My old friend, Peter Paul Markin, my old merry prankster yellow brick road “on the bus” 1960s summer of love, 1967 version, friend came over to Cambridge to visit me a few weeks back. We had lost touch for a while, although we never really lost contact for any extended period, but now we have time and the inclination to “cut up torches” more often about the old times. He told me that he had recently gone up to my old home town in Maine, Olde Saco, to take “the waters.” He had been going to Maine periodically ever since I introduced him to Perkin’s Cove down near York way back when so that was no surprise.
Of course any reference to Olde Saco automatically brings back memories for me of Olde Saco Beach, and of Jimmy Jakes’ Diner where I and my corner boys hung out looking, well what else do corner boys do, looking for girls. Especially girls who had a little loose change to play Jimmy Jakes be all to end all jukebox. But that is not what I wanted to talk to Peter Paul about just then, although I said we might get back to it some other time. What I wanted to discuss with Peter Paul, why I had asked him over, was how he had, happily, stayed with Laura, his soul mate, all these years.
Now this was no abstract question for I had just completed the final proceedings on my third divorce. (I won’t even list the number of other non-marital arrangements that I have been part of over the years. I only count the official ones, the ones that cost me dough.) So I was frankly jealous/perplexed that Peter Paul and Laura had survived through thick and thin. And here is what he had to say to the best of my recollection:
“Josh, you know as well as I do that in the old days, the old California care-free days that we were nothing but skirt-chasers. Yah, we might have been “on the bus” with Captain Crunch and the “new age” and all that stuff but I don’t remember a time when a good-looking woman passed by, young or old (old then being maybe thirty, right), that we didn’t do a double-take on. And wish we had been fast enough to come up with a line to entrance, enchant, or whatever it was we thought we had in those days. I don’t know about you but I still do those double-takes and I bet you, you old geezer, do too. [Josh laughs] Jesus, remember Butterfly Swirl when you and I first met and how you “stole” her right from under my nose. You just never got over the rolling stone thing. And before Laura I was strictly a rolling stone too.”
“I already told you a few times about how Laura and I met, met in high civilization Harvard Square, when I was in my lonesome cowboy minute and we connected from the start. From the Ms. Right start I called it. And about that first handshake that sealed, sealed maybe for eternity, that we were going to stick. Stick like glue. You know that part, that ancient history part , so unless you want me to repeat it I want to talk about sometime more recent that will give you a better I idea of what I mean. You’ll like this one too because it involves that last trip to Olde Saco”
“As you damn well know every once in a while I have to journey to the ocean, back to our homeland the sea. It’s just part of my DNA, just like yours. It’s in the blood since childhood. Usually, over the last several years, I have headed up to Olde Saco for a couple of days at a time alone as a change of pace. When I announce that I am going Laura usually asks, “Is it a retreat or a vacation (probably meaning from her, and the cats)?” We usually laugh about it. This time I was going an extra day since we were not going to take a week’s vacation this summer.”
“You know Laura just retired so I figured that she would appreciate the time to collect her thoughts (in between playing housemaid to the cats). A couple of days before I was set to go she said she wanted to come up for a day. I don’t remember whether she said it sheepishly or not, this Maine thing being “my time” but I said, straight up, “come on up.” And she did. No big deal; we walked Olde Saco Beach(new to her since we usually went to Wells together in Maine), went to dinner and then had our traditional ocean ice cream.”
“That last stop, that ice cream parlor stop, was at Dubois’ on Route One. Was that there when you were a kid? [Josh: no]. And do you know what the place had. It had an old jukebox that played all the old tunes. So naturally we had to, or rather Laura had to, play a few memory lane tunes. I don’t remember them all, except some dreary Rickey Nelson thing, she insisted on playing to rekindle some school girl crush she had on the guy.”
“And that experience, or rather one moment in that experience, explains why we have stuck, stuck like glue, all these years. There we were sitting in some plastic chairs eating our ice cream (frozen pudding, good frozen pudding) Laura, looking like a school girl, swaying to the music and with a smile on her face, a relaxed smile that said it all. What guy in his right mind would give up that smile, or the possibility of that smile, short of eternity”
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