had something to do with the growing racial tension in town. Or maybe the work of a random madman or a joke gone terribly wrong. “I think the police came,” Bruce says. Whatever it was, he certainly didn’t take it personally. “I was a kid then, so I mostly thought it was exciting,” he says. “It was just strange.”
One Sunday morning a few weeks later Bruce fired up his motorcycle to give Ginny a ride to a friend’s house, dropped her off, and turned for home, the soft spring air in his trailing curls. He was nearly home when a man driving his son home from church in a large sedan failed to see the motorcyclist headed his way on Jerseyville Avenue. Bruce got tossed over the hood and landed headfirst on the pavement. When patrolman Lou Carotenuto got to the scene, Bruce was on the sidewalk, conscious but dazed and cradling the knee that now poked through his torn and bloodied jeans. “He was rubbing his knee, but he kept saying, ‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’” Carotenuto says. “Just like Doug would have done.” With Bruce’s eyes glazed, bloodied knee swelling visibly, and his responses fuzzy at best, Carotenuto called for an ambulance, which rushed the mostly unconscious teenager to a hospital near Asbury Park. There, the emergency room staff cut off his blood-soaked jeans and presented Bruce to an older doctor whose patience for beaten-up teenaged hippies had obviously run short.
Presented with a bloodied, semicoherent adolescent, the doctor glared at his patient’s shoulder-length hair and muttered that maybe the hippie deserved what he got. The physician stayed long enough to diagnose a concussion, and ordered that Bruce be held for observation and moretests. Fretting both about her son and the astronomical cost of hospital care, and then presented with a police report that set the blame for his accident squarely on the other driver, Adele hired a lawyer to prepare for litigation in case the man’s insurance company refused to pay. She learned quickly that their chances in civil court would improve dramatically if Bruce appeared on the stand looking like a clean-cut American. When Doug returned to the hospital with a barber in tow, Bruce screamed bloody murder. “Telling him that I hated him, and that I’d never forget,” Bruce recalled onstage during the 1980s. Even now Adele seems horrified to recall the episode, though they were just trying to help keep the family—and particularly her son—afloat. “Everyone was making fun of him!” she says. “But we felt so terrible. I never thought that he would feel that bad.” However, with three children to feed and all the regular bills to pay, the family needed the money more than Bruce needed his hair.
Then Ginny, in the midst of her senior year in high school, got pregnant. That her then boyfriend, Michael “Mickey” Shave, was a professional rodeo rider did not help her parents confront the social and religious stigmas attached to out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies. But Ginny’s predicament was by no means a first in their corner of Freehold, or in the family itself, so Adele took a deep breath and did what had to be done. The young couple were married in a small ceremony, the family had a party to celebrate, and the youngsters braced themselves for a premature adulthood that would test them both in ways that no teenager could imagine. 2
Back in Doug’s midnight kitchen, one thought gripped him, then wouldn’t let go: he’d had enough. Enough family history, enough probing eyes, enough Freehold. Imagining sunny skies and a shore as far from New Jersey as possible, his thoughts turned to California, the traditional destination for East Coast refugees in search of a fresh start. “He just wanted to get out,” Adele says. “I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave Ginny because she’d just had her baby, and I had worked for the same man for twenty-three years. But Douglas said, ‘I’ll just go without you, then.’” Sensing the
One Sunday morning a few weeks later Bruce fired up his motorcycle to give Ginny a ride to a friend’s house, dropped her off, and turned for home, the soft spring air in his trailing curls. He was nearly home when a man driving his son home from church in a large sedan failed to see the motorcyclist headed his way on Jerseyville Avenue. Bruce got tossed over the hood and landed headfirst on the pavement. When patrolman Lou Carotenuto got to the scene, Bruce was on the sidewalk, conscious but dazed and cradling the knee that now poked through his torn and bloodied jeans. “He was rubbing his knee, but he kept saying, ‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’” Carotenuto says. “Just like Doug would have done.” With Bruce’s eyes glazed, bloodied knee swelling visibly, and his responses fuzzy at best, Carotenuto called for an ambulance, which rushed the mostly unconscious teenager to a hospital near Asbury Park. There, the emergency room staff cut off his blood-soaked jeans and presented Bruce to an older doctor whose patience for beaten-up teenaged hippies had obviously run short.
Presented with a bloodied, semicoherent adolescent, the doctor glared at his patient’s shoulder-length hair and muttered that maybe the hippie deserved what he got. The physician stayed long enough to diagnose a concussion, and ordered that Bruce be held for observation and moretests. Fretting both about her son and the astronomical cost of hospital care, and then presented with a police report that set the blame for his accident squarely on the other driver, Adele hired a lawyer to prepare for litigation in case the man’s insurance company refused to pay. She learned quickly that their chances in civil court would improve dramatically if Bruce appeared on the stand looking like a clean-cut American. When Doug returned to the hospital with a barber in tow, Bruce screamed bloody murder. “Telling him that I hated him, and that I’d never forget,” Bruce recalled onstage during the 1980s. Even now Adele seems horrified to recall the episode, though they were just trying to help keep the family—and particularly her son—afloat. “Everyone was making fun of him!” she says. “But we felt so terrible. I never thought that he would feel that bad.” However, with three children to feed and all the regular bills to pay, the family needed the money more than Bruce needed his hair.
Then Ginny, in the midst of her senior year in high school, got pregnant. That her then boyfriend, Michael “Mickey” Shave, was a professional rodeo rider did not help her parents confront the social and religious stigmas attached to out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies. But Ginny’s predicament was by no means a first in their corner of Freehold, or in the family itself, so Adele took a deep breath and did what had to be done. The young couple were married in a small ceremony, the family had a party to celebrate, and the youngsters braced themselves for a premature adulthood that would test them both in ways that no teenager could imagine. 2
Back in Doug’s midnight kitchen, one thought gripped him, then wouldn’t let go: he’d had enough. Enough family history, enough probing eyes, enough Freehold. Imagining sunny skies and a shore as far from New Jersey as possible, his thoughts turned to California, the traditional destination for East Coast refugees in search of a fresh start. “He just wanted to get out,” Adele says. “I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave Ginny because she’d just had her baby, and I had worked for the same man for twenty-three years. But Douglas said, ‘I’ll just go without you, then.’” Sensing the
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