DEMO DERBY Paintings by Jane Dickson / Writing by Peter Nolan Smith

On a summer night in 1969 a high school friend Dave Quaan drove my older brother, next-door neighbor and me to Norwood Arena in his family’s station wagon. The Ford Country Squire hit its top speed of 115 on Route 128. We got off the highway at US 1 and drove south to a ball of light glowing under the stars.

Our destination was Norwood Arena, which featured weekly drag racing and demo derbies. Dave parked the Ford and we hurried into the stands. The first heat started at 7 pm. We bought four beers with a fake IDs and drank them fast. My brother spotted a boy from our hometown. Joe Tully had bullied me in 7th Grade. I couldn't remember why he had stopped the beatings.

Three months ago he had been arrested for joy-riding and his father, a town cop figured a short stretch at Billerica Reformatory would teach his son a lesson, only Joe was not the learning kind.

"You want to start something?" asked my brother. Frunk always had my back.

"No, not now."

The six-footer was hanging with six leather-jacketed thugs. My revenge could wait for better odds.

At 7pm the announcer called the first demo derby with a hoarse throat. Detroit clunkers rooster-tailed across the dirt. Fenders flew in the air and bumpers battered doors. The coup de grace was a rear-end smash into the radiator. After the third heat Joe came over and poked my chest.

"Long time no see."

"Not long enough."I swatted away his hand. "Do me a favor and leave me alone. I'm here for the races."

"Sure, tough guy, but I bet I could win one of these.”

“In whose car?”

“My car.” He pointed past the fence to a 1969 Chevy Station Wagon. “It's faster than any of those wrecks on the track.”

Joe was drunk and I said, “Then go for it, unless you’re a pussy.”

“Who you calling ‘pussy’?” His clenched fists turned white. “I’m no pussy.”

“Prove it.”

“I show you right now.”

"I'll be watching."

Joe staggered underneath the stands shouting to his greaser friends.

“Are you okay?" asked my brother.

“Yes, Joe said he was going to enter his car in the next heat."

"Bullshit, more like he had to puke in the urinal. Maybe he'll drowned in there."

"I should only be so lucky."

Right before the start of the next heat a late entry roared into the arena.

It was Joe’s station wagon.

“No way.” His friends hooted their support, as Joe circled the arena in the immaculate Chevy.

Everyone descended to the chicken wire fence separating the audience from the dirt track.

“This is wicked," Frunk said, admiring my 7th Grade tormentor, and even I shouted for Joe.

"Wicked."

Several seconds later the station wagon was t-boned on its first pass through the Figure 8 and the Chevy 360ed through a puddle of mud.

Norwood Arena liked a wet track.

Joe avoided another collision, but a 64 Ford Fairlane rammed the station wagon against the wall. The cracked radiator spewed steam and Joe crawled out of the wreck with a huge grin. It didn't last long.

“I’m fucked.” Joe climbed into the stands.

“That you are.” I forgave him everything, as a tow truck hauled the totaled Chevy out of the arena.

“But it isn’t the first time I fucked up, so gimme a beer.”

The night Joe didn't have to buy a single beer, but his glorious evening ended upon getting home. The station wagon belonged to his aunt and she was pressing charges.

His father paid for the damages and exiled his son to a military school in thick forests of northern Maine. Winter in Aroostock County was as cold as Siberia. There was no escape, although Joe tried seven times.

After graduation in June he enlisted in the army. His fare-well party was held at Norwood Arena on a warm night.

“I’m sorry,” Joe told me at the end of the night. His hair was crew cut short. He was ready for war.

"For what?"

“Bullying you was fucked up, but no worse than you tricking me into the arena with my aunt's car.”

“Did you really think you could win?”

“Yeah, so I guess we're even.”

“You be safe over there.” Forgiving was easy once you had your revenge.

The following week Joe was airlifted to Viet-Nam. After his second tour he married our hometown’s prettiest girl. Joe became a cop like his old man and they had four kids.

I see them on Christmas Eve and Joe tells the story about the demo derby. We all laugh too, except for his father, because some things are never funny to people who weren’t there.

ON THE SOUTH SHORE: From Neponset to Nantasket - Kindle Edition

I was lucky enough to live through the 1960s as a teenager on the South Shore of Boston.

Home was still home to us.

My friends and I led charmed lives at the Quincy Quarries, Surf Nantasket, and Wollaston Beach

ON THE SOUTH SHORE recounts those lives.

The time was short, but retelling these tales brings back those years, if only for a moment.

They were good ones on the South Shore.

EXCERPT from GAY BOY

That next fall my parents were happy and my mother gained weight like she was storing fat for a harsh winter. As her belly grew beyond belief I wondered if she was ever going to stop eating, since Frank and I usually received any leftover cake.

The leaves changed color in October and in November JFK beat Richard Nixon to become the first Catholic president. The cold weather arrived in December and Pearl Harbor Day 1960 dawned with a hoary frost topping the fields south of the Neponset River.

During lunch my 3rd Grade class stared out the windows at sullen northern clouds. We ate our sandwiches in silence. The nuns believed that Jesus barely spoke during his Agony on the Cross and their students were expected to follow his example in thought and deed.

A shrill bell signaled recess and the classes boiled from the school into the sub-freezing temperature. Standing still on the icy asphalt meant frozen feet, so the girls skipped tattered ropes, while the boys kicked misshapen balls around the rear parking lot.

Right before the end of the play period our station wagon rolled down the school’s driveway and Chuckie joked, “Here comes the jail truck from Billerica Reform School.”

Having endured endless ribbing about the metal bars across the windows of the station wagon from family and friends, neither my brother nor I laughed with our classmates. Funny was for other people, but my father got out of the car with a broad smile.

Mother Superior demanded with a sense of command backed by the Church, “What are you doing here?”

In her mind a man’s place at this hour was at his job, because at this hour we belonged to her.

“I want to speak to my boys.” He waved for us to come closer.

“Impossible” Mother Superior expected obedience from adults as well as children. “No.” My father had been brought up in Maine and he confirmed that his authority superseded the Church by telling us, “You mother had a baby boy.”

“We have a baby brother?” Frunk was confused and so was I.

“You didn’t know your mother was having a baby?”

“I thought Mom was getting fat.” Any woman would have gained weight from her recent feeding frenzy.

“She was fat with your baby brother. We’re going to see him.”

“You can’t disrupt the school day like this.” Steam fumed from Mother Superior’s dragon beak.

“They’ll make it up at Church this Sunday.”

As a convert to the faith he was immune to the nun’s wrath, but my brother asked timidly, “What about our books?”

“No one does homework on Baby Day.” My father waved to my sisters and they ran over to us.

“They’re going to the hospital to see their mother.”

“Is Mom okay?” I asked with concern.

“She’s fine. Let’s go.”

We piled in the car and he drove to Beth Israel Hospital, humming IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK ALOT LIKE CHRISTMAS.

“This is not a playground,” my father said entering the hospital. The lobby smelled cleaner than our house.

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect you to be on your best behavior.”

“Yes, sir.” Our submission to our elders was complete.

We filed one by one into the private room in Richardson House.

My mother lay on a bed with a small baby on her chest. My Nana held our now second youngest brother, Padraic. A white uniformed nurse sat on a chair reading the Record-American. We stood around the bed. Our new brother was very pink.

“He weighs seven pounds.” My father touched the small body and his little fingers squirmed like spring worms rising from the earth. We were a bigger family by one and each of us smiled with a shared happiness.

My parents named their sixth child after my grandmother’s uncle. The young priest had met the fourteen year-old girl off the boat from Ireland and placed Nana in a Salem household staff. My grandmother had danced with our grandfather at a church outing in Marblehead.

In my mother’s mind our next two generations owed their existence to Uncle Mike and she prayed that at least one of us might take up the Cloth to return the favor. I didn’t have the heart to confess my atheism.

Those first months Michael was a miracle and I rushed home from school to feed, bathe, and rock the tiny creature in a cradle from my grandmother’s house in Maine. After having six kids in eight years my mother was grateful for my assistance, however this peaceful period ended with his first bout of infantile teething.

My mother and I sang him GOLDMINE IN THE SKY a thousand times. His bawling destroyed our attempts at harmony. One day Michael fell asleep and we sat on the bed in relief. The support struts creaked under our weight and his unearthly howl filled the bedroom. He seemed shocked for a second, then smiled before drifting into a blessed slumber.

That was as bad as it got.

Michael was very special.

To read more of ON THE SOUTH SHORE, please go to Kindle Direct at this URL

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A time machine to the past.

DEMO DERBY REDUX by Peter Nolan Smith

Last August I weekended in Montauk with Richie Boy. As we left his bungalow off Ditch Plains, the diamond dealer handed me the keys to his Mercedes SUV.

"You drive into the city." The two of us had had a long night at the Liar's Bar in Montauk.

"You sure you want me to drive." I was in no better shape than him. "I mean this is an $80,000 car."

"Don't smash it up." Richie Boy had newly-born twins waiting at home. He needed the sleep and he crashed out before we reached Easthampton.

Traffic accordianed through the various beach community. All the weekenders were heading back to New York

Approaching the Long Island Expressway my cellphone rang. It was Red Deb. My longtime friend lived with her family in the North Country beyond Albany. We hadn't spoken in months and I pulled over to stop on the shoulder.

"How's it up on the edge of civilization?"

Her town had a one blinking red light, a hunter's bar, a diner, and three churches for a population of a little over 400.

"Quiet."

She quickly explained about wanting to purchases a diamond wedding.

"I can hook you up."

There was a loud roaring in the background like a buzz saw.

"What's that noise?"

"I'm at the Columbia County Demo Derby."

"Demo Derby?" ABC's Wide World of Sports featured Demo Derbies on Saturday. Drag Racing too. "I haven't been to a demo Derby since 1969."

"That's 40 years ago."

"A long time."

"Yep." Deb came from Westchester County, but liked country. She was friends with Merle Haggard.

"Any Jap cars in the derby?"

"None."

"Any Hummers?"

"Just pieces of shit."

"My last time I went to the Demo Derby was in Norwood Arena." The race track was outside Boston. Drag racing, dirt track, and demo derbies. A boy's dreamland. "I was there with my schoolmates. Six of us in Dave Quann's Cougar. Another boy from my hometown, Joe Tully, was also at the arena. He had driven his family's station wagon. So had we. His was a Chevy with a 327 engine. Ours was a Ford. Neither were built for racing. We drank beers for the first couple of heats, then noticed Joe wasn't around. None of us thought much about it, until the next heat was announced and Joe drove out in his family station wagon. His friends and mine gave him a standing O. The checkered flag was waved to the competitors and Dave's car circled the arena. He was broadsided by two car on his fort time through the figure 8. We died laughing. Everyone had to fit in Dave Quann's Cougar. Joe was sent to military school after that. Went to Viet-Nam in 1971. Came back and married the prettiest girl in town. He still tells the story about the demo derby. We all laugh at it too."

"Men will be boys." Deb knew what men were. Her son's name was Earl.

"And proud of it too." My son's name is Fenway.

Like the park.

I hung up the phone and stepped on the gas.

The LIE was not Norwood Arena and Richie Boy's car was not a wreck, but all I could hear were the words.

Gentlemen, start your motors.

I didn't have to be told twice.