Hello, friends.
If you’ve been following me or reading my diatribes for any length of time, you know that I’m a big Bruce Springsteen fan. His music has guided me through good times and bad, jubilant and horrific. This week, I am so damn proud to be a Springsteen fan.
He made news this week by opening the first concert of his recently-named Land of Hope and Dreams Tour by saying what I’d hoped he’d say, but even more so.
When he announced that he and the E Street Band would be touring again this year, it looked like an add-on to the tour they’d been on from 2023 through 2024. Then, about two weeks ago, it was announced the tour would be called the Land of Hope and Dreams Tour. His song “Land of Hope and Dreams” is a song that’s about a lot of things. The hopes and dreams of our nation and of each individual person. It’s also a song about loss and death. “You don’t know where you’re goin’ now, but you know you won’t be back,” he says at one point. Naming the tour after this 1999 song was an indication to me that he was going to take a stand.
And he did.
His setlist is actually similar to the one I made up in the essay I wrote a few weeks back in this newsletter, taking a lot of the songs that fit perfectly with the time we’re in and saying what needs saying. He’s finally debuted his song “Rainmaker,” of which I’ve written about here a time or two.
It’s not always that your heroes live up to your image of them, and it’s nice when it happens. Now come on up for the rising, come on and lay your hand in mine as we get into this week’s newsletter.
Welcome to the 122nd installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and more fun at the park.
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Anyway, let’s go!
***
I don’t know what I did this week. No joke. It was Sunday and then it was Friday. The end of the school year is kicking everyone’s ass and so my writing mostly happened in my head. I’m still waiting to hear back from another reader of Project: Amusement Park (two, actually) but may have to start ahead on draft 3 without them.
Every time I decide what I’ll work on next, I suddenly want to do a different idea. My brain is a game of Survivor right now with the concepts and stories vying for attention. But something will happen soon. I can feel it.
***
Introduction
Last week I thought I’d tell a story that I’ve verbally told many times that makes people laugh not because of what happens in it so much as how I tell it. I got to just over 1,000 words and most of it was backstory. In the interest of not taking too much of your time, I decided to stop it just as things were about to happen. Here’s the link to last week’s part in case you missed it.
So, let’s go back to the park in the early spring of 1988….
Chased from the Park, Part II: The Mountain, Bad Boys & the Sharp Half Moon
“Did he just say…?” Eric said.
“‘Get off our mountain,’” I said.
“Let’s go,” said Scott.
“No.” I turned toward them. “We were here first and there’s plenty of room for the six of us.”
Scott didn’t look convinced and Eric continued bouncing from foot to another, full of energy. We were on the hill we called The Mountain at Brooklawn Park. From the north, near the duckpond a short distance away, came three boys. One of them–the one in the middle–had shouted across the park to us to leave the hill where Scott, Eric, and I were playing G.I. Joe with toy guns.
My heart began racing. I’d been bullied before. At ten years old, I wasn’t one of the “cool” kids at Ashley School, my elementary school. Whatever cool factor I’d had in kindergarten and first grade was gone by third grade. Now I was in fifth grade. Back then, elementary school in New Bedford went to sixth grade. I didn’t realize as I stood on that rocky hill with broken glass under the sun twinkling like a galaxy full of stars, that not only was I on a precipice of the small rocky cliffs that could take me to Acushnet Avenue, but also the precipice of a half-decade of being bullied. The approaching boys, who were now coming up the gradual incline of the hill, the route we took to sled in the winter, were bullies. I could tell. Particularly the boy in the middle.
Maybe I should just go, I thought.
No. There’s plenty of room up here for us all to do our own thing!
The boys had arrived.
Two boys flanked the middle kid and this validated my opinion that the middle boy was the leader and the other two were the flunkies, the goons, the yes-men. Or yes-boys, as it were. The middle boy was smallest of the three and wore acid-washed jeans and an acid-washed denim jacket, the kind with a fluffy collar that were all the rage in the 1980s. Maybe he wore a white tee shirt or a red button-up shirt open to reveal the white tee underneath the jacket. White high tops gleamed in the midafternoon sun. His light brown hair was a feathered-out mullet.
“Didn’tcha hear what I said?” he asked and approached us. “I said to get off my mountain.”
I could sense Scott and Eric about to do just that. I probably should have, too, but I’d seen too many movies. The Rebellion does not give in the evil Galactic Empire. The hero justifies his existence and place to those who would put him–and his friends–down.
“This mountain is big enough for all of us,” I said. I remembered that I had a dollar bill from allowance in my pocket and was afraid that this creep would try to take it. I put my hand in my pocket and grasped that dollar. “If you want to play here, fine. We’ll go over there.”
I indicated the west side of the mountain, the one that faced Brooklawn Park. While there was rocky outcroppings there, it didn’t have the same feel of being a mountain like the east side that looked out at Acushnet Avenue.
“No,” the boy said. He and his friends tried circling us but I followed. Now my back was facing the west and I could see the cars driving past on Acushnet Avenue. A bank was across the street. “We want the whole mountain. So get off.”
By now, he was right in my face and things were tense. His flunkies were chuckling and ready for anything. Scott was silent and likely looking away, up into the sky, looking for Superman or god or the ability to fly away. The boy’s icy blue eyes had a feral quality. They were set too close together with his sharp, upturned nose in between them. He spoke in a menacing way.
Let him have the Mountain, a voice in my head said. You will not win this.
“All right, we’ll go,” I said and lifted my hands. The hand that had been in my pocket accidentally dropped the dollar bill.
For a moment, George Washington looked up at from a spot of rock. I quickly swiped it and clutched it, afraid that the other boy had seen it.
“What’re you doing?” the boy asked.
“Nothing,” I said. Looking back, it was kinda lame to say that.
“Were you tryin’ to grab this.” The boy knelt and came up with a shard of broken glass.
An aside. Brooklawn Park on Acushnet Avenue used to be place where people hung out. I’m sure that it still is but since I don’t live over there and don’t drive through that area in the evening, I really don’t know. In the 1980s, it wasn’t uncommon to drive past the park in the early spring and summer evening and find tons of young people parked and hanging out. Big hair, rock tee shirts, tight jeans, boots of various styles for the guys; teased, tight short skirts or jeans, revealing blouses or shirts for the women; leather jackets all around; with motorcycles or cars that always looked well-loved. Cigarette smoke and drinking happened. As a result, the Mountain was littered with broken glass. If it came in a glass bottle and it was consumable, it was broken on the Mountain.
“Be careful not to cut yourself,” came from my father’s mouth many times when I played there.
And now, one of those shards was being held inches from my face.
“You were gonna grab this and stab me, weren’t you?” the boy asked.
Everything had stopped. The two chattering, chuckling goons no longer looked jovial. Eric had stopped bouncing from one foot to another, not sure whether to follow his best friend or his brother. Scott had stopped looking for Superman/god/an answer. Everyone’s eyes were wide.
“N-no,” I managed.
“Yes you were,” the boy said. “You were gonna grab this piece of glass and cut me.”
Those feral blue bore into me and the shard of glass grew closer, only an inch or two away. The shard of glass was a clear halfmoon, it’s sharp edge and point raised toward me.
I thought, He’s going to cut me!
To be concluded…
***
I did it again. I’ve gotten to about 1,200 words and have to stop. I’m sorry. Next week will definitely see the conclusion of this little tale.
***
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