“The Next Girl Who Throws Sand In My Face Is…” –With Johnny
Silver’s Sad Be-Bop 1960s Beach Blanket Saga In Mind.
A YouTube film
clip of the Falcons performing You're So Fine.
No question that Jimmy Callahan and his
corner boy comrades, including Sam Lowell, of the old Frankie Riley-led
Salducci’s Pizza Parlor hang-out “up the Downs” (no further explanation is
necessary for any old corner boy who knew pizza parlors were exceptionally good
places to hang your knee against a wall waiting, well just waiting for whatever
might come up for any others it was nearly impossible to be a corner boy if you
did not have a corner and that should be enough on this matter) from the day
high school got out for the summer in the early 1960s drew a bee-line straight
to the old-time Adamsville Beach of blessed memory. One day recently Jimmy had
been thinking back to those times, back a half century at least, as he walked
along the beach at Big Sur and had been telling his girlfriend, Miranda, that
his love affair with the sea started almost from the day he was born near that
beach, a beach that still held his sway although he had seen, and was seeing
right there with her better beaches since then. (As far as that girlfriend
designation goes with Miranda Jimmy always wondered what the heck do you call
somebody whom you are not married to but are intimate with who is along with
you pushing the wrong side of sixty, so Jimmy’s simple girlfriend it is until
somebody comes up with something better that “significant other,” what the hell
does that mean, “consort,” like he/they were royalty or something or “partner,”
like you were ready for incorporation rather than romance.)
The old Adamsville beach with its
marshlands anchoring each end, its stone-laden sands uncomfortable to sit on,
its rendezvous teen meet-up yacht clubs, its well-sat upon seawalls, and its
thousand and one night stories of late night trysts in fugitive automobiles and
while on skimpy beach blankets, its smoldering fried clams at the Clam Shack
fit for a king or queen, its Howard Johnson’s many-flavored ice creams still
held memories wherever he was in later life.
Although from what Red Rowley, an old
corner boy comrade, had told Jimmy a while back when they had touched base for
a minute in Sweeney’s Funeral Parlor over in landlocked Clintondale a couple of
towns away after the death of a Jimmy family member the old beach had seen
serious erosion, serious stinks and serious decay of the already in their day
ancient seawalls and no longer held the fancy of the young who back in the day wanted
to go parking there at night to “watch the submarine races.” (For the clueless
that is an old local custom gag because looking for midnight submarines off
shore was not what was going on in the back seat of some Wally’s car.) Also the
beach no longer served as a coming of age spot for winter-weary guys watching
winter-weary well-tanned girls in skimpy bikinis between the yacht clubs hot
spot for such activity. In fact Red said that last time he checked on a hot
July summer’s day at high noon nobody, young or old, was in that sacred spot.
Red Rowley who was the youngest boy in
the Rowley household and who had been afraid of girls, not closet gay or gay afraid,
but just afraid of girls and their ways had like a lot of Irish guys who took
their stern religious upbringing too seriously never married and had stayed in
town the whole time, stayed in the same house, and once his mother’s health
declined after his father died never thought to leave. So Red could, as an old
fixture like the street lights, see what changes had occurred around town. And
he would ask young people, some of who were interested in talking to him, what
they were up to, what they knew about the old time customs of the high school
and of the town.
Hell, Red said, the young guys in the
neighborhood didn’t know what he was talking about when he mentioned “watching
the submarine races,” that old code word for getting in the back seat of an
automobile (or if car-less and desperate on a skimpy beach blanket against that
stony sand) with a girl and seeing what was what, coming up for air to check
for any midnight submarine sightings. One guy even asked how one could see a
submarine at night if one was in the neighborhood of the beach. Jesus. Also
they, and here Red meant both sexes, had no idea on this good green earth that
those now old tumble-down yacht clubs in dire need of serious paint jobs after
the slamming of the seas and the furious winds had done their work had been the
site of many a daytime planning for the night heat sessions. Were clueless that
guys would ogle girls there, thought it kind of, what did one of them, one of
the girls, call it, yeah, sexist. Jesus doubled.
Red, by the way, was one of those
ancient Irish Catholic corner boys who had stayed in town to help mother in
order to have clean socks and regular six o’clock suppers without the bother of
matrimony but also like Jimmy, hell, like Sam Lowell and every guy who breathed
their first breaths off an off-hand sea breeze, also stayed to be near the
ocean too. But Red had mainly watched the town change from an old way station
for the Irish and Italians to the South Shore upward mobile digs further south to
a “stay put” moving from the big city immigrant community which he was not
particularly happy about since he could not speak any of the new languages
(frankly in high school he had serious trouble with the English language) or
understand the cultural differences when they, the collective mix of immigrants
none from European homelands, did not bend at the knees in homage on Saint
Patrick’s Day. But Red’s trouble with the new world of America (not really so
new since these shores since the sixteen hundreds had seen wave after wave of
immigrants just back then they had been from Europe, or had been Africa branded),
or the real condition of Adamsville Beach was not what had exercised Jimmy on
that trip to Big Sur with Miranda but about the old beach days, the now
fantastic beach days.
Jimmy had chuckled to himself when he told
Miranda- “Did we go to said beach to be “one” with our homeland, the sea? You
know to connect with old King Neptune, our father, the father that we did not
know, who would work his mysterious furies in good times and bad. Or to connect
as one with denizens of the deep, fishes, whales, plankton, stuff like that.
No.” Then he went down the litany of other possible motives just as a little
good-humored exercise. “Did we go to admire the boats and other things floating
by? The fleet of small sailboats that dotted the horizon in the seemingly
never-ending tacking to the wind or the fewer big boats, big ocean-worthy boats
that took their passenger far out to sea, maybe to search for whales or other
sea creatures? No.” “Did we go to get a little breeze across our sun-burned and
battered bodies on a hot and sultry August summer day?” Jimmy, a blushed red
lobster in short sunlight who was sensitive about that red skin business
declared a loud “No,” although Red, Frankie, Peter, and Josh, his other comrade
corner boys less sensitive to the sun would have answered, well, maybe a
little.
Jimmy said that he soon tired of those
non-reasons, this little badger game, and got to the heart of the matter,
laughed to himself as he thought and then mentioned to Miranda-“Come on now we
are talking about sixteen, maybe seventeen, year old guys. They, every
self-respecting corner boy who could put towel and trunks together, which meant
everybody except Johnny Kelly who had to work during the day in the summer to
help support his mother and fatherless younger brothers and sisters , were
there, of course, because there were shapely teeny-weeny bikini-clad girls [young
women, okay, let’s not get technical about that pre-woman’s liberation time]
sunning themselves like peacocks for all the world, all the male teenage North
Adamsville world, the only world that mattered to guys and gals alike, to see.
Had been sunning themselves in such a manner since bikinis and less replaced
those old-time bathing suits that were slightly less cumbersome that the street
clothes you saw in your old grandmother’s scrapbook. And guys had been
hormonally-charged looking at them that long as well.”
“Here is the catch thought,” Jimmy
continued. “They, and they could be anywhere from about junior high to the
first couple of years in college although they tended to separate themselves
out by age bracket were sunning themselves and otherwise looking very desirable
and, well, fetching, in not just any old spot wherever they could place a
blanket but strictly, as tradition dictated, tradition seemingly going back
before memory, between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. So,
naturally, every testosterone-driven teenage lad who owned a bathing suit, and
some who didn’t, were hanging off the floating dock right in front of said
yacht clubs showing off, well, showing off their prowess to the flower of North
Adamsville maidenhood.” And said show-offs included, Jimmy, of course, Frankie
Riley (when he was not working early mornings at the old A&P Supermarket
and did not show until later in the afternoon), his faithful scribe, Pete
Markin (who seemingly wrote down for posterity every word Frankie uttered and
some that he did not, and others including the, then anyway, “runt of the
litter,” Johnny Silver. And Sam Lowell too.
It is Johnny’s sad beach blanket bingo
tale that Jimmy had suddenly thought about when he had driven pass the old
beach one day to confirm Red’s recent beach judgment mentioned at the funeral
parlor and wanted to relate to Miranda as the over the top waves pummeled the
scarred rock faces in the secluded reaches of Big Sur to give her an idea of
what the sea meant to a lot of guys he knew. If, in the Jimmy telling, it all
sounds kind of familiar, too familiar even to old time non-corner boys, to those
who do not live near the oceans of the world, to the younger set who may have a
different view of life than what carried the day back then, it is because, with
the exception of the musical selections, it is. This is how it all started
though:
“The next girl who throws sand in my
face is going get it,” yelled Johnny Silver to no one in particular as he came
back to the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boy summer beach front acreage just
in front of the seawall facing, squarely facing, the midpoint between the North
Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. “For the clueless,” and Jimmy assumed
Miranda was in that vast company so he took pains to spell it out, “the corner
boy world in North Adamsville, hell, maybe every corner boy world everywhere meant
that you had certain “turf” issues in your life not all of them settled with
fists, although an issue like some alien corner boy looking the wrong way at
one of the Salducci girls could only be resolved that way.” But mostly it was a
matter of traditions, traditional spots which the “unwritten law” held for
certain groups and the spot between the boat clubs was theirs, and had been the
“property” of successive generations of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys
since at least the end of World War II when Frankie Riley’s father and his
corner boys, some very tough boys transplanted from South Boston to work in the
shipyards and some restless guys who had like Frankie’s father served in the
war but were not ready to settle down “claimed” the spot.”
Johnny, after having his say, fumed at
no one in particular as the sounds of Elvis Presley’s Loving You came
over Frankie Riley’s transistor radio and had wafted down to the sea, almost like
a siren call to teenage love. Then one of those “no one in particulars,” Pete
Markin replied, “What did you expect, Johnny? That Katy Larkin is too tall, too
pretty and just flat-out too foxy for a runt like you. I am surprised you are
still in one piece. And I would mention, as well, that her brother, ‘Jimmy
Jukes,’ does not like guys, especially runt guys with no muscles bothering his
sister.” Johnny came back quickly with the usual, “Hey, I am not that small and
I am growing, growing fast so Jimmy Jukes can eat my… ” But Johnny halted just
in time as one Jimmy Jukes, James Allen Larkin, halfback hero of many a North
Adamsville fall football game running opponent defensive players raggedy in his
wake, came perilously close to Johnny and then veered off like Johnny was
nothing, nada, nunca, nothing. And after Jimmy Jukes was safely out of sight,
and Frankie flipped the volume dial on his radio louder as the Falcons’ You’re
So Fine came on heralding Frankie’s attempt by osmosis to lure a certain
Betty Ann McCarthy, another standard brand fox in the teenage girl be-bop
night, his way Johnny poured out the details of his sad saga.
Seems that Katy Larkin was in one of
Johnny’s classes, biology he said, and one day, one late spring day Katy, out
of the blue, asked him what he thought about Buddy Holly who had passed away in
crash several years before, well before he reached his potential as the new
king of the be-bop rock night. Johnny answered that Buddy was “boss,”
especially his Everyday, and that got
them talking, but only talking, almost every day until the end of school. Of
course, Johnny, runt Johnny, didn’t have the nerve, not nearly enough nerve to
ask a serious fox like Katy out, big brother or not, before school let out for
the summer. Not until that very day when he got up the nerve to go over to her
blanket, a blanket that also had Sara Bigelow and Tammy Kelly on board, and as
a starter asked Katy if she liked Elvis’ That’s
When The Heartache Begins.
Katy answered quickly and rather curtly
(although Johnny did not pick up on that signal) that it was “dreamy the way
Elvis sang it, but sad when you think about all the trouble guys bring when
they mess with another boy’s girl.” Then Johnny’s big moment came and he
blurted out, “Do you want to go to the Surf Dance Hall with me Saturday night?
Crazy Lazy is the DJ and the Rockin’ Ramrods are playing?” And as the reader
knows, or should be presumed to know, Johnny’s answer was a face full of sand.
And that sad, sad beach saga is the end of another teen angst moment. So to the
strains coming from Tammy’s radio of Robert and Johnny’s We Belong Together we will move along.
Well, not quite. It also seems that
Katy Larkin, tall (too tall for Johnny, really), shapely (no question of “really”
about that), and don’t forget foxy Katy Larkin had had a “crush” since they had
first started talking in class on one John Raymond Silver if you can believe
that. She was miffed, apparently more than somewhat, that Johnny had not asked
her out before school got out for the summer. That “more than somewhat”
entailed throwing sand in Johnny’s face when he did get up the nerve to ask. And
nothing else happened between them for the rest of the summer, except Johnny
always seemed kind of miserable when he leaned up against the wall in front of
Salducci’s to confer with his corner boys about life being kind of crazy. But
get this- on the first day of school, while Johnny was turning his radio off
and putting it in his locker just before school started, after having just
listened to the Platters One In a Million
for the umpteenth time, Katy Larkin “cornered” (Johnny’s term) Johnny and said
in a clear, if excited voice, “I’m sorry about that day at the beach last
summer.” And then in the teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all women imperative,
“You are taking me to the Fall All-Class Mixer and I will not take ‘no’ for an
answer.”
Well, what is a guy to do when that
teenage girl imperative, hell, maybe all women imperative voice commands. After
that Johnny started to re-evaluate his attitude toward beach sand and thought
maybe, after all, it was just a girl being playful. In any case, Johnny had
grown quite a bit that summer and it turned out that Katy Larkin was not too
tall, not too tall at all, for Johnny Silver to take to the mixer, or anywhere
else she decided she wanted to go. “
Here is what Jimmy told Miranda that
Big Sur day to put a philosophical twist on the whole episode fifty years
later. After stopping his car toward the
middle of Adamsville Beach, the place between the two yacht clubs where he and
the Salducci corner boys hung out, the two clubs whose appearance that day spoke
to a need of paint and other fixing up, the place that had stirred his memoires
that day Jimmy Callahan thought Red had it all wrong, all wrong indeed, it had
nothing to do with the condition of the clubs, the beach, the sand, the waves
or the boats. Mr. John Raymond Silver and Ms. Katy Silver (nee Larkin), now of
Naples, Florida, are proof of that statement.
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