HillBilly Ranch Bar Boston - 1999

As you get old you forget. as you get older, you are forgotten - anon

I know that I didn't come up with that quote, because I haven't really forget everything yet and several years ago I reminisced about Lost Boston with a few old-timers during an afternoon Jacob Wirth's bar, while killing time waiting for the Chinese bus back to New York.

The girthy fifty-year olds were both members of the court, a judge and a DA, and I introduced myself, asking if they knew my brother, who had worked as a lawyer in Boston for almost thirty years.

"You mean 'No Show' Smith. I can't count the number of times we've requested his presence here and he never shows."

"He's a hard worker."

The sharp winter sun filtered through the thick front window. No music played on the stereo and the TV showed the rerun of last night's Celtics game. At that moment there was nowhere else in the world closer to heaven.

"And this isn't hard work." The DA slugged down a Jameson and signaled for three more.

"It can put a sweat on you, but not like digging a ditch." I had been working as a general contractor on a rich man's house in Greenwich, Connecticut. My hands were calloused from the toils of construction. The three of us were of Irish descent. Our grandfathers had suffered hard labor to make our lives less of a struggle. "Holding a shovel is more honorable work."

"To the Big Dig." The judge raised his glass. The tunnel under downtown Boston had replaced an elevated highway spanning downtown for decades.

"Sorry, if I don't join you, but they dumped the rubble into the Quincy Quarries." The project planners had dumped more than 5.4 million cubic yards into the granite pits.

"Now the Quarries was something. Most every teenage boy south of the Charles River had jumped off Rooftop."

"Here's to Brewster's Quarry" The bartender appeared from nowhere and placed four glasses on the scarred wooden plank, joining us to toast the longgone teen Eden.

"Remember when they didn't let women drink at the bar here?"

"Yes, back in the early Sseventies I used to bring my feminist friends here as a joke. They hated that the bartender wouldn't serve them at the bar. He loved telling those hairy girls to take a seat in the dining room." I couldn't remember his name, but we agreed that back then a woman's place wasn't at the bar in Jacob Wirth's. I was of a different mind now, but said, "I thought it was a good laugh."

"Maybe the bartender didn't think it was that funny. You were probably a dirty hippie and I mean that in the best of all possible terms. I was a Marine."

From South Boston?"

"Yes."

I had taught at South Boston High School during the Bussing Era and decided not to mention that.

"Not many choices for young men from Southie back then."

"Prison, OD, or the Marines. None of us had the money for college."

"A wise choice. I protested against the Vietnam War." At sixteen I wanted to join the Marines to get out of my hometown. My mother, a staunch anti-communist, refused to sign the papers.

"You dirty hippie."

"I'll drink to that."

My brother showed up later and our collective memories toured the city of our past. We extolled the prune rolls at Warmuth's, the grilled hot dogs at WT Grants, the strippers at the Two O'Clock Lounge, and relived my brother's bachelor party in the Combat Zone. That was a blank in my mind.

"I vaguely recollect stumbling out of the Naked I into the Hillbilly Ranch. I think I wanted to hear a version of Meryl Haggard's MAMA TRIED."

"We lost you for about an hour."

"Probably ended up with the drag queens at the Other Side." William laughed with his beer belly juggling like defrosted jello. The beer at Jacob Wirth's was better than good.

"No, I'd remember that. At least I think I would, but something sticks in my mind about getting up on the stage of the Hillbilly Ranch and singing a song." Later I had seen Sleepy La Beef, John Lincoln Wright, the Bayou Boys, and other southern bands of the 70s at the dive next to the Greyhound bus station.

"That was a tough bar owned by Frankie Segalini. You were lucky that you weren't rolled in that place. it was filled with Navy peckerwoods and crackers. They didn't like us Irish."

"You returned to the Naked I intact." My older brother had a head for long ago. He was a lawyer.

"And we made it to the church in time."

The four of us clinked glasses to those times gone by. It was good to be with my older brother and two members of the court. We spoke of our lies

The 1978 Blizzard, the Chelsea Fire, BC beating Notre Dame, Checker Cabs, friends, family, the Surf Nantasket, Brother's Bar in Kenmore Square, and the taste of fried clams from Tony's on Wollaston Beach.

Afterwards I walked my brother to his office on Beacon Hill. The bus station and the Hillbilly Ranch were gone. Neither of us said anything about them. We were happy to have seen each other and spend time together. We were in the now in a city we knew so well. As youth we had thought that the good times would never end and they never do in your heads, especially after spending an afternoon at Jacob Wirth's.>

Life Is Illusion in the Combat Zone

Back in 1969 Jerry Brendt took this photo of two brothers messing around with white girls. This was not Selma, but Boston's Combat Zone where people could be people.

The Caddy is a convertible and the girls love the horseplay. Everything seems perfect.

Everything depends on your point of view or disposition.

"it's just a car, girl.

Closing The Combat Zone

I liked old go-go bars.

My first was the 2 O'Clock Lounge in Boston's Combat Zone.

1971.

Drums, bass organ, sax, stripper.

Paradise.

I hate gentlemen clubs.

They have no class, but class went dead in the beginning of the 21st Century, except for those who never gave up the dead.

Combat Zone Amnesia

In the 60s urban social scientists suggested to Boston officials that the city create an adult entertainment area between the bus station on Boylston Street and Chinatown to contain the wickedness of mankind. The experiment green-lighted prostitution, drag queens, piano bars, go-go bars, rent boys, and pornography along Washington Street and the adjacent blocks. The Boston Record-American newspaper labeled haven of sin the 'Combat Zone' and men across New England gravitated to Boston's Decriminalized Zone of Sexuality to cut loose with friends and complete strangers.

The Combat Zone featured top-notch strippers at go-go bars such as the 'Teddy Bare Lounge', the 'Two O'Clock Club', 'Club 66' and the 'Naked I'. LaGrange Street was the hot spot for street hookers running out of 'Good Time Charlie's'. Most of the pimps frequented the Sugar Shack. I saw James Brown performed on that stage and my friend Andy K swears that he went to the Sugar Shack with Bill O'Reilly, the future right-wing propagandist for Fox News. I

During the early 70s I drove taxi to pay for college and every night I stopped in the Combat Zone to catch the strippers and whores heading home after closing. It was a good fare and sometimes we shared a joint on the route to their apartments. I never thought them bad, but the the Catholic Church attacked the Combat Zone as proof that Satan was trawling for damned souls.

I wish that I could say they were wrong, but the Combat Zone was too much fun for most men and bad things occurred on those wind-blown streets. Pimps beat up girls, girls ripped off johns, hustlers robbed gays, drugs killed the weak and in 1976 a Harvard football player was murdered on LaGrange Street. That well-publicized homicide doomed the Combat Zone, although its true killer was the higher rents for downtown properties.

Sin was cheap.

Now sex is expensive.

Few people remember the Combat Zone, but I recall the organ/bass/drum trios providing music for the strippers. I learned about sex from the stroke books in the XXX parlors. I had good luck with the dancers after midnight. I was their ride home and I got them there fast.

It was the best a man could do for dirty angels escaping Satan.

SHADOWS OF THE COMBAT ZONE by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late 60s lower Washington Street was anointed Boston's Combat Zone for sex and sin. Working-class drinking dives became go-go bars named the Naked I and Two O'Clock Lounge. Gay clubs like Jacques and The Other End flourished freely in the alleys. Porno theaters openly screened XXX-rated to enthralled men and the cops ceased to persecute the flesh trade, so hookers plied their trade in front of Goodtime Charlie's on La Grange Street.

Everyone was getting their cut.

The Mafia, the bartenders, the pimps, the musicians, and the taxi drivers scored cash off these strippers and hookers.

They were a gold mine.

From 5pm to 2am the hookers strutted their stuff. Hospital workers, lawyers, firemen, and sailors loved them and the girls loved them back for a price.

A quickie was $20.

An hour ran $50.

Showgirls cost a lot more.

The nearest hotel was the Avery, although most johns opted for the short-time rooms above Goodtime Charlie's.

Sherri was the hottest girl in the Combat Zone. The blonde's long legs stretched out of tight hot pants and her cupcakes breasts popped under a tube top. Platform heels transformed the 18 year-old into an Amazon.

She was better than good.

Sherri was wicked.

But she was far from easy.

Sherri was a freelancer in the Combat Zone. Many pimps tried to recruit the freelancer into their stables, but the blonde teenager was too hot for a single man and the police protected her for the sheer pleasure of her smile.

A few of the go-go dancers offered Sherri competition, but they needed beer, booze, and a three-piece band to create her aura of lust. The trios of sax, organ, and drum played low-down soul and the dancers loved grinding flesh to James Brown covers.

The strippers danced like ballerinas on 'Ludes.

It was a true art form.

Bad people walked on Washington Street

The Combat Zone had dark alleys. Crazy Jack was the King of the Shadows. No one was scarier on those back streets.

Crazy Jack was running ten girls. The pimp treated them bad. He asked Sherri to be his queen. She told him 'no' every day of the week and Crazy Jack wasn't happy hearing those nos.

Sailors from the navy Yard haunted the go-go bars. The girls never fell in love with them. Sailors had sweethearts in every port. One lieutenant said he loved Sherri.

"I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only you, Sherri. Only you."

It almost sounded true.

Sam had gold braid on his shoulders.

He was an officer and a gentleman.

Normally Sherri ended her nights at the Hillbilly Ranch across from the bus station. The 45s on jukebox were mostly country-western. Hustlers drank at the bar and none of midnight cowboys queers bothered her.

A gin and tonic cost $1 and she liked the music on the jukebox.

Sherri came from the South. She never said where, but she listened a lot to Patsy Cline.

The Hillbilly Ranch was her home away and after work she pulled on a red wig to be someone other than herself.

Boston's bars closed at 2am. Combat Zone was empty by 3. Sherri walked out of the Hillbilly Ranch at 3:10. The owner asked if she needed a cab. She shook her head.
"I'll walk."

Her apartment was short walk across the Commons on Beacon Hill.

She took a shortcut down an alley. Someone followed her into the darkness. Sherri walked faster, then heard a wet smack.

Crazy Jack lay out cold on the sidewalk.

The sailor was walking the other way.

She called out to Sam.

"You want to have a coffee?"

"Sure."

"I'll meet you at the coffee shop in ten minutes." Sam walked away into the shadows.

Where she didn't ask.

Nine minutes later Sherri checked at the clock. Sam was almost late.

A girl like her didn't wait more than fifteen.

She had someplace to be.

And that someplace was bed.

With or without Sam.

FOTOS BY JERRY BRENDT, ROSWELL ANGIER, AND JOHN GOODMAN.

Old Friends Never Fade Away

A good college friend re-connected me via Facebook.

We hadn't seen each other in a good 35 years. I remembered our time together at Boston College like it was two weeks ago and wrote him the following message to rekindle the soul connection.

"hank, good to hear from you. I'm living fort greene nyc. I was telling someone just the other night how we used to drive our checker cabs into the combat zone at 1:30 for last call. A long-necked beer and that band in the corner; organ, bass, and drum. Naked girl on stage. Last call. Another beer and then back into the taxi to drive a stripper home. We'd meet back at 15 malbert road for a pizza, more beer, then play table hockey before crashing on the sofas.

"those were the nights." he answered.

And that was the truth.

I've had a good life.

Which I owe to my friends like Hank.

Goodbye Jacob Wirth

Last week the owners who been operating Jacob Wirth since 1975 announced that debt has forced him into selling the 150 year-old beer hall in Boston. Kevin Fitzgerald owes over $2,000,000 to the IRS and state as well as employees and food purveyors. Several years ago I met the owner during a slow Sunday and told him how much I loved his establishment. He felt the same way, but love can't pay bills. Despite the sale Jacob Wirth's will probably continue to be a restaurant, since the property is landmarked as a historical site in the old Combat Zone. Of course politicians could change that ruling to build a luxury condo tower. They are future of of zombie cities.

Closing The Go Go Bars

I liked old go-go bars.

My first was the 2 O'Clock Lounge in Boston's Combat Zone.

1971.

Drums, bass organ, sax, stripper.

Paradise.

I hate gentlemen clubs.

They have no class. Not like the old school.

Sex Quotes

"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz SL500." - Lynn Lavner

"Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope." - Camille Paglia

"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship." - Sharon Stone

"Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps." - Tiger Woods

"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson

"Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is." - Barbara Bush (Former US First Lady)

"Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet." Robin Williams

"Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place" - Billy Crystal

"According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful." Robert De Niro

"There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?" - Dustin Hoffman

"There's very little advice in men's magazines, because men think, 'I know what I'm doing. Just show me somebody naked !" - Jerry Seinfeld

"See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." - Robin Williams

"It's been so long since I've had sex, I've forgotten who ties up whom." - Joan Rivers

Sex is one of the most wholesome, beautiful and natural experiences money can buy. - Steve Martin

You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-..aged woman. Stuff you pay good money for later in life. Elmo Phillips

" Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same." - Oscar Wilde

"It isn't premarital sex if you have no intention of getting married." - George Burns

Photo by Jerry Brendt's COMBAT ZONE series.

Also check out his AMERICA SUBURBS X

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/08/jerry-brendt-scene-from-1960s-boston-the-combat-zone.html

The man's a genius.

BAD CROSSING by Peter Nolan Smith

My college tuition in 1973 was $2000 for the year. I hacked a cab for Boston Taxi to support myself. Our garage was next to the old Boston Arena. If a driver booked more than $100 a night, the payout jumped from 45/55 to 50/50. My classmate Hank Watson and I were the top earners for the company. We caught the 12am operators from the NET&T building and ended the night with a final ride for the strippers of the 2 O’Clock lounge. The drinking age was 18. Hank and I rendezvoused at 1:30am to watch the headliners finish the night.

Tuesday night was the best.

The girls got paid their commission for the drinks to the suckers.

The 3-piece band played our requests. We tipped them with our tips. IN DA GADDA DA VIDA was priceless on a stand-up Hammond organ.

One evening we stayed after hours.

Neither of us were aiming for magna cum laude.

The strippers taught us life.

My favorite DANCER was Claudia. She was a 17 year-old blonde. Marilyn Monroe could have been the mother who abandoned her to the nuns. After closing Claudia and I drank three tequila at the Hillbilly Ranch and smoked a joint with the country-western band. Hank was driving his favorite, a sister named Shaleen, to Roxbury. My first class RADICAL ECONOMICS with Barry Bluestone was scheduled for 9am.

6 hours away.

“If you want to go, then we have to go now.”

Claudia was glad to go.

She had a jealous biker boyfriend.

Ben liked showing up at the Hillbilly ranch to take his cut of her take.

I had Claudia sit in the front. Anyone sitting in the back triggered the meter. The $7 fare from Combat Zone to Forest Hills was better in my pocket than that of the greedy owner.

Claudia talked about her childhood.

Nuns. Beatings. Priests. Wandering hands.

“A-huh.” I was having trouble staying on the road. Smoking weed and tequila was a deadly combination and Claudia asked at her address, “Are you okay to drive?”

“Fine.” My head was strapped to the end of a helicopter prop.

"You want to come upstairs?"

"Another night."

I had a class in the morning and headed back to the garage ignoring the radio dispatcher. Anyone in Dudley Station was stuck in Dudley Station until the train opened at 6am. I stepped on the gas. Columbus Street was naked of traffic. My Checker cab had some tiger in its engine. I hit 70, which was too fast to stop for an Olds 88 burning the stop sign at Centre Street.

I t-boned the big car at the doors. My taxi snap-tailed across the intersection at 1000 rpm. The Checker came to a stop against a curb. The driving wheel was in my hands. The windshield had been shattered by the impact of my head. I dropped the steering wheel and touched my forehead.

No blood.

No missing parts.

The Olds 88 was bent in half.

A black man lay out the door.

I walked over to the wreck. Steam vented from the engine. People were exiting from the nearby projects. Blood was leaking from the man’s ear. This was not a good sign.

“That look like my Uncle Milton.”

“That white boy killed Milton.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.” I leaned over Milton. He was wearing a red silk suit. Wilson Pickett style. “Can you hear me?”

“White boy you done kill me.” Crimson bubbled from his lips.

The crowd was going in anger. Someone had a gun at his side. I eyed him as if I were not white. He didn’t buy the lie.

This was a Mob.

Soon it would be a riot.

I stood alone.

A Boston cab drove between us. Hank was behind the wheel. Shaleen stepped out of the back in pink hot pants splendor.

“Leave the white boy alone. He’s good people.”

The crowd's indecision was detoured by the whoop of a police car. They backed away from the crushed Olds. Shaleen had done her job. Hank drove away with Shaleen in the front seat. He didn't have a class until the afternoon.

“Get in the car.” The officer behind the wheel ordered with urgency. I obeyed his command and we escaped, as an ambulance pulled into the intersection.

“I think I killed that man.”

“Not at all. And besides he was just a nigger."

"Excuse me." I didn't think I had heard him right, but Boston was renown for its racism.

"They have thick skulls. He'll live and we’ll write it up in your favor. You’re from Boston, right?”

He could tell I was a townie from my accent.

"Jamaica Plain down near Forest Hills."

My grandmother lived there. I was from the South Shore.

"Don't worry about nothing."

The next morning I made my economics class and slept through most of it.

At the end of the semester I received a C and I was never charged with manslaughter, because Milton survived the crash. He had been drinking too. The cab company was angry. Milton was suing them for damages.

The stop sign had been turned the wrong way by vandals.

"I didn't do it," I explained to the taxi company.

"Well, someone did."

They fired me without blinking an eye.

Six months later his lawyer called my house to ask me to testify against the cab company.

"I'll give you $100."

I received a check.

No one showed for the court date, but ever since that night I’ve always thought that the state should have a drunk driving hour. No one on the road but drunks.

2am to 5am made sense to me and probably Milton too.

We were survivors.

For that night and beyond.

SHADOWS OF THE COMBAT ZONE by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late 60s lower Washington Street was anointed Boston's Combat Zone for sex and sin. Working-class drinking dives became go-go bars named the Naked I and Two O'Clock Lounge. Gay clubs like Jacques and The Other End flourished freely in the alleys. Porno theaters openly screened XXX-rated to enthralled men and the cops ceased to persecute the flesh trade, so hookers plied their trade in front of Goodtime Charlie's on La Grange Street.

Everyone was getting their cut.

The Mafia, the bartenders, the pimps, the musicians, and the taxi drivers scored cash off these strippers and hookers.

They were a gold mine.

From 5pm to 2am the hookers strutted their stuff. Hospital workers, lawyers, firemen, and sailors loved them and the girls loved them back for a price.

A quickie was $20.

An hour ran $50.

Showgirls cost a lot more.

The nearest hotel was the Avery, although most johns opted for the short-time rooms above Goodtime Charlie's.

Sherri was the hottest girl in the Combat Zone. The blonde's long legs stretched out of tight hot pants and her cupcakes breasts popped under a tube top. Platform heels transformed the 18 year-old into an Amazon.

She was better than good.

Sherri was wicked.

But she was far from easy.

Sherri was a freelancer in the Combat Zone. Many pimps tried to recruit the freelancer into their stables, but the blonde teenager was too hot for a single man and the police protected her for the sheer pleasure of her smile.

A few of the go-go dancers offered Sherri competition, but they needed beer, booze, and a three-piece band to create her aura of lust. The trios of sax, organ, and drum played low-down soul and the dancers loved grinding flesh to James Brown covers.

The strippers danced like ballerinas on 'Ludes.

It was a true art form.

Bad people walked on Washington Street

The Combat Zone had dark alleys. Crazy Jack was the King of the Shadows. No one was scarier on those back streets.

Crazy Jack was running ten girls. The pimp treated them bad. He asked Sherri to be his queen. She told him 'no' every day of the week and Crazy Jack wasn't happy hearing those nos.

Sailors from the navy Yard haunted the go-go bars. The girls never fell in love with them. Sailors had sweethearts in every port. One lieutenant said he loved Sherri.

"I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only you, Sherri. Only you."

It almost sounded true.

Sam had gold braid on his shoulders.

He was an officer and a gentleman.

Normally Sherri ended her nights at the Hillbilly Ranch across from the bus station. The 45s on jukebox were mostly country-western. Hustlers drank at the bar and none of midnight cowboys queers bothered her.

A gin and tonic cost $1 and she liked the music on the jukebox.

Sherri came from the South. She never said where, but she listened a lot to Patsy Cline.

The Hillbilly Ranch was her home away and after work she pulled on a red wig to be someone other than herself.

Boston's bars closed at 2am. Combat Zone was empty by 3. Sherri walked out of the Hillbilly Ranch at 3:10. The owner asked if she needed a cab. She shook her head. "I'll walk."

Her apartment was short walk across the Commons on Beacon Hill.

She took a shortcut down an alley. Someone followed her into the darkness. Sherri walked faster, then heard a wet smack.

Crazy Jack lay out cold on the sidewalk.

The sailor was walking the other way.

She called out to Sam.

"You want to have a coffee?"

"Sure."

"I'll meet you at the coffee shop in ten minutes." Sam walked away into the shadows.

Where she didn't ask.

Nine minutes later Sherri checked at the clock. Sam was almost late.

A girl like her didn't wait more than fifteen.

She had someplace to be.

And that someplace was bed.

With or without Sam. FOTOS BY JERRY BRENDT, ROSWELL ANGIER, AND JOHN GOODMAN.