“And mind you, we mean EVER!”
A minor flaw, I assure you.
Other families and groups were scattered about, similarly tethered to their respective poles while enjoying the beach. The water on the bay side was almost always tepid and calm. There was a roped-off kiddie swim area, followed by another roped-off area for the older and presumably more proficient swimmers.
For much of the day, my folks would hang out on the beach, occasionally summoning either my sister or me (or both, what’s the point?) to fetch them iced coffees, BLTs, ice cream sandwiches, and the like from the snack bar. (“Here’s some extra money, kids, get yourselves something to eat.”)
Otherwise, we freely roamed the complex, dividing our time between the snack bar, playing hours upon hours of pinball (quarters on the glass claiming “next”), swimming and roughhousing in the pool, playing softball or kickball or football at the ball field, soaring skyward on the swing set, and climbing ropes on the playground. Wherever we were, we were whirlwinds in motion, from here to there and there to here, doing all the things that made being a kid at Mashnee, the best feeling in the entire world!
The next day at the pool with my sister and cousins, I met some other kids who were my own age and older. Both groups naturally paid a lot more attention to the girls, but who could blame them? Alison and my two cousins were, frankly, knockouts. My cousin Lauren introduced us to the older kids.
“These are my cousins, Alison and Jimmy Rocket,” she told them, and I barely resisted the urge to correct my name. “They’re from Seekonk,” she continued. “They’re renting that yellow-shuttered house over on Clipper Road for a month.”
Directing his response to the girls, one of the older boys, who sported a deep voice, wide smile, and wavy blond hair, looking all the part of a Calafornia surfer, though he was from Rhode Island, politely nodded, then took off his sunglasses when making introductions, and winked.
“Hey there, I’m Adrian Best, and these are my buddies. This guy is Ronny, the best athlete on the island.” Adrian gestured to a muscular, agile-looking kid with thick, wavy, jet-black hair, and a clef in his chin that would make Carey Grant jealous, indenting his square chin, (who also looked ruggedly unshaven). Ronny favored the girls with a shy smile.
“And this is our elderly grandfather, Howie,” Adrian joked. Howie looked a little goofy to me, but he stood every bit of six and a half feet tall.
“Hey there,” they both said, stepping on each other’s words as they did. With just a few more smiles and some well-timed humor, they were easily escorting the girls to a group of lounge chairs (ah ha, not chained) toward the far end of the pool, leaving me to fend for myself.
That’s when I met the other two kids, who would become my long-time friends and constant cohorts, Big Patrick Flaherty and Stevie Bird. Patrick was a big, tow-haired kid, sporting a rosy face that cheerfully announced his Irish ancestry. This was his family’s second summer at Mashnee. Like us, his family would be on the island for a month. They were renting a cottage directly next door to the cottage his grandmother owned.
Stevie Bird was ten then, but looked sixteen. He had a lanky build, and I was pretty sure he was already shaving. He could be hysterically funny, especially when he was screwing around with his perpetually broken glasses. They had thick-as-coke-bottle lenses, and the busted plastic bridge drooped, despite the reams of scotch tape he continued to wrap around it. His family was from New York, and like the rest of us, Stevie was here for a month as well.
Stevie’s parents were psychiatrists, which probably explains why his whole family was pretty much whacked. But I liked him. Besides, every group needs someone to pick on, and as long as it wasn’t me, I was game.
“You guys wanna try a cigarette?’’ Stevie offered. “I snatched some Virginia Slims from my mom’s pocketbook; there’s three left.”
Needless to say, we were both game, me with no previous smoking experience, and Patrick, who had an older brother to teach him the ropes, with plenty of smoking experience. We just needed a place to do it.
At Stevie’s suggestion, we headed over to the unoccupied baseball field and crouched down behind the green backstop, with one us as “lookout.”
The half-mauled cigarettes were nervously lit by Stevie, and then passed around for deep drags and even deeper coughs! All in all, the cigarettes themselves were disgustingly awful, ahh, but the mischief, sublime!
The next day we were watching the older kids play a rough-and-tumble game of tag football on a large patch of grass adjacent to the playground, with end zones marked by a Mashnee flag on one side, and USA flag on the other, when thanks largely to the influence of my sister’s good looks, I got invited to play a few downs.
It was a big deal. What made it even bigger, was the kid who asked. I had met him the day before, when I was running a lap around the island. His name was Tony Dupré. He worked in the maintenance department as assistant to the head groundskeeper and could be seen doing chores all over the island. And flirting.
The combination sales and groundskeeping office was located at 146 Mashnee Road. The building itself was a stretched-out version of the basic cottage of gray weathered shingles. Back then the building had a green door and shutters.
The modestly furnished sales office was located on the right-hand side of the building. Inside, a large bulletin board had been mounted on the knotty-pine-paneled wall, and on the board there was a street map of Mashnee, along with pictures of available rental units.
On the left-hand side of the building was the large maintenance and groundskeeping garage. It smelled of diesel and fresh loam. There was also a large tool shed out back packed with lawnmowers, chainsaws and the like.
Tony, despite the fact that he was just an assistant, was effectively the “Big Man on the Island,” and heart-throb to virtually every girl within ten years of his age. He had long, straight, dirty blond hair, parted in the middle, steel-blue eyes with a look of impending mischief, and a warm smile, accented with a noticeable chip to his left incisor.
He also had about a four-inch scar running away from the corner of his right eye, which I immediately presumed was the result of some heroic knife fight. Man was he far out! And for a few plays anyway, he was my quarterback.
For starters, he nicknamed me “JimmyRocketBabyKid” signifying an affection I will never forget. Based on my running ability and Tony’s enthusiastic endorsement, he told me to play ‘wide receiver.’ I was thrilled (and scared!).
“Ok, JimmyRocketBabyKid, you line up on the outside right and do a stop-and-go route.”
“You know what that is, right?”
“Of course (not),” I shot back.
So we lined up with Tony over center. The kid across from me was literally twice my size and six to seven years older. To my chagrin it was, in fact, presumed surfer extraordinaire, Adrian Best.
“Ok, JimmyRocketBabyKid,” Tony called out.
“Here we go now, JimmyRocketBabyKid.”
“Show me what you got now, JimmyRocketBabyKid. 36, 24, 36, hutt-one, hutt-two, hike!”
I was off like I’d been shot from a cannon, my fast-twitch muscles engaging instantly as my lungs called for extra oxygen, and my heart pounded like the latest rock and roll song by Hendrix.
Adrian was playing tightly, just a few yards off me. I ran straight at him, stopped for a split second (perhaps a stop-and-go?), juked two steps to the right, then blasted right by him, leaving the Beach Boy eating a faceful of my dust (well, grass, whatever) as I sped downfield. Meanwhile quarterback Tony was scrambling for a better position, then chucked an absolute bomb my way.
The ball zipped through the sea air making an audible whoosh. It kept going and going. I looked back and saw it zipping over my head, but I streaked toward its potential landing spot with the urgency of someone catching a baby thrown from a flaming window. Running all out with my hands stretched to their very limit, I could see the ball spiraling over my shoulder, but somehow quickened my step, catching the ball with the tips of my fingers, hauled it in and accelerated headfirst…smack…into a metal flag pole. The one everyone warned me about.
I was out like a light! Decked. Concussed. KO’d.
I awoke a few groggy seconds (or was it hours?) later to see Tony, Adrian, Ronny, my sister Alison, and a whole bunch of hazy-looking silhouettes standing over me. I was in a total fog and had trouble making out the multitude of voices, which sounded jumbled and far away.
My head was absolutely throbbing and my ears rang. When my hands went to explore my damaged forehead, they found a pronounced goose egg of Jurassic size and proportion. I wanted to puke.
Perhaps not a ton of blood had been spilled, but a ton of hurt was administered. The next thing I knew I was being scooped up by Tony’s strong, reassuring arms (“Holy effing cripes, Jimmyrocket. What a great catch, dude! But man, kiddo, you almost killed yourself out there, little guy!”) and carried home to my discernibly alarmed parents. My mom rattled off a bunch of incomprehensible instructions.
