Well, I was born in a small town,
And I can breathe in a small town’
Gonna die in a small town,
Ah, that’s prob’ly where they’ll bury me.
I have a few things in common with John Mellencamp, author of the above sentiments. I was born in Methuen, Massachusetts, a small town snug up against the New Hampshire line. And I can breathe in Fairfield, Florida, barely a speck on God’s Earth. I have yet to concede that dying is an acceptable fate, but if it does happen I hope it occurs on a zip-line somewhere in the Amazon when I am in flagging health late in my 98th year, leaving my concubine in tears. Whichever part of the jungle hosts my demise will certainly be small town if it is any town at all.
These days, it seems, the majority of my friends reside in small towns. People who used to live in Gainesville and have some affiliation with the University of Florida or the businesses which surround it have retired to the country, building cabins, driving around on tractors, raising farm animals, trying their best to imitate their hayseed neighbors. Chuck Lemasters, who has always had a hand in agricultural pursuits, is comfy in tiny Jonestown. Leonard Weinbaum lives in Keystone Heights. Marcia Dalton wandered off to upstate Georgia. Linda Hughes is a farm wife in Clemmons, N.C. Internet Hero Deb Peterson is happy to call Waldport, Oregon home. And Mike (Jagger) Hatcherson, always a pioneer, somehow meandered all the way to Ketchum, a fictitious place in Idaho. What happened to the lure of the city?
When we were kids, the countryside held few charms. Every so often, the family would truck on down to rural Connecticut or off to Western Mass. to visit marginal relatives and we kids had to go along. There were no interstate highways in those days and the trips took forever. Nobody was flying down the autobahns at 70 miles an hour and there were always those important stops at the roadside stands selling fresh arugula. It took Neil Armstrong less time to get to the moon than it took us to get to Greenfield, Massachusetts. And when we got there….well….have you ever been to Dullsville? There was nothing happening, unless you wanted to count the firefly rodeos, and I was always a firefly sympathizer. As soon as attentions of the bold hunters drifted, I’d uncap the jars and let the poor bastards free. Once a Liberal, always a Liberal. This sort of political intrigue was not necessary in Boston.
There would have been some relief, of course, if we’d had television. Forget it. People started getting TVs when I was about ten years old, but even then you had to live within a reasonable distance of the stations and have a father willing to risk his life installing a “TV aerial” on the roof. If you went to the local hospital emergency room on weekends, there would always be an army of would-be antenna geniuses sitting on the couches, crutches in hand, waiting for attention. And if you lived in, say, Bumfuch, Connecticut, you would need a TV aerial like the one at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to get any reception. With no television, you had to get your kicks via animal interaction. In Greenfield, that meant pony rides on “Rocky Blue.” I liked Rocky Blue okay, but I’m not sure he was crazy about me. Or maybe it was just that often, in the middle of a ride, it would occur to him that it might be time to eat and he should return to the barn just to check. When Rocky Blue decided it was time to go back to the barn, no amount of abuse or cajoling was going to change his mind--you were going back to the barn. One day, he got it into his head that an Emergency Meal had just been delivered to his stall and he raced back like Secretariat in the Belmont. I fell off about halfway. My Mother was very upset and told me there’d be no more riding Rocky Blue. “That’s very sad,” I told her, smiling.
City Lights
Most kids, of course, love the city. The city is where the action is. The first time I took my stepson Danny to a Braves game in Atlanta, he wandered the downtown streets, wide-eyed. “This place is GREAT!” he exclaimed. “When I get older, I’m moving HERE!” He changed his mind a few years later when I took him to Boston for a Red Sox game. We took the subway over to Harvard Square on a Saturday and Danny almost collapsed with excitement. “BILL!” he screamed, “Come over HERE! LOOK! They’ve got JUGGLERS! And they’re FREE! I’m moving here when I grow up.” Well, what more could any kid want? Major League Baseball and free jugglers. Does it get any better than that?
When we were kids, Boston was the actual Hub of the Universe. In the summers, after school got out, either Tom Rys or Jackie Gordon would go with me to the Red Sox games. When we were younger, we’d catch the B&M Railroad train at the depot on Parker Street, detrain at North Station in Boston and take the subway to Kenmore Square. Occasionally, visits to Prince Spaghetti House were required. Once, I won a contest on a local radio station and got a free dinner there. When you’re a kid, you’ve got your doubts that you can walk into a place and actually get free food, contest or no contest. We were a little intimidated walking in, but they treated us like the Kings of Siam. The Greatest Day of Your Life could be the one you got free pizza and went to a Red Sox game. Try doing that in the country.
Sometimes, hitchhiking was necessary. In those days, for some reason, the child-murderers had not yet risen from their slumbers and hitchhiking was rampant. Boston was only 26 miles away, so it was no big deal. Usually, though, if there was a night game, we’d hitchhike in and take the train back. One night, a game went into extra innings and Jack Gordon and I missed the train. It was the first time we had to hitch back after dark and we were a little nervous—not so much about the return but what our mothers would say when we rolled in at two a.m. Our first ride took us across the river to Cambridge, where a couple of cops decided to check us out.
“We’re going home from the Sox game,” I told them. “We missed the train.”
Apparently, this was too complicated an explanation for the cops to understand. They questioned us for ten minutes, one of them finally settling on Jackie’s ring. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to Jack’s finger. “Is that a wedding ring?”
Now, Jackie is not a person hard to amuse, but this may have been the most hilarious question ever posed to him. His eyes opened wide and he almost fell to the ground, laughing. “Are you CRAZY” he asked the policeman between bouts of laughter. “I’m TEN YEARS OLD!”
The Gestapo, embarrassed, relented. We went on our way. We made it home a little after midnight. “Did you boys have a good time?” Yeah, Ma—swell. We even made friends with a couple of nice policemen.
Downtown Fairfield.
Country Life
My first taste of life in a small town arrived when I bought forty acres in Orange Lake, Florida in 1976. The property was just off the lake, open rolling land suitable for the installation of a horse farm, and only 25 minutes from my house in Gainesville. What can I tell you about Orange Lake—well, it had the one requisite traffic light at the town’s major intersection, there was a spiffy volunteer fire department over on U.S. 441 and the social center was a bar/package-store along the same thoroughfare. Less than fifty feet from our fenceline was the Heagy-Burry Park, which had a boat ramp allowing the avid fisherman to enter Orange Lake, itself, and battle the festering islets of hydrilla on his way to the fishing grounds. More than one of them had his motor snarled by the noxious weed and the angry anglers were always battling the county for more assistance in curbing the rapidly-expanding blight. Over on County Route 318, a covey of optimists had incongruously built a gigantic Jai-Alai fronton a couple of years back, an act of bravado which seemed to us not unlike building a castle on the moon. Anyway, that was Orange Lake.
If anyone thinks that to establish a horse farm you merely buy a few acres and—voila—add horses-- sorry, wrong number. You probably didn’t know this, but thoroughbreds can’t eat just any grass. Well, they can, but if we want them to reach their maximum potential we must provide appropriate nutrition. Around here, that would be Pensacola or Argentine Bahia grass. If you don’t have any of this stuff growing in your nice fields, well, you’ll just have to plow them up and plant some. Eventually, it will grow like crazy and you’ll spend half your life mowing it. When the Bahia grass comes up, a few other things will arrive with it. One of them would be crotalaria, a weed poisonous to horses, which my rural neighbor, the all-knowing Mr. Johnson, told me the U.S. Department of Agriculture used to apply to the land as a “cover crop.” No problem, Mr. J., we just mow it down, right? Wrong. We must pull it up, every plant, by the roots or it will never go away. Between my wife, Harolyn, Danny and I, we must have pulled up 2000 of the buggers.
As time went by, we got to know the neighbors, the Gestalt of the town, the ebb and flow of rural society. For one thing, they believed in the barter system. Mr. Johnson, for example, needed about a half-acre for a watermelon garden. In exchange for using our land, he would provide free tractor service and advice. Not to brag, but we got the better of that deal. Our tractor always operated smoothly but Mr. Johnson spent many a night, shotgun at the ready, hiding in the bushes to apprehend melon-grabbing coons. Mack Gornto, a big guy who looked like his name sounded, traded us an acre nearest the boat ramp for his help constructing a barn and fences. Our resident manager, Danny Levine, took care of feeding and watering the horses in exchange for a place to live, a modest mobile home we rescued from an uncaring trailer czar. The neighbors got to know us, invited us to their churches. We doffed our hats, smiled, told them thank you. We didn’t go.
Time passed, the horses grew. Our first racehorse, Star Spectre, won a race. Our horse-care personnel, happy at the start, usually moved on after awhile, gypsies in search of greener pastures. Orange Lake, however, remained the same--quiet, enduring, resistant to change. There was something to be said for the country. You always knew what to expect. The friends you made were solid. We contributed to the institutions without expecting recompense. We funded the volunteer firemen, never anticipating we’d need them. Funny, how that goes. One freezing winter morning, I arrived at the farm to find the water troughs frozen solid. I had to use matches to loosen up the snaps which held the feed pens closed. Ten minutes after I called, the firemen were there with a water truck. They drove around to all the paddocks, filling up the troughs, offering to return later if necessary. John Denver said it best: “Life ain’t nothin’ but a funny funny riddle. Thank God I’m a country boy.”
The staff of Pathogenes, Inc., Fairfield’s largest industry.
Fairfield
After living in Gainesville for 21 years, from 1965 to 1986, I emigrated to Siobhan’s house in Marion County, about ten miles from my own farm. With her new residence and an equine veterinary practice in Fairfield, she certainly wasn’t moving anywhere. The place, with one bedroom, an office, two bathrooms, a living room and utility area comprised about 1200 square feet in all and was set on 5 acres, with five more to be added later. Her stepfather, Tom Floyd, eventually built a cottage adjacent to the original house, connected by an enclosed walkway, where he lived the brief remainder of his life. That cottage is now the Supreme World Headquarters of Pathogenes, Inc., Fairfield’s largest industry. That we know of. If Orange Lake was a small town, Fairfield is an afterthought, tucked in along County Route 316 between Reddick and Williston, each ten minutes away. The latter town looms like Metropolis, with its plethora of banks, restaurants and churches, over the tiny hamlet of Fairfield. If you’re looking for something to do in Fairfield, forget it. Our downtown consists of the local Post Office and a convenience store called the V-Mart. Nobody knows what the “V” is for and we’re not asking. Down the road is—we think—a sort of seminary for the Greek Orthodox Church. We can’t be sure because nobody can read the lettering outside. It’s all Greek to us. The inhabitants of the seminary show up every so often at the Post Office but they don’t talk much and we’re okay with that.
There is virtually no crime in Fairfield, either due to the high character of the populace or the fact that everybody has big dogs. Either way, it works for us. Every so often, someone new moves in and automatically bumps the population up 5%. Not many people seem to move out. Most of those who do are called home by the Cosmic Arbiter who must have an abundance of stalls to clean. The unofficial mayor of the place and largest property owner is Mr. Walter Boring, who lives just down the street. Hell, in Fairfield, everybody lives just down the street. Anyway, we like Mr. Boring, one of the few mayors extant with a healthy sense of humor, displayed for the world in the erection of a large sign on the main road which reads “WELCOME TO BORINGVILLE.”
We like it here. It’s quiet and nobody bothers us much. Once, when Siobhan had a stalker, he got lost on his way to the place and wound up in Key West. If you think a GPS will help, don’t bet on it. Although our property is in Fairfield, Fedex and UPS have to use a Reddick zip code to find us. Mr. Boring, the property owner, is looking to pick things up, however. He’s pumping up the real estate agents on the many benefits of Life in Fairfield and a few more lookers are prowling the streets. We’re not worried yet but Mr. Boring is an enterprising man. He has a lot of big ideas. And everybody is dreading the day we see those multi-colored fliers on the telephone poles: “ATTENTION! THIS SATURDAY ONLY! FREE JUGGLERS AT THE V-MART!”
Say it ain’t so, Walter. It won’t be Boringville any more.
That’s all, folks….
Nude Leftovers
“The Nude Coed” is a good column. I did meet Pamme one day at the SC. She was retrieving rolled up posters from some storage area and commenting on a dubious substance on one of them. I was 14 and star-struck. She was nice.
Selig Goldin was Benmont Tench, Jr.’s law partner. The reason I know this is odd. Twenty years after my father died, I had gone through some therapy and counseling to deal with it. I didn’t deal with it at the time and all kinds of stuff came up. I flew to Gainesville and, at the advice of my mental health care professional, read a letter aloud from me to my father over his grave in the Jewish cemetery at the east side of town. It worked. The next day, I decided to to have lunch with my father so I went to the store that used to be called Mother Earth and got a snack my father liked—bread, feta cheese and olives—and headed to the cemetery, but not before buying a tall Budweiser at the ABC Liquor across from the graveyard.
I was leaning back on some deceased Jew’s grave marker facing my dad’s grave, eating and drinking the beer and having a nice time, a lot of closure, when I saw an elderly woman on the other side of the chain link fence who was probably wondering what the fuck I was doing. I went over to talk to her. She was Selig Goldin’s widow and was there to visit his grave. It was she who told me of Goldin and Tench’s partnership. Memories.
Marty Jourard
Marty, of course, was and is a saxophone player with THE MOTELS, among other things; Tench is the father of Benmont Tench III, one of Tom Petty’s HEARTBREAKERS.
Very touching piece in todays blog. Somewhere in the cosmos, Pamme is loving the attention. We were close friends for a while. She was nuts and enjoyable. You should have mentioned her spot on the old Garry Moore show, “I’ve Got A Secret.” I think I saw that before I met any of you. “Memories….light the corners of my mind….”
Irana Zisser
Pamme fooled the entire panel, which was charged with identifying The Nude Coed. The other two girls were allowed to fabricate stories and prevaricate. What the hell—a little cash reward and an all-expenses-paid trip to The Big Apple. Nude pays.
