Issues → July/August 2008 → Features →

Lifetimes Unfold on Scarborough's Sands

The summer beach holds memories

by Ann Hood

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One summer, I stood on a platform in the Junior Miss department of Jordan Marsh at Rhode Island's Warwick Mall and watched my favorite stockboy wheel overloaded racks of men's suits and women's coats through the aisles. It was 1973, and I was a Marsha Jordan Girl, one of eight high school kids who modeled for the store. At Christmas we wore suggestive lingerie and expensive jewelry and spritzed perfume on women's husbands on Men's Night in hopes they'd spend lots of money on holiday gifts for their wives. In September, we walked a makeshift runway in back-to-school clothes. And in summer we mannequin-modeled, dressed in hot pants or gypsy skirts, our faces shiny with Bonne Bell blush and lip gloss, as we stood on those platforms with instructions not to move. No matter what.

I stood that summer, frozen in place, and willed my stockboy to deliver a rack of something to Junior Miss. He always did, usually with one or two other stockboys. They'd park their racks, then do their best to make us laugh. Funny faces, silly jokes. My friend Beth, standing still beside me, would roll her eyes. "Why doesn't he ask you out already?" she'd whisper between clenched teeth when they finally left. It was the same question Beth and I debated every day at Scarborough Beach.

Scarborough is a sprawling state beach where even now blankets lie so close together you can almost feel the heat from strangers' bodies beside you. Radios compete for attention. Kids running past kick sand on you. The air, of course, smells like salt. But also French fries, clam cakes, coconut suntan lotion.

In 1973, they hadn't yet built the sleek new concession stands, or fixed the boardwalks, or put in showers and toilets that actually worked. In 1973, Scarborough was a crowded, hot beach. Down the road, East Coast kids emulated Californians by trying to surf our small waves. A bar called Schiller's filled with barefoot teenagers who went there to dance every weekend night. Take-out chowder and clam shacks lined the far end of the road. And Beth and I took turns driving the hour ride there every day.

We wore matching bikinis -- hers hot pink, mine lime green. We spread our blanket, letting our identical long, straight hair -- hers dark brown, mine sandy blond -- fan out around us. We covered ourselves in Coppertone, undid our straps to avoid tan lines, closed our eyes, and talked. Mostly, we talked about boys. I'd recently broken up with my steady boyfriend, but she still had hers, and she told me their plans: what they'd name their children and what kind of dog they planned to own.

Jordan Marsh -- no, the whole state of Rhode Island -- seemed to be full of cute boys that summer. The boy who worked at Waldenbooks took me sailing. The boy who worked in Linens took me to the movies, twice. I went dancing in Newport with a boy who was visiting his aunt, who lived next door to my aunt. A friend of my brother's -- a college boy! -- took me to a play at Brown University. We discussed these boys, their merits and flaws. We ate Popsicles -- hers blue, mine root beer -- and pondered my possibilities.

Back then, a boy's car was as important as almost anything else about him. The GTO, the Vega with the fat white racing stripe, the Opel, the Bug -- they all said something about the boys who drove them. We discussed that, too. Was the boy who drove that Vega trustworthy? Was an Opel too stuck-up? We always ended with the stockboy, who drove a Mustang convertible, the perfect car. He must have a girlfriend, we decided with a sigh.