The Escape Hatch
the secret to good thrifting, how to survive drunken Boston fools, and what to do if you get beat up on vacation
My oldest son goes back to school tomorrow after three weeks free from class and homework, but I wouldn’t say he’s been on a break. It turns out that if you’re out of school at the same time your family’s seasonal business is open, you work. A lot. He has sold maple syrup, maple cream, and maple candy to hundreds of customers. He has worked as a dishwasher: hauling dish bins to the kitchen, scraping dishes and soaking dishes in soapy water, loading dishes onto a rack to wash. Then he put all the clean dishes away. He’s worked expo, bringing orders from the grill through a window to the front counter so the gals up front can call customers’ order numbers. He’s helped unload sap from trucks into holding tanks, and he’s helped sniff out leaks in the sap lines in the woods.
As for me, I’ve tried to do a few of these things with his littlest brother, a seven year-old, underfoot; a seven year-old who likes to either a) say mean things and yell and not help at all or b) be attached to me like a barnacle.
The minute the basketball season ended for our two youngest sons, I sensed an opportunity. My sister-in-law is a manager at a Boston area Marriott, and could she sneak my oldest son and I into a room for two nights at a dreamily reasonable rate? She could.
“But I think this is going to be my busiest week for sap,” said Chip as I packed my weekender bag.
“I’m sure you can work it out,” I said. “It’ll be two days. He needs this, and so do I.”
By that time the next day, we were looking out our hotel window at the Google building next door.
“Look at this view!” I said.
“I know,” said my son. “And there’s google. Why are there only like two people working?”
He was right; we could see into everyone’s office cubicles, and we could only count five people in the office working between ten floors. Most of the swivel chairs were empty, just another case of the post-Covid working world. Likely most employees were working from home in a dress shirt on the top, PJ pants on the bottom.
I should have brought my binoculars, I thought.
From twenty four floors up, the roads looked like pathways drawn with thick gray crayons, and two long, slender racing shells carrying a crew team followed by a boat of coaches cruised down the Charles River despite the spitting rain. I could already feel my nervous system resetting. It was just in time because I had a surprise for my son: I snagged us tickets to that night’s Celtics game.
Neither one of us had ever been to an NBA game, and TD Garden did not disappoint. At first glance, one would think our lowest-priced tickets would mean our seats would absolutely suck, but that was not the case. Was there even a bad seat in the house? If we were this high up and this was our view, could I shake the hand of the architects who designed this castle? I decided I needed to attend every event at TD Garden for the foreseeable future!
Jayson Tatum was back after almost a year leave due to a damaged Achilles tendon, and every time he took to the court, the crowd went wild. But Jaylen Brown was the literal MVP (shooting to chants of “MVP! MVP!” from the audience), eventually scoring 41 points as the Celtics beat the Phoenix Suns 120-112. It was a sweet game. Too bad we had Tweedledum and Tweedledummer sitting directly in front of us.
Tweedledum was in front of me on the left side and doing his best impersonation of Vince Vaughn with a Southie twist and Nate Bargatze’s large eyeballs. Tweedledummer sat in front of my son and must have been Pauly Shore’s long lost twin brother with slightly bowed legs and a baseball hat. He was Pauly Shore, but instead of the jokes, there was only darkness.
I’ve dropped the occasional swear word here when I deemed it essential to a story, but these two yokels dropped F bombs on almost every other word. They’d scream and stand up and yell and stand up, pausing only to take another gulp from their endless rounds of beers. As the evening went on, if a player missed a shot, Pauly Shore would stand up and start to saunter down the stairs, dropping F bombs about how he was going to kick the ass of the player that just missed.
I’m sure they’d be really scared, I thought.
I imagined a gigantic Celtics star towering over this miniature drunken buffoon in tight jeans and extending one arm out in a swift grab, squeezing and lifting Pauly by the head, and slamming him backward onto the ground, immediately knocking him unconscious. Everyone in our section would cheer and high-5.
“I’m sorry about these guys,” I whispered to my son. “Are they making it hard to watch the game?”
“It’s fine,” he said. “There was a guy like this at the Red Sox game, too. Remember?”
I didn’t remember until he said it. That’s right, I thought. There was another townie douchebag at the Red Sox game. Of course there was! This moment gave me real pause.
Why was I always letting this city off the hook? Why was I only remembering the good stuff about Boston and blocking out the bad? I mean, this city was/is so racist that a guy named Whitey Bulger ran an Irish mob here for decades. He thrived for chrissakes!
“You’re right!” I said to my son. “Boston sports fans are the worst!” Thank God my middle school aged son was there to slap me awake after almost three decades of a relationship with this city.
