The events of this chapter took place between April 1964 and who knows when.
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Emergency
Peggy and I still wrote. A 1964 letter was urgent. She was in the Florida State Hospital at Maclenny. They were giving her shock treatments. She wanted to see The Saint. She been calling me The Saint (after the Roger Moore tv character) for at least a year. She wanted me to get her out of the hospital.
Jim did not hesitate when I asked him if we could go to her. His compassion was not driven by whatever lust he might still have had for me. Jim Newton truly was a nice man. With Butchy and Marty along, the trip would be far from a die-hard trek to rescue a damsel in distress. It was an adventure, yes, but a quest as well. We all knew there would be no way to get Peggy released from Macclenny, but it was important to show support and to let her know that people loved her and that her old friend wished things could be better for her.
We piled into the Continental and headed for F-L-A. Jim had a gasoline credit card and between us we had a few dollars for food and, maybe, enough for one night on some town way down there. The Continental was a white hard-top convertible, like the 1962 model shown above. We also brought along a good supply of peanut butter and jam.
Macclenny is about 40 miles south of the Florida edge of Okefenokee and an hour west of Jacksonville. We drove straight through from Boston to the hospital. Jim and the boys waited in the car while I marched up to the entrance and asked if I could visit Peggy. No dice. Not only was I not family, I was without Peggy's doctor's permission to visit her even if I could be there during regular visiting hours, which I wasn't. I have absolutely no idea how we managed to have a face-to-face meeting at one of the out doors of the ward she was staying in, but we did. We could barely hear each other through the wire-reinforced window, but we got to see each other and smile a bit. It was terrible for her, and disturbing for me.
We said our good-byes and Jim and the boys comforted me.
Continental Breakfast Lunch and Dinner
There was no need to mope and be miserable. We had accomplished one goal: to visit and comfort my friend, albeit visitation and comfort under glass.
We headed back to Boston, sidetracking first to Jacksonville. We found a little boarding house near the center of town, at some PB&J; then left the Lincoln parked while we ambled about looking for something to do. And what else do four faygalas (a play on the words Baby Love) do in a new town that would make them feel like being home? We had fantasies of seeing hundreds of handsome sailors, but I don't think we saw even one - in uniform, that is. But we ended up looking for a gay bar. Butchy and Jim - they preferred the Punch Bowl scene, while Marty and I were more into Sporters type places.
We splurged on a taxi, and asked the driver to take us to a gay bar.
After traveling some distance, he drove up to the parking lot of a dock-side establishment. The lot and the building were brimming with lights and fake-paper fake-chinese lanterns. It was the gayest place the cabbie could think of. But to us it was just a straight bar brightly lit, inside and out.
I wonder, now, when "gay" starting meaning gay people. I'll try looking it up on the web.
I know that when I was at Mesa High, Thursday was queer day. Maybe it was every other Thursday or some such thing. Queer day meant you had or could wear something odd or strange. We didn't have gay day. But we did have Senior Hat Day, where the senior class was encouraged to wear decorative head gear. I was lousy with contempt when my Senior Hat Day rolled around in 1962. I wore a had made entirely of empty Marlboro cigarette-box packages. There's a picture of me wearing it. I'll have to scour the archives that my friends Jim Scudder and Barry Kazmer have been so kind to share with me.
But gay to mean gay? Wikipedia says this:
The term gay was originally used, until well into the mid-20th century, primarily to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637. The term later began to be used in reference to homosexuality, in particular, from the early 20th century, a usage that may have dated prior to the 19th century. In modern English, gay has come to be used as an adjective, and occasionally as a noun, that refers to the people, practices, and culture associated with homosexuality. By the end of the 20th century the word gay was recommended by major style guides to describe people attracted to members of the same sex.
I can tell you this, for sure: in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, gay was gay, dude. But in Jacksonville during the late middle sixties, at least one taxi cab driver knew gay only as gay.
And Speaking of Gay
Now that the gay bar thing was dead in the water, we talked about going to a movie, but instead hit the sack - leaving Jacksonville in all its gayness, and Florida in all its Peggy-Is-Still-Strandedness behind.
We were in Georgia for only half and hour when we got pulled over, allegedly for speeding. But Jim was a terribly conservative driver, never inclined to break any rules of the road. Mostly, I guess, because he had absolutely no ability to pay whatever fine might be thrown at him.
Without money for the "speeding" fine, we were inches away from spending the day and who knows how long in a cell at the local police station.
But Butchy, our gayest gay friend on this trip - Butchy came to the rescue by entertaining the local constabulary simply by being probably the only gay person they had ever encountered. The fact that this was probably not true doesn't matter. They'd never been entertained by a twenty year old large framed, dark haired man who could do Marilyn Monroe as well as the best.
We happily went on our way.
It's Coming Back To Me Now
The trip to Macclenny had to have been late in the summer of 1964, because I was already working at Union Bay State Chemical in Kendall Square, Cambridge. I know this because one day at work a piece of one of my recently unbandaged wrists - from the Bev-and-Scotty scene - sprang a leak while I was delivering a formula to the manufacturing plant.
Mr. Sammons, the office manager, I think, was with much agitation asking everyone in the place if somebody'd been hurt on the job. "Why?" asked Vito Zblesky, the plant manager.
"Because there's blood on the floor!"
Sadly, without judging, they realized the blood was from me.
Cambridge
It was through Jim Newton that I landed my first real Boston job, and I would work at UBS and live at Jim's Chestnut Street digs for the next year.
I was living there when I met Ronnie Friedman in the fall of 1964. I know it was then, because Petula Clark was in heavy rotation on Arnie the Woo and everywhere else. Downtown was such a great little song. Perky and light and with something to say about urban fun.
It was through the efforts of Jim that I was hired as a secretary in the production office of UBS, an old glue factory, really, using huge chemical recipes to tailor the brews to the specifications of the purchaser, depending on what they were gluing together.
More at the Jobs chapter.
UBS was located across the Longfellow bridge near Kendall Square in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston. After leaving Jim's, but not staying out of his life entirely, I took an apartment on Myrtle Street. The apartment was tiny, but perfect. There was a kitchenette, a bathroomette, a livingroomette and a bedroomette. In face, now that I think of it, the livingroom was also the bedroom.
In Cambridge, I loved the hero sandwiches served from a cart near Kendall Square station. Ham and cheese, with sweet pickle chips.
The next stop north of Kendall was Cambridge Square, but I often would walk that way if I needed to do any shopping.
Shopping. For work I had to wear business attire which for me meant black slacks, light blue button down shirts, a tie, and black sport jacket. It was easy for me to dress for work each day because I had 5 light blue button down shirts, 2 or 3 pair of black slacks, regular shoes, and the sports coat.
One of my lunch-hour shopping trips found me in a check-out line at Woolworth's in Cambridge Square. Toothpaste, maybe. I handed over my money and the cashier looked at me and said, "I remember when I bounced you on your knee! I'm you're aunt Peg." Okay, I was 20 years old but I can't believe that aunt Peg could recognize me between when I was under 5 and now.
We exchanged big hugs. So untethered was my life, that I never saw her again.
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