Authors: Jack Baran
Pete drives north along the Hudson as the first drops of rain hit the windshield. It’s pouring by the time he swings on to the thruway in the blinding wash of an eighteen-wheeler highballing upstate. There’s little visibility in the downpour, just a green impression ’till the cloud-cover lifts just past New Paltz and he glimpses the soft ridges of the Catskills through the back and forth of the windshield wipers. He turns off at Exit 19 – Kingston/Woodstock, west on Rt. 28. In ’56, Little Petey followed an AAA Map, Route 17 to 209 to 28. Pete had never been back not wanting to disturb the memory of that magic summer.
Stewart’s has replaced the farmhouse on the corner of Zena Road where he pulls in to gas up, discovering that the mini-mart features hand-dipped ice cream. Pete can’t resist making his own chocolate marshmallow sundae.
Driving down Zena Road, there’s another cloudburst. The windshield wipers swish back and forth, back and forth in time to rocking guitars and off-kilter harmonies on the local radio station. Pete turns left at the four way stop sign where Zena meets the Sawkill Creek. The first time he heard Rock and Roll was in the Studebaker.
A jangly electric guitar played behind a snarling vocal. Little Petey jolted to attention, turned up the volume. A staccato drum roll made him vibrate all over. Frances lowered the volume.
“Mom!” Little Petey turned it back up.
What was the song about? A hound dog crying all the time? High classed? Was mommy high classed? Definitely pretty, even if she was skinny and never smiled much. When the song ended they announced the name of the singer, Elvis Presley. “Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley,” Little Petey repeated over and over again.
“Stop it! You’re driving me crazy.”
Little Petey didn’t like it when mommy got mad and lost her temper. He shut up and gazed out the side window, a Weeping Willow reached down to drink from the stream. “We there yet?”
“Almost.”
“How far is almost?”
The Studebaker slowed and turned up a gravel driveway. A red barn and a weathered two-story white farmhouse were barely visible through the pouring rain.
Pete slows as he passes the Weeping Willow. The Downing farm is on the left. He turns up the driveway; the same red barn faces the same two-story white farmhouse. Unchanged. Is this possible? Is he hallucinating? Nothing stays the same.
Mary Ann Downing looked out the window of her small attic bedroom. Nine years old, straw blond hair crudely cut, her green cats eyes widened when the Studie pulled up to the house. She tore downstairs. “It’s them! They’re here,” running through the kitchen, “they’re here!”
“Mary Ann,” her mother, Polly, yelled. “Put on your raincoat!” Too late, she’s gone.
Little Petey stared at the girl cart wheeling barefoot in the rain. He burst from the car screaming with pent up energy, followed her splashing through the puddles.
Polly, dressed in shorts, hair tied back with a bright scarf came out the kitchen door holding an umbrella. “Mary Ann! Get back in here!” Frances stepped from the car; she hadn’t seen her friend since before she went off to Iceland. Polly closed the umbrella. “Franny, Franny.” The two women hugged as the children danced wildly around them.
Pete steps out of the car, takes in the familiar landscape, the shuttered house, the padlocked barn, eerily the same, except Mary Ann is not here to welcome him.
The Downing Farm was originally the De Graf place; corn grew in the lower fields and cows once grazed on the upper meadow. There were maple trees on the hill, a stone smokehouse that doubled as a sugar shack and a chicken coop. Over time, the family sold off most of the land. Polly’s parents owned the place the summer his mother stayed there with Jerry Victor, the love of her life.
The rain stops; the sun breaks through the clouds. Pete walks out into the soggy meadow. He hadn’t thought about his mother in a long time.
Frances, Franny to her friends, originally Frieda Spilkowitz, grew up on a Pennsylvania chicken farm, the eldest child in a large Orthodox Jewish family. Her father Yakov, a brutal man, had buried two wives and the third was already pregnant. When his daughter turned eighteen, he sent her to work in a nearby factory. The family needed money and Frieda was happy to get away from her father’s tyranny.
She met Jerry on the assembly line. He was different from the other workers, spouting a radical doctrine, trying to organize a union. Though young and inexperienced, Frieda possessed a powerful intellectual curiosity. Jerry introduced her to the writings of Karl Marx and the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, explaining how these two men were changing the world. He confided that he went to Russia to get a close up view of Communism; he wasn’t impressed. He believed in the union and the rights of the worker, but he was no Red. Management thought otherwise, branded Giovanni Victorino a Communist and sent goons to teach him a lesson.
Frieda hid Jerry at the farm. Over dinner, he and her father argued about religious orthodoxy especially the treatment of women. They actually came to blows. Yakov, a dirty fighter, had Jerry down and was kicking him mercilessly. Frieda slammed her father with a frying pan and ran away with the union organizer.
The two comrades shared a small tenement apartment on Thompson Street in the Village. She changed her name to Frances Spellman, registered at the New School, and worked nights as a waitress in a former speakeasy entered through a courtyard off Barrow Street. Jerry introduced her to a demimonde of artists, radicals, and dilettantes. It was a rush of experience until Dec. 7
th
, Pearl Harbor. The world changed overnight. Within a week, Jerry joined the Navy; six months later he was dead.
In ’56, Pete didn’t know much about his mother’s family beyond that they were Jewish. Mommy was an atheist, and so was he. He walks around the barn looking for a way in.
A vase of wild flowers welcomed them. Little Petey crossed the threadbare carpet to try out the new old couch but was sidetracked by a bookcase stuffed with stacks of National Geographic’s, true crime magazines and a ton of pulp fiction paperbacks. A prodigious reader, he grabbed a handful of magazines, a couple of paperbacks and climbed up to the hayloft. That’s where he wanted to sleep. Franny stayed in the same converted tool room she shared with Jerry Victor.
Pete drives slowly up the gentle hill that leads into the village of Woodstock. The old buildings, fixed up just short of precious, are all familiar though every one has been re-purposed. On the curve at the center of town stands the 18
th
century Dutch Reformed Church with a freshly painted white steeple overlooking the town green transformed from a mud hole into an imaginatively carved stone piazza with benches and lush flowerbeds. Pete seems to know where he’s going, turns left down Tannery Brook Road, drives slowly around the bends looking for Little Deep, the swimming hole just up from Sully’s Bridge where he swam with Mary Ann.
The Streamside Motel is tucked into a glade overlooking Mill Stream. It was built in the sixties to accommodate a heady Woodstock music scene, twenty-three units on two tiers with a small two-story white frame house at the far end of the property. Pete pulls in and walks down to the swimming hole. A gaggle of teenagers are splayed out on the rocks, a young dad teaches his little boy to swim, a dog comes out of the water and shakes out.
That summer wherever Mary Ann went, Little Petey was sure to follow. They raced across the meadow to where a rope hung from a low limb of a gnarled oak. The little girl shot the boy a challenging glance, shimmied up to a crude but sturdy platform. Petey smiled, he was a good climber and passed the test easily.
“Why does your momma call you Little Petey? You’re not really little.”
“My dad was Big Petey.” He held back a sob. “He died in a plane crash. He called me Little Petey.” The boy squeezed his eyes shut pushing back his feelings.
Mary Ann took his hand, “That’s all right, Petey, it’s okay to cry.”
“No.” His tears flow unchecked.
“Up there.” Mary Ann pointed to the sky. “Your dad! Look!” A red tail hawk circled above. His dad was a bird, not lost or dead, but flying high over the Downing meadow.
Mary Ann’s domain extended across the road, all the way down to Sawkill Creek. “I’m not allowed to cross by myself.”
“You’re with me. Look both ways, no car coming, go.” She crossed. “See how easy.”
Heart racing, Petey looked in both directions, ran to the other side. “I did it, I did it,” he screamed.
“Watch out for Poison Ivy!” The little girl climbed over the guardrail.
Petey followed her across a muddy flat, frogs hopping in all directions. He caught one, gently held it in his hand. “We don’t have frogs like this in Iceland.” He released it.
“I read in National Geographic that Iceland has lots of volcanoes.”
“Tons. My dad took me to see one. It smelled like rotten eggs. Trolls love that, they live in caves nearby.”
Mary Ann eyed him skeptically. “Trolls! Did you ever see one?”
“Only once. He was bathing in the smelly water, singing, but I couldn’t understand the words. Trolls have a special language.”
“Was he scary?”
“Not really. He was ugly, but I kind of liked him.”
“We don’t have trolls on the Sawkill, we have bears. They live up the mountain and come down for berries. I saw a mother and her cub once.”
“Were you scared?”
“No, I was eating berries too. You know what the cub’s name was?” She smiled wickedly. “Little Petey,” she shouted.
“Hey! You guys shouldn’t be down there.” Susie, Mary Ann’s big sister stood on a rock above them. “Wait till Mom finds out.”
“My sister, Susie.”
“You Little Petey?”
“His name is Petey. His father was Big Petey.”
“Are you going to get us in trouble?”
“Not if you’ll be my slaves.”
“You’re sick, Susie.”
“Follow me! No talking!”
“Susie acts like a teenager,” Mary Ann whispered, “because she hangs around with older kids who live on the other side of the creek, but she’s only twelve.”
Back at the house, Carl, the girls’ father, just home from work, sawdust in his hair and a cigarette dangling from his lips, listened impatiently to Franny complain to Polly.
“I had to sign a loyalty oath to get my job at NYU.”
“Big deal, you’re an American, you were born here.”
“That’s not the point, Carl.”
“Even Jerry gave up on the Commies. He died for this country.”
Franny walked away without another word.
Polly elbowed her husband. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Your friend probably hasn’t gotten laid since her husband died.” He said that extra loud for Franny to hear. “That’s what she needs, not politics.”
Polly punched him in the arm. “Pig!” She went into the house, slammed the door behind her.
Carl’s glare transformed into a smile when he saw Susie leading the kids up the driveway. “Who wants to play Monkey in the Middle?”
“Me. I want to catch,” yelled Susie.
“No, me,” Mary Ann shouted. “Susie always catches.”
Carl’s eyes went from his willful daughters to the timid boy who stood between them. “Want to catch?”
“What’s Monkey in the Middle?”
He stubbed out his smoke and picked up a pink rubber ball lying on the ground. “I’m going to throw you the ball. The girls run back and forth between us ’till we tag them out. Then we’re the monkeys in the middle.” He threw the ball to Petey who missed it completely. Susie ran, Mary Ann followed shrieking. The boy picked up the ball, confused. “Throw!” Carl shouted. Petey threw it way over his head. “Strong arm, kid.”
Pete registers at the Streamside, checks into Unit 15 on the upper tier. The soft mattress on the bed is bad for his back, the shower drips in the bathroom and the room needs a fresh coat of paint but Pete doesn’t care, the bridge and swimming hole are right outside the door.
A riot of flowers blooms along the road and the trees flush green overhead. Pete walks around the bends into town.
A bus to New York City pulls to a stop in front of Houst Hardware and three Buddhist monks board. Pete checks out the sign on the store, Est. 1956.
He walks down the hill past the candle shop advertising the world’s biggest candle, makes a note to return when it’s open. A bunch of scruffy teenagers hang out on the wall outside the Chinese Restaurant, they could be sitting on a stoop in the Bronx. Pete spots a bar across the street, maybe there’s a ball game on.
The place is half filled; a muted Mets game plays on the TV. Two electric guitar players jam on a small stage. One is overweight with long thinning hair, the other looks like an ex-junkie and neither would inspire young girls to squeal, but these guys can really play. Pete orders Mother’s Milk, a dark, frothy, local brew on tap. He checks out the crowd, many seem to have a history with the musicians, especially two women who might have once been groupies; there’s also a couple of appreciative Japanese tourists and a table of college kids from across the river. During the break, Pete buys the musicians a drink and listens to their story of burning out on the road. They were in a semi-famous band, making good money, touring non-stop behind a couple of big hits. At their peak, they sold millions of records, but got screwed. Pete knew who they were, had seen them play, been a fan.
“We were lucky.”
“Made it home alive with a little coin.”
“Survived our success.”
“Others didn’t.”
Pete walks back through town, stopping on the piazza. A gangly kid with nappy hair, a big smile and a nose-ring, is playing guitar for change – sounds pretty good. He drops a twenty into his open case, wishes the kid luck.
The summer of ’56 had a sound track playing on Mary Ann’s portable Motorola. Dragonflies rocked around the clock. Fats Domino serenaded honeybees on Blueberry Hill. Little Richard screamed, tutti frutti, to chipmunks zigzagging around a snake sunning on a bluestone wall.
Almost every day, Franny and Polly took the kids swimming at Little Deep. While the women sunbathed, the kids took turns swinging on a rope, landing with a thrill in the cold mountain water.