What Is In A Name-Plenty When You Are Taking An Ill-Advised Trip Down Memory Lane With No Direction Home, Alone And Some Damn Headlights Gather You In

What Is In A Name-Plenty When You Are Taking An Ill-Advised Trip Down Memory Lane With No Direction Home, Alone And Some Damn Headlights Gather You In

By Allan Jackson

Sometimes a nostalgia piece gets out of hand, goes way beyond the original intent. Often brought on by some side issue that had been buried so long you had forgotten that way back when that thing counted for plenty. Of course when you apply the getting out of hand theory to the work of any of the older writers here who literally came out of the same school then the frame of reference can only be about the various corner boy gradation experiences from about fourth grade on to maybe our early twenties. Thus I was able to forthrightly state in a recent article on what essentially amounted to a tough drill in the class dynamics of American society, North Adamsville section that one of the standard reasons given for many of the articles produced in this publication is that they relate to a certain demographic that many of the writers here are still standing members of-what is loosely called the Generation of ’68. The Generation of ’68 as reflected in 1960s life in the Acre section of North Adamsville where I, we, grew up as much as the great upheaval some of us were part of later that decade  known various as the counter-culture, the descend into hell and a resulting cultural war without end, and without reason. Some aspects looked at from the old days in the neighborhood, as here, frankly have no rhyme or reason except as they pertain to the life of the Acre, and its environs. Today we are about unpleasant memories of being stiffed by forces we had no control over. About the class issue that would later haunt a number of us, but which went by the name-as always back then-girl trouble.  

Seth Garth, Sam Lowell, maybe Bart Webber, don’t quote me or him on this one, have gone endlessly over the nuts and bolts of what our corner boy existences were in the old Acre section. That desperate poverty which affected every aspect of life in the town and which we became painfully aware of as we grew older and the beast could not be contained any longer. But the Acre which actually protected us for a while from the harsh realities of what “our betters,” my mother’s ragged term for non-Acre people, those who were dead ass aimed at the fruits such as they were of the 1950s golden age that missed us, not kissed us, as only one section of the town, representing one segment of the high school life although the most desperately poor section and therefore with its own challenges. There was as the case usually is a “better” section, the Hills, where the up and coming families lived in the new ranch houses which were all the craze back then among the upwardly mobile.

The Hills were actually set on a peninsula across from Adamsville Beach and separated from the immediate Atlantic section, slightly better than the adjacent Acre by a long causeway that practically speaking might as well have served as a Berlin Wall, a Mexican Border Wall, a free fire zone to keep the ruffian hordes out. Thus unless you were very inquisitive about the place you had no real reason in early youth to go there, or to know anybody there. They had their own Seal Rock Elementary School which I would not actually see until sometime in high school. The flow of kids, the mixing of school-age populations to reflect a broader social fabric (nice, right) did not begin in earnest until junior high school. If anybody has paid attention Bart Webber spent a fair amount of ink describing how the post-World War II baby boom created the need to break down the previously six grade high school into a four- year school by the addition of a separate junior high school for seventh and eighth grades. This is the real melting pot if you will of the Hills, Atlantic, and Acre Rock student populations. My oldest brother Rex who played sports and other activities and who went through the former six-year regime at North Adamsville High told me that he had zero friends from the Hills during his time there. Had exactly one date, or maybe it was one girlfriend from the Hills and he was a very handsome looking guy.

After running through all that chatter I got to the heart of the matter. Small town, yes, but certain social norms were not generally broken prior to the creation of that junior high school and even then it was a close thing. We in the Acre, we who were defined by our being corner boys, had no particular set of expectations except nobody snitched to nobody for no reason-or else. The social whirl in the Hills was something else. Maybe it was parents, maybe ministers, maybe who knows misbegotten teachers but those in the Acre were cursed with a stigmata, with the sign. See the Hills were something like the last stronghold in town for the devotees of the Protestant Reformation who originally landed in the town held the reins for at least a couple of centuries before the “bloody” Irish Roman Catholic and Italian dittos came crashing in to fill up the working class jobs at the granite quarries or the shipyards.

It is hard today having been through eight million relationships with all kinds of different people from all kinds of backgrounds to have heard that we of the Acre were some kind of cretins, some social refuse. This was not some fiat from above but, I hope the reader was being attentive, those very girls with whom we had the everlasting “girl trouble.” As we corner boys budded into young hormonally charged teenagers we had had our fill of those Irish Catholic girls from the neighborhood who had as we called it-rosary beads in their hands and a Bible between their knees. Mixing, or so we thought, with the Hills girls whom we knew were not Catholics since there were many Protestant churches in the Hills but no Catholic church although I am not sure what we thought they were would give us more opportunities or so we thought.           

After that mouthful I aimed my arrows at one Jill Hoffman (see the dreaded rollcall list below taken from the membership roll of the Protestant youth group over in the Hills with her name listed right along with the others). Jill was this delicate flower who I (and plenty of other Acre, Atlantic and Hills guys too) dreamed dreams about. She and I would actually talk in class and afterward too since we both loved literature. One day I decided to make my big move and ask her to the school dance that next weekend, that next Friday I think is when they held them. Now this is eighth grade not grad school or something like that so I was innocent enough to ask. Here is her reply-Girls from the Hills don’t go anyplace, anytime or under any conditions with heathen (her word gotten from who knows where) boys from the Acre. In short we Hill girls stick with our Protestant boys.

End of story. A tough way to grow up but that is the facts. Well not quite the end and this has caused some rancor among the old corner boys who think that while I had Jill’s ass nailed correctly to the cross I had conveniently forgotten about another girl from the Hills who while as rabidly connected to some Protestant ethic (she told me once that her minister would go fire and brimstone over the “Catholic” problem in the town, warning, forewarning really all the young Luthers to steer clear). This girl, Ginny Garland, (see that same rollcall for her name) would actually talk to us, would talk to me and be friendly in the way almost any civilized girl was friendly back then. Ginny was a big rangy girl, for the times, not beautiful in any conventional sense but her bright eyes and sweet smile were worth fighting over. Here’s the big break-through Ginny, when asked, accepted corner boy Donald White’s invitation to the senior prom. Said sure. So some ice was broken in the mid-20^th century. From what I hear they had a good time. So there. (Well not “so there” since I would be very remiss if I didn’t say that Donald White would later lay down his beautiful head in some hellhole battlefield in Vietnam and whose name is now enshrined in granite on town hall memorial and down in black granite in Washington. Somebody told me once that Ginny would occasionally go to that town memorial but I don’t know that for a fact.