Stories within a Story

Digging deeper still looking for the causes of this disillusionment with most everything even the athletics had lost its luster perhaps that is what happens when you give up the ghost and quit and die a little simply depressed working full time tedious boring mechanical work a cog and running no joy with the knee pains and pointless anyway oh to rediscover the passion first one has to know what is the thing this young man just want to know one thing before I say bye bye sweet tart, any thing.

So sometimes he walked those Lowell streets at night as the sun was going down smoking a pipe of tobacco sitting like a little old man on a park bench and what was it I read about an unexamined life of course I agree but sometimes you just have to find the joy the bliss.

He talked his friend into playing hooky from work and picked him up in the Skylark and they headed to Salisbury Beach and on the way they came upon others two of the female persuasion. The girls were sisters and we stopped at their house a little ways from it so their parents would not see the car and they grab their bikinis and we are off.

I knew a few girls didn’t understand them didn’t go dating or to the prom and had no interest in doing so because I was a serious person 19 years old sitting in the park an evening smoking my pipe quite distinguished ahem.

I knew the sisters well in fact my hooky playing friend whom I had known my entire life at least from first grade was dating one of them the older one but on the sly so you couldn’t be sure that was the way it was done.

It was a hot summer day and the beach was packed the sun was like a torch and the water put your genitals into shrinkage mode a good thing too because when the younger sister ran down that beach chasing after the rubber ball you threw her way ooh la la and she chased it down in that itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikini it was a confirmation of everything that was good and beautiful made life worth living.

She was flirtatious and for some reason that bothered my hooky playing friend but I knew that she just could not help herself being a certain time girls just want to have fun and all that.

We had sandwiches and then fell asleep and when I awoke I went for a walk on the beach and after walking a bit I started to run barefoot in and out of the crashing wave’s water receding back spellbound I made the far reaches unaware of time the sweat poured and before turning back I dove into the cold water and got out and ran back like a demon channeling Herb Eliot and his iconoclastic coach Percy Cerutty running the sand dunes in Australia.

Hooky playing friend say, “where you been the past hour? Tull is playing the Casino tonight and we are going to sneak in.”

“I went for a run and I felt awesome I could have run all day” and with that we were off in the Skylark headed for Hampton picking up 8 quarts of beer on the way.

We parked along a fence by a ball field and the younger sister asked if she could wear my grey hoodie that was in the back seat. “Sure but it has my name stenciled on the back it was my team issue at J&W.”

Jethro Tull was huge then and the Casino was a small venue and when we arrived out back of the place there were already thousands of kids without tickets and some knuckle brains were trying to climb drain pipes to get in. It looked like a riot might break out at any time.

http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/casino/nhmagazineJuly2015

We found a quiet spot nearby in some tall reeds and drank the beer. The endorphins from the run went to my head and the beer to my legs. We went back to the Casino and got as close as we dared and the entire building was moving up and down and even outside the music was deafening it was awesome.

The music stopped suddenly and we found out later that the plug had been pulled by the authorities who were overwhelmed by the crowd. It was a mini Woodstock until it wasn’t.

We walked on the beech and then back to the Skylark. The girls slept in the car and we slept on the cold hard ground beside it. Very early the next morning it was back to Lowell and back to work but happy for the respite.

Locomotive Breath: