Miscellaneous Shit, Part 12

I only went to Alibis a couple of times—it closed shortly after the owner, Paul Currier, had a heart attack while driving home and crashed his car into a tree on Parker Street near the Allen Street corner in 2006. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Paul also owned Sylvester’s, Rookies, and Celtic Pub. Johnny Mac’s liquors took Alibis place.

Made at Milton Bradley in Springfield--year unknown lol. Get at the breech of a Big Dick.

The Parkway Drive-in’s grand opening in 1948 featured “Song of the South.” It closed in 1987. You can barely see the old Parkway sign in the photo below—one of only three of the sign that I know of. The other two are in my blog post on old drive-ins.

The old Look Park pool in Northampton. The pool is long gone and the 1930 pool building was restored in 1999 and is now the Garden House, a banquet facility.

At 75-by-150-feet, the pool was the largest in New England in 1930. It closed in the early 1990s amid much protest, even though attendance had dropped way off. The pool needed upgrades and legal liability and insurance rates were high, so the park officials and trustees said the hell with it.

For some reason the only thing I remember about Jukebox Saturday Night is just plain running out of money there and calling it an evening. This was before ATMs—or these magic money machines were in their infancy—and my wallet was empty. Bereft of a credit card. I was a kid. It must be tough for today’s youngsters to fathom going to the bank on a Friday and withdrawing money from a teller. And if you ran out of cash in a bar you went home. Just as well—it was getting late.

The Gaslight—AKA Gasfight. When I went in the place, it was long after the time period when it was particularly rowdy in there. I had heard that the South End Gang used to start brawls at the Gaslight and wolfpack people in the parking lot, but I don’t remember being apprehensive about trouble erupting at the Gaslight. It was probably about ‘83 or ‘84 when I went to the Gaslight a half dozen times, and I believe by then the South End Gang as we knew it had pretty much fizzled. Was the gang still around? It was in ‘81 when I was a high school senior—I used to see the guys sitting on or leaning against their cars in a lot on the corner of Main and Locust. However, I lived on Margaret Street in the South End in the summer of ‘83 and I never saw them. Did they exist as a unit by then?

The original Foster Memorial Church was built in 1911 and its present incarnation with the taller steeple was built right behind it in 1955. Apparently they tore the old one down right away. That’s all I know. Anyone have any more details?

On April 10, 1970, the MC5 played at the Woodrose Ballroom (more commonly known as the Capitol Theater) where One Financial Plaza is now.

Rick Hall, the promoter who ran the Capitol Theater rock show and operated the light shows, booked a ton of acts there from the summer of 1970 to May of 1971, including:

Alice Cooper

J. Geils Band (several times)

Fat 

Rod Stewart w/ the Small Faces

Savoy Brown (2 times)

Eric Burdon and War

Brian Auger and the Trinity Express

Cactus (with Tim Bogart and Carmine Appice, formerly of Vanilla Fudge)

Allman Bros. Band (more than once)

Jonathan Edwards

Livingston Taylor

Chicken Shack (Christie McVie of Fleetwood Mac)

Quarry

The Buoys

The Grassroots

Sugar Creek

NRBQ

The Neighborhoods

Cin

The Elves

Dr. John

The Daddy Warbux Show

“The Alice Cooper show was the last show we did,” Hall told Hell’s Acres. “Alice came on stage in a silver spacesuit open to the top of his crotch, and did his first number with his hand hooked into the suit over his groin. This managed to get a couple of hundred people freaked out enough so they left. The show culminated with an onstage ‘hurricane.’ Part of the band’s contract specified we supply a bulk soda canister of CO2 gas and a feather pillow. For the finale Alice sliced open the pillow while a stage assistant opened the high pressure gas and strobe lights were turn on. The band rolled around on the stage while feathers fill the auditorium. It was an awesome stage effect!”

Hall had been reluctant to book Alice because he had never of “her.” Alice was not on the music charts or anyone’s radar, so he advised the shock rock’s agent that the show’s reception might fall flat.

“I told him I didn't think a female folk singer would go over well,” said Hall, “but he told me to trust him, it was not what I thought, so I booked them for a whopping $2,000. As fate would have it, "Eighteen" hit number one on the charts the weekend he played the Capitol. I think that of all the concerts I booked there, Alice was my favorite, and certainly the most unusual.”

Hall also has Derek and the Dominoes booked for the Capitol, but Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash so they had to cancel the show.

All these concerts were financed on a shoestring budget. “My partner Dusty and I were just a couple of young naive hippies full of optimism,” said Hall. “It’s a miracle we pulled it off at all. If it hadn't been for the help of numerous volunteers who helped us renovate the theater as much as we could and helped run the shows, it never would have happened. None of us ever made a penny out of the whole deal, but it was worth it just for the ride. It was an awesome experience and I am forever in the debt to the volunteers who made it possible.”

A mural of former Cathedral High and UMass star Derek Kellogg at the Zanetti School gym in Hungry Hill. He scored 1,486 points at Cathedral and earned All-Western Mass distinction. I don’t have a clue who painted the mural, but Derek must have played at Zenetti a lot to get this honor. Derek was a product of Springfield youth basketball who played for Our Lady of Hope, Holy Cross, and Holy Name teams. The gym he frequented at the most was definitely the Dunbar Community Center, where the cream of the crop court rats played constantly. “I played for everybody that had a team,” he once said.

Memorial Golf Course on Roosevelt Avenue, across from Smith & Wesson, closed forever after the 1961 season and was replaced by Veterans Golf Course on South Branch Parkway. People did play at Memorial in the spring of 1962, however, until the grass got too long. Apparently there was a line to tee off there in ‘62!

Before Walgreens, Rocky’s hardware, and Marshall’s in Sixteen Acres center there was Popular Market.

My friend Rob Gostofsky (not his real name), an Acres guy, and I went over to Rice Nature Preserve in December of 2020. I put on snowshoes; he had a two-piece snowboard that he put skins on to hike uphill…

…Then he snowboarded down. We were in the midst of the pandemic and we were dying to get out. 

This other dude had the same idea that day, hiking up with his ski boots on and carrying his skis on his shoulder—and then coasting downhill:

My latest purchase from Steve’s Sports I West Springfield: the Springfield Indians circa 1981, when they were the Boston Bruins’ farm team. They had Craig McTavish and Keith Crowder. They rocked. Unfortunately, their affiliation with the Bruins was short-lived. Read all about this season in another blog post.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I bought this beauty as well on the same trip to Steve’s, prompting my wife to simply shake her head in wonder.

See you in April! Like my Facebook page!