As to a few days ago — a good time was had by all. We were up and out of here (dark woods and river) at 4:30 AM for the Berkshires. Over the Mohawk Trail. I knew we'd come back through Hawley, it's quiet little villa along its own woodlands in the evening. At the book sale we had to be in a line already forming from the night before! so no matter we were there at daybreak we were still back aways in line. Book dealers bring boxes the night before and leave them as their place in line. Others rent motel rooms for a quick first-step. We drive through the night. The tickets handed out by 7:30 and still not that many were there. A friend of ours had a basketball and that's all I had to hear bouncing around since we were at a school and the hoops had two good nets. One hoop, though, looked like Shaq had done a jam on it. Bad tilt. My friend didn't seem to miss much despite the tilt. I invited over a few other middle-aged guys who hadn't touched a basketball in 40 years and tossed them soft passes and before you know it they were feeling a little younger and hitting a few at close range. That killed one hour. Susan sat in the sun enjoying herself. The sale wouldn't start until 10 in the morning but by then we all had our tickets and the sale would be a 3 hour workout for us and we fetched a half-dozen boxes of books. After that we bicycled the campus edges of college town. A few guys playing a good game of tennis.
In the afternoon we knew we had been saving up a full year of no junk food so we could hit Pedrins Dairy Bar, the very place I went to with my family every weekend through the summer of my childhood. Hotspot early 1960s. I still think it's the best, or one of the best, fish n chips or clam roll or milkshake with fries hangout in all the Berkshires. Susan and I ordered then put down the tailgate on the truck and ate up on the tailgate. Legs swinging. All that was missing was Pacific Ocean. That's all.
Junk now in us we headed deeper into old Adams town and we tooled all my old bicycle haunts on the way to the cemetery where yearly we go to plant more flowers at my parents graves (mom not yet in there) and clean out their etched names in stone of grit and lichen. We do it with a plastic knife from the dairy bar. Mount Greylock happens to look terrific from this location so we took off our socks and boots (sandals Susan) and lay in the sun right near the graves. I believe I fell asleep for a few minutes sinking a bit down into the labyrinth of father.
Next stop was to head back into Adams and check out the place...what a misery watching a once vital town shutting down store by store and the sidewalks virtually empty. I remember crazy soda jerk joints, a red bold facade Woolworths, bowling alley upstairs, pool hall, cops walking the beat (now one young cop on bicycle), kids kids kids everywhere. Shiny oil smell hardware stores. The train passing right through the heart of Main Street. A RR worker standing outside the caboose always giving us a wave. Vanished. I hadn't been in Miss Adams Diner in 45 years and never have taken Susan in, so we went in for coffee and pie. Susan had the coffee and I had tea. The waitress was new in town (1985) from Texas and never heard of my father's lumberyard right behind her diner just about, or my great grandfather's great log yard. There was an old lady with puffy white hair in for shepherd's pie at 4 in the afternoon and I have a sneaky feeling she knew about that lumber place. It's funny, on the way out to the cemetery I saw this same woman out in her backyard hanging laundry and I said to Susan: "See that old woman, she's probably the age of my mother and has probably never left town. Hanging wash." An hour later she's right behind me in a booth listening. Small town.
The Texan blond was going all hog wild about the old Polish Church (what I called it as a kid because that's what it was). It turns out they have gorgeous stained glass in the church and it's another place I haven't been inside for almost a half century...I suggested to Susan we climb on our bikes and head out to see the church. We get there at just the hour for mass and a vigil because It seems the church is being closed down. There's a rift down the center of town between those who want to close down all but one Catholic church in town for lack of funding etc., and keep the one center-piece church on the main street as all-purpose church. The heartbreak is what to do with this magnificent Polish church. The interior (we knocked on the door and got inside) is stunning glass work, and the 'marble' columns. I got up to them inches from my eyes and I swore they were marble, so has every architect who has visited. Not so. Wood. And since the church was built in 1905 it's a good bet all the wood for the building, and these sterling, scalloped marble columns, came from my family's lumberyard. Now I wish my father was alive to talk to me. There's a custodian in the church working hard to keep the church open and vital and he asked us to sign a petition and we did gladly. He also did a double take when he asked my name. Suddenly we were flooded with familiarity of a known goodness once in this town. He was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1965. I was in 1970. He went. I went elsewhere. Almost 40 years later we're talking. Trying to save a church built by people long gone. The craftsmanship eternal.
Ah, so we got on the bikes and rode out the dusk by going up to the old baseball field (Russell Field) where I once hit a line drive through short stop and brought in a winning run. Same baseball diamond they flooded every winter and we ice-skated for hours under floodlights. I'd stay so late skating with my middle brother Scotty that he'd be crying from the cold by the time we hiked back home. Not a big hike now as I look around from the field over the old buildings and up a few side hill streets, but a barren and frigid Sahara Desert to an 8 year old, in the cold dark of 20 degrees. Susan and I swing by it all on dirt bikes taking the uphill to the golf course and around an old neighborhood I always loved because there is this miniature sort of Lombard Street (San Francisco) that comes down from the golf course to the library and into the center of town all over again. Full circles are all about a small town. All the steeples, built by Italians and French and Irish and always the Polish.
