During all of these years and through 1961 we spent our summers, as well as weekends late spring and early fall, at our summer house that my father had built in 1941. Located right on the beach in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island, it was larger and fancier than the typical cottages of that time, in this fishing village cum summer enclave. What a childhood paradise! Although my father would upgrade to a bigger boat the following year, the summer of 1953 when I was seven he still had a fourteen foot lapstrake boat with outboard motor.
One day the two of us returned from boating, me donning my ubiquitous captain’s cap, and he landed the boat on the shore. Next he asked me to stand on the rear seat for weight, so he could pull the boat up farther. Did you notice that he didn’t ask me to sit on the seat? I didn’t. Being a fool I did as Dad had requested, and stood on the rear seat while he gave the boat a good yank. Guess what happened.
What happened was that I picked myself up from the knee deep water where I had landed flat on my back, grabbed my captain’s cap before it floated away, and then introduced my laughing father to a whole vocabulary that he never knew I possessed. As I strutted all the way home, soaking wet and swearing like a trouper, I passed a policeman who said, “Hey, little fellow, you better watch your mouth.” At which point I gave that officer an obscene tongue lashing that left him speechless.
In the third grade my mother told me that I could have a birthday party, it would be my eighth, and invite any of my classmates that I wanted. There were two third grade classes at the school, and I invited all the usual suspects from my class, and then one boy from the other class, Billy Pirraglia. My mother was very active in PTA and knew Billy’s mother, who called her and said that it was sweet of me to ask him, but that Billy didn’t know me. No, he didn’t, we had never even spoken. But I had had my eye on him for a couple months. He was a cutie pie; I was infatuated, and figured the party might be a way to make a connection. He did attend, but we never became friends. (Now he looks like one of the seven dwarfs, Doc, I saw his picture on classmates.com.)
The summer of 1954 my father launched his new Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, which he had spent the winter building. Christened the JALAHOJE by my mother, who enjoyed telling people it was an old “Indian” (“Native American” nowadays) word meaning “never a dull moment.“ In fact, it was an amalgam of the first two letters of each of our names: JAy, LAnce, HOpe, JEsse. On the morning of August 31st that year Hurricane Carol struck, proving to be one of the two most deadly and destructive hurricanes in the history of New England. We survived the storm, although it was a very close call (see Chapter 3: The Hurricane Years).
As reconstruction of the beach community commenced after Carol, my parents bought one of the cottages down the lane from us which had travelled in the storm and then, like many others, was returned to its original location. That was the priority the spring of 1955, getting that place ready for summer rental. From as early as weather permitted, we spent every weekend in Jerusalem, but for some reason this one weekend I didn’t join my parents.
My father had given me a small corner of the back yard to use as my own and I started building a clubhouse of sorts with scrap materials, which I called Fort Mess. When I found a big old picture frame with the glass intact, my fort got an addition with a picture window. Saturdays my Aunt Lois would always come by and pick up my grandmother and Uncle Bud to go shopping and, more often than not, my grandfather would join me later in the back yard. I always looked forward to his arrival. That Saturday though I had seen my grandfather climbing the back fence back into his yard, which was strange, and I thought sure he’d come over but he went right upstairs to their apartment.
For the next couple of hours I kept expecting him to show up but he never did. Finally the shoppers came home and the next thing I know I heard a siren and the rescue truck pulled up in front of their house. Other aunts and uncles and family arrived. My mother’s cousin, George Dean, told me that my grandfather had died, and that I had to be a strong little fellow for my grandmother. Immediately I went into our house to call my parents but, knowing that they’d be working at the rental cottage on Brecka Drive where there was no phone, rather than calling our beach house I called the Hartleys at Jim’s Dock, and asked them to get a message to my parents.
Sometime later one of the adult relatives called the Narragansett police, and they sent a squad car to find my parents but, thanks to the quick thinking of my nine-year-old brain (for which I was highly praised), they were already on their way home. While out in the yard that morning my grandfather had noticed a small fire in the farmyard in back, so he jumped over the fence to put it out, and when I saw him he was coming back. He didn’t feel right afterwards, and that’s why he went upstairs and never came back down. He had had a heart attack and died shortly after my grandmother had returned home. This was the first experience with death for both my brother and me, and I remember that night being huddled with my parents in our room, as they tried to help us make sense of it all.
Life in elementary school continued to be difficult, and in fourth grade I ended up sitting next to Montifix William Houghton the Third, AKA Monty, but I always referred to him by his full name. As a diversion during lessons he made a hobby out of grabbing my left arm, and repeatedly punching the upper arm with hard blows. It continually sported a series of black and blue bruises. This went on for quite a long time, although I never said anything to the teacher—I had enough problems, I couldn’t afford to be a squealer—and Monty never got caught.
One day though I got caught . . . by my father. He got a glimpse of my arm, and forced a confession out of me. Then told me that the next time Monty hit my arm, I was to hit him right back, and that if he saw any more bruises on my arm, he’d give me a few on my behind. As instructed, the next time Monty hit me I hauled off and clobbered him good. “Lance! Why are you hitting Monty? Go see the principle immediately!” Now the teacher notices! After weeks of being the victim, the one time I strike back I get busted. That was my first ever trip to the principle* and I was humiliated, but Monty never hit me again. (*It wasn't until I was in junior high shool that I learned that my mother and the principle, Olga Burke, were very good friends.)
My ninth summer, 1955, was spent in my new eight foot pram, rowing around the sprawling salt marshes -- a fantasy like maze of inlets, channels, and coves that snaked amongst the eelgrass and bulrushes. That November I turned ten, and for Christmas my gift was a three horsepower Evinrude outboard motor (a far cry from a dollhouse). In the spring my father tried it on my pram and, thinking that it was unstable, traded in the eight footer towards a twelve foot skiff, and I moved from the salt marshes to a dock in the harbor.
Now I had as my playground all of Salt Pond, a vast salt water lake almost two miles wide, that sprawls its way inland about four miles, and sports three inhabited islands, a scattering of diminutive ones, and an intricate shoreline scalloped with inlets and coves. That was also the summer that I went to Camp Legiontown for two weeks (see Chapter 4, Camp Legiontown).
The fifth grade found me selected as a Junior Police, whose main duty was to hold one of four red flags on poles, at the crosswalk by the school’s entrance. Each year there were six Junior Police selected, three boys and three girls, rotating flag patrol. The big event was the annual nationwide Junior Police Rally in Washington, DC. A boy and girl from each school were elected; at least that’s what I remember. What I also remember was wanting to be one of the chosen more than anything in my life (except maybe the dollhouse). It didn’t happen.
As a consolation my parents planned a trip for spring break that year, which was a special treat. Being that we always spent our summers, plus spring and fall weekends, at our beach house, we had only taken two trips: one to New York City but I was so young the only thing I remember is riding the giant tortoises at the Bronx Zoo; and another in 1953 along the Mohawk Trail in New Hampshire, where we saw the movie Those Redheads From Seattle and I became smitten with Teresa Brewer (my first and only time infatuated with a girl).
Our first stop was New York City where we went to Radio City Music Hall, saw The Rockettes, and took in all of the other tourist venues including a trip to the Statue of Liberty. There, running a little late and hoping to catch the next to the last ferry of the day, we all sprinted along the sidewalk to the pier. Still in awe of so many big tall buildings, I wasn’t looking where I was going, and turned to look straight ahead just in time to connect nose first with a thick unyielding metal sign post.
After being knocked back a few feet, the back of my head hit the concrete quite hard, it was amazing that I did not lose consciousness, although I did see stars. Looking back it also seems amazing that my parents didn’t seek medical attention; because once I was upright we continued on and took the last ferry to the Statue. Looking back, I could very well have had a concussion, and may very well have, because I have absolutely no memory of the visit to the Statue. Also, my next regular visit to the doctor revealed that I had a deviated septum.
From New York we travelled on to Philadelphia—I stuck my finger in the crack, didn‘t get it stuck—and then Washington, D.C., doing all the things that the Junior Police would have been doing. Our itinerary also included a trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains and a visit to the Luray Caverns. After which we returned to Rhode Island without further mishaps.
We had become very good friends with the couple that bought the beach cottages next door (the wife, Marion would become one of my mother's three best friends). They were younger than my parents and had a two-year-old son, Robby, and an infant girl, BJ, who was born in 1954, three months before Hurricane Carol. Actually her name was Barbara Jane, but my mother abhorred long names and especially double names, so when the girl was born my mom dubbed her “BJ” and so she is known to this day, seventy years later (and she is still my dearest friend). I adored the kids, and as they got older I took them everywhere with me, including many trips on my boat.
One summer I was selling greeting cards through a mail-order company. When my orders were completed, the goods delivered and the money collected, I had to send the company their share. One complication, I had no money. The interrogation began. Marion was quite intrigued and couldn’t wait to find out what I had done with the money. When they started applying the thumb screws I spilled my guts, and my mother gave Marion the accounting. Ice cream for Robby and BJ, $2. Hats for Robby and BJ, $5. Game for Robby, $3. Pinwheel for BJ, $3. The list went on. Every last cent I had spent on Robby and BJ.
As the last year of elementary school drew to an end, I started preparing for junior high school by telling the barber, “Leave the sideburns, I’m going to junior high school now.“ That faithful day in September of 1957 I walked the three-quarters of a mile, arrived at the entrance to the imposing three story brick edifice, and entered the hallowed halls of Aldrich Junior High School (formerly Aldrich High School). Here the student body was four times that of elementary school, as four schools merged into one, and here I become a victim of a whole new breed of harassment.
Gym class proved to be the worst, and an agony that I suffered two days a week -- but there were two classes, and I had the good fortune of being assigned to the one with the nice teacher. The other teacher was the feared Mr. Lambert, a real hard ass. One day in the locker room before class, some of the boys were giving Lambert a bad time. He got angry and said he’d take both classes that day, and planned to put us through the paces. Out on the field he had us running laps, but one boy from my class said he couldn’t do that. He had heart problems and had a medical certificate excusing from gym, but by an agreement between his parents and our teacher, he was allowed to participate to the limited degree that he could. In Mr. Lambert’s defence, he didn’t know this.
As the boy tried to explain Mr. Lambert harangued him and told him to get running. The boy did a lap as best he could and then tried to get Mr. Lambert to let him stop. He didn’t. We tried to speak up on the boy’s behalf, but Lambert told us to shut up or we’d be running till dark. The boy did another lap, and then collapsed at Lambert’s feet, where he kicked dirt and convulsed with arms flailing. Lambert, thinking he was faking, started kicking at the boy with his foot. The boy kept kicking and convulsing and flailing as we all circled around and watched. Then he stopped. The first time that I saw death in the happening. Our classmate, our friend, a twelve-year-old boy, had died in front of us covered in sweat and dirt, while a junior high school gym teacher kicked at him with his foot.
Nowadays whenever I hear about the death of a school age child, by whatever cause whether at school or not, it always impresses me the process that the other children are helped through. Memorials are placed, counselling and grief support are available, and memorial services are held to remember the lost classmate. In 1957 at Aldrich Junior High School, nothing was done. The grief and trauma of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year old children, especially those who had witnessed the event, was completely ignored. There was no memorial service, no counselling, no acknowledgement whatsoever. Nothing about the tragedy was ever mentioned. And the parents never sued Lambert or the school.
With that event swept under the carpet, school life got back to normal, and some of the students -- needing something other than studies to occupy their feeble, demented, sadistic little minds -- started a club and recruited members from all three grades, boys and girls alike. It was called the LPL Club. That stood for “LET’S PANCE LANCE!” My life was hell. I was always late for classes because I would wait in the doorway of one class until the final bell had rung and the corridors were clear, then I’d run to my next class. I couldn’t be in the corridors with other students as someone was always trying to pull my pants down. More than once I was the victim of surprise attacks outside, abducted by a few students and dragged off into the woods. There I was stripped, brutalized and abused, and forced to do various and sundry unspeakable things to secure my freedom, the least of which was kissing and licking their shoes, including the soles.
To add to my humiliation, one day in the showers Leroy Ward pissed on me, and this became a popular sport with other boys as well. I stopped taking showers after gym. My school days were agonizing, and as I hear now of students taking a gun and terrorizing their school, I feel their pain. Just like those they injure or kill, they are victims as well. Bullying is a crime! And in addition to the perpetrator, the criminals are the negligent school authorities who do not protect all of their students equally, and do not ensure them a safe environment for education, which is their mandate. But in my day bullying wasn't even acknowledged, and there was no recourse for the victims. Yet no matter how devastating the bully was, the thought of taking a gun and shooting people never crossed my mind. That wasn't part of me or our culture then.
With the abuse that I was subjected to at school, and at home at the hands of my violent alcoholic father and rage-oholic older brother, I believe that I would not have survived had it not been for the friendship of John Harris, whom I had met at age 12 in the seventh grade. It was the first time that I knew I wasn't the only one, and we are best friends to this day, sixty-seven years later. His home became my sanctuary and his loving support of his parents became my surrogate parrents. They were Christian Scientists, a faith that has sustained me ever since.
In the midst of all this I did have a few joys, and one was the opportunity to earn my own money – by junior high my weekly allowance had reached a whopping seventy-five cents. My brother had a very big paper route in the neighbourhood adjacent to Aldrich, and he gave me one third of his route to handle as my own. We worked out of Pop Wilson’s news and variety store, one of the seven businesses in Norwood’s little retail hub. The original “Pop” was a nice old man, and when he died his son took over the store. He became the new “Pop”! He was very good to us kids, especially his paper boys, and he gave us two or three pennies more for each paper delivered than other newsstands gave their boys.
He watched over us too. Somewhere along the line I had discovered James Dean, and I simply had to have every movie magazine that had his picture; my favourite, one of James wearing nothing but briefs. One week when I was spending all of my weekly earnings on magazines, Pop asked if my mother knew how I spent my money. I put a couple back. In the end though it was all a fruitless passion . . . I learned that James Dean was dead.
During these years the greatest joy of all was doubtless The Seal, a glorious seventy-three foot (twenty-three feet longer than our house) motorsailer owned by The Louttit Corporation. It berthed at Onset, Cape Cod, during the summer and in Florida during the winter. Two years in a row (1956 and 1957) the Louttit’s gave my father the use of the yacht, complete with captain – Captain Hatch (which we thought was funny as “hatch” is a door on a boat) – for about a week each spring and fall. There had never been anything like it. My father’s distant cousin, Kesta, and her husband, Stuart, always joined us -- they were very close friends whom Jay and I loved very much. Kesta said that we were “kissing cousins” but I was never clear as to what that meant relationship wise.
The Seal was a classic vessel with captain’s quarters, mates’ quarters, galley, a large dining room and stateroom that accommodated up to eight. The adults stayed there, while Jay and I always had the separate aft cabin at the stern all to ourselves. The Seal had all natural teak decks, which Captain Hatch watched with an eagle eye. We were rarely allowed to have food or drink on deck, and anything oily like potato chips which could stain the teak was a capital offence. During our sojourns aboard there was only the captain, but for the Louttits or on a charter it was always the captain plus two mates. For that reason we never experienced The Seal under full sail, which must have been magnificent, as that required a full crew . . . but this hardly tainted our enjoyment.
What a spoiled Little Lord Fauntleroy I felt as we cruised around Vineyard Sound, Buzzards Bay, and Nantucket Sound; putting up at the swanky yacht clubs of Nantucket Island, as well as Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Vineyard Haven all on Martha’s Vineyard. Our fourth and last trip on The Seal was the fall of 1957. I was thrilled for him my fifteen-year-old brother who was at the helm, as we cruised the length of the Cape Cod Canal to Cape Cod Bay. There we joined the throngs of boats and yachts heralding the arrival of the Mayflower II, destined for Plymouth after its maiden voyage from England. Of the entire flotilla, The Seal was one of the most elegant crafts.
My father was always a bit of a braggart, but in his later years it became harder and harder for either of us to distinguish his realities from his fantasies. One of his favourite allegations was that he had had an affair of many years with his secretary at Louttit Laundry, Muriel Cormier, whom he referred to as his “office wife”. Whether or not that was true I have no idea, but I do know that my mother would always bristle at the mere mention of Muriel’s name. Then it really hit the fan. The summer of 1958 there was a week’s vacancy at the little house (the rental cottage at back of our beach house), and my father gave that week to Muriel. My mother was fit to be tied, and a pall settled over our household that lasted for weeks.
Muriel arrived with her son, Edward, who was seven months younger than me. Much to my mother’s chagrin, he and I hit it off well, and were buddies for most of that week . . . until the fight. Put two boys on a beach together and sooner or later someone is going to throw some sand, which I hated. Edward hit me with a face full while I had my mouth open, and I was on him in a rage. It wasn’t much of a fight really. In a flash I had that little bugger pinned down on his back, got my hands around his neck, and started choking him mercilessly. Then something snapped in my head, and I realized that I was going to kill him. That wasn’t a childhood fancy, it was fully my intention to choke him to death and I was well on the way . . . were it not for that snap.
After jumping off of him in horror, I made a vow to myself that I would never fight again. I never did, ever. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get beat up, my future was full of beatings, but I never fought back … physically anyhow. Reflecting on my lethal anger that day has always left me with a few wonderments. Was my anger fuelled by my mother’s distress and the tension in our household around this woman and her son? Nothing had ever been mentioned about Edward’s father, who and where was he? Why was this boy – who had to have been conceived while my mother was carrying me – named Edward? That’s the most curious of all, why Edward? Might the mistress of a man with the last name of Edwards name her bastard son Edward? It could very well have been more than a coincidence. Was he my half-brother? Doubtless I will never know, but my strongest suspicion is that he was.
By the end of 1958 my parents were talking about a trip to Florida. It was tentative at first but I was ever hopeful, and on the side of a small travel case that my mother had given me I pasted cut-out letters that said, "FLORIDA OR BUST!" Well, Florida it was and we went during spring break. My brother was sixteen and did a lot of the driving, which had me in the backseat the whole way wishing we were in our ol’ faithful, the roomy four-door ‘51 Buick. Despite how much I loved the flashy three-tone (black, red, white) ‘55 Buick, it was a two door and it wasn‘t long before I was feeling cramped; at times sitting on my travel case to give my legs more stretch room.
As I recall we did the trip in three days, spending just two nights in motels, and it was quite an eye-opener traveling through the 1959 south during that time before interstate highways and the civil rights movement. Segregation was still the law of the land. We saw chain gangs, and poverty like we had never imagined. When we got to Saint Augustine, Florida, we stopped to visit relatives that I had never heard of before. When leaving after an hour or two, the lady of the sweet elderly couple asked Jay and me, “Are you sure you don’t need to use the bathroom again? Speak now or forever hold your peace.“ We both heard it as “piss” and cracked up simultaneously, which was met with stern looks from parents and confused looks from the couple.
Later that day we landed in Fort Lauderdale, at the home of Barbara and Dick LaMarsh, daughter and son-in-law of dear kissing cousins from our voyages on The Seal, Kesta and Stuart. They had a son younger than me, which is all I remember about him. The house was a squat square cement block affair, which was nice enough but smelled musty, typical of the tropical climate, on a huge lot overrun with all sorts of exotic tropical vegetation, and some waterfront on part of the Intracoastal Waterway. We did all of the usual Florida things, yet for me three things in particular were most memorable.
The first . . . Miami Beach! Wow! Even though I didn’t know what Art Deco was at the time, this was an Art Deco extravaganza. The architecture and opulence of all the magnificent hotels was overwhelming, each one spectacular in its own right. The lights, the pools, the landscaping . . . it was a wonderland that I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams. Probably part of the reason that the movie Where The Boys Are had such an impact on me when it came out two years later, I saw it eight times. Although that may have had something to do with my mad crush on the character Ryder played by, I’m ashamed to admit now, George Hamilton.
Parrot Jungle was memorable for one reason in particular. All the kids who had been to Florida had pictures taken with five parrots on them -- one on the head, two on each arm. I was looking forward to that more than anything else, except maybe for buying red pants, which I didn’t do. I bought two pair of madras Bermuda shorts instead, ever the practical New Englander. Before the pictures though we had to tour the jungle to see all of the exotic birds, feed some, and then watch the show. Fascinated by a white cockatoo, I seemed to miss the sign that said “DO NOT FEED” and I stuck my right hand through the bars holding a sunflower seed.
That bloody bugger wasn’t interested in any ol’ seed, he wanted flesh and blood. He chomped down on my index finger at the first knuckle, leaving it looking like it was about to fall off. It wasn‘t as bad as it felt or looked, and a trip to the infirmary had me iodized and bandaged and sent on my way in no time, yet I still have a scar. Next we saw the show and then it was time for the pictures.
My brother went first, I tried next. But I was shaking so much that the birds kept putting their beaks down to balance, which I interpreted as their intention to bite me, and I shook all the more; a vicious circle. The handler removed the birds sans photo. Dad went next and then Mom, and then I braved it and tried again. This time was a go and I think one of my father’s proudest moments. Me with the five birds on me, bandaged finger and all – it was a big bandage – thanks to one of their nasty cronies.
All of it, however . . . Miami Beach, Parrot Jungle, almost losing a finger . . . all of it paled in comparison to the delights that I discovered at The Cypress Gardens. The venue was spectacular to say the least, the flora and fauna, the water, the boats, as well as the water skiing events and water acrobatics. All unbelievable, but what totally rocked my world was the male performers, a veritable feast for my pubertal eyes.
Even though a mere thirteen, I could barely contain myself. They were awesome! Truly awesome! Despite my secret stash of Charles Atlas magazines, I never imagined that so many good-looking young men with such beautiful bodies actually existed in the flesh (so to speak), yet here they all were parading around in skimpy tight bathing suits, with their curves and bulges in all the right places . . . if you know what I mean. Be still my heart! Although it seemed as though there was not enough film in my camera, I managed to capture a plethora of fine photographic fodder for many a night of voracious teenage imaginings.
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