Skiing Veterans’ Golf Course

There I was on Saturday, December 12, just itching to get out and do something outside on the freshly fallen snow, but I was hesitant to partake in any cross country skiing or snowshoeing in Wilbraham. Why? It was the last day of shotgun season for deer hunters. I could have made my way to town-owned conservation land, where shooting is forbidden, but most of these reservations are adjacent to wooded private property, where the bullets were undoubtedly flying. (Anyone who regularly hikes in Wilbraham knows what I’m talking about.)

So what better place to cross country ski than at Veterans’ Golf Course in Sixteen Acres? After all, there’s no shooting in Springfield, right folks? Let me put that another way: not much gunfire in the Acres on a cold Saturday afternoon, right? Besides, I have always liked hiking in the adjacent South Branch Park, and this was my chance to ski the golf course for the first time.

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I park in the lot, which faces the back nine (pictured above), but I choose to walk down the hill and snap on the skis at the bottom, because the incline is just too damn steep! Yes, you may think I’m wussy for admitting this, but my skinny skis are designed for groomed trails, not backcountry skiing, so stopping and turning is a bit more difficult when I’m flying down a hill. Since I don’t want to end up in the South Branch of the Mill River (in the middle of the photo) or careening into the woods on the right, I walk like a wuss.

I snap on the skis at last, cross the bridge over the brook, and start gliding.

Who says you can’t take good photos with phone cameras? Check this out:


My tracks along the windswept tundra:


It’s amazing how evergreen trees will shield the ground from snow (below). If you’re ever lost in the woods and are forced to spend the night, build a shelter in a pine grove if it looks like rain or snow is coming!


I make my way down the fairway of the 14th hole. I remember traveling on the same stretch of ground 28 years ago—when I was in the bed of my friend’s pickup truck! Indeed, one night Doug Mizzetti thought it would be hilarious to drive off Plumtree Road and onto the golf course. Did his tires wreck the fairway? How should I know? It was dark out.

I’m approaching the tee to the 14th hole (below), which was once a notorious keg party spot in the neighborhood—right behind the former Ursuline Academy building, where I attended elementary and junior high school. Did I ever partake in these nighttime festivities? Let’s just say that when my friends and I were walking by, we did pause for some “refreshment” at the 14th hole—and also at gatherings at the 12th hole— before continuing on our shortcut through Veterans’ Golf Course to the Allen and Cooley cinemas, arriving just in time for a midnight showing of Woodstock or The Song Remains the Same or the Rocky Horror Picture Show.


Time to turn around. Here is a view from the tee to the “green”:


As I cross South Branch parkway to hit the front nine I snap a shot of the signature Veterans Golf Course bushes:


While I enjoy the peace of a nearly solitary jaunt on a cold winter day, I am pleased to see someone else snowshoeing, along with a father taking his son sledding on the course. I also see someone else’s ski tracks in the snow. Memo to exercising in a gym on December 12: you missed a good workout in a winter wonderland.

Despite growing up in the neighborhood, the only time I played golf here was during the summer of 1983, when I was recovering from mononucleosis on an extremely hot day. So how was my round of golf? Let’s put it this way: if Cooley Street and Plumtree Road were parts of the fairways, I would have been doing all right. As I ski, I relive memories of swearing, throwing clubs, and boiling in the sun on afternoon that was 70 degrees warmer than today.

Yes, I am much more at peace on the skis during my first outing of the season than I was on links that wretched summer day, although I’m sweating just as profusely. I always forget what a cardio workout this activity is. I pause to guzzle some water and take a picture of the tips of my skis. Now it’s time to press on.


I extend my route into the old Camp Wilder property, a 32-acre tract which the city of Springfield bought for $1.2 million with the help of a $500,000 state grant in 2002. It was a bold move for a perpetually cash-strapped city, but the purchase of the land from the family of the late Emma Anderson Wilder, who founded the camp in 1940, saved the woods from certain development.

Below is Bass Pond, which is next to the camp. When we were teenagers, sometimes we thought it was a good idea to end an evening with a late-night dip there—but people who lived on the pond called the cops on us every time. I remember even getting the bum’s rush neighbors when I tried to fish there during the daytime.


If you grew up in the neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, but if you weren’t an abutter, a member of the Bass Pond Club or the Springfield Paddle Club, or enrolled in Camp Wilder, you couldn’t use the best pond in Sixteen Acres!

Ironically, when a lawyer for the city was examining the title of the pond for the state grant application, he discovered that Bass Pond was not a private pond, but was actually owned by the state and open to the general public. He found that Bass Pond is a “great” pond because it exceeds 10 acres and subject to state and colonial law dating back to 1647. “Every inhabitant who is a householder shall have free fishing and fowling in any of the great ponds ... within the precincts of the town where they dwell,” states the colonial ordinance. “It shall be free for any man to fish and fowl there, and may pass and repass on foot, through any man’s propriety for that end, so they trespass not upon any man’s corn or meadow.”

Amazing. Little did I know that I when I was accused of trespassing, I could have put down my fishing pole, pulled the colonial ordinance out of my pocket, and said to the old bag, “I doing some fishing, I might be doing some fowling, and I’m not stepping on thy corn or thy meadow, so fuck off, wench, lest I moosh one of my night crawlers in thy wrinkled old face!”


Alas, my ski tour of Veterans’ has come to an end. What will be the subject of my next blog entry? Only the shadow knows.

When the Springfield Civic Center Rocked, Part 2

Black Sabbath's Ronnie James Dio

Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Well, in case you missed “When the Springfield Civic Center Rocked, Part 1,” or if you it read a long time ago (I’m sorry, a lot of time has passed, hasn’t it?) and you don’t feel like reading it again, here’s the situation:

It was August 27, 1981, on the floor in front of the stage in the Springfield Civic Center. ZZ Top was about to perform, but I was about to get pummeled by Ron Donnelly, because he thought I was crowding him.

Never mind that the contact was unintentional—I kept getting pushed into the goon. The crowd repeatedly surged forward, propelling me into Donnelly. But he was in no mood to hear excuses.

“Ron!” I yelled. “I can’t help it! I keep getting pushed from behind!”

Donnelly looked at me quizzically—because I had mentioned his name. He tilted his head to the side, like a confused dog trying to make sense of something. Did you ever see a puppy looking at a fellow dog on the TV screen—gazing with a cocked head and wrinkled brow—ready to pounce, but not knowing exactly what he’s viewing? That’s what Donnelly looked like a big, dumb, puzzled Rottweiler. He was trying to figure out whether or not he knew me.

He didn’t. Not really. I had partied with Donnelly before at a few keggers, but there wasn’t a hint of recognition in his bewildered expression.

What I had going for me, however, was the fact that I knew his name. I wasn’t sure that fact alone would spare me, although it stalled him for a few seconds. Then his friend John Sewell, a guy who used to play on a Sixteen Acres little league baseball team with my brother, evidently recognized Dan. Sewell whispered something Donnelly’s ear. I tried to read his lips, and he appeared to say, “I know his brother Dan. He’s cool.” Thank Christ. Five words that prevented a brawl between our groups.

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The lights dimmed and the crowd surged forward again as ZZ Top started playing. The band launched into “Groovy Little Hippie Pad,” but it wasn’t too long before Donnelly, Sewell et al turned their attention to the rowdy group of Hillbillies to their left. The close quarters on the floor had breathed new life into these two groups’ animosity for one another, and I think that the hicks were expecting things to go no further than some posturing and maybe a little pushing. But I knew Donnelly and his crew better than that—they didn’t fuck around. And sure enough, by the second tune, “Waitin’ for the Bus,” the Cathedral guys were swinging on the Hillbillies, who were thoroughly surprised that the confrontation escalated so quickly.

Then, just as the crowd parted to get out of the way of the donnybrook, my brother and Rick Riccardi took advantage of the rare and ample space caused by the brawl and bolted between all the combatants to get closer to the stage. Jesus, I thought, those weasels ran right through the fight! How the hell did they do that? Well, by time I realized what happened, it was too late to join Dan and Rick: there was no way Stan Janek and I were going to try to get by that maelstrom.

So we watched the fight. So did ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, who nudged bassist Dusty Hill and then pointed to the bedlam in front of them, not wanting his bandmate to miss any of this raucous action.

It turned out to be not much of a fight. The poor Hillbilly slobs covered up, and one or two of them tried to fight back, but it was no use—they were caught in a tornado of fists. A handful of beefy security guards in front of the stage climbed the barrier, but by the time they made their way into the crowd, the hicks were long gone, and there was no way they were going to do anything to Donnelly and the boys, who had settled down and wisely opted not to mix it up with security.

Thankfully, I was then able to enjoy the show. Hey, I went to a fight, and a concert broke out. I wonder what ever happened to Ron Donnelly. He seemed destined to die young, but sometimes these guys have a way of defying the odds and straightening their lives out. His buddy John Sewell, for example, became a Springfield cop. Maybe Donnelly did the same thing. Then again, maybe one night he got drunk and stoned enough to eat a light bulb and ended up in the morgue. Who the hell knows?

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It’s funny: when I look my concert stubs from the Springfield Civic Center and recall the shows, what usually comes to mind is not the music—which was in-fucking-credible, by the way—but instead the mayhem. For example, at the 1980 Black Sabbath show, I remember checking out the guy standing on the roof of his car in the Classical High School parking lot after the show, his pinky and index finger extended in a satanic sign, the other hand holding a bottle of Jack Daniels, and his shirt ripped and bloody from a butt-kicking—undoubtedly security guards—as he screamed with a horse voice, “Sab-bath! Sab-bath!”

That scene took place at about 1:00 a.m. as I tried to sober up for the drive down State Street and Wilbraham Road back to the Acres. Christ, I had to go to school the next day, but the rock marathon of three bands (Riot, Black Sabbath, and Blue Oyster Cult) sure was worth it. I’d say that of all those acts I saw at the Civic Center during that period, the Sabbath show was by far the best. From the monster-distorted opening power chords of “War Pigs” to the angst-drenched encore “Children of the Grave,” Ronnie James Dio pulled no vocal punches as he belted out “Neon Knights.” (Here’s a link to a live version of the song—no, it’s not at the Civic Center). Thousands celebrated the song “Sweet Leaf” the only way they knew how, flicking the Bics in unison, their lighters igniting a constellation of blazing joints in a burnt out universe. Words cannot do justice in describing the way the Civic Center rocked. It was pure evil fun at deafening decibels.

I’m not sure which image is burned brighter in my mind: Dio’s dramatic, wizard-like posturing, Geezer Butler's hair flying rhythmically as he hammered his bass, or the robed and hooded woman cradling a candle and walking countless oval laps around the arena like a zombie throughout the entire concert.

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Here's a little poem I wrote about the Sweet Leaf heyday in the Springfield rock universe: Whether you smoked in the Civic Center or not, you always came home smelling like pot.

What caused the decline and then the dearth of concerts at the Springfield Civic Center? In part, you can blame a snowstorm. Seriously.

When snow buildup caused the Hartford Civic Center’s roof to collapse in 1978, management saw the situation as an opportunity to add thousands of seats, and the reopened arena in Hartford dwarfed the Springfield Civic Center. Hartford started getting the premier concerts: bands would rather play two dates there than pack up all their equipment after a show and truck it up I-91 to Springfield. When the Worcester Centrum opened in 1982 with 12,000 seats (expanded to 14,800 in 1989) compared to Springfield’s 7,000, promoters opted to book bands in that city and in Hartford, betting that music lovers in Springfield would make the long drives to see the shows—and they were right.

And with the opening of the behemoth outdoor amphitheaters, such as Great Woods in Mansfield, and Meadows in Hartford, the Springfield Civic Center missed out on the summer tours.

Moreover, by 1981, rock acts were drawing far fewer concert patrons than they were five years earlier. You can pretty much see what happened to arena rock in general by looking at the double-bills at the Civic Center in the early 1980s: Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult (the “Black and Blue” tour), the Outlaws and Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult and Foghat (the “Blue Fog’ tour). Indeed, the bands that used to sell out the place individually began to combine to fill the seats with fans.

It didn’t help that the music industry was changing rapidly in the early 1980s. The heavy, heavy bands that were the mainstay of teenage wasteland in the 1970s started sinking under their own weight.

But we didn’t give up on them. Even when Black Sabbath enlisted Ian Gillan (formerly of Deep Purple) as the lead singer for its 1983-84 tour, we were ecstatic when we heard that the band was coming to the Springfield Civic Center on March 4, 1984.

So we headed down Wilbraham Road and State Street to see Sabbath and the Civic Center. Just like old times, right? I put in a tape of the band’s new album, “Born Again,” on my cassette deck. Ian Gillan was no Ronnie James Dio or Ozzy Osbourne, but the album still kicked ass, although the cover art, a sketch of a baby with devil’s horns and fangs, looked like an amateurish attempt at comic book art, a Satan-worshipping high school student’s dopey art project. The song “Trashed” was a beauty, though. An instant metal classic, even though the video is idiotic. The lyrics are tremendous: “It really was a meeting — the bottle took a beating.” It’s a song about, well, getting trashed. Trashin’ your car. I can dig it. Caaaan yooouuu diiiiig iiiiit?


Notice the similarity to the 1981 Depeche Mode "Shout" single:


Both covers are based on the newborn in this 1968 magazine (below).


I wonder what this lad is doing now. Does he know what his devilish face inspired? Was he, in fact, Rosemary’s baby? Anyway, feel free to read the story behind the cover at the end of this blog entry. It turns out that the artist turned in the worst image possible in the hope of getting a rejection fee, but Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler (pictured below) liked it. “It’s shit,” he said, “but it’s fucking great!”


Whoops, where was I? Oh yes. We were driving through Winchester Square on our way to the concert.

We parked at the Classical High School parking lot, and after a bit of tailgaiting, we walked into the Civic Center, which was about half empty. Or half full. Depends on how you look at it, especially for an Ian Gillan-led Black Sabbath. I mean, where was everybody? Watching Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Flock of Seagulls on MTV? Jesus! Come on! Sabbath was in town!

The lights dimmed. We opened our bottles of various spirits. Gillan’s voice sounded pretty good on the album, but it was just too damn raspy live. It’s obvious the seventies weren’t too kind to him. “I think this tour might have been a mistake,” I thought. “Oh well, I’ll just take another swig of Captain Morgan and make the best of it.”

But when Sabbath awkwardly lurched into a new song called “Stonehenge,” we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. A giant picture of Stonehenge filled the backdrop screen. Holy fuck. Pitiful. The concert reached an even lower low when Gillan, oblivious to his embarrassing vocal strain, starts croaking out “Smoke on the Water” as a cloud of dry ice enveloped the stage. It would have been a great Spinal Tap-like moment if Gillan had gotten lost in the fog, had fallen off the stage, and cracked his head open.

Well, they slogged through “Smoke on the Water.” Christ. The brontosaurus of heavy metal songs, the living fossil that didn’t know it was dead, lumbered around the arena, stumbling and bumbling toward the La Brea tar pits, dragging Black Sabbath nation into the bubbling black goo. Half the fans were on their feet — the true faithful — cheering deliriously until they were as hoarse as Gillan. The other half didn’t care. They were either puking or pissing in the bathroom, passed out in their seats (like the guy in front of me), at the concession stands satisfying their munchie cravings, or just sitting there and fiddling with their drugs and drug paraphernalia.

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A few months later, my brother and I watched the movie "This is Spinal Tap" at the Allen and Cooley Cinema, and we laughed ourselves senseless, especially at the Stonehenge scene, which reminded us of the Black Sabbath show. In this parody of a heavy metal band, Spinal Tap had ordered a life-sized Styrofoam Stonehenge to be built for their act, but someone screws up the dimensions, and the stage version of the ancient monument is only three feet high. So, in a concert, to make the mini-Stonehenge look larger, they get midgets in hooded robes to dance around prop while a Jethro Tull-like flute solo is played.

Truth be told, Black Sabbath initially had a 3-D Stonehenge set in the 1983-84 tour, but they often had to settle for the back-lit backdrop that we saw in Springfield because they couldn’t fit the fake stone slabs through the doors most of the arenas. That must have been some scene, the fucking tour manager crying in an English accent: "They don’t bloody fit, what the fuck are we going to do? Saw ’em in half and put ’em back together?"

Also missing from Springfield was the midget—yes, just like in Spinal Tap—who played the horned and fanged Satanic baby on the “Born Again” cover. He was a casualty of an accident earlier in the tour, when he plummeted from the top of Stonehenge and missed a pile of mattresses that was supposed to cushion his fall. Hear Gillan describe this incident, as well as the dry ice fog preventing him from reading the lyrics in front of him.

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No, I don’t have the ticket stub to that Black Sabbath show at the Civic Center, but I have others—from 1979 to 1981—as well as from 1982 and onward, which I have posted below. As you can see, my attendance at concerts there waned in the mid-1980s. I can chalk it up to a few factors: I was away at college nine months of the year, and when I was in Springfield I went to shows at other venues, because let’s face it, arena rock in Springfield went up in smoke. When the dry ice cloud cleared after “Smoke on the Water” at Black Sabbath in 1984, there was little left to cheer about regarding the rock scene at the Springfield Civic Center in the 1980s—and it hasn’t recovered.

I did come back to the Civic Center after an 11-year hiatus for a Kiss concert in 1997—but does that really count? I guess so. My parents had forbidden be to see Kiss there in the 1970s, so I guess that was my last concert in the building, unless you count Sesame Street Live with my wife and son this year.

The Story Behind the “Born Again” Cover

Yes, I would wear this shirt with pride—to Sunday Mass!

Steve Joule, who designed the Born Again cover, had mentioned the similarity of the cover art to Dephe Mode's "New Life" LP in an email to somone who designed a site on this information. Here's what Steve had to say:

“OK, let's put this baby to rest once and for all. The Black Sabbath "Born Again" album sleeve was designed under extraordinary circumstances; basically what had happened was that Sharon and Ozzy had split very acrimoniously from her father's (Don Arden) management and record label. He subsequently decided that he would wreak his revenge by making Black Sabbath (whom he managed) the best heavy metal band in the world, which, of course, they are, but back then in the early '80's they weren't quite the International megastars that they had been in the '70's. His plans included recruiting Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan, getting Bill Ward back in on drums and stealing as many of Sharon and Ozzy's team as possible, and as I was designing Ozzy's sleeves at the time, I of course got asked to submit some rough designs. As I didn't want to lose my gig with the Osbourne's, I thought the best thing to do would be to put some ridiculous and obvious designs down on paper, submit them, and then get the beers in with the rejection fee, but oh no, life ain't that easy.

“In all I think there were four rough ideas that were given to the management and band to peruse (unfortunately I no longer have the roughs as I would love to see just how bad the other three were as sadly my booze and drug addled brain no longer remembers that far back). Anyway, one of the ideas was of course the baby and the first image of a baby that I found was from the front cover of a 1968 magazine called "Mind Alive" that my parents had bought me as a child, in order to further my education. So, in reality, I say blame my parents for the whole sorry mess. I then took some black and white photocopies of the image (the picture is credited to 'Rizzoli Press') that I overexposed, stuck the horns, nails, fangs into the equation, used the most outrageous colour combination that acid could buy, bastardised a bit of the Olde English typeface and sat back, shook my head and chuckled.

“The story goes that at the meeting Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler were present, but no Ian Gillan or Bill Ward. Tony loved it, and Geezer, so I'm reliably informed, looked at it and in his best Brummie accent said, "It's shit. but it's fucking great!" Don not only loved it but had already decided that a Born Again baby costume was to be made for a suitable midget who was going to wear it and be part of the now infamous "Born Again Tour". So suddenly I find myself having to do the bloody thing. I was also offered a ridiculous amount of money (about twice as much as I was being paid for an Ozzy sleeve design) if I could deliver finished artwork for front, back and inner sleeve by a certain date. As the dreaded day drew nearer and nearer, I kept putting off doing it again and again, until finally the day before I sprang into action with the help of a neighbour, (Steve 'Fingers' Barrett), a bottle of Jack Daniels and the filthiest speed that money could buy on the streets of South East London, and we bashed the whole thing out in a night, including hand lettering all the lyrics, delivered it the next day where upon I received my financial reward. But that wasn't the end of it, oh no.... when Gillan finally got to see a finished sleeve, he hated it with a vengeance, and hence the now famous quote "I looked at the cover and puked!" Gillan might have hated it, but Max Cavelera (Sepultura, Soulfly) and Glen Benton (Deicide) have both gone on record saying that it is their favourite album sleeve.

“Another story that was spread was about the sleeve, and this most likely is just evil, malicious gossip, but as soon as the first set of printers proofs were delivered to the Jet offices, one was put on a bike and sent to Sharon to piss her off as she was in hospital having her and Ozzys first born Aimee, and ever since the baby on the cover has been known as Aimee ... fact or lie? You decide. And there you have it.”

And that is the story of the Black Sabbath 'Born Again' sleeve as told by Steve 'Krusher' Joule. And, on a final note, Steve says he never saw the Depeche Mode cover till two years after Born Again was released.

When the Springfield Civic Center Rocked, Part 1

Just what exactly killed arena rock in Springfield? LocalBuzz.com recently gave a pretty thorough review of the region's concert promotion business and why the Springfield Civic Center (now the MassMutual Center) got left in the dust after its rock heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s. There were a number of factors, but they all boiled down to the same reason that the Civic Center, ironically, was such a great place to see our favorite bands: the building is so damn small.

Regardless of the venue’s size, back then it seemed as if there was a good show every month at the Civic Center, when downtown Springfield turned into a teenage wasteland on concert nights, keeping the police busy and the older citizens outraged. “You should have these people when I was driving home,” said my father when he came home from his law office on Main Street. “Bunch of drugged out and drunk kids.”

Oh yes, Dad, I know. Drugged out and drunk. And in a couple of years I’ll be joining ’em.

Actually, he had just cause for concern about my safety, because at the time his firm represented the insurance company of promoter Cross Country Concerts, which had settled a couple of lawsuits filed by concertgoers. These plaintiffs consisted of unfortunate fellows were determined to get into the concert free and got beaten to a pulp by security goons (actually bike gang members hired by bands) at Ted Nugent and Johnny Winter shows in 1978. My father had taken their depositions and read the medical reports of their injuries and they were horrific. One guy hadn’t even tried to force his way into the place. He knew one of the Civic Center’s ushers, and his employee friend let him in, but the bikers spotted him and stomped him.

But Dad eventually acquiesced and let me go to concerts. “Just don’t try to sneak into the show,” he warned. “These security guards wear T-shirts that say, ‘We Show No Mercy,’ and they don’t.”

Sure, those nights in Springfield were fraught with drug use, drunkenness, donnybrooks, and debauchery, but it was all part of growing up wasn’t it? The concerts also put Springfield on the rock map for a while. Think about it: when was the last time a big-name act has come to the MassMutual Center? Just take a look below all those ticket stubs from shows I went to in just two short years! Hell, I probably even lost a couple of stubs during that period—victims of the washing machine. And look at those prices! (Click on the stubs to enlarge.) Incredibly, the prices stayed at $9.50 through 1981, going up just a dollar during that period.


















And what freedom fans had at the Civic Center, never getting patted down at the door (unlike at the Hartford Civic Center). Thanks to a lawsuit against the city by two concertgoers who claimed they were illegally searched in 1978, we were able to sneak in whatever beverage we wanted in just about any quantity. In fact, I was able to sneak a six of Bud 16-ounce cans and some hard stuff in various pockets of a winter coat once. In 1980, however, security did begin confiscating Frisbees at the door, denying us the colorful sight of several dozen discs flying throughout the arena before the lights dimmed. The no-Frisbee rule took effect after a fan plummeted to his death after lunging for a catch at a Foreigner show two years before, but concerts were still basically an unsupervised free-for-all in the building, a situation that which had its ups and downs.

The up-side was the fact that you could weasel your way through the crowd all the way up to the front row. They had to pack as many people as they could into the little arena, so many shows had a “general admission” policy with no floor seats. The downside was that this arrangement led to some king-hell brawls down there, like the one that broke out at a ZZ Top show in 1981.

That ZZ Top show was a kick-ass concert, in more ways than one. There we were, yours truly and three other guys from Maebeth Street in Sixteen Acres, including my brother, having words with a bunch of hicks who cut in front of a bunch of people in line, including our group. One of us (all right, it was me) said, “Excuse you, asshole,” and these fuckers started talking trash. “Oh, are you from Stinkfield?” one of the six morons said. “We don’t like people from Stinkfield.”

There was talk back and forth about getting together for a fight outside after the show, but then things calmed down. After all, none of us wanted to pay $9.50 for a ticket just to get thrown out before we entered the building!

Who were these fucking country bumpkins that were always the next day’s arrest log in the newspaper after every concert? They came from towns like Warren, Ware, Russell, Athol, Brookfield, and God knows where else. What kind of moonshine were they drinking that led them to get busted after spending all that money for the show? For Christ’s sake, they might as well have gotten rowdy at a square dance or a hootenanny or something in their own towns instead of coming all the way to Stinkfield. (Yes, the Bondi’s Island sewage treatment plant was rather odoriferous. Memo to hillbillies: if you don’t like the smell downtown, stay home!)

We had missed the opening act while waiting in line, so during intermission we were making our way to the front of the stage, when who do you think we see to our left in the crowd? The pig-fuckers from Podunk, of course. And they started staring us. There was bound to be trouble, and there were six of them and only four of us Maebeth Womblies (Yes, that’s what we called ourselves. Don’t ask me why.)

But then we saw another bunch of guys we “kind of” knew from the neighborhood on our right. There were seven of them—they all went to Cathedral High School. I use the term “kind of” because we knew many of the crew they hung around, but the ones we were more familiar with weren’t there. Still, some of them recognized us, and gave us a friendly nod, which was a good thing, because this group from Cathedral was fucking insane. They made up the rougher portion of the “heads” at my high school—they guys who smoked dope heavily, but unlike the more mellow ones of their crowd (the heads that we really knew), these hooligans never left a party without causing complete mayhem. They even struck fear into the hearts of the jocks at Cathedral, targeting the “cliquers” at nearly every graduation party the previous May.

We were fortunate, and it’s not because the Cathedral heads would have helped us out much in a fight with the hillbillies. They might have been inclined to—just to get a few kicks in for fun. But the real reason I knew we were off the hook was because as the heads were gradually advancing to the stage, they were also unintentionally moving closer the hicks to our left, who were getting even more rambunctious, jostling with each other and annoying people. So we kind of backed off and let the two groups converge, like two systems clashing in a perfect storm. Oh my God, I thought, none of these hillbillies know what they’re in for: an ass-beating.

Unfortunately, we ended up right behind the heads, and the packed crowd behind us began to push forward, as concert patrons always do in front of the stage. The heads began to notice he hicks' antics, looking at them with disdain, but the certifiably insane Cathedral head Ron Donnelly started getting mad at us, instead of the hillbillies, because we were getting shoved right into him—repeatedly.

The throng of fans on the floor surged forward again, and Donnelly turned around, frowning. He was a big dude, and he was plainly sick of the Maebeth Womblies invading his space. It was obvious, except to Donnelly, that it wasn’t our fault—we were being pushed into him. But he was clearly fed up with us, and when the wave of humanity propelled us into the Cathedral heads again, he started losing it.

“You motherfuckers quit your fucking pushing,” Donnelly said to me. He was holding a wrinkled rolling paper in one hand and a small bag of pot in the other.

“It ain’t us!” I replied. “We’re getting pushed from behind!”

“Well, you tell those motherfuckers behind you cut the shit,” he said as he lowered his face close to mine, nose-to-nose. I knew he had some scars on his face, but at this vantage point I could see deep divots and long canals that I hadn't noticed before. “I'm trying to roll a joint, and I’m dropping my weed. If you push into me again I’m gonna kick your fucking ass!”

Shit, I thought, I’ve got to get some space between Donnelly and me. For Christ’s sake, this is a guy who rammed some poor slob’s head through a car window at a party a few months ago. I tried to back up, but I couldn’t get much leverage because we were packed in like sardines. So I pushed backward with all my might, and I was momentarily successful, gaining a few feet of room. But, as veteran concertgoers know, however, such an action is always met with an equal and opposite reaction—and then some. When the retaliatory domino effect rippled through the crowed and reached me, I was launched right into Donnelly’s sweat-soaked back.

The freak spun around, grimaced, put the rolling paper and baggie in his pocket, assumed a fighting stance, and bellowed, “That’s it!! That’s it!! You’re fucking dead!!”

Great. There I was thinking one minute earlier that I was going to have to fight some hillbillies, and then I managed to piss off a guy who I knew for a fact got in a fight every weekend. Donnelly did nothing but eat, sleep, smoke weed, drink, and fight. I had seen him whale on a few guys at parties, and now I was target of his rage. Moreover, there was no way to exit this scene. Beam me up, Scotty!

Will I have to face the wrath of Donnelly and his friends? Stay tuned for Part 2!

The Great Wiffleball Fire of 1975

Yes, just like the fire that torched the Fenway Park bleachers in 1934 (pictured), the Great Wiffleball Fire of 1975 almost burned down a "stadium."

July 18, 1975

FIRES RIP THROUGH WIFFLEBALL GAME;
ARSON SUSPECTED AT HERMAN STADIUM

SPRINGFIELD—A series of mysterious fires erupted during a Wiffleball game at Herman Stadium yesterday, repeatedly delaying the contest. In the fifth inning, a large conflagration flared behind home plate, threatening the Riccardis’ garage and almost resulting in the postponement of the game. However, fire crews responded in time to save the structure, and the game was resumed.

The above was the headline and the lead paragraph in the main story of the Maebeth Enquirer on July 18, 1975 (or thereabouts). I guess you could say that my neighborhood “newspaper”—named after our street—paved my way into journalism. Every day that summer, along with the following summer, I produced a one-sheet issue detailing our Wiffleball games, vandalism exploits, and fights. To write the headlines in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS I used one of those plastic rulers that had the outline of the alphabet running through it.

Needless to say, the Great Wiffleball Fire of 1975 had to be covered in great detail in the Maebeth Enquirer. (More on that later.)

I was pretty adept at keeping up with my daily Maebeth Enquirer deadlines that summer. I had to be: if I took too long with an issue, the delay would cut into our Wiffleball time. And that simply wasn’t tolerated.

“Come on!” yelled my friends as I wrote feverishly. “Finish it up!”

Yep, only five occurrences, other than my Maebeth Enquirer issues, could possibly hold up our all-day Wiffleball marathons:

• A “time out” or two was sometimes called during a game while my brother and I argued and sometimes fought.

• If the ball was so busted up and couldn’t be repaired with our cigarette lighter “plastic surgery,” someone had to get on his bike and buy another ball or two at Parker Drug.

• When the Ding Dong Cart came down the street, we inevitably had a break to pig out on popsicles, ice cream, and other junk food.

• If we were sweating bullets on a hot day we would take a break to splash and dash in the neighborhood pools.

• Lastly, every day our Wiffleball play was interrupted when Frank Herman’s parents called him in to dinner and told all of us to scram while the family ate.

“Frank! Dinner!” yelled his mom around 6 o’clock every day. These were two words we were in no mood to hear.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Craig Stewart to Frank Herman. “Why can’t your old man let us play while you’re eating?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Just come back later. We’ll finish the game after I’m finished eating.”

“Fuck that shit,” said Craig. “You just tell your fucking parents that this is our stadium, and we’re just letting your family live here.”

“Uh, yeah, OK Craig,” said Frank laconically as he turned to go inside. “I’ll be out later.”

Frank was by far the worst Wiffleball player on Maebeth Street, but we let him play because we had to use his backyard. We had played Wiffleball in other yards, but all of our parents were sick of our yelling, fighting, and other antics—not to mention the permanent base paths, pitchers’ mounds, and batters’ boxes worn into our lawns. The Hermans, for some reason, didn’t care about their yard being trashed, so we played there for much of the summer.

The problem was, of course, the matter of the Hermans’ dinner, which was an annoying daily ritual. How dare they? We were furious when we had to suspend a game, so every day we voiced our frustration by saying that it was “our stadium, and we’re just letting your family live here.”

We didn’t have to say this. He knew we were pissed. But we said it. We knew it was cruel. But hell, that’s what 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds do.

God, did I love Wiffleball back then. And I still do. So when I discovered that you could buy a Wiffleball hat online (pictured on the Wiffleball company site below), what do you think I did?

I bought one, of course! Here it is on a Teddy bear in my office.

Here is the back. Yep, I wear that motherfucker with pride. Jealous? Buy one for yourself!

The only other situation that could possibly put a temporary stop to our Wiffleball games back then (no, it wasn’t rain—hell, we played through that) was the occasional outbreak of flames on the field.

I guess the major contributing factor to the Great Wiffleball Fire of 1975 was the fact that we all carried matches and lighters, not because we smoked (we didn’t), but because each of us had a personal arsenal of fireworks.

Another factor was the Frank Herman’s old man raking up dead grass and leaving it in a bunch of mounds all over our field for several days without picking it up.

Well, I thought it was perfectly hilarious to secretly flick a lit match on a grass pile while I was on second base or on deck. There we were, in the middle of a game, with Craig just about to pitch, when all of a sudden a smoldering grass mound would burst into flames, requiring a time out while someone stomped the fire into submission.

“Bob, will you cut it out?” asked Frank. “My parents are gonna be bullshit if they see that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Seriously, cut the shit, Bob,” barked Rick Riccardi. “I don’t wanna step on that when I’m catching a pop fly or something.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said. “It must’ve been spontaneous combustion. It’s a hot day. The heat builds up. They shouldn’t leave these piles on our field.”

I could see that my friends, who thought the fires were funny at first, were beginning to get annoyed. And they were right—this could be dangerous. So I cut the shit. As for that match I had flicked on the large cardboard box behind the batter’s box, it didn’t seem to be smoldering, so I forgot about it. I should have known better than to fire a match on a box that was sandwiched in the three-foot space between the Hermans’ chain link fence and the Riccardis’ garage. After all, it was right next to some dried up tomato plants that had withered in the summer heat.

Still, nothing happened. The match didn’t ignite the box—for an inning or two. And then, POOF! Holy shit. The flames shot up eight feet and spread to the dead tomato plant stalks, sending a plume of black smoke in the air. We found out later that old man Herman had filled the box with dead grass, but had left it in his yard, and Craig Stewart had simply tossed it over the fence before a game to get it out of the way.

Oh. My. God. The garage was going to go up in flames, I thought, as I came running in from center field. And the garage has a car in it! We all stood there like idiots—the fire was too big to stomp out and getting bigger. I tried to kick dirt from the batter’s box onto the fire, but at that point even a few bucketfuls of dirt would have been useless.

Fortunately, Steve Hostetter was smart enough to run over to the Hermans’ hose, turn it on full blast, and spray the flames into oblivion.

“Bob, you fucking idiot!” yelled Rick. “You almost burned down my garage. Look at the scorch marks!”

Indeed there were scorch marks on the side. How would we explain those? Neither the Hermans or the Riccardis—or any other neighbors for that matter—saw the smoke or heard the few moments of confusion in the yard. It was a good thing that the Riccardis never really saw that side of their garage. Rick’s father had stopped tending to the tomatoes a month prior to the Great Fire.

“Shit. Sorry,” I said. “I guess we can say that we shot a Roman candle at it by accident, or something. I don’t know.”

“A Roman candle,” scoffed Rick in disgust. “Jesus Christ. Fucking idiot.”

I was going to write WIFFLEBALL GAME GOES UP IN SMOKE as a headline in the Maebeth Enquirer, but the truth was that the game went on. After narrowly averting a catastrophe, we simply picked up where we left off. Obviously, my book of matches went into retirement during Wiffleball games that summer, to be used only for fireworks.

I was kind of curious if anyone had pulled a dumb stunt similar to mine during a Wiffleball game, so I Googled "Wiffleball" and "fire" and came up this gem on YouTube: a couple of guys soaking a Wiffleball and bat with a flammable liquid, lighting them ablaze, and then hitting the flaming ball onto a backyard deck, almost burning it down (pictured above). I guess they have me beat.

The Juvie Jail Woods and the Story of Pumpkin Head

So, are you sick of me writing about my trudges through local nature reservations instead of dredging up stories of my misspent youth? Tough shit—you’re about to get another hiking description.

Actually, I can mix the two narratives—old story and new hike—together in this entry as I write about yet another underrated conservation tract, known unofficially as the Tinkham Road wetlands area (officially the Labelle Drive Conservation Area), which borders both Springfield’s Sixteen Acres neighborhood and the town of Wilbraham on the northeast side of Tinkham Road, south of Wilbraham Road. The only trailhead I could find with a bona fide parking lot is behind St. Mark’s Armenian Church on Wilbraham Road.

I hit this reservation on May 30, and I was surprised how appealing and diverse these woods are. From Tinkham Road, as you eyeball the woods behind the Department of Youth Services (DYS) facility—yes, the juvie jail—you’d never think that there is hikeable piece of land, never mind an area with both hills and marshes, because it looks flat at first glance.

However, not long into the hike you can enjoy varied terrain, and you’re soon looking way down at a swamp. (See photo below.)



In fact, some of the pathways go through uplands that are surrounded by low-lying swamps, giving you many dramatic views of marshland. (See photo below.)


Wow, check out this orange fungus on a dead log.


Someone obviously went to great trouble to block the path with a fallen tree and other branches (below) to make it tough for people who illegally use motorized dirt bikes and ATVs on the trails.


I have mixed feelings on the use of these vehicles. Yes, I know they cause erosion and degrade the environment, but I’ve been hiking long enough to also know that without them, many trails would be overgrown and inaccessible to hikers.

Here’s an incredibly steep hill. Betcha the thrill-seekers on wheels love this downhill run.


The hill leads to an open area that is home to a longtime resident of the woods. What would an urban forest be without at least one stolen junked car?


I stumble upon another native of the Tinkham Road wetlands, a huge snapping turtle, undoubtedly a female—they come out of the water about this time every spring to lay their eggs on dry land.



Trying not to get too close—I like my fingers where they are, thank you—I put a dollar bill next to it to give you an indication of its size.


Several of the trails lead to the back of the DYS facility for juvenile offenders. (pictured below) When I was a kid it was known as the “bad girls’ school” or more officially the Our Lady of Lourdes “home for troubled teens.”


Below is a photo of the front of the complex in the 1970s, when Western New England College rented space there for its Law School before the College moved it to a new building on its campus down the road in 1978. Students affectionately referred to it as “Our Lady of the Law School.”


Area residents weren’t too thrilled when the state put the DYS facility on the property in 1985, and they were furious when there were three separate escape dramas within the first six months of 1991. My friend Ron Williams (not his real name), who was a guard there, was trying to stop the second escape when he was stabbed with a shank, beaten with his walkie talkie and a flashlight, and left in a pool of blood. He received 17 stitches in his head. A total of 13 inmates, including a murderer, fled the facility in that breakout, but most of them were caught the same day.

Ron Williams. Man, that guy could never catch a break in life. Seriously—one crisis after another. His sister died of from a brain tumor the year before, and Ron himself died of a heart attack in 1995.

And I’m sorry to say that my friends and I were the source of much of his childhood torment. He had a strong personality, and could be incredibly witty at times, but he was, for the most part, well… rather odd. While we collected baseball cards, Ron collected comic books, and he had a strange obsession with Superman. We couldn’t convince him that someone like Thor, even with his mighty hammer and a shitload of kryptonite, could whoop the shit out of Superman. Yes, I believe that in many ways, Ron thought he was Superman, and if we badmouthed Superman, we were insulting Ron Williams. He also idolized John Wayne, and we took great delight in torturing him by insisting that John Wayne was a fag.

Ron was also the kind of guy who played with his G.I. Joe and Action Jackson dolls while they were still in their original wrapping—he didn’t want to get them dirty, which would have diminished their dollar value.

“Ron,” implored my friend Craig Stewart. “Take the fucking G.I. Joe out of the bag. Let’s see his kung-fu grip.”

“Nope,” said Ron. “It’s not coming out of the bag.”

“Fucking Pumpkin Head,” mumbled Craig under his breath.

“What?! What did you say? I’ll kill you!”

Oh-oh. Yes, Ron had quite a temper. He also had quite a large head, hence the nickname Pumpkin Head. Man, those two words set him off like no other. It was worse than questioning the manhood of John Wayne or George Reeves, the secretly gay (no secret to us) actor who played Superman in the 1950s.


Ron was always quick to fight, and quick to get his ass kicked. And when he got punched, his nose had a habit of gushing blood with a flow not unlike Chicopee Falls. Yes, Ron bled a lot. I remember when we were playing tag in our house and he whipped around the corner in our kitchen and slammed his big old pumpkin head into the corner of our counter, spraying blood everywhere. I tried to stem the crimson tide with a roll of paper towels, but when my parents came home and saw the carnage, it was a trip to the emergency room and a big old headful of stitches for poor Ron Williams.

Of course I got a stern lecture from mom and dad about having a friend in the house when they weren’t home, which was strictly verboten. Later, Ron and I got around the rule by playing in our garage, but a week later the dumb-ass closed the garage door, turned the handle, and locked it. He couldn’t figure out how to unlock it from the inside, and of course my family hadn’t seen the key in years. Then the motherfucker couldn’t budge the window lock and started freaking out. When my parents got home, they reminded me that Ron was prone to asthma attacks, so they insisted on breaking the window to get him out so he wouldn’t die on us, and then I was grounded for the fiasco. Fucking Pumpkin Head.

Pathetically eager to be accepted by our gang, Ron did anything on a dare, which led him to pull outrageous stunts in order to be the “Dare King,” a title we bestowed on the purveyor of only the most brazen acts of vandalism—and we did give him the crown the time he tore up Patricia Hale’s garden with a sickle, although his glory was diminished by the fact that he had to pay the bitch $15 for the damage.

Did I mention that Ron had a temper? Jesus, I remember the time when my brother and Rick Riccardi gave him his “birthday noogies,” and boy did that set him off. He simply informed them that it was his 11th birthday, so Dan and Rick felt compelled to get him in a headlock and give him 11 birthday noogies. It went down something like the picture below.


What’s the big deal, right? Well, Ron went ballistic, throwing wild, girlie punches, and the whole neighborhood, including Rick’s parents, watched Dan beat the shit out of him in Rick’s back yard, with no one attempting to break it up. Finally, Ron’s brother heard him screaming and swearing a block away and ran over. He applied his handkerchief to the stop the flow of blood from his brother's nose, and it worked. But after a momentary pause, Ron threw the blood-soaked cloth at Dan and charged him, and he got hit again, prompting the resumption of a crimson cascade from his schnoz. It was Niagara Falls all over again. That’s when his brother and I finally had to break it up.

And then there was Ron’s boxing match with Stan Janek. Literally, a boxing match. Yes, after the movie Rocky came out, my brother and I persuaded my father to let us buy two pairs of boxing gloves, which he agreed to, as long as we also bought—and used—a couple of mouthpieces whenever we boxed. Because of our constant cruelty, Ron hadn’t hung around us in a while, so he didn’t know that we really did whale the shit out of each other during these bouts.

So there he was, cowering under a barrage of Stan’s punches, and it was Niagara Falls all over again from his nose. He threw off his gloves and went after Stan, who backpedaled but still landed punches. “Aaaah!!” screamed Ron, throwing his bloody mouthpiece at Stan and storming out of our yard.

“Holy shit,” said Craig. “That was pretty wild, even for Pumpkin Head.”

But it wasn’t over. Ron suddenly collapsed, leaning against a car in front of Rick Riccardi’s house. We all ran up to watch his asthma attack. Was it fake or real? With Ron, we never knew.

“Water,” he said between gasps and blasts of his inhaler. “Somebody get me water.”

Rick ran in his porch, ran out, and gave Ron a small bowl of water, which he drank with gusto.

“Hey Rick,” said Craig, laughing. “I think he wanted a glass of water, or a drink from your hose, not your cat’s fucking water bowl!”

“What?!” yelled Ron.

“You needed water!” explained Rick, apologetically. “I had to act fast…”

“Aaaah!!” screamed Ron, chucking the bowl at Rick, who ducked. He didn’t need to duck. Ron’s girly throw was horribly inaccurate. “You motherfucker! I'm allergic to cats. I need a doctor!” He stormed down the street. No more collapses, just a couple of middle fingers directed at us.

“A fucking cat water bowl!” laughed Craig. “Oh my God! That’s hilarious! Why didn’t you give him some Purina Cat Chow while you were at it?”

“I had to act fast,” repeated Rick. “I thought he was gonna die.”

To paraphrase Michael Corleone, he had been dying of the same asthma attack for years. How many times did he pull that act? Little did we know he would indeed be the first of us to kick the bucket.


Ron didn’t hang around much after that. A couple of years later we heard he got his ass kicked a few times at Tech High, including a brutal beating by three black kids that sent him to the hospital. I’m sure Ron didn’t go looking for trouble with these guys, but somehow it always found him. It was the late 1970s, and Tech wasn’t the tinderbox that it was during the race riots of 1969 and 1971, but the place was no picnic for a guy like Ron. I’m sure they beat him up because he was a doofy white guy who didn’t have enough friends to retaliate, and they were right.

We ran into Ron on and off over the years—he was the same crazy Ron. He always had a flair for drama, and we wanted no part of it. Even the entertainment value of his tantrums wore off after a while. One time in high school he came over Stan's house and he seemed in awe of the fact that our friend Dave O'Brien could burn rubber with his car in reverse—so much so that he insisted on trying it, and he squealed with delight when he made those tires squeal. Sure enough, about a month later, we heard that Ron turned the Dairy Mart on Plumtree Road into a drive-thru, crashing through the window. He insisted that his car's transmission was fucked up.

“You sure you weren't trying to burn out in reverse and you didn't remember that you were in drive?" I asked him.

“Fuck you, Bob,” he said, flipping the bird with both hands and storming off. Again with the double middle-finger. That guy was one finger-holic.

Ron, Ron, Ron. Life is a box of chocolates, and Ron was allergic to chocolate—and a crapload of other stuff. However, it wasn’t his allergies or his asthma that killed him. For some reason he stopped taking his blood pressure medication, so one morning he didn’t wake up.

Well, back to the present. So here I am, after my hike, showing my three-year-old son the photo of the turtle on my cellphone, but he can barely see it. So I draw it for him with his chalk on the driveway.


We all know a hard-luck guy or two. But Christ, if it weren’t for hard luck, Ron wouldn’t have had any luck at all.

You know, it’s great to be alive and be able to hug your three-year-old son in your driveway after drawing a chalk turtle. Ron never knew that pleasure. Never knew the joys of fatherhood or falling in love. As we raise our boy, I can only tell him that no one deserves to be tormented anywhere near the extent that we ragged on Ron--not that I have to give him any of the gory details. Whoops, too late, they're already on this blog. And I can only pray that my son experiences none of the kind of abuse that Pumpkin Head took.

Ron, Ron, Ron. Dead at 32. Man, that’s some fucked up shit.