I was down in the basement listening to a Rolling Stones album when my mom came walking through with the laundry. Our laundry room is down in the basement next to the boiler and across from my dad’s workroom. He calls it his workroom even though he doesn’t really do any work down there. It’s just where he keeps all his tools and a bunch of coffee cans filled with loose nuts and bolts and his National Geographic magazine collection. He’s got a bookshelf down there that covers the whole wall and it’s filled with hundreds of National Geographics going back to even before he was married. I don’t know why he still keeps them because it’s not like he ever reads the old copies and it’s not like me or Tommy are ever going to read them. Although Tommy has a few he keeps hidden under the basement sink that I’m not allowed to look at or tell mom and dad about because if you do it’ll be the last thing you fucking do, you hear me, you dumb little shit.
Tommy also keeps his weights and workout bench down in the workroom and he has a speed bag hanging on the ceiling. When he’s working out on that thing you can hear it rat-a-tat-tatting up through the whole house and it drives my mother crazy because first of all, it sounds like machine gun fire when he gets a good rhythm going and second of all, if he’s working out he’s gonna be blasting some “getting pumped” music like Zeppelin or AC/DC and he’ll have it cranked to ten and my mother can barely hear herself think and wouldn’t it be nice to have some peace and quiet in this house on the weekends.
This is why I’ve got the Stones playing at a respectable level so when she walks through with the laundry she just smiles and nods at me. The Rolling Stones are my favorite group by far and I’ve got my neighbor from up the block, Sonny, to thank for that. You see, a few years ago, Sonny fell in love with disco and decided rock and roll was dead, so last summer he held a garage sale on his front stoop to finally get rid of all his old rock albums. He had two milk crates filled with all his old records and he was selling each album for two dollars. I ran home and scrounged five bucks from my piggy bank and some loose change I found around the house so I was only gonna be able to buy two records but Louie had six dollars so he was getting three. As we each start going through the milk crates, Louie quickly found Yes’s Fragile, The Who’s Who’s Next, and Billy Joel’s The Stranger, and I’m pissed because there’s nothing good in my crate until I find the Rolling Stones’s Hot Rocks but it’s a double album and Sonny wants $3.25 for the double albums so if I want the Stones I’m not gonna be able to get another record. So I tell him I’ve only got five bucks on me and could he maybe cut me a break on a second record and he says sure, but he says he gets to pick it since he’s losing money on the deal and I say OK. He offers me Neil Young’s Live Rust which is also a double album, because Sonny says he hates Neil Young and he hates live albums and he adds, “Besides, Neil Young doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says rock and roll will never die because it’s already fucking dead” and he’s happy just to get rid of it. So, he gives me Live Rust for a discounted price of $1.75. So now I’ve got four actual vinyls for my five bucks, which pissed Louie off because he only got three for his six bucks.
That night I took the albums down to the basement where we keep Tommy’s old record player. When Tommy got a new stereo for his sixteenth birthday, my father moved his old one down here because in our house we don’t throw anything out. We either put our old shit down in the basement or up in the attic. Almost every inch of both floors is covered with stuff most families would throw out or give to the Salvation Army, but not us. I already told you about all the old National Geographic and that’s just the start of it. We got lamps, tables, chairs, two old couches, sports equipment, pots and pans, you name it, we got it, as far as the eye can see.
“If I paid good money for something, why would I ever throw it out?” my dad asks. So that means, if he bought something and it entered our house, it was never ever gonna leave. We’ve got boxes piled on top of crates that are stacked on top of shelves going all the way to the ceiling. Even the bar in the basement is cluttered, covered and stacked up with all this old crap.
That’s right, we have a bar in our basement. That’s a weird thing about our neighborhood, all the houses have tavern style bars built into their basements. Mr. Ford told my dad that when Mr. Gibson built these houses in the 1920s it was during Prohibition so he figured people who wanted to drink would have to do it in their own home.
Most people don’t use their bars except for Louie’s and my friend T-Mac’s families. Louie’s dad is a handyman and is always redoing bathrooms and kitchens or fixing windows and doors or painting ceilings and waxing floors, so he turned their basement into a German beer hall, or at least that’s what Louie’s dad calls it. It’s actually pretty fancy so we’re never allowed to go down there. T-Mac’s dad is a mailman so theirs isn’t as fancy. But T-Mac’s family is always throwing parties in their basement bar and his older brothers are allowed to hang out down there and drink, even though they are only sixteen and seventeen. T-Mac says we’ll be allowed to go down to drink once we get into tenth grade but like I already said, I’m not gonna be a drinker who goes and breaks their mother’s heart.
Tommy, who doesn’t care about the heartbreak of our mother, asked my dad to finish our basement and fix up the bar so we could use it for parties, but my dad says, “Who the hell would want to drink in their basement when there’s so many good bars in the world.” So, it’s on top of our unfinished bar that I found Tommy’s old record player buried under some old shoulder pads and a football helmet.
The reason I was down in the basement with my new Stones and Neil Young albums, digging out Tommy’s old record player is because I don’t have my own, although that’s what I want for my thirteenth birthday. I never used to listen to any music other than what my parents were playing in the car or what my mom listened to when she was cleaning the house on Saturdays and when she’s cleaning on Saturdays, she’s only got ears for Frank. In the car we usually listen to WABC and they play whatever the big hits are at the time. Like this summer, that sad song “Sailing” is on the radio anytime we go anywhere. Tommy says it sucks and only a real pussy would like a song like that, but I have to admit I dig it. So does my mom. Me and her have that in common, we both like sad songs. But before getting Hot Rocks and Live Rust, I never had any music that I really cared about. I have a little transistor radio, you know the ones with a strap for your wrist, that I hang on my bedpost but all I ever used to listen to were the Yankee and Knick games and sometimes Jean Shepherd on the nights my mom kicked me out of her bed. But that night in the basement last summer, everything changed.
I decide to listen to Hot Rocks first since unlike Neil Young, I had at least heard of the Rolling Stones, but I didn’t really recognize any of the song titles other than “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” So, I started with side one of the second album because “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is the first song on it and the next song was called “Street Fighting Man” and I figured that must be cool.
From the moment I dropped the needle down, I became a Stones fanatic. I sat down there all night long listening to side one over and over and over again. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Honky Tonk Women,” and “Gimme Shelter.” A year later, older and wiser, I know how lucky I was that those five songs were my introduction to rock and roll.
Anyway, I was down in the basement again, by myself, lying on one of the two old couches, which is where Tommy used to make out with his girlfriend every night before they broke up because he’s not allowed to bring girls up to his bedroom because we’re not running a house of ill repute for you and some hussy to do as you please. I’m playing side one of Hot Rocks over and over again and it’s making me want to cry. Side one has some really sad songs like “Play with Fire” and “As Tears Go By” and when Mick sings “Smiling faces I can see, but not for me,” I nearly lose it. So maybe I’ve got a little bit of my mom’s sadness in me because why else would I listen to these depressing songs over and over again when I know they’re gonna make me cry. And then, right as I’m thinking that, my mom steps out of the laundry room and wants to know the name of the song that was just playing and I tell her it’s called “As Tears Go By.”
She asks me to play the song again and I get up and move the needle back. She then sits down next to me on the couch. She doesn’t say anything while we listen to the song and I don’t say anything either. We just sit and listen, and she starts crying but I still don’t say anything because what are you going to say when your mom is crying to a Rolling Stones song. Talk about a sad night on Marlboro Road.
When “As Tears Go By” ends she wipes the tears from her eyes and says that was a nice song and gets up and goes back to the laundry room. I know something’s wrong because your mom shouldn’t just sit next to you, listen to the Stones, and cry. It’s like earlier in the summer with my dad at Bay Park when I put my arms around his shoulders as he sat on the bench and watched the fishing boats come back to their marinas and I could tell he was crying. I know I don’t know much but I do know parents shouldn’t cry in front of their kids unless they’re at a funeral because it’s way too confusing and just plain scary to think about.
Two songs later, “Mother’s Little Helper” comes on and she comes out again, but now she’s carrying the laundry basket, and she says, “Mother’s little helper? That’s what I could use.” Then she laughs as she heads up the basement stairs. I don’t really know what she means by that or why she laughs, but it seems like everything must be OK now.
After she goes upstairs I play “Mother’s Little Helper” again but this time I really pay attention to the lyrics. There’s a line in there about the mother burning her frozen steak and I figure that’s what she’s talking about, because she’s not really the best cook, but then it gets to the line about the overdose and that’s when I realize the song is about drugs. So now I’m really confused. Was my mother saying she wants or needs to take drugs to help her through her busy day?
That night after we ate, she was sitting on the couch reading like she does every night after dinner and as I headed out to go see who was hanging on the block, she stops me and holds up her book and says, “This is my mother’s little helper.”