Short Stories, Long Odds

Written in 2001. This is not strictly non-fiction, but almost everything is true? The geography may also be a little skewed.

I stopped in New London on my way from Boston to New Haven once. If I remember correctly, I could see the whole town from the top of the hill, looking down into the bay. It was October, right when New England does what it does best, and it was a cool sunny day.

I remember thinking that New London seemed like it was entirely contained in a crater which tilted towards the sea. I’d been living in Boston for about three months and I hadn’t smelled the high tang of the Atlantic yet - and one of my clearest memories is the briny scent and the way the sun shone on the water when I got out of my car. The water looked blue. I’d seen blue ocean in movies before, but the Texas coast is always brown or green, and it never smelled like this - storied and old and serene, if you can dig it.

I looked down into New London, this city that I happened upon by accident and I thought “Here is a whole city I can see at once, and I bet I can walk all of it before the sun goes down.” It was 1997, and to the geezers that won’t seem like a time so long ago or so different, but for kids my age, we know the difference. It could be a forever ago, because between now and then, well, something’s happened.

I killed the engine at Morgan Park on top of the ridge and got out. The car I had back then was a 1968 Dodge Rambler. It had been a waste-case but I wanted to see if my friend Eddie could fix it just like he said he could fix everything else, and he did. It took us three years and delayed his Model T restoration project quite a bit; it spanned from before I could legally drive until after I could buy smokes, which I began to do in earnest at the earliest possible opportunity; it spanned from one relationship to another, from one state of awareness to another. It took us three years but it got me from Texas to Boston to New Haven to New York City to Boston to Canada to Montana to Boston to Michigan to Texas before it finally quit. I spent 380 dollars total on getting it to run and its the best car I’ve ever had.

It had a bumper sticker on it that told everyone on the Eastern Seaboard that “HAGFISH Rocks Your Lame Ass”. This was a remnant from high school but I could not bear to let it go.

All of my friends from Boston were apt to take trips very similar to this one at any moment with very little provocation. It happened all the time and I don’t want to break out the old adage about how “we were all looking for something” but I think we were. There was no limit to the excuses we would make up to get away. We never went together.

I walked down into the city on Waller Street, marvelling at how interesting everything looked. I had never seen a town like it, ever - my first thought is that it was like a painting, one of the ones that makes you wish you were there instead of here.

There was a young guy on the corner of Waller and Williams who’s name was Orion. He was painting a rather detailed sailboat on a skateboard and wasn’t averse to talking so I asked him what he did besides paint. He told me he was really into music and that his parents were recovering hippies - Orion was raised to believe that every song is a protest song. He let me listen to some of his drum and bass mixes on my cd player, and I let him listen to my symphony. He gave me my first ever unfiltered cigarette. He also told me that his worst fear was getting lost. He was born and raised in New London.

I kept walking down Waller (which turned into something else, Mercer, I think) and eventually hit a street called Brainerd. I thought this was interesting because every other town I’d been to in New England had a street or square or place called Brainerd. I even lived on Brainerd Road in Boston. I saw a restaraunt that looked promising and turned back west up Broad Street, and ended up at the Sundowner. It was about 5:30 when I sat down at the bar and met David Correson.

David was a travelling insurance salesman, he is my age, and he was on his way to Hackensack, New Jersey. I asked him if he’d ever heard of the Cadets of Bergen County, and he said no but his cousin had been in a similar organization. I told him about how I’d met a skateboard painter named Orion and how I intended to write it all down, even the conversation I was having with him. He said that he’d always wanted to be a writer.

I was in a serious series of devil’s advocacy back then so I prodded him and said “Well, why aren’t you a writer then?”

He says to me “I don’t know. Something’s happened and now I’m something else, I guess.”

I finished my dinner (which was the first and only time I’ve ever had fried clams - I don’t know why, they were great, I’ve just never had them again) and decided it might be time to start walking back toward the car. I said goodbye to David and turned out into the cooling night air.

On my walk back to the park I thought about where I might go on my road trip. I really wanted to head over to Hartford (Home Of The Whale, as it always will be in my heart), and the accompanying story of where I ended up is tiresome and common, and far less inviting than the canorous sounds of oceans and engines, so we’ll concentrate on one and not on the other. The fact that I was driving up the New England coast in the fall is much better to think about than where the trip took me.

Although I guess to think of one is really to think of the other. You see, my sense of direction is terrible and so on my way home from New Haven I got lost and ended up, by accident, back in New London. The Mass Pike came back into sight and I learned that I cannot be trusted to follow even simple driving directions; but I tell you now that more than anything I learned the most from going back to the Sundowner the night I got lost, a little later on in October, 1997. I met another guy there, and his story was very similar to our pal David from a few nights before: road-weary traveller doing something he did not really enjoy for reasons he did not wholly understand. This guy’s name was John Hale and he sold elevator parts.

I said to him “With a name like John Hale you should be an actor or something.” and he says “Probably, but I’m not. I don’t even know how I got to where I am.”

Sometimes I feel that way too. Sometimes I try to figure out how it happened, or what chain of events has led me from here to there, but the conclusion to that problem always seems overthought or desultorily reached. The most accurate thing I can ever boil it down to is that something’s happened, that’s all, and that’s as accurate as it gets.