I don’t remember when or how we came to have our first party at Jimmy Stillman’s. The parties were not all that noteworthy but Jimmy is and it just seems right to include them in The Basement Diaries. To most of us, Jimmy seemed rich. Big beautiful home… lots of money… and no real job we could ever catch him working at. It was just understood and accepted that his family was wealthy.

If I had to guess, our acquaintance with Jimmy, and the parties that followed, came about something like this: Someone in our group invited Jimmy to one of our parties. He probably looked around and said (to himself), “How primitive,” and invited us all back to his place.

Jimmy’s home was very nice. We were always under the impression it had been professionally “done” by an interior decorator. No sofas from Wilcoxson’s for Jimmy. I’ll leave it to another to describe Jimmy’s home.

Not only did Jimmy open his home to 40 or 50 strangers at a time, he was a gracious host. When he saw us toting in our little paper sacks of beer and wine coolers he immediately headed for the liquor store. I remember going with Jimmy on a number of these trips. Even though we had taken up a “beer run” collection before leaving, our money was no good at Jimmy’s. It was nothing for Jimmy to drop a couple of hundred dollars on one of these trips.
As you might imagine, word of Jimmy’s parties spread. Beautiful home, free booze… these were parties made for crashing. Even Kennett’s City Fathers knew about our evenings at Jimmy’s. They didn’t seem all that worried about us getting shit-faced on some mosquito-infested ditch bank and then driving 90 miles and hour back to Kennett. But the idea of us swilling Champaign in air conditioned luxury must have been too much for them. So Jimmy got raided.

There were a lot of people at Jimmy’s that night. And I’m sure not all of them were of legal drinking age (not something anyone worried too much about, even 30 years ago). But Jimmy was too polite to turn anyone away, so there were some younger people there that night.

The raid was organized and led by none other than Circuit Court Judge William H. Billings. Kennett’s police department didn’t have a SWAT team but the judge made do with what he had. Jimmy went to the door and did his best impression of Humphrey Bogart trying to keep Claude Rains and his officers from storming Nick’s Place. I don’t know if the judge and the police ever made it past the kitchen but when word of the “raid” spread to the rest of the house, under-age revelers began streaming from every door and window.

Legend has it Jimmy’s back yard was littered with shoes as terrified young people literally ran “out” of them as they fled. Some, the story goes, didn’t stop running until they reached McGhee’s Drive-In, more than a mile away.

Wrestlemania

One final (personal) recollection from Jimmy’s. Those who were there will remember this and treasure it, I’m sure. Those who were not… well, you missed it. The story involves Genny Baker. Genny was a friend of Jane Marshall. In fact, I think they were together at the city swimming pool when we first met Jane.

Like Jane, Genny was tall. And strong. And for reasons lost in time, Genny and this reporter began wrestling on Jimmy’s living room floor. There was never anything romantic between us and there was certainly nothing romantic about this night. I probably said something smart and Genny offered to kick my ass and the next thing I knew, we were rolling around on Jimmy’s seventy-dollars-a-yard carpet trying to pin each other.

What started off as a good-natured tussle turned into battle-of-the-sexes death match. There was no way –with many of my friends watching– I could let a girl pin me and god only knows what was fueling Genny’s amazing strength.

With The Guess Who’s American Woman blaring from Jimmy’s stereo, Genny and I fought for what seemed like hours. I remember looking up, at one point, at the bottom of Jimmy’s baby grand piano, and thinking that I’d remember the moment for ever.