Claymont, Part 2

Claymont has always been a place that had a civic pride in things uniquely Claymont. I'm not necessarily talking about any famous landmarks such as the old library, Archmere Academy or the Christmas Weed. No, I'm talking about things we older Claymonters revere with whimsical nostalgia even if we were ambivalent - and maybe downright hostile - towards them in our youth.

How does the Tri-State Mall sound? Back in the day, it's where we hung out, in our Purple CHS jackets with gold lettering, filling up night after night, complaining how bored we were. The Mall was uniquely Claymont. It wasn't really shared as a hangout with any other Delaware school. Notice I said "Delaware" school because the good students of Chichester found a need to hang out there, too. Generally, the two schools kept their distance from each other, but, sooner or later, a cute girl from "Chi" would be talking to a "Claymonster" and before you knew it, a jealous boyfriend emerges from nowhere. Fists are thrown, bodega attendants are yelling and steady-handed bystanders are sneaking hash pipes from under the counter of Village Records in the confusion. Within a week, a simple scuffle gets the grapevine treatment and next thing you know, "oh-my-god!" teenagers are telling a tale of an all-out gang fight, with knives, chains and nuclear warheads; thousands killed, millions of dollars in damage and echoes of "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way..." filling the air.

As much as we hated the Tri-State Mall, we sure as hell spent a lot of time there. Could there ever be a more delicious and disgusting pizza as you would get from the Orange Bowl? I don't know if that place had seats. Everything seemed to be like a lean-on-the-counter arrangement and lots of orange. LOTS of orange. The pizza itself had a thin crust so firm it could snap a bike chain. It was also heavily floured so when you burnt your mouth of the volcanic cheese, your tongue would magnetize to the bottom (thanks to the flour) so, in effect, you were destroying the roof of your mouth with every bite. Look at the roof of the mouth of any older Claymont folks and it resembles the ceiling of an abandoned farm house. But, ma-a-a-a-a-n, was that the best freakin' pizza in the world. I think they sold insanely-oversalted soft pretzels there, too. They must have had a secret deal with Coke or Pepsi. All that heavy salt and flour conspired in a way that if you didn't have enough money for a drink, you went somewhere else for food. I've seen some first-timers dehydrate in front of my eyes. They run to the doors and collapse in a heap of bones and dust like a time-challenged vampire.

Oh, there were other choices, to be sure. Just next door at Grant's (which then became Grant's City and then K-Mart...I think), they had a little restaurant. Grant's was a department store where you could find a perfectly good scarf in the toy section, a Ted Nugent Album in the bathroom accessories section and some woman smacking her kids so hard and with such skill she never lost the two-inch ash on her Benson & Hedges cigarette in EVERY section. They had a little lunch counter/restaurant thing. I can't remember what it was called, but I remember they had a mascot named Buddy Bradford. Think about that for a second. A department store lunch counter with a mascot they put on everything, including a plastic hand puppet of Mr. Bradford. Hell, Starbucks doesn't even have a mascot. Grant's was also the place of my Cub Scout undoing. Don't feel bad for me - I only signed up to get the knife. My brother, Dave, and I, were at Grant's doing our weekly shoplifting. With us, happened to be two of the baddest dudes around - I won't give their names, and if they are reading this, you know who you are! - who decided to turn on us, run back to our house and rat us out. Dave arrived at the house first. Me? Oh, I took my sweet old time getting home. I figured mom would be completely exhausted taking her anger out on Dave. The most I would get would be the residual. That was the end of my Cub Scout days and besides carving an Ivory Soap canoe, making the worst Soapbox Derby car in the history of the world and being able to legally carry a weapon, my scouting days were largely forgettable.

The Tri-State Mall had a few other unique facets to it, such as the Hong Kong Shop. It was one of those places that had a lot of glass, ceramic and tapestries. It always smelled sweet and intoxicating, almost to the point of being disorienting. The owners were always friendly, but suspicious - as they should have been - and you had to walk VERY carefully through the aisles because one trip over the shoe laces would have resulted in a cataclysmic cascade of every breakable thing in the universe. Me and my friends always flattened ourselves against the left-most wall and made a beeline towards the back corner where the black light posters were. Oh, there were non-black light posters there, like 500 posters of The Doors, a painting of a man holding a lantern with the lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" and the six-panel "Stoned Again" cartoon. The black light posters were what kept you in the store five hours at a time. There were the multi-colored zodiac velvet posters, some giant, rainbow-themed Spiro-Graph-like drawing and some naked woman with a cheetah and a spectacularly-large afro. The room was small and had a curtain to accentuate the black light wonderfulness. Sometimes, we would just end up being fascinated with how freaky our teeth looked.

Further down the way was Village Records, which had everything - posters, clothing, mirrors, pinball machines and yes, even records. I still remember seeing a price tag on one of my dad's Emerson, Lake & Palmer albums for $4.00. That wasn't a sale price. It was the actual retail price. Bought my first album there, too - "Kiss Alive II" because, well, I rock. Between the Hong King Shop and Village Records, I probably spent a total of 8-9 years, if you add the hours together. And I'm going to get this out of the way now so I never have to revisit this again. In 11th grade, we had a school-wide fund-raiser Dance-a-thon for, I think, Muscular Dystrophy. I was determined to raise more money than anyone, and thanks to an out-of-the-blue donation of $10.00 from Paul Eckler, I barely edged out sophomore Amy Guderian. I was so focused on winning I didn't even think of the fact that, "oh ****, now I have to dance! I can't dance! And now I have to do this for 12 hours?" So there I was, doing the Cabbage Patch Dance, The Smurf and The Curly Shuffle - all with the patented white-man-overbite. Then came the dance contest where everyone formed an alley on both sides for contestants to dance down. I was forced into doing it against my will, especially with the delicious Donna Tenshaw being the judge (man, all the Tenshaw girls were lookers) but proceeded to groove my way down the path. I must have looked like The Joker wrestling a rogue fire hose. By the time I made it to the end, Donna was laughing so hard I thought she was going to snort. As it turned out, I actually won the dance contest, probably based on pure humor alone, and received a gift certificate to Village Records. I took that certificate, won on the musical stylings of "Bette Davis Eyes," "Centerfold," and "Pac-Man Fever" and bought an Ozzy Osbourne shirt. See? It all came around.

The movie theater was one of the best around, for first-run movies. There was even a balcony section where you could smoke, and smoke they did. Smoked things legal and illegal, drank and had their way with their partners. Not a movie went by when you wouldn't hear several empty bottle of something rolling down the aisle - and that was for the Benji movies. I saw Star Wars the first morning it opened - and proceeded to see it 20 more times in the theater. I've only gone to see a movie more than once with one other film (that's a lie, but, whatever) and that was when I went on a date with a girl I really didn't want to go out with, and took her to "Silence of the Lambs." Game. Set. Match. Anyway, it was great to get a large gathering of friends together to bellow, in unison, "Your lack of faith is disturbing," in between Jujubee fights. When I was older, we had another large contingent go see "Halloween II." It was a fun movie to watch with friends and the blood wasn't confined to the screen. The marvelously cute Bev Wilson literally lifted little Tim Troutman out of his seat when she dug her nails into his arm during the scary parts. Tim lost a pint of blood that night. I just have to add this other Tri-State Mall movie theater nugget. For anyone who remembers when "Porky's" came out, tell me you didn't laugh more during that film than any other. It's not the funniest movie around, although it was damned funny, but it was the funniest movie to watch in the theater. The Cherry Forever scene, Michael Hunt scene, the hysterical assistant gym teacher - and the legendary shower scene made you laugh yourself sober. Good times.

On the opposite side of the Mall from Grant's was Wilmington Dry Goods, which is worth mentioning primarily for the fun we used to have sliding down the escalator handrails. But something dark was at the bottom of those stairs...something sinister. There was a lower level, which was split-level and perpendicular to the main floor of the mall, like a strip mall super glued to the proper one. My mom used to work at the lamp store down there with some of the most amazing-looking women (including my mom). One night, when, thankfully, my mom wasn't working, two of them were robbed at gunpoint. There was a stairwell next to the lamp store which also led up to the main level. Mom arrived one morning to open the store and saw firemen hosing down the stairs. Apparently, one of the girls who worked at the massage parlor was blown away by some nut job (who was finally captured LAST YEAR) and they were cleaning up the aftermath. Mid-way up the stairwell was a recessed metal door, behind which was a highly exclusive massage parlor. I'm sure nothing illegal was ever happening back there, and even if I wasn't sure, I value my life too much even 25 years later to tell you what I really think. There was also a comic book shop on that lower level. Ever watch The Simpsons? Know who "Comic Book Guy" (Jeff Albertson) is? Well, THIS guy looked exactly like him - ponytail, goatee...stunning, really. Aside from having some of the more obscure comics and being a birthing ground for aspiring Dungeons & Dragons players, he had the most extensive collection of Playboy magazines - going back to the early 1960's. Even though we were nowhere near legal age, he still let us buy them. You know how it is when you're young - you go to buy a Playboy, look around first, check out the Sports Illustrated, flip through an Archie's comic, your eyes shifting this way and that - then, you gather all the possible nerve you possess and reach for the magazine. Then, you quickly slither your way to the register and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. You'd always buy a newspaper and maybe a MAD Magazine to provide some subterfuge in case you were ever approached. And yeah, I had the first Bo Derek issue.

Of course, you cannot celebrate the greatness of the Tri-State Mall without paying homage to the annual carnival, which occupied the southern third of the parking lot. The rides weren't half bad, actually, and the girls were amazing, in their feathered hair, dark eye shadow and roach clip earrings. The Midway games were your standard fare of duck ponds, darts and goldfish bowls. Spider rings were everywhere and if you were really good, you walked off with an Aerosmith clock or REO Speedwagon mirror. It was no Holy Rosary Carnival, that's for sure, but it was always a nice thing to see such a dark place lit up, and for a brief moment, magical.

Sometimes, I long for those semi-innocent days of the Tri-State Mall. The chance to flip those old Playboys on eBay for big bucks, actually buying a velvet Elvis at the Hong Kong Shop and perhaps getting to see what was on the other side of the big metal door in the stairwell. I also would like a chance to have another slice of pizza from the Orange Bowl with whatever is left of the roof of my mouth.

Even if I have to go to Chichester to get it.