“I want go home, watch TV; I want go home, watch TEEE-VEEE!”- The Great Fear of Hollywood studio executives, as verbalized by Gabe Morbeck in a movie theater in Greenfield, Mass.
Monday, August 14th - Despite our late arrival last night I wake up early and decide to quietly vacate the premises. I’m excited about being back in the area after so many years, and drive across the Connecticut River over to Northampton.
I’m gravely disappointed that the railroad bridge in the center of town has been re-painted in cheerful hippie-like pastels, replacing the angry “Give us Jobs or Incomes Now!” graffiti. Jobs? Incomes? Either one will be fine, thanks. After a quick trek up and down Rt. 5, I stop for coffee and a quick refresher course about the problems of lesbians at 7 in the morning. I‘m fascinated being back on the turf of my twenties, and make a quick circuit of the ‘Hamper so see some of the old hot spots. I cruise past the motel room about 8 o’clock only to find my erstwhile companions still deep in slumber, so I head over to Amherst to gaze lovingly at UMass for a few moments.
Many things HAVE changed here, but the general character of the place is remarkably similar despite my 14(?) year hiatus. I am particularly shocked by the absence of the “Quonset Hut”, once an 80’s disco dive where an old Polish fellow named Mr. C. tried to convince revelers to go “Boogie Oogie Oogie”. I stop to fill the van up with gas, and discover the reason for last night’s severe visibility problems. Not only was it raining torrentially, but it appears that I was driving with only one headlight. AHA!
I stop by the room again to find everyone up and watching Nickelodeon. The three boys and I go out to Burger King for breakfast, the main attraction being the “Kid’s Meals” they give away there. We all receive some little Pokemon picture frame things that purportedly light up when you press them downward. Whether we all received working versions of this jewel of Asian manufacturing society is questionable, given the effects of the morning sun streaming magnificently through the window.
We have a big morning of fun planned which gets partially derailed by the arrival of the rain we thought we left behind last night in Connecticut. We take a pleasant trip up Rt. 47 to Sunderland and cross the river into South Deerfield. The covered sheds used to grow leaf tobacco dominate the landscape. Apparently this rainy summer has been bad for the leaf tobacco (used for cigar wrappers) business. Both Sally and I are astounded as to how even the grungy parts of this area look kind of cute and quaint. We stop by the UMass Agricultural School’s Dairy facility where they used to have cows with glass washing machine doors mounted in their stomachs. We see a few girls hanging around but none are the least bit transparent.
Our intention is to drive north to see the Mohawk Trail and Shelburne Falls, but the precipitation intensifies somewhat. We stop for fruit at a vegetable stand and all have a grand old time climbing around on a few “Boston & Maine” cabooses the proprietors have hanging about on an old siding. There’s nothing like some good (FREE!) railroad fun.
We venture up north a bit on Rt. 5 and hop into Old Deerfield Village for a spell, a restoration/ preservation / living history museum. As much as Sally and I would like to buy a ticket to see all of the houses it seems impractical, given the ages of our troop. We settle for a pleasant walk in the drizzle, the highlight being a very modern backhoe pushing around some very modern dirt. We head back South towards Northampton, intent on revisiting my favorite Diner in the world, the “BlueBonnet”.
We go in only to find that our little boys are in a heated competition to see who can be more obnoxious. It’s clear that dining out today isn’t going to work so we shift gears and send Sally to the Take-Out window. We boys all leave and go up Bridge Road in search of one of my former addresses - only to find that it no longer exists! It took me two passes up the street to convince me that 694 Bridge Road (with its beautiful conifer lined ball yard) had been condominiumized. The barn and the old house with the upholstery shop has been torn down, replaced with a 100 unit retirement community (replete with streets and hydrants, even).
I snap a few pictures and go back to pick up Sally waiting outside the ‘Bonnet’. We return to the Norwottuck Inn and I take a bite of my first “Lucky Burger” in almost 15 years (A Lucky Burger is a Giant Hamburger on a Giant Bun for a Giant Appetite!) Sally has some homemade chicken pot pie while the boys imbibe french fries, french fries, french fries.
We eat lunch in the room and the little boys prepare for nap time. Brad and I go out to yuk it up in the Happy Valley. We make an emergency stop at the Wal-Mart which now dominates the old “Mountain Farms Mall”, a study in boom and bust back when I wore a younger man’s clothes (Cue the Harmonica). I procure a shiny new square headlight for the van and we load up on bug spray in preparation for our Sturbridge camping extravaganza. Brad and I decide to be sportsmen for a while and play a quick 19 at the new miniature golf course mysteriously erected near “The Stables” Restaurant.
We both do pretty well but naturally miss the only really important putt, the one for the “Free Game” at the end. This place is no “Dr. Hacker’s”, but the greens seem pretty fair. Brad is delighted by the drainpipe technology used to transport golf balls from upper levels to lower levels. Speaking of technology, they have a fabulous small wooden device at the front desk which thriftily dispenses only ONE little pencil at a time! Yankee Ingenuity! We stop to look at an old plow left out to lend a little farmer’s ambiance to the place and hop in the van and get going.
One of the main reasons I chose to stay in beautiful Hadley was our Inn’s proximity to the newly minted (at least as far as I’m concerned; it wasn’t here when I left) Norwottuck Bicycle Trail. I realize that Hadley was a place I spent a lot of time “just passing through” in my previous incarnation, usually stopping just long enough to buy a pack of cigarettes at the Cumbersome Farms on Route 9. As an armchair traveler on the World Wide Web I stumbled across the website for this new recreational wonder, built on the rail right of way of the old “Boston & Maine” tracks between Northampton and Amherst. The most intriguing part for me was being able to cross the old rail bridge spanning the Connecticut. When my boyhood friend Jimmy Schultz visited me from Oklahoma one time we walked at least part of the way across, keeping an ever present eye out for speeding locomotives which might be sneaking up behind us.
Brad and I went looking for the bike trail, easy to find but hard to Access. Evidently Hadley hasn’t really jumped on this bandwagon, as we keep running into “No Parking” signs everywhere a street intersects the trail. We finally find a legal spot and toodle off in a westerly fashion. A light drizzle starts to fall but we enjoy ourselves immensely anyway. Brad likes operating a vehicle on a real highway; He’s very good at stopping and waiting for me every time we encounter one of those mysterious octagonal red signs.
Crossing the bridge was tremendous! We disembike (watch out Webster! A newly coined term I just invented!) and hike down to the River to see the dock where the UMASS crew launches their sculls for rowing competitions.
On our return trip east we stop at the Hadley Town Commons. I love New England towns for having “Commons” right at their center, and Brad and I stop to take a picture of ourselves. I perch the camera up on a rock to use the self-timer and it plummets to the ground in mid snap. We take a nice blurry picture of green lawn and find a tree with a branch in the right place to hang the camera on for a second try. I’ll always remember that the Hadley Commons was my first stop in this area, circa 1972. I think I went with sister Mary Ellen to help her move to UMASS and we stopped to eat the sandwiches Mrs Big had made us before we got to the Big City (Amherst, little did we know........).
We finished bike riding and returned back to the Inn. We sneaked around and put our bathing suits on, as both Brad and I were determined to use the motel pool despite the low temperatures. BRRRRR! It was pretty cold, but I was intent on “getting our money’s worth.” I think I made this hotel reservation on a hot summer day in Southeastern Pennsylvania, never imagining a cool day in New England. We hopped out of the pool and couldn’t go back to the room due to sleeping boys. Sally continued to read her book while Brad and I drove south down Rt. 47 towards South Hadley. I was hoping there would be hang gliders for him to see when we went past Mt. Skinner but I guess that’s more of a weekend thing.
I still “had bare feet on” when I pulled over on Route 47 south at some point to help him organize something in the back seat. I did my best imitation of Fred Flintsone walking on hot coals, emitting a string of “Ooh-Ahs” as I walked around the van on the rough gravel shoulder. Our budding Philadelphia Lawyer-in-training then proceeded to trap me with a bit of keen unassailable logic.
“How come your feet aren’t tough enough to walk on that gravel (his ARE) but they’re tough enough to walk down in the our cellar where there’s broken glass (his AREN’T)”. In the words of Ralph Kramden, “Humminna Humminna Humminna.........”
We zip through beautiful South Hadley, Mass and take a quick glimpse of Mt. Holyoke (the college, not the mountain). Brad and I return to the room to find our companions up and watching Nickelodeon (where have I heard that before?) The weather is still bit drizzly and we decide to ho-ho over to Amherst, with the ultimate idea of securing nourishment in mind.
I greatly enjoy seeing the UMass Campus and I take everyone past my old Dorm (William M. Cashin in the “Sylvan” Living Area). I can tell that the boys have had enough of re-living memories they don’t have so we proceed up Rt. 116 towards Sunderland. It’s been my dream to return to “Bub’s Barbeque”, an eating establishment with checked tablecloths and loads of barbeque sauce to heap on everything. We even manage to get a table all alone out on the converted front porch so that our noisiness will not disturb the other patrons. No Matter. Mr. Gabriel Shaw Morbeck still manages to throw an absolute FIT! Sally and I take turns staying with him in the car while he howls and howls. The food’s not as good as I remember it and it’s expensive. All in all, a very unrewarding dining experience. We hop in the van and drive north, taking the turn just across the river for Mt. Sugarloaf. Everyone likes going up to the top of the tower they have for scenic observation and I snap a picture of my favorite pastoral view of downtown Sunderland.
We head north towards Greenfield, desperately seeking entertainment. We pass a theater with a sign heralding the new “Thomas the Tank Engine” movie.
Capital Idea, It! The film’s about 1/3 over already but that doesn’t stop them from charging us full price. We boys wander in to our seats while Sally gets us popcorn. This is the little boys’ first cinematic experience so we’re interested to see how they’ll react. Things went pretty well until the scary stuff started to happen. Who would have thought that even I would be frightened by something in a Britt Allcroft production. There’s an evil engine with a big nasty claw who chases everyone else in the film menacingly. Our boys bury their heads in our shoulders in abject terror, all the while repeating, “I want go home, watch TV; I want go home, watch TEEE-VEEE!”
Peter Fonda’s a lot different as a kindly grandfather then he was as a drug crazed motorcycle rider in the 60’s. Times change. We return to Hadley to catch some ZZZZZZZ’s.
