Today, we sit down with Billy Hands, Grease Monkey Poet, keeper of stories in Orient.
He grew up in North Jersey, but his summers belonged to Orient, long before he moved here full-time in the early ’80s. Those early seasons shaped him. He learned from the men in his family: a father whose journey ran from the Major Leagues to the service bay, and a grandfather with a gift for words and an eye for people. And from his mother, he inherited something just as lasting, music, feeling, a way of listening that would one day find its way into his poetry.
At the service station, Billy watched the world roll in, locals, travelers, old-timers, wanderers, each leaving behind a story or a rhythm that stayed with him.
Billy forged his own path. He continues to run the Orient Service Center, a place where engines, stories, and the poetry of ordinary days collide. And in his writing, you can hear the echoes of all those influences: family, summers on the edge of the sea, and the quiet pulse of a community that has shaped him for decades.
In this conversation, we talk about family, community, his father’s time in the majors, the characters who drift through small-town life, and the stories and people of Orient, and the joy Billy finds in those everyday encounters.
