Benched
The Club at Mashnee, was not only the primary hangout spot, it was the epicenter of all activity.
In addition to serving as the ping pong room, the game room was home to an organized event every night of the week. These well-attend events included:
Bingo Night
Square Dancing Night
Movie Night
And the most popular by far, you could smell ’em long before you could see ’em,
Wednesday Night Weenie Roast!!
The unmistakable aroma of which traveled the full girth of the island, beckoning young and old for a dinner of delicious frankfurters. There was a very large steel grill positioned directly outside the gameroom which was utilized for the cookouts; with lines of salivating children and plenty of eager parents, snaking across the lawn and spilling around the corner onto the playground.
For growing boys, consuming anything less than three hot dogs was an affront immediately punishable by an onslaught of underwear wedgies and potential double-noogies! I typically ate three or four (extra-burnt please with a toasted roll), and I was skinny! Did the hot dogs look green? Yes. Did they smell funny? Yup. Were they the best food I ever ate? You betcha!
There was a rather long flight of stairs (how many hundreds of hours did my ass spend sitting on those steps!) heading up to the second level, which housed the Snack Bar and the Boat ’n Bottle Bar. Eventually there would be an addition built, basically a covered deck with picnic benches, to enlarge the restaurant’s dining area.
When you consider the level of daily aggravation the manager of a snack bar on an island literally teeming with kids of all ages had to put up with, the fact that the position was even filled was a miracle unto itself.
On the other hand, it was clear that certain hiring allowances must have been made. The standard’s not particularly lofty.
Picture if you will a perpetually cranky, sarcastic, (“I might as well own the place, I’m here 24 hours a freakin’ day.”) chain-smoking, perhaps a bit tipsy, wire-haired, yellow-toothed, cursing older lady, and you’re about halfway close to envisioning the seriously annoyed, and every once in a while incredibly kind (go figure?) Betty O’Connor, the one and only manager of “MY! snack bar. Don’t like it? Then get the hell out!”
Betty was fast approaching the collection of a regular social security check, and had it up to her eyeballs with screaming patrons. With a Camel unfiltered cigarette perpetually hanging betwixt her lips, this woman, of average stature, mind you, could threaten to “kick your ass up and down these front steps ten times without blinking an eye if I were of a mind to,” if you were causing trouble. And she was dead serious!
She had also produced a pair of genetically predictable offspring.
Betty’s son and daughter also worked at The Club. Her 22-year-old daughter Marylou Riley, product of train-wreck marriage number two or three, was short and solidly heavy, built like a bulldozer, with the power to match. She also had zero patience with kids and hecticness in general. Yeah, good fit.
On the other hand she was a fast and efficient worker who could be counted on to correctly match orders with the myriad of anticipatory faces, in the helter-skelter world of snack bar chaos. She detested her job and often made it a point to share that information. With everyone.
Marylou’s brother nicknamed “Crazy Eddie” was a big, powerfully built teen who was trouble-waiting-to-happen. But man, that kid could swim. So in addition to being a jack-of-all-trades for whatever basic odds and ends needed fixing around the island, he worked mostly as a lifeguard at the pool. His claim-to-fame being the sheer number of kids he either kicked out of the pool or tossed into it, depending on that day’s demeanor. He seemed to take particular joy in tossing me the farthest!
Eddie was the proud owner of not only a souped-up, jacked-up, pimped-out, lime green Plymouth Roadrunner, with a “three-on-the-tree” gear shifter, but also an impressive juvenile rap sheet, and was therefore well-known by the local Bourne Police Department.
Ed very much liked enforcing pool rules, any rules. Even made-up ones! Oh, and over the years he rejoiced in throwing me and some other kids over the hedges. His brute strength catapulted us far, hard, and wide! Not fun.
As rough and tumble as this family was, each possessed a soft underbelly. Betty could also be a gentle, caring soul, and if she liked you, (I was lucky to be among maybe three or four in that category.) she might just save that be-hind of yours a time or two. Perhaps more.
Marylou, like her mother, also had a gentle side that occasionally made an appearance. And as for Eddie, he would occasionally befriend us, sometimes even being our good friend, delighted to join in previously forbidden mischief; habitually turning gentle waves into towering tsunamis of trouble!
Up above the entry door to the Snack Bar, angled high into the corner on metal brackets, was a small RCA television with a rabbit-ear antenna and perpetual static. Of course like most TVs of that era, there were hastily wrapped tin-foil strips surrounding each branch of the antenna, in a valiant, but largely unsuccessful attempt to bring clarity to the fuzz.
Just around the corner and across from the blue restroom doors announcing “Buoys” and “Gulls” was an events bulletin board, featuring “Island News of the Day,” upcoming activities, musical entertainment, daily specials, sports, and other odds and ends.
It would be typical to see a few hastily torn paper scraps tacked to the board advertising such things as available rentals, names of prospective babysitters, and perhaps an alert for a missing cat. There might also be a colorful loose-leaf flier reminding people of TONIGHT’S SQUARE DANCE 7PM, along with the High and Low Tides Guide for Phinney’s Harbor, and that weekend’s softball schedule.
If you walked just a bit farther (“No Minors Past This Point”) through the swinging saloon doors, you’d find yourself in the always-bustling knotty-pine-paneled Boat ’n Bottle Bar. The bar’s lounge area was equipped with a piano for evening musical entertainment, typically a pianist or guitarist of some local acclaim. At night it had a very “smooth jazz” lounge feel, perpetually thick with smoke.
Bar patrons could grab one of the wicker and rattan chairs at the table-height hand-carved mahogany bar with brass inlays, or choose the slightly darkened lounge area, furnished with clusters of small round cocktail tables, each with four of the same style wicker/rattan chairs. In retrospect, the bar’s decor was perhaps more reminiscent of Tahiti than Cape Cod.
Although there were a couple of hastily installed (judging from their wobble) ceiling fans, crudely adhered to strips of wood above, there were times that the greenhouse effect, (i.e. hot as literal hell, I am suffocating), reached the point only the locals dared to brave.
Everything about the bar was great. The people, the atmosphere, the music, and we were told, the drinks. Everything that is, except for the head bartender “Ben” (according to his silver name tag worn just above his shirt pocket) who overtly loathed us kids, and we suspected, all mankind. Cranky would be an immense understatement—vile, a more accurate description. Oh, and did I mention mean? Downright so. Yup, there was definitely something “off” about this guy, so we did our best to avoid him as much as possible. The other islanders would have been well served by doing the same.
****
Night time was another world entirely at Mashnee. It could best be compared to a Salvador Dali painting, surreal. By early evening the misty fog would roll in from the north side of the island, first engulfing Captains Row, and then quickly seizing the rest of the island as its own domain. “Pea soup” is what the old-timers called it, thick and moist and unrelenting, covering every square inch of the island’s landscape. Once the sun set and night fell, the island turned a hazy version of pitch black, void of any meaningful light, with the exception of the green floodlights (and their accompanying fireflies), illuminating The Club area in a hazy mix of fluorescent green. At most, homes on the island had a small, 40-watt entry light attached to the front of their cottage, which struggled to provide little more than a blurred outline of their cement steps, and even then, seldom used due to their tendency to draw vengeful misquotes or worse yet, a swarm of unrelenting gnats.
The pace, at which one traversed the idiosyncrasies of the island’s terrain at night, be it by road, cut-through lawns, or by rock and beach, was in direct proportion to their length of stay at Mashnee.
Short-term renters would carefully proceed down the middle of streets, each tightly clutching flashlights, while taking short, tentative, indecisive steps toward their desired destination (mostly The Club).
Longer-term, full-summer renters typically gathered in larger groups with fewer (but still some) flashlights, and took quicker, more assertive steps, the sounds of which were drowned out by their incessant giggles and outright laughter.
Homeowners, on the other hand, were carefree, fleet of foot, and not a flashlight to be had in the bunch as they zig-zagged their way barefoot over bushes and through backyards, most often to the screams of: “How many times do I have to tell you kids to get offfff my lawn...!” from their flustered inhabitants.
But even those with the strongest of flashlights would agree that once the sun set, and the fog rose, much of the island looked slightly out of focus, a tad off kilter, just beyond sight, and outlined in foggy shadows.
Each sliver of light provoked illusions of what might lurk in the dark spaces, (other than the white stripes of Hog Island skunks, which ambled and squirted their way around the island, seeking their evening feast).
Skunks were particularly fond of summer visitors who naively left the doors to their “refuse room” propped open in a vain attempt to alleviate the smell. The clever skunks, who were often heavily scented, considered the open doors a particularly neighborly invitation to dine and stink.
Adding to the nighttime mystique, were the mesmerizing, and slightly spooky sounds emanating from the island, as if speaking out in its own language. Cicadas tended to call during the day, ending their melody at dusk, so what was typically heard at night were crickets and katydids who sang through the night, often accompanied by a virtual rhythm section of peepers, the small chorus frogs who sounded like baby chicks with their peep-peep calls, and great horned owls with their own distinct sound-track. Great horned owls sounded a bit like fog horns, with a low-pitched “boopboop—WHOOB-WHOOB” sound.
