TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 6) CAPE COD
A Throwback Thursday Serial About Life in London in the '70s
On registration day in early September 1974 at Cape Cod Community College (4Cs) I signed up for law enforcement courses, marveling at how easy it was to elude the marketing program they had slotted me into.
Instead: Criminal Law, Criminology, Psychology, Sociology and Public Speaking,
Twentieth century architects have much to answer for generally, but 4Cs campus, though modern, was beautifully designed and just the right size for me.
The onset of turning leaves perked me up. Between classes I'd ensconce myself in one of several music rooms, play my own compositions on a grand piano and revel in a spectrum of fall foliage through the window beyond.
I had originally rented a mini-cottage, perfect for one person, a convenient location, but I stupidly allowed two new friends to talk me into renting with them a Cape Codder (of course) near Craigville Beach, which put me out in the boonies.
With no wheels of my own, I had to hitch to college each morning and it would take three different rides to get there. And just about everyone who picked me up, when they asked where I was from and I told them London, could not understand what the hell I was doing in Cape Cod, going to 4Cs. I never had a good answer.
No TV set, no phone, just me and an empty house every weekend when my housemate drove home to Newton looking for bar-fights (the other housemate quit school in mid-fall and went home).
News from my brother: He was closing up Tricky Dick's and heading to California, with a stop in Cape Cod en route.
The Trailways bus from Boston dumped Michael after dark at the Hyannis depot, which had closed for the night. He asked the bus driver for advice on how to get to Craigville and the driver just shrugged, didn't want to know. But a taxi appeared out of nowhere and rolled him, guitar in hand, to my rented house. We sang Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies, drank Jack Daniels and he filled me in on Tricky Dick's.
It had been a wild last night, he told me, with Barney helping out, nobody keeping track of coffee or cakes or anything. Mike was wide-eyed over a character named Bronco, an eccentric tramp, who had practically moved in. And he raved about Roger Okin, an English schoolmaster who played trumpet without using a trumpet. It sounded so bizarre.
Mike departed after a weekend and Cape Cod grew more lonely, more desolate, and I found myself counting the days on a calendar until I could return to London.
I'd take long walks on the beach, walk a mile to the general store on Sunday mornings for a Boston Globe. I had a lot of time to get to know myself. Even to study, for the first time in my life. I actually got an A on a Criminal Law test.
It was spooky staying on my own in a house, no neighbors (all summer homes), listening to the rattle and whistling of signs and the howling wind, and having only a radio for company: America's Tin Man and Carole King's Jazzman. It was good for me and taught me a line I've oft repeated to my daughters: "You're not afraid of the dark, the dark is afraid of you."
Looking for a groove, I joined the campus newspaper—Mother—and interviewed Pat Ryan, the student body president. Pat was completely at home; and I realized, I didn't just want to be in Massachusetts, I wanted to have been from Massachusetts—like him.
At the end of October, continuing my search of autumn '71, I took a Trailways bus to Providence, Rhode Island to visit Amy H, a friend from ASL, attending Brown. She put me up in her dorm suite.
It was a fun weekend, full of sport, games like Capture the Flag (as a stranger in town, I almost got away with the flag through subterfuge—a precursor to my career in espionage…); and entertainment, an excellent college production of Company. I was sorry when the weekend ended.
Amy drove me to the bus station in downtown Providence on Sunday evening and I was two minutes late for my Cape Cod bus. I felt lonely and sad as I waited two hours for the next bus. I hit the station bar, had a beer, then another, and by the time I finished a third, it was time to board. I was starting to enjoy my misery, and I wrote a long letter to my ASL sweetheart (still in Beirut) and I found that writing things down not only speeded up wait time but purged my soul, the way I suppose prayer and communion soothes the deeply religious.
In mid-November, another bus trip, on my own, to Plymouth to see Plymouth Rock—a pilgrimage I'd wanted to make since seeing a picture of it in my 6th grade U.S. History textbook. Up close, the rock looked small and insignificant, trivialized by the commercial exhibitions and enterprises that surrounded it.
Livingston Taylor came to 4Cs to perform and his rendition of Over the Rainbow stirred something inside me. It was the way he fit himself into the song and made it his own.
I did well, As and Bs (unusual for me, my attention normally elsewhere), and I planned to return to the Cape after spending Christmas in London.
I caught a ride with Brooks Smith, my Criminology professor, who dropped me at the Greyhound bus station in cold and icy Boston. And it turned colder and icier as the bus wound its way north through Vermont, stopping at Burlington, as it had four months before, and then across the border into Canada toward Montreal.
I had about 30 bucks in my wallet and it cost a tenski just to cab from the bus station to an airport motel. Any motel, I instructed the cabbie, the cheaper the better.
It was snowing outside, getting late, and I was sure I wouldn't have enough money to buy a room for the night. I spilled the contents of my wallet and the small change from my pocket onto a counter and came up five bucks short. The manager took pity on me, gave me a key and let me keep a dollar.
And checking into that room past 11 that night, taking a hot shower, getting beneath warm blankets and watching Johnny Carson on TV, is one of the golden moments of my life.
Come morning, after blissful slumber, a motel minibus whisked me through slush to the airport terminal.
There was only one Air Canada flight to London, and I held a cheap standby ticket. It being almost Christmas, flights were booked solid and there was a group of people already milling around on standby, miles ahead of me on the list. My situation looked grim.
I explained my predicament to the desk: If I didn’t get on that plane I'd have to sleep in the departure lounge, a single dollar for food. It earned me an indifferent shrug.
A tense two hours ensued. They finally started calling names. I stopped counting after the eighth, resigned to my fate.
And then the ticket agent called my name and I was saved.
Another golden moment.