As I Walked By the Restaurant---Gilda's Club writing class prompt

As I walked by the restaurant, the whiff of frying fish brought me right back to that summer in Boston. It was the summer of 1974, to be exact, and Larry and I were there for twelve weeks.  In Lexington and Concord, really.  We were living in a big rented house in Lexington, just down the street from “Battle Green” and I was working in Concord, just up the road from Walden Pond.  

Larry was NOT working, for the first time since he was old enough to push a wheelbarrow, although in theory he was writing the prospectus for his dissertation, which I guess he did do as he eventually did finish his PhD.  Anyhow, it was the most decadent 12 weeks of my life up until then, and since then as well.  Lord, what fun it was.  And how guilty I should be feeling, but I don’t.

There was a whole crowd of us from all points around the country working at Ginn & Company, a publishing company that’s probably not in existence anymore, but in those days they published a lot of textbooks, and I worked for an NSF funded science curriculum project that had been picked up by Ginn to do the final editing and publishing of our materials.  But meanwhile, there still was a lot yet to be written, and about 25 of us were “the writing project.”  

Only two of us brought our spouses:  I and a guy from our Tallahassee headquarters, and we two couples wound up renting together a spacious home along with another single Tallahassee lassie.  Since we were the only ones not living in an RV or a college dorm, the “office parties” either took place at our abode or at a restaurant or a park. And even when we weren’t having whole group gatherings, we and our housemates made a point out of trying out as many of Boston’s seafood restaurants as possible.  We only cooked “at home” about 6 times in that whole 12 weeks.

 

One restaurant in particular (here tell the story of Larry and the saucy waitress).

            Then there was the evening when our friend Michael came to Boston to attend a science educator convention.  We had already agreed to hold the “traditional” Friday night office get-together at our place, so before anyone arrived, Larry and I went together in our little VW bug to pick up Mike at Brandeis University where he was staying. Mike had hardly gotten settled in the back seat when he pulled out a fat doobie from his shirt pocket.  I’d never known Mike to smoke cigarettes, much less a joint, but he lit right up and blew out a cloud of sweet smelling marijuana smoke, then  handed it forward.  Larry waved it away with “Are you nuts? I’m driving!”  

But I wasn’t driving so I took a long drag and eventually blew out my own big cloud of smoke. Look, dueling clouds, I said with a giggle.  Then Quick, roll up the windows, the last thing we want is to get b. u. s. t. e. d.  Buck (the director of this writing project) would shit a brick if we got arrested.  Can’t you just see it?  Writers for high school science books charged with drug possession.  I’d never work again.  And I can’t imagine, Mike, that the president of XY University would be happy to find that his new Assistant Professor of Chemistry was caught personally testing the molecular structure of weed.  With that, Mike and I dissolved in laughter.  Seeing each other laugh made us laugh harder.  Hearing each other laugh made us laugh even harder.  Even ol’ Lar, the stone cold sober driver delivered a chuckle or two.  Every time it seemed that the laughter was getting under control, someone would say B U S T E D, and there we’re go all over again.   Larry finally stopped at a Pewter Pot, a coffee and muffin place, to try to get us sobered up before we got home to host the party. 

Well, we finally got home, drove into the driveway and found half our guests out in the driveway leaning up against someone’s car and passing a joint around.  They had started the party without us. Someone had lit a bunch of candles for the only light, wine and munchies were on the counter in the kitchen, there was already some canoodling going on in dark corners by married people—married, but not to each other.

Calm the story here by telling about mowing the yard with the rotary Lawnmower our landlady left for us.

Spice up the story by describing the weekend trip to Vermont with Jack and with Delta Dawn playing on the 8-track in the VW the whole way there.

There were some surprises that summer, well, many surprises, but one in particular involved our 5^th housemate—the single woman.  Somewhere in Boston she found a young female thing to love, and often spent the late evenings with her parked in our driveway where they made out madly. All within easy observation from our bedroom window.  Larry was all for this, as he always had sort of a thing for girl on girl sex, but our other married housemates were totally blown away (and not in a good way) as they had known this woman for years and hadn’t a clue that she was gay.  This was 1974, after all, and most gays were still in the closet.

Don’t forget the prime rib story at the George Washington Inn.

Plus the Legal seafood story at Jack's temporary quarters with lobsters and butter and corn on the cob and beer.

About half-way into the summer Larry decided to buy a sailboat at Sears. This was a very small single hull sailboat that was “guaranteed” to be able to ride safely on the top of a car.  It only weighed one hundred pounds.  I’d had one similar to it in an earlier marriage and I’d loved it.  It was the only boat I ever felt confident to handle by myself.  So off to Sears Larry went and soon arrived back at the Lexington house with a giant cardboard box tied to the top of the VW with numerous yellow ropes. Some hours later, and with the help and intrusion of many of the summer writers, the sailboat was assembled, and then disassembled and tied upside down to the top of the VW bug.  All the rest of the summer we drove around Boston like that. Tiny car, small boat. Locked together like a mating of two different species.

Tell the story of the maiden voyage of the sailboat.

 Tell the 4^th  of July story of the picnic on the banks of the Charles River.  Boston Pops.  Trying to get into locked bathroom.  Peeing in the bushes.  In mid-whiz, I became aware of footsteps coming my way.  Nothing I could do about it, except hope that the couple would look away either in politeness or in disgust, but at least look away.  My only consolation was that I would never see those folks ever again.

All too soon, the 12 weeks passed and we loaded up our road-weary VW Bug with our stuff and the sailboat on the top.  The sailboat was slightly longer than the car, and gave us a slightly top-heavy look.  The big drawback was that since the boat extended out over the hood (and beyond), we had to stop waaaaay back from stoplights in order to see when the light turned green.  Luckily we were on Interstates for most of the trip.

We arrived back in Tallahassee satiated with experiences, restaurant food, wine, and laughter, with barely an ounce of energy left to unpack the car.  We left the sailboat on the roof of the car and collapsed into bed where we spent the better part of three days in recovery from sleep deprivation.  Dang.  What a great summer.