Eddie's Diner and the Summer of 1974

It was the summer of 1974 and every room was smoke-filled and empty cups were being filled quickly. It seemed no one could get enough. The availability of alcohol and pot, even to minors, had turned even the most ordinary days into reckless adventures. I really don't know how we all managed to stay alive, but we did.

There was a group of us that partied long after the lights in most homes had been turned off. We cruised dark, empty streets listening to hard rock on noisy eight-track tape players. The music was rebellious, and so were we.

We ended a lot of nights at Eddie's Diner, which stayed open all night. For $1.10 you got two eggs, two strips of bacon, and two slices of buttered toast, with coffee. Eddie's Diner was a small railroad car that was set on an empty lot on Route 1 in Walpole that had been there long before we discovered it. The dirt parking lot was not very well lit. During peak summer months and in the absence of rain, when you pulled in, the dust hovered over the entire area for a few minutes. The diner was comfortable with a low, chrome-trimmed, white Formica counter that faced the grill, several small booths around the front and a couple of tables in the middle. Eddie was an old-school short-order cook; white tee shirt, full-length white apron, a white cap, and he could keep hot food coming.

We had gone to a club in Wrentham for drinks, live music and the opportunity to meet some young women. Tommy and I were hoping Ricky would get lucky at the club and stay out of trouble, but instead, he drank too much and scared off any available women. We left the club empty-handed and went looking for trouble. After cruising without any purpose except bad intention, we decided to get breakfast. It was around 2:30 AM.

There were several empty booths with red bench seats that looked to be original to the railroad car that was the diner. Ricky was the first one in and immediately chose a booth along the front of the diner, beside the windows and then he sat in the middle of the bench that faced the door. Tommy and I squeezed into the bench across from him.

So there we were, sitting in Eddie's Diner at 3:00 AM, just starting to eat breakfast when in walked three kids our age (18-21), two guys and a girl. She was a "hippie-chick", and nice-looking too. They sat down at one of the tables closer to the door, middle of the diner. Ricky saw them walk in and followed them with his eyes. This was not our first rodeo and Tommy and I were both hoping this one would end differently. The eggs were hot, bacon was crisp, and the toast was buttered, but we never got to enjoy any of it.

One kid, the tall, thin one, was wearing a bright yellow Yarmouth tee shirt. He looked like any other kid during those times; he needed a haircut and better fitting clothes. Maybe it was that those two guys seemed happy and were with an attractive girl that pissed Ricky off. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe a combination of everything in his life. After his parents divorced a few years earlier, Ricky had some real anger issues. He was six feet tall, good looking, heavily muscled, dark-skinned with blonde hair, and extremely dangerous.

Ricky looked over at the table where the three kids were sitting, made a funny face and then read the single word on the tee-shirt out loud, adding his own unique twist to the pronunciation. "Yar-mouth", then he added, "sucks dick". Forks down, backs up. Ricky rushed their table and lunged across it, punching the tall, thin kid in the face. Eddie jumped over the counter and forced all six of us out of his diner and into the dirt parking lot where Ricky immediately got into an aggressive posture, hands up, fists clenched, facing the tall, thin kid.

Tommy and I are good size and so the other kid had to stand down and we could see by the look on the hippie-chick's face that she wasn't happy. Just as the fight was about to start, through a fast-moving cloud of dirt, headlights appeared and a car full of their friends pulled up awkwardly, like a drunk, desperate to make last call. Five guys got out of the car in a hurry, headlights on. The odds had suddenly changed.

The kid got into a karate stance and faced Ricky. Ricky laughed and got into an exaggerated karate stance of his own, mocking the kid. Then without warning, the kid executed a perfect round-house kick that landed hard on Ricky's jaw, stunning him. Nothing we could do but watch him get his ass kicked, not that he didn't deserve it.

Fortunately, Eddie called the cops and they arrived just in time to prevent Ricky from getting badly hurt. We found out later, the kid was a third-degree black belt.

On the way home, seated in the back of Tommy's car, Ricky hung his head and didn't talk. We dropped him off at his house and with the night finally over, Tommy and I agreed that was the last time we were taking him out with us. I'd been friends with Ricky since first grade, but he turned into trouble and I can't say that it was all his fault. There was no one to help him manage his anger or deal with his demons. Eventually, his addictive personality took its toll and Ricky was never able to straighten out his life like the rest of us did.

Ricky died of an overdose six months shy of his 30th birthday...

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.