SCARY TIME AT DICK'S

MY MOTHER WAS RIGHT

If you have been reading the two other blog entries about Dicks you  know that it was a place where greasers with Ducktails lingered chugging cold sodas. I gained some place in their midst by chugging with them but mostly by keeping my mouth shut.

But one hot August day was different. There was more tension than usual--part of the charm. I was not paying attention to the quarrels AMONG THE DUCKTAILS. I knew only a few by name and even fewer ever spoke directly to me. 

They dressed alike. Their uniform was jeans, white t-shirt with cigarettes in one wrapped sleeve, and some had leather jackets, some had different patches on those jackets, and some had heavy black boots that Bikers wear. And some wore high tops.Some had bandannas tied around their necks. 

"What KIND OF A DAY WAS  IT?  
It was a day like any other day that alters and illuminates mankind and you are there". (Funny that just came back to me  just as  I was  writing this--that was the lead in to a favorite TV show of mine  I think it was called YOU ARE THERE. They would pick a  date in history and tell us the story of that day,)

This hot day during a chugging session an argument started. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once--something about a '51 FORD. Suddenly the sound of breaking glass caught my attention and  brought silence to the scene. One of the boys had broken a  soda bottle against the cooler and was standing with the broken bottle in one hand.  He called out another boy who stood up and  whipped the bandanna from his neck and  began to wrap it around his wrist. In his other hand  he was holding something metallic.

Suddenly a click sounded in the silence. He had a switch blade in his right hand and he started to circle the boy with the bottle.  Someone threw bottle boy a t-shirt and he wrapped it around his exposed  arm. I heard a man's voice shouting --"NO not here--take this outside."
  
But they kept circling each other and everyone backed away. Except me--I was frozen to the bench. Right in front of me, they were swinging the knife and the broken bottle. Then the jagged bottle made contact with the switchblade holder's forearm and blood started to pour out.  The switch blade holder jumped in a kind of startle reflex and lunged low at the other boy, his knife caught the bottle holder's thigh and cut open the denim. Bright red blood started to run down his pant leg. I must have been screaming  because someone told me to SHUT UP.
And they suddenly seemed to remember that  I was there.  The store clerk had by this time  moved to the door and was  holding it wide.
All of youse --GET THE  HELL OUT. 
 They surged in a mass out onto the sidewalk.

  I sat there and  the clerk came back and closed the door and locked it. Then he pulled down the shade in the window and turned the "out for lunch sign"  around. 

He looked at me and then he gave me some wet paper towels.  I then saw that I had some blood that had  spattered on to my blouse and on my arms.  I washed it off and  he gave me another orangeade.
  He turned up the radio on the counter for the baseball game.  He sat next to me on the bench and the stillness was broken only by the voice of Curt Gowdy calling the RED SOX .
"You should not have seen that," the clerk said.
"I am tempted to tell your mother, I know where you live."
OH, Please, I won't tell anyone.
Can you keep a secret? 
I promised I would.
And then he added something--and  never come back here ,
DO you understand? 
 I nodded, yes. 
He made me say the YES out loud. 
 He took the empty bottle from me and added it to the empties  in the racks next to the cooler. 
I offered him a dime but he laughed and said. MY treat.
And that was one secret of many that I did keep--not just from my mother--I did not even tell Lucille.
UNTIL NOW. 
      
I would meet these boys or their doubles later in life when they became a fixture of the White Tower that sat on the West side of the Main Street Bridge, some of it cantilevered over the water. 
BUT BY THEN I WAS A TEENAGER TOO