before the possum
I know this sounds like horse-shit, but I knew Tammy back when she lived in Clyde, NY. Her name was Tammy Sulkowski then. She changed it later, but that’s another story. Not saying I dated her - I was mostly friends with her younger sister Cathy and we did go out a few times. Nothing more than making out in the backseat of my buddy’s car but it was exciting. One night Cathy said to me, “ya know, your brother is a better kisser than you.” So that kind of hurt and soured me so I didn’t see her again for a while. Tammy had the big hair even then and did sing a little but not much that I recall.
Their old man was part owner of a pool hall in Clyde. The pool hall sat right next to a dry cleaners and a couple of other crappy businesses there on main street in Clyde. He owned it with a man by the name of Muscolino. Clyde was mostly Polish and Italians back then and everyone seemed to get along fine except when there was too much drinking.
Anyway, Tammy worked for a while at the pool hall and we’d hitchhike there from Newark in the summer. There would be about seven or eight of us hanging around Celso’s Newsroom with not much to do. Someone would say something about hitchhiking to Lyons or Clyde and so we’d pair up and start walking backward with our thumbs out up East Union Street toward Lyons. We had an agreement for guys to leave about every ten minutes so we’d space ourselves out and drivers wouldn’t see all of us at once. That mostly worked. Now I’ve had some good times in my life and seen some funny-ass things. And all I can say is there isn’t much that can top getting a ride when you’re hitchhiking and sitting in the backseat, you and your buddy looking at each other with shit-eating grins trying to keep the laughter inside, knowing what’s coming. It’s just perfect when your ride pulls away from a stop light and you look out the window and see a couple of your buddies still hitchhiking in the hot sun - waiting for a ride. They left before us and we snagged a car that most likely would have picked them up. So we look out the window at their twisted faces and silently laugh and point and of course give them the finger. It was just an exquisite moment, I gotta tell you.
We liked the pool hall since they would let us come in and watch the men play and smoke cigarettes and hang around. You had to be eighteen to play pool so we just watched. I loved the smell and the sounds of the balls clicking and dropping and the cigarette haze and the men talking low and the overall well-worn-ness of the place. Some old guys always read the Racing Form so it was all great for a young kid wanting to know the ways of the world. Tammy was older than us and pretty well stacked. She’d talk with guys who looked right out of the 1950’s hot rod scene and some even wore white t-shirts with cigarette packs rolled up in their sleeves - Camels, Pall Malls, Lucky Strikes* - all filterless. Crazy.
You couldn’t hear what they were saying, but every now and then you’d pick up Tammy laughing and saying, “why not?” And then one of the guys would leave and then a few minutes later Tammy would leave. They’d come back after about an hour but they didn’t talk to each other. This would happen every now and then with different guys and I’m thinking that’s where Tammy picked up her stage name, “Wynette”. Can’t be sure, though.
Clyde was good for having a fireman’s carnival toward the end of the summer. It went on for a full weekend starting on Friday night. All sorts of people came and the volunteer fire companies would all come and bring their trucks and the firemen would talk and drink and sometimes fall down. Man, the firemen could out-drink anyone when it came down to it. Well, a few years went by and I went to the Clyde carnival with my girlfriend and there was Tammy up on a bandstand singing, “We’ll sing in the sunshine..we’ll laugh every day…we’ll sing in the sunshine…and I’ll be on my way.” It was a beautiful night. Magic. It was not a song she’d be remembered for, neither was the pool room. Neither was Clyde. But I remember it all.
* On the back of the Luckies pack was printed, L.S.M.F.T. Part of the advertising was “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”. But we were sure in our adolescent minds that it was code for, “Loose Straps Mean Floppy Tits”. Life was good back then.
~
