Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 3: Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and JFK Slept Here

Happy Thanksgiving!

We in college-town Amherst and our friends in artsy Northampton, MA are put asunder by a four-mile stretch of commercial and farming land known as the Town of Hadley.  Incorporated in 1659 and largely Polish-settled in the 1800's, Hadley is small-town America at its finest.

DREAM SEQUENCE ALERT:

INTERIOR. Hadley American Legion Hall.  Evening.  Autumn, 1965.

Two aging Hadley-ites on barstools - who could be named Waskiewicz and Matuszko, or Gronastalski and Wanczyk, or Zagrahdnik and Perczak, but who in our tableaux are named Sienkiewicz and Gralinski - knocking back a couple of Miller High Lifes.

Sienkiewicz farms "Hadley Grass" (asparagus), also operating a vegetable stand (Stan's) on the property where it abuts the main road.

SIENKIEWICZ:

(groans)

Tractor needs fixin'

GRALINSKI:

Yep. Be a good harvest if the frost holds off.

Gralinski grows tobacco in his fields across Route 9, and half a mile up the street he leases a corner of his land, close to the Coolidge Bridge, to Barsellotti, who operates a red-checked-tablecloth and candle-in-the-chianti-bottle joint called the Aqua Vitae.

SIENKIEWICZ:

My daughter JANEY's passed her driver's test this week. Y'remember she served a burger to PRESIDENT KENNEDY, a month before he was killed.

GRALINSKI:

(sniffs, but not disrespectfully)

Yeah that's nothin' - I had LIZ and DICK in the restaurant last week, boozin' it up.

No words for a half minute.

SIENKIEWICZ:

"Think we'll get that frost?

Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The In Crowd" plays over the jukebox. Sienkiewicz picks at the label of his Miller.

Stan's, 2010

Aqua Vitae, 2010

 GRALINSKI:

Don't know.

But either way, ... y'better git that tractor fixed!

Don't let it be forgot

That once there was a spot,

For one brief, shining moment

That was known as Camelot.

 See Also: Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 1: John F. Kennedy

               Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 2: Liz & Dick Booze Cruise