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| One of Jimmy's gardens 1982 |
July 3, 1982
“He’s waiting for us again,” Louise said as I pulled the car towards
the driveway and found Jimmy sanding at the end, looking as impatient as he had
the day before, but also not quite a cheerful
“It took you long enough to get here,” Jimmy said, when I finally
stopped the car. “I wasn’t sure you were going to top on your way west.”
“I said I would.”
“You say a lot of things that doesn’t mean you’ll do it. Did you bring
wine?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” I said. “Rosemary gave me a bottle we
could bring to the camp site.”
I reached into the back seat and drew it out, paper bag and all, and
handed it to Jimmy, who looked over the rim of his glasses at the label.
“No bad,” he concluded. “Your friend has better taste in wine than you
do. I was afraid you might show up with Boons Farm.”
“I like Boons Farm,” I said.
“That’s because you have pedestrian tastes,” Jimmy said. “But let’s not
argue over cultural differences. We have things prepared.”
Prepare was the wrong word; orchestrated fit better.
He brought us to the lawn in front of the house, a square of green
screened from the street by the overhang of trees. He had planted flowers
around it as if a wall of a castle. A blanket was spread on the grass, and a
tray full of fruits and vegetables, as well as plates filled with cheese.
“Most of the vegetables come from my gardens,” Jimmy said. “Ginger
baked the bread. We bought the cheese from a diary just west of here. So, it’s
about as natural as we could make it.”
“Except for the crackers,” Ginger said, coming out of the house
carrying a bowl filled with these.
I could feel the tension, even though both of them smiled, an act as
good as anything Ginger or Frank could have put on at the Barn Theater, maybe
better.
Frank claimed Ginger and Jimmy had met at a picnic not much different
from this one, near the lake. Bill, Richard, Charlie, Alf, and a handful of
girls from nearby Boonton, among whom were Ginger and Carol. Richard had
actually brought Passaic Valley together with Boonton by dating a girl from up
there.
Alf – although he denied it later when I asked about it – apparently
came with Ginger as his date, only to have Jimmy fall instantly and permanently
in love with her.
She was one of the few girls who didn’t take guff from him and though
only 17 could give as good as she took, and Jimmy could not resist that.
Jimmy borrowed the keys to Alf’s car, and then borrowed Ginger, and the
both settled in the car with the doors locked, smoking the stash of pot Alf
kept stored in the glove compartment, while Alf circled the car like an angry
wolf, threatening to huff and buff and blow the whole damn car down.
After that, Jimmy and Ginger became the talk of the town, the
inseparable couple everybody believed would eventually marry and have children
as perfect as they were.
They moved in together in secret in Parsippany, but then for some
reason nobody understood, broke up. She fled to California. Jimmy, the company
of Alf, went out to get her and bring her back, again fueling the belief they
were finally on their way to the chapel.
Alf flew home early after a confrontation with people associated with
Ginger’s sister, including two bikers who were really undercover cops who
warned him to leave or else, and Alf left.
When Ginger and Jimmy got home, they set up housekeeping on Pine Street
in Montclair, seemingly on the way to a happy life when everything fell apart.
She moved out, Jimmy fell to pieces and fled to Passaic. I spent countless
evenings in Jimmy’s company, smoking pot to cure his misery, watching Yankee
games on TV, or music on the stereo he bought with the proceeds of the car he
sold to Bob.
How Jimmy ended up back here in Towaco, living in Ginger’s mother’s
house still wasn’t clear. But he clearly loved it here and would spend the rest
of his life puttering around in his garden if fate would let him.
This was closest thing he would likely see to the imaginary world Frank
called “Garleyville,” an idea Frank and Jimmy first proposed when it was clear
Frank was going to get a sizable settlement for injuries sustained in our
accident near Greenwood Lake in early 1972.
We came close when Frank found an ad in the want ads of The Village
Voice offering land near the Canadian border and convinced me, Jimmy and
Garrick to drive up there with him to look at it – Jimmy behind the wheel,
Frank in the passenger side as navigator with me and Garrick like baggage in
the back seat.
For miles we chatted about life, music, women and the land, and what we
should do with it when we bought it, how each of us would have our own little
piece to fulfill our own bit of fantasy, as if the cosmic wheel have finally
landed on our number and was going to grace us with all our desires. But it was
a lonely ride, even though we were together, because each of us had split for
the women we loved, most recently Jimmy with Ginger at that moment still in
California, Frank mumbling over and over how everything would be all right once
we got the land.
It never happened and for many reasons. And so, Jimmy sought to find
his own little world in other places, struggling in Pine Street and then
Passaic Street, and finally here.
“You forgot the bread,” Ginger said when she’d settled on the blanket.
“I’ll get it,” Jimmy said, then motioned for me to join him and we both
headed back into the house, passed the large fireplace, through the dining room
and then into the kitchen.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked Jimmy when we were finally
alone.
Jimmy shook his head.
“Later,” he said. “When you come back from your camping trip. I’ll call
you.”
We carried the bread out to where Ginger, Louise and Ruby waited.
Jimmy made a big deal out of pouring wine for the adults, and then
asked Ruby if she wanted soda.
“I want wine, too,” Ruby said.
“Forget it, kid, it’ll stunt your growth,” Jimmy said.
“Is that what happened to you?” Ruby asked.
Ginger laughed. Perhaps she saw her 17-year-old self in the 11-year-old
Ruby from those early days when she alone could take on Jimmy’s cutting wit
unscathed.
“You’re losing your touch, Jimmy,” Ginger said. “In the old days, you
would have cut her in two.”
“I’m being polite.”
“Just another sign of your mellowing.”
“Watch your tongue, Ginge, you’re bordering on sacrilege,” Jimmy said,
and then glared at me for smiling, “and you’d better not laugh to expect to die
young.”
“A little too late for that, we’re all getting close to middle age,” I
said.
But the humor was not enough to cure the ache I could see in Jimmy’s
eyes. I almost wanted to hug him but knew he might literally kill me if I
tried.
Ginger held up her glass for a toast.
“Here’s to all those years we’ve had as friends,” she said.
“Someone should call Frank and tell him to get his ass up here,” Jimmy
said.
But no one moved. We all knew Frank couldn’t get here before we had to
leave.
Timeless as this place was, time beyond the borders of this little
world was passing and we needed to reach the campground in Pennsylvania before
sundown.
We rose and made our way to the car, and stood around it for a moment
even then reluctant to leave, as if we all knew that this place would never be
the same when we returned, that something fundamental was changing with every
tick of the clock, and that when I returned later, there would be no gardens
for Jimmy to tend, no magic in the air, only emptiness.
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