***Daydream Visions Of Wollaston Beach, Circa 1964-For “The Girl On The Rocks”-NQHS Class of 1964

      

Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, and the Quincy Old Sailor’s Home (and cemetery about a quarter of a mile away, closed now but the final resting place for many a sea-faring man, known and unknown). Yes, those names and places from the old housing project down in Germantown where I came of age surely evoke imagines of the sea, of long ago sailing ships, and of desperate, high stakes battles fought off shrouded, mist-covered coasts by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And agile enough to keep it. Almost from my first wobbly, halting baby steps down at “the projects” I have been physically drawn to the sea, a seductive, foam-flecked siren call that has never left me. Moreover, ever since I was a toddler my imagination has been driven by the sea as well. Not so much of pirates and prizes but of the power of nature, for good or evil.

Of course, anyone with even a passing attachment to Quincy has to have had an almost instinctual love of the sea; and a fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turns her back on us. Days when the fugitive waves respect nothing in front of them surging over crumbling seawalls, laying waste to helpless abandoned houses, and flooding roadways from Malibu to Wollaston Boulevard (oops, Quincy Shore Drive). And moonless nights when she shows her furious face to sea- craft from dingy to super-tanker leaving drowning men to ponder their lives in those long last moments. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But enough of those imaginings. If being determines consciousness, and if you love the ocean, then it did not hurt to have been brought up in Quincy with its ready access to the bay and water on three sides anchored by its longest shoreline stretch, Wollaston Beach of blessed memory.

The glint of silver off the Long Island Bridge when the sun hit it at a certain time of sunny day. The early morning winter sun coming up over the horizon on the bay. The Boston skyline at dusk (pre-Marina Bay times when there was an unimpeded view). Well, I could go on and on with my beach view memories but the one thing that mattered for me in any season or any weathers was the word “escape.”  Wollaston Beach can serve as a metaphor for that idea. I do not know about you and your family but I had a very rocky time growing up and certainly by the time I got to high school I was in desperate need of a sanctuary. It is no accident that I spent a fair amount of time there. It may be hard to believe looking at its disheveled sands and tepid waves aimlessly splashing to shore seen with today's older eyes after recent trips there and after subsequently seeing many more spectacular ocean settings but then the place provided a few happy memories, now old hazy, happy memories.

For the Class of 1964 one cannot discuss Wollaston Beach properly without reference to such spots such as Howard Johnson's famous landmark ice cream stand (where now stands a woe-begotten clam shack of no repute). For those who are clueless as to what I speak of, or have only heard about it in mythological terms from older relatives, or worst, have written it off as just another ice cream joint I have provided a link to a Wikipedia entry for the establishment below. Know this: many a hot, muggy, sultry, sweaty summer evening was spent in line impatiently, and perhaps, on occasion, beyond impatience, waiting for one of those 27 (or was it 28?) flavors to cool off with. In those days the prize went to cherry vanilla in a sugar cone (backup: frozen pudding). I will not bore the reader with superlative terms and the “they don’t make them like they use to” riff, especially for those who only know “HoJo’s” from the later, orange pale imitation franchise days out on some forsaken great American West-searching highway, but at that moment I was in very heaven.

Moving on how could one forget the 19 cent hotdogs sold on the beach a few doors down at Maggie’s. (That can’t be right, I must be misremembering, maybe it was nineteen dollars, nothing in this wicked old world ever cost 19 cents.)  Or those stumbling, fumbling, fierce childish efforts, bare-footed against all motherly caution about the dreaded jellyfish, pail and shovel in hand, to dig for seemingly non-existent clams down toward the Merrymount end of the beach at the just slightly oil-slicked, sulfuric low tide. (By the way the jellyfish are still there in all their glory and please, take mother's advice, do not step on them, they might be poisonous.) And one could always see some parent parading a group of kids down to the flats. Generally staying for a couple of hours before high tide, and after as well, and that parent always seemed to have had snacks and drinks in tow in an all-purpose cooler.

Elsewhere along the shoreline older kids swam, dug dream castles in the sand to be washed away by an indifferent tide, played catch in the water with a rubber ball, and when they finally got tired, could be seen laying on towels strewn every which way listening to WRKO or WMEX on the transistor radio. Listening to Earth Angel, Johnny Angel, Teen Angel, Who’s Sorry Now, I Want To Be Wanted, Suzie Q and the like. [I know this is a geriatric site but there may be a stray child who sees grandma’s computer glued to this page, you know some young member of generations X, Y or Z, who may not be familiar with the term “transistor radio.” For their benefit that was a little battery-powered gizmo that allowed you to listen to music, the “devil's music,” to hear one’s parents tell the story, rock 'n' roll, without them going nuts. And no, sorry, you could not download whatever you wanted. Yes, I know, the Stone Age.]

Farther down the shore came overpowering memories of the smell of charcoal-flavored hamburgers on those occasional family barbecues (when one in a series of old jalopies that my father drove worked well enough to get us there) at the then just recently constructed barren old Treasure Island (now named after some fallen Marine, and fully-forested, such is time) that were some of the too few times when my family acted as a family. Memory evoked too of roasted, really burnt, sticky marshmallows sticking to the roof of my mouth. Ouch!

But those thoughts and smells are not the only ones that interest me today. No trip down memory lane would be complete without at least a passing reference to high school Wollaston Beach. The sea brings out many emotions: humankind's struggle against nature, some Zen notions of oneness with the universe, the calming effect of the thundering waves, thoughts of immortality, and so on. But it also brings out the primordial longings for companionship. And no one longs for companionship more than teenagers. So the draw of the ocean is not just in its cosmic appeal but hormonal as well. Mind you, however, I am not discussing here the nighttime Wollaston Beach, the time of "parking" and the "submarine races." Our thoughts are now pure as the driven snow. We will save that discussion for another time when any kids and grand-kids are not around. Here we will confine ourselves to the day-time beach. Although I still have a long-standing nighttime question now grown fifty years hoary with age- Why, while driving down the boulevard on some cold November night could one notice most of the cars parked there all fogged up? What, were their heaters broken?

[For the heathens, the pure of heart, the clueless, those who just got in from Kansas or some such place, or the merely forgetful, going to watch the “submarine races” was a localism meaning going, via car, preferable your own car and not some borrowed father’s car to be returned by midnight no later, down to the beach at night, hopefully on a very dark night, with, for a guy, a girl and, well, start groping each other, and usually more, a lot more, if you were a lucky guy and the girl was hot, while occasionally coming up for air and looking for that mythical submarine race out in the bay. Many guys (and gals) had their first encounter with sex that way if the Monday morning before school boys’ lav talk, and maybe girls’ lav talk too, was anything but hot air.]

Virtually from the day school got out for summer vacation I headed for the beach. And not just any section of that beach but the section directly between the Squantum and Wollaston Yacht Clubs. Most of the natural landmarks are still there, as well as those poor, weather-beaten yacht clubs that I spend many a summer gazing on in my fruitless search for that aforementioned teenage companionship. Now did people, or rather teenage boys, go to that locale so that they could watch all the fine boats at anchor? Or was this the best swimming location on the beach? Hell no, this is where every knowledgeable boy had heard all the "babes" were. We were, apparently, under the influence of Beach Blanket Bingo or some such early 1960s Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicillo teenage beach film. (For those who are again clueless this was a “boy meets the girl next door” saga, except at the beach...)

Get this though. For those who expected a movie-like happy ending to this piece, you know, where I meet a youthful "Ms. Right" to the strains of Sea of Love, forget it. I will keep the gory details short. As fate would have it there may have been "babes" aplenty down there on the shore but not for this boy. I don't know about you but I was just too socially awkward (read: tongue-tied) to get up the nerve to talk to girls (female readers substitute boys here). And on reflection, if the truth were to be told, I would not have known what to do about the situation in any case. No job, no money, and, most importantly, no car for a date to watch one of those legendary "submarine races" that we have all agreed that we will not discuss here. But don’t blame the sea for that.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Johnson's)