American Music

Part One

Photo by Carol Highsmith's America on Unsplash

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I was living in Westham, Massachusetts in those days, trying to spend my summers away from my hometown in Springfield and hoping catch a date with a girl from my school whose family lived in Westham. I’d picked up a job typing up the minutes for the town council meetings when the town stenographer decided – with two weeks to go before the summer beach season – she was fed up with Massachusetts and would be moving to Rhode Island posthaste. I needed a job and the town needed someone who could type one hundred words a minute. And in their wisdom, the selectmen decided that a bright young man of nineteen fresh off of his freshman year at one of those universities in the vicinity of the Charles River must know something about typing quickly. I hadn’t the heart to tell them the school had remedial typing classes for just such students as myself, whose fingers hadn’t caught up to our knowledge of the finer points of style and rhetoric.

I took the job without even asking what they paid. Turned out, it wasn’t much. But the girl I had my eye on, Ruth Griffith, was the daughter of one of the selectmen. For some reason, I thought that meant she might attend the town meetings.

Ruth didn’t attend the town meetings, but it seemed like every other resident did. Westham wasn’t very large. Main Street was two blocks long and there weren’t any other streets in the “downtown” to speak of. There was a general store which was also a drugstore. There was a package store. There was the bar which served breakfast in the mornings. It had ropes on the walls and pictures of fishermen. Workingmen went in around six and they went in again around six in the evening. There were two churches, Catholic and Protestant. I think it was Methodist, but it could have been Presbyterian. According to my mother, all Protestant denominations shared the same common denominator: they were heretics. There was a post office and a tiny courthouse. There was an ice cream parlor which only opened from May to the end of September. And there were two of those tacky tourist shops, the kind selling funny bumper stickers and purple shirts with green seashells.

For such a small town, local politics was hot. Every Monday night, old folks and students and workingmen’s wives packed the meeting hall to standing room only. The occasional tourist would drop by, too, to see what the fuss was about. Every Monday, without fail, there were too many concerns, too many agenda items, too many questions, and too many homeowners who wanted to monologue for the board of selectmen to make it through everything. We inevitably ran over half an hour and tabled half the topics we planned to cover to the next Monday. Which only meant that we wouldn’t clear through the backlog anytime before I had to return to school in August.

I have to tell you, I loved it. Back in Springfield, local elections seemed very staid. Voters didn’t worry about anything other than whether their children were learning enough science in school. As long as city government was reasonably competent, nobody paid it much mind.

Here in Westham, people cared. And boy did they ever. Seemed like everybody had a complaint about something. Or someone. There was a lady with graying hair which she hadn’t cut since the end of the war (it was claimed). This seemed unlikely, but maybe people meant the one in Korea.

On one particular Monday in June, this lady stood up to speak as soon as the meeting was called to order and before she’d been called. Seated next to the selectmen, I heard Everett Digby turn to Rudy Tremain and say, “Wonder what the old bat wants this time.”

‘The old bat’ was only about fifty, but in those days that seemed a lot older than it does now. Especially telling you this in my seventies. But I think it was older in those days. People stay younger now. I don’t think that’s just my imagination.

Her name was Deidre Maxwelton, and she’d been widowed some eight years earlier when her husband had been killed in the storm of ’59. Half the fishing boats in Westham went down that day – just moored in the harbor – and he’d been drowned trying to go out and save a pair of tourists who’d gone out sailing on a day when the smallest child in Westham capable of speech could have told them it was going to storm.

Supposedly, Maxwelton had never liked tourists after that. The two in question had drowned along with her husband, but all tourists were one tourist to her. After her period of mourning had ended, she had taken up going to town meetings, usually with some complaint about tourists. She never stopped wearing black, though.

There was a small podium at the front of the center aisle where anyone could come and speak. As she made her way to the podium, I saw several eyerolls from other locals. Tom, the bartender, always came but never spoke. Ralph, a fisherman who’d been a close friend of Deidre Maxwelton’s husband, almost inevitably got up to contradict whatever she’d said. Someone told me they hadn’t liked each other before the accident. Jerry, a mechanic, had had his petition cut short last week and clearly thought he should be allowed to speak first tonight.

“What I want to know,” began Maxwelton, clearing her throat especially loud and looking around at Tom and Ralph and Jerry, “is what this town is going to do about the little green men.”

“Here she goes again with the little green men,” whispered Rudy Tremain to Everett Digby. “Next it’ll be the saucers.”

“I saw another saucer last night. I cannot for the life of me understand why this town refuses to take my sightings seriously. You have only to read the news to know such sightings are happening all over the country. Why, I can’t be the only resident of Westham to have seen saucers in the sky. To date, they have only ever come at night and they have flown discreetly so as not to wake anyone not already awake, and not to disturb anyone not already looking for them with a telescope, but sooner or later they will grow bolder. Summer is upon us. What if a saucer flies over the beach in the middle of the afternoon, when all the families are out and the children are foolishly playing in the waves?”

She had been adamant in previous years, I was told, that swimming in the ocean was foolhardy and not a proper recreation for small children. In that view, she wasn’t alone. I’d never seen anyone in her generation swimming in the ocean. Nobody under the age of thirty owned a surfboard, something that was just beginning to make its presence known here in the east.

The selectmen let her speak for several minutes, and then when it seemed she had her fill, Everett Digby thanked her for her input and told her that the board would take it very seriously and would deliberate about what possible courses of action the town might take to be ready for a possible landing.

“Fat chance,” she retorted, “like you boys ever deliberate anything. What do you selectmen do all day other than run your real estate firms and send your kids to private schools? You meet here once a week to listen to our concerns and then you don’t ever do anything about any of them.”

“That’s enough,” said Everett Digby. “You’ve had your time to speak. Now it’s time for someone else.”

Jerry went next and made his petition about the need for better signs on the rotary.

“No one from New York has ever seen one,” he said. “They forget how to drive. I almost hit a guy the other way who stopped in the middle.”

Selectman Digby asked him what type of sign he thought would be appropriate.

“Something like, ‘Move along. Don’t stop here, idiot, in the middle of the gosh darned road.’”

Selectman Digby thanked him for the suggestion and Jerry sat back down. Next, Old Doc Oleander made his way to the front. Everyone liked Doc, because he didn’t waste anyone’s time and he always had something useful to say. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have come to the meeting.

“Independence Day is coming up,” he began. “And I wanted to know how far along this town was in planning for it. I had a few suggestions of my own. Figured they might come in handy.”

The selectmen all exchanged glances. As I understood it, the town budget couldn’t afford fireworks this year and they didn’t want to let on if they didn’t have to.

“Well,” began Selectman Tremain. “We had been talking about it among ourselves. We’re open to suggestions from the town, of course. We’d like to do something different this year. Every town does fireworks. We thought it might be nice to set ourselves apart.”

“No fireworks?” screamed someone from the back.

“Of all the cheap tricks this lousy town…” muttered Deidre Maxwelton loudly to herself.

Doc waited for the noise to die down. “I did have an idea,” he said. “Back in the Depression, there was never any money for fireworks. And one year someone in the town had a bright idea that we would have a little festival in the park and anybody who could play an instrument could bring it and we’d have a little music. Boy, I’ll tell you, if that wasn’t the best Independence Day I ever saw, I don’t know what was. People came from four towns over soon as word got out. Someone started strummin’ a guitar at ten in the morning and I think the real playing started sometime that afternoon. A few fellas had fiddles and someone had a set a drums. The local high school band came and there was even a brass band from out of town. Prohibition had just ended a year or two before and people were handing around beer. Sun went down and still there were folks wanting to play. I was fourteen and I think I stayed out all night, just sitting in the grass with my buddies and my girlfriend of that time and listening to different folks. You never know just how a fella can play sometimes. Folks I never knew could play an instrument got up there after dark and started ripping and roaring and people were dancing and singing and it was a grand old time. I think they finally cleared out around about sunup, but I couldn’t tell you the truth – it was so long ago.”

The whole room had fallen silent listening to Doc. He grinned a little. He wasn’t usually a smiling man.

“Well,” he said. “I was thinking we could do something like that. Over in Baxter Park, you know. Just put the word out. People’ll come. They always do. Just tell ‘em music in the park, anyone who can play or sing or hum a tune can go.”

He sat back down and Selectman Tremain asked the assembled crowd what they thought of it. There were a number of yells of ‘yes’ and only one of ‘no.’

Deidre Maxwelton mumbled, “they’ll burn the whole place down.”

Some kid shot back, “You bet!”

Another woman stood up. I didn’t know her name. She made her way to the front and introduced herself as Mary Ensminger.

“I rather like that idea,” she said. “We ought to have a celebration in the park with music. Doesn’t need to cost a whole lot of money. A good, old-fashioned, patriotic music celebration. American music. What could be better than American music? That’s got to be about one of the best things about this country.”

“But,” she added, “it’s got to be a family event. We want wholesome music, not any of this new dangerous stuff that all the young people are into. No long hair and definitely no electric guitars. People will have their children at the festival and we don’t want them getting any funny ideas about going off and being rock and roll musicians.”

I saw the kid who’d shouted, “You bet,” look around and tug down the corners of his mouth like he had an idea. To tell you the truth, I was having an idea then, too. I’d started learning to play an electric guitar while I was away at school, although I didn’t have it with me that summer.

Selectman Tremain tapped his hands on the desk in front of him. “I like it,” he said. “American music.” He cocked his head. The other selectman were nodding and smiling. Digby asked the crowd if anyone else would like to weigh in on the suggestion. A number of people did. Most simply said that they liked the idea and hoped the town wouldn’t botch it like they did everything else. One or two came up to express their vociferous objections to rock and roll, and to second Mary Ensminger’s stipulation that the music be wholesome and family-friendly.

The kid raised his hand. I’d had my eye on him ever since he had shouted, “You bet.” Originally, I’d thought he was pushing sixteen, but now I realized that he must have been closer to my age. His boyish face and lack of height made him look younger than he was. But when he stood up and made his way to the podium, I could tell he was out of high school. If I’d had to guess, he’d graduated earlier that month.

“I just want to say,” he began.

“State your name,” interrupted Selectman Tremain.

“My name is Jack Tremain,” said the young man. “And I think most of you know me here. Not to pull rank, but my uncle is on the board of selectmen. You might know of him…”

“Alright, speed it along,” said Selectman Tremain. “We don’t have all day.”

“Okay, all I wanted to say is that I think it’s unfair to say that we can have American music, but we can’t have any rock and roll. I don’t know what’s more American than rock and roll. Why, it was practically invented here. I guess I just thought someone ought to stand up and defend rock and roll if good American music was being unfairly slandered. I mean, not to take anything away from other music, but I…”

“Thank you, young man,” interrupted his uncle for the third time. Jack sensed his time was up and sped up his speech.

“I just wanted to defend…”

“Thank you.”

“All I wanted to say was…”

“You may sit down, now.”

“It isn’t family unfriendly,” shouted Jack. Then, in a quieter voice he added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that so loud.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tremain. If you would please sit down and let someone else speak, we have quite a number of petitions to clear through today.”

“Oh alright,” said Jack, turning and walking back to his seat. “But it isn’t fair. There’s nothing wrong with rock and roll.”

Part Two will be out later this month…