“I’m bored with going to the same places every week,” I told Larry. “Let’s go somewhere we’ve never been. Let’s just drive until we find a bar we’ve never seen before!”
Larry shook his head, laughing silently as he often did when considering my ideas. “Okay!” he said finally. “Anything for you, Baby!”
We headed out for a ride in our new car, which – Larry was quick to remind me – cost way more to drive than the motorcycle did. So we headed out on the highway into Westmoreland County, blasting music on our 8-track player and pretending we were far, far from home.
Somewhere along the highway we saw a lincoln-log-styled pub with a glowing neon sign: “Miller Lite.” Since that was Larry’s favorite, we knew that this was the place we should stop.
Since it was Saturday, the place was hopping: jukebox blasting classic rock, a handful of very active pool tables, and plenty of people hooting at the bartender for “another round over here!” Larry and I jumped right into the action. We played pool for hours, selected some of the best songs on the jukebox, and drank shots of brandy and schnapps along with our beers.
By this point in my drinking career, I blacked out regularly. While I remembered the general ideas of what happened during our days, specific details were often lost. For example, hours would pass, but I only remembered four songs on the jukebox. I’d “come to” while walking around the pool table, suddenly realizing I had no idea how long I had been playing or with whom I was playing.
On this day, with Miller Lite on tap, I remember picking up the pitcher of beer and downing the whole thing. It wasn’t a huge pitcher, but I remember guzzling it – because then I ran to the restroom and vomited, clearing my head enough to temporarily pull me out of my blackout.
I left the restroom and ordered another pitcher. I remember standing at the bar, waiting for the pitcher, and then … nothing.
Blackout-drunk was my new normal.
Next thing I knew, Larry and I were in the car.
I have no idea if I had blacked out or passed out – it’s all the same in the mind of a drunk – but when I came to, I was frustrated. We were speeding down an isolated highway in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t have a beer in my hand.
“Why did we leave?” I slurred at Larry. “I loved that place! Let’s go back!”
Larry never looked away from the road. “Nah, it was just time to go.” He didn’t explain why we left, and I remembered absolutely nothing about leaving.
“I want to go back!” I whined. “Stop the car!”
“We’re almost fuckin’ home,” he said. “We’re not fuckin’ going back.”
“I want to go back!” I screamed. Then I reached over to the gearshift – something I could never have done on the motorcycle – and slammed the gear into park.
With a noise like a boulder slamming into metal, the car skidded violently, going from fast to stop instantly and slamming us both into the dash.
“What the fuck!” Larry bellowed. “You coulda fuckin’ killed us!”
“I wasn’t gonna kill us,” I grumbled. “Can we please just go back to the fuckin’ bar?”
“Fuck NO!” Larry hollered. “We’re not fuckin’ going back! Fuck this shit!”
He furiously – carefully – slid the car into drive and drove us home where I promptly passed out.
The next day, I woke up with my first-ever black eye, and no idea how I’d gotten it.
Week after week, I worked night shift. Two out of three nights a week, I called Larry at three or four o’clock in the morning.
“Can you pick me up?”
“Sure Baby, be right there.” He never complained. Larry went to work at seven.
I’d stand on the street chain-smoking 120-millimeter cigarettes down to the filter, waiting.
Larry would light a cigarette and pull on his jeans, boots, chaps and jacket. He’d walk half a block to the end of the street in the pitch black, then lumber to the alley, reaching the garage. He’d brush off the snow from the lock, insert the key, and lift the manual garage door. Then he’d put on his helmet, back the bike onto the street, re-close and lock the garage door, put on his gloves, then drive 45 minutes in the freezing cold to get me.
I did not thank him for this. When he arrived, I hopped on, teeth chattering, hands and feet frozen, pulled on my helmet – and off we went toward home.
About two-thirds of the way home, we’d cross under an overpass, the Harley engine echoing briefly as we rode. And there, under the overpass, sat a decrepit black Camaro with a rolled, molding sign that said “FOR SALE.”
We passed that car for months.
On one particularly cold night, when I was exhausted and frozen to the bone, I leaned up toward the front of the bike. Over the echo of the Harley engine I said to Larry, as loudly as I could muster, “I want that car.”
“You want that fuckin’ Camaro?”
“Yes, I love it. And I’m fucking cold.”
Larry laughed his gravelly laugh. “What’s to love about it?”
“It’s black,” I said. “I want a black Camaro.”
“That car’s a piece of shit,” he said. “But maybe I’ll fuckin’ look at it.”
Less than a week later, Larry paid $250 cash and drove that Camaro home.
When I saw the car in the daylight, all I saw was rust. There were rust holes in the floor on the driver’s side and the passenger’s side – huge, gaping holes that allowed us to see the road passing by underneath. There were rust holes in the ceiling allowing us to similarly watch the sky. There was rust around the headlights, the taillights, both doors, and the bumpers on both ends.
The Camaro had the amazingly delightful smell of old leather, oil, mold and stale cigarettes. I inhaled deeply as I stuck my head through the window.
“It has an 8-track player!” I yelled, bumping my head and knocking a bit of rust from the door.
Our new Camaro was broken and misaligned and rusted out in every conceivable way. The fact that Larry was able to drive it home was a miracle; the fact that he could fix it himself was another one.
Our garage was too small to store the car inside with the bike, but Larry pulled it in halfway whenever he had time to work on it. Sometimes he pulled in the front part of the car and worked under the hood. Sometimes he jacked up the car to get underneath and laid on the cold garage floor. Sometimes he backed it in, jacked it up, and messed with tires and wires and bolts.
Six weeks later, we had a functional car.
“You painted it gray!” I screeched. “I wanted a black car!”
“That’s primer,” Larry said. “It’ll be black when I get the money to get it painted.”
A month later, we had a black car.
I loved it.
Ronnie was a chubby man with a permanent smirk and curly red hair. He still lived with his parents and, contrary to popular belief, did not have any mental challenges. He was sweet as could be and very, very quiet.
Ronnie showed up to watch Larry’s band play regularly, as he was bassist Leo’s brother-in-law. From what I could tell, Ronnie spent his time smoking pot and shyly looking at the ground when any females wandered by.
At first I was afraid of Ronnie, because I feared he was afraid of me. We spent a few Friday nights sitting together and alone, staring at the stage and drinking, until one night I was wasted enough and talkative enough to start asking him questions.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Thirty-four.”
“What do you do?”
“I work at the mill.”
He was very short with me, incredibly shy. But I was too lonely to care.
“Why aren’t you drinking beer?”
He became almost defensive. “I like mixed drinks.”
“What’s your favorite movie?”
“Eraserhead.”
“What?”
“Eraserhead! Haven’t you ever seen Eraserhead?”
I’d asked the right question.
Ronnie and I started talking about movies, and comedies, philosophizing about what was funny and what wasn’t. We didn’t necessarily agree but I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit.
Talking to Ronnie was like talking to a long-lost brother. We each had healthy respect for the other’s opinions, and we became instantly attached every Friday night. Looking back, we were both incredibly out of place in that environment, and both exceptionally weird with our lists of favorite things. But together, we were both just off-center enough that we saw ourselves as suddenly more normal.
“What kind of music do you like?”
“The Who’s the best,” said Ronnie.
“The Who sucks!”
“The Stones then.”
“The Stones are okay. What about Black Sabbath?”
“I hate Black Sabbath.”
“Me too! Everybody I know likes Black Sabbath, but I hate them! I love AC/DC.”
“AC/DC sucks. What about new wave?”
“Oh my god I love new wave!”
When I started going to Linda’s to watch Larry play, I would spend most of my evening watching Larry play and bristling at Zeke, the new guitar player, who was just too loud for my liking. But once Ronnie started showing up, I completely ignored the band unless I was called up to sing.
With Ronnie there, I had someone to talk to – someone comfortable, someone who drank all night and never left early, someone who was happy to see me even though his smile was perpetually condensed.
The only difference I saw between Ronnie and me is that Ronnie loved to smoke pot, and the guys would all go out and get high in the parking lot between sets. It was months before I realized that Ronnie always had weed – always – and that he was getting the band high.
I found marijuana to be incredibly boring, since I’d smoked it in high school and found it dull. So I stood outside and watched the joint go around and chain-smoked my absurdly long cigarettes and believed I was holier than thou.
Then the band would get back on stage and Ronnie and I could go back in and discuss whatever was next to discuss.
Ronnie and I had substantially more in common than Larry and I ever did.
So when Ronnie showed up, I had a friend. And Ronnie, who still lived with his parents at the age of 34, had a friend, too.
Larry’s band started playing regularly at a bar called Linda’s Place, in Whitehall. It was right at the end of the bridge that (in my eyes) went to Kennywood, but Linda’s Place was headed in the wrong direction, toward crime-ridden neighborhoods I’d never seen.
Being at the end of the bridge doesn’t mean that anyone frequented the bar. It was tiny and dark and quite empty. In fact, Larry’s band played there every Friday night – for a pittance of $120 to be split among four people – and the patrons on Fridays usually knew someone in the band.
Linda – the bar owner – didn’t seem to be aware that a band sucked up every cent of proceeds she might have otherwise acquired. Linda was a squat woman with bug-eye glasses who sat in a corner grumpily complaining that nobody was there, then leaping to her feet and dancing alone when she liked a song.
Larry and Leo were bothered by the lack of crowds, but had too much fun playing music to care. The drummer, Stogie, brought in a guy named Zeke to play guitar. Zeke was very, very loud and the more he drank, the louder he got. He wanted to play rock and roll, which didn’t sit well with anyone else, but managed to talk them into playing Keep Your Hands to Yourself, which he’d drag out with guitar solos until even the band wanted to quit. Zeke would breathe the occasional “whoo!” into the mic, so that everyone would think he was ready to close out the song, but then he’d just keep going.
With Zeke wanting to rock and Larry wanting to play country, they managed a fine line of southern rock music that kept them both happy enough to continue playing at Linda’s for more than a year.
In this new format, Larry started closing the last set with a rousing, very loud, run-on-forever version of Free Bird. And since I knew how to play Free Bird, and was there every week, and had been drinking by then for many, many hours, Larry eventually invited me on stage to play along with them.
I loved, loved, loved this time. I hopped on the stage, completely wasted, and in front of a crowd of maybe three people I jammed out on my guitar. I did the slow part, the fast part, the bar chords … I was a superstar! It was many months before I realized that Larry was turning the amp off when I played along.
Since my guitar playing left a lot to be desired, Larry brought me on stage for other songs throughout the evening. Together we sang duets: Meet Me in Montana, You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma, and Leather and Lace.
Unlike Zeke, I required a microphone to be heard. With that microphone in front of me and a dozen beers in my system, I sounded exactly like Marie Osmond, Shelly West and Stevie Nicks.
I’d never heard of Shelly West before Larry taught me the Oklahoma song. But getting to be Marie Osmond and Stevie Nicks in one night…? Every Friday? Well, that was the most fun I had ever had in my drunken adult life. I sang my heart out, and then sat back and drank more beers while listening to the audience – sometimes all three people – compliment me on my singing.
I knew it was only a matter of time before I was singing in front of thousands.
I always envisioned Larry’s youth as a very brief phase that may have never really happened, since he was so very old at 37. Looking back, I think Larry learned a few lessons that carried him through life.
Lesson #1: Everything must be done yourself. No one ever did anything for Larry. His dad disappeared, his stepfather appeared way later, and his mom – a strong woman with an equally strong will – simply ignored him until he figured out stuff on his own. Larry became independent at a very young age.
Lesson #2: Motorcycles are essential. They’re the cheapest vehicles to run and maintain. Larry grew up poor, and was married with a baby by 18, so he had to be frugal. As a bonus, Larry learned to fix motorcycles and found an entire culture based around motorcycles with a pool of instant friends at the ready wherever he went.
Lesson #3: Music is free and easy, and the chicks love it. Larry taught himself to play the guitar and then learned every song he liked. He made an album of cover songs, and opened once for Hank Williams, Jr. – the highlight of Larry’s musical career.
I enjoyed gawking at the photo of Young Larry on the album cover, taken when he was maybe 20 years old. I found it fascinating that Larry was once young; I needed to see it with my own eyes.
At 37, Larry had learned that the motorcycle lifestyle was insufficient to sustain me, since I hadn’t shown any interest in rebuilding the Triumph in the Floridian backyard, and I spent the biker parties hanging out under trailers and in trees.
So Larry – who knew these three things – put his focus on music, with me in mind.
Larry set up the living room with a faux stage, amps and a mic at the ready. He bought me an Applause guitar that would plug into the amps. And he often suggested that I play guitar with him when we were drinking at home. I didn’t have a lot of interest in improving my guitar skills – bar chords hurt my fingers – and I didn’t have a lot of interest in learning finger licks and new rhythms to play ancient country songs.
But I plodded along; it was something to do. I learned that his bar chords were just fancy versions of the same chords I’d learned in high school, and I realized that most songs only required three chords anyway. I still enjoyed just listening to him play, but I started to watch his fingers more than I had before.
One day when Larry came home from work, I was rocking out to Free Bird – blasting the music so loud he heard it from the street. Larry strode across the living room in his boots, smiling and grabbing both guitars from where they hung on the wall.
He put one boot on the table, Free Bird still blasting, and Larry started playing along with the song.
I couldn’t believe it. Larry knew how to play one of my songs! I picked up my guitar and tried to follow him. When the song ended, he continued teaching me – finally a song I cared about! We played Free Bird for about two hours until I could sing and play the slow beginning, and even knew how to play rhythm for the faster part.
I learned Free Bird. It required learning a semblance of bar chords, but it was worth it.
Not long after, I hopped up on stage with Larry’s band to play it. After that, I never wanted to leave.
Every Sunday during football season, we drank all day long. This was not different than any other day, except that it felt infinitely more acceptable to drink on a Sunday if football was on TV.
In Pittsburgh, football is synonymous with Steelers: signs, flags, bumper stickers, everyone adorned in Steelers gear: hats, gloves, jackets, hoodies, jerseys. There is no other football in Pittsburgh.
We met Larry’s brother, Timmy, at the VFW. Every few minutes, as I drank, the VFW erupted in screams, yowls, hoots or roars.
I’d glance at the TV: Helmet-clad men. Green grass. White lines. Whatever.
I didn’t understand football.
My high school sweetheart played football. I sat in the stands and looked for his number (23). When I found him, I watched him stand on the sidelines until he ran onto the field. Then he’d line up. Sometimes he pushed somebody and ran a few feet. Sometimes he ran in a circle. Sometimes he just stood there. Then he ran back to the sidelines, at which point I would clap as loud as I could.
So this is how I watched the Steelers games, except I wasn’t dating any players so I didn’t know on whom to focus. There seemed to be a bunch of guys in helmets and shoulder pads running in circles, all diving on a pointy ball.
One day Timmy – not Larry – figured out that I had no idea when to cheer and when to boo. He stared at me and then, earnestly, asked me a question.
“Which team do you like?”
“The blue team is pretty.”
“You like the Oilers? No,” he said. “Ya gotta root for the Steelers!” Timmy explained that pretty uniforms do not make a team better. Then he provided a short exposé of why the name “Steelers” is meaningful to millworkers everywhere … and clarified that the team name did not glorify shoplifters.
This was news to me.
After that, Timmy took it upon himself to teach me the game of football, using the word “we” when referring to the Steelers. I’ve always been fascinated by the fans’ alleged ownership of any team s/he likes. I became a Steelers fan that day so I could feel included.
Timmy said there was an offense and a defense, which is why sometimes “we” didn’t get to throw the ball. Also, we didn’t always throw the ball. Sometimes we ran the ball and sometimes we punted the ball.
Sometimes we got field goals, but they weren’t as good as touchdowns. Sometimes we took the ball from the other team – the best thing we could do – and got points that way.
“Can they take the ball from us?” I asked.
“No,” Timmy said. “Nobody takes the ball from the Steelers.”
He was serious. I believed him.
When something confusing happened – like a penalty or a sack – I didn’t ask for clarification. Everyone was too busy hollering at the screen. But Timmy spent the vast majority of the 1986 season explaining to me everything I needed to know to understand football.
I still only went to the bar for the beer, but it was better being included in the insanity. I had something to look at while everyone was yelling, and I learned to love the game.
Late in my drinking career, I stopped watching football – and I didn’t watch again until 2002, when someone at my son’s preschool in Maryland told me that the Steelers might make it to the playoffs. I was sober by then, and discovered that somehow I could successfully watch football without drinking beer.
Nowadays I am completely obsessed with football. Thanks, Timmy.
The building next door to Paul’s Place looked like a giant block of cement. There were no lights, not even over the door, and no signs indicating its contents.
One night I saw three men coming out of the primer-gray door, all carrying bottles of beer. Suddenly I couldn’t withhold my questions any longer.
“What is it?” I asked Larry. “What’s in that building?”
“You don’t want to go in there,” he said.
“Why not?”
Larry laughed. “It’s a fuckin’ strip club!”
“No it’s not,” I said. I had seen strip clubs in movies, and they were larger, brighter and more interesting.
“Yes it is.”
“Then I do want to go in there!” I was more intrigued than ever. “Are women allowed in a strip club – women who aren’t strippers?”
“Sure!” Larry said. “Chicks get in free!”
So we parked in our usual place and walked over to the pitch black building. Just inside the first heavy gray door was a second, with a bored guy in a chair and a sign scrawled with “$5 COVER.” Larry handed a guy a five; I hesitated, waiting for permission.
The man stared blankly at his money and gestured toward the club using only his head. Larry pulled open the door; inside was even darker than outside.
After my eyes adjusted, I saw a bar – no tables – with ten stools nailed to the floor, two men sitting three seats apart, staring at their beers.
The wide bar doubled as a walkway for the strippers.
I saw feet first, on the bar as I sat: a pair of ragged, stubby heels in the dark. As I lifted my head, I realized that both women were otherwise completely naked, pacing back and forth in their confined area like zoo animals.
They did not dance. They did not smile.
Unlike the strippers I saw on TV, these women strolled lethargically: back and forth, back and forth. They were rail-thin with simple hair and zero props. There were no strobe lights, no poles, no g-strings, nobody hooting and hollering for more. The music was just one long song with no words, no pumping beat, no inspiring melody.
The old guys stared forward as though a black hole hung over them. If anything sexual – or even seductive – was happening, it would have been only inside their heads.
When I finally got the nerve to really look at the women’s make-up-smudged faces, they were staring at the walls. Upon closer inspection they looked not only bored but desperately, achingly, crushingly sad. Heartbreaking despair poured from their eyes.
I’d been so fascinated by the idea of strippers that it had never crossed my mind that they were human beings.
I looked down at my beer, then up again to be sure: yes, sad. So very sad.
I was dead silent, watching their feet pass.
Sipping.
Even the beer felt wrong here.
Larry had his arms on the bar, shaking his head at his beer and laughing immaturely under his breath, like we were teenagers doing something illegal.
After a minute, Larry leaned over and loudly whispered over the musical drone, “Your tits are nicer.”
He thought he was being reassuring.
For the sake of Larry’s five dollars, I stayed as long as I could. I made it about ten minutes.
Finally I whisper-croaked: “Can we go?”
“Sure, Baby.”
I walked out fast, the neon lights beckoning next door.
In the future when I considered that building, I wanted to cry.
Larry regularly declared, “Pitcairn’s the only place in Pittsburgh that has more bars than churches!”
I’m not sure if that was factual, or even why it inspired pride in Larry. I wish I had somehow counted the churches – which I never saw – and compared that number to the handful of bars we frequented.
Since we lived on the other end of Pitcairn – a full ten minutes’ walk from Barry’s – we started exploring some of those neighborhood bars. The Sharwood Lounge, always pronounced incorrectly as “The Sherwood,” was only a three-minute walk from our new apartment. It was bigger than Barry’s and it had a pool table, so I enjoyed drinking there immensely.
Unfortunately for Larry, The Sharwood had a much younger crowd – my age, instead of gray-hairs. This included young men who, quite consistently, believed it was okay to talk to me whenever Larry wasn’t looking. Larry would go to the bathroom, or across the street to buy cigarettes, and he’d come back to someone hitting on his ol’ lady.
I didn’t mind, as I often got free beers – and occasionally cocaine – out of the deal. Larry, however, didn’t like The Sharwood as much as I did.
“But I can play pool,” I whined, when Larry wanted to go elsewhere.
“I know a different place we can play,” he said. “It’s right across the bridge.”
I hadn’t ever seen a bridge but, sure enough, there’s an enormous bridge right at the end of Main Street. It goes into a minuscule town called Wall.
Apparently someone had named a town after a slab of concrete, or maybe plaster.
Larry and I started going “right across the bridge” to Paul’s Place whenever I wasn’t working. For Larry, they had Miller Lite on tap. For me, they had a great jukebox, featuring not only country and classic rock but also one of my favorite songs by the Talking Heads. And they had a pool table!
Owner Paul was there every night, sometimes bartending, sometimes not, but always drinking.
Larry and I went straight to Paul’s after work, because Paul’s Place had hamburgers and pickled eggs and reheated frozen pizza, which meant we could start drinking at dinner time.
We’d sit down at a table because the bar was too crowded with other people eating their pickled eggs, and we’d have our dinner and a couple of draft beers. We’d listen to the jukebox and sometimes play a game of pool. Eventually, the after-work crowd would clear out, and we’d move our glasses to the bar to sit where we were more comfortable.
I loved those high, spinning chairs. Plus I always wanted to be as close to the alcohol as possible.
Then, as we sat at the bar drinking, Paul’s Place would slowly fill up again as the night crowd descended. They’d stay for hours, getting drunker and louder as the night wore on, and then they’d shuffle out the door to go home.
Larry and I would stay through both waves, drinking and laughing and having a good ol’ time. We got to know Paul really well. Sometimes he’d get us a beer at 1:59 a.m. and allow us to drink it before shooing us out the door.
Then we’d wander out to the bike, put on our helmets, and drive the two minutes across the bridge to our home.
We loved the camaraderie there. But every night, as we pulled into Paul’s Place, I was inexplicably drawn to the drab, window-less building next door.
As the weather started to get cooler, and the longest summer of my life ended, I became acutely aware – again – that I was living a double life.
Three days a week, I was the young adult who was smart and friendly and hard-working, who loved new wave music and laughing with my young-adult colleagues. Our little crew ordered subs and Diet Coke and ate while we “worked.” Those happy times started on Tuesday afternoons, when I hopped on the bus and rode into Pittsburgh with my Walkman in my pocket and my REM tape on repeat.
Between shifts, I drank and slept.
Around three o’clock in the morning, Larry would pick me up on the motorcycle. Even in the snow – when my teeth would chatter and my fingers turned blue and I’d nearly cry – I’d ride the motorcycle ready to party, having just completed a rousing shift of paste-up with my new best friends.
But sometimes we worked until the sun came up and the busses started running again. Then the bar downstairs opened so the Pennysaver staff would have a few drinks.
One morning, no one else wanted to drink with me so I was left to drink with only Steve, the press operator. Steve and I drank and drank. He had two rows of front teeth, which caricatured his mouth into such a state that it was hard to notice the rest of his face. By the end of that drinking escapade, Steve and I were making out on the bar stools; the man was inexplicably a great kisser.
That day and several others, I slept through my bus stop at the end of the line. The bus had already headed back into Pittsburgh. I’d wake to a rush-hour-crowded bus, panicked, and jump off the bus wherever I was. Then I’d cross the street and wait for the next bus home.
Back in Pitcairn, especially in the middle of the night, I’d blast my music at full volume, smoking cigarettes and drinking whatever beer we had in the fridge. I’d wake Larry for sex when the sun rose, then I’d pass out in the bed as Larry was pulling on his jeans for work.
These were good days.
On Fridays, I morphed into full-time biker chick. For me, that meant country music and drinking beer from Friday afternoon until whenever I passed out Tuesday morning. If we also went out for pizza, or Larry’s band played in one of the bars, it was a big weekend.
Larry and I did absolutely nothing else.
Larry spent his days – when I was sleeping – working on his bike in his new garage. He did all the shopping, too: bread and bologna for him, and sliced mushrooms for me. I sautéed the mushrooms in butter virtually every day and called it sustenance.
Larry made sure we had at least a twelve-pack of Miller Lite in the fridge so I’d have something to drink when I came home from work. There was nowhere to get beer in the middle of the night. “Closing time” – two o’clock in the morning – doesn’t mean much to most people, but to an alcoholic, it’s the end of forever.
I never, ever wanted it to be two o’clock.
For three nights of work, a twelve-pack wasn’t nearly enough. Larry started buying cases, which he’d split to carry home in the saddlebags. Then I’d complain because I couldn’t drink them for many hours; the Harley turned them to foam.
But I always drank them eventually, and it was impossible to keep the fridge stocked with me living there.
Back in the day, calling someone on the phone meant walking to the wall, picking up the phone, and standing beside that wall while talking on the phone. If you needed to use the restroom, drive a car, or reach your cigarettes on the other side of the room, you needed to put down the phone and walk away, often hanging up before doing so (particularly when driving).
When the call was long distance – say, to Bonnie in Ohio or Debbie in Virginia – that added a cost to the bill at the end of the month. Long distance bills could be very, very high.
So I didn’t talk to Bonnie or Debbie very often. We wrote letters to each other, and waited by the mailbox for a response, which came immediately in Debbie’s case, and almost never came in Bonnie’s case.
When I did talk on the phone, then, my conversations felt especially important. But in our new apartment, we spent most of our time listening to other people’s conversations.
This made it very challenging to have a conversation of my own.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me,” I would start.
“And then Jerry found a carrot in his soup and as you know Jerry hates carrots and …” Then there would be static.
“Hello?”
“Still me,” I’d say.
“What about the car? Didn’t he just get it fixed?”
“What?”
“I don’t know what’s happening, sorry. Something’s wrong with our phone we think.”
Some kid would ramble: “Every day I get butter sandwiches in my lunch. I HATE butter sandwiches!”
“Did you hear that?”
“Of course I heard that. What is it?”
“I have no idea.”
The voices would suddenly notice us. “Who is that talking? Did you hear something?”
“It sounds like someone else is on our line! Get off our line you asshole!”
“I’m not on your line! I’m on my own phone!”
“What did they say?”
“I have no idea.”
“This is fucking insane!”
“If I ever buy carrots again, I’m hiding them in the back drawer!”
“Are you still there, Kirsten?”
“I’m here!”
“Kirsten? What were you saying about carrots?”
“I wasn’t talking about carrots!”
“He didn’t just get the car fixed. He never got it fixed the first time so this time….”
My conversation would end before it ever began.
It took me awhile to realize that the people talking on “our” phone line were living in the apartment building next door.
Pitcairn isn’t known for its glamour but the apartment building next door was an eyesore. It was a pasted-up, falling-down, three-story building with about 12 apartments. I called it the Pitcairn slum.
Our house didn’t have windows facing in that direction, but we started to recognize that the voices from outside were eerily similar to the voices we were hearing on our phone. If we opened our kitchen window and listened really carefully, the phone conversation echoed.
There was no way to remedy the situation.
Eventually it became fun to see who could hear us talking, and who could respond. We’d try to hold conversations with the people next door.
“Hey! Tell me more about the carrots!” I would yell.
The other person would get very quiet. “Did you hear that?”
I’d giggle, waiting. Phones were fun.
Only a few years later, the building next door was completely demolished leaving only dirt and grass.
I bet that made phone conversations easier.
