vocational-program guys like Barry Damon (carpentry) or Brian Dunbar (sheet-metal working), played footballâBarry at center, Brian in the backfieldâthey could hang out with the other football guys and partake of all the attendant privileges.
Friday nights were party nights. One of the girls invariably offered up her house for a gathering. Armed with beer bought by one of the guys whose beard was thicker than most, the boys drove over into Johnnyâs Lane near the sandpit and drank until half of them threw up, which in most cases required four or five beers apiece. George could usually hold the most, and Barry Damon, whose snow-white hair earned him the nickname the Great White Rabbit, often barfed first, not necessarily missing his sneakers and the shoes of some of the other guys. George had a firm policy of never taking his fatherâs car out on Friday nights.
Saturday night was date night; guys would grab a car, a girl, and head to the Weymouth Drive-in for Psycho, or Tammy and the Bachelor, or Troy Donahue in A Summer Place. After that it was a race to Weymouth Great Hill, a 153-foot-high glacial drumlin with room at the top for fifteen to twenty cars that provides a spectacular view over Wessagussett Bay to the lighted spires of Boston. The movie would end at about eleven, and the girls had to be home by midnight, which meant the guys inside the cars with the windows steaming up fast had less than one hour to devise a strategy that would culminate in the laying of a hand on top of a female breast. âLet me tell you, you werenât going too far in those days,â says George. His regular date, Gerry Lee, rated high up in the ânice girlâ category, which compelled George to take one or two other girls out during the course of a weekend to explore a wider set of possibilities. âEvery girl had her standard code. Some of them, if you tried to do anything, theyâd start to cry. I liked to try to take out older girls; they were a little more, you know, liberal.â The sexual revolution, after all, was a good five years off, and while few teenagers in Weymouth at that time gave any thought to sexually transmitted diseases, there was certainly plenty of anxiety about other exigencies. In one notorious incident, a boy at school had gotten his girlfriend pregnant his senior year, and the two had to quit school and get married, and he joined the navy; their future, for all its former promise, was now regarded by their friends as a closed book.
While George failed to become the schoolâs chief football star, he more than made up for that by his lordship over the social life. âGeorge always managed to have the action rotating around himself; he was the hub, the manipulator of the social scene,â says Jack McSheffrey, who grew up on the Circle. âHe was the one you called to find out who was going to drink beer at the sand pit or who was going into Quincy or to the beach. If you werenât with him, you had the feeling of being left out.â After Georgeâs mother changed her sales job from Ann Taylorâs in Braintree to Remickâs Department Store in Quincy, more or less the Neiman Marcus of the South Shore, George became one of the few kids to have his own charge card and a wardrobe that stayed center-front in the style of the dayâherringbone jacket, khaki pants, button-down shirt, crewneck sweater, penny loafers, Jack Purcell tennis sneakers with the blue stripe across the toe. âI would kind of emulate the way George dressed,â recalls Barry Damon. âHe always bought whatever was happening, Harris-tweed coats, saddle shoes; everything always had to come from Remickâs. Heâd look at what I was wearing and say, âWhat are you buying that shit for?ââ
On the rare Saturday night when they had no dates, George and Barry would lead a foray up to Great Hill and try to disrupt whatever activities were going on by treating
Friday nights were party nights. One of the girls invariably offered up her house for a gathering. Armed with beer bought by one of the guys whose beard was thicker than most, the boys drove over into Johnnyâs Lane near the sandpit and drank until half of them threw up, which in most cases required four or five beers apiece. George could usually hold the most, and Barry Damon, whose snow-white hair earned him the nickname the Great White Rabbit, often barfed first, not necessarily missing his sneakers and the shoes of some of the other guys. George had a firm policy of never taking his fatherâs car out on Friday nights.
Saturday night was date night; guys would grab a car, a girl, and head to the Weymouth Drive-in for Psycho, or Tammy and the Bachelor, or Troy Donahue in A Summer Place. After that it was a race to Weymouth Great Hill, a 153-foot-high glacial drumlin with room at the top for fifteen to twenty cars that provides a spectacular view over Wessagussett Bay to the lighted spires of Boston. The movie would end at about eleven, and the girls had to be home by midnight, which meant the guys inside the cars with the windows steaming up fast had less than one hour to devise a strategy that would culminate in the laying of a hand on top of a female breast. âLet me tell you, you werenât going too far in those days,â says George. His regular date, Gerry Lee, rated high up in the ânice girlâ category, which compelled George to take one or two other girls out during the course of a weekend to explore a wider set of possibilities. âEvery girl had her standard code. Some of them, if you tried to do anything, theyâd start to cry. I liked to try to take out older girls; they were a little more, you know, liberal.â The sexual revolution, after all, was a good five years off, and while few teenagers in Weymouth at that time gave any thought to sexually transmitted diseases, there was certainly plenty of anxiety about other exigencies. In one notorious incident, a boy at school had gotten his girlfriend pregnant his senior year, and the two had to quit school and get married, and he joined the navy; their future, for all its former promise, was now regarded by their friends as a closed book.
While George failed to become the schoolâs chief football star, he more than made up for that by his lordship over the social life. âGeorge always managed to have the action rotating around himself; he was the hub, the manipulator of the social scene,â says Jack McSheffrey, who grew up on the Circle. âHe was the one you called to find out who was going to drink beer at the sand pit or who was going into Quincy or to the beach. If you werenât with him, you had the feeling of being left out.â After Georgeâs mother changed her sales job from Ann Taylorâs in Braintree to Remickâs Department Store in Quincy, more or less the Neiman Marcus of the South Shore, George became one of the few kids to have his own charge card and a wardrobe that stayed center-front in the style of the dayâherringbone jacket, khaki pants, button-down shirt, crewneck sweater, penny loafers, Jack Purcell tennis sneakers with the blue stripe across the toe. âI would kind of emulate the way George dressed,â recalls Barry Damon. âHe always bought whatever was happening, Harris-tweed coats, saddle shoes; everything always had to come from Remickâs. Heâd look at what I was wearing and say, âWhat are you buying that shit for?ââ
On the rare Saturday night when they had no dates, George and Barry would lead a foray up to Great Hill and try to disrupt whatever activities were going on by treating
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