The Summer of '86 (29)

The summer following college freshman year I swam with the local club, Little Rhody (eg Rhode Island) at the Brown aquatics center, a 50m by 25yd pool too shallow at the competition-end with an odd timber-roof that one could climb onto when one was drunk.  Not that one would do so.

Sidebar: unsurprisingly the roof became structurally unsound and torn down in 2010 to make way for one of the best pools I know - the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, which opened at Brown in 2012 and is big, deep and fast (racers feel it).

So the summer of 1986 I trained from 6-8am then painted houses until dusk then washed dishes at the upscale restaurant Cafe At Brooks (in the dicey Providence neighbourhood of Fox Point) which was fun since the head chef, Joe, was a RISD graduate with no culinary training.  He would look at me and say, straight faced, "this one is coming back."

The waitresses were pretty and we were allowed an after-shift drink at the long brass bar after closing hours.  Sometimes Providence mayor Buddy Cianci would drop by to tell stories about Federal Hill or the mob.

For some reason known only to a 19 year old I wanted bleached hair so, after morning practice, I added a lemon juice and salt mixture to my scalp. Below.

Here I am at summer's end painting the stairs of my parent's Berkeley house (Moe informed that my fees to be offset by the rent, a never ending joke between us (of course I paid no rent).