Smitty's

And Other Springfield Adventures

 

Today I took the bus to Springfield. At the holdover at Holyoke's Veteran's Park I saw that yesterday's torrential downpour had been too much for somebody's bumbershoot. 

In downtown Springfield I paused to look in the window of the former Luva restaurant, whose owner was a friend of my father.

What was weird was that looking in the window it looked like the place was untouched since the last night it was open, with booze behind the bar and everything. It was as if the door was locked on the last night it was open and no one has ever returned.

Not far off is the also defunct Cafe Manhattan. In the late 80's that place was one of the liveliest joints in Springfield.

Well at least good ol' Smitty's and Theodores are still open.

That reminds of an essay I wrote about Smitty's that needs to be transferred here from Geocities. 

 

I saw on one of our local TV News shows that Smitty's Pool Hall has turned one hundred years old. That doesn't particularly surprise me, although frankly it had never occurred to me to wonder just how old the place was. There is a timelessness about Smitty's that's sorta like a person whose age you can't guess, who never look young but never seem old. Smitty's is like that.

Then again maybe I don't know what I'm talking about since I haven't actually stepped foot in Smitty's in years. But from what I saw on TV, it looked pretty much the same. I'm not talking about the decor, which was dark the way pool halls should be, and therefore too dark for the TV camera lights to capture much. But it did show the customers, and they looked like the same sort of people I used to see there, so maybe it hasn't changed.

Back when I was a student at the noble High School of Commerce, back before Phil Sweeney retired and the Democrats ruined the school system, me and my friends used to skip school on occasion and go to Smitty's. The proper name for the place is Smith's Billiards, but I've never heard anyone actually call it that. It's on Worthington Street and was the place where we usually spent the afternoons when we played hooky. Does anyone even use that term anymore for skipping school?

Our illegal absences usually began elsewhere. The first stop was always the Seven Kettles in Baystate West (now called Tower Square). It was a glorified diner with cheap coffee and pastry, the kind of place that attracted a lot of bums. In other words it was a perfect place for truants to hang out. I think that's where I first got addicted to caffeine, hanging out in the Seven Kettles.

On our way downtown from Commerce we would walk without a pause right past the main branch of the City Library. Yet ironically the next stop on our itinerary after the Seven Kettles was usually a reading room of a different sort. I'm talking about the old Phoenix Newsroom near the Arch, which had an indifferent management that would allow you to peruse at your leisure their magazine section. Not just the front section, which featured dull publications like Time, Newsweek and U. S. News and World Report. I'm talking about the back section, which was out of view of the casual customer, and which featured easy reading material of the sort that had lots of pictorials featuring the mating habits of human beings.

After tiring of that educational environment, we would then cross the street to that infamous temple to misspent youth, the Playtown Arcade Gallery. We'd play pinball there, but usually only briefly, because that was not our real intent in going there. What we wanted was marijuana, and we all knew that the young black dope dealers that passed through Playtown at irregular intervals always had the best weed. 

You could even make back the day's expenses by rolling part of what you bought into joints and selling them singly at twice the price. This illicit teenage capitalism was as sophisticated as anything you could learn about supply and demand in Junior Achievement and many times more profitable. It was also pretty much risk free. The only authority in Playtown was a fat bald guy with a cigar and suspenders whose sleepy eyes saw nothing as long as you weren't mistreating the machines.

Once we scored the weed we would leave Playtown and go under the Arch, through the Peter Pan bus terminal (a good place to find customers for your joints) and then go behind the Springfield Newspapers and beneath the overpass, where there were some scattered woods that you could follow all the way down to the Connecticut River. There we would smoke joints, goof around on the riverbank, commune with nature and eventually wander back to Playtown. Once there we'd play games with names like Gorgon, Snow Devils and Aces Wild, whose colorful lights and carnival sounds were just perfect for when you were stoned.

But finally it would be time to go to Smitty's to play pool. All previous adventures were but a prelude to this phase of the day. At that time Smitty's was the only place I knew of that had a security camera in the stairwell so that the bartender could see in advance who was coming in. In those days such security measures were rare, and that Smitty's was a place that needed such equipment was part of its mystique. Whether they needed it to warn of the arrival of unwanted rowdy clientele or the arrival of unwanted law enforcement personnel was uncertain. From what I saw it was needed for both.

One time one of my friends dropped his pants and mooned the security camera, and we got mad at him because we thought that would mean the bartender wouldn't let us in. It was important not to offend the bartender, because if business was slow, and the coast was clear, we could send whoever was the oldest looking of us up for a pitcher of beer and the bartender would pretend not to notice that some of the guys at the table barely had their first shave yet. As it turned out he never said a word about the mooning.

Smitty's was the sort of place where nobody much noticed you and what you were doing as long as you didn't notice them. People went to a place like Smitty's not to be noticed, and lots of them had better reasons than being truants for not wanting to be. It was a very adult world, part of the side of life they don't teach you about at home or in school, a world which many might ignore or disapprove of, but one which we boys were drawn to like moths to a flame.

But maybe I'm romanticizing the place. Certainly I was disappointed the last time I went there with Jay Libardi. We couldn't believe how the joint had changed from our high school days. This was during the era when the yuppies discovered pool and transformed the game into some kind of high-class leisure activity, with players bringing their own pool sticks in velvet-lined cases and everything. They had even installed a no smoking section! Good grief, in our day had some wuss ever suggested anyone put out a cigarette they would have been beaten-up on the spot.

Some of those yuppies even had their wives and girlfriends with them. Women in Smitty's? Except for the occasional angry housewife who would storm in to drag her husband home by the ear, or the occasional prostitute who would sashay into the joint hooking her trade, women never went to Smitty's. We left disillusioned. It's true what Thomas Wolfe said - you can't go home again. It will only spoil your memories.

I've since heard that after the yuppies lost all their money or moved on to other things, that Smitty's slid back into its old self. I hope that's true. At least that's the way it looked from the dark images I could see on the TV screen in the piece about Smitty's centennial. There will always be a place like Smitty's. There will always need to be.

Happy 100th birthday, and may you rack 'em up for a hundred more.

I took the bus up to Pine Point where I went to see some friends and relatives at Saint Michael's Cemetery, whose shrubery calls on airplane passengers for prayers. 

By Duggan Middle School (forever a junior high to me) I saw that they have a new electronic sign across the street with the date and the time and temperature and everything. How many students do you think stare at that sign during classes?

It reminds me of my Duggan reading teacher Mr. O'Neil who once put a sign by the clock in his classroom that read, "Time will pass, will you?"

Heading down Riverton Road I saw that it actually has a sidewalk. Pine Point really has entered the modern age!

Heading up Denver Street, I passed the infamous Walker House where I lived during my twenties. Oh God, if those walls could talk!

I passed the house where Jay Libardi died. 

At last I arrived at beautiful downtown Pine Point!

Oh well, it's always good to visit the old stomping grounds. 

 

Getting Tabby

The New News

 



People have been asking me what I think of the new tabloid version of The Springfield Republican that has been coming out on Saturday and Monday for the past few weeks. In three words: I like it.

Or at least I like it better than the alternative. For months it had been rumored that The Republican would follow the example of its northern competitor the Hampshire Gazette and discontinue their Saturday edition. Some feared the Monday edition might fall as well. Happily, the new format allows the paper to continue to be a daily for at least a while longer, and they should be praised for their commitment to remaining a daily for as long as possible.

Of course, the tabloid editions are smaller than the broadsheet ones, but not dramatically so. The national news is mostly missing, but people can get that lots of places. Instead they are finally focusing on what they do best, which is providing the local news that most other news sources are not likely to cover. As Jeff Jarvis has advised, "Do what you do best and link to the rest." I have hundreds of sources for information about Obama's speech in Egypt, but if the Mayor of Springfield gives a major address there are only a handful of places to turn to find out about it. The Springfield Newspapers are well equipped to be that source, but its too bad its taken them so long to realize it.

Holyoke Hike

On the streets of Northampton the usual everyday circus was in town. 

Nearby Food Not Bombs was giving it away for free.

This morning I was admiring the flowers by the bus stop.

I couldn't help but notice this bright orange flower standing out amidst its otherwise barren environment. 

Even in hostile surroundings and against all odds, the flower still managed to blossom and express its beauty. There's a lesson in life there if you look at it right.

I took the bus down to the Paper City. Soon I was in beautiful Veteran's Park - the shuck and jive capitol of Holyoke. 

I needed to go to the Social Security Office but I didn't know where it was. I decided to head over to the nearby post office, since being a federal building they might very well know. Entering the Holyoke Post Office is like tumbling through a time tunnel into the 1930's.

The Social Securtiy Office is not located in that building, but I discovered there that it is located on High Street. On my way I admired the beautiful old buildings still standing on that famous street.

However, I still couldn't locate the Social Security Office. Therefore I decided to inquire at Holyoke City Hall.

To do so meant sneaking past the doorway leading to the meeting place of one of Holyoke's most dangerous gangs.

At the Election Office I asked the whereabouts of the SS office, and they rattled off directions with a formality that made me realize it was a question they had been asked many times before. They were good directions and I had no problem finding the office, which is located right next to the Holyoke office of The Springfield Newspapers. 

Once inside they gave me a number and told me to sit down and wait my turn. My number was 32. They were currently on number 24.

So it was hurry up and wait, but who expects to do otherwise at a government office? I stared out the window at the city below. 

Quicker than I expected my number came up and I completed my business in less than five minutes. Then I was back on the street, and Holyoke I love you, but I must say good-bye and catch the northbound bus. 

Later at UMass I had lunch at the Blue Wall, which was packed with patrons wall to walls of blue. So much goes on at the University in the summer now that you might consider it a year-round institution.

Beyond Feder

Until just recently, the only people to cover the free speech controversy at UMass has been myself and the trusty UMass Collegian. Happily, the Valley Advocate jumped into the fray recently by printing a commentary by Reason Magazine editor Cathy Young on last semester's "Feder Fiasco" in which former Boston Herald columnist Don Feder was heckled off the stage when he tried to give a speech. Young gave this devastatingly concise summary of the incident:

A group of left-wing students announced their intent to protest Feder's appearance. The campus police then demanded the organizers pay an added $444 for security, nearly tripling the costs to the club.

It's bad enough to place a burden on unpopular views by requiring student organizations to shoulder extra costs for hosting controversial speakers. It's doubly outrageous when, even with the extra costs, the controversial speech is still silenced.

While Feder was not shouted down or physically threatened as some other speakers have been, the protesters were blatantly disruptive from the start. They laughed raucously when Feder was introduced as an "author and intellectual." The announcement that no protests or disruptions would be tolerated during the speech was greeted with open jeers.

As Feder began to speak, the protesters hissed and hooted. At one point, a group of them noisily turned around their chairs to face away from the podium. Finally, a woman in the audience interrupted Feder, rising to shout out a statement about the murder of a transgendered African-American woman. Feder asked the police to escort her out; she walked out on her own, to the cheers of her fellow protesters, and even paused to wave to her friends and yell a derogatory comment to Feder. As the disruptions continued, Feder cut his speech short and left the podium.

What I personally find disturbing about these incidents is that the people involved are the college educated people who will help determine the degree of free speech we have in the future. If they learn on campus that shouting down people you disagree with is not just permissible, but even admirable, what degree of freedom of expression can we expect to have in the future?

This week someone named Marlena Fontes wrote a letter to the Advocate that is probably as good an argument as can be made for the pro-disruption side:

Cathy Young's article "Intolerant of Dissent" [May 21, 2009; on the appearance of conservative columnist Don Feder at UMass] rests on the idea that all free speech should be protected and listened to politely. It seems she misunderstands the meaning of free speech, which is a protection from government intervention into that right rather than insulation from outspoken community dissent. 

Or rather she seems to understand that freedom of speech should be part of a large agreement, which is only kept by naive liberals, to listen politely and nicely to all people even if their speech is violence-inciting, hateful and racist. This is not say that Feder should not have been allowed to speak, but a community has the right to respond.

What Fontes fails to tell us is who are these wise people who can determine in advance for us whose speech is intolerable because it is "violence-inciting, hateful and racist" and therefore not protected? It is one thing to "respond" it is another to do so in such a way that your opponent is unable to speak at all. We should JUST LET EVERYONE SPEAK and let every listener judge the value of what they hear according to their own judgement. That is the only sane system.

Hamp Sights

I never noticed before that the fountain in downtown Northampton's Coolidge Park is made of stones from each of the Pioneer Valley towns.

Dig this exotic plant in the window of Noodles. 

Emily's Scents

An Erotic Sensibility?

 

I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too --
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

-Emily Dickinson

There's a fun book out called What the Nose Knows which explores all things smelly in an entertaining and informative way. Written by respected science writer Dr. Avery Gilbert, a section of the book is devoted to smell and creativity. Several paragraphs are about Amherst's Emily Dickinson and her nearly obsessive devotion to flowery fragrances.

This near-recluse lived her entire life at the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was knowledgeable about botany and obsessed with flowers, of which she grew many kinds on the property and in an indoor conservatory. Cultivating flowers was a hobby for many women of her time, but unlike them Dickinson could not have cared less about showy scentless orchids.

Her exclusive passion was scented flowers. Her favorites make an impressive list: French marigold, mignonette, peony, primrose, Sweet Sultan, Sweet William, roses of various kinds, lilac, mock orange, honeysuckle, jasmine, heliotrope, and sweet alyssum. Dickinson was not into subtlety; she preferred the strong perfume of tropical jasmine and ripe "Bourbon" roses. Her conservatory was saturated in scent. Given the Victorian sensibilities of the time, these lush blossoms were considered too suggestive for the drawing room. Instead she placed pots of them in her bedroom and next to her writing desk. Not surprisingly, flowers are a major theme in her work; one in five of her poems refers to flowers in some way.

Too suggestive for the drawing room? You mean the flowers made you horny? He says she kept them by her bed and writing desk so perhaps that helps explain the erotic tension many scholars have noted in her work. Gilbert, however, quoting several passionate passages from Dickinson's poems, goes even further:

This casts a sinister new light on the poet's album of of pressed flowers, lovingly preserved in the Emily Dickinson room of the Houghton Rare Book Library at Harvard. Scholars celebrate it as a beautiful record of her passion for flowers. I think the album is a creepy thing - it houses the trophies of a serial killer.

I think Dr. Gilbert is getting a bit carried away there and reading too much into too little, but it's still an interesting notion. The whole book is full of such unexpected insights about the role of aromas in our lives. I recommend it.

Did you know that in 1987 a flower was named after Emily Dickinson? This website describes it as "One of the few variegated Hostas with fragrant lavender flowers. An irregular creamy margin on a medium green leaf." Here's a photo:

 

Kesey and Rand

I stumbled upon an interesting essay in the Los Angeles Times that makes comparisons between the work of Ken Kesey and Ayn Rand.

The journals that Kesey kept while composing his books detail how serious he was about the craft of writing, and how good. He poured every chaotic impulse and vision he had into "Cuckoo's Nest" and "Notion" but found ways to keep the basic storylines clear and simple. In "Cuckoo's Nest," the "wild goose" renegade Randle P. McMurphy rolls into the mental ward like Shane coming to town and is at once set in opposition to Big Nurse Ratched who, if not exactly the villain of the fable, is certainly the representative of society's cruel and oppressive forces. In "Notion," our first clue about the logger Hank Stamper is given by an arm that Stamper has affixed to a pole in his yard, a dead man's arm with defiant middle finger sticking upward. Both books are set in Kesey's native Oregon, and both have the same blunt plot motor that served Ayn Rand in "The Fountainhead": the guy who just refuses to give in.

Rand uses the device to tell her favored story about the triumph of the individual will, while Kesey takes it in a diametrically opposed direction. The resistance of McMurphy and Hank Stamper is glorious but destroys them and brings death to others. Thus a dilemma is raised: Does America want brute individualism or the comfort and suffocation of social order? Kesey's life tells us which side he came down on, but in his fiction he didn't answer the question; instead, he explored its ambiguities in dramatic and shattering ways. Kesey's subject was "the great wild American hollow, which is scarier than hell." 

 

Rough Justice

Even by Springfield standards it was a terrible and senseless crime - a 20 year old pizza delivery person named Corey Lind was brutally murdered while out on a delivery. Arrested was Alex Morales, who told police three different versions of what happened, each more incriminating than the last. Here's what he looked like when arrested.

Here's a photo by David Molnar of what he looked like when he appeared in court.

However Morales showed up with more than just a haircut and a new suit. He also had a whole new alibi he thought would get him off the hook. According to the Springfield Republican:

Taking the stand in his own defense, Morales testified he had first met Lind, of Chicopee, about 2 1/2 weeks before the day of the slaying. Morales stated he was walking home from work and Lind stopped and asked him if he knew where a certain address was located. Lind, delivering pizza, gave him a ride home that night and four or five other nights, he told the jurors.

Morales testified that he wanted a ride from Truman Circle home to Massasoit Street in the early morning hours of Dec. 8 and that he called Domino's to order a pizza in the hopes that Lind would be the delivery person and would give him a ride.

One of the first questions defense lawyer Alan J. Black posed to Morales was if he had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child. Morales said he had been sexually abused by an older brother for nearly two years when he was 7 years old.

In his testimony, Morales said Lind asked if he wanted to hang out together and Lind drove to Monson in search of a field where Morales said he had gone to with his girlfriend.

Morales said that as they were sitting in Lind's car in the field, Lind moved close to him and put his hand on his leg. He told the jury he then "freaked out" in part because of his childhood sexual abuse.

Morales testified he got out of the car and thought Lind was coming after him and yelling at him, perhaps with a knife, so took his own knife and kept swinging it, cutting Lind.

Asked repeatedly by Black why he didn't tell police that he was acting in self-defense after an unwanted advance, Morales kept saying he was scared and he didn't want to talk about his own childhood sexual abuse or what he alleges were Lind's advances. 

 



So it would be okay for Morales to have killed Lind if it could be proven that the person murdered was gay? I don't know which is more contemptible, that the defense lawyer even allowed his client to take the stand with such a story, or that it was thought that it might work. But of course, it's perfectly acceptable to defend your manhood by killing a queer if he makes a pass at you. Especially if a faggot bothered you when you were young.

To the jury's credit they quickly returned with a guilty verdict, showing they gave the "I only killed a queer" defense little credence. But just the fact that such a defense was even attempted shows that we still live in a society where there are those who feel that even murder is justified as long as the victim is gay.

I don't want to sound mean about it, but I hope that in prison Morales is introduced to gay sex - and not in a gentle way. 

 

Busy Me

Around Hamp

Couldn't find time to blog the last couple days, but as always the camera was clicking. I started my day today at Northampton's City Hall buying a PVTA bus pass for this month.

Frankly, I'm getting to the point of considering throwing enough money at the registry to get my license back, which was lost in my drunken past. Next I went to the Haymarket, which was surprisingly quiet.

I see from these posters in the window of Dynamite Records that Eminem has a new album out called Relapse. I haven't heard it, but the reviews have been less than glowing. 

Generally the public loses interest when an artist starts singing about their time in detox. Most people can't relate to such an experience.

I like this psychedelic car I came upon in front of the nail parlor next to the Cumberland's on King Street. 

My neighbor took this old bike and made the baskets into planters to make a unique lawn ornament.

This picture taken about two years ago shows my roommate Bert walking along the abandoned railway in Hamp near the skateboard park.

 



For the first time in ages I went that way and saw that it has been nicely paved into a bike path.

On the old stone railway wall was stenciled these Rubik Cubes.

Peeking around a Market Street corner.

Remember that mysterious dog cut-out that was in front of the Academy of Music?

It turns out to have been an ad for a production of Snoopy the Musical. I happened to be waiting for the bus just as they were delivering Snoopy's doghouse via the stage door. 

This poster in the window of the Hamp porn shop suggests a summer love.

 



May it be so.

 

Former Hamp Characters

Lord Russ is injured at home.



 

Valley sex symbol Paolo Mastrangelo was recently listed as among those whose tweets are followed by the staff of The New York Times, rated right between Nicole Richie and Newt Gingrich. Wow, what Paolo says is more influential than the former Speaker of the House? There is also a Paolo Popsicle hitting the market.

A good licker and an all day sucker.

 

Today's Video

Oh what can it mean?