It was a two story house close to the railroad tracks and just across from the train station mostly closed since passenger trains stopped coming through in 1967 the house had a brief alternate life as the small town’s teen center The Other Place for about eight months between 1973 and 1974 and it was quintessential small town 70s with jukebox playing China Grove, Smokin’ In The Boys’ Room and Basketball Jones downstairs with occasional dancing (one time I danced alone because I was too shy to approach girls) and Wednesday night Bible study upstairs where one time things were running late so we watched some of the ABC-TV edit of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to kill time and just down the upstairs hall was a pool table where I would watch the people who knew how to play pool really really well and as I said earlier it returned to being a two-story family dwelling sometime in 1974 and from that point onwards I took young people’s theater classes on Saturdays in the city half-an-hour’s drive away which was good until my parents didn’t want me to play Billy Bibbit in a production of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST scheduled for the summer of 1975 at the theater and I didn’t stand up for myself and rock the boat—instead, all the acting I was allowed to do was One-Act Play competition in the small town (which led to competition in other towns and cities) and the Junior Class Play and that kept me busy for as long as these enterprises lasted
I wish The Other Place could have stayed open at least until my graduation in 1977 so I might have had somewhere to go to practice social skills and, if that had happened, it could have made a certain difference in how the remainder of the 70s and early 80s played out for me
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