Chapter 6

The sun sets, the star appears

Turning the page by moving to Bristol increased my daily intensity. I still needed to pick up my sisters and take them to school. Then an interesting twist. My mother had hired my ex-girlfriend Margie 3 years ago to babysit my half-brother who was now a year and a half old. Of course, I was elected to pick her up on my way into Waterbury. She was very pregnant herself and I got to watch her say goodbye to her husband many mornings in the run-down side of a city that I hated. 

Don’t get me wrong. There was nothing left but friendship. I just did not care for her husband based on my conversation with Brian on New Year’s Eve. Our drives were pleasant enough and we talked mostly of our families. The detour was not convenient and added extra to my mad rush mornings. For a moment I got to see my mom each day for 2 minutes. This was the casualty of the vandalism. Since the fall of 1978, I used to have coffee with my mom. We talked for a while each morning and it was really great. I always imagined that we would sort of wind down, knowing when this morning ritual was going to end. Instead, it was torn from us one very cold morning. It taught me that we take things for granted and we shouldn’t. With a small exception, we really never got to regain these morning coffees. 

In late March, my sister also moved in at my grandfather’s house. Now she joined me on the drive to Waterbury. Kathy and I drifted apart, not out of any falling out, but more so because our lives had each gotten busier. When May happened, she was on her way to Oklahoma. I knew June and the journey to Texas was coming fast. I spent all of my study hall time planning the trip. It was easy to plan on paper how far I would drive each day and where I would stay. It never occurred to me that actually doing it would be something totally different. There always seemed to be people that I was giving a ride to before or after school.  A different Cathy approached me one day asking for a ride.  With a car full, she sat in the middle of the front seat.  As I dropped people off, she was the last one to take home.  She stayed next to me when she could have slid over. I stopped in front of her house.  I carefully told her that I was so flattered, but could not start something right now. 

April came and I got the fever. It was the call to return to Lone Oak Campsites in East Canaan. My friends and I were coming of age. I had my Voyager HiLo camper still sitting on my site on Chuck’s Circle. Come mid-April we all started meeting on Fridays or Saturdays as our schedules would allow. Tom stated coming up again, all of my Rhode Island friends, Gary from Southington. Gayle came up too, this year with her fiancé Paul. It was an incredible bond I had with these people. I soaked in every weekend knowing that very soon I would no longer be able to do this. I wanted to savor these, what I considered to be probably the best days of my life.

We had a couple of large camping weekends in which we actually camped on alternate sites having invited an army of friends up. We did this funny thing wherever we went, we would take every car that we had. So when we arrived at the diner in Canaan for breakfast we arrived, filling the parking lot. Same with State Line Pizza, we arrived like locusts. Wherever, movies, hikes, and grocery stores. Late-night trips to Millerton, NY, where the drinking age was still 18 to buy beer was the only time it was ever a single car mission.

Memorial Day weekend we had a giant group and even my sister and cousin came up and camped. We had a lot of guitars that weekend and being a holiday weekend, we attracted other people to our group. They were ok,  but they were your stereotypical stoners that could play guitar and we were looking to lose them. We mentioned that we were going bowling, to bingo, then to midnight mass. I can still recall the oldest guy in the group of stoners, sitting there on the picnic table bench.  In his very slow, slurred, almost Tommy Chong sort of way: “Bowling? Ok, that’s cool. Bingo? I guess so. But, that midnight mass? I don’t know man.”

The weeks flew by. I was preparing to leave Connecticut. I was painting my car red, it was gold. I sent a photo ad to the local sales paper advertising my camper for sale. One weekend, Tom was not going to have enough time to drive up to Canaan, so we all went to him. We hung out at Candlewood Lake and has a great weekend. I could feel it, my time was getting short. Final exams were underway at school. At some point later in June, the people in the class of 84 would be walking across the stage, getting their diplomas, and departing. Me, I was probably going to be somewhere in the middle of Missouri by then. Good riddance. I did my time. I served four years in this jail, the failing, rusted, cracking, decaying city of Waterbury Connecticut.

Back in 10th grade, we had an assignment in which we were to write a letter to someone important, like a Congress person, with the goal being to improve our community. I wrote to Leonid Brezhnev the President of the USSR, asking for just one Soviet ICBM to be fired at Waterbury, stating that this alone was Waterbury’s only hope.

It was Tuesday, June 19th. I had already finished working for Toys R Us last week. This week I had a lot to do. I sat in Mr. Sweeney’s Accounting-3 class of 3rd period in school. As usual I was not really paying attention and talking to Mark Tumulis. Sweeney had me for three years out of my four there. He knew me well. He knew what I was planning. We were engaged in non official conversation around the room. I said aloud that I really had better things to do than to study for finals. He knew I was right. Mr. Sweeney understood that I could do nothing in class, not do any homework, ignore all the happenings in class and still pass tests and finals to pass Accounting with a 65-70 average. He also knew that after being here for four years, he wasn’t about to change my ways now.

“You have no reason to be here” he said replying to my statement. I got up told him I would see him tomorrow and left school. I went down the Old Waterbury road towards Bristol. I had not finished painting the Dodge and Steve had been right. The red and black front end and the gold rear end were a hideous combination. I found a spot off the road in Plymouth to pull away from all other civilization. I opened the trunk and finished painting the car. After I was done with the red, I painted an R/T stripe around the trunk. Finally, it was done. This of course was no custom paint job, but I was proud, nonetheless.

My last final exam was done, I was out the door of JFK High School, and I did not look back. I visited with my relatives and especially my wonderful Grandmother Violet Jackson. I was really going to miss her.

I said good-bye to my friends at Gary’s house in Southington on Thursday afternoon. Steve was there with Robin, Mark’s girlfriend. Robin’s hair was now short. She was headed into the military. We took some pictures and listened to the Kinks Low Budget tape with amusement. These songs, the studio versions of the live ones we had played all last summer were a reminder of all we had been through together. The summer of 1983 was incredible. Spring began with my new camper and having only the most exciting site in the campground. Fast times, loves and losses. Summer was a way of life. We would meet new people every weekend and who was to know what would happen next. Everything was always a surprise. We were young and many stories would come from these times we had all spent together. Now we stood in the street at 8 Luty Drive in Southington seeing an end to this era of our friendships. We didn’t know it, but all of us here today would never all be together again. I drove away feeling sad, yet the gravity of my long awaited journey sent a power through my soul that I could not surpress.

I really did not have enough money for the trip yet. Everyone said if you put a photo ad in those shopper papers, you always get your price and get lots of calls. No one called.  I went up to Lone Oak for the last time. Gayle and her soon-to-be husband Paul made me an offer and I took it. It was appropriate, she had spent many hours in that camper, playing music, meals, laughing, singing, just being us.

I returned home to Bristol to do my final pack out and the phone rang. A guy told me that my ad had a typo in the phone number, it read 582 instead of 583. I never noticed it.  I would have gotten more having sold it this way, but, my friends bought the camper. The one I bought at 16. I was not disappointed. I said goodbye to my mother as she was going away for the weekend.  I would see my sister Amy and brother Bobby at my Aunts house this weekend. I said goodbye to my grandfather in the driveway in front of his house. When I shook his hand, there was 100 dollars in it. I thanked him. He presented the British salute, palm facing out, fingertips almost touching the beret as if he was wearing one. “Salute the Phoenix, the great bird rising from the ashes of destruction.” This is something my Grandfather would do every time he saw this car after a long time of not seeing it. It was a reference to it being destroyed in the vandalism attack and then coming back from the dead. Deep down I knew, Vicki-Lynn was worthy of such respect.