Chapter Four
Unsuspected Friends
The previous fall had been a strange, new experience for me. The graduation to the age of eighteen was fascinating and I felt like the world was new. All of my life I looked back on my life. (I know. How dramatic for one of such a young age to reflect like this.) 1970, 1971, 1972. These years seemed to me like the world was new. The sun seemed brighter, and the air seemed cleaner. As time passed by the world became old, dirtier, and less appealing. Clearly, this is the result of understanding more of the things that go on around you and their respective complexities and complications. No longer, however.
Here at the age of 18, I was seeing what I was made of in some ways. September brought about Texas enthusiasm. October brought about my new job at Toy's R Us working with many great people. During September and October, I began to drive on a regular basis and by November, I was given my mother's 1972 Dodge Dart. Late November and early December had me working very late at the store for the Christmas season. I had stayed up all night long every other night just so that I would not oversleep the next morning. As am 18 years old, I was terrible at answering the alarm clock on short sleep cycles. January was different though. The hectic days and nights of the retail holiday season at a toy department store were over. The Trivial Pursuit, Apple and Commodore 64 computers, and Cabbage Patch Kids Riots were behind us.
January felt dead. This time of year was for me to reflect and envision my place in the universe, or at least that is what I did any other January. This January was no different. I decided one Sunday to take a ride to my cousin Tom's house in Northville, Connecticut. My stepfather argued that I should not be driving a car with over one hundred thousand miles on it all over the place before I drove it to Texas. There was not much you could tell me at 18. In my estimation, one hundred thousand miles on this car was nothing anyway. I was born with confidence in things that below the surface, were in tune with mechanical aptitude. It is just like being able to read body language on a subliminal level. I was not worried.
I drove to New Milford and met Tom at the Barkers department store parking lot. The red and white 1977 Nova was easy enough to spot. The first thing he did which was so characteristic of him was to intensely hold up a red pack of Marlboro Box cigarettes and say, "You see these, not a word to anyone else about them!"
He led us to the little sub-township of Northville. He lived in a one-room apartment in a very old colonial house that was constructed in 1718. The apartment actually had a hand-drawn picture of the house in 1718 on the wall as you entered the apartment on the left. This place had significant charm and I marveled at how the colonial continuity had been done so well, yet somehow inexpensively. It was good to see Tom. We had spent some time last fall up at Lone Oak Campgrounds but he was busy working for Kimberly Clark Inc. swing shift which really trashed his social life.
We played records. Tom and I were severely interested in music. He played some Paul Mc Cartney tunes. He was a big McCartney fan and I was the die-hard Lennon fan. I told him how excited I was that in just a couple of weeks, John Lennon's "Milk and Honey" LP would debut. We recorded music tapes and drank coffee. We talked about short-wave radios and guns too. We stayed up fairly late despite Tom having to work the "A" shift in the morning. We made plans for him to come up to Waterbury when my mother and stepfather went away for the weekend as they do each year in February.
This was a neat visit. Tom and I shared a friendship that spanned years. It began when we were young kids. We met when I was five and he was nine. Tom was a geeky type of info-maniac as a kid interested in Star Trek and spaceships and radios. As much as I would like to say that at five I would be interested in these things, I was not. Not understanding the exceptionally of these interests one tends to wonder what is up with the person who is interested in these things.
Years passed and by the mid-seventies, I really began to understand Tom. He was very seriously interested in Paul Mc Cartney and Wings. The Wings thing was about as big as it got in the mid-seventies. I really liked the music. We had this in common. He became a mentor in the world of music and we had many long conversations about radio and music despite the fact that I was merely twelve and he was sixteen. This grew into him coming up to the campground with me every weekend in the fall of 1982 as he became one of the boys at the campground.
I did not see Tom but a couple of times in 1983 until the latter half of the summer. Then he was once again with us all the time. His intellectual aspirations complemented our group of people. Some people may have thought that with his being two to four years older than the rest of us he was just there to buy beer. Not so. In Canaan, Connecticut back then I could walk into the grocery store and buy five cases of beer and no one would ever ask for ID.
Tom and I awoke that Monday morning. Echoes of McCartney's music played in my head from last night. We headed down the road, each in our own vehicles to a roadside store for a hot cup of coffee. From there, Tom went to work and I headed back over the mountain through Bridgewater, Morris, Woodbury, et cetera.
The intellectual stimulation of last night's conversation still was heavy in my thoughts. The mountains were covered by a very heavy but scenic fog. The mist formed fountains from the mountain tops. Splendid. The action in the hills was like the pronunciation of what my soul was doing this morning. Things were so much clearer than they had been yesterday. Individuality was raining down upon me and it felt like freedom but I could not understand it. I was full of fire and creativity. The road was nearby and I could feel it and yet not know what it was. It was a call that I would become all too familiar with for the rest of my life.
I arrived home in Waterbury to write a piece called "Fountains in the Mountains." It was nowhere as stupid as its name and although it no longer exists, seems in my memory to be somewhat like "Taking What is at Hand" a piece I wrote on March 4, 1985, the day of the fateful Dodge Space-Time Disaster. I was certainly buried in the depths of winter. Things became in the winter, how should I say, "Heavy". My thought process was always so deep at this time of year. Sometimes I write a lot about one thing alone, Time. Time was my best friend and my arch-enemy. The following pieces of the work called "I Can't Hide" show all too well what I was thinking of too often...
Everything passes by slowly.
There is too much wasted time.
Even when we are awake there is no sunshine.
I can't hide from the stars in the sky.
They bring me back to the summer night sky.
I can't hide from the clock in the cupboard.
I can't hide from the calendar behind the closet door.
Reaching out for you I am shot and dead.
Just the same as yesterday, so many had to pay.
I can't hide from the bitter cold.
I can't hide from getting so old.
Everything is a mess. You will never get home.
So you can't feel sorry, you've got to make it alone.
On and on it went not only here but throughout my life. A formidable struggle with time. It took me many years to realize my struggle with time is no coincidence. It would seem that I am very conscious of its binding down restraint on things I somehow already am aware of. In the previous piece, I am convinced that since I am writing so emotionally about something so unlike what was happening to me in January of 1984 I am actually writing about future events in my life. The parallels are too startling to ignore. There is something about the confines of winter that brings the weight of existence down upon you like nothing else can. I compare this to the weight of mortality during a fierce mid-summer night electrical storm. There are some things in this world that were put there to make us feel small.
It was during this time in January that a strange alliance took place between me and my friend's ex-girlfriend Kathy. Scott and I kind of drifted apart right after New Year because although he and I were hired together in September at Toys R Us, he was laid off with all of the Christmas help that was hired, but my job in maintenance was not seasonal. I know he did not blame me, but he wasn't happy about it either.
Kathy was attractive and fun to be around. She was not like the typical Waterbury type that I chose to stay away from through high school. I began giving her rides home along with her friend Debbie. Nothing special. It was something that happened naturally. We quickly considered each other friends.
I had even talked with Kathy about the possibility of dating Debbie but Debbie was involved at the time. Debbie too was different. Debbie however, did not happen. Kathy and I would continue to spend plenty of time together each day.
My parent's weekend away came and I invited Tom up for the weekend to hang out with me and to go to Cheapskate Records with me. In a conversation on Friday night Tom and I decided that he and I would cruise over to Kathy's house and play a joke on her and tell her that Tom's car, his hot-looking 77 red and white Nova was mine, and that this would be what we would be riding in each day. At its conception, this idea seemed really great.
We drove all around for three-quarters of an hour. Suddenly it was time to return to Kathy's house and I realized that this was not a joke at all, or perhaps a stupid one. I had to tell her the truth and when I did, she looked quite stunned. She took it well, but inside I thought of how she must think I'm some sort of idiot. We left and I could not shake my feeling of screeching guilt. Tom was empathetic too. I think in the beginning he thought it was a lighthearted prank as did I and now he felt bad for me because he knew I liked Kathy.
Cheapskate Records was a hole in the wall, second floor, one small room outlet where extraordinary treasures in record albums could be found. There was plenty of Lennon and McCartney stuff there which is what drew us into this quaint establishment. The moldy carpets would fill the senses as you walked into the Bank Street business but the quest upon which commenced at this threshold was splendid. If you told this guy who ran the place that you wanted to hear a reggae song recorded by Dean Martin, Julie Andrews, and Ozzy Osbourne in Bangladesh, this boy could come up with it.
Tom and I found some great treasures and brought them back to my house where we played them. Tom decided that he was going to go home a day early. I really did not want him to leave but there was nothing that was going to change the mood now. He had to work Sunday night at Eleven PM and I could not blame him for wanting to be rested for that. I told Tom before he left that I was going to call Kathy and maybe pick her up and make it up to her. Tom told me that he thought this would be a good idea.
Kathy was gracious on the phone and made me feel that what I did was not so bad after all, even though I knew it was. I drove over to her house and picked her up. We cruised around the western side of Waterbury and headed towards Bristol. We went down the darkened Old Waterbury Road. Kathy and I talked and talked. It seemed that we could talk about anything at all. She really opened up to me telling me things that most girls would not tell a guy.
On the way back to Waterbury, Kathy wanted to drive. She did not have a license yet but I let her anyway. We were doing well until an oncoming car with its brights on blinded her and we came within centimeters of the guard rails by the dam. I yelled, "Hey!" In reality, I was yelling at Kathy but it actually appeared, (and quite smoothly I might add) that I was yelling at the other car with the bright lights so rudely left on. This left Kathy at ease and my knee-jerk reaction was nicely camouflaged.
On this mild February night, Kathy and I found that we were quite comfortable with each other. The evening ended at around 11 PM and as she got out of the Dodge she told me to stop by tomorrow if I wanted to.
The following day I picked Kathy up and we drove all over the place talking all the way. Kathy was a big Journey fan. Steve Perry was her idol. John Lennon was mine. We were very different despite our ability to communicate. Kathy loved to drive. We got into this habit where she would sit right next to me and she would steer. This may sound odd but it became a very common thing for us to do. We did have a lot of good times. We spent every day together during the February Vacation. The days were unseasonably warm. We even hit 70 degrees a day or two. The world felt alive and spring just had to be coming early.
The weekend came and I had to work at Toys R Us all day Saturday. On Sunday I picked up Kathy and headed west over the mountains through Woodbury Washington and Bridgewater. I told her it was a secret where I was taking her. We drove all of the way to Tom's house but he was not there. We drove back late that afternoon. We talked even more about deeper subjects, she looked at me, "Boy, are you ever different", she told me as we talked about very personal stuff.
Being 18, there was a part of me that screamed inside, 'You are in the friend zone stupid!" I wondered to myself why couldn't I just be normal! I find it interesting though that in the 80's there seemed to be an unwritten requirement inside a male that said if you were hanging out with a girl, there should be more. She was cute. She was the kind girl who rocked a Journey t-shirt, designer jeans, and white sneakers. In stereotypical 80's movie style, she would knock me off my feet if she opened the door in a beautiful dress. It was her. Being able to relate to females the way that I could seem to be a burden at times. I was raised around so many women, I understood them much more than most males my age. But Kathy and I were friends. It came so naturally, and I am glad it did. It was what we were best at for each other. I remember her with fondness as she does with me. A couple of years ago, we had a conversation over social media 37 years after last seeing each other. I told her, "Every time I hear a Journey song, I think of you." She countered, "Every time I hear a Beatles song, I think of you."
We arrived back in Waterbury and I took Kathy home. Kathy said to me, "You know that I'm moving to Oklahoma City in a couple of months, you should stop down and see me on your way to Texas ." "Sounds great," I told her. An event on the Will Rogers Turnpike in June would make this not possible.
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