WAITING
ON THE ANGELS – The Long Cool Summer of 65 Revisited
Act
III Episode 1 – Flashback - Vince Gets an Education Behind the Bar
The sun rising over Ocean City greeted Vince Rennich as he woke up in a second floor room of Bay Shores nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey. That’s where he was, he thought, taking in a lungful of sweet, salt air and getting his bearings to the sounds of barking seagulls outside the screen less window. Poking his head out he looked at the giant orange and red sun rise across at the Ocean City skyline on the horizon, then at the blue shinny swath of Great Egg bay, and rows of boats to the north and the foot of the causeway bridge on the other side.
One big seagull flew by and looked at Vince, perched on a mast of a nearby sailboat and chattered on like a laugh, making him wonder if the seagull was laughing at him.
Making his way down the rickety wood steps he finds some of the guys from Gregory’s Tight End club already there, continuing the job they started yesterday of cleaning up the bar so it can open by Memorial Day weekend, two weeks away.
After cleaning up the joint for a few hours they broke for lunch, some having a pizza delivered that they washed down with some beers that were left over from last Labor Day, while Vince and Bill Saylor drove down Bay Avenue to Delaware at the Anchorage and up the hill to Gregory’s, where Saylor introduced Vince to Charles Carney the bartender, as instructed by Bay Shore’s manager Jack Murray.
As Saylor and Rennich ordered lunch – raw clams and snapper turtle soup, Carney opened the clams in front of Vince while telling him that Jack Murray wanted him to learn the basic tricks of the bar trade, so pay attention.
“You won’t have to shuck any clams at Bay Shores,” Carney said, as he put a knife into a clam in his hand and twisted it around, tausing the top and placing the clam in an ice lined dish, with lemon. “But you will work somewhere else someday and should know how just the same.”
“At Bay Shores you’ll just have to open beers and
pour shots for the most part,” Carney continued, “but there are a half-dozen
other drinks that you have to know how to make because there’s always someone
in the crowd who wants a screw driver, Harvey Wallbager, Dunes Sunrise or a
Long Island Ice tea, so you have to know how to make them,” handing Vince a
copy of Mr. Boston. And as the waitresses ordered a special drink, Carney
showed Vince how to make it. He also took Vince behind the bar and showed him
how to mix the right amount of liquid detergent in the sink to wash glasses,
how the copper pipe thing worked, and how all of the liquors were placed in a
particular order so you knew where they were when you were busy.
Before Rennich was finished with his lunch, Carney had given him the Bartenders 101 class, and at the end said, “You’ll just have to learn the rest from experience,” and that he did.
Before the month was out, Rennich had risen from bar back to relief bartender during slow nights during the week, and was working the night Bay Shores was raided, and all the underage girls scampered out the women’s room window onto the dock while grown 20 year old men jumped into the bay and swam ashore, but they escaped.
The NJ state police ABC – Alcohol Beverage Control, without notifying local authorities or police, orchestrated the raid, and only nabbed one guy, a 19 year old college kid who they busted and used as an example, with the penalty being Bay Shores had to close for one month – the month of July. Vince was glad that he hadn’t served the kid, though he did have some new friends he met and they kept coming to his bar and tipped good, though he knew they weren’t 21. They got away in the melee.
Jack Murray took care of his crew however, and made sure that everyone who worked for him got a job at another nearby joint, with the understanding that they come back and work August through Labor Day, when they would close for the season at the end of the night. All of the local bars and restaurants offered to help, and took in his bartenders, bar backs and waitresses for the month, and they all went back to Bay Shores when they reopened in August, and Vince went to Gregory’s where he worked one end of the long mahogany while Carney worked the other.
When the people come and everybody does well, all the businesses are busy and everyone is flush with cash, there is no competition and everyone helps each other, especially in the bar and restaurant business. If one place ran out of a certain brand of beer or liquor, or needed a keg of beer, toilet paper or anything, they could make a quick phone call and count on another place nearby to send a bar back over with whatever it was they needed, and it would be replaced in kind the next day.
Some nights, after closing Gregory’s at 3 am Vince would drive Carney over to the B&B Lounge in Atlantic City, that was open all night, where Carney introduced Vince to George McGonigle, the bartender who was always complaining about something, but a good Irish curmudgeon.
Early one night, just when they were getting busy, Rennich saw Carney talking to Elmer Gregory, one of the owners, and some heated words were exchanged and after serving a customer, he looked down the bar and Carney was gone. It’s unclear if he was fired or just walked, as he sometimes did, taking the tip cup with him, and Elmer told Vince he had to finish the shift by himself. But when he had the chance, Vince grabbed a dime from his tip cup and went into the old wood phone booth, closed the glass door and called the B&B Lounge. When George McGonigle answered the phone Vince told George that Carney had just walked off the job and it was an open opportunity for him.
George then pulled a Carney and doing the same thing, he picked up his tip cup and walked, shaking hands with the other bartender and said his goodbyes to the waitresses he liked and without even announcing he was quitting he walked. After talking briefly with Elmer, George McGonigle was behind the bar with Vince Rennich for the first time.
While Rennich went back to work at Bay Shores in August, and continued living in the second floor room overlooking the bay, he worked part time at Gregory’s and when the Bay Shores season was over on Labor Day, he began working full time at Gregory’s where he shared the bar with George McGonigle for the next thirty years.
But after the bust for serving that under 21 year old, and the Anglemeyer murder connected to one of the Dunes bouncers and maybe one of the Bay Shores bartenders, Jack Murray also walked. It’s not clear if he just quit over all the shit that was going down or if he was fired by McLain and McCann, but he was gone when the Bay Shores reopened in August and a new manager was ordering the liquor, hiring the bands and counting the money at the door.
Before Rennich was finished with his lunch, Carney had given him the Bartenders 101 class, and at the end said, “You’ll just have to learn the rest from experience,” and that he did.
Before the month was out, Rennich had risen from bar back to relief bartender during slow nights during the week, and was working the night Bay Shores was raided, and all the underage girls scampered out the women’s room window onto the dock while grown 20 year old men jumped into the bay and swam ashore, but they escaped.
The NJ state police ABC – Alcohol Beverage Control, without notifying local authorities or police, orchestrated the raid, and only nabbed one guy, a 19 year old college kid who they busted and used as an example, with the penalty being Bay Shores had to close for one month – the month of July. Vince was glad that he hadn’t served the kid, though he did have some new friends he met and they kept coming to his bar and tipped good, though he knew they weren’t 21. They got away in the melee.
Jack Murray took care of his crew however, and made sure that everyone who worked for him got a job at another nearby joint, with the understanding that they come back and work August through Labor Day, when they would close for the season at the end of the night. All of the local bars and restaurants offered to help, and took in his bartenders, bar backs and waitresses for the month, and they all went back to Bay Shores when they reopened in August, and Vince went to Gregory’s where he worked one end of the long mahogany while Carney worked the other.
When the people come and everybody does well, all the businesses are busy and everyone is flush with cash, there is no competition and everyone helps each other, especially in the bar and restaurant business. If one place ran out of a certain brand of beer or liquor, or needed a keg of beer, toilet paper or anything, they could make a quick phone call and count on another place nearby to send a bar back over with whatever it was they needed, and it would be replaced in kind the next day.
Some nights, after closing Gregory’s at 3 am Vince would drive Carney over to the B&B Lounge in Atlantic City, that was open all night, where Carney introduced Vince to George McGonigle, the bartender who was always complaining about something, but a good Irish curmudgeon.
Early one night, just when they were getting busy, Rennich saw Carney talking to Elmer Gregory, one of the owners, and some heated words were exchanged and after serving a customer, he looked down the bar and Carney was gone. It’s unclear if he was fired or just walked, as he sometimes did, taking the tip cup with him, and Elmer told Vince he had to finish the shift by himself. But when he had the chance, Vince grabbed a dime from his tip cup and went into the old wood phone booth, closed the glass door and called the B&B Lounge. When George McGonigle answered the phone Vince told George that Carney had just walked off the job and it was an open opportunity for him.
George then pulled a Carney and doing the same thing, he picked up his tip cup and walked, shaking hands with the other bartender and said his goodbyes to the waitresses he liked and without even announcing he was quitting he walked. After talking briefly with Elmer, George McGonigle was behind the bar with Vince Rennich for the first time.
While Rennich went back to work at Bay Shores in August, and continued living in the second floor room overlooking the bay, he worked part time at Gregory’s and when the Bay Shores season was over on Labor Day, he began working full time at Gregory’s where he shared the bar with George McGonigle for the next thirty years.
But after the bust for serving that under 21 year old, and the Anglemeyer murder connected to one of the Dunes bouncers and maybe one of the Bay Shores bartenders, Jack Murray also walked. It’s not clear if he just quit over all the shit that was going down or if he was fired by McLain and McCann, but he was gone when the Bay Shores reopened in August and a new manager was ordering the liquor, hiring the bands and counting the money at the door.
Act
III Episode 2 – David Brenner Breaks into the Judge’s Chambers
Over dinner at Daniel’s restaurant on Shore Road, sitting at a table for six near the bar and piano, David Brenner announced to his crew and his secretary’s parents what the story was they were going to work on.
As they wrapped up their Italian seafood dinner with some red wine, Brenner’s secretary took a $5 bill over to the piano player and put it in Bobby Chic’s cup and requested a song – Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea,” as she had done twice earlier in the evening.
As they sat back after dinner, Brenner recounted how they were filming in Bay Shores when the college kid on the motorcycle rode in and around the dance floor and got arrested, and how they followed him being taken away by Bader’s Raiders in the paddy wagon and followed that to City Hall where they discovered Judge Helfant’s Midnight court where they processed all the drunks and disorderlies, but Helfant wouldn’t let the camera into the court room.
“We’re going to pay the Judge a visit tomorrow,” Brenner said, “and see what he has to say on camera.”
The next morning, waking up at his secretary’s family house in the exclusive Gardens section of Ocean City, they took their time getting ready, and over coffee and sticky buns read the old news reports that mentioned Judge Helfant that his secretary had dutifully compiled over the past few days.
Timing themselves to arrive around noon, when Brenner knew the administrators and bureaucrats would have their guards down, they parked outside the front door of the Old City Hall and with camera rolling went in and found the place deserted. Brenner went to the back of the room, and through a swinging wood waist high door, went into the back offices and knocked on the door with the frosted glass painted “Judge E. Helfant.”
When nobody answered he opened the door and with the cameraman filming, he began going through the office files until he found the one labeled Midnight Court, which listed the initials of a half dozen people who each got a take from the income from fines, but no other records.
Sitting behind the judge’s desk in his plush leather chair, Brenner picked up a Somers Point phone book and looking up Helfant’s name found it listed and called him. Since the judge had gone to the open all night Flamingo Motel Lounge in Atlantic City after wrapping up the court at 3 am the previous night, he was still asleep, having only gone to bed a few hours earlier.
“Hello,” he answered groggily.
“Judge Helfant?” Brenner asked.
“Yes?”
“This is David Brenner from KYW TV 3. I met you in court the other night, err morning and you wouldn’t let me film.”
“Yes, I remember, what do you want?” he asked as if annoyed.
“Well we’re doing a story and want to ask you a few questions.”
“You can go to hell,” the Helfant said.
“Well, I’m in your office right now, calling you from your phone on your desk, and we’ve just gone over your Midnight Court files and low and behold – there are none!”
“Can you tell me who these initials stand for on the receipt in the file?”
Helfant replied, “Stay right there, you will be arrested for breaking and entering shortly,” and then hung up.
Over dinner at Daniel’s restaurant on Shore Road, sitting at a table for six near the bar and piano, David Brenner announced to his crew and his secretary’s parents what the story was they were going to work on.
As they wrapped up their Italian seafood dinner with some red wine, Brenner’s secretary took a $5 bill over to the piano player and put it in Bobby Chic’s cup and requested a song – Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea,” as she had done twice earlier in the evening.
As they sat back after dinner, Brenner recounted how they were filming in Bay Shores when the college kid on the motorcycle rode in and around the dance floor and got arrested, and how they followed him being taken away by Bader’s Raiders in the paddy wagon and followed that to City Hall where they discovered Judge Helfant’s Midnight court where they processed all the drunks and disorderlies, but Helfant wouldn’t let the camera into the court room.
“We’re going to pay the Judge a visit tomorrow,” Brenner said, “and see what he has to say on camera.”
The next morning, waking up at his secretary’s family house in the exclusive Gardens section of Ocean City, they took their time getting ready, and over coffee and sticky buns read the old news reports that mentioned Judge Helfant that his secretary had dutifully compiled over the past few days.
Timing themselves to arrive around noon, when Brenner knew the administrators and bureaucrats would have their guards down, they parked outside the front door of the Old City Hall and with camera rolling went in and found the place deserted. Brenner went to the back of the room, and through a swinging wood waist high door, went into the back offices and knocked on the door with the frosted glass painted “Judge E. Helfant.”
When nobody answered he opened the door and with the cameraman filming, he began going through the office files until he found the one labeled Midnight Court, which listed the initials of a half dozen people who each got a take from the income from fines, but no other records.
Sitting behind the judge’s desk in his plush leather chair, Brenner picked up a Somers Point phone book and looking up Helfant’s name found it listed and called him. Since the judge had gone to the open all night Flamingo Motel Lounge in Atlantic City after wrapping up the court at 3 am the previous night, he was still asleep, having only gone to bed a few hours earlier.
“Hello,” he answered groggily.
“Judge Helfant?” Brenner asked.
“Yes?”
“This is David Brenner from KYW TV 3. I met you in court the other night, err morning and you wouldn’t let me film.”
“Yes, I remember, what do you want?” he asked as if annoyed.
“Well we’re doing a story and want to ask you a few questions.”
“You can go to hell,” the Helfant said.
“Well, I’m in your office right now, calling you from your phone on your desk, and we’ve just gone over your Midnight Court files and low and behold – there are none!”
“Can you tell me who these initials stand for on the receipt in the file?”
Helfant replied, “Stay right there, you will be arrested for breaking and entering shortly,” and then hung up.
Helfant then called the pay phone at Charlie’s Bar,
across the street from City Hall, and asked for the Chief, the Chief of Police,
who he instructed to go to his office and arrest Brenner and whoever else was
there.
George Robert's Real Estate Office and Charlie's Bar
Brenner instructed his cameraman to go outside with his secretary and film the arrival of the police and the judge, so he too wouldn’t get arrested, and the chief, with two officers in tow, found Brenner sitting in the Judge’s chair smoking one of his cigars.
“You’re under arrest,” the chief said, and as the other two cops began putting hand cuffs on Brenner and the chief read him his rights the mayor walked in from Gregory’s down the street, wanting to know what was going on as Judge Helfant arrived at his office.
“I want to make a phone call,” Brenner said, and after a short discussion the chief ordered one of the handcuffs removed and they allowed Brenner to call his office from the Judge’s desk phone.
Brenner got his producer at KYW on the phone and told him he was being arrested in Somers Point and may need some bail money, though the amount hadn’t been set.
“Five grand,” Judge Helfant said, overhearing the conversation.
Though they couldn’t hear Brenner’s boss on the other end of the line, he said something like, “This is the third time in two years you’ve been busted on a story,” he said, as Brenner put his hand over the phone so the others in the room couldn’t hear it.
“Five Grand is not something I can come up with without going before the finance committee so you’re going to spend the night in jail and have to get yourself out of this one,” and hung up.
“Thanks,” Brenner said, “I won’t let you down, we have it all on film and it’s a great story,” he continued as if still speaking to his boss, bluffing and putting his best poker face on with the Judge, the mayor, the chief of police and two police officers in the small judge’s chambers.
“Well,” Brenner said, “you can either let me go and I’ll owe you one, and that will be reflected in my story, that will be seen by a half million people in the Philadelphia – Delaware Valley area, or you can throw me in jail and we can go to court and I’ll reveal all of the Shenanigans you’ve been pulling off in your own court room.
After a heated discussion between the mayor, the chief and the judge, the chief ordered a cop to remove the handcuff from Brenner’s other hand, and told him to go and do whatever story he wanted but they would not cooperate or make a statement on camera. And if he was seen in Somers Point again he would be arrested for the breaking and entering, which carried a three year jail term and fine.
With his secretary behind the wheel of the white Chevy Van parked in front of City Hall, the cameraman stuck his head out the hole in the roof and filmed Brenner walking out the front door, a big smile on his face and clapping his hands. He gets in the passenger side and instructs his secretary to “get while the getting’s good,” and tells her to drive down that alley as he points across the street to Anchorage Lane.
Brenner instructed his cameraman to go outside with his secretary and film the arrival of the police and the judge, so he too wouldn’t get arrested, and the chief, with two officers in tow, found Brenner sitting in the Judge’s chair smoking one of his cigars.
“You’re under arrest,” the chief said, and as the other two cops began putting hand cuffs on Brenner and the chief read him his rights the mayor walked in from Gregory’s down the street, wanting to know what was going on as Judge Helfant arrived at his office.
“I want to make a phone call,” Brenner said, and after a short discussion the chief ordered one of the handcuffs removed and they allowed Brenner to call his office from the Judge’s desk phone.
Brenner got his producer at KYW on the phone and told him he was being arrested in Somers Point and may need some bail money, though the amount hadn’t been set.
“Five grand,” Judge Helfant said, overhearing the conversation.
Though they couldn’t hear Brenner’s boss on the other end of the line, he said something like, “This is the third time in two years you’ve been busted on a story,” he said, as Brenner put his hand over the phone so the others in the room couldn’t hear it.
“Five Grand is not something I can come up with without going before the finance committee so you’re going to spend the night in jail and have to get yourself out of this one,” and hung up.
“Thanks,” Brenner said, “I won’t let you down, we have it all on film and it’s a great story,” he continued as if still speaking to his boss, bluffing and putting his best poker face on with the Judge, the mayor, the chief of police and two police officers in the small judge’s chambers.
“Well,” Brenner said, “you can either let me go and I’ll owe you one, and that will be reflected in my story, that will be seen by a half million people in the Philadelphia – Delaware Valley area, or you can throw me in jail and we can go to court and I’ll reveal all of the Shenanigans you’ve been pulling off in your own court room.
After a heated discussion between the mayor, the chief and the judge, the chief ordered a cop to remove the handcuff from Brenner’s other hand, and told him to go and do whatever story he wanted but they would not cooperate or make a statement on camera. And if he was seen in Somers Point again he would be arrested for the breaking and entering, which carried a three year jail term and fine.
With his secretary behind the wheel of the white Chevy Van parked in front of City Hall, the cameraman stuck his head out the hole in the roof and filmed Brenner walking out the front door, a big smile on his face and clapping his hands. He gets in the passenger side and instructs his secretary to “get while the getting’s good,” and tells her to drive down that alley as he points across the street to Anchorage Lane.
Act
III Episode 3 Lynda’s True Confessions
Lynda VanDevanter finished her 3am – 11 am shift at
the Emergency Room of Shore Memorial Hospital and even though she had her
bathing suit on under her uniform, she broke routine and went home – back to
her room at Mrs. Nick’s Rooming House on Wesley Avenue.
Running up the steps with the spindle railing, the
home owner Mrs. Nick stopped her on the porch where she was playing bridge with
three other ladies, and introduced her to them.
“This is Mrs. Waldman, the mayor’s wife,” she said,
“and this is Mrs. Rundgren and Mrs. Croce,” who was Jim’s aunt who lived in
Ocean City, but didn’t know her nephew was in town.
Lynda said hello to them all, and nodded when Mrs.
Nicks told her that there were three young men in the room next to her, which
made Linda roll her eyes as she continued on up the steps, knowing that three
guys will be hogging the bathroom the occupants of four rooms shared.
And sure enough, as she got to the top of the stairs
a young man, Joe Walsh came out of the bathroom and said hello and introduced
himself.
“My band the Nomads are auditioning at Tony Marts
tonight, if you can come by and cheer us on,” Joe said, and Lynda just replied
with a smile as she went into her room to get some things she needed to take to
the beach.
Once she got down at the beach Lynda laid down on
the blanket the nurses had set out earlier, next to her boyfriend “JJ,” who was
lying there sound asleep, a hard night at the Dunes, so the radio was off as
Lynda began talking to the mayor’s daughters on the next blanket over.
When the other two nurses came back from a dip in
the breakers, Lynda told them and the sisters what happened at the emergency
room early that morning, right after she got there shortly after three. A
really embarrassed guy came in with his wife’s wedding ring on his penis, which
had swollen up so the ring wouldn’t come off. After trying every lubricant
available, Lynda came up with a solution, went down in the basement and came
back with a janitor and a giant pair of wire cutters, saying aloud, so the
patient could hear, “We’ll cut if off.”
And after a brief scare, the patient realized she
meant cut the ring, and that’s what they did, an ingenious act that earned
Lynda the reputation as being the resident penis specialist. And although the
patient was a well-known Ocean City celebrity, she couldn’t divulge the name
because of the patient’s privacy, and she respected that.
As the four girls all laughed at that, Lynda said
she has two more confessions to make.
When things quieted down, the radio off, Lynda
acknowledged she was a virgin, and being a good Catholic girl, she was proud of
it, but was beginning to doubt her faith as she was in love with “JJ” and the
summer was winding to a fast close, and “JJ” was being recalled early, she was
thinking about “doing it,” if “JJ” wanted to.
That got the girls laughing softly again, so as not
to wake “JJ,” and they only stopped when Lynda interrupted, saying, “And my
final confession,” she waited until everyone was silent, “I enlisted as an Army
nurse and volunteered for Vietnam.”
“No!” said “JJ” sitting up, shaking the towel off
his face, as he was apparently awake and listening the whole time. “No, don’t
go to Vietnam,” he said as visible horror shown on his face.
Even though he spent one of his 21 years in Vietnam
“JJ” didn’t talk about it much, and when he asked only replied, “It sucked.”
Lynda then began reciting some of President
Kennedy’s inaugural address, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us
well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the
success of liberty....." but “JJ” cut her off.
“He’s dead.”
Then all went quiet on the 9th Street beach as Lynda
put her head down on “JJ’ stomach and put a beach towel over her head and fell
fast asleep, exhausted from a long night at the Emergency Room and true
confessions on the beach, and dreamed.
Act
III – Episode 4 – Joe and the Nomads Get a Gig
After enlisting Stephane to sing with them for their
second Tony Marts audition, Joe and the Nomads went looking for a keyboard
player, first to Shriver’s Pavilion on the Ocean City boardwalk, but they
didn’t expect to find one there since it was a scene dominated totally by
guitars. So they scoped it out for a little while, then grabbed a slice of
pizza at Mack & Manco’s counter and ate as they walked to 8th Street to the
Purple Dragon Coffee House.
You could see the big roaring Purple Dragon head
jutting out above the front door that looked like it belonged on a Thanksgiving
parade float, but as legend would have it, was from the bow of a Spanish
treasure ship that ran aground at Anchorage Point during a Nor’easter’ a
hundred years before the Dutch and English Quakers arrived and settled in. It
was made of old hard wood and refashioned paper Mache, and painted purple, of
course.
The large purple dragon’s head jutting out over the
sidewalk would have been an issue for the building inspector, but since the
building was owned by D. Allen Stretch, the city commissioner responsible for
public works and safety, it got a pass.
Inside the Dragon there was half the afternoon lunch
crowd there usually is because all of the folkies and most of the hippies were
camping at the second annual Philadelphia Folk Festival at the Wilson farm
outside Philly. While most of Philly was heading down the pikes or Expressway
to the Shore, the folkies and hippies were going in the other direction,
leaving a lot of empty seats at Shriver’s Pavilion and the Purple Dragon.
Still drinking their Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer
from the boardwalk, they sat at a table in the back, where a folkie was playing
guitar on the small stage.
While debating the meaning behind the lyrics to Bob
Dylan songs was a popular pastime at the Purple Dragon as it was among the
hippies at Shrivers Pavilion, the Purple Dragon was not just a stage for
singers and guitarist, the Purple Dragon soap box was also open to poets and
story tellers, and so it was after a guitarist John Buloshi would trash was
finished, William Kresge, a North Jersey college student did some magic tricks
that impressed Tido, who became his protégé and learned some of the mentalists’
tricks long before he became known as Kreskin.
Then Pittsburgh Paul took the stage, and after a
moment of stage fright, he straightened up and began reading from a white piece
of paper – “The Sheriff of Reality.”
The Sheriff of Reality
By Pittsburg Paul
I
am
The
Sheriff of Reality
So
watch out Bad Guys
For
I am
Everywhere.
I'll
step upon
Your
Shadow
And
walk upon
Your
Dreams
Until
you think
Your
carrying
The
world upon
Your
shoulders.
Wither
I come
And
wither I go
No
one knows
Not
even I
Cold
steel
Pressed
upon
Your
back
Give
me
The
Goods
And
I don't
Mean
the money
Thundering
I come
And
thundering I go
And
the world
Will
never
be
the same
Thus
Spoke
The
Sheriff of Reality
After a few lines he put the paper down and really
got into it, reciting off the top of his head, and a tinkling of the piano keys
against the wall grabbed everyone’s attention for a split moment – it was Tido
Mambo chiming in, and then the Nomad’s percussionist began tapping his bongos
and dragging Paul’s poem into the realm of music.
When Pittsburgh Paul was done and walked off stage
with an extended applause and a smile on his face, Joe asked Tido to stay where
he was and sat down on a stool on the stage and began playing his acoustic
guitar, a Ventures surfing tune that everyone knew, and the bongos and Tido on
keys rounded out the sound. After an extended jam, Joe knew Tido was in another
league, but asked him to join the Nomads at the Tony Marts audition.
Tido was honest about it, “I already have a band,”
he said, “and I’ve already been fired by Tony three times in one week – not the
record,” he pointed out.
But he did want to go back to Tony Marts and since
it was a Monday and his band was off that night, Tido agreed to join the Nomads
for the audition, and asked them to stop by the Anchorage two hours early so
they could practice a little before going on.
So later that afternoon the Nomads VW bus pulled up
in front of the Anchorage Tavern and the three Nomads and Stephanie went in and
to the back of the bar where Tido was sitting at the Tom Thumb piano, with his
hair pulled up and hidden under a yellow silk Egyptian turban that Sam The Sham
and the Pharaohs had given him after they jammed to "Woolly Bully"
into the early morning at the Dunes the previous week. Stevie and the Nomads
got it – since Tido had been unceremoniously fired and kicked out of Tony Marts
by the bouncers three times, he had to go back in disguise so he wouldn’t be
recognized.
Stevie and the Nomads all ordered Cokes from Buck
the bartender even though he would have served them despite none of them,
except Tido, was over 21. They didn’t want to drink before their audition,
introduced Stephanie to Tido and then ran though the two songs Stevie wrote but
mainly stuck to the popular standards that they knew Tony was looking for.
Then they all packed into the VW bus and Joe drove
the few blocks down Bay Avenue and pulled up to Tony Marts front door to unload
the equipment they would need.
Tony wasn’t in the house yet, Joe noticed as he
looked up into the corner seat at the little elevated bar in the corner where
Tony always sat, his seat was empty, that bar wasn’t open yet, but a few of the
others were, and manned by popular bartenders like Doobie Duberson, Harry
Goldberg, Sonny McCullough and Dick Squires.
Joe had arranged to go on first, and they were a
half hour early, so after plugging in his guitar and testing the microphones,
he sat down in the corner on a keg of beer next to a tall, thin black guy
picking at an electric guitar that wasn’t plugged in, staring intently at his
fingers as they plucked the guitar.
When he was done the tall, thin black dude looked up
at Joe sitting there next to him and smiled, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m Joe, with the Nomads,” Walsh said, reaching out
his hand, “we’re auditioning tonight.”
The guy shook Joe’s hand but didn’t say anything,
just smiled.
“Hey, you got a pick I could borrow?” Joe asked,
“I’m fresh out.”
The guy hands Joe the guitar pick he had in his
hands and Joe thanked him and then added, “We got an extra guitar slot if you
want to sit in on any of our set, feel free.”
“You with Joey Dee and the Starliters?” Joe asked,
and the guy just nodded yes.
“Wow, that must be really neat! But I guess you get
tired of playing the Twist and Peppermint Twist so much.”
The guy just smiled and picked up another pick from
his guitar case and started staring at his fingers as he plucked the unplugged
guitar, and Joe went back to the stage with his pick.
They were all in place on the main stage a few
minutes before they were to go on when out of the corner of his eye Joe saw Mr.
Marotta come in the front door, sit down in his spot at the corner of the bar
and light his cigar.
It was Show Time in the Showplace of the World.
The three Nomads kicked in with the power trio set,
while Tido just played softly to fill in the sound and not call attention to
himself, while Stevie stood back against the wall and wasn’t introduced until the
third song, a popular number before they did Stevie’s two originals, that they
knew would make Tony winch.
But they didn’t get the hook or get unplugged
because Stevie was really strong and Tony liked her immediately, and during her
second song, the tall, thin black guy who played with the Skyliters plugged in
and stood in the back but added a dynamic third guitar that blew everybody
away, except Tony.
Tony just didn’t get it, and appeared perplexed, as the
crowd, as it filtered in, were suddenly paying attention to a no nothing new
band nobody ever heard of before and at the end of the song everybody was
applauding, cheering and whistling, including the bartenders and bouncers, so
Tony couldn’t give them the hook as the crowd clearly liked it.
Before the Nomad’s set was over the Starliter’s
guitarist unplugged his guitar and unobtrusely left the back of the stage to go
over to the other stage where his band was getting ready to play.
Ending with the Ventures surf songs that kept
people’s attention and got the dance floor going, the Nomads ended their half
hour audition as Joey Dee and the Skyliters began playing “The Peppermint
Twist” across the room.
The Starliters front man Little Joey Dee was a
Jersey Guy, that is a North Jersey Guy in the Frank Sinatra-Frankie Valle mold,
and married to the mob, and had a squeaky voice that has been heard over every
radio in the country, but on this night it was the Starliter’s guitarist who
was getting all the attention, much to the dismay of Joey Dee.
“Who is that guy?” everyone wanted to know.
A few years out of the Army, James Jimi Hendrix was
still looking for himself and a good paying job in music, and had already left
Little Richard and jammed with his idol Muddy Waters when he hooked up with
Joey Dee and the Starliters through Leroy Brown, his old drill sergeant from
Fort Dix.
While the whole room was twisting the night away,
and Tido Mambo sneaked out a side door, Joe was still pumping with excitement
and was smiling as he approached Mister Marotta at the bar.
“How’d we do Mister Mart?” Joe asked.
Tony took the cigar out of his mouth and smiled,
“You’se guys did good. You got a job, three sets a night on the back stage
through next Thursday,” he said knowing that Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
were coming in Friday to play the Labor Day weekend. The Nomads were just going
to fill in for a few nights, but it was a gig, and while it was too late
to include them in the newspaper print ads, they would have their name on the
Tony Marts Marque – along with Joey Dee and the Starliters, the Fall Guys and a
few bands like the Nomads who just came down the pike looking for action.
Joe was due to be at Kent State, Ohio on Thursday
for freshman orientation, but he would miss that in order to play a paying gig
at Tony Marts, and wouldn’t make it to Ohio until Tuesday, he day after Labor
Day, and he would be forever disoriented for missing freshman orientation.
And they were going to have to play without Tide
Mambo or Jimi Hendrix and Stevie could only sit in to sing a few sets, but Joe
was confident they could hold their own and after scrounging around Shrivers
Pavilion and the Purple Dragon for more players to fill out the band for the
three night gig, Walsh just sat down with Tony and explained it to him.
“We’re a Power Trio,” Joe said, “and even though
we’re only three guys, we try harder.”
So Tony let them play, and even got to like some of
their original songs because the crowd liked them too, and just let it go, like
water off a duck’s back, he was just resigned to the fact that, as he put it,
“The Hawks were the last of the gentlemen.”
“After the Hawks, the animals took over,” he
lamented, taking a puff of his cigar and a sip of his drink.
On the other side of the room Joey Dee and the
Skyliters were rockin' the house, as everybody was up twisting to the
"Peppermint Twist," the song that made them famous two years
previous. They played the Peppermint Lounge in New York City, and their song
made that place famous, so they became the house band there, but were now
milking that song for whatever they could get. And then to close the set they
did an extended version of the Isley Brothers' "Shout!" that had the
college kids going crazy and lying down on the dance floor and bars and shaking
on their backs - the ultimate Twist and Shout!
"Shout,
shout, let it all hang out.
These
are the things I can do without
Come
on, I'm talking to you, come on
Shout!
In
violent times
You
shouldn't have to sell your soul
in
black and white
They
really ought to know
Those
one track minds
That
took you for a working boy
Kiss
them goodbye
You
shouldn't have to jump for joy
They
gave you life
and
in return you gave them Hell
As
cold as ice
I
hope we live to tell the tale
I
hope we live to tell the tale
And
when you've taken down your guard
If
I could change your mind
I'd
really love to break your heart
I'd
really love to break your heart
Come
on, I'm talking to you come on
But you really have to hear it with Hendrix on
guitar.
After his successful audition Joe Walsh talked to
Tony about some gig details and then stuck around to see the Joey Dee and the
Skyliters, but was attracted, as was everyone else in the house, to the guy in
the back with the guitar, the tall, skinny black dude in the Afro. Joe zoomed
in on the guitarists fingers and watched for a few minutes in awe and thought
how the quiet guy talked with his guitar.
Joe then searched his pockets and took out the
guitar pick the guy with the left handed strat had given him and looked at it
as if it had something magical about it, and he kissed it.
Act
III – Episode 7 – Nucky takes the Judge for a Ride to see the Alberts in the
Pines
For one of the first times in his life Judge Helfant
didn’t know what to do. Should he go see Stumpy Orman? Should he go to Hap
Farley through Mister Kirkman? Or should he go right to the top and arrange for
a sit down with Angelo Bruno himself?
Since KYW TV 3 was in Philly, maybe Bruno could push
some union buttons or put a call into the station’s owners.
Instead, Helfant decided to call Nucky for some sage
advice. Nucky Johnson answered the phone at his Absecon cottege he shared with
his wife and longtime girlfriend. Nucky’s first wife and love of his life had
died suddenly only a few years into their marriage, and Nucky stayed single until
he was about to go to prison when he married his girlfriend so she could visit
him while he was incarcerated in federal prison for income tax evasion.
After four years in the joint Nucky got out and
decided to retire rather than contest Hap Farley for the job of being boss of
Atlantic City again. But Nucky retained his honor and his reputation and even
though he was just an ordinary citizen walking down the boardwalk, everyone
recognized him dressed nattily in suit and tie and pink carnation in his lapel,
and total strangers would come up to him and thank him for some good deed or
another he did when he had the power to move mountains.
Nucky also retained his position high among the
ranks of the local Republican Party and was given a seat at the head table with
all the Big Wiggs at all official functions, so it was natural for Judge
Helfant to call on Nucky for advice.
Old now, and not getting around much anymore, Nucky
instructed Helfant to pick him up at his front door at 5 pm on Saturday
morning, and Helfant was precise in arriving at the appointed time.
Nucky walked out the front door unassisted but with
the help of a cane – a dark wood, knot ridden Irish schelleigh, and Helfant
opened and closed the passenger door at the curb and hurried around to get in
and get going, where ever it was they were going.
“Head north on the Parkway,” was Nucky’s only
instructions, as Helfant, turning off the radio, began relaying the roots of
his problem with David Brenner and KYW TV3 investigative unit breaking into his
office chambers and finding no records of the Midnight Court called him on the
phone and threatened him. While they could have arrested Brenner, the mayor
decided to let him off the hook if he would lay off the story, and Brenner
walked with no promises. The story could bury him, Helfant said.
Nucky was silent as he took all the information and
then told Helfant to get off the Parkway and onto Route 9 North at Forked
River.
Helfant knew that there was absolutely nothing in
Forked River, a barren Piney town where a lot of bodies were buried deep in the
woods, and he began to wonder if this was all a set up to kill him, but didn’t
verbalize the thought.
“What should I do, Nuck?” Helfant asked, but Nucky
remained silent and turned on the radio, “The Budweiser Beachcomber Show.”
After mulling things over, and feeling Helfant get
tense, Nucky told the Judge that they were going to visit the Albert brothers
at their cabin at Waretown, near Forked River.
Although practically nobody knew it, Nucky Johnson
was a Piney at heart, born near Bass River where they were driving past at that
moment and only moved to Mays Landing, the county seat, when Nucky’s father was
elected sheriff.
Nucky said that he remained friends with the Albert
brothers, and visited them on the Saturday before he went to prison, and
visited them again on the first Saturday when he got out of the joint, but he
hadn’t been to see them in quite a while.
The judge had never heard of the Albert brothers
before and he wondered if they were some kind of hit men and asked Nucky what
kind of racket they were in, but Nucky just told him to “wait and see.”
At Nucky’s instructions the judge pulled of Route 9
and went a mile or so down a winding dirt, or rather a white sugar sand road to
a little cabin surrounded by a half dozen cars and old pickup trucks, a few
people sitting around a fire pit outside.
“Just relax, listen and enjoy yourself for the next
hour,” Nucky instructed Helfant, “and I’ll tell you what to do on the way
home.”
In the light of the fire pit Helfant could see two
wood outhouses out back, and could hear music coming from the open windows of
the little house, fiddle and banjo music that got louder as they walked closer,
and then suddenly stop when they opened the door and walked in, Nucky hobbling
in first and Helftant right behind.
Inside Helfant glanced around at about ten old men,
eight of them with some sort of instrument, washboard, spoons or a metal pan
used as a drum, and they were all silently looking at them standing at the
door.
“Nucky!” the standup bass player said,
putting his instrument down and shaking Nucky’s hand and giving him a hug.
“It’s soooo good to see you. Been years!”
“This here’s Judge Helfant,” Nucky said, “and Judge,
this here’s the Albert brothers and their friends, who come here every Saturday
night to jam.”
“And they’re glad to see us because whenever someone
new comes in they all stop playing and have a shot of the good stuff,” Nucky
said, sitting down in a chair next to a small table on which there was a big
brown jug and a dozen little sewing thimbles that somebody was filling up with
the moonshine from the jug.
Then they started playing again, old Piney blue
grass songs so old nobody knew who wrote them, songs about the devil and the
crossroads and the same themes the old bluesmen and mountain pickers sing
about, including the “Air Tune,” said to have originated from the time a local
fiddle player named Giberson who was on his way home when he came across the
Devil, who said he could live on if he could play a song the Devil had never
heard before, and to save his soul he did – the “Air Tune” that was never
written down but every Piney can play, and tell the tale that goes with
it.
And every time somebody came by, opened the creaky
wooden cabin door to join in they would stop and have a thimble of the clear
white stuff that went down too easy. While Nucky had three or four, the judge
only had the first one and then laid off, and had to help Nucky out when they
decided to leave and give up their seats to some new comers with their axes and
picks to play.
They were half way home before the judge asked Nucky
once again.
“What shall I do Nuck?”
Nucky Johnson looked straight ahead, and didn’t
answer right away, but eventually he said, “Nothing.”
“You do nothing.”
“Don’t talk about it, don’t call Stumpy, Hap or Ang,
or you will set forces into motion that you can’t control. Don’t do anything,
even if the story airs on TV, by the day after Labor Day everybody will forget
about it. So don’t do nothin’ is my advice.”
And then all went quiet for the rest of the ride
home until Nucky put on the radio as they headed home and could see across the
bay the bright lights of Atlantic City that looked like a string of diamonds
and pearls on the horizon.
Act
III Episode 8 - The Search for the Lost Nukes
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the
Pentagon ordered some questions be answered in response to a report on Ian
Fleming’s 007 spy-fiction thriller Thunderball and recently released movie on
the possibility that Fleming got the idea for the fictional story of an
international terrorist cartel recovering two nuclear bombs from the ocean
floor from the accidental disposal of two 20 megaton nuclear weapons in the
ocean off of Cape May, New Jersey on July 28, 1957.
Since the Air Force had lost the nukes the Chairman
of the Chiefs ordered a four star Air Force general to look into the whole
affair, and the general ordered a full bird Colonel in Counter-Intelligence to
determine if there was a national security leak of classified information if
Ian Fleming had learned about the accident and used it as the basis for
his Thunderball story because it was officially classified a “Broken
Arrow” Top Secret incident and downplayed to the media as the public safety was
not threatened at the time.
The Colonel was also instructed to determine if
there was a public safety issue today, some six years after the accident. The
Colonel then passed on the CI-mission to a Captain and the public safety issue
to a Second Lieutenant who ordered a Staff Sergeant to investigate and file a
F-301 Report that would be classified.
The Staff Sergeant responsible for the public safety
issue didn’t know where to begin looking into the accidental disposal of two 20
megaton nuclear weapons of mass destruction and what dangers they posed to the
public safety, so he called Bob Schoelkopf, a high school friend who was in
charge of training the dolphins for the Sea World Act at the Steel Pier on the
boardwalk in Atlantic City, which was just north of where the accident took
place.
It being late on a Sunday afternoon Bob was in his
office that overlooked the Diving Horse act and the Deep Sea Diving Bell, and
was quite surprised to hear from his old school friend, and even more perplexed
by the nature of his questions.
“Bob, this is strictly off the record, but I need to
know if you or if you know anyone who tests and monitors the sea water for
pollution?”
“Sure,” Schoelkopf replied, “we do it all the time.
We look for fecal matter, industrial pollutants fertilizers, insect and bug
killing chemicals and the like…”
“Radiation?”
Schhelkopf was perplexed by the question.
“You mean nuclear radioactivity?”
“Yes,” came the stern replay.
“No,” Schoelkopf said, “we don’t normally test the
waters for that.”
“Well Bob,” the Sergeant began, “we have a problem,
and I’ll give you the basic facts, but this is all deep background and off the
record, and you can’t quote or repeat what I have to say, but I want you to
know because you can help me and possibly help avert a national catastrophe.”
The Air Force guy who knew Bob from college days,
only a few years ago, explained how on July 28, 1957 an Air Force cargo plane
C-124 took off from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and after losing two of
its four engines, utilized emergency procedures and dumped its cargo two 20
megaton nuclear warheads with Plutonium 239 that were never recovered.
After a few moments of silence, Schoelkopf asked,
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
The military wanted to know if they did routine
testing of the water samples from Atlantic City to Cape May, and if they did
could they include testing for radiation?
The problem, the Air Force sergeant explained, was
not that the war heads would explode, that was not possible, the problem was the
metal container the bombs were in would rust through and the bomb casing would
leak the Pu 239, one of the most dangerous substances known to man, and
contaminate the entire North Atlantic Ocean.
The other problem, the sergeant hesitated to
verbalize, was that the Soviets or as in the movie Thunderball, some rogue
terrorist group would locate and retrieve the warheads and make a dirty bomb
out of them that could be used to blackmail the nations of the world, just as
in the movie, but, he noted, that was not a credible possibility, at least in
the eyes of the Department of Defense analysists.
Schoelkopf, who was having growing doubts about the
ethics of training dolphins to do tricks, after reading Dr. John Lilly’s book
“The Mind of the Dolphin,” realized that the porpoises, like man, were mammals,
and not fish, and since they have the same sized brain as man, communicated
among themselves and were easy to train to do tricks, should not be captured
and trained like circus animals. Now he believed that the dolphins were
actually smarter than man, and maybe al of mankind were knuckleheads.
After pulling a science book off his office shelf,
Schoelkopf read: “Plutonium is a transuranic chemical element with symbol
Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-grey appearance
that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized.
Created when uranium atoms absorb neutrons, it was discovered in 1940 at the
University of California, Berkeley, and made during World War II for use in
atomic weapons. Nearly all plutonium is man-made, and emits alpha particles…”
Taking it all in and then sitting back and thinking
about it for a while, he picked up his desk telephone and called the Margate
Beach Patrol Headquarters and asked to speak to Joel Fogel, a lifeguard who
just got off duty and was checking out his equipment for the day. Schoelkopf
knew that Fogel was an environmentalist as well as an adventurer, and had
started a non-profit research organization Water Watch International that
tested waters for pollutants.
Fogel too said that testing for radioactivity was
new to him, but he would look into it, and after asking why he was doing this,
Schoelkopf told Fogel the basic deep background of the “Broken Arrow” nuclear
accident that deposited two 20 megaton nuclear warheads about 100 miles off of
Cape May in 1957 and have not been able to find them or retrieve them, and
they’re now worried the metal casings may have corroded and may release the Pu
239 into the water.
“Do you know what the half-life of Pu 239 is?” Fogel
asked, knowing the answer he gave up without waiting, “24,000 years.”
“Well we won’t be around for that,” said Schoelkopf,
“and maybe this will hasten our departure from this planet if they’re not
located and retrieved.”
Besides being a lifeguard and adventurer Joel Fogel
was a stringer for the New York Times and within a few days of the phone calls
between the Air Force sergeant at Dover, Bob Scholekopf and Joel Fogel, the New
York Times ran a front page story “Air Force Lost Two Nukes -Thunderball For
Real,” a story that was subsequently picked up by the Washington Post, Time and
Newsweek magazines and Life and Look as well as all of the network radio and TV
stations, including KYW TV 3 who put their crack investigative team on the
story since they were already in the vicinity.
Before the week was about, by Labor Day weekend, to
ensure the public’s safety, every lifeguard stand at the Jersey Shore from
Manasquan to Cape May Point was equipped with a portable Geiger counter with
instructions to check and monitor any debris that washed ashore for signs of
radiation.
So now, the Ocean City Police boardwalk squad had
noise decibel meters while the lifeguards were checking for radiation, and
public safety was being maintained.
Act
III Episode 9 - Lynda’s Dream
When Lynda woke up on a blanket on the 9th Street
beach a few hours after she fell asleep the other girls – two nurses and the
mayor’s daughters were gone, and her boyfriend “JJ” was still asleep. She
looked around and most of the others on the beach were gone too, as it was late
afternoon.
Lynda smiled as she thought about the most wonderful
dream she just had. She was walking along a beach, holding hands with “JJ,” the
light surf washing up on their bare feet. It was night, and not Ocean City
because there were no city lights and the sky was full of stars and just a
sliver of a moon on the horizon. They stopped walking and kissed as their toes
dug into the sand up to their ankles, and she remembers thinking in her sleep
that she didn’t want the moment to end as the sound of the lifeguard’s whistle
startled her awake.
She began to think of the other girls laughing at
her for being a virgin. As she later put it into her own words what she was
thinking.
“The people making the jokes may have thought they
were funny, but I began to feel that the real joke was on me. Here I was a
twenty-one year old girl who had probably seen hundreds of penises in nursing
school and the emergency room, and I hadn’t yet seen a single one being used
for its intended purpose. I began to feel like my virginity was an albatross. I
had to get rid of it. However, there was a problem of finding the right
situation. When it happened the first time, I didn’t want to be on the floor
while my girlfriends were asleep. On the other hand I was afraid that if I
waited for the perfect circumstances, I would end up being a fifty year old
virgin, stil anticipating ‘the night.’ Even at that, I still had to convince
myself that he person I was going to make love with for the first time was the
person I would marry.”
She looked at “JJ” asleep beside her on the blanket
as he started talking in his sleep, yelling something about “gooks,” and as she
shook him he was covered in sweat, he opened his eyes and suddenly jumped on
top of her, put one hand on her throat and drew back the other hand as if to
smash her face, then woke up and realized where he was, stopped cold and looked
around scared; Lynda was terrified.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Don’t touch me now,” he said. “Just a bad dream.”
Then she thought of the time at the gas station,
when the attendant didn’t have any high test gasoline for his Barracuda, and
“JJ” as Lynda herself recalled, “got this wild look in his eyes and acted like
he was going to kill the guy. He screamed obscenities, smacked his hand against
the dashboard, and then floored the accelerator, leaving a patch of burning
rubber and a perplexed pump jockey. He would sometimes come out of his
depression with a bang and immediately begin partying like there was no tomorrow.
He could be a wild bronco – unruly, loud and full of fire. But he was always
gentle with me. I was sure I loved him, which was why, a few weeks after I got
the engagement ring, I told him that I was ready to make love with him.”
“JJ” had been called back to Army duty early, and
was leaving the next day for a domestic deployment he didn’t know where,
probably anti-riot duty in some big city where they anticipated trouble like
Watts. It was also just before Labor Day, so the entire Jersey Shore was packed
with tourists.
As Lynda herself related, “As soon as J.J. got over
the shock, we began the search for a nice place. Unfortunately, trying to find
an open room at the Jersey Shore around Labor Day weekend is about as difficult
as locating the Holy Grail. We started in Ocean City at seven o’clock. Next was
Somers Point. Then Longport, then Margate City, then Ventnor City and al the
way past Atlantic City to Brigantine. It was all the same – NO VACANCY. We
drove out to the parkway and headed south. By midnight we had tried motels all the way down to North Wildwood and the only thing we had to show for it was
frustration.”
J.J. wanted to go back to Lynda’s room at Mrs.
Nick’s rooming house, or do it under the boardwalk or in the car, but Lynda
refused.
As she later recalled the details: “We headed back
to the Anchorage to drown our frustrations at seven beers for a dollar. JJ had
such a sad expression on his face that he looked like a little boy who had just
seen his puppy run over by a train. We sat in silence, both of us staring into
our beers until around two in the morning. Suddenly, J.J. snapped out of his
mood. He grabbed my arm, swung me around on the stool, kissed me and laughed.”
Then the guy next to J.J., who I recognized as being
in the band at Bay Shores, interrupted us.
“There’s an open room upstairs, and Andrew,” he said
pointing to a young man sitting at the bar by the dining room doors, “will
probably let you have it. He’s a soft touch, especially when it comes to love,
and will probably let you have it for the night for nothing.”
A moment later Lynda saw J.J. talking to Andrew, the
owner, who was nodding his head.
Lynda: “He came back to his seat with a key in his
hand and a broad grin on his face. We walked up the steps to what must have
been all-time sleaziest rooms in the world. It had boxes piled all around, a
dirty mattress without any sheets, and a single exposed light bulb hanging
directly over the bed. Outside the window was a neon sign “The Anchorage” that
kept blinking on an off.”
“I’ve waited twenty-one years for this, I thought,
only moments before I felt the quick sharp pain that marked the end of my
virginity. I think it happened when the neon sign was off. Or maybe it was on.
It was hard to tell because the damned thing flashed so quickly. I guess I must
have been in love.”
The next day, after breakfast at the Point Diner,
J.J. left to rejoin his Army unit that was being domestically deployed for
anti-riot duty, while Lynda went back to work at the Emergency Room at Shore
Memorial Hospital, wearing her bathing suit under her uniform so she could
immediately hit the beach after work and tell the other girls what happened
after they left her asleep on the beach.
Act
III Episode 10 The Ninety-Nine Percenters Unite
At first it appeared, at least to those on the
federal counter-biker task force, that they were playing a multi-dimensional
game of chess across the national game board against outlaw motorcycle gangs,
an estimated 1500 of whom were expected to descend on Ocean City, New Jersey on
Labor Day, a force to be reckoned with and one they felt they could deal with
effectively. But then a completely unexpected element came into play, and
garbled the works - The Ninety Nine Percenters rose from seemingly nowhere and
joined the fray.
With major news stories and a Life Magazine article
about the influx of college kids to Ocean City-Somers Point that summer, the
extensive coverage of the explosion and chaos at 14th Street Beach when the
riot squad enforced the anti-noise ordinance, the search for lost nukes
offshore and the continuing special reports from the KYW TV3 News Investigative
team created a plethora of media stories that got the attention of Newsweek
Magazine’s new crusading liberal editor who gave serious assignments to a number
of young, hungry reporters who were quickly on the scene.
Newsweek’s recent article on Bob Dylan got a lot of
attention but was not complimentary, as the reporter who wrote it was promised
an exclusive interview with Dylan and didn’t get one, so they published an
article that alleged Dylan had plagiarized the song “The Times they Are a
Changing” from a Jersey Shore high school student. But even after the story was
proven false, the damage was done, and set the stage for him to be ridiculed at
the Newport Folk Festival and the Forest Hills concert.
Then in late August when the Beatle’s released the
song and movie “Help!” it headed off Dylan’s song “Like A Rolling Stone” that
was locked in at Number 2 on the Pop Charts and kept from being Number One by
"Help!" even though "Like a Rolling Stone" is now
generally recognized as one of the greatest rock & roll song ever.
But Newsweek got what others missed, and verified
through unnamed anonymous sources, the rumor started by Mr. Elwood Kirkman’s
private maid at the Flanders Hotel that a federal multi-agency task force was
preparing for an onslaught of outlaw motorcycle clubs on Labor Day, including
the notorious Hells Angels, some of whom had been unceremoniously evicted from
Ocean City the previous May and threatened to return to wreak havoc on the town
known as “America’s Greatest Family Resort.”
And Newsweek's scoop was quickly picked up by other
publications, especially the Florida supermarket tabloids. Although the source
of the leak was never identified, the feds knew it was someone who was in the
room at the Flanders where they held their first two meetings of the Barbarian
Task Force, the name of which itself was classified.
Everyone knew all about the Hell's Angels, as they
were the subjects of numerous magazine articles, books and even a few movies,
but no one ever heard of the Barbarians, and wondered who they were, though the
feds knew that was a name they invented for their task force, and not a real
biker gang, or club as they refer to themselves.
At a garage on the Coast Highway near Los Angeles –
the City of Angels, a mechanic and motorcycle enthusiast was on his lunch break
and reading the Newsweek Magazine article when he folded it up, used it to swat
at a fly, and began to complain loudly to a few other mechanics who were
sitting around near him, but not really paying attention.
“The outrageous behavior of the so-called
one-percenters gives all of us a bad name,” he said, and after ranting and
raving for a few minutes, he stopped talking and decided to do something about
it. It was time for action. If the Hells Angels, Barbarians and other
one-percenters were going to get together to for a Labor Day run to Ocean City,
New Jersey to rampage the place, then he was going to organize the Ninety-Nine
Percenters and make a run to Ocean City too, and outnumber them and show the
nation and the world that most bikers are good, honest, tax paying citizens who
do good deeds instead of drugs, raping, robbing, pillaging and causing trouble.
With less than a week before Labor Day the Ninety
Nine Percenters were getting organized and uniting in LA under the banner and
patch of The New Barbarians, and heading to the Jersey Shore on a Labor Day run
that they insisted would better reflect the good and honest nature of most
bikers, come hell or high water. Instead of ransacking the town they
would do go deeds, help old ladies cross the street and be kind to anyone whose
paths they crossed.
Act
III Episode 11 - The Weather Report
As the sun rose over the ocean as usual, the
Thursday before Labor Day weekend began unusually, out of routine, with KYWTV3
News Investigative Team on-camera reporter Tom Snyder called to extra duty as
the weekend weatherman – as the usual weather girl had put in for vacation.
They were going to send Snyder back to Philly on the
train, but the executive producer decided to try out some new micro-wave relay
technology so they set up the equipment at the Ocean City Music Pier, where
they were also producing a live TV teen dance show they wanted to promote, so
the KYW TV crew set up their own base of operations at the Music Pier, just
north of the 9th Street Beach and across the boardwalk from the Moorlyn Theater
and Moorlyn Terrace street.
If Snyder had gone back to Philly, Brenner would have
had to do the on-camera reporting himself, and started practicing, and began to
like being on camera and started cracking jokes about it. Setting up the on
camera scene at the Music Pier for that morning’s weather broadcast, Brenner
the director situated Snyder so his back was to the sun rising over the ocean
horizon with the Atlantic City skyline in the background.
Brenner also had Snyder wear his skimpy, tight
French cut bathing suit, and every time he would come on, usually two or three
times a broadcast – three broadcasts a day, he would have Snyder wear a
different silly hat and a different t-shirt – each one promoting a different
bar or restaurant – Bay Shores, Dunes t’ill Dawn, the Anchorage 7-4-1, Tony
Marts All Stars, Mack & Manco’s, so he got to plug some of his new friends
and their businesses, some of whom helped grease their way on the stories he
did and was doing for the hour long documentary – The Long Cool Summer, that
was to air on KYW TV 3 at Prime Time on the day after Labor Day.
At precisely Six thirty-five AM Brenner checked all
the equipment and tapped the cameraman on the shoulder and the secretary said
it was a go, and something clicked and Brenner pointed to Snyder and he began
talking: “Good Morning Delaware Valley, I’m Tom Snyder filling in on the Dawn
Patrol for Samantha Rich, your Weather Gal, who is on vacation, but to tell you
the truth, I feel like I’m on vacation here in Ocean City, New Jersey –
America’s Greatest Family Resort.”
After a pause and a broad smile, Snyder continued:
“The good news is that it appears the weather will be terrific for the Labor
Day weekend despite the lingering presence of two low pressure areas off shore,
storms that have the potential of developing into major hurricanes, the second
and third major storms of the season that the National Weather Service has
named Betsy and Carroll. While these storms do present a potential danger to
the East Coast flooding areas, they should bring big waves so the surfers
should be happy about that,” Snyder smiled and then laughed half-heartedly and
Brenner had the cameraman pull back the camera lens from Snyder’s talking head
to reveal his whole body, including the Bay Shores – Dunes ‘Til Dawn T-Shirt
and Snyder’s French cut bathing suit, and finally a fade out and “Cut."
At noon, for the mid-afternoon news weather report,
Brenner had Snyder dress in Jigg's Cowboy hat and wear an Anchorage 7-4-1
t-shirt, and escorted to the water's edge by an Ocean City boardwalk summer
policeman with a noise meter and a 9th Street Beach lifeguard with a Geiger
counter, to show that the water was safe and the beach not overwhelmed by loud
music.
Snyder also reported that the traffic was being blocked at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway by irate motorcyclists who were protesting the ban against motorcycles on the Expressway, and that if you're heading to the shore, it would be advisable to avoid the Expressway and take either the White or Black Horse Pikes an alternate back roads route.
Snyder, to end his report, also noted that the two tropical storms off shore had achieved hurricane status, and that Betsy was changing course and heading towards the Florida Keys were it was expected to make landfall at Key Largo, while Hurricane Carroll was slowing down and maneuvering off shore and while making big waves, was not expected to make landfall.
Snyder also reported that the traffic was being blocked at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway by irate motorcyclists who were protesting the ban against motorcycles on the Expressway, and that if you're heading to the shore, it would be advisable to avoid the Expressway and take either the White or Black Horse Pikes an alternate back roads route.
Snyder, to end his report, also noted that the two tropical storms off shore had achieved hurricane status, and that Betsy was changing course and heading towards the Florida Keys were it was expected to make landfall at Key Largo, while Hurricane Carroll was slowing down and maneuvering off shore and while making big waves, was not expected to make landfall.
The day was just beginning however, and
Brenner and his crew still had to cover the Carroll Brothers court case – the
first legal test of the noise ordinance that afternoon, and the City Commission
meeting early that evening, where a new resolution was being introduced banning
bicycles and skate boards on the boardwalk, motorcycles on the causeway, and
surf boards all together.
Act
III Episode 12 - Grace Kelly Returns to Her Roots
The arrival in Ocean City of Princess Grace of
Monaco was met, as usual, with no fanfare, as she routinely returned to her
childhood stomping grounds every Labor Day weekend since she married Prince
Rainier in 1956.
As usual, her sister Lizanne Kelly Levine and her
husband Donald picked her and the two kids up at the airport in Philly. As they
drove across the Walt Whitman bridge she looked out the window as they passed
Jack’s Twin Bar in Gloucester City, where she used to visit her old boyfriend
Dick Boccelli playing drums with Bill Haley and the Comets before they were
famous.
And when they got to the fork in the road, Don
driving asked if he should take the Black Horse Pike or the new, year old
Atlantic City Expressway – and Grace chose the Pike, so they could stop for hot
dogs and ice cream at that roadside stand their father always stopped at on the
way to the Shore.
As Don Levine veered to the right he looked over at
the entrance to the Expressway and took notice of the shiny new sign that read:
“Motorcycles Prohibited” – with a black silhouette of a man on a motorcycle in
a circle and a slash across it.
They had to wait for the drawbridge to Ocean City to
open and close so some of them got out of the car and went to the railing and
waved at the people on the boat going through below, and Don Levine at the
wheel shaking his head and thinking how they could have lowered their rigging a
few feet and went under the bridge with no problem but just had to open the
bridge because they had the right of way and could do it so they did, and set
this huge Labor Day weekend traffic jam in motion, one that backed up to the
Somers Point circle and then all the way to Route 9, that would take an hour to
get untangled. But tempers didn’t flare, and everyone just breathed in the salt
air, took advantage of the view from the bridge and listened to the radio.
Once they were moving again, Levine drove down 9th
Street to Central and made a right at the Chatterbox and as they passed Grace
looked down 11th Street to see the Flanders, and for a moment tried to imagine
what it was like in August 1929, the year she was born, when her father bought
this lot and built this house, the only house south of 14th Street, that when
it was first built stood out like a lighthouse on this dune of sugar sand.
This house of brick with the small fence, this house
with the parapet roof from where you could see the stars, this grand, great
house where so many kids had so much fun for some many seasons. And another one
was coming to an end and as usual, would go out with much fanfare.
When Levine stopped the car on 27th street, Grace
sat in the car for a moment to look at the house – the graceful Spanish Revival
lines and red tile terracotta roof, and thought, if only for a moment, of
Vivian Smith, the young architect who designed it, and how interesting a person
he must have been, as he also did some other significant buildings in town –
the Music Pier, the Chatterbox, the Flanders, the Copper Kettle Fudge building
and boardwalk arcade – all done in the Spanish Revival style, while other
building that also bear his signature – Ocean City High School, Ocean City
Hall, Ventnor City Hall and some classic Atlantic City boardwalk hotels are all
of different styles and totally unique in their own way, as was the beach house
built by her father John B. Kelly, Sr.
John B., as he was called by friends and foe alike,
was an Irish bricklayer who started a one man “KELLY FOR BRICKWORK” company
that eventually built almost every skyscraper in Philly that is shorter than
the Billy Penn’s hat, as there was once a law that prevented the construction
of anything higher than Billy’s hat, and Kelly built most of them, as well as
other major landmarks such as 30th Street Station, which makes you stop and say
“Wow” when you walk in for the first time, and the Atlantic City Race Track.
John B. built his house on the barren south dunes
because all of the other major Philadelphia Main Line society millionaires had
homes in the North End Gardens section of Ocean City or in Margate and
Longport, so just as he built his Philly Home in East Falls rather than on the
Main Line, he bought an inexpensive lot in a part of town nobody else really
wanted to live. He had riparian rights to the water’s edge and while the house
was at one time on the beach, when they put Central Avenue in he owned the
beach lot on the other side of the street and eventually built a big two story
brick house there too, so by 1965, with the two houses, it was sort of like the
Kennedys, the Kelly Compound, except there was no security and anybody could
come and go and generally did, brothers, sisters, cousins and cousins friends –
all part of the Kelly Clan.
Since her father passed away, her mother Margaret
Kelly had assumed the mantle of leadership of the household and after paying
her respects to her mother, sitting in the shade reading a book, she said hello
to her brother, lifting weights in the garage, and gathered up her two kids and
a few other straggling cousins and walked across the street and down the beach
to the boardwalk.
It is quite a hike but an exciting one, knowing what
was in store – a box of fudge from Copper Kettle, slice of pizza from the front
counter of Mack & Mancos and a walk down the boardwalk to the rides –
Ferris wheel, bumper cars, and carnival candies, just like, and fitting in with
all of the other Shoebees and tourists.
Switching into routine, Grace Kelly let the kids run
free while she unpacked her sparse baggage, as while in town she would visit
and buy some new dresses from her tailor – Mr. Talese, and get t-shirts for all
of her maids, butlers, drivers, chefs and Swiss Army security.
Her kids knew the routine now, and looked forward to
riding their skate boards and bicycles, having lunch and banana split at the
Chatterbox, “where mom used to work,” the kids moan whenever the Chatterbox is
mentioned.
And so it was with much dismay when Katie, the
Mayor’s daughter arrived for work as a waitress at the Chatterbox and
discovered that Grace Kelly was there with her two kids but were gone.
“But,” someone remarked, that’s her sister Lizanne
still sitting in that booth eating ice cream.” and Kate looked over and
recognized Chris Matthews, the Philly college kid and Chatterbox cook sitting
in a chair and talking to some women in a booth.
"That's your station, so you better get over
there and wait on the royality," another waitress said, and so Kate went
over and introduced herself.
Act
III Episode 13 – Mitch Ryder and the Wheels are Late
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, riding high on their
number one hit “Devil With the Blue Dress” were due Friday afternoon to play as
Tony Marts headliners for the three day Labor Day weekend, but their tour bus
was mired in a traffic jam at the base of the Atlantic City Expressway where it
forks into two roads – the Expressway and the Black Horse Pike.
The Expressway had just opened the previous year,
and while it was a toll road that cost a dollar, motorcycles were prohibited
and a group of irate bikers were having a sort of a sit in and blocking traffic
from entering the Expressway to protest the ban on motorcycles chanting,
“Bikers Pay Taxes Too.”
So Joe and the Nomads, along with the Fall Guys –
the new house band, and Joey Dee and the Starliters, with their amazing
guitarist, all had to do extra duty until Mitch and his band showed up, and the
Nomads came through like troopers in the clutch.
They had to keep the crowd at Tony Marts and keep
them from leaving and crossing the street to Bay Shores to see Tido Mambo and
the Messiah’s of Soul, Johnny Caswell and the Crystal Mansion and Pete Carroll
and the Carroll Brothers, heroes of what they call the Incident at 14th Street
Beach. And they did. When Jimmie the guitarist from the Skyliters sat in with
the Nomads, he blew everybody away, playing the guitar behind his back and with
his teeth on beat and without missing a note.
When Mitch Ryder and the Wheels finally arrived
around ten PM that Friday night, Mitch came in and immediately took command and
his band played their hearts out, making up for their tardiness.
With Mitch Ryder playing the “Devil with the Blue
Dress” at Tony Marts and Tido Mambo playing Jesus Christ with the Messiahs of
Soul across the street at Bay Shores, there was an anticipation in the air for
the arrival of the Angels – the Hells Angels and the Barbarians from LA – Los
Angeles – the City of Angeles.
And when Joe and the Nomads finished their gig and
unplugged their guitars from behind the side bar, setting the stage for Mitch
Ryder, Tony called Joe over to his bar, gave him a drink, thanked him for
playing the two extra sets and handed him a white envelop saying, “Youse boys
did a fine job, thank you.”
Joe later opened the envelop that contained four
twenties and four five dollar bills that he shared equally with the other two
Nomads and Jimi, the Skyliters’ guitarist who was picking his unplugged guitar
in the corner.
“A bonus from Tony,” Joe said as he gave the $25 to
Jimi, who smiled and said the only two works Joe ever heard him say.
“Thanks, man,” that was accompanied by a big smile.
With the $25 bonus and the pay that Tony gave the
Nomads for playing the week long gig at Tony Marts, Joe bought a motorcycle
that he mounted on the front of his VW bus that slowed down the already slow speed
of the bus that on Monday morning, would get him to Kent State Ohio for his
first semester despite having missed freshman orientation.
Act
III Episode 14 –The Last Classic Lit Class Under the Boards
Ocean City High School teacher Bill Hamilton held
the last Classic English Lit class of the summer school session under the
boardwalk at the Music Pier at the same time Tom Snyder above him was
broadcasting the noon weather report, dressed in a Bay Shores Dunes Til’ Dawn
T-shirt and Campbell’s Seafood baseball hat, for which Clint Campbell supplied
the TV crew with fried fish and fries for many meals.
As the six students, including Kate, the mayor’s
daughter, sat on a beach blanket and ate Mack & Manco’s pizza from a
cardboard box, that Hamilton had provided, they began to discuss the assignment
– Calvary’s epic Greek poem “Awaiting the Barbarians.”
Taking turns Hamilton had each of the students read
a part of the poem out loud, a poem about a medieval town in Europe that, when
news of the eminent arrival of a hoard of Barbarians, causes people to panic
and the chaos their fear causes creates more damage than the Barbarians, who
failed to show.
Awaiting the
Barbarians - By Constantine Cavafy
What are we
waiting for, assembled in the forum
The barbarians
are due here today.
Why isn’t
anything happening in the senate?
Why do the
senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our
emperor get up so early,
and why is he
sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne,
in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two
consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their
embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they
put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings
sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they
carrying elegant canes
beautifully
worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our
distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their
speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden
restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious
people’s faces have become.)
Why are the
streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going
home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s
going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were those
people, a kind of solution.
After they had read the poem, some of it twice, they
engaged in a heated discussion as to whether the poem still had meaning, if it
could be related to contemporary events, and if it was worth discussing at
all.
After the one hour lesson, Hamilton announced that
everyone had passed the course with an A grade, as they knew they would as he
was known as a pushover for easy A's.
Then Kate went directly to work at the Chatterbox
where she was disappointed in having missed Grace Kelly, who was in for lunch
with her kids.
Back at the Chatterbox Kate the waitress comes up to
one of her tables, a booth where Lizanne Kelly Levine and the Chatterbox grill
cook Chris Mathews were talking.
“Hello,” Kate said, “I’m your new waitress if you
need anything,” as she observed them finishing up their banana splits.”
“Hi Kate,” Chris said, introducing her to Lizanne.
“I’m sorry I missed Grace,” Kate said, and was taken
aback when Lizanne said, “You didn’t,” pointing to the little girl in the booth
eating a Sunday. “This is Grace Kelly Levine.”
Chris, with his apron and floppy white cook’s hat,
excused himself to get back to work, and mentioned the fact that, “Hey Kate,
I’ll be singing tonight at Your Father’s Mustache if you can get your dad and
sister to come in I’ll be there singing away.”
“Okay,” Katie laughed, and at Lizanne’s invitation,
sat down in the chair Chris had left and asked Lizanne, “So what’s it like to
be the sister of a princess?”
‘It’s more like having a princess for a sister,” Lizanne said.
‘It’s more like having a princess for a sister,” Lizanne said.
“I’m sorry I missed Grace,” Kate said, and was taken
aback when Lizanne said, “You didn’t,” pointing to the little girl in the booth
eating a Sunday. “This is Grace Kelly Levine.
“What was the wedding like?” Kate wanted to know.
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there,” Lizanne replied.
“You should have been a bridesmaid,” said Kate.
“I know, but I stayed home prego with Grace here,”
Liz explained, and then went into the litany of things that happened, that left
Kate with her mouth wide open and uttering one long, “Wowwww.”
Then Liz asked Kate if she was athletic and liked
sports and competition, and with an anxious nod of the head and an emphatic
"Yes," invited Kate to the Kelly Clan Beach Olympics on Monday and
surf, sail, row and play volley ball and unlike the Kennedys who play sissy
touch and flag football, play co-ed tackle football on the beach. That is if
she was up to it. And bring a friend.
END
ACT THREE –
Act
III Episode 1 – Flashback - Vince Gets an Education Behind the Bar
The sun rising over Ocean City greeted Vince Rennich as he woke up in a second floor room of Bay Shores nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey. That’s where he was, he thought, taking in a lungful of sweet, salt air and getting his bearings to the sounds of barking seagulls outside the screen less window. Poking his head out he looked at the giant orange and red sun rise across at the Ocean City skyline on the horizon, then at the blue shinny swath of Great Egg bay, and rows of boats to the north and the foot of the causeway bridge on the other side.
One big seagull flew by and looked at Vince, perched on a mast of a nearby sailboat and chattered on like a laugh, making him wonder if the seagull was laughing at him.
Making his way down the rickety wood steps he finds some of the guys from Gregory’s Tight End club already there, continuing the job they started yesterday of cleaning up the bar so it can open by Memorial Day weekend, two weeks away.
After cleaning up the joint for a few hours they broke for lunch, some having a pizza delivered that they washed down with some beers that were left over from last Labor Day, while Vince and Bill Saylor drove down Bay Avenue to Delaware at the Anchorage and up the hill to Gregory’s, where Saylor introduced Vince to Charles Carney the bartender, as instructed by Bay Shore’s manager Jack Murray.
As Saylor and Rennich ordered lunch – raw clams and snapper turtle soup, Carney opened the clams in front of Vince while telling him that Jack Murray wanted him to learn the basic tricks of the bar trade, so pay attention.
“You won’t have to shuck any clams at Bay Shores,” Carney said, as he put a knife into a clam in his hand and twisted it around, tausing the top and placing the clam in an ice lined dish, with lemon. “But you will work somewhere else someday and should know how just the same.”
The sun rising over Ocean City greeted Vince Rennich as he woke up in a second floor room of Bay Shores nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey. That’s where he was, he thought, taking in a lungful of sweet, salt air and getting his bearings to the sounds of barking seagulls outside the screen less window. Poking his head out he looked at the giant orange and red sun rise across at the Ocean City skyline on the horizon, then at the blue shinny swath of Great Egg bay, and rows of boats to the north and the foot of the causeway bridge on the other side.
One big seagull flew by and looked at Vince, perched on a mast of a nearby sailboat and chattered on like a laugh, making him wonder if the seagull was laughing at him.
Making his way down the rickety wood steps he finds some of the guys from Gregory’s Tight End club already there, continuing the job they started yesterday of cleaning up the bar so it can open by Memorial Day weekend, two weeks away.
After cleaning up the joint for a few hours they broke for lunch, some having a pizza delivered that they washed down with some beers that were left over from last Labor Day, while Vince and Bill Saylor drove down Bay Avenue to Delaware at the Anchorage and up the hill to Gregory’s, where Saylor introduced Vince to Charles Carney the bartender, as instructed by Bay Shore’s manager Jack Murray.
As Saylor and Rennich ordered lunch – raw clams and snapper turtle soup, Carney opened the clams in front of Vince while telling him that Jack Murray wanted him to learn the basic tricks of the bar trade, so pay attention.
“You won’t have to shuck any clams at Bay Shores,” Carney said, as he put a knife into a clam in his hand and twisted it around, tausing the top and placing the clam in an ice lined dish, with lemon. “But you will work somewhere else someday and should know how just the same.”
“At Bay Shores you’ll just have to open beers and
pour shots for the most part,” Carney continued, “but there are a half-dozen
other drinks that you have to know how to make because there’s always someone
in the crowd who wants a screw driver, Harvey Wallbager, Dunes Sunrise or a
Long Island Ice tea, so you have to know how to make them,” handing Vince a
copy of Mr. Boston. And as the waitresses ordered a special drink, Carney
showed Vince how to make it. He also took Vince behind the bar and showed him
how to mix the right amount of liquid detergent in the sink to wash glasses,
how the copper pipe thing worked, and how all of the liquors were placed in a
particular order so you knew where they were when you were busy.
Before Rennich was finished with his lunch, Carney had given him the Bartenders 101 class, and at the end said, “You’ll just have to learn the rest from experience,” and that he did.
Before the month was out, Rennich had risen from bar back to relief bartender during slow nights during the week, and was working the night Bay Shores was raided, and all the underage girls scampered out the women’s room window onto the dock while grown 20 year old men jumped into the bay and swam ashore, but they escaped.
The NJ state police ABC – Alcohol Beverage Control, without notifying local authorities or police, orchestrated the raid, and only nabbed one guy, a 19 year old college kid who they busted and used as an example, with the penalty being Bay Shores had to close for one month – the month of July. Vince was glad that he hadn’t served the kid, though he did have some new friends he met and they kept coming to his bar and tipped good, though he knew they weren’t 21. They got away in the melee.
Jack Murray took care of his crew however, and made sure that everyone who worked for him got a job at another nearby joint, with the understanding that they come back and work August through Labor Day, when they would close for the season at the end of the night. All of the local bars and restaurants offered to help, and took in his bartenders, bar backs and waitresses for the month, and they all went back to Bay Shores when they reopened in August, and Vince went to Gregory’s where he worked one end of the long mahogany while Carney worked the other.
When the people come and everybody does well, all the businesses are busy and everyone is flush with cash, there is no competition and everyone helps each other, especially in the bar and restaurant business. If one place ran out of a certain brand of beer or liquor, or needed a keg of beer, toilet paper or anything, they could make a quick phone call and count on another place nearby to send a bar back over with whatever it was they needed, and it would be replaced in kind the next day.
Some nights, after closing Gregory’s at 3 am Vince would drive Carney over to the B&B Lounge in Atlantic City, that was open all night, where Carney introduced Vince to George McGonigle, the bartender who was always complaining about something, but a good Irish curmudgeon.
Early one night, just when they were getting busy, Rennich saw Carney talking to Elmer Gregory, one of the owners, and some heated words were exchanged and after serving a customer, he looked down the bar and Carney was gone. It’s unclear if he was fired or just walked, as he sometimes did, taking the tip cup with him, and Elmer told Vince he had to finish the shift by himself. But when he had the chance, Vince grabbed a dime from his tip cup and went into the old wood phone booth, closed the glass door and called the B&B Lounge. When George McGonigle answered the phone Vince told George that Carney had just walked off the job and it was an open opportunity for him.
George then pulled a Carney and doing the same thing, he picked up his tip cup and walked, shaking hands with the other bartender and said his goodbyes to the waitresses he liked and without even announcing he was quitting he walked. After talking briefly with Elmer, George McGonigle was behind the bar with Vince Rennich for the first time.
While Rennich went back to work at Bay Shores in August, and continued living in the second floor room overlooking the bay, he worked part time at Gregory’s and when the Bay Shores season was over on Labor Day, he began working full time at Gregory’s where he shared the bar with George McGonigle for the next thirty years.
But after the bust for serving that under 21 year old, and the Anglemeyer murder connected to one of the Dunes bouncers and maybe one of the Bay Shores bartenders, Jack Murray also walked. It’s not clear if he just quit over all the shit that was going down or if he was fired by McLain and McCann, but he was gone when the Bay Shores reopened in August and a new manager was ordering the liquor, hiring the bands and counting the money at the door.
Before Rennich was finished with his lunch, Carney had given him the Bartenders 101 class, and at the end said, “You’ll just have to learn the rest from experience,” and that he did.
Before the month was out, Rennich had risen from bar back to relief bartender during slow nights during the week, and was working the night Bay Shores was raided, and all the underage girls scampered out the women’s room window onto the dock while grown 20 year old men jumped into the bay and swam ashore, but they escaped.
The NJ state police ABC – Alcohol Beverage Control, without notifying local authorities or police, orchestrated the raid, and only nabbed one guy, a 19 year old college kid who they busted and used as an example, with the penalty being Bay Shores had to close for one month – the month of July. Vince was glad that he hadn’t served the kid, though he did have some new friends he met and they kept coming to his bar and tipped good, though he knew they weren’t 21. They got away in the melee.
Jack Murray took care of his crew however, and made sure that everyone who worked for him got a job at another nearby joint, with the understanding that they come back and work August through Labor Day, when they would close for the season at the end of the night. All of the local bars and restaurants offered to help, and took in his bartenders, bar backs and waitresses for the month, and they all went back to Bay Shores when they reopened in August, and Vince went to Gregory’s where he worked one end of the long mahogany while Carney worked the other.
When the people come and everybody does well, all the businesses are busy and everyone is flush with cash, there is no competition and everyone helps each other, especially in the bar and restaurant business. If one place ran out of a certain brand of beer or liquor, or needed a keg of beer, toilet paper or anything, they could make a quick phone call and count on another place nearby to send a bar back over with whatever it was they needed, and it would be replaced in kind the next day.
Some nights, after closing Gregory’s at 3 am Vince would drive Carney over to the B&B Lounge in Atlantic City, that was open all night, where Carney introduced Vince to George McGonigle, the bartender who was always complaining about something, but a good Irish curmudgeon.
Early one night, just when they were getting busy, Rennich saw Carney talking to Elmer Gregory, one of the owners, and some heated words were exchanged and after serving a customer, he looked down the bar and Carney was gone. It’s unclear if he was fired or just walked, as he sometimes did, taking the tip cup with him, and Elmer told Vince he had to finish the shift by himself. But when he had the chance, Vince grabbed a dime from his tip cup and went into the old wood phone booth, closed the glass door and called the B&B Lounge. When George McGonigle answered the phone Vince told George that Carney had just walked off the job and it was an open opportunity for him.
George then pulled a Carney and doing the same thing, he picked up his tip cup and walked, shaking hands with the other bartender and said his goodbyes to the waitresses he liked and without even announcing he was quitting he walked. After talking briefly with Elmer, George McGonigle was behind the bar with Vince Rennich for the first time.
While Rennich went back to work at Bay Shores in August, and continued living in the second floor room overlooking the bay, he worked part time at Gregory’s and when the Bay Shores season was over on Labor Day, he began working full time at Gregory’s where he shared the bar with George McGonigle for the next thirty years.
But after the bust for serving that under 21 year old, and the Anglemeyer murder connected to one of the Dunes bouncers and maybe one of the Bay Shores bartenders, Jack Murray also walked. It’s not clear if he just quit over all the shit that was going down or if he was fired by McLain and McCann, but he was gone when the Bay Shores reopened in August and a new manager was ordering the liquor, hiring the bands and counting the money at the door.
END
ACT THREE - WAITING
ON THE ANGELS – The Long Cool Summer of 65 Revisited
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