those 27 (or was it 28?) flavors to cool off with. In those days the prize went to cherry vanilla in a sugar cone (backup: frozen pudding). I will not bore the reader with superlative terms and the “they don’t make them like they use to” riff, especially for those who only know “HoJo’s” from the later, orange pale imitation franchise days out on some forsaken great American West-searching highway, but at that moment I was in very heaven.

Moving on down the boulevard how could one forget the 19 cent hotdogs sold on the beach a few doors down at Maggie’s. (That can’t be right, I must be misremembering, maybe it was nineteen dollars, nothing in this wicked old world ever cost 19 cents. Ever.)  Or those stumbling, fumbling, fierce childish efforts, bare-footed against all motherly caution about the sting of the dreaded jellyfish, pail and shovel in hand, to dig for seemingly non-existent clams down toward the Merrymount end of the beach at the just slightly oil-slicked, sulfuric low tide. (By the way the jellyfish are still there in all their glory and please, take mother's advice, do not step on them, they might be poisonous.) And one could always see some parent parading a group of kids down to the flats. Generally staying for a couple of hours before high tide, and after as well, and that parent always seemed to have had snacks and drinks in tow in an all-purpose cooler.

Elsewhere along the shoreline older kids swam, dug dream castles in the sand to be washed away by an indifferent tide, played catch in the water with a rubber ball, and when they finally got tired, could be seen laying on towels strewn every which way listening to WRKO or WMEX on the transistor radio. Listening to Earth Angel, Jonny Angel, Teen Angel, Who’s Sorry Now, I Want To Be Wanted, Suzie Q and the like. [I know this is a geriatric site but there may be a stray child who sees grandma’s computer glued to this page, you know some young member of generations X, Y or Z, who may not be familiar with the term “transistor radio.” For their benefit that was a little battery-powered gizmo that allowed you to listen to music, the “devil's music,” to hear one’s parents tell the story, rock 'n' roll to us, without them going nuts. And no, sorry, you could not download whatever you wanted. Yes, I know, the Stone Age.]

Farther down the shore came overpowering memories of the smell of charcoal-flavored hamburgers on those occasional family barbecues (when one in a series of old jalopies that my father drove worked well enough to get us there) at the then just recently constructed barren old Treasure Island (now named after some fallen Marine, and now fully-forested, such is time) that were some of the too few times when my family acted as a family. The memory evoked too of roasted, really burnt, sticky marshmallows sticking to the roof of my mouth. Ouch!

But those thoughts and smells are not the only ones that interest me today. No trip down memory lane would be complete without at least a passing reference to high school Adamsville Beach. The sea brings out many emotions: humankind's struggle against nature (we all had first-hand knowledge of that when the weak-kneed seawalls protecting the beach were swept over when Mother Nature threw one of her hurricanes our way and cut off the road, cut us off from the civilized world), some Zen notions of oneness with the universe (although what did we know of such exotic ideas except maybe in books and what would we care of that kind of oneness when the oneness that counted was some unattainable he or she), the calming effect of the thundering waves (making me and others I have talked to life-long converts to  the proposition that no human made noise should be any louder than the splashing waves treating the shoreline as if one were in a cathedral. Naturally that idea comes up against, at least in the old days before everybody got technology quiet, some damn hooligan boom box blaring out rock ‘n’ rock and hip hop nation music, drunken teenagers trying to make a mark in the world by being as loud as possible assuming that is the ticket to attention in a world not watching and the ramble amble of passing traffic that interrupts the endless ocean sleep), thoughts of immortality (some primordial longing to return to mother sea, some womb configuration and let’s leave it at that because we are dealing with some DNA connection far beyond what little literary effect I am trying for here), and so on.

But the sea, being around the vastness of it (maybe not at old Adamsville but surely in places like LaJolla, Big Sur, Peggy’s Cove, Bar Harbor and Kitty Hawk to name a few) also brings out the primordial longings for companionship. And no one longs for companionship more than teenagers. So the draw of the ocean is not just in its cosmic appeal but hormonal as well. Mind you, however, I am not discussing here the nighttime Adamsville Beach the time of "parking" (you know guys and gals getting together in all seasons to fog up some father-borrowed car and learning the rudiments of getting heated about another person, beyond that use your imagination or check in with your ancient memory bank) and the "submarine races." Our thoughts are now pure as the driven snow. We will save that discussion for another time when any kids and grand-kids are not around. Here we will confine ourselves to the day-time beach. (Although I still have a long-standing nighttime-driven  question now grown fifty years hoary with age- Why, while driving down the boulevard on some cold November night could one notice most of the cars parked there all fogged up? What, were their heaters broken?)

[For the heathens, the pure of heart, the clueless, those who just got in from Kansas or some such place, or the merely forgetful, going to watch the “submarine races” was a localism meaning going, via car, preferable your own car and not some borrowed father’s car to be returned by midnight no later, down to the beach at night, hopefully on a very dark night, with, for a guy, a girl and, well, start groping each other, and usually more, a lot more, if you were a lucky guy and the girl was hot, while occasionally coming up for air and looking for that mythical submarine race to start out in the bay. Many guys (and gals) had their first encounter with sex that way if the Monday morning before school boys’ lav talk, and maybe girls’ lav talk too, was anything but hot air.]

Virtually from the day school got out for summer vacation I headed for the beach. And not just any section of that beach but the section directly between the North Adamsville Yacht Club and Adamsville Boat Club. Most of the natural landmarks are still there, as well as those poor, weather-beaten yacht clubs that I spend many a summer gazing on in my fruitless search for that aforementioned teenage companionship. Now did people, or rather teenage boys, go to that locale so that they could watch all the fine boats at anchor? Hell, no. Or was this the best swimming location on the beach? Hell no. This is where every knowledgeable boy had heard all the "babes" were. We were, apparently, under the influence of Beach Blanket Bingo or some such early 1960s Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicillo teenage beach film. (For those who are again clueless this was a classic Hollywood “boy meets the girl next door” saga that the industry lives and dies for and apparently capable of spinning off endless variations of, except the action is at the beach...)

Get this though. For those who expected a movie-like happy ending to this piece, you know, where I meet a youthful "Ms. Right" to the strains of Sea of Love, forget it. I will keep the gory details short. As fate would have it there may have been "babes" aplenty down there on the shore but not for this lad. I don't know about you but I was just too socially awkward (read: tongue-tied) to get up the nerve to talk to girls (female readers substitute “boys” here). And on reflection, if the truth were to be known, I would not have known what to do about the situation in any case if I had succeeded in getting any place with a girl. No job, no money, and, most importantly, no car for a date to watch one of those legendary "submarine races" that we have all agreed that we will not discuss here. But I can hardly fault the sea for that.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Johnson's)