I Have Stories

Yes it was crowded.. you could not get there until after 10 pm… otherwise you would be at the mercy of the desperate

By desperate… meaning men who wanted to talk and then stalk you for the rest of the night

We could not reveal that we were nurses. Made men nervous when women were smarter then them..

Not talking about the disco.. that is another story. When you are in the ‘rock and roll’ Boston bars.. the men there were strictly blue collar types. The less they knew the better

Bars were open til 2am.. so we had plenty of time to drink and smoke cigarettes as we crowded around the bar.

Once we loosened up a bit.. we would dance with each other (there were usually 2 -4 of us).

We danced with our drinks in hand, shoulder bags (aka pocketbooks or to non- Boston people.. purses) and our lit cigarettes

We were so cool. In fact, we were cool once we went outside because you could not wear your coat/jacket inside. There was no place to put it.

3 Black Russians in – we were having a great time – until a cute guy that was talking me up noticed something.

“Your friend’s pocketbook ( pronounced Pock-A-Book) is on fire!”

I was actually smoldering … and he was nice enough to throw his beer into it.

No harm – no foul. The only thing burning was a pair of winter gloves.

They reeked of beer and we threw them out and kept dancing. It was hysterically funny to us.. and the beer guy

He was our new bestie.. the 3 of us realized he was way too young (the drinking age was 18).. so we put him in the zone and he deflected any male coming near us.

Once the lights came up for last call.. he realized his friends had left without him.

Oh well.. we would drop him off home..

So he jumped into the front seat of the 2 door sedan to guide us.

He started to get friendly as we drove along. It was getting alarming and my friends in the back started yelling and hitting him with their handy POCK-A-BOOKS.

Fun times! He firmly told us that he was not going to go home.. but would stay at our place.

Not a good plan. Nurses think fast.

I saw a well lit gas station with a police car in the parking lot across the street.

A took a sharp left and pulled in fast. I asked him nicely to get out.

Of course he refused… so I started honking the horn.

Quick response from officer and ‘Joey’ got a squad car ride home

We had revealed that we were nurses and we spared ‘Joey’ from the lock up with our compassion.

We laughed all the way back to our favorite all night take -out sandwich shop and called it a night.

It was a new era for us.

“Fire Pocketbook” became a code phrase for bar cling-ons that needed dumping…..or when we just needed a laugh.