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A digitally enhanced photo of the building that was Shades. Do you have any real photos from then?

I wrote this essay ...
... a couple of decades ago ( back when I could still think) and came across it recently. It really jolted my memory back to the 60's and I thought it might gives yours a little jolt as well. I forewarn you, this is a memoir not a newspaper article, it is my personal impressions of my hometown so if they don't match your impressions of your hometown, why not share those with us? Just click on the comments on the bottom and post one of your own. I would love for this blog to be a place of remembrance, all of ours! How cool would that be?

SHADES
by Francesca (Joy) Rizzo

I'm sitting at the swirly formica counter of one of those fake old diners in the city where they have oldtime signs around and I go a little nuts and order a burger deluxe. One bite into that char-broiled patty of heaven and I find myself transported back on a bizarre memory journey. Back, back into my past.


Since my past doesn't begin to get interesting until the 60's, I end up around 1964 at another swirly formica counter. A counter in a small, narrow soda shop on Elm Street. In the kind of perfect little town Rod Serling would get a hard-on for.


Instead of the Andrew Sisters, let's say The Shangrilas are begging me to "Remember...walkin' in the sand ... Remember...walkin' hand in hand" in that sullen yet perky way they had. I take another bite of my burger and twirl around on my stool (I'm allowed to twirl - I'm a teenager) to survey the scene. The place is packed this afternoon. The booths are all filled and the aisles are crammed with a bunch of rah-rahs, greasers, mods (god help me), dopeheads and a few card-carrying druggies. There is a din. People are laughing, teasing, flirting, making dates and deals. This is not American Graffitti. This is not Potsey's Place. The sign out front says something elsa, but everyone knows this is "Shades." The coolest soda shop in the county.
Probably the world.


I'm not sure what made Shades so cool. It wasn't anything on purpose like The Hard Rock Cafe or anything like that. It wasn't the decor which was boring soda shop with a candy counter, some booths, tables and stools. It wasn't the food which I can't remember and kids don't care about anyway. It wasn't even the Balkas, the really nice mom and pop who bought it from the mean German couple who made us order or get out all the time. It's probably supposed to have been the kids themselves, but I think the true reason Shades was cool was because it was so cool.


Union County, New Jersey encompasses some of the most desirable real estate for aging baby boomers because, to the untrained eye, it promises them a safe and attractive suburban family life just like The Cleavers, The Andersons and The Stones. Westfield, one it's stellar towns, has all the earmarks of idyllic perfection - it's has colonial storefronts, old churches, parks with lush greenery, ponds with ducks and two houses where the fathers killed their whole family. The center of town is clean and sparkly with sunny sidewalks that look like huge white chicklets. Tiny clean and sparkly colonial-front stores selling nice products stand side by side under the big old elms and maples that line the streets. What's eerie about Westfield, why Rod would like it, is that it's not touristy cute, dolled up with a ton of "ye olde quainte shoppe" signs and hitching posts. Westfield is a real town that is just naturally cute.


Back then, most everyone in colonial Westfield came over on the Mayflower, except my family and me and the several stray Italian and Jewish families who clung to each other due to similar coloring and humor. The few black families in town sort of stayed quietly by themselves and straightened their hair. There was the good side of town and the bad side of town, but in Westfield the bad side of town wasn't really so bad. It was even kind of cute. The good side was made up of Old Money, New Money and Some Money people. We lived somewhere in the Some New Ethnic Money section at the time, but, I don't think the kids really paid much attention to that. The parents did. But the kids didn't. The kids only cared whether you went to Roosevelt or Edison Junior High and that didn't matter much after school was out. After school was out, certain kids made their way like lemmings into the center of town.


Parents didn't exactly hate Shades because you could never pin anything on it. There were rumors that drug addicts went there, and they did. But they also went to the high school and to the church and just about anywhere they wanted. They gave parties when their parents were away and invited me to them and if their parents lived in the Old Money section there was lots of drugs. Oversized brandysnifters filled to the brim with bright red and green joints always added a festive touch at Christmastime and I'm really unaware of stocking-stuffers but smack was not unheard of. I tried a joint now and then but was one of those people who couldn't ever get high - only nauseous, which is not fun.


The big wild boys, suicidal ex-jocks bloated with booze, drove fast sports cars up through the mountains while the older boys, in their early twenties, floated around town, car-less and perpetually sad, happy and stoned. There was a fair amount of sex going on, but somehow it escaped me. I knew a lot of the kids were doing it but I never connected it with me. And neither did they. I was gonna wait til I got married. As it turned out, it was a good thing I didn't wait because I would be a virgin to this day!


But while I was waiting, there was still much to do. Shades was usually steaming with the suppressed surprised passions of a ton of feverish teenagers pressed against each other in one tiny soda shop. Unrequited love was the main agenda and it was easy to fill. My contribution was a four-year crush on a boy named Bill. He was just my Bill, an ordinary guy who to me was Cary Grant, Carl Betz, John F. Kennedy and the Arrow shirt man all rolled into one. Being a few years older and very sexually active, Bill saw fit to verbally tease and titilate me to the point of adolescent hysteria but to never lay a paw on me. I assume he was being responsible. I wished he had been less responsible. Much less responsible. Like Dave, also older, who used to give me rides home in his silver corvette and park around the bend from my house and kiss me and feel me up to the tune of "Good Vibrations." I wished Bill had been responsible like that.


Bill had a best friend, Timmy, who, I was told, had a crush on me although I never sensed an inkling of it. There was a girl named Debbie (supposed to be Cher's half-sister) who, I was told, had a crush on Timmy. One afternoon at Shades, I walked in and Debbie walked by me and slammed me hard into the candy counter. She hated me.


Shades even had a celebrity quotient, we were that cool. As a matter of fact, the famous rock and roll singer Kenny Gorka and the rest of The "Younger Girl, Mr. Dyingly Sad" Critters often frequented our cosy establishment. I know this for a fact because I, more than once, went for a spin with Mr. Gorka in his groovy corvette. He was a really nice guy and back in those days, it felt like riding with Paul McCartney!


We also had another local celebrity. His name was Jack Burgess. Jack Burgess had the distinction of being both bilingual and mentally retarded. He was probably in his early twenties and looked like a kind of silly-looking Mick Jagger which is probably redundant. Jack had very big lips, a military crew cut and rode his bicycle with the big basket on the back everywhere. He had a job through some social-work program where he made bottle caps or something all day but, in his free time, Jack made his way to Shades just like the rest of us.


After school or after dinner, you'd probably find Jack and some of the gang squished into a booth bustin' balls. Jack actually did have a goofy "Mortimer Snerd" voice and an odd, original greeting he gave to all the pretty girls (all girls were pretty to Jack). He would walk directly up to me, stop, click his heels, raise himself on his toes and lightly tap his forehead on mine making a "cluck" sound on contact. Then he would say, goofily cheerfully, "Hi there, Joy-Cee!".


Whether he was, in fact, bilingual was not the point. But, if challenged, Jack always rose above the occasion.


"Talk German, Jack!"
"Ziegheildt!"
"Talk French, Jack!"
"Parle Voux Francais!"
"Talk Spanish, Jack!"
"Ole!"


Shades was the center for intellectual conversation. Or, at least, conversation. The phone booth in the back by the tables would ring and the closest person would answer.


"Hello. Shades."
"Yeah. Who's there? Anybody?"
"I don't know. Who are you?"
"Don."
"Oh, yeah. Well, Taylor's here with Reagan and Noonan and a bunch of other people."
"Oh. Okay. Well, see if anybody wants to talk to me."


And you'd call out his name and people would talk to him. One evening, in particular, I remember calling the phone booth in the back by the tables out of sheer terror. It was Valentine's Day and I was home alone. Word was out that the "Jersey Devil", Union County's own maniac killer/monster/thing, was on the prowl for it's annual February 14th romantic mangling session and there was one too many creaky noises in my house for my tastes. I lay on my parent's bed with the TV on and a steak knife in my hand as I called the back phone booth.


"Does anybody wanta talk to Joy?"


Thank god some did. And one by one I talked them out of their minds. Just when I'd get calm enough to trace imaginary paisley designs on my thigh with the knife tip and think about hanging up - I'd get scared all over again.


We liked to get scared. Late at night, we'd meet at Shades and load into cars and drive up into the mountains to go "Beam-hunting". Looking for "The Beam" (an extra-terrestrial beam of light roaming the winding mountain roads in search of your guess is as good as mine) was usually more fruitful than you'd think. Sometimes these extra-terrestrial beams of light would seem to travel in pairs. Almost like ... um ... car headlights.


Other nighttime excursions sometimes included forays into the wilds of New York. Shades East was actually The Clover Club, a dinky, crummy little bar in Staten Island whose only claim to fame was that it wasn't far, the drinking age was eighteen and they never proofed you no matter how young you looked. Except when I went there. I admit, I always carried around with me the belief that if I did anything wrong I would somehow be put in jail and executed. This may have stemmed from a childhood misconception about the sign "Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted" which I took to mean "Shoplifters Will Be Executed". But it was not my own sub-conscious that turned me in to the bouncers at The Clover Club that fateful night. In fact, I believe it was supposedly Cher's half-sister Debbie whose insane jealous hatred towards me caused her twisted mind to single me out to the bartender and then, laugh as I was escorted out to the parking lot and made to wait in the car until everyone was done having a good time. I was too nice to do anything about it. Except in my dreams when I got to throw her through the same plate-glass door night after night.


We used to meet in front of Shades' glass door even when it wasn't open. Sometimes, in the fall, on Sunday mornings, a bunch of us would meet out front with our heavy socks, boots and containers of beer and drive up into the mountains to go horse-backriding. This was fun. Most of us were experienced riders so we could afford to get stupid. Someone would always fall off at least once and one time we all fell off in a row and Terry Hege could always be depended on to trot out of the woods, backwards in his saddle with his car keys extended out searching for the ignition.


Winter was usually spent hibernating in the booths but spring brought something special. Springtime meant Easter and Eastertime was an interesting occasion at Shades. Each Easter, weeks before the holiday, Mr. and Mrs. Balka began making their homemade chocolate candy. And, if the place seemed kind of empty some days and you wanted to brave the basement steps you could usually find a few of the gang earnestly sticking eyes on bunnies.


Summer meant no school and if you didn't have summer school you reported to your swim club instead for your required tan. Shades was pretty slow on summer days but on summer nights things happened. One summer night, I remember there was a big outdoor dance at Shackamaxon, one of the swim clubs. It was a wild bash and kids came from all the neighboring towns. The music was loud, the dancing was pretty loud too. It was dark and crowded and getting late. The Shades gang decided to split, and in sports cars, pick-ups and sedans we formed a caravan down the wooded, unlit private road from the club. There was lots of mock yelling and honking and radios boosted up but it got real quiet real quick. I looked around and out on the side of the road, caught in the beams of our headlights, wandered Jack Burgess - stunned and messed up with blood coming out of his mouth. His bicycle lay twisted and tossed between some trees. There was a moment, I remember. And then cars screeched stop. Emergency brakes were pulled. Doors slammed open and closed. I saw the guys run over to him, furious with concern, and gently check his mouth. As some gathered around him asking questions, another retrieved his bike and then suddenly, the yelling began again. This time for real.


"Some guys beat up Jack! Let's GO!!"


Jack and his bike were led to safety. The car doors opened and slammed again. Even louder than before. Tires peeled out in the dirt and gravel flew up spraying the cars and trucks. I remember feeling weirdly proud.


It's been over twenty years since they gutted Shades and put in a bright, white Hills ice cream parlor that people only go to for the ice cream. [ UPDATE: It's now a jewelery store!] We moved away the summer I graduated high school in 1969 and I lost touch with mostly everyone although, as fate would have it, I did bump into Bill at the Jersey shore around 72 and he had turned "hippie" and had long frizzy hair and didn't look like the Arrow shirt man at all. Of course, he wanted to fool around. NOW.


It used to be that once in awhile bits of news would float my way. But now it's so long ago that I usually don't even remember the people's names or worse, the people themselves. And I wonder how it can be that you know people and then you don't. I wonder what makes me remember some people in great detail and forget others ever existed. Recently I heard that Jack Burgess died some years ago. I don't know if it's true but it made me really sad anyway and I can't help but wonder if he's okay.