PaulPallazola
Spring. 1977. Gloucester, Massachusetts.
The Glass Sailboat was an eclectic enterprise launched in my hometown by Mac Bell, the son of a local factory owner. Mac graduated from Gloucester High School with my older sister in 1971. At age 19 the heir to Gloucester’s Mighty Mac raincoat factory opened a shop that sold health foods, records, jewelry and imported soapstone pipes. As a teenager I frequently shopped there for rock music, where most long playing albums were available for under $5.00.
I quickly became friends with David, one of Mac’s employees who worked the backroom where the records, cassettes and “head shop” products were sold. He was into a lot of the same kind of music I liked, the “Southern California” rock sounds popularized by the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Poco, Karla Bonoff and Linda Ronstadt. David knew his music and would tip me off about new releases. The previous summer when Linda Ronstadt released “Hasten Down The Wind” David showed me the promotional poster before putting it up in the store. “Wow. I knew she was gorgeous but…wow”. David laughed and nodded in agreement with me. He put the album on the store’s turntable. “Yeah, I’m buying it”, I laughed and went home with a delicious sounding impulse purchase. To this day it’s one of my favorite albums.
David seemed like a pretty happy guy with a pretty cool job. Sometimes he got real quiet but I never saw him speak a harsh word to anyone. He was a year older than me and seemed smart. I wondered why he wasn’t in college. When I started attending Salem State I made it a point to stop by The Glass Sailboat on Saturdays and chat with David about concerts, girls, school, whatever and once in a while bring home a new record or pack of Zig Zags or E Z Wider cigarette papers. On Saturday in February I was in the store and David said “Stop by at closing time, okay?” I didn’t live far from there so at ten minutes to five I popped in. “What’s up Dave?” I asked. “Here, I wanted you to have this” he said, handing me a carefully rolled poster. I peeked to see what it was. “They were gonna put up a new promo for the Springsteen album, so… ” “I love it man, but David don’t you want it ?” Dave replied, ” I memorized it working here. She’s hot alright but I figure it’s your turn. I thanked him and the poster went on my wall and would go on the wall of my first apartment in fall River the following year until Rachel moved in and suggested changing wall posters. I told her that one had come from a very close friend and I couldn’t throw it away. We compromised and moved it from bedroom to living room.
The last couple times I saw David he was pretty quiet, like something was weighing on his mind, but if you asked him he’d always respond cheerfully. It was a shock the day I came home from school and saw the Gloucester Daily Times. David had been missing for a couple of days, and his family had grown concerned. Gloucester Police had set out to find him and they did, face down in Ravenswood. He had taken his father’s shotgun and blown himself away. I spent a lot of time afterwards wondering what was really going on when he was so quiet, what he was really wrestling with. David was a few weeks shy of his 20th birthday, a very pleasant youngman with a lifetime of possibilities.
There were a couple of sad songs on the Hasten Don The Wind album. After that, whenever I heard them I’d think of David.
This is a Great to see.
Losing a friend is hard especially when you think you could have helped them before it was too late, but writing about it was good for this is a way of letting your feelings known.
Just think, the whole time you were admiring him he was probably admiring you. The grass is always greener…
I’m sure you’re right Alex. I considered myself a “social mutant” and was very shy outside of my small circle of friends but clearly there were kids going through worse.
No matter how bad off you think you are, there’s always someone who wants to trade places with you…
Really tragic. Sometimes even families don’t do the right thing to save their own. One of my best friend’s brother blew himself away with a shotgun due to depression and other problems. He was living with his mother and father but kept himself distant. He also left behind a wife and four children. This was an educated man who was once a professor teaching at a college.
Yes RasmaSandra it is so hard to know what burdens people carry inside. If I had known something was going on with David, I would have tried to talk with and encourage hi to get help. It was a deep shock when I heard about it.
It is very sad to read such a tragic event, let alone it happens to people we know closely. If any of his family members were aware of his attitude earlier…
I often wonder about his family. David rarely mentioned them but most kids in their late teens don’t talk extensively about family.
I agree about that, what “if” his family is more concerned before the tragedy happened…
I have one nephew who has been moody lately after the company has laid him down because of the crisis (he works for an oil and gas mining contractor company), which seems to have been the culmination of his disappointment over many things. He is a very intelligent child intellectually and that is precisely the barrier of all counsel. My eldest sister has been overwhelmed with his withdrawal, which later confined himself more in the room, did not want to meet anyone. My wife and I still keep trying to overcome it and lucky in since last month he has started willing to be invited to do various activities.