The Hot Rocks from Hot Shoppes

The year is 1964 and Friday night after the basketball game everyone is at Hot Shoppes at the corner of Keene Mill and Backlick, when there is actually an intersection and when commercial civilization stops at Giant Food.

On a sugar high from eating too much hot fudge ice cream cake, Jackie Montague and some other Lee Seniors throw a huge pumice boulder from Hot Shoppes’ rock garden into the back of Jackie’s station wagon and Jackie makes a squealing tire exit onto Keene Mill heading East toward Lee. Some fortyish to fiftyish adult calls the cops and a police cruiser cuts Jackie off before she can get the rock to Lee’s Senior Court. Jackie has to drive the rock back to Hot Shoppes with police escort.

At one a.m., Ron Gabaldon, John Harms, Jerry Hall and Jack Duckworth throw the rock into the trunk of Jack’s 1954 blue Chrysler bomb and head back to Lee where they drive around back and place the rock in the garden in the seniors’ smoking court.

Monday morning, during homeroom period, Bill Simms, Ken Cole and Principal William Parrish, contemplate the rock. After much consternation, Bill Simms pulls his Jeep around to the Senior Court. With the students in all the classes surrounding the court watching, Bill and Ken load the Senior Stone in the back and return it to Hot Shoppes.

One week later, Bill, Ken and Mr. Parrish contemplate the rock again and the scene repeats itself. This is history’s first videotape rerun and it happens ten years before videotape is invented.

The reruns continue every Monday morning for six weeks until one day Bill Simms returns during second period to the senior court. After much consternation and a special consult with Mr. Parrish, Bill places the Senior Stone back in the senior court (to the cheers of the on-looking seniors) where it will reside for many years.

What Bill, Ken and Mr. Parrish don’t know is that the seniors of ‘64 are more creative than the average student. Following the return of the first rock, various seniors take turns bringing rocks from the new Post Office at Brookville Plaza, the West Springfield Golf and Country Club, the West Springfield Post Office, and the other Hot Shoppes in Arlington, Seven Corners, and Alexandria. For some unknown reason, only the manager at Springfield Hot Shoppes realizes that the mountain of pumice rocks out front of the restaurant has grown aesthetically displeasing. He refuses to allow the pumice pile to grow any more and tells Bill to dump no more rocks.

It was from such humble beginnings that Pavlov, a less well-known alumnus of Lee, developed his salivating dog experiments. This story explains why to this day, Bill Simms breaks out in a sweat whenever he sees a decorative pumice boulder.