Fenway VET

[ucantdoitdoggieSTyle2]

Total shithole.

[poptart]

$40 to park

Wft?

Not IN.

[Screw_Michigan]

No shit. KC Scott, why aren't you taking a fucking cab or maybe public transit while you are on business? Why would you choose to drive to the Park when you don't have to?

[BSmack]

Small monsoon

Every time I have ever BEEN to Boston it has been like one long rain delay. I'm not even sure how they play baseball there. They must schedule games in between the raindrops.

[ucantdoitdoggieSTyle2]

My business was way the fuck out in Lowell.

Bro -- you drove right by my house (I am assuming you took Rt 3 to get to Lowell) and didn't even stop in for a workout?

.
.
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Eject.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

...must refrain...from accessing ImageShack...account...


...resolve...weakening....

[BSmack]

My business was way the fuck out in Lowell

What part of the narcotic business are you in?

[ucantdoitdoggieSTyle2]

...must refrain...

Dude. I took the ball. I put it on tee for you. I handed you the driver.

If you don't smack that sumbitch 300+ yards, we're all going to be disappointed.

[Truman]

He'd have a better shot throwing the ball at the hole, ucant...

Did a three-game series at Fenway in '86.

Sox took two out-of-three from the Royals that weekend, but I still remember the lasting impression Bo Jackson had on the locals (Get-a-job-Bo-oh, Get-a-job!), and the insistance of many that we should trade Kevin Seitzer straight up for Wade Boggs (I think Seitz went 6-for-6 against the Sox one game earlier in the season, and Red Sox Nation was smitten).

I also remember being introduced to one of these for the first time in my life:



There are few things in this world nearly as good as a grilled Italian sausage purchased from a street vendor in front of a kick-ass, old ballpark.

Fenway-style Italian sausages have been a part of almost every big sports weekend/tailgate ever since. Mangia!

[Goober McTuber]

He'd have a better shot throwing the ball at the hole, ucant...

Did a three-game series at Fenway in '86.

Sox took two out-of-three from the Royals that weekend, but I still remember the lasting impression Bo Jackson had on the locals (Get-a-job-Bo-oh, Get-a-job!), and the insistance of many that we should trade Kevin Seitzer straight up for Wade Boggs (I think Seitz went 6-for-6 against the Sox one game earlier in the season, and Red Sox Nation was smitten).

I also remember being introduced to one of these for the first time in my life:



There are few things in this world nearly as good as a grilled Italian sausage purchased from a street vendor in front of a kick-ass, old ballpark.

Fenway-style Italian sausages have been a part of almost every big sports weekend/tailgate ever since. Mangia!

Whenever my 100% Sicilian father-in-law decides to grill up some Italian sausages, he makes up a batch of his Angelina Sauce. I believe it’s just tomato sauce, tomato paste, garlic and crushed mint. Make it up a few days ahead of time and stick it in the fridge. Take it out once or twice a day to shake/stir it. Perfect complement to the sausage.

[Truman]

Yeah, Goobs, that was my first experience with them in '86. Street-guy had a pot of red sauce simmering off to one side of his grill, and he fried his peppers and onions in a big-ass cast-iron skillet about as big around as a basketball rim. Started doing the mustard-thing on those occasions when I got too lazy to whip up a batch of marinara.

Good as Fenway Italian sausages are, it's damn near an impossibility to turn down a brat properly fixed Wisconsin-style. So I don't. I usually enjoy both when we're tailgating...

[ucantdoitdoggieSTyle2]

Lowell didn't look any shittier than anyplace else I've been in Boston.

Whole lotta drugs in Lowell, I think that was B's point.

Meanwhile, Boston itself (say within a one mile radius of the Public Garden) is clean as fuck... it's not until you start getting out into Dorchester, JP, Mattapan, and West Roxbury that you'll find much crime/drugs.

Btw -- you shoulda tried the STL Ribs from Cobblestone. Not bad...

[BSmack]

Lowell didn't look any shittier than anyplace else I've been in Boston.

Whole lotta drugs in Lowell, I think that was B's point.

A lotta drugs and not much else when I visited. I dated a girl from Lowell for a bit. She lived in town in a 3rd floor place just across the river from the Tsongas Arena. She was drug free, but everybody in the neighborhood looked like extras from that Mark Wahlberg movie about Irish Mickey Ward. Visiting her was the last step in the relationship. I know I could never commit to her because that would have meant moving to Lowell.

[smackaholic]

Lowell didn't look any shittier than anyplace else I've been in Boston.

Whole lotta drugs in Lowell, I think that was B's point.

A lotta drugs and not much else when I visited. I dated a girl from Lowell for a bit. She lived in town in a 3rd floor place just across the river from the Tsongas Arena. She was drug free, but everybody in the neighborhood looked like extras from that Mark Wahlberg movie about Irish Mickey Ward. Visiting her was the last step in the relationship. I know I could never commit to her because that would have meant moving to Lowell.

I think the shitiest shithole that rings boston may be lawrence. it was almost bridgeport ugly.

[Van]

I actually have a Lowell story.

My old bass player was from Lowell. He came out to California with his wife in an effort to make it in music, and that's how I met him. He loved California and absolutely hated everything about Massachussetts in general and Lowell specifically, but his wife was homesick almost from the moment they set foot in SoCal.

Within two years she made them move back to Lowell.

The next Halloween, I flew out there to visit them with my first wife, Angelina. She didn't really want to come, knowing how much of a raging alcoholic this guy was. She liked him and all, but there was always so much drama whenever the guy drank, and his wife had let us know he was so utterly miserable over having to return to Lowell that he'd completely lost his mind to the bottle.

Well, we went anyway, and everything was fine...until the night of the Halloween party.

First, his wife and our singer's wife both came on to me something fierce. They were shitfaced hammered and had no idea what they were doing. They just knew I wasn't their miserable husbands, and because I was the guitar player that made me the sexiest thing on the planet.

Okay, look. The bass player's wife was a sweet girl but full-on homely. I'm talking Nasty Chowd Fugly. Pick your worst Chowd stereotype and she was it. The singer's wife was actually fairly hot, but was she ever hammered.

The whole night, Angelina was getting a kick out of their slovenly attempts to squeeze my dick. She wasn't even trying to stop them. She just laughed, "Hey, they're your problem, not mine!"

Then again, she was wearing Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils" outfit so she had her own issues to deal with; namely, their horny, totally blasted sixteen-year-old nephew absolutely mauling her nearly-bare breasts every time she turned around. She was handling that one decently enough, but when the singer's wife started coming on to her too, trying to convince us that we "both just had to fuck her wicked hard," we knew it was becoming a little too sketchy for comfort.

Fortunately, out of the dozen or so people who were there that night, the main drunks passed out en masse. Only a few of the teens remained conscious, and without their parents also acting the fool right alongside them the wind seemed to go out of their Beavis & Butthead sails.

The following morning, the bass player rolls into the kitchen around eleven. His wife wouldn't make an appearance until the early evening, she was so wasted. Per usual following one of his drunks, he was in one of his morosely apologetic moods. All he could do was slobber incessant apologies for what he suspected he had said and done, since he couldn't recall fuckall of what had happened the night before. Then it was Serious Talk Time, which was always the next progression in his post-drunk routine.

As part of his apology, he would insist on giving me a heartfelt rundown of his childhood and present-day misery. Usually it would involve taking some long ass walk somewhere, and this time would prove to be no exception. Grabbing our coats, we headed on out the door and hopped into his car.

Next thing I know, we're walking along this chainlink fence running by some little river. It was more like a stream to me, but he called it a river. He starts telling me about Jack Kerouac and the history of Lowell; in particular, how everyone there has always been a fucked up, hopeless drunk. Apparently it had been that way forever in Massachussetts, and especially in Lowell.

Everyone smokes like a chimney, drinking is the main local pasttime, there are no hot women whatsoever—"Gahd, seriously, dude, guys around here would give their entire ballsack just to spend one hour with a chick like Angie. To pathetic fucks like us, she may as well be from Mahs...."—these were the basic realities for him.

"Dude, I've stahted suckin' cack."

Just like that. No warm-up, no hesitant lead-in. Nope. Just..."I've stahted suckin' cack."

He then went on to explain that he was so miserable and so thoroughly weighed down by Catholic guilt that he couldn't deal with it anymore. He just wanted to punish himself, so into the bottle (and Black Sabbath records) he dove. He began a rambling narrative describing how he came to find himself taking furtive steps towards frequenting local highway rest stops. Before long, he was sucking cock in the stalls, probably a half-dozen times or so, along with a few other bouts of bradhusker-meets-Elvis in a nearby park.

"I'm not coming on to you or anything. It's not like that. I just wanted you to know how fucked up I've become, ever since she made us move back to this hellhole."

Later that night, his wife took me aside to ask how my day had gone with her husband.

"He told you, didn't he?"

I thought about playing dumb, then thought better of it.

"Yes, he told me."

"I don't know what's wrong with him. I just know he's really miserable, you know, guilty and all that shit, and out of the blue he started going to those rest stops. He'd just take off at night, telling me he was going to do it. He didn't even try to hide it."

"Christ, Deb, what did you say?"

"What could I say? He's a miserable guy. Always has been. So, fine, let him drink himself stupid and suck cock. Whatever."

That was twenty-some years ago. They're still married, and he's still a miserable drunk. Having long ago moved to Dracut, supposedly he's no longer hitting the rest stops, and now he has two teen boys who are in a metal band.

That's Lowell, Mass, to me.

[Goober McTuber]

Nice to see you still fighting the good fight, Van. Pretty fucked up story, though.

[Van]

I sure thought so, yet he and his wife seemed to feel that theirs was hardly an atypical story for Lowell.

Because it was Halloween...fall...I thought the place was gorgeous. They couldn't have cared less, but I was blown away by the typical New England fall foliage, and just the beautiful greenery in general. They thought I was a total retard when I returned one day all excited from a nice walk through their neighborhood, carrying an armful of badass red, gold and orange leaves. I also thought the layout of the neighborhood itself was amazing. I'd never seen houses laid out that way...with no fences! Swear to god, the houses were just plunked right down willy nilly on these rolling, grassy hills, and anyone could walk right up to the backdoor of any of them.

I'd never seen anything like that in California.

When they took me to Salem, Mass, on Halloween Night in the rain, I was hooked.