Hamlin Beach

It began as a very ordinary day at the tail end of May. I’d been home from college for about 2 weeks, and had just begun my quintessential summer job mowing grass around the electrical substations of Western New York. It was a high paying job ($8.90 / hr) that my Dad had managed to get me working at Niagara Mohawk, his employer of 35+ years. It would be a hot, dry summer in 1988, the temperatures would set records, and the creeks would dry up. I would spend my days driving in circles around Western New York, from the hills of Cowlesville, north to Medina, east to Brockport, and south to the shores of Hemlock Lake. It was an enormous expanse of country to cover in a company pickup truck with 2 others, pulling a trailer loaded with mowers, gas cans, trimmers, and the tools of our trade. By July the grass has burned out to straw gold, but our work continued, making the rounds of rural back roads from substation to substation, tending to the weeds, and holding back nature from the electron laden arteries of civilization.

In some ways it was the best job I had ever had. At first I had considered the painting crew as the pay was around $12 / hr, mostly due to the inherent danger of climbing the electrical towers. But in the end, my fear of heights got the better of me, and caused me to chicken out. It’s just as well. My friends on the crew complained about the long hot days in full coveralls, burning in the sun and “bitch-a-mastic” paint, as they worked their way through the mosquito infested swamps of Bergen and Alabama. By contrast, my days were spent driving the idyllic farm roads of Western New York, familiarizing myself with every short cut, and coffee shop between the waters of Ontario, and green hills of Wyoming County. I learned more about my home during that summer, than in the other 19 summers combined, and fell in love with the place. But I digress…

The evening of my birthday was not intended to be anything special. I had made some plans with Dan’l to get together and hang out, and he was due to pick me up shortly after dinner. To my great, and ever lasting surprise, when he pulled into the driveway of 20 Prospect in his 1978 Chrysler Cordoba, the front and back seats were full of my 5 closest friends in the world. When I jumped into the back seat, I noticed a case of Molson Golden sitting on the floor, and was informed that we were heading to the lake.

It was a gorgeous, warm summer evening. The sun was slanting in golden rays across the landscape as we drove due north through the muck lands of Elba, across the fabled canal at Albion, through the orchards of Orleans County, and on up Route 98 like an arrow for the shore of Lake Ontario. Six of us laughing in the car, with the windows down, and the moon roof open, and Steve Miller’s greatest hits playing on the radio. We arrived at the beach, and sat on a break wall, looking out at the Lake, drinking beer, and talking until well after the sun had gone down.

It was a simple evening, and one that we would repeat many times over the course of the summer. A group of kids, a case of beer, and a remote rural spot where we could share a laugh, and some stories, and discuss our dreams for the future. We were a cocky bunch, like all 20 year olds are. We were chafing at the restraints of being stuck in Batavia for another summer, and looking forward to the day we moved away to somewhere important, and exciting, and did “real” work. I look back and laugh about it now. If we’d been told how lucky we were, we’d have never believed it. We were convinced that somewhere “out there” important things were happening, and we were somehow missing out on them. We were so eager to get out there and stake our claims in the world.

The time would come soon enough. It was the last free summer we had. The next summer was the interim between our Junior and Senior years of college, and most of us had moved on to internships, or “important” summer jobs in our fields that would prepare us to land that all important post college job when we graduated. It would be a time to lay the first brick for the foundation of that all important resume. But the summer of 1988 was one last fling. A summer to be spent in idleness, drinking in the cool of dusk, leaning against the warm hood of a piece of Detroit steel, watching the swallows dart through the twilight, chasing mosquitoes like so many dreams. I loved those days, even though I wished them away, and I miss those dear friends. And despite the times and distances that have grown like weeds around us, I love them still. God bless them all, wherever they may be.

Stay Gold Ponyboy

Sorry about yesterday’s super serious, faux-intellectual post. Yeah, sometimes I am full of krep, and even I know it. Most of the time I’m just full of it, and totally clueless to that fact. So I owe you all a good story.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any good stories, so here’s an old one instead.

No sunlight is more golden than the light through the branches of the weeping willow tree. Whenever the June sun shines clear out of the cerulean sky I think back to the last few days of High School. ND was surrounded with weeping willow trees. (still is for that matter). Those last few days of the school year, as we were taking our Regents Exams, the drafty old windows would be cranked open, and the breeze through those willow branches would taunt us with the promises of freedom. Look up from your desk for just a moment, and the illuminated willow branches outside the window would wave to you like sirens calling sailors to their watery graves. “Forget the Geometry Exam!”, “Come out and play!”, “Summer is almost hear!”.

 

When the yearbooks were signed, and the bell sounded for the final time, the ties would come off, and we had all we could do to keep from grabbing the nearest plaid skirted girl, and making out in the bushes. (That didn’t happen until after dark usually)

 

I read once that the average teenage male thinks about girls once every 5 minutes. I think that is woefully under estimated. Put the average teenage male in close proximity to the plaid skirted female, and it pretty much dominates his every waking thought. The mere sight of certain knee caps in my Religion class was enough to make some of us unwilling to stand up without a strategically placed textbook.

 

June was the season of parties in the woods, or at the end of dirt roads. It was the season of drinking outdoors without freezing your ass off. It was no longer necessary to have a backseat at your disposal. Any shrub, or shadowy park would do. (The frugality of the Nuns taught us how to be resourceful.)

 

As I have said before, if you only knew me from the stories on this blog, you’d think that my adolescence was spent purely in the pursuit of girls and alcohol. It wasn’t. However, for the life of me I cannot remember what else I did. I think those were the brain cells that I sacrificed in college.

 

I can distinctly remember one golden June afternoon when Bella and I made a trip to buy beer in her parents rusty Safari Station Wagon. We lovingly referred to it was the Deathmobile, as much for the handling, as for Bella’s driving. She somehow managed to put it into a cornfield after seeing a hot guy in a convertible once, but that’s a story for another time.

The sunlight streamed through the trees, and the wind rushed through the open windows as we listened to 97 Rock, or some such lousy WNY Classic Rawk station. We had picked up Sheila Welch, and were on our way to buy beer from the one convenience store on East Main Street that would sell to minors.

 

Well, I should say “the one store that would sell to Sheila”, because they were under the impression she was 21. (It would be another 10 years before someone mistook me for a 21 year old). It was awful nice of Sheila to buy the beer for us as she wasn’t invited to the party where we’d be drinking it. To this day I don’t know how Bella sweet talked her into helping us. Hopefully, no sexual favors were exchanged. At least, they weren’t exchanged with me unfortunately.

 

For such a fleeting moment in life, these clandestine drinking parties take up a disproportionate amount of memory. Surely there were just a handful of them, although it seems like they all blend together into one golden evening in my mind; an evening full of the promise of the sweet, malty buzz of cheap beer, and the soft, flowery scent of girls. Even 25 years later, it’s hard to ask for a lot more out of life than that. Maybe that’s a sad thing, but I prefer to think of it as a happy one. It’s a sign that some things in life do transcend time, and space, and can offer us a taste of that immortality that surely hides behind the veil of our material world. The promise and hope of greater things to come, when you know that great things have already arrived. The way I felt sitting at a desk, looking out a window at the sunlight illuminating the leaves of a willow tree on a June afternoon. A golden light showing me the way into a world full of possibilities.

 

So interweb friends, right now I would like nothing more than to invite you all over for a bonfire, and party at my place. Sadly, my status as a 300 lb. serial killer requires a certain degree of anonymity, so that will not be possible. Instead, consider the comment box to be our virtual spring fling. The tunes are on, I just tapped the keg, and there’s a box of Franzia in the fridge. Help yourself! I only ask that if you get sick in the comment box, you be so kind as to clean up after yourself. Experience has taught me that if you leave a puddle of sick on the floor overnight, it’s damn hard to get the smell out before the folks come home.

 

And as a friend once pointed out, the blog comment is the 21^st century equivalent of signing a yearbook.