a stray thread of memory

UMass Boston is situated on Columbia Point, an artificially-augmented peninsula jutting out into the Dorchester Bay side of Boston Harbor, which means that my alma mater offers an amazing ringside view whenever a storm rolls in off the Atlantic. During major meteorological events, the storm surge can be strong enough to swamp parts of Morrissey Boulevard, forcing a closure of the road and sometimes even the campus itself.

That's what happened on October 30, 1991, when the Halloween Nor'easter (a.k.a. the "No Name Storm" a.k.a. the "Perfect Storm") slammed into the New England coastline. Up in the windowless clubrooms and offices on the fourth floor of Wheatley Hall, my small group of friends and I had no idea of what was going down until someone stopped by to tell us that Morrissey was closed off, and that we'd better skedaddle before things got any worse.

My girlfriend at the time and I, along with two of our friends, hopped on the shuttle bus to the JFK/UMass subway station. We made it as far as the Bank of Boston offices on the corner of Mt. Vernon Street before the gridlock, which stretched up and around the Day Boulevard rotary and back through the South Boston waterfront, became so impenetrable that the bus driver opened the doors and told us to walk the rest of the way to the subway station.

The rain hadn't started yet, but the wind off the ocean had already reached gale force levels, forcing us to crab-walk the last couple of blocks to the station. The northbound Red Line train was empty, save for my group, a middle-aged townie, and a twitchy street person. At some point during the long, stop-and-go stretch between Broadway and South Station, the street person stumbled over to the doors of the car and started to pound on them with his fists.

Then he unzipped his fly and pissed on the floor of the car, howling "God forgive me" over and over as the puddle of urine spread beneath him. Eventually the townie looked up from his copy of the Herald and barked "Yer forgiven! NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

A group of yuppies got on the train when we finally arrived at South Station. They stood in a group by the doors, their designer shoes smack dab in the middle of Piss Lake. "Hey, someone must have spilled something!" one said, the the rest of the completely oblivious group chuckled at the non-joke. I suppose I could have clued them in, but it was too entertaining a spectacle to spoil.

My girlfriend lived in Jamaica Plain, so I saw her off at the southbound Orange Line platform before catching a another northbound Red Line train to Alewife. Even though it was mid-afternoon and Downtown Crossing is a major public transit hub, the place was a ghost town. Even the street musicians and the folks who sold incense and Afrocentric pamphlets by the shuttered snack bar had packed it in and called it a day.

And I thought to myself, as I attempted (and failed) to sit on one of the platform's non-functional granite seat-sculptures, that this is how the end of the world will probably feel like.

(I also had no idea that thirteen years later to the day, on another stormy afternoon, I'd be exchanging marriage vows with a girlfriend-yet-to-be.)

As for the musical annotations, here's a double shot of postpunk, my genre of choice in the autumn of 1991....and for every autumn since then. The chill in the air and the ever-lengthening evenings add the right touch of environmental synergy for appreciating coldly minimalist soundscapes, don't you think?

Cabaret Voltaire - Premonition (from The Voice of America, 1980)

Joy Division - Shadowplay (from Unknown Pleasures, 1979)

(More Red Line inspired hijinx here.)