Who Needs Fiction When Real Life Will Do?

Want to do lunch with your favorite fictional character? Not me. I used to live with a host of them on the backside of Boston’s Beacon Hill. Yeah, the neighborhood is real snooty and transformed these days, but in the 1960’s it was described as a “working-class slum”. Just a few blocks towards the Massachusetts Statehouse, it turned all Proper Bostonian, but on the backside, it was hospital workers, transients, old West Enders, and Folkies like my friends and me.

We called it many non-publishable names. In the semi-fictionalized stories I’ve posted on the blog, I called it the Folkie Palace. One bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, and a large front room overlooking Grove Street. It’s still there, but the photos I’ve seen on real estate sites indicate that it’s been thoroughly sanitized and rehabilitated. It is also very expensive. Not the dump we loved. However, they must have had quite the job renovating because we were not too gentle on the old property.

But about the fictional characters. The leaseholder was John, but he was known as the Teahead – short for the Teahead of the August Moon. The somewhat failed semi-monastic ( and sometimes spiritual leader) was the Monk. There was also Mike the Vice, Mike the Canary, the Sadist, and other occasional cast members who drifted in and out on a random schedule.

To these, you can add myself, Wes Carson, and my travel buddy Bill, known as Captain Zero. There is a very ” hairy” story about how he received the moniker of Captain Zero involving the desired shaving of his beard by his mother-in-law, and his pubic hair…well, you can guess.

So this was the cast of characters I lived with between road trips. I always returned to the Folkie Palace and took part in their whacked-out antics.

I should mention that my friend Bill was the muralist who decorated the halls with absurd and semi-obscene renderings of Biblical events. Also, there was- should I tell this one??? Oh damn! OK. Here it is. The living room was brightly decorated with anatomically correct renderings of various women displaying their mammary endowments for comparison to the young ladies so unfortunate to visit the Palace. It was called the Itty Bitty Bitty Club. These too were realistically rendered by my friend Bill.

What were the advantages of living at the Palace between road trips? Well, the parties, wild shenanigans, friendships, and the location. We could almost roll downhill to the emergency ward of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and we were frequent fliers there. At the foot of the hill was the Harvard Gardens, which we helped glide into infamy. The bar is still there, but staunchly denies any ties to the bad old days. It’s much too upscale these days. Not too far away is the Phillips twenty-four-hour drugstore. Need I say that we were frequent shoppers there?

Then down the hill in an eastward direction was Charles Street, the commercial and cultural center of the Neighborhood. All the barrooms are intact from my day, and many of the other businesses too, but they’d deny any association with the likes of us. Beyond that was the Back Bay and the Charles River, where the little sloops sailed every afternoon.

What made us so troublesome? The constant partying and the weird pranks played on holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas were sufficient for most. But there was much more.

So you see. I don’t need to associate with fictional characters of dubious Provenance; I have my own semi-legendary associates to lunch with.

Interested in the adventures of the fictionalized, but real Folkie Palace? Here are a few links: https://loucarrerascarver.com/2022/01/19/top-job/,

https://loucarrerascarver.com/2021/11/17/thanksgiving/,

https://loucarrerascarver.com/2021/10/27/a-good-night/

***A very, very afterward. I am a very “staid” pillar of the community where I still manage the tiny access television station. A few years ago, one of the Selectmen in the town offered to host a talk show. We set up the studio every Wednesday for his talk and interview show, and every Wednesday he’d stroll in and chat about his guest. He also frequently shot me a glance like he almost recognized me, but couldn’t place me. Yes, it was the Capuch ( a shortened form of his Italian last name that we had known him by). Eventually, I came clean about our relationship many, many years ago when he and other Boston Police officers responded to the hijinks the inmates of the Folkie Palace had gotten into – once or twice almost turning our bit of Grove Street into a battlefield. The Capuch laid an index finger alongside his nose and told me, ” Lou, your secret is safe with me!”

I remain a stalwart and staid member of the community… no one knows.