Stay Gold

by editor Michele Catalano

This essay is not about vinyl, but eight-tracks. It’s just a story revolving around music and physical media that I wanted to share with you.

I don’t know how or why the rivalry started. I was born into it. By the time I was 11 or so, I knew that the kids from the next town were bad, bad children and I should never associate with them. I heard this not from my parents, who remained completely unaware of the rivalry, but from the older siblings of my peers, who regaled us with stories of a rivalry so intense that I often imagined it would escalate into a bloody battle that would make headline news around the world. We’re talking Sharks and Jets, Crips and Bloods, Yankees and Red Sox.

During the school months, the battle between towns was nearly dormant. We made fun of their school, their football team, their mascot, their heritage, their mothers. We made up songs about them and carved nasty rumors about them into telephone poles. But we rarely interacted with them until summer.

Things moved along slowly, as they do when you’re a kid, and the rivalry neither heated up nor disappeared; it just existed on the periphery of our lives. Things came to a head in the summer of 1976, my last as a public school kid, as I was headed to the Catholic high school for ninth grade.

We spent most of the early summer at the playground of our old elementary school, hanging around sort of listlessly, annoyed by the heat and the Long Island humidity. There was only one thing that was saving the summer from being a bust: my portable eight-track player. It was a bulky, awkwardly built piece of machinery, and anything played on it sounded like it was coming out of a small AM transistor radio. Carrying around a stack of eight-tracks wasn’t feasible, so we spent most of our time with The Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits, The Beach Boys’ Endless Summer, Chicago IX, or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I’d carry only the one that I shoved into the player, so whatever I felt like leaving the house with that day was what we listened to. 

I was the Pied Piper with that eight-track player. Everyone followed me around to hear the music. It was powerful. It was the only time I felt like I really belonged, that I had some kind of value with people who were my friends but who often treated me like shit. I was especially popular when I played the Doobie Brothers eight-track and hit next to skip to track four, “Black Water.” Everyone loved that song. It’s the background music for every memory I have of that summer.

Our towns were separated by a two-lane main road. The north side of the road was ours; the south side, theirs. We often straddled the yellow line that cut the road in half, just for the shits and giggles of being in two towns at once. Hey, this was the suburbs, 1970s. Entertainment was not easy to find.

On the south side of that road was a 7–11. Unlike today, where there’s a 7–11 on practically every block, back then there was just a lone store. And we had to cross into the rival town to patronize it. Sure, we had Carl’s candy store and Murray’s. But Carl didn’t have the array of candy that 7–11 did. And Murray had a vicious German shepherd in his store that left teeth marks in the gum. Besides, 7–11 was huge in comparison to the mom-and-pop stores. 

Every once in a while, we would run into some of our rivals in the 7–11, especially during the summer when Slurpees were at a premium. Dirty looks would be exchanged. Stares would be met with icier stares. There might be a silent standoff. Someone might utter a whispered insult. There would be no scuffle, no yelling, no fight. Just a chilled silence coupled with the affected stares of middle class kids who weren’t sure how to get a rivalry past the insult stage and into gang war territory. Or maybe we just liked it the way it was. We’d walk into that 7-11, eight-track blasting as much as one could blast something with such terrible sound, making our presence known. “Black Water” was now our anthem, the song that announced us, like a wrestler’s intro music.

Things finally came to a head in the summer of ’76. It started in June at, of course, 7–11, when I ran into Sissy Smith at the Slurpee machine. Sissy was the youngest, and only girl, in a family of five kids. Her brothers had a reputation for being tough, mean, and criminally insane. When we talked about bad kids, we talked about the Smiths. They were the ringleaders of every near-fight that almost took place. It was said that the oldest boy, Steven, was in jail, and that the three younger boys had all seen the inside of the juvie hall. They were legends. 

Sissy was two years younger and about three inches shorter than me. I wasn’t exactly a giant, so Sissy’s small stature (this was the first time I was that close to her) surprised me. I had heard so much about this rough-and-tumble girl; I knew some older sisters of friends who were terrified of her. It was all in her demeanor and her voice. Sissy carried herself as if she were six feet tall and made of body armor. Her voice was thick, raspy and deep. You might think that would sound funny coming out of a tiny eleven-year-old, but Sissy, with her dark, short-cropped hair and permanently scowling mouth, knew how to work that voice so that when she spoke to you, she was indeed six feet tall and made of body armor. Sissy wore a Doobie Brothers shirt, and for a brief second, I wanted to show her my eight-track player and tape and talk to her about how the rest of the album didn’t really hold up to that one song. But she was the enemy, and we don’t talk to enemies, even about a shared love of the Doobie Brothers.

I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events that occurred that June afternoon. I just know that it involved me, several of the boys I was with, and a perceived slight towards Sissy, and that it culminated with the lot of us running out of that 7–11 as if we were being chased by fire. We crossed the two lanes without looking both ways and only looked back at the store when we had safely made it to our side of the street. Sissy and two of her brothers were standing outside the store, emitting a string of curse words I had previously only heard uttered by large, hairy men at fire department picnics. 

A sense of doom fell over me. I had this vision of my entire summer ruined, months of relentless heat that would not be washed away with Slurpees. I was never venturing into that town again. We walked home listening to Endless Summer, which usually made me so happy, but feeling like summer was over in June was depressing as hell. The batteries in the eight-track gave a signal that they were dying, and I split up with the gang and headed home, thinking about Sissy and her Doobie Brothers shirt.

Word of the clash traveled quickly. A non-existent exchange of words by the Slurpee machine was run through the machinations of teenage rumors. It became warped, stretched out, magnified, and distorted until that one small instance became the shout heard ’round the towns. War was declared. It was going to be a long, hot summer.

Perhaps we were the product of suburban boredom. Or perhaps we had all read The Outsiders one too many times. Either way, we were no longer just a group of friends, a gathering of kids, not even a clique. We were a gang. And we were going to have a gang fight. No, not just a gang fight. A rumble. Yeah, just like in The Outsiders.

Now that we were tough gang members, we had to act that way. We roamed the streets at night in packs, looking menacing and furious. We said mean things about cops. We loitered where it clearly stated NO LOITERING. We played handball against the wall that had NO BALL PLAYING spray painted across its surface. We went into the school yard after sundown. We were bad. This was all soundtracked by my eight-track player, making me an important cog in the wheel. I was secretly scared to have a fight, but I felt important and needed for the first time in my life, and I ran with it.

Two of the Smith boys met with a few of our older “gang” members to iron out the details of our rumble. At first, it was going to take place the first Saturday in July, but a few people couldn’t make it because their families would be on vacation that week. It was moved to the following Thursday, but that was nixed because too many kids were going to summer school and had early curfews during the week. Finally, after much haggling and checking of family calendars, it was decided that we would rumble the second Saturday in August.

As the summer days went by, we busied ourselves by playing Kick the Can, swimming, practicing our loitering skills, and listening to the Beach Boys and the Doobie Brothers. We talked about the rumble only when a safe distance away from family members, especially younger siblings. When talk turned to weapons, I got nervous. I knew what happened to Dally in The Outsiders. Which one of my friends would be the one to die? Which one would have to choke out the words, Stay gold, Ponyboy? 

I was all ready to get melodramatic and put a stop to this tragedy waiting to happen. Scenes from West Side Story ran through my mind. But in some odd way, I thought it would be really cool to break out into song while one of my teenage friends lay in a pool of blood while his brokenhearted girlfriend from the other side of the tracks looked on and oh, the heartbreak! The drama! Then leaf subsides to leaf / So Eden sank to grief / So dawn goes down today / Nothing gold can stay.

Ed slapped me across the head. Hello? You paying attention? I snapped out of my dramatic reverie. They were asking if I could steal a lead pipe from my father’s work yard. Sure, sure. No problem. Lead pipe. I never gave it another thought. I knew even then, despite my warped musical fantasies, that this rumble was never going to happen. We were chicken shit. All of us. We were middle-class suburban kids looking for some excitement. The excitement, of course, was in the talking about it, not in the doing. Who needs that anticlimax? The summer would just sail by if we spent every night getting worked up about hiding lead pipes in the sump. The anticipation of this would see us through August.

July was long, hot, and humid. We spent most of it on the playground, listening to whatever the eight-track of the day was. Once, Gloria brought her own eight-track, The Manhattans,  and begged me to play “Kiss and Say Goodbye” for her so she could cry about Tony breaking up with her three months ago.

The day of the big rumble finally arrived. We met at the playground early that morning to map out our battle plan. But Ed showed up with a bag full of fireworks that he found in the bushes behind his garage, and we spent most of the morning trying to light them off. They were all duds, made impotent by days of rain. The abject disappointment of not being able to scare the neighbors with early morning firecrackers put a damper on our spirit. We kicked some rocks around, played a game of handball, and headed to my house for an early afternoon swim, forgetting all about our gang plan. Anyhow, our plans wouldn’t have mattered. We were the little kids of the gang. The real meat of the gang, the high school kids, had a last-minute meeting scheduled with the Smith boys. While we were playing Marco Polo, eating PB&Js provided by my mother, and once again listening to “Black Water”, they were hammering out rules for the rumble.

Darkness finally descended, and we met in front of Ed’s house as planned. I had forgotten the lead pipe, maybe on purpose, but no one asked about it. We walked as one towards the sump. Our hearts were racing, our adrenaline pumping, our fear meter ramped up because, for all our posturing about being rough and tough gang members, we were scared shitless. Still, I couldn’t help but grin a little as I quietly hummed “Tonight” from West Side Story on our way to the fight.

We arrived at the sump expecting to see a crowd of people climbing through the hole in the fence. But there was no one. No rival kids in sight. No one but Ed, sitting on the curb drinking a soda. Apparently, the fight was off. Again. The other kids wanted to change the venue to their territory. Our guys wanted it here. They almost decided on a neutral site in another town, but no one felt like walking all the way over there. So the fight was off. Again. Disappointed but slightly relieved, we headed back to my house and played Kick the Can until our curfews were up.

Two weeks later, the big end-of-summer event arrived. The local church fair, with its Ferris wheel and zeppoles and gambling tables, signified the coming of another school year and the end of our lazy days. It was as if the fair put a spell over everything; for five days we’d swim in the epitome of summer, riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, scooping fresh lemon ice out of a cup, begging the grownups to let us into the gambling tent. The noise from the fair could be heard blocks away. 

I spent many summer nights listening out my window to the DJ spinning Creedence Clearwater Revival songs, the MC calling out the names of raffle winners, and the calliope music of the children’s rides until 11 p.m., when everything would suddenly go silent and dark. And when the Sunday night session ended and the fair went dark not for the night, but for the year, the spell would be broken and mothers across town would wake up with the urge to go back-to-school shopping.

That August, I was about to turn 14 and was finally allowed to stay at the fair until closing. No more listening from my room. I watched the MC hand out prizes and danced to the Doobie Brothers—on a full fledged set of speakers instead of my shitty player— and ate so many zeppoles I could feel the yeast expanding in my stomach. I watched as Ed, after sneaking three cups of beer from the ever-running keg, shoved an entire sno-cone into his mouth and then proceeded to puke every color of the rainbow in the football field behind the church.

Around 10:30 on the last night of the fair, I ran into Sissy Smith. I had exactly one quarter left out of my meager allowance, and I knew what I wanted. A pickle. Not just any pickle, but one of those half-sour, half-crunchy pickles that had been sitting for days on end in barrels of garlicky, salty pickle juice. The kind of pickle you could only get at the farmer’s market, except during fair days, when the farmer’s market guy brought his pickle barrels to us. My mouth watered just thinking about it. And now the only thing standing between me and that half-sour was the mean, foul-mouthed, vicious Sissy Smith, wearing her Doobie Brothers shirt. 

Except she wasn’t looking so mean. Her usual scowl was gone, and she seemed to be frowning. The fact that she was apparently sad didn’t bother me at all; it was as if all air had been sucked out of Sissy’s bully balloon. I felt empowered by her obvious sadness. I could go get my pickle without fear. When I got closer to the pickle guy, I could hear him telling Sissy that the pickles were a quarter, take it or leave it; her dime was of no use to him. His voice had the edge of someone whose patience had run thin; by the time the fair ended all the vendors sounded that way. I approached the counter. Sissy looked me up and down. I ignored her, dug the quarter out of my pocket.

Give me your quarter.

Her raspy voice didn’t quite have the roar it had that day in 7–11.

Uhh..no\

I said give it to me.

I want a pickle. She frowned*.

So do I.

Then she pouted. And I remembered that she was only eleven. Practically a baby. She looked tired and a little bit dirty. I recalled my father telling me about the Smith family, and how the parents were hardly ever home and the kids would just run amok with no supervision or rules, and that’s why they got into so much trouble. At that moment I saw an eleven-year-old little kid who was way too young to take part in pseudo gang fights and smoke cigarettes and sneak beers and stay out this late by herself, and I instantly felt bad for her. I handed the pickle guy my quarter.

A half-sour, please. Cut in half?

He cut it in half, fat ways, and smiled at me as he wrapped each half in plastic deli wrap. I handed half to Sissy.

We spent the next half hour in the side alley of the church lot, leaning against the convent wall, eating our pickles, listening to the workers dismantle the rides and talking about the music we loved. Summer was over. So was my stint in the local junior high; I’d be going to the Catholic high school come September. I knew that my days of hanging out with Ed and the gang were pretty much over. And when Gloria and Lori, who had been looking for me, finally found me, giggling at some joke Sissy had just told, and they didn’t gasp or recoil in horror, but sat down, and Gina handed one of her Marlboros to Sissy, I knew the rivalry was also pretty much over.

A few days later, on my birthday, Boston released their debut album, which everyone immediately fell in love with. My mother took me to the record store that weekend to get the eight-track. For the next two weeks before school started, my friends would follow me around as I played the tape for them. We’d walk to 7-11, pick up Sissy, and head back to the playground or to my house to swim. On the last day of summer, the eight-track stopped working. Which was fine, as nothing gold can stay.