🎧 311: Garth provided the ...

     Garth provided the solution. One day, when Herb was between trips, Garth asked him to meet him after work. They drove to the rattiest section of the ratty wharf area of Babbington.
     In Seafood and Sex, his study of life in “a small coastal town somewhere in America,” T. Wallaston (Stretch) Mitgang, the pioneering psychohistoricosociologist, wrote:

     The waterfront area — that is, the area near the working waterfront, the poorest area of town, the messiest, the rattiest — is its true social frontier, a miniature of the social frontier of American society at large. Here are tiny clusters of representatives of ethnic and racial groups who haven’t yet made their way downtown (or haven’t been permitted to) and who may never make their way (or be permitted to make their way) to one of the shady streets of comfortable houses along the pleasant canals away from the sound and smell of men and women at work, unless it is to make a delivery, mow a lawn, or wash a floor. To spend time in this part of town, with its diversity of colors, tongues, religions, pasts, plans, and dreams, is to see that the melting pot, with its suggestion of a homogenized mush, is the wrong metaphor. Better would be something like a stewpot. If we are concocting an American social dish, this is where it’s cooking, and it’s something like a hearty stew or chowder, with chewy bits in every spoonful, not all of them familiar.

     Garth took Herb to a place that Herb had heard of but never visited before: Corinne’s. There were two parts to Corinne’s. In plain sight, almost at the end of Lower (that’s Lower Bolotomy Road, remember), was a fish house with the name Corinne’s on a painted sign that ran along the ridge of the roof, and behind the fish house, concealed in a warehouse, was the other Corinne’s, the one sometimes referred to in speech as Corinne’s Warehouse, a name delivered with a wink, a raised eyebrow, and a sly elongation of the first syllable of the second word. This was the speakeasy and whorehouse.
     When they entered the warehouse, Herb found himself in a chaos of crates and boxes and pallets and skids and barrels. Garth followed what seemed to be a familiar pathway through this chaos, and Herb tagged along. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Garth stopped and stood perfectly still for a moment, listening. Satisfied that there were no following footsteps, he pushed the side of a large crate, and it swung inward. Garth motioned Herb into the cabinet he had revealed, and then followed Herb inside and pulled the door closed behind them. From his pocket he took a small silver penknife engraved with his initials, and he pushed it through a knothole on the opposite side of the crate. In a moment, that side of the crate swung open, and a small, bent old man in a brown suit welcomed Garth and Herb. As they passed him, Garth held out his hand, and the old man dropped Garth’s penknife into it.
     Herb tried very hard not to notice who else was in the place. He understood that Garth’s gesture in bringing him here was a statement of trust, and he wanted to show that it wasn’t misplaced.
     “Herb,” said Garth, “I’m going to tell you something that you have to keep under your hat.”
     Herb nodded, just once.
     “Good,” said Garth. “I’ll come right to the point. I’m going to leave the company, and I want you to come with me. Some important people — I can’t say who just yet — have gotten together to buy a Studebaker distributorship, and they want me to manage it. Herb, how would you like to sell Studebakers?”
     “Here in Babbington?” asked Herb.
     “Well, yes,” said Garth. “I know it might seem a little — well — boring to be in Babbington all the time, but you could really build a future here, Herb, and — ”
     Herb raised his glass and nodded, and Garth smiled.
     “Good,” he said. “Good.”

In Topical Guide 311, Mark Dorset considers Books: Seafood and Sex; Secrecy: Concealment, Camouflage; Secrecy: Secret Societies; Secrecy: Code Words, Passwords, Signs and signals; and Sex: Houses of Prostitution: Corinne’s from this episode.

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