And the band played on ( June 13, 2004)

June 13, 2004

Although Jimmy did his best to hide his liberal leanings from a community that might have seen Atilla the Hun as soft on crime, he could not escape their seeing him as one of the town’s “odd” characters who just happened to have a job as the library director.

But if the community appreciates Jimmy as its director – as temporary as that might be – they seemed less than enthusiastic two weeks ago when he brought the band to play at the picnic.

The kids, mothers, and especially fathers took more interest in the traditional festivities elsewhere in the park with only a handful of locals showing up under the tent with us to listen to the music, and most of these locals taking cover against the chill of the air.

Even as the band set up, we could see how sparse the audience was going to be, a sharp contrast to a year ago when Jimmy, John and Rocky played the fire house as a trio.

If this bothered Jimmy (and I later learned it did) he showed no sign of it at the time, seemingly more concerned about where band members would set up on the makeshift stage.

He appeared to be concerned about members of this band wandering off and kept barking at one or another to set up at one end of the rectangular tent—the green and white stripes of which making the whole thing feel like a circus.

When John arrived, Jimmy’s expression changed, sourer, testifying to feelings he had expressed to me during a phone conversation about how uncomfortable he felt about one of his oldest band mates dating his sister.

“I’ll get used to it, I suppose,” he mumbled at me as I passed near him in the tent, then he went to help John get his equipment.

The new drummer (whose name I can’t recall) seemed a little lost, too, setting up his kit on the lift while frowning at the nearly non-stop banter between Jimmy and John. While neither mentioned Jimmy’s sister Patti by name, she clearly was the subtext of their dispute.

For more than 30 years these two had fought similar fights in subtext, not always mentioning the real reasons for their dispute – such as back in the good old days when they argued about stuff when a girl named Carol was the real cause neither of them wanted to mention by name.