Kennedy Park. Marge Williams. Two out of three ain’t bad. 1977 release. I remember being at Kennedy Park with Marge Williams, our neighbor. We must have been there for some reason related to Scott. I was 15.
A few years earlier at Kennedy Park, I was beaten up by Brian Palladino who would eventually marry Barbara Williams, Marge’s daughter. I have no idea why Brian stood above me while I sat crying as he beat me. I probably said something snotty and snarky while being forced to participate in Lodi’s Summer Recreation program since I could not be left alone without setting the house on fire.
It was the cusp between Freshman and Sophomore years in high school. Marge Williams heard the lines ‘I want you, I need you but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you, so don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad’ and wanted to know more about it. In hindsight and through gossip it may have been around this time that Marge Williams’ marriage was falling apart and that song struck a chord within.
I spent a lot of time at 7 Riverview Avenue. I knew that house inside and out. They seemed to have everything, and I thought they were a more modern family, perhaps a younger family than mine. Later on, I was to find out that was not the case.
Marge Williams wanted a fish pond, and her husband Edward L. set about creating one. It was a haphazard affair, and there were no fish to speak of. Scott Williams, David Plauchino, and I would generally play in the backyard and cool off in the fish pond with no fish.
One summer afternoon, the three of us were cooling off when Jimmy Williams, the oldest son, showed up. Marge was inside and yelling at Jimmy, accusing him of being high. Whether or not he was, I couldn’t say. Marge insisted that his eyes were red and glassy and the more Jimmy denied being high, the more it seemed that he was actually high.
It wasn’t a good look for either of them, and Scott, David, & myself did our best to ignore the yelling and screaming going on. Perhaps this was when I started to see the cracks in the not-so-perfect facade of 7 Riverview Avenue. Once high school kicked into gear, I started to fade away from hanging out with Scott.
He was 6 years younger than me, and I was having enough trouble staying alive, negotiating the corridors of Paramus Catholic, and a year after that, joining the workforce. When I joined the workforce, I wound up reconnecting with Barbara Williams, who worked for the same book company, albeit in a different department.
Barbara would give me a ride home when we finished working at the same time, listening to the 8-track of Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy, or Toto’s album featuring ‘’Hold the Line’. So long ago and yet it seems like yesterday. Songs I remember I reckon.
Google Gemini rewrite as a Steven King essay
The summer of 1977 didn’t just arrive; it sat on your chest like a dead weight, smelling of asphalt and cheap Coppertone. That was the year Meat Loaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” started leaking out of every AM radio in Lodi. It’s a song about settling, which is a grown-up’s way of saying “I give up.”
I remember being fifteen, stuck in that greasy, humid limbo between freshman and sophomore year. I was at Kennedy Park with our neighbor, Marge Williams. We were there for some reason involving her son, Scott—probably another ritual of the Lodi Summer Recreation program, a government-sanctioned babysitting service designed to keep kids like me from setting their houses on fire out of sheer, suburban boredom.
The Geography of a Grudge
Kennedy Park held ghosts for me even then. A few years prior, a kid named Brian Palladino had used me as a punching bag there. I remember sitting on the dirt, crying, while he stood over me like a conqueror. I don’t know why he did it, though I can guess. I was likely being snotty—a smart-mouthed kid with a tongue too sharp for his own good.
The kicker? The punchline to that particular cosmic joke? Brian eventually grew up to marry Barbara Williams, Marge’s daughter. That’s how small towns work. They aren’t places; they’re feedback loops.
The House of Glass
I spent a lot of my youth at 7 Riverview Avenue. To my teenage eyes, the Williams’ house was a shrine to modernity. They seemed younger, cooler, more together than my own clan. But looking back, I realize I was looking at a movie poster and thinking it was the film itself.
Take the fish pond, for instance. Edward L., the patriarch, decided to build Marge a pond in the backyard. It was a haphazard, DIY disaster that never actually held any fish. It was just a hole in the ground filled with lukewarm water. Me, Scott, and David Plauchino would sit in that empty basin to cool off, a trio of kids in a concrete puddle.
One afternoon, the illusion cracked for good. We were in the pond when Jimmy, the oldest son, rolled in. From inside the house, Marge started screaming. She was on him like a hawk, accusing him of being high.
“Your eyes are red, Jimmy! They’re glassy!”
The more he denied it, the more he looked the part. It was an ugly, jagged moment. We tried to make ourselves small in that fishless pond, trying to tune out the sound of a family coming apart at the seams. It turns out Marge had a reason to be fixated on that Meat Loaf song. Her own marriage was hitting the skids, and when Jim Steinman wrote about “never gonna love you,” it probably sounded less like a ballad and more like a prophecy.
Static on the Radio
High school eventually did what it always does: it acted as a centrifugal force, spinning us all off into different orbits. Scott was six years younger—a lifetime at that age— and I was busy trying to survive the gauntlet of Paramus Catholic.
A year later, I was in the workforce, and the loop closed again. I found myself working at the same book company as Barbara Williams. She’d give me rides home in a car that smelled of the late seventies. We’d sit in the cockpit of her life, listening to the 8-track click through Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy or the driving, mechanical beat of Toto’s “Hold the Line.”
Funny, isn’t it? We think we’re living these grand, unique dramas, but most of it is just a series of snapshots held together by a radio edit. 1977. Kennedy Park. A pond with no fish.
Two out of three ain’t bad, I guess. But in the dark, you realize it’s the one you’re missing that keeps you awake.