...A Camp Fire Tale
OK...No more teasing you about the story of Gary and Twyla. It's a fairly long or short story...depending upon the mood of the moment...and the way it's being told. The hardest part is just beginning...and that is right now.
It was just a couple of days after Christmas, 1971...that I went to visit Gary above the post office and learned that he and Twyla had had a falling out of sorts. He was down, but still more mad at the situation than anything else. Twyla had packed up what little stuff she owned and had grabbed a ride with Eddie Buckner down to Boston where she was hanging out with him and Joe. Gary was a bit bitter about that....but also relieved that at least she wasn't with some total stranger.I Thumbed down to Joe's house in Andover and met the three there. We rode into the city and hung out. Eddie was all excited because he was going to be hosting a film crew at his camp over the New Year's holiday. He was going to school in Boston to learn to be a TV producer/engineer and one of his professors had asked him if he wanted to be part of shooting an Arctic Cat snow mobile commercial...(in other words-supply a cottage for free)..."Sure!"...a shot at the big time! We had a few memorable adventures over the next couple of days...which are totally irrelevant to this story...and managed to get back to Eddie's camp in time to prepare for the film crew's arrival a few days before New Years. I was a bit surprised that Twyla stayed with us...but figured that she would eventually come around and go back to Gary. Things were clicking beautifully for the shooting of the commercial...the crew of about a dozen technicians arrived with "tons" of equipment and began setting up on Friday night..."we" shot a lot of film the next day because the light was so good and the temps were so mild. I ended up being a "star" in the film...turns out I was one heck of a stunt driver/ stunt man. Most of the footage needed was in the can by the end of the day...and everyone retired to the camp that night in high spirits, because a New Years eve snow storm was moving into the area that night and it promised a chance for some wonderful footage of virgin snow covered trails for the next day. We partied...a bit of weed...some pills...and a lot of alcohol...I brought two gallons of my Grand father's home made elderberry wine to the party. It was very smooth...very scary stuff...even a serious drinker had trouble maintaining poise after downing little more than a beer can's worth. I warned them...but who's going to listen to some dumb hick...especially when already jacked up on who knows what else. The snow began falling just after dark...and the winds picked up soon after. Pretty soon they were howling and driving the snow against the windows in horizontal sheets. The wine was flowing...the crowd was loud ....drunk and raucous...almost out of control...and some time around 9PM, the phone rang. It was Gary's mother, who called to tell us that her son Gary had just emptied two or three cans of "Raid" bug spray down his throat and had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. She was calling just to let us know that she considered us partly responsible for him taking his own life...we had stolen his girl and driven him to it...and don't even think about coming by to express any condolences over his passing. Stay away..."You back stabbing Murderers!" . Wheww!! Talk about a buzz kill! Things got pretty quiet in the place after the call...just the sound of the howling wind and icy snow hurtling against the cathedral windows of the cottage. At some point, Twyla came over to where I was and started telling me how smart and wise and sexy I was...how she'd always been intrigued and attracted to me...and how it would be a dream come true if I would just let her stay with me back in Keene...Hmmm! As drunk and horny as I was...I couldn't see that arrangement working out even in the short run...I told her that as much as I'd like to accommodate her...I couldn't...at which point she left me and began working the room for another "sugar Daddy"...within 20 minutes she had hooked up with a young Boston technician who had to be wondering how he had managed to get so lucky all of a sudden. I was pretty depressed over the whole evening...Gary was dead...and for all intents and purposes...so was Twyla...in the end, she was willing to trade her body to just about anyone in return for a warm meal and a dry bed. Eddie and Joe were too screwed up to really even understand what had occurred...and one by one...the crew gave into the poisoned magic of the elderberry wine and gravity...and passed out on the carpeted floor where ever they happened to be at the time. I didn't want to spend the night there...the place....the people...all just seemed so shallow. tacky and profane for some reason....and I knew I had to leave. I bundled up and struck out across Locke Lake...taking the direct route, up over my Grandfather's hill, ...the short cut to the half moon bridge. The screaming wind and swirling snow matched my anxious, confused, unsettled mood any way...I was a walking cocoon of introspection...trundling through the blizzard. The visibility was practically zero...and the wonder is that I didn't become disoriented in that dark night, snowy chaos and start wandering through the drifts in circles...but...I ended up following almost a compass course across the frozen dark stretch of ice and was very close to the opposite shore...so close that I could hear the sound of the frozen pellets of ice dashing against the trees lining the shore.
At this point, things get a bit "weird"...maybe it happened the way I'm about to tell it...perhaps it was all just a figment of my over heated, emotionally charged imagination...but a glowing, electric blue ...figure...something roughly human shaped appeared a few yards in front of me....I remember questioning it's reality...and noticing that it was giving off enough light to reflect the falling snow flakes between myself and it....the flakes lit up more brightly as they blew through it...then disappeared as they hurtled into the darkness just beyond it's glow. Looking back, It some what resembled what one would imagine to be the shimmering ethereal shadow cast by the grim reaper...and I'll tell you at this point...I was not drunk...or stoned...or the least bit tired...in fact, I was very, very much awake and crystal clear in my head. I stood in place for several seconds...trying to get a handle on things...and all of a sudden...the figure seemed to gesture to me in a silent slow motion...it seemed to be beckoning me to approach...and out of shear reflex I stepped forward...and crashed through the ice into the winter cold water of Locke Lake...fortunately, since it "was" Locke Lake...I found myself standing on the lake bottom only about waist deep and was able to crawl out ofn to the ice bath and across the snow to the nearby shore. Once on land I headed for home through the deep snow as fast as only a freezing wet, scared shitless yokel can move. When I went back to the spot where I had met the electric shadow and fallen through the ice...it turned out to be the exact spot where one of my great grand father's hired hands had been killed in an accident around the turn of the century. A wagon load of stones had accidentally been dumped on him there. It may have been just a coincidence.
I returned to Eddie's camp that morning and learned that...perfect snow or not...the filming of the commercial was done...everyone was too sick and hung over (they blamed the wine) to do anything more on it...and were heading back to Boston "pronto"...the commercial would never be finished...I would never be a star stunt man...Twyla would leave with her temporary techie...never to be seen again by us...Joe and Eddie were still out of it...and Gary was still...and would always be...dead. I guess that it was at that moment that I realized just how fragile and temporary "everything" is....wine, films, friendships, lovers, ...lives. All the talk about Peace, love...drugs, friendship, music and politics...all of our generation's innocent dreams....were all just a giant mirage...just another electric blue ethereal phantasm...beckoning us towards the thin ice lying just beyond where we were safely standing. That's when the 60's ended for me...and I began looking for other dreams to believe in.
That's the reader's digest version of the Gary & Twyla saga...hope it was worth the wait. Your turn for a camp fire, wine sipping adventure. Time to go...Bye
It was just a couple of days after Christmas, 1971...that I went to visit Gary above the post office and learned that he and Twyla had had a falling out of sorts. He was down, but still more mad at the situation than anything else. Twyla had packed up what little stuff she owned and had grabbed a ride with Eddie Buckner down to Boston where she was hanging out with him and Joe. Gary was a bit bitter about that....but also relieved that at least she wasn't with some total stranger.I Thumbed down to Joe's house in Andover and met the three there. We rode into the city and hung out. Eddie was all excited because he was going to be hosting a film crew at his camp over the New Year's holiday. He was going to school in Boston to learn to be a TV producer/engineer and one of his professors had asked him if he wanted to be part of shooting an Arctic Cat snow mobile commercial...(in other words-supply a cottage for free)..."Sure!"...a shot at the big time! We had a few memorable adventures over the next couple of days...which are totally irrelevant to this story...and managed to get back to Eddie's camp in time to prepare for the film crew's arrival a few days before New Years. I was a bit surprised that Twyla stayed with us...but figured that she would eventually come around and go back to Gary. Things were clicking beautifully for the shooting of the commercial...the crew of about a dozen technicians arrived with "tons" of equipment and began setting up on Friday night..."we" shot a lot of film the next day because the light was so good and the temps were so mild. I ended up being a "star" in the film...turns out I was one heck of a stunt driver/ stunt man. Most of the footage needed was in the can by the end of the day...and everyone retired to the camp that night in high spirits, because a New Years eve snow storm was moving into the area that night and it promised a chance for some wonderful footage of virgin snow covered trails for the next day. We partied...a bit of weed...some pills...and a lot of alcohol...I brought two gallons of my Grand father's home made elderberry wine to the party. It was very smooth...very scary stuff...even a serious drinker had trouble maintaining poise after downing little more than a beer can's worth. I warned them...but who's going to listen to some dumb hick...especially when already jacked up on who knows what else. The snow began falling just after dark...and the winds picked up soon after. Pretty soon they were howling and driving the snow against the windows in horizontal sheets. The wine was flowing...the crowd was loud ....drunk and raucous...almost out of control...and some time around 9PM, the phone rang. It was Gary's mother, who called to tell us that her son Gary had just emptied two or three cans of "Raid" bug spray down his throat and had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. She was calling just to let us know that she considered us partly responsible for him taking his own life...we had stolen his girl and driven him to it...and don't even think about coming by to express any condolences over his passing. Stay away..."You back stabbing Murderers!" . Wheww!! Talk about a buzz kill! Things got pretty quiet in the place after the call...just the sound of the howling wind and icy snow hurtling against the cathedral windows of the cottage. At some point, Twyla came over to where I was and started telling me how smart and wise and sexy I was...how she'd always been intrigued and attracted to me...and how it would be a dream come true if I would just let her stay with me back in Keene...Hmmm! As drunk and horny as I was...I couldn't see that arrangement working out even in the short run...I told her that as much as I'd like to accommodate her...I couldn't...at which point she left me and began working the room for another "sugar Daddy"...within 20 minutes she had hooked up with a young Boston technician who had to be wondering how he had managed to get so lucky all of a sudden. I was pretty depressed over the whole evening...Gary was dead...and for all intents and purposes...so was Twyla...in the end, she was willing to trade her body to just about anyone in return for a warm meal and a dry bed. Eddie and Joe were too screwed up to really even understand what had occurred...and one by one...the crew gave into the poisoned magic of the elderberry wine and gravity...and passed out on the carpeted floor where ever they happened to be at the time. I didn't want to spend the night there...the place....the people...all just seemed so shallow. tacky and profane for some reason....and I knew I had to leave. I bundled up and struck out across Locke Lake...taking the direct route, up over my Grandfather's hill, ...the short cut to the half moon bridge. The screaming wind and swirling snow matched my anxious, confused, unsettled mood any way...I was a walking cocoon of introspection...trundling through the blizzard. The visibility was practically zero...and the wonder is that I didn't become disoriented in that dark night, snowy chaos and start wandering through the drifts in circles...but...I ended up following almost a compass course across the frozen dark stretch of ice and was very close to the opposite shore...so close that I could hear the sound of the frozen pellets of ice dashing against the trees lining the shore.
At this point, things get a bit "weird"...maybe it happened the way I'm about to tell it...perhaps it was all just a figment of my over heated, emotionally charged imagination...but a glowing, electric blue ...figure...something roughly human shaped appeared a few yards in front of me....I remember questioning it's reality...and noticing that it was giving off enough light to reflect the falling snow flakes between myself and it....the flakes lit up more brightly as they blew through it...then disappeared as they hurtled into the darkness just beyond it's glow. Looking back, It some what resembled what one would imagine to be the shimmering ethereal shadow cast by the grim reaper...and I'll tell you at this point...I was not drunk...or stoned...or the least bit tired...in fact, I was very, very much awake and crystal clear in my head. I stood in place for several seconds...trying to get a handle on things...and all of a sudden...the figure seemed to gesture to me in a silent slow motion...it seemed to be beckoning me to approach...and out of shear reflex I stepped forward...and crashed through the ice into the winter cold water of Locke Lake...fortunately, since it "was" Locke Lake...I found myself standing on the lake bottom only about waist deep and was able to crawl out ofn to the ice bath and across the snow to the nearby shore. Once on land I headed for home through the deep snow as fast as only a freezing wet, scared shitless yokel can move. When I went back to the spot where I had met the electric shadow and fallen through the ice...it turned out to be the exact spot where one of my great grand father's hired hands had been killed in an accident around the turn of the century. A wagon load of stones had accidentally been dumped on him there. It may have been just a coincidence.
I returned to Eddie's camp that morning and learned that...perfect snow or not...the filming of the commercial was done...everyone was too sick and hung over (they blamed the wine) to do anything more on it...and were heading back to Boston "pronto"...the commercial would never be finished...I would never be a star stunt man...Twyla would leave with her temporary techie...never to be seen again by us...Joe and Eddie were still out of it...and Gary was still...and would always be...dead. I guess that it was at that moment that I realized just how fragile and temporary "everything" is....wine, films, friendships, lovers, ...lives. All the talk about Peace, love...drugs, friendship, music and politics...all of our generation's innocent dreams....were all just a giant mirage...just another electric blue ethereal phantasm...beckoning us towards the thin ice lying just beyond where we were safely standing. That's when the 60's ended for me...and I began looking for other dreams to believe in.
That's the reader's digest version of the Gary & Twyla saga...hope it was worth the wait. Your turn for a camp fire, wine sipping adventure. Time to go...Bye
posted by PaaSun_lok at 11:09 AM
2 Comments:
That story leaves me speechless.
I met them once. In fact, to this day, I believe they saved my life. Bless them both.
Your writing will never surpass this perfect piece.
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