1960s – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

RUMFORD ROSWELL???

BUT FIRST, A BLAST FROM THE PAST TO SET THE TONE…

CLICK TO PLAY…

Mid-September, 1977, the Teachers’ Lounge…

Three or four of us were hunched over the far end of the lunch table. We’d been poring over the daily newspaper. They’d been checking out the local area high school football scores. Me, not so much. But anyway, after I folded the paper back into its original shape and arrangement, and laid it back down, front-page-up, I spotted that same news article that had caught my attention earlier, back at home during breakfast.

Me: “You guys see this one?”

One of Them: “What’s that?”

Me: “Steven Spielberg. Got a new flick coming out. Gotta say, I really like his stuff.”

One of Them: “Shark boy? What’s this one gonna be about? Killer whales?

Me: “UFOs.”

One of Them: “Well, that’s stupid.”

One of Them: Come on. Science Fiction? Really? That’s a ‘step down,” isn’t it?

Me: “Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, I just LOVED Duel. And… Sugarland Express was really good, too. The guy’s a movie maker’s movie maker.”

One of Them: “What’s it called?”

Me: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

One of Them: “Well now, that’s a hell of a title. Wonder who came up with that clunker.”

Me: “It’s a technical Project Bluebook classification.”

One of Them: “Oh yeah? Well, of course… you’d know if anyone does.”

Me: “But here’s the thing.”

One of Them: “Yeah?”

Me: “Says that after this movie hits the screens, authorities’ phones all over will be ringing off the hook. UFO sightings’ll start going through the roof. A UFO movie like this, it says, could generate a lot of mass hysteria. You know, like everybody and his grandmother’ll probably start seeing ‘em and calling’em in.”

One of Them: “Hmm. No shit. Well, that’s all this country needs, isn’t it.”

One of Them: “Christ, I wouldn’t know who to call.”

Me: “Well, I mean, Jaws did that, sort of. I mean driving everybody nuts about sharks. Put the ol’ bullseye on’em, didn’t it. Put’em right on the ‘World’s Most Wanted List.’ Not Dead or Alive, either, just Dead. All sharks must die. They’re Public Enemy #1 right now, whereas before…”

One of Them: “Well… they are basically man-eaters, aren’t they.”

Me: “I know I’m in no hurry to go swimming in the ocean. But this article’s saying the movie’s basically about UFO abductions. So, maybe it’s Move Over Time for the sharks. Little green men are about to be climbing up the FBI’s Public Enemy List.”

One of Them: “Well. They sure as hell aren’t too likely to turn out like My Favorite Martian, are they.”

One of Them: “Christ, listen to yourself. They’re not likely to turn out to be anything, stupid.”

Me: Hell though, I still remember the nightmares from when I watched The Man from Planet X at age seven.”

One of Them: “I mean, little green men? That’s rubbish.”

One of Them: “You know, I wouldn’t mind seeing one of these UFOs your keep hearing about though. I just wouldn’t wanna meet the pilot and crew, is all.”

Me: Well, if quote-unquote “seeing” one of them does become all the rage, maybe you’ll see one too. Maybe we’ll all become victims of mass hysteria.”

One of Them: “Baloney!”

One of Them: “Whatever.”

Now although the timing couldn’t possibly have been more flukey, it was at this exact point of this discussion that the door to the lounge swung open and in strode math teacher, Jack Rogers. We each greeted him with our routine “Hi, Jack,” and “Mornin’, Jack!”

Jack, not saying Good morning back, marched straight over to our little group, not bothering to set his brief case down, take off his jacket, sit down, or anything. And he had the look of someone who hadn’t slept at all last night. He also had the look of a man on a mission because there he was, just standing there before us, kinda dazed-looking and staring down on all of us with the look of someone who’d just swallowed a June bug.

“Hey, guys,” he said, sounding like he was a little out of breath.

“So what’s up with you this morning,” someone asked.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear away cobwebs. “Something happened last night.”

We waited. “O…kay?”

“AND…?”

“This is gonna sound weird, but… OK, here goes. So I was driving back from Portland last night, taking a shortcut over some back roads, when I noticed something in the sky, up and off to my left. A dim, flickering light.”

Right there, we all made eye-contact with each other. Deadpan eye-contact. But with raised eyebrows.

“And it was moving. Slowly. In the same direction as me. It was dark out, but I could still make out the tree lines off away on the horizon, and this… light… whatever it was, was above those. The thing was less than a quarter mile off to my left, and probably up, I dunno, maybe about 400 feet.”

“You telling us what we think you’re telling us?”

Jack nodded. “It’s like… it was like one of those UFOs you hear ab…”

We erupted in a thunderclap of raw, involuntary laughter!

Which was pretty unfortunate, as Jack looked like he’d just been bitch-slapped! His cheeks burned a feverish pink. He was hurt, and angry. And who could blame him? And I know I immediately felt pretty bad about it. I think we all did. But I mean, come on, what were the odds?“

{Just a couple of notes here: (1) “Jack” isn’t his real name of course, and (2) “Jack” hadn’t been diagnosed yet, but for quite some time he’d been exhibiting symptoms of sugar diabetes: a seemingly-forever constant thirst regardless of how much water he regularly consumed and (2) a very touchy disposition where he sometimes would lash out in anger at things that were irritating him.}

But before I could say, We’re so sorry, Jack, someone asked, “Did you by any chance read the paper this morning?”

“No! I didn’t as a matter of fact, OK?! I mean, after last night... Iyou know what? I wasn’t exactly in the mood!”

Oh yeah. He was really pissed.

“See, all I was in the mood for this morning… was to come in here and… try to… I dunno… screw it… try to talk to you guys! And…”

“Hey listen,” I said, “we are so, so sorry. We weren’t laughing at you. See, we…”

“Oh. Really? Had me fooled!”

“No, I swear! It’s just this article in the newspaper this morning. Here. Read it. You won’t belie…”

“Excuse me if maybe I don’t wanna read it. That OK with you?!”

“OK. That’s fair, Jack. But please. Just hear me out?”

I took his glaring silence as an OK. So I ran pell-mell through what the article had to say and asked him to try to imagine what the effect of his entrance, along with his so unfortunately coincidental… revelation, had had on us. “And I swear to God, Jack, if you had been in here… and in on this conversation and I, or any of us, had come walking in through that door and said exactly what you said… well… think about it. How would you have reacted?”

His glaring silence persisted. I got it. The sting of anybody getting targeted as the subject of a chorus of belly-laughs, like that one, would linger. “OK, but please, Jack. Just know that we really weren’t laughing at you. We were just… reacting to the un-frickin-believable coincidence of the whole thing. I mean, c’mon, what were the odds, right?”

He just said, “Hmmmm,” placed his briefcase down on the floor, hung up his coat, came back, and joined us at the table. “You guys can think what you want. But you weren’t there. And damn it, I know what I saw.”

“And I believe you. I’m sure we all do. People are seeing things like that all the time. Which is why they created Project Blue Book in the first place, to follow-up on the thousands of sightings. So please, I hope you can work on forgiving our unintentional… but still pretty rude and thoughtless reaction.”

Jack just nodded. But finally he said, “So, can I tell you about it then, or what?”

I said “Yes, of course!” and everybody chimed in on that sentiment. And somebody asked, “So what’d it look like?”

“Well, you see… that’s the thing. It wasn’t saucer-shaped. Or cigar-shaped either, like they usually say. This thing, well… it honestly looked like (and this is gonna sound weird, but it’s one of the things that makes this so perplexing for me…) like the top of a tower. Only floating.”

We were all duly puzzled. “Wait a minute. Like… whattaya mean, a tower?”

“I mean, you could see sort of a structure to it, even though the thing appeared kinda fuzzy for some reason. Sorta… shimmery. But I mean… so just try to imagine the top of a radio tower off in the distance, OK? Upright? Tapered at the top? Only this tower’s lower half was missing. And the thing was floating. It’s crazy I know.”

“Well, that is sort of hard to imagine”

“Well, not for me anymore. Hey, gimme that piece of paper over there. I’ll draw you a picture of it.” Jack plucked a pencil from off the lunch table and went to work. It didn’t take him long. And this is what he showed us:

The four of us pored over it. Someone said, “Shit, that don’t look like any normal ufo.”

“That’s what I was saying!”

And then, seemingly right out of the blue, the first bell was ringing and all of us had to haul ourselves out of our chairs, gather up our things, and head for our respective classrooms.

End of discussion.

But it had been an interesting morning, to say the least.

And I still felt bad for Jack.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That Evening, 5:30-ish:

A cool autumn evening with the darkness threatening to settle in. We were seated around the dinner table, our family, partaking of the typical evening meal. Suddenly, a knock at the front door!

None of us was expecting anybody. “I’ll get it,” I said, rising from my chair and heading out through the living room.

I was totally surprised to find Jack standing on the other side of the screen door.

“Hey, Tom.”

“Jack. Hi. This is a surprise. C’mon in.” I stepped aside and he stepped into the entryway.

“Who is it?” Phyllis calls from the kitchen.

“Jack. Jack Rogers!”

“Oh.”

“What’s up, Jack?” I couldn’t help but notice that he was appearing somewhat antsy.

“You busy right now? Or having dinner? I don’t wanna interrupt your meal.”

“No problem. Just finishing up. Maybe three or four French fries left. Why? You wanna talk, I take it?”

“Yeah that, plus I wanted to know if you’d be willing to take a ride with me.”

“A ride? What, right now? Where to?”

“Look,” he shrugs, “First, I apologize for how upset I got this morning, OK? But it’s just… this whole thing’s driving me crazy, alright? I mean, still.”

“You don’t need to apologize. I…”

“But I know what I saw, OK!?”

“Sure. Look, I know you saw something… something unidentifiable. I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

“Well, if you’d’a been there, you’d sure as hell’ve seen something too, damnit! And then…”

“I’m sure I would have. Look, Jack, I believe you, OK? I have no doubt in my mind you saw something, alright? Something weird. But listen, if anyone needs to apologize… well, it’s me. And I do. Again. And sincerely. I’m honestly sorry we all laughed. It was just… a gut reaction to the bad timing of that whole damn thing. I’m serious. Look, if you’d been in our shoes, you’d see that.”

“Yeah. So you guys all said. And yeah, I do get that now.”

“I hope so. It was just a bad… one hell of an unfortunate coincidence. I mean, there we were reading that very article, talking about it and everything… and in you come…”

“Yeah. OK. Whatever. I get it.”

“It was like some slapstick scene right outta a sit-com, you know?”

“Yeah yeah yeah. So anyway… you got time to take a ride with me, or what? Right now? I just really need to go back there. And have a look. It’s driving me nuts!”

“Well, sure. OK. I’m in. But honestly? You gotta realize that whatever it was you saw is more than unlikely to still be there. Right?”

“I know. Yeah. But I still wanna go out there. And just take a look-see. I just feel I gotta go back and… I dunno what!”

“Got it.”

“And I really just don’t wanna go by myself. Because on the off-chance there is something to see out there tonight, I don’t wanna be the only one. I want a witness.”

“OK, Jack. I mean this sounds like an adventure. I’ll get my jacket.”

As I lifted my jacket off the hook in the rear hallway, I stuck my head around the corner into the kitchen to say goodbye to Phyllis. “Remember I told you this morning, Jack told us he’d seen a ufo last night? Well… I’m going for a ride with him to check out the area. And who knows, maybe I’ll be abducted. Probably be back in an hour or so…”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It seriously did feel adventure-like to me though, cruising on a UFO quest through downtown Rumford in Jack’s Jeep with the doors removed and the cool, rushing air breezing all through the cab! There was something wild and crazy about it. And right up my alley.

Then the town limits were behind us and we were tooling out into the woods on back roads growing spookily darker by the mile, what with the leafy branches from both sides of the road entwining themselves together and forming a canopy of even greater darkness over our heads.

But it was invigorating to be outside. Certainly better than watching the 6:00 news on the living room sofa.

Jack was detouring circuitously around, so that we’d be traveling down the road in the same direction he’d been traveling the previous night. “I know we’re not gonna see anything,” he bemoaned. “But I’ve just gotta go back there and be sure. I just can’t stop thinking about it. All the time.”

“Yeah. I get it. But it would be amazing, really too much to ask, to be treated to the same sighting two days and a row. Too good to be true, most likely. But I swear on a stack of Bibles, Jack, I totally believe you. Actually, I just wish I’d gotten to see it.

The whole thought of it felt pretty exciting, in a goose-bumpy sort of way.”

And soon we were rolling down the road in the exact area where he’d first noticed the thing in the sky. There were acres of flat fields of grasses on either side, checkered with bales of hay lying in loose rows.

“Yeah see, it was right up over there,” he told me, with an index finger pointing at the horizon off on one side of the road. “Just a damn, dim, flickering thing, crawling right along up there low in the sky in the same direction as me.

And see, that’s the thing too: what you so often hear about UFOs is that they’re usually bright, not dim. And strobing, not… just barely flickering. But it was weird just the same.”

We rode along for a minute or two in silence. You could now see some of the stars coming out, glinting overhead. But nothing other-worldly. Finally, I asked him, “So whattaya wanna do now? Throw in the towel, or wait awhile longer?”

“Not ready to throw in the towel just yet, even though I’m pretty much positive we’re never gonna see what I wanna see. It’s just that about a mile up ahead is the turn-off, where I had to go right to head home and the thing… just continuing heading off and away in a straight line. Last I saw of it anyway.”

It was a crossroads where Jack finally let us roll to a slow stop. “Yeah. This is it. Where I had to turn off.”

“Whoa. You forgot to tell me there was a graveyard right here.” There actually was.

“Honestly, I never even noticed it myself. It was dark, and I was keeping my eyes glued to the sky.”

We climbed out of the Jeep, walked around to the front of it, and leisurely leaned our butts up against the grille and the front of the hood. The stars were pretty and bright. But the dim UFO was nowhere to be seen. “The graveyard’s kinda spooky though.”

“Hey. Sorry I dragged you all the way out here.”

“Not at all. It’s all good. I enjoyed the ride and the fresh air. So much more exhilarating than scoring the stack of essays I brought home with me this afternoon.”

“I just wish I knew something… anything I could do to get this… anxiety out of my head!”

“Well, I dunno if, or how, it might help, but see that big barn over there’s some guy over there leaning in under the hood of his pick-up. Working on his truck’s engine. We could just head over there and ask him if he saw anything last night. Worth a shot.”

That gave Jack a little boost. “Good idea. Let’s do that.”

A minute later we rolled up into the guy’s driveway and climbed out. Right away the guy looked up and started giving us the hairy eyeball. I didn’t blame him. Two guys pull up in my driveway that time of night way out in the willy-wags, I’d have felt very wary myself. Jack called out a friendly “Hello!”

I noticed in the light hanging above him that the guy picked up what looked like a foot-and-a-half long wrench. He certainly didn’t look too happy to see us. “Whatta you two want?”

“Sorry to bother you,” Jack said, “Just have a question. See, I was driving down this road here last night, ust about this time actually, and I happened to notice a… well, a dim, flickering light in the sky right up about there,” he said, pointing. “No idea what the darn thing was, but it was moving at a pretty good clip. It’s been driving me crazy ever since trying to figure out what it might have been though.”

The guy just stood there staring at us, stock-still by the open hood of the truck, silent, waiting. For more of the story maybe? Jack went on.

“So I was just wondering. If you saw anything like that. Last night? Or any night, for that matter.”

The guy didn’t seem to like that question. “That, Mister,” he said, “is none of my business!”

I felt Jack’s body stiffen, saw his face flash to anger! This morning he’d suffered the indignity of being laughed at by his peers in the faculty lounge. And his day apparently hadn’t been going so well since then.

“What did you just say to me?”!

Oh great— those were fighting words.

“I think you heard me,” the man snapped back.

For a second, I don’t know why, but I felt sure Jack was going to try to jump the guy. The guy with the big steel wrench. In my mind I could imagine hearing a couple of duelling banjos starting to pick out “Yankee Doodle.”

“Take it easy, Jackie. Please. And… time to go., right? Let’s just get outta here…”

“Hey, you! All I did was ask you a simple, friendly question. A simple yes, or no question! And You? You…”

“Jackie! Come on!” I urged. “Let’s go!”

“OK,” said the Man with the Wrench. “Let me point you in the direction of somebody you should be asking that question! All right? Now, you see that white farmhouse right down that road there?” He nodded toward it, over his shoulder. “Next one down? They’re the ones you need to ask! Not me or anybody else. Because. As. I. Said. It’s none of my business.”

“So… let’s go. Let’s go do what the man said, OK Jackie?”

“Jesus!” Jack growled. But he did back away and, thank God, slammed himself back into the Jeep.

But… I was wondering, what in the hell is going on here? What were we getting ourselves into? And more than that even, Did I really know anything at all about Jack? “You know…” I told him as we went barreling down the little dirt road spitting rocks out from under the tires toward the white farmstead, “we really don’t have to go to this place, though, do we?”

I never got an answer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In no time, we had mounted the little front porch of the main house, and Jack was banging his fist on the front door. He’d begun with a knock, but since we could see some of the windows were blazing with light while no one was deigning to answer the door, he’d started banging on it.

After a while, the door cracked open a little. A crack no more than five inches wide. And peeking out through the crack was a nervous little boy’s face. A boy maybe four feet tall, plus or minus.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Hi,” Jack replied. “Could I speak with one, or both, of your parents please?”

The door opened to about a foot wide now. Swallowing noticeably, the boy said, “Uhhmm, they’re not home right now.”

“Oh. OK then, I guess I’ll hafta talk to you. So anyway… last night I was driving down the road back there and I saw something up in the sky. I guess I’ll hafta call it a unidentified flying object since I sure as hell couldn’t identify whatever the hell it was. You ever see one of those around here, up in the air at night?”

“No sir. Never.”

“It was giving off a flickering light and it was moving, traveling, right in the same direction as me… and it’s been driving me crazy ever since because… all I wanna know is what the hell it was. OK? Because it was disturbing, you know? And then, on top of that, this guy and me here? We just stopped up the road at your not-too-friendly neighbors’ place and asked him the same question. And you know what? He got all pissed off and said if I wanted to know what it was, I should come over here and ask you folks. So. OK. Here I am. And I’m asking. What exactly was it I saw last night, Huh?”

It took a moment before the boy, looking down at his toes, pretty much whispered a meek, “I don’t know.”

Once again I sensed Jack doing a double-take. “Well, I’m sorry, kid. But I think you do know. And I can’t imagine why you would, but I think you’re lying to me. Because that guy back there, your Mister Greenjeans from hell? Hesaid you people would have the answer!”

“Jackie, would you please take it easy? You’re scaring the kid. Cmon. Let’s go home.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be sounding so scary, kid, if you’d just own up to whatever this is, all right? I mean I didn’t drive all the way out here just to be lied to. OK? So let’s have it. What was it I saw last night?! What’s going on here?”

Silence.

“Well? I want an answer.”

The boy looked at him with imploring eyes, and then his gaze dropped back down to the toes of his shoes again. And then, in the saddest, softest little voice you could ever imagine, confessed.

“Uhmmm… we’re not allowed to talk about it…”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You’ve just finished reading my true story, “Rumford Roswell Part I.” Part II will be following close on the heels of this one. Watch for it to find out about The Aftermath of Part I.

In the meantime, below is a little smile for you in the form of a short little YouTube video. Enjoy.

Please feel free to leave me a comment, below, if the spirit moves you.

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A CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE, 1963

(A Little Out of-Season “Valentine’s Day Card” to… Ourselves, After Passing the 58th-Year-Anniversary Mark on July 31st, 2024)

What you’re looking at here is a clipping from our local weekly newspaper, The Piscataquis Observer (‘Piscataquis’ being the county of which my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft is the County Seat). The photograph here appeared either in early December, 1963 or December of the following year. It doesn’t matter which. The picture is of one big, fat snowman.

It had snowed throughout that day and evening, necessitating Foxcroft Academy to declare a snow day (which had pumped up the entire student body into an electrified state of positive energy). It had been a day of shoveling out walks and driveways, shouldering errant cars back onto roadways, sledding and tobogganing, building snow forts, and battling snowball-fight battles.

Sometime though, very late at night or in the early morning however, this snowman appeared— standing like some spooky traffic-cop-god manning the empty center of Monument Square. The snowing had stopped falling around 9:00 pm. The temperature had risen to about 40 comfortable Fahrenheit degrees, and the clouds above had swept themselves aside to reveal the black velvet, diamond-studded firmament overhead. The air that night was refreshing and sweet to the lungs. The world was a winter wonderland cliché. The town, silenced down and virtually emptied out by midnight, had become our personal playground. The snow which crunched under the soles of our boots was perfect snowman-snow.

Alone together in that perfect night, Phyllis and I began rolling our first snowball into the huge, legless hips of our Frosty the Snowman. And boy, it proved nearly impossible to upheave that second, even larger torso into place, but… love conquers all, doesn’t it.

Words can’t do justice to how happy we were, how amazingly content I was for a change. We were head-over-heels in love with love and with each other. Everything was perfect in my life! I mean, I actually had a girlfriend! A going-steady girlfriend! A high school sweetheart, and man oh man, was she ever sweet! We were going to movies. We were dancing at the Saturday night Rec Center. We were building snowmen.

I had a girlfriend who was a soda-jerk (I still hate that term) at Lanpher’s Rexall lunch counter who would personally wait on me (and maybe give me an extra ice cream scoop in my ice cream soda once in a while, if and when nobody was looking). And hell, I actually even liked school those days (mostly of course because she was always there). I mean, I had no idea what I ‘wanted to be when I grew up,’ but hey, I had blind faith that all would work out just great. And that Phyllis would be my future.

I was, and still am, a hopeless romantic.

So anyway— the snowman.

Building that snowman is a cherished memory for Phyllis and I. Despite the fact that when the photo was featured that Thursday in The Piscataquis Observer, the caption below it insultingly read, “Four students constructed this huge snowman in Monument Square.” I mean, come on! What four students!? There were no four students! What kind of low-lifes will just come along and, being total losers, find a museum-worthy work of art, and claim, “Yeah. We did that! That’s our snowman”? Damn. If they’d listed the names of those scumbag art thieves, I would have placed a big burning paper bag of dog-poop on their doorsteps at night, rung their doorbells, and run off to hide and watch those losers dirty their soles trying to stomp the fire out, heh heh!

But anyway… we know the truth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ours was an odd relationship though, for the first year or so.

For one thing, Phyllis was extremely shy and demure. A really old-fashion girl that way. (Oh yeah, we laugh about this today. Those who know her now would have a hard time picturing her as some 1860’s cotton-plantation-type Southern belle.)

During our hour-long phone calls, I’d end up doing all the talking and she’d be doing the ‘very-interested’-listening-thing, basically. Oh, I’d get the occasional little titter and monosyllable back… even a complete sentence now and then. But I’d know she was there, because I could hear her shy and demure breathing on the other end. And even though I‘d pretty much become the Penn to her Teller, that was good enough for me. Great even (because hey, I had a real girlfriend at last, you know?)

Another odd thing is that she would never let me take her picture with my little Kodak Brownie^©. In fact she didn’t want anyone taking her photo. Whenever I or anyone else pointed a camera in her direction, she’d either turn totally around or cover her face with her hands. Scoring a good snapshot of Phyllis became a challenging sport. You’d think she was in the Witness Protection Program. Either that or the movie star being hounded by the paparazzi (which in her life was all of us toting our cameras).

“**Do NOT click the shutter on that camera!**“

I remember her stepdad Elden, a wonderful man, giving her some sensible advice on my behalf. Something like, “Phyllis. Wouldn’t it be better for you if you did let him take your picture? After you’d had the opportunity to prepare yourself and look your best, rather than leaving him to run around showing all his friends and family the somewhat odd pictures he’s getting now?”

But no… she wasn’t ready to heed that that advice. Thank goodness for school yearbook photos.

“What did I just TELL you about *NOT* clicking that *SHUTTER!!!*“

She apparently had no idea how beautiful everybody else saw her as. I mean, I had this moment in the hallways of the Academy where a barely-known-to-me-farm boy came up to me between classes and demanded, “You the guy going steady with Phyllis Raymond?”

Not knowing if I was about to get into a fight or something, I said, “Yeah. Why?”

And he looked at me with the most hangdog look you could imagine and said, “Do you know how goddamn LUCKY you are?!” He said it like an accusation. But no, more an unhappy surrender. “’Cause I sure hope the hell you do!”

Apparently, he’d had his hopeful sites on my new steady for some time.

“Yeah,” I told him, “I do know. And no, I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

And honestly, with my track record and loose-cannon self-esteem, I was still bewildered about how the hell I’d ended up with one of the elite majorettes.

Well, other than my sparkling personality and my extremely handsome looks, I guess the fact that I was always hanging around with the popular Mallett Brothers and had taken her out on that Johnny Cash concert date hadn’t hurt matters any.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Things We Do for Love

So after we’d got a few weeks of dating under our belts, I started hanging around out by the track after school, reason being: I loved watching Phyllis during her majorette practices. She was amazing. All of the majorettes were.

They actually did this one routine where they honestly tossed twirling, flaming batons way up over their heads and then caught them, all in sync, on their way back down. That blew my mind. I don’t know what they had on either end of their batons, but the flames sure looked dangerous. I really worried about Phyllis getting herseld a bad burn.

So anyway there I was, out there one afternoon watching them practice, when I was approached by John Glover, the Track coach whose team was also working out on the track and field. “You can’t be hanging around out here,” he told me.

“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t see I’m getting in anybody’s way or anything.”

“Because this is practice time. Only practitioners are welcomed. And since you’re neither a majorette nor a track star…”

“OH, come on. Really?”

“Really. Now on the other hand, I’m in need of a runner for the mile. If you care to apply, you can live out here and watch the girls over your shoulder all the time.”

Huh!

And so that was the year I went out for track.

I “ran” the mile. No runner, me– thus, the quotation marks. I was a jogger at best. And lazy, but I’ve already owned up to that in more than one of my previous blog posts. Plus, I found running really painful. And rather pointless, since the majorettes didn’t practice every afternoon like the track team did.

Now, obviously the difference between me and the other, much-more-motivated milers was how I “practiced.” Real milers would ready themselves for the next track meet by what seemed like running all the time. Three miles at a pop. But me? Hey, if I were readying myself for the mile run, I’d jog a mile. Maybe once, but certainly no more than twice a day. So…

When the starting gun fired on the day of my first track meet, we were off! It was a sweltering, hot day. Immediately I noticed one runner after another pulling past me like I was my old grandfather tooling down I-95 in his rattletrap pick-up at 40 miles per hour. And despite my better judgement, I (idiot me) began to succumb to the peer pressure. Stupidly, I accelerated. I passed someone. And then somebody else! And you know what? It was easy. Easy-peasey. I finished lap-one looking good!

At the end of lap-two, however, I wasn’t so pretty, quite honestly. But the track fans on the sidelines were cheering, goading me on. So I persevered.

But as I galumphed past them at the end of my third lap, my lungs were engulfed in flames!

Since there was no actual photograph of this event, I’ve stolen *this* appropriate one from the movie, *Platoon…*

And when I crossed the finish line, dead last… I simply collapsed down onto my rubbery knees, and puked my guts out.

Yeah. The things we do for love.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Going steady with Phyllis was a little tricky…

Like, one day after the final bell had rung at school, Phyl and I and the throng of all the happy-to-be-outta-there kids were marching en masse down the Academy driveway, headed for Lanpher’s Drug to hang out. I, the perfect gentleman, was of course carrying her textbooks (easy for me since I seldom brought any of my own home). (And backpacks hadn’t caught on back then.)

Now, whenever we were together, I had learned to make it a point to try to appear way more mature than my actual sixth-grade-level, Mad magazine mentality. Because I didn’t want to lose this one. So I always strove to never to let her catch me doing or saying things that would disappoint, or offend. Not an easy life for a guy like me.

So… while we were walking and talking quietly on our way down toward West Main Street’s sidewalk, way back behind us I overheard something that makes my teeth clench. Jim Harvey’s loud voice. “Boy, you guys shoulda heard what Tommy Lyford said to Ol’ Ma Gerrish in study hall this afternoon! That got a rise out of her!”

Damn it, Jim, I was thinking. Keep your mouth shut, why don’t ya! But of course he didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. And I’ve long forgotten whatever it was I’d said earlier that day to win the chorus of cheap laughs I’d got from my equally immature study hall audience, but whatever it was, Phyllis went cold. She asked me politely for her books back, and we made the rest of the trip to her house in dead silence.

Me, the scolded dog.

And for some reason Phyllis also did not approve at all of gambling… back then (which is a laugh and a half now, when you consider all the casino man-hours she’s since put in, altruistically helping out struggling casinos wherever she finds them). But even though I was aware of her sentiments, personally I thought gambling was a way to look pretty cooland manly back in those high school days. So any so-called “gambling” I did, I always tried to keep on the down-low.

(Did I happen to mention I had a reputation for being *****-whipped back then?)

So anyway, I was working at the Esso Station one Saturday afternoon, along with the boss’s son Jerry, a wise-ass little punk three or so years younger than me.

Business had slowed down for a while, so he and I were just leaning our backs up against the tool bench in the back of the grease-monkey-area and shooting the bull. We’d opened up the bay doors for the fresher air and just to watch the ol’ traffic slide on by. Eventually another car pulled in for a fill-up. It was Jerry’s turn to get it. He was outside there for a couple, three minutes, and then he came hustling back in with an idea.

“Hey, let’s pitch some pennies. Whattaya say?”

I said sure. I always kept a modest cache of pennies in my pants pocket, since we partook of penny-pitching often, to kill time. Penny-pitching was like a game of micro-horseshoes. You’d each toss your penny up against a nearby wall, and the one whose penny landed the closest to the wall won that toss and got to keep both coins. I know it sounds brainless today because they were, after all, only pennies. However, pennies were worth a little more sixty years ago than they are today, right? I mean, for ten pennies you could buy a cup of coffee anywhere.

But my point with all this is… penny-pitching is a form of gambling. And guess what! While I was bending over, picking my two pennies up off the floor, I heard Jerry suddenly yell out, “Hey Phyllis! Look what Tommy’s doing! Pitching pennies with me!”

Immediately I realized what had just happened. The little bum had set me up (again). See, (A) while he was out there pumping gas, he’s spied Phyllis down the sidewalk, walking our way; (B) Jerry knew how Phyl felt about gambling; (C) Jerry also knew that I was one hopelessly *****-whipped little puppy; and (D) he’d set the whole damn thing up, the bum, just to watch me getting put back into the doghouse.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But hey, in spite of all my little “transgressions,” we remained passionately in love and getting more serious about staying with each other for all time, in spite of her being Catholic and me, Methodist. That was only a problem for my mom however, not us. Secretly we were living on the energy of the dream-promise of… marrying, despite how young and star-crossed we were.

For Christmas for instance, I ‘d got Phyllis a gift that was actually a ‘secret code’ hiding in plain sight: Namely, a cute little charm bracelet. I allowed Ma to check it out– especially emphasizing the cute little miniature majorette charm.

However, just before I got that bracelet wrapped up, I nefariously slipped in the contraband. I quickly attached it to the bracelet, and then took off, spiriting my special gift across town where I delightedly placed it under Phyllis’ Christmas tree.

(ta-dah!) The $2.99 “engagement-ring” charm, oh my!

Ma would be so pissed…

I’d also bought her one of those little pink and white music boxes with the tiny pirouetting ballet dancer positioned in front of its little mirror.

All well and good.

But gawd, even with that done Ma, with her Pentacostal upbringing, still managed to be a problem. When she asked me what else I was getting Phyl for Christmas, I told her, “A sweater.” But before I could get the next sentence out of my mouth, wherein I would have described the sweater I’d ordered, she threw a fit.

“A sweater?! Oh no, you’re not!”

“What? What’re you talking about? Why NOT?!”

“Because it’s not appropriate to be buying a young woman clothing, that’s why! Not at your age!”

“What the heck are you…? WHY can’t I buy Phyllis a…”

“You know very well why!”

“Excuse me!? No! I don’t think so! So… tell me, why don’tcha! Why?”

“Because men buy sweaters for women because… well for one reason: sweaters accentuate their breasts! That’s why!”

“Oh! My! God!”

But believe me, I got it then. Ma was still living in 1940’s World. I could just imagine the image that was going round and round in her brain. Phyllis as some steamy Mae West, and me as some sleazo!

“Ma! You’re… nuts! The sweater’s not going to accentuate… ANYTHING! It’s the same sweater I’m getting for mySELF! For cryin’ out loud! It’s not lingerie! It’s a cardigan! Come on! Gimme a break!” This was so embarrassing for me.

And by the way, even though we’d been going together for months, Phyllis and I hadn’t yet arrived at that level yet. I’d say we were both on “second base,” no further.

And hey, I loved it, being right where we were. Just being with her was all I cared about. It was like she was an angel. And quite honestly, I would have blushed if someone had spoken the word “breasts” aloud in our company.

Consider for example, one Saturday afternoon I walked Phyllis over to the Center Theatre to watch the movie West Side Story. I was loving it at first. It was so Romeo and Juliet. But then, in my opinion, something occurred near the end of the show that shocked, especially considering I was sitting right there shoulder-to-shoulder next to my angelic girlfriend.

When Anita (Rita Moreno) goes to Doc’s place to deliver a message to Tony (Richard Beymer), the Jets pretty much maul her, with the dance choreography depicting this as a very graphically simulated gang rape!

I was beside-myself-horrified! It was way too realistic for my tastes let alone, I believed, Phyl’s. I was silently haranguing myself with, Omigod! What kind of a movie have I brought my sweet, little girlfriend to?! What must Phyllis be thinking about this?! Or about ME… for bringing her to this… violent, sexual thing? Sinking down in my seat, I hardly had the guts to even look over at her. And after the movie, I walked her silently home, barely daring to speak. I pretty much figured I’d blown it.

Yes. I know. It seems silly today, doesn’t it. But that’s just how respectful, how virginal and sheltered some of us were back in the early 60’s. No, not everybody of course. But… me, for one. Today it seems ridiculous, but back then I was sweating bullets.

Turned out it hadn’t bothered her much at all. It was a non-issue. No biggie. Phew! But I was such a silly worry-wart. With so much growing up to do…

Yeah, the “crazy little thing called love” was so awkward for me, but upon looking back it was unbelievably wonderful and magic too. So yes, I love harkening back to my courtship days with my sweet girlfriend, Phyllis. So idyllic. So many great dates, beginning with that big one, our first real date: The Johnny Cash concert in Bangor, Maine.

You know, a lot of the time I couldn’t get to borrow my Uncle Archie’s car and had to use my dad’s bulky new Ford Econoline van with the Lyford’s TV Repair logo on the back, along with its large inventory of vacuum tubes, soldering irons, toolboxes, and the oscilloscope rattling around in the back. Not the most romantic ride.

But those were the wheels that charioted us to The Mallett Brothers and Johhny Cash.

Funny thing about the van. Dad once joked that he couldn’t drive up West Main Street without feeling the steering wheel suddenly lurch a little in his hands, tugging the van in the direction of Winter Street, the street on which Phyllis lived. It was like a horse that “knew the way” he told me, and was challenging his decision to go “off-trail.”

Oh, there are so many sweet memories I choose to wallow in every so often.

Like the day Phyl and I, with our picnic lunch, bicycled the whole five miles out to Sebec Lake’s Municipal Beach for a day in the sun, with swimming to cool off. Jeez, talk about being head over heels in love! That was such a magic day.

And then, when I graduated from the Academy in ’64, Ma wouldn’t let me go to the graduation parties everyone else was enjoying, lest I get drunk or something. Who knows. Instead (and this was such a dumb-dumb, embarrassing idea) she made me “celebrate” at home, setting up what she called a “party” for Phyllis and I and another couple. I was as mad as a wet hen, as they say, but it was hard to stay mad with pretty Phyllis right by my side, as this photo shows. I was happy that Ma was slowly coming around and accepting the inevitability of… Phyllis and me.

**The wild graduation “party.” And look how slim we both were!**

It wasn’t such a bad evening after all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So… summing this all up, I guess I’m trying to say that our “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” goes down in the scrapbook of our minds as that heavenly, magic period of our early innocent courtship. A period of incredible happiness and hopefulness and truly halcyon days and nights. I was so blessed to have that, just as I am blessed today (us having made a good dent in our 59th year of marriage and our at least 61 years of being a couple) to live my life with the most incredible woman I can imagine. She still drives me crazy every day– Still Crazy After All These Years…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And now, to end on a lighter note: alas: here is/are a look at those lascivious, immodestly infamous sweater(s) during our courtship (And please, for decency’s sake, do not scroll down farther if you’re under 21 years of age):

The garment as imagined by my mom:

**Mae West wearing Ma’s imagined Christmas gift sweater…**

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And then, the reality…

**The actual shockingly UGLY Christmas sweaters**…

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THIS OLD GUITAR Part II: Hello. I’m Johnny Cash

The subject of my most recent post was my mother’s old acoustic, six-string, arch-top guitar that had been lying around and gathering dust in our house since Ma’s 1940s country and western band heydays. That, and even more so, the almost fairy tale effect it ended up having on a couple of young boys during the early ’60s. Because that’s when I toted it all the way out to the Mallett homestead in Sebec, where it fell into the hands and creative imaginations of high school sophomore Neil and his sixth-grade brother, David Mallett. And then…

Ta-DAH! The Mallett Brothers duo was born!

And over the next few years, I was so very fortunate to be in a position to witness, and often even accompany, those troubadours as they entertained their growing fans with their many live performances; not to mention often catching their records playing on the radio or watching their television broadcasts. It was amazing. And I don’t care who, or how many others, would claim the same thing, I knew that I was their greatest, and longest lasting, fan.

By that time, I’d started flirting with freshman Phyllis Raymond. And the heavens knew that I was wishing for something extra to boost my image in her eyes. And then (abra cadabra!) an unexpected divine gift just seemed to fall right into my lap!

I’d met Neil in the school lobby one morning as usual just before school started.

“You’re not gonna believe this!” he told me with an excited grin.

“What?“

“Johnny Cash is coming to the Bangor Auditorium!“

“Whoa! No shit!?” That was news! “I mean, Wow!”

“Not only that! Red and I are gonna be opening for him!” (‘Red’ being the family nickname for David. They all had nicknames, all the brothers. Bub, Mose, and believe it or not, Neil’s was ‘Ike.’)

“What!? You are not! NO WAY!” That was the most unbelievable thing I’d ever heard.

“We really are!”

“That’s just crazy! But… how!?“

“Well, it’s not gonna be just us. A bunch of local musicians have been invited to play too.”

“Wow!“

And sure enough, there it was. That very day, right there in the Bangor Daily News that morning!

At that time, I had no idea then who George Jones, June Carter, or the others were, nor did I care. All I could think of was… this was a potential Date Made in Heaven! I couldn’t wait to pass Phyllis my note reading, “How would you like me to take you to see Johnny Cash in person??? I can make that happen!”

Can you imagine how cocky I felt, writing that? How manful I was feeling? How… lucky? Me thinking the only dates Phyllis had ever been on were (A) meeting up with somebody at the Rec Center or (B) being walked to some crummy high school play with me. Because like me, she was living in Nowheres-ville. But… come on! I mean, Johnny Cash! She’d have to be looking at me now as somebody interesting, you know? Somebody with connections. Somebody so… upperclassman. Like, maybe she was thinking, Who knows? Maybe Tommy will be getting us tickets to see… ELVIS next??? You never knew.

It was cold and raining hammers and nails on the night of the concert (I just stole a Tom Waits’ phrase there– I didn’t make that up). I’d only had my license for a couple of weeks, and I’d logged practically zero hours of night-time driving, so my driving was a little iffy, but still I was pushing it as fast as the speed limit allowed because we’d gotten off to a late start. We rolled into the auditorium parking lot, threw open the car doors, and ran (holding hands) through the rain to the main entrance!

Inside, I quickly pushed my three hard-earned dollar bills in through the ticket-lady’s window (and I mean, can you believe only a buck-fifty for a major concert???!!!). Already we were catching the faraway-upstairs-strains of David and Neil belting out “Tear After Tear,” so we flew up three flights like a couple of Hollywood lovers while the final movie credits were rolling through the happy ending of some big romantic movie!

We popped out into a gigantic balcony packed with Johnny Cash fans and, sure enough, way down there on the main floor, far away and looking tiny, were David and Neil harmonizing, picking, strumming, and just sounding so damn good.

They got to perform more numbers than I ever would have expected they’d be allowed, considering the size of the line-up slated to play after them. Probably it was because the audience was so into them, judging by the wild applause and whistling. They had fans from all over the state of Maine by that time. I felt so proud of them. And so blessed to have them as my friends.

It was a night to remember for them of course, but also for me. A handful of incidents, some of which I saw for myself and some which I learned from the Malletts who witnessed them first-hand backstage, remain logged in the memory-album of my brain.

A cute, though insignificant, one occurred while Neil and David were performing on stage. I was keeping my eyes glued right on them, so I didn’t miss it. I think it was David, but it could have just as well been Neil (David, I think). (Whichever.) Both of them were down there singing, picking, and strumming their hearts out when (bink!) like a glitch in the matrix, someone’s guitar pick launched from the strings like a tiddlywink. Sparkling in the spotlight’s beam over the heads of the audience, it arced out and way like an indoor micro-meteor! It was cool to see the performers do their double double-take the instant that happened, but then soldier right on like the troopers they were.

But there were things that weren’t so cool that evening, too.

There were a lot of other locals lined up to play before The Man in Black. They started off with a yokel named (wait for it) Yodeling Slim Clark (A.K.A., “Maine’s Great Yodeler”). Three guesses as to what he mostly did. And there were other locals too. Hal Lone Pine. (Sure. Somehow I too tend to doubt that that was Hal’s actual last name.) Big Slim? What? Two Slims on the same card? Terri Lynn? Jeanne Ward? I didn’t know them, nor do I remember their performances at all. It was getting to be a long night.

It was Yodeling Slim Clark who led off after The Mallett Brothers. And in between the numbers, some emcee from somewhere out of sight down on that stage babbled on at us from time to time like some carnival barker: “Hey folks. It won’t be long now for the main event!” Or “You just wait! Johnny’s champin’ on the bit to get on out here on stage with his Ring of Fire!” But George Jones was up and the audience went wild. I didn’t know who the hell he was at the time, but it was easy to gather from all the roars and the applause that he was of The Grand Ol’ Oprey Big Time. As was June Carter. I’d never heard of her either.

They night was growing long, everybody waiting and longing for The Man in Black. And then something ominous happened. “You know what, Ladies and Gentlemen? We’ve had lots of requests to hear old Yodeling Slim Clark one more time! Come on out, Slim!” And you could feel it rippling through the audience. What? Yodeling Slim, again? Why?! Good Lord, wasn’t once enough?! And then, “Don’t you worry, folks! Johnny’s here! And he’s gettin’ ready to come out here in just a few, and give you the show of a life time! He’s here!“

I immediately looked around at the fans seated around me, who were also immediately looking around at all the fans seated around them. Puzzled frowns all around! I heard a whisper behind me that took the whisper right out of my mouth. “Damn! I don’t think Johnny’s HERE!” And suddenly that was the writing on the wall. For all of us. There was a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. The emcee didn’t say he wasn’t here, but something about the way he insisted that he was here knocked the wind right out of your sails, I can tell you that. And then… damned if we weren’t listening to old Yodeling Slim all over again. Talk about adding insult to injury…

And guess what. Johnny really wasn’t there!

According to Neil, later on, the people responsible for the show were going nuts backstage. Pulling their hair out! Where the hell was he!? Nobody knew!

They’d been stalling for too long, which helps to explain the long night. I mean, can you imagine the bedlam there would be with everybody angry as hell… and demanding their money back?! After stringing us along seemigly forever, and then torturing us with Yodeling Slim a second time.

A coupla days later, Neil described Johnny’s actual arrival this way: All of a sudden a backstage double door was kicked open, letting the wind and rain gust in. And there he was! In a long, black coat, possibly a rain coat, and a cigarette poking out of the corner of his mouth. Behind him stood the band with their guitar cases and amps. Dripping wet, he stepped inside and flicked his cigarette butt across the floor! And Neil? He chased that butt down and scooped it up! And yes. He had himself a genuine, bona-fide Johnny Cash souvenir!

I know that he kept this memento for a long time in his billfold because he showed it to me. More than once.

However, once when I related this story to some people over at David’s home a few years ago, Neil pooh-poohed my account by saying, “I think you’re using quite a bit of poetic license there, Tommy,” to which David spoke up in my defense, “The hell he is.”

(Sorry, Neil)

Anyway, it turned out that Johnny and his good ol’ boys in the band were quite inebriated. That much was obvious by the way we watched Johnny swagger up to June Carter out there on the stage, toss his guitar over his back to hang off his shoulder by the guitar strap, grab June around the waist, tip her over a few degrees below the horizontal, and plant the longest kiss I’d ever seen planted on anybody’s lips. And the crowd erupted with whistles and catcalls! I was shocked!

I didn’t know it then because I knew nothing about June and very little about Johnny except his wonderful music, but both of them were married. And not to each other.

But not for long, after that.

A few days after the concert, word got around that Johnny and the band had demolished a couple of motel rooms where they’d spent their night. Probably in a drunken blackout. I don’t know.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But what I do know is… hell, that was one unforgettable date! Very heady stuff. Especially for a couple of small-town, never-been-anywheres like Phyllis and I. But as far as I was concerned, I’d totally done it. Because after a date like that, what girl was ever gonna drop me? I drove her home thinking, Oh yeah, chick’s gonna stick with me. (OK, I admit it. Actually I was thinking that with a big ‘I hope‘ tacked on.) But it was pretty good plus yardage for me.

I mean, hey, I was in with the Mallet Brothers, right? So, like, from her point of view, maybe anything was possible. Maybe I really would end up taking her to see Elvis next, for all she knew. Or… Ricky Nelson. Or…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But you know what blows my mind? That none of this might have (wouldn’t have), happened had it not been for one musical instrument that my Aunt Elva had purchased for my mom, Violet Lyford back in the early 1940’s.

Because in 1963, it just so happens that one antique guitar was shown to two young boys, along with a tiny bit of brainless instruction about how to play four simple guitar chords. And a duo who called themselves The Mallett Brothers hit the stage shortly after.

Later the youngest one, David, went off to college with his guitar, and over time blossomed into this amazing national and international singer-songwriter who to this day has seventeen albums to his credit. And today, two of his sons are setting the world, or at least America for now, on fire as The Mallett Brothers 2.0.

You want some irony though? Some twenty-five years later, after the original Mallett Brothers began, I’m still fooling around with those same stinkin’ four chords. Yeah. How do you like them apples?

But whatta say… LET’S HEAR IT FOR MA’S GUITAR…!!!

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THIS OLD GUITAR

I grew up in a home that had an old acoustic guitar just lying around in it. It was my mom’s.

Way back in the early 1940’s, she and some of her wild siblings and friends formed a locally popular country-western band that played at the area Grange halls. According to a 1999 article in Paper Talks: as dirt-poor as they were, Ma’s (Violet’s) older sister Elva earned enough cash by “cutting potato seed” to purchase a guitar for herself and one for her. They named themselves The Bar-K Buckaroos. Mom’s brother Chester, a born con man, acted as the band’s “manager” under the imaginative name Ace Dixon.

(A cherished Lyford family story is that our dad, Raymond, was smitten and became a big fan of mom’s during one of their concerts. Reportedly performing a popular song of the day called “Winking at You,” she came strolling down through the audience, coming to a stop right in front of him, and then personally serenading him with a few lines. {And winked at him!} And the rest is history.)

So anyway, the guitar. When I was in junior high, Ma taught me three basic chords, all in the key of C: C, F, and G7. I discovered that with those three, I could navigate my wannabe singer’s voice through most of the popular songs at that time. Eventually, however, I found that if I ever wanted to be able to handle The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” I had to familiarize myself with the A minor chord as well. I mean, anybody and everybody who was learning guitar that I knew wanted to play that particular song, it being so dark and cool.

Back in 1960 I had a friend who owned an electric guitar and an amp. I’d spend hours with him in his bedroom taking turns blasting his neighbors. We’d crank that amp up to a 7 on the Richter scale and let’er rip. This Wayne Smith was so much more talented than I was. (And if you’re wondering how good I was, my answer is: not so much. I think I got to be… promising, but that’s as far as I ever got.)

I’d learned the do re mi scale in C though, which enabled me to pick out the melodies of popular songs in that key fairly easily. So from Wayne’s bedroom, the neighbors got treated to my loud rendition of “Apache,” an instrumental made by famous by The Shadows in 1960, or The Ventures’ popular “Walk Don’t Run.” On top of that, and being nuts over Johnny Cash, I worked hard to learn to play the chords of his hits in his signature style while picking out the melodies to boot.

But like I said, “promising, but that’s as far as I ever got.” There are a couple of reasons:

(1) I’m lazy.

I’d already learned to play practically everything I wanted to play in the key of C. Trying to master playing the necessary chords for pop songs in other keys? Well, that was difficult, wasn’t it. Smacked of effort. So why bother? C was good enough for me. And besides, if I wanted to play songs in higher or lower chords… hey, that’s what capos are for, right?

So… laziness.

(2) I suffered from terminal stage fright.

Although in the safety and privacy of my room I practiced! practiced! practiced! like I was trying to get to Carnegie Hall (and had even begun to show some definite growth), the problem was this: the moment I’d feel a few eyes bearing down on me while playing, my brain would just fly right out the window.

It’s been that way all my life. For instance, as a kid I played a lot of basketball with a number of older kids. Every weekend after Central Hall Rec Center closed down at 10:00 pm, a bunch of us would rent the floor and play ball till 1:00 am next morning. I got really good at it too. I’d honed a hook shot that was deadly. I was hell on wheels.

Now of course, you’re probably thinking, Oh sure, in HIS OWN OPINION he was hell on wheels. So… how good was I really? Answer: good enough to make the starting five on the A-squad three years running. In 7^th grade. In 8^th grade. And in my freshman year.

Why?

Stage fright. Oh, I was just great during practices. And in each one of those three years, when the jump-ball tip-off signaled the start of first game of the season, I was right out there on the floor. with the rest of the starting team. But…

There’d end up being about 150 fans’ eyes gawking at us, but particularly right at me (or so I felt). Consequently, I became dazed, confused, and “frozen.” One of my teammates would shoot the ball over to me and guess what: I’d just stand there, watching the ball bounce off my chest and disappear out of bounds.

And after that happened twice, Coach would call me over to the sidelines, look deep into my eyes and ask, sincerely, “Tommy. What’s going on?!” And my answer (to each successive coach, three years running) was always the same: an embarrassed, “I… don’t know…” After which I’d spend the rest of the season warming the bench.

Sad irony: I was as bad at performing with the guitar as I was at basketball. And not only that but, yeah, up through my sophomore year in high school it was also that way when talking to pretty girls. Which sucked, but… it just was what it was.

See, this is what the ancient Greeks called a ‘tragic flaw.’

However (A) by 1962, I was still looking sort-of-hopefully toward my (possible?) musician-future-stardom with some degree of optimism, but (B) although I had no way of ever expecting the irony of it (nobody would or could have), the future-BIG-payday teased at by the windfall of Ma’s guitar wasn’t going to be about…

…me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now, I’ve mentioned in previous posts that my best friend throughout high school (and beyond) was a fella named Neil Mallett. He grew up in Sebec, Maine, located a few miles north of my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft. From kindergarten through eighth grade, Sebec kids attended school in Sebec. However, beginning with their freshman year, they joined us ‘townies by enrolling in Foxcroft Academy.

Neil and I were both enrolled in the College Prep curriculum at FA, so the two of us ended up taking all the same classes. Not only that, but Neil ended up sitting right behind me in pretty much every class due to the fact that our unimaginative teachers could think of no better way than alphabetical order to arrange our seating plans. This recurring proximity sealed our friendship. Consequently, I soon found myself becoming a frequent visitor out at his home in Sebec.

We didn’t have a lot in common at first. I lived in town in a house resting on a boring single acre of land; Neil lived in the country. Our house was boxed in by the houses of our many, many next-door neighbors. He lived in a not-at-all crowded, neighbor-filled-neighborhood. His homestead had all kinds of things mine didn’t. An old field truck that I could drive. A tractor. A huge barn. A flock of sheep. A big German Shepherd. At least four other brothers. A mom filled with spooky stories. Big country breakfasts every morning. And lots of fields with haying to be done.

It was wonderful. For me, a rural agricultural Disneyland. I wanted to live out there in Mallettville. I wanted to be a Mallett.

I stayed over often.

**Dumbass me.** **Notice the brown rectangular roof of the *very large building* down below in the upper half of the photo, for a sense of scale…**

All kinds of things happened out there. For one thing, I got fear-frozen up maybe 200+ feet up on the 260-foot, still-under-construction Telstar tower that was adjacent to one of their properties.

Practically all the boys from miles around felt compelled to climb that tower at one time or another. It was a rite of passage.

Another thing that happened is that I got to spend almost an entire summer haying out there. My God, it was hard, hot and sweaty work, but I loved every minute of it.

Now, harking back to the real adventure: one time out there, in the winter of ‘62, I got to talking about how much I was enjoying playing my Ma’s guitar at home. Neil’s and his younger brother David’s ears perked right up my descriptions. And so I got asked to bring Ma’s guitar out there for them to check out next time I came over.

So we made plans for that.

“It was a dark and stormy night.” Freezing, windy, and snowing. One of Neil’s older brothers pulled up in our driveway to chauffer the guitar and me off to Sebec. And since the entire rear window of the car was for some reason missing and the snowflakes were swirling around inside the interior, I wrapped the instrument up in an old blanket to keep it as dry as possible. It was about a 10-minute ride.

So anyway, the guitar arrived in one piece (and no worse for the wear), and we brought it into the warm Mallett living room. Everybody gathered around for my little demonstration. And believe it or not, even though I was among very good friends, I still got as nervous as hell while doing it.

Wow though, Neil and young David really got into the whole idea that with only three, maybe four chords, you could play “any song.”

***BOYS! Grow Giant Mushrooms in YOUR Cellar!***

Sounds pretty much like a pitch from one of those ads in the back of some 1950’s comic book, doesn’t it. But that is pretty much what I told them anyway. But of course…that turned out to be an unintentional untruth of course.

Anyway, it was a hands-on experience for them, each taking turns, trying out the chords, and immediately learning about the guitar-player’s painful fingertips. But I figured that, like most kids who just dream and dream of playing the guitar, that the nitty-gritty reality of the commitment involved would end up making short work of that dream. Besides, they didn’t even own a guitar.

But unbeknownst to me, the guitar I’d just handed over was like Jack’s magic beans in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Something immediately took root in these two guys. I mean, by placing that completely ordinary musical instrument into their sweaty little palms, I was unwittingly creating a monster. (Well, two monsters actually.) (And to be clear: I’m talking ‘monster’ in a good way… in a very good way.)

Because in a few weeks, they had a guitar of their own. And in a few more weeks, they had two guitars! And damn, they could both play them! Head and shoulders above what I was capable of. And on top of that they’d discovered they could sing as well, David assuming the lead vocalist role, and Neil backing him up with the harmony. They quickly assembled a playlist of popular folk and country songs and took them out on the road.

**This article from *Up North* (Jan/Feb 2008) by Shelagh Talbot**

Next thing you knew, they were performing a couple of numbers before the student body at Foxcroft. And were a sensation. Everybody loved their sound. Word got out. Their reputation spread. They were asked to perform gigs at Rec Center, churches, weddings, and grange halls just like my mom. And they had become… The Mallett Brothers.

(Yes, I know– right this very moment there is a nationally popular band called The Mallett Brothers [David’s two sons, Luke and Will] out there making a big, successful splash in the music world, but Neil and David were the original Mallett Brothers back in the 60’s.)

Before you knew it, they were even showing up on television— TV talent shows, performing in guest spots with other well-known local singers, and then (lo and behold!) they came out with their own television show!

Early in the 60’s I was fortunate in that, being such a close family friend and all, I was allowed to accompany them on their various grange hall gigs all over the area. I liked to think of myself as sort of their ‘roadie’ but, in reality, I was more of groupie, just tagging along for the adventure.

And then, in another blink of an eye it seemed, they began cutting a few 45 rpm records. And songwriting became added to the mix. That was a family affair, beginning with their mom, Pauline, who penned the song, “Solomon,” (the yellow label featured in the photo below). The Mallett Brothers were off and running.

These records found their way to radio stations around the state of Maine, got plenty of play time, and bolstered their growing popularity.

The 45 in the center is titled “Cole’s Express.” The story behind that one is that The Mallett Brothers got hired by a large firm in the small city of Bangor, ME, namely Cole’s Express. They were hired to sing their way north to south, east to west all over the state of Maine to promote Mr. Cole’s company. It was a lucrative deal.

Oh how I envied them, staying in motels, meeting all kinds of interesting people, and getting paid for doing something they were more than passionate about. The YouTube video below was recorded during one of their stops in Fort Fairfield, Maine.

But hey, one of the best and most memorable of the many gigs I got to accompany them on was on Monday, July 20th, 1963. This was during the total solar eclipse of that year, at the dead center of the eclipse path which lay smack-dab in Dexter, Maine. Dexter hosted an unforgettable 4-day celebration that included vendors, food, dancing, a talent show, and music.

Headlining the music on the stage that day was The Mallett Brothers. The weather was perfect. And a family of performers were so taken by David and Neil, that they invited us to come out to view the eclipse on their family’s farm. It was great. We got to watch the confused cows slowly heading in across the fields toward the barn only to stop and turn around when the sun came back out. And then we also got to hear the rooster crow an untimely cock-a-doodle-doo, announcing morning for the second time that day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here’s my point… well, at least PART I of my point (look for one other ‘Part’ of the point in this adventure). So many things subsequently happened only because there was this old guitar, a left-over relic from the 1940’s, left leaning up against a side of our piano in the family living room back in the mid-1950s. I mean, suppose my mom never received that guitar in the first place, and that there’d never been a little country western group called the Bar-K Buckaroos. Would I have taken that amateur interest in playing a guitar anyway? I don’t see how. At least not then. Would I ever get some other opportunity to learn about those three chords? Possibly. A lot of kids did.

On the other hand, I’m pretty positive I would have met and befriended Neil anyway though, thanks to the alphabetical-seating-order-fetish of those unimaginative teachers of FA’s College Prep classes. But there wouldn’t have been that particular winter’s night gathering in the Mallett living room, listening to me playing those easy chords.

In fact, minus the cause (the guitar) and effect (David’s and Neil’s early musical career) I, Neil, and David could all very likely be living lives in some alternative reality. I mean… horror of all horrors, what if I’d (haha) gone over there and, in an enthusiastically glorified and charismatic manner, shared with them the basketball path I was futilely trying to master, and had somehow tantalized and mesmerized them with the amazing scientific precision of that deadly “hook shot” I had honed so sharply? Might then Neil and David have put their creative energies into competitive sports instead? And might David and Neil have become famous brother-athletes on a national scale, like Peyton and Eli Manning?

OK, now you’re probably wondering what it is I’m smoking. Just being facetious. But yeah. Really. What if there hadn’t been that guitar at all, eh? Did the guitar have anything to do with me finding a permanent girlfriend? Yes!

Did that guitar have anything to do with David and Neil crossing paths with The Man in Black, Johnny Cash? Yes, I believe so!

But stay tuned to find out. Look for “This Old Guitar, Part II” in the next day or two.

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THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY II: She Blinded Me With Science !!

From the conclusion of THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY…

“Ah hah. She was there. Fate? And Serendipity?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She spotted me first.

I saw this little, nonchalant wave from way up there at the uppermost level of the bleacher seats. Along with the hint of a wry smile? I waved back and smiled back, and then began threading my way up between the seated fans to join her.

But man, I was feeling a queasy apprehensiveness (otherwise known as cowardly cold feet.) Because I honestly didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I had no idea what to say when I got up there. There was no plan. No script. No brain functioning at the moment. So unlike me. Winging it. Onward and upward though!

But God! What were we ever gonna talk about…? Biology?

I eased myself down beside her. We had the gym’s cinder block wall behind us to lean our backs against. I took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. And then… we eyeballed each other for a moment. Me, daring myself not to avert my eyes in this uncomfortable, eye-to-eye-contact contest. My brain-dead shyness was breathing its bad breath down my neck, just waiting for the cue. And me, pretty sure I’d just put my foot in it once again.

“You came,” she said. That was like moving a pawn forward a couple of spaces to start the game.

My move.

“Yeah.”

My intimidated pawn cautiously crawling only a single space out onto the board.

Her move. (please say something please say something please…)

“I wasn’t sure you would.”

OK, my move, my move, my move! What to say? God, this was like my first time swimming all the way out over my head at the beach, hoping like hell I was gonna make it out to The Float without drowning, or at least getting any bloodsuckers stuck on me!

“Yeah. Me either. Same here. I mean. I wasn’t sure you’d… you know…”

Pure eloquence!

“So…” she said.

“So…” That was me. (obviously.)

“Guess it’s time.”

“Yeah.”

Wait. What?

“Uhm, time for… what? What for exactly?”

She held up her index finger. “You said you wanted to see it.”

“Oh, God, yes! Yeah.”

You know what? Somehow she didn’t seem a thing like the same girl I’d been assigned as a lab partner that morning. That girl with the sullen, angry, Jimmy Dean vibe. (And yes, I know I should’ve come up with some female movie star’s name other than Jimmy Dean’s, who was, yes, a guy, but…

She proffered me her hand. I took it. Once again. I took a breath. Then pretended, with a put-on, officious frown, to administer a professional medical examination of the finger. “Yes,” I said presumptuously. “Hmmm. I see, I see.”

“SO… is it… OK?”

“Well, yes. It is.” Were we really playing ‘Doctor‘ here? “I see you’re down to a single, standard Band-aid. That’s a good sign.”

“Oh yes. Johnson & Johnson.”

“Of course. The very best.”

“So…?”

“Uhmmm… so… lemme think… Well, I guess take two aspirin, stop being a bleeder, and call me in the morning.”

My God, we were talking. I was talking.

“Technically, I’m not a bleeder though.”

OK. That earned a frown from me. “No? Oh, that’s right. Because… technically you didn’t bleed out and drop dead on the biology classroom floo…”

I didn’t get to finish that sentence. And the reason is…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. What I’m about to relate IS, I swear, a true story. If you find it unbelievable, just know this: looking back on it, so do I. And so did my brother. Not to mention my mother, after she found out about it. But this really did happen. Only the dialogue here is generally and creatively extrapolated from the known bits and pieces of this distant recollection. The actions herein are not. They are 100% real.

The memory of this… let’s call it the ‘in-the-bleachers moment’ (along with the many like-minutes that followed on its heels) I’ve kept stored away in the private little “steamer trunk” in my head for all these decades, along with all my other bizarre, embarrassing, or in some cases seriously unfortunate real secrets.

So, why now? Age, I guess. From the perspective of this, my 78^th year on the planet, things that once made me blush, or made my heart practically beat itself right out of the ribs of my rib cage, seem silly and trivial now. And so many, I’ve discovered, can make for some pretty entertaining stories, just begging to be let out of the box and be told.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So. Sue had just claimed, “Technically, I’m not a bleeder though.”

And my snarky comeback began, “No? Oh that’s right. Because technically you didn’t bleed out and drop dead on the biology classroom floo…”

And the reason I didn’t get to finish that sentence is…

She kissed me! And Wow! I really hadn’t seen that coming! And it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to duck. But when I say she kissed me, I mean she KISSED me! This was no peck on the cheek! No smack on the lips! She planted one on my mouth that kept it shut for 30 seconds! She’d wrapped her left arm around my neck and then pressed her right hand on the back of my head while she did it!

Now, did I stop her and try to push her away? Did I say, “Hold on, there. Don’t you think that was a little inappropriate? I mean, considering we’re seated right out here in public at a basketball game, in plain sight of a couple hundred fans?”

Nope. The answer is no. N-O, NO. I did not.

I mean, c’mon guys, I was fifteen, right? Juliet’s age in Romeo and Juliet (and me not due to turn sixteen until July, seven months away.) And whoa, I was just getting really kissed for the very first time in my life, wasn’t I! And it had happened so fast, any pros and cons I might have had would’ve just been swept away right out on the tide like so much flotsam and jetsam anyway. Yeah, this being my first “real” kiss and all, what happened to me during that thirty-seconds was something the likes of which I’d never could’ve imagined.

First of all, I was stunned. Stunned emotionally, but also physically, like I’d just been stung all over in a somewhat pleasant jellyfish attack.

Secondly the world all around me had just shrunk right down to a Sue-and-I-sized bubble. I mean, where’d that basketball game go? I didn’t know. I didn’t question it. I didn’t care. Out of sight, out of mind.

I could only concentrate on the face looking back at me, close as a mirror image.

Thirdly, the only thing going on around that bubble for all I knew was those Fourth of July fireworks. Because from my preadolescent viewpoint, that was a Hollywood kiss! Just like in the movies, where I’d been primed to expect a crescendo of orchestra music and fireworks.

And finally, something “magical” was going on; something was happening all over me, inside and out, from head to toe, and I had no idea how to take it. It was like a buzz. Best comparison I can come up with is a massive infusion of adrenaline. Close, I guess, but no cigar. No, it was something else. (And no, I’m not talking about something of a prurient or sexual nature, so get your mind out of the gutter, if that’s where it is. It was nothing like that.)

OK, now today I know exactly what was going on, whereas way back there in those Dark Ages of the early 1960’s, it was something none of my generation could ever possibly have had even an inkling of. So…

I’ll lay it all out for you so that, in my defense, you will completely understand why I was in no position, in no state of mind whatsoever, to have had the wherewithal to say, “Hold on, there. Don’t you think that was a little inappropriate? I mean, considering we’re seated right out here in public at a basketball game in plain sight of a couple hundred fans?”

And yes, I have every confidence you will find me innocent of all charges.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But first… It’s time for a little TED TALK here. So get out your pens and notebooks, boys and girls. I’m going to teach you something about the Science of Kissing. I’m going to explain three Facts of Life that I’m betting you are unaware of or, if you have stumbled upon this information in the past, you’ve likely forgotten all about it.

The following is an article I discovered on Google. The author is one Emer Maguire, winner of the Northern Irish Installment of the International Science Communication Competition, FameLab.

READ IT. THERE COULD BE A QUIZ AFTERWARD…

“WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR BRAIN WHEN WE KISS?

“The brain goes into overdrive during the all-important kiss. It dedicates a disproportionate amount of space to the sensation of the lips in comparison to much larger body parts. During a kiss, this lip sensitivity causes our brain to create a chemical cocktail that can give us a natural high. This cocktail is made up of three chemicals, all designed to make us feel good and crave more: dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin.

“Like any cocktail, this one has an array of side-effects. The combination of these three chemicals work by lighting up the ‘pleasure centres’ in our brain. The dopamine released during a kiss can stimulate the same area of the brain activated by heroin and cocaine. As a result, we experience feelings of euphoria and addictive behaviour. Oxytocin, otherwise known as the ‘love hormone’, fosters feelings of affection and attachment. This is the same hormone that is released during childbirth and breastfeeding. Finally, the levels of serotonin present in the brain whilst kissing look a lot like those of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

“No wonder the memory of a good kiss can stay with us for years.”

And so, worthy Members of the Jury, I ask you to now consider the evidence that undeniably finds my client, little Tommy Lyford here, INNOCENT of any and all charges. Because, as the facts have clearly shown, at the much too innocent age of only fifteen (and also unbeknownst to him), he was unwittingly administered a powerful Dopamine-Oxytocin-Serotonin Cocktail that had rendered him not only unable to lucidly make sound and healthy decisions, but also left him in an induced state of helpless euphoria.

And… ahem, in the very words of the defendant himself, in his closing statement delivered earlier after taking the stand and testifying in his own defense…

“For cryin’ out loud! SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE!“

(The defense rests.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Alright. Now that I’ve been exonerated in the courtroom of my own mind at least, the story continues…

Maybe twelve seconds after the kiss ended, I found myself reeling. And gazing into an impish twinkle in her pale blue eyes. And what devilish message was that flirtatious grin taunting me with? How’d you like them apples, homeboy? Or, Boy, you oughtta see your face right now?

I had no idea. I was just… happily flustered, to say the least. The Hollywood movie I’d been longing for in my daydreams had just come right down off the silver screen and right into the movie seats to audition me.

And… when I noticed her face starting to float back over toward mine once again for a close-up re-take of my screen-test, my face ended up meeting hers half-way! Coked to the gills on the Dopamine-Oxytocin-Serotonin-Cocktail, I threw myself into the role!

Knowing practically nothing about real “love scenes,” it turned out I must have been somewhat of an idiot-savant. A star was born!

We kissed each other’s brains out!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later that evening I was home, and situated at the kitchen table having a snack from the fridge. Just Ma and I were there. Everything was fine. In fact everything was really far better than fine. I was glowing inside. And why not? Glinda the Good Witch had (apparently) floated down from The Emerald City and tapped me with her magic wand.

It was just like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. One minute I was Barney Fife…

and Hey Presto! the next minute I was a certified make-out-artist-Lothario!

Life was good. Going over and over the evening in my mind, I was still rocked by it all. I mean, Einstein was right: Time actually can stand still! Did you know that? I mean, first there was that amazing, steamroller kiss. Then… we’d leaned into each other and, wow, the real kissing began. And even though it seemed like we’d just begun… suddenly, like Cinderella’s twin-alarm-clock fairy godmothers, Sue’s actual twin sisters (I didn’t even know she had twin sisters) were urgently tapping on both of our shoulders, telling us it was time for Sue to go home, that their ride was here. Wow. It was like… waking up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But yeah. Back to the present: There I was sitting at the kitchen table, when suddenly the kitchen door burst open! It was my older brother, Denny. He came barging in to the kitchen like Paul Revere sounding the alarm!

Denny: Ma! Tommy was making-out with a girl tonight! Practically all night, too!

Ma (from the pantry): WHAT!

Me: (cringing silently)

Denny: Right there in the bleachers, Ma! During the game and everything!

Ma (bustling into the kitchen): “NO!”

Denny: Yes! And he wouldn’t stop! He just kept… jeez, doing it!

Me (privately under his breath): Why oh WHY, just once can’t you do something bad so I can rat you out?!

Ma (incensed): TOMMY???

Denny: Right in front of everybody! Right there in the bleachers where everybody…

Ma: I said, TOMMY???

Me (in desperation): That’s not true! We were seated way up top in the bleachers. There was nobody behind us to see, Ma! And everybody in front of us…well, they was watching the GAME! I SWEAR!

Denny: How the heck would YOU ever know?

Ma (fit to be tied): We didn’t bring you up like… ! We didn’t bring you up to make a SPECTACLE of yourself, and our family, like that! You should be ASHAMED of yourself!

Me (biting my tongue, wanting to say: But you know what, Ma? I’m NOT!)

Ma: Just you wait till your father gets home!

Denny: Oh yeah. And there’s one more thing!

Ma: Oh Lord, no! What?

Me (cringing even worse):

Denny: (plunging the dagger deep in my back) She’s (drum roll, please)… Catholic! And she’s a (blanked-out-family-name for anonymity)! You know, the ones from Atkinson!

Me (whispering under his breath): “Et tu, Bruté?”

Ma: OK, mister, You are so grounded!!!!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But… TO END ON A LIGHT NOTE…

I need to say this. I’m a big Seinfeld fan. And whenever I re-visit the above confrontation in my head, all I can think of is that hilarious episode of Seinfeld where Newman (Hello… NEWMAN) barges into Jerry’s apartment and lets it be known that he witnessed Jerry shamefully making out in a movie theater during the screening of Schindler’s List.

Go ahead. Play the clip…

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THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY

I still didn’t really have a lot going for me as a high school freshman.

Well, I had escaped my K-through-8 World. And that was pretty big. I mean, leaving all my embarrassing ‘dirty laundry’ behind me back in grade school:

Getting sucker-punched right off a playground swing seat by… a girl;

Nearly losing my manhood wrapped around a maple tree trunk with a bicycle crossbar between my Buster Browns;

Surviving the shame and trauma of “The First Kiss Gone BAD” Milestone”;

And of course, having barely escaped THE TENDER TRAP set by the two feral little vixens, Sandra (Dee) and Wendy (with my virginity still intact).

But at least on day-one at Foxcroft Academy, I was starting off all over again with a clean slate, playfully toying with the thought of becoming a monk in a monastery. Well no, not really, not seriously. That was just me being a drama queen. But hey, at least I wouldn’t exactly have to take a vow of chastity, would I. The universe seemed to have already conferred that vow on me arbitrarily.

But unfortunately being a high school freshman came with a curse: Health Class had clued me in to the sad truth of the matter that girls mature both physically and mentally two or three years earlier than boys. (And of course I was, like, Gosh, you don’t say! Oh wait… that’s right! Now you mention it, I do seem to recall two chicks named Sandra (Dee) and Wendy who’d definitely surpassed me in maturity.)

But here’s the thing:

(A) First of all, that implied that most girls my own age were only likely to find boys who were older than me (1) more attractive, (2) generally more interesting, and therefore (3) more compatible for dating (damnit!).

(B) I was now, a lowly ninth grader trapped in a grades-nine-through-twelve school building with not one, single, solitary female younger than me in a radius of two miles around in any direction. Meaning, that I was gonna hafta wait two frickin’ years before any female (who might [or even might not] find me (1) attractive, (2) interesting, and therefore (3) compatible for dating) would ever show up!

And (C) damnit all again, when you’ve got at least the beginnings of your hormones sputtering to life inside you, as I had, you just can’t seem to ever throw in the towel and give up trying in spite of yourself. No matter how hard you try.

So there it was, the writing on the wall: my chances for any ninth- or tenth-grade love life loomed before me like some pot-holed, dead-end street.

Yeah, and it wasn’t helping that I wasn’t popular. Plus, no successful athlete either. Me, still short for my age. And all in all… I’m talkin’ basically just some silly, frivolous little class-clown learning vicariously all about life through the likes of Mad Magazine and …

that quirky and very dated 1950’s sit-com, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. (About this: please understand that the irony of that show’s title was the fact that Dobie Gillis could never end up getting himself a girlfriend if his life depended on it.) (And if that scenario should sound somehow familiar, you’re probably thinking of my life up to this point in my story. In fact, I seriously considered titling this post “I, Dobie Gillis“).

All the beautiful babes on the show (like Thalia Menninger below, played by teen, Tuesday Weld) always ended up going for the filthy rich guys (like Milton Armitage, played by Warren Beatty [also below], or the popular captains of the sports teams).

See, like Dobie, I too was stuck obsessing over the bevy of out-of-reach, more-mature-than-me, high school dreamboats that were always whispering and giggling together in the cafeteria.

Well. OK. I did have that one and only thing going for me. The Charles Simic thing. Poetry. I’d been dabbling in doggerel (poetry written by dogs) ever since fourth grade. My rhyming-dictionary-brain could put just about any thoughts or sentiments into rhyme. In fact, by the time I’d got to high school, I’d already built myself quite a little reputation as the ‘Class Poet.’ (Also the ‘Class Clown,’ but that’s neither here nor there.)

So anyway, there I was, languishing in the leaky rowboat of my potential ‘love-life,’ adrift on a sea of study halls, and praying to Neptune that by casting my poetry nets and shiny little poem-lures, I just might beat the odds, just might luck out and reel in one of the more (alright, perhaps more desperate) physically and mentally developed trophies lurking out there in those shallows of academia…

Me, The Young Man and the Sea.

But it’s funny, isn’t it. How sometimes “The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”? How Fate and Serendipity can conspire by rolling the dice of your destiny behind your back?

What I’m hinting at is…

SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In Lap Lary‘s biology class (familiarly called “Lap” because as the high school track coach, I guess he was known for making slackers run extra laps), I sat in a front seat. Sitting in the front seat wasn’t my idea. Lap [Fate] put me there to help me ‘pay attention.’ Yeah, he was very helpful that way.

I wasn’t at all thrilled with biology, but occasionally we had a lab that was actually interesting. Case in point, one day as part of a unit on the circulatory system, we were learning about the different blood types. The lab required us to pair up with the student seated next to us [Serendipity] and (and here was the scary part) draw a few drops of blood from each other. Those drops would then be mounted on slides to be examined under a microscope, and then ‘typed’ by us.

So the student seated next to me happened to be a girl. A girl I didn’t know. And I knew everybody else in that class because we sophomores had all been freshmen together. But this girl hadn’t been. I knew absolutely nothing about her. And of course, it felt a little awkward, being assigned some unknown girl as an instant lab partner, especially when I was expecting to pair up with one of my buddies.

But, whatever— I dragged my desk around so the fronts of mine and hers were touching and she and I were facing each other.

“Tom,” I said, by way of introduction.

Looking a lot bored, she responded, “Sue.”

She was very skinny, kind of plain, and seemingly freckled all over. I mean, if the school were to put on a play version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, she’d be a shoo-in for Tom’s girlfriend, Becky Thatcher. No Natalie Wood there. But of course, I was more a lot more Mickey Rooney than a Paul Newman, so…

“Can I ask how where you’re from?”

“Can you? You just did,” she said sourly.

“Yeah. OK. I’m sorry. None of my busin…”

“This class stinks.”

“Oh.” So. Neither a Natalie nor an academic, then. “OK.” I tried for a little chit-chat. “Yeah. And me? I’m not doing too hot at it right now. I”ll probably end up right back here in this same seat, same time next year.”

“Doubt it,” she said, rolling he eyes like she found my attempt at chit-chat boring. But of course she would, wouldn’t she, what with girls maturing a couple of years earlier than guys. Whatever.

Lap was distributing the lab kits: alcohol swabs, Band-aids, cotton-batting balls, the little silver cylinder that housed its tiny, spring-operated fingertip-nicker, and our microscopes. “Whattaya say?” I asked. “Wanna do me first, or should I do…”

“I’ll do you.”

“Oh. OK. Hey, You sound a little nervous.”

“You’re the nervous one here.”

She was right. So I decided to zip it. And we began. with her swabbing the tip of my index finger.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Minutes later, I was winding a Band-aid around it, not that I was really bleeding or anything. Just a couple drips. Turned out my blood is O-positive. Good to know. Then it was my turn.

So she laid her small, surprisingly cold hand, knuckles-down, in my open palm. I swabbed her fingertip, cocked the little silver doo-hickey, and asked, “You ready?”

“Whatta you think?”

Hmmm. I said, “O-kay.” Man, so far I barely knew what her voice even sounded like, she was so talkative.

Not that I cared. (snick!)

I already had the glass slide lying at the ready on a paper towel. So, like a cop inking a felon’s fingerprint, I turned her hand over and gently dabbed her finger (which was bleeding rather noticeably, by the way) on the slide, immediately thinking, Whoa, that’s a little more blood than I was expecting! Actually, blood was dribbling off over all four sides of the little slide. And when I tried to cap that slide with the upper slide in preparation for the microscope, Jesus, blood squished right out from between them! By that time, it was more than a little obvious that her bleeding was getting more than just a little out of control. My fingers were all bloodied.

“Oh my God!” I said, which is most always what I say just before a panic attack kicks in. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

Oh? ‘Yeah?‘ I thought. You are? I snatched up the dinky little Band-aid and, in trying to tear it out of its paper wrapper, nearly tore it in half! And Jesus, now the blood was getting all over both my hands and hers, not to mention the entire Band-aid while I struggled trying to remove its two little plastic tabs! Meanwhile, there was red Rorschach blot growing on the paper towel, just like my panic! Jesus! The Band-aid just wasn’t going to cut it!

I dropped it and pinched the tip of her finger tight to stanch the bleeding, leaned my big-bulging-eyed, panicked-face right up eye-to-eye with her calm face (jeez, how could she be calm?!), and whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on here!”

“I’m… Well, I’m kind of a bleeder,” she confessed.

A bleeder! Kind of?! Oh yeah, that’ was all’s all I needed to hear right then! (And she’d said it so calmly! As if she were just telling me her shoe size or something. JESUS! SHOULDN’T SHE BE PANICKING TOO?!)

“Mr. Lary!” I yelled over my shoulder. No answer. “MISTER LARY! We need HELP OVER HERE!” A second or two passed. Then from somewhere seemingly way too far off in the classroom behind me, I heard his bemused voice. “Be with you in a minute.”

In a MINUTE??? No! “NOWWWWWWW! RIGHT NOWWWW! HELP! WE GOT BLOOD HERE!” And then there he was! Standing over our double-desks and looking down upon the mess! “Oh wow! That’s… That’s a lotta blood!”

“I know I know I KNOW! She’s a BLEEDER, damnit!”

“Ooh! OK. Keep pressure on that finger. Be right back. Going for the first-aid kit!” And off he went. Leaving me holding hands with a dying sophomore! And by now, most of the kids were gathering around us, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and packing us in close, finding the two of us deliciously fascinating!

But… blood is a funny thing, isn’t it. For some, it just is what it is. For others, it’s just not so wise to let them catch sight of it. Take Ronnie, for instance.

Ronnie the big, brave football player. While peering down upon my partner’s little bloodbath of a desktop, his face drained of all color, leaving his complexion ashy, with an almost greenish tint. Then, like an oak… TIMBER! Down he went! Fortunately for him, someone caught and cradled his head before it would otherwise have bounced off the floor.

Lap had reappeared but, jeez, now he was on his knees tending to Ronnie! Me thinking, Let the lunk tend to his OWN self, why don’tcha?!

I found Sue looking at me, still all cucumber-calm. Which irked me, in my panic. “ Now look what you’ve gone and done.”

“Me?! You’re the one that stabbed me, remember?!” Wow. I hadn’t seen that coming!

“Well,, when you were stabbing me, mighn’t you have just given me a little heads up at least that you were a bleeder!”

“I’m not a bleeder. I just…”

“And you stabbed me first!

“I only…” And then this Sue that I’d only just met suddenly burst out laughing! I hadn’t seen that coming either.

Then, I don’t know why, but I started to laugh. And let me tell you, I really wasn’t in the mood for laughing, either. But too bad for me, right?.

And then her laughing ratcheted itself up a couple, three, notches. She was laughing hard now. Which was crazy, right? And next thing you knew, (I couldn’t help it) I was laughing my head off too! The two of us totally out of control. And what a sight that must’ve been. Two blood-blotched little mental patients strapped to the mad scientist’s blood besotted operating table and cackling it up hysterically! For a full minute.

We laughed our asses off.

She was lucky she didn’t bleed out…

After Lap had got Ronnie taken care of and back up on his feet, and Sue’s finger bandaged up tight and properly, the class was pretty much over.

While we were waiting for the bell (our desks now back in their rows, side-by-side again) I asked her if I could check out her finger once more. “Just to make sure there’s no blood seeping through that big fat bandage.” That almost started us up again.

But once again she laid her hand in mine. We were once again holding hands.

“Looking good now,” I reported officiously.

“So are you,” she said. “Well… I mean, honestly, you were looking pretty green there. I kept thinking, Oh, that’s all I need right now. To have, you know, this guy pass out on top of that guy, and then maybe the whole class going down like a bunch of dominoes.”

My God, she had such a very warm smile. And I was thinking, So that’s what her voice sounds like.

And then I realized that I was grinning like an idiot.

After a long awkward silence, I thought of something to say. “So, where is it you live, anyway.”

“Atkinson.”

“Ah.” Atkinson being a little village maybe eight to ten miles west from town. “So, I guess you’ll be… grabbing the bus home right after school this afternoon then.”

“Nope. You couldn’t pay me to ride that bus.”

“So how do you get home then?”

“Either one of my brothers or my dad. They’ll pick me and my sisters up tonight.”

“Tonight? Well, what’ll you do in the meantime?”

“Oh, just hang out. Like we always do. And whoever does pick us up, it’ll be after the game tonight.”

“The basketball game? Oh, you’re going to that?”

“Yup.”

“Huh! Yeah. Me too.” What was I saying? I wasn’t planning on going to any basketball game. “So… maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Yeah.” Still smiling. “Maybe you will.”

“Yeah. And I probably should, you know, check that finger again.” Oh my God. Had I actually said that? “I mean, ahem, you know. Make sure the bleeding has completely stopped.”

“OK. Provided I haven’t bled to death in the meantime.”

The end-of-class bell was ringing. “Oh please. Don’t do that.”

Out in the hall I watched her disappear in the hallway crush.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Feeling somewhat nervous, I stepped in from the December cold, paid my admission fee in the gym lobby, and walked into the clamor of refs’ whistles, the dribbling ball, squeaks of sneakers on the polished floor, and the occasional GHAAAKK! of the buzzer. The hometown-side’s bleachers were packed.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was feeding my angst. Just the uncertainty about whatever lay in store for me that evening, if anything at all.

I began scanning the crowd. I doubted she’d be there. Either way, what did I even care? I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. She was just somebody I’d… well, somebody I’d held hands with that morning. For a few minutes. That’s all.

But for some reason though, something had felt oddly intimate that morning. Hah. Two complete strangers with apparently nothing in common (one who would barely deign to speak to the other at first) being thrown together by fate (fate being in this case Old Lap Lary), and then… and then, unexpectedly, by some somewhat extreme circumstances…

Whoa, right there Trigger! What I just said there? Did sound just a tad bit similar to the opening line of Romeo and Juliet???

Nah. What was I, crazy? No. But damn! I was such a little romantic back then. I mean, did the expression ‘damsel in distress’ perhaps occur to me too? Oh, probably it did. Of course it did. And did my dumbass brain actually toy with the notion that… well, because our hands had spent a few moments clasped, and in blood, too… that we’d undergone some kind of ancient blood ritual? Like, we’d come out the other end as something like…?

OK, I’m not answering that.

Jesus H! That’s just laughable. Pure and simple.

But things like this sometimes make me wonder what my life would look like today if I hadn’t spent my entire childhood practically sneaking into Center Theatre and watching all those movies! I mean… I could’ve been an engineer instead of the bleeding-heart romantic English major I still am today! I could’ve had a simple, black and white life, a life where everything would be explainable by the precise arrangements of ones and zeros, instead of suffering all this messy angst of the heart.

Wait a minute. No. That’s unimaginable. Forget that.

Face it. Like Popeye the Sailor man, I yam what I yam what I yam.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ah hah. She was there.

Fate? And Serendipity?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hey, stay tuned for the ballgame and the rest of the story in the next installment.

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I, YOUNG CYRANO PART(S), THE LAST

Rites of Passage: First REAL Date

From the previous blog…

I discovered note-passing was very much akin to fishing. Because with note-passing, I could, and did, get some “bites.” I found that a really clever note or poem passed to some girl seated two rows or more away in study hall was somewhat likely to get my foot in the door at least, meaning that I could actually score for myself a sunny, pretty-girl smile sent my way from across the classroom now and then. Which, by the way, the first time that happened was when I realized that if I put pen to paper, and then let the paper do the talking instead of me, personally— why, my words on paper could boldly say what I didn’t have the little guts to say in person. Yes, that would be so much more do-able than trying to express myself out loud while gazing eye-to-eye into the face of some bewitching little Shirley Temple… only to discover that my tongue, like Elvis, had suddenly left the building.”

So… that’s when I became my own, one-man Cyrano de Bergerac. I became a cowardly little serial-note-passer in school. I mean, it was better than nuthin’…

So, you know when you’re out there on the lake fishing, and you’re getting pretty bored with all those little nibbles that keep stealing your bait? Or when you do land something, it’s always one of those little sunfish that nobody wants? And you keep dwelling on the depressing fact that you’ve actually never caught a decent fish in your entire life, and never will? But then, all of a sudden…

SPLASH!

You’ve really got something on the line for once!

Well, surprise of all surprises, one of my poem-notes snagged a popular cheerleader, if you can believe that. And cute? Oh yeah. And at first it left me thinking, What’s wrong with THIS picture? Because I mean this was the kind of girl that would make my little circle of cronies fall down and die in disbelief! And wonder of wonders, this girl already knew me and yet honestly seemed to like me! I mean, what was she? Crazy?

OK. I was a year older than her. Maybe it was that weighing in my favor. And probably part of it was because I was on the basketball team, even though basically all I did in that capacity was ride the bench. But, hey, maybe I just looked good in the uniform?

Anyway, her name was… no no, let’s not go there. Let’s just refer to her as… Sandra (Dee).

She went to our church, so like me she was a Methodist. Our parents knew each other and were good friends, so that made the process of me getting to know her even better a lot less unnerving. And her mom thought that the two of us as a “couple” were “cute.”

My mom not so much. She didn’t think I was ready for dating.

But this girl and I really enjoyed talking to one another, which to me was astonishing. We held hands! We ended up going on a couple of movie dates! I even, you know, “accidentally” dropped my arm (from where it was nervously resting up on the back of her seat) onto her shoulders, and… wow, she didn’t even mind! She liked it. And it was great, I tells ya!

I was head-over-heels in love. (Picture here a very anomalous Darth Vader here rasping, “The Crush is strong with this one!)

Of course now, as an adult, I realize I was only head over heels I a crush. But, man, I was on the phone with her all the time.
Not only was I happy. I was SOMEBODY!

And then one day on the phone, this girl let me know something: her parents were going away for an overnight that weekend, and she was going to have to stay home to babysit her baby brother. Excitedly, she told me she wanted me to come over to help babysit. I was dumbstruck! Yes! The whole idea seemed like a dream come true.

However for me, there was a fly in the ointment: that would be Ma.

Oh, I wanted to do this so badly. And no, I swear it was not for any of those prurient reasons you may be thinking of, as you will soon see. I just wanted to get to spend a nice long and cozy evening with my girlfriend. However, embarrassed and in agony, I had to tell her the truth. And it made me want to cry.

“I would so love to do this. I honestly really really would. But I can’t.”

“Oh? No? Why not?”

Jesus, didn’t I hate to have to let her in on this dark secret of my crummy little life. I mean, I was an eighth-grader already, practically a grown up for crying out loud, right?

“Because my mom will never consent to it.”

(long pause) “No? Your mom? Why not?”

“Because… well… you know…” Oh, I really so didn’t want to have that conversation.

(long pause) “Uhmmm… no. I don’t.”

I wanted to die of shame right there. It took a while for her to drag it out of me, but finally, and painfully, I managed to choke it out that… Ma didn’t “like” the prospects of… well, you know, what could, and definitely would in her mind, happen any time a boy and girl were left alone together. There. The secret was out. I was a namby-pamby Momma’s boy!

I wanted to run away and hide. And puke.

“I’ll tell you what,” she surprisingly said, still sounding cheerful and totally undeterred. “I’ll have my mom talk to your mom. My mom can talk anybody into anything.” And knowing her free-wheeling, fun-loving, mom, I didn’t really doubt that for a second. However…

“Sure. Any mom but my mom, that is. See, my mom’s never gonna buy it. So please. Don’t, OK? There’s no point. Just… don’t have her do that. Alright? It’ll just make a lot of grief for me.”

Of course it won’t. How could it?”

(Oh, let me count the ways.)

I was feeling about as small a gnat. And so very sad for myself! Because truth? I could see the writing on the wall. This little complication with Ma could mushroom out of control and spell the end of our little boyfriend/girlfriend thing we had going. And that’d just about do me in.

Still, no matter what, I couldn’t talk her out of having her mom call mine. So that meant that if I knew what was good for me, I had to face Ma right up front and give her the heads up about the soon-to-come phone call. And what it was gonna be about.

Ever hear the expression ‘mad as a wet hen’?

“Well, that’s just not gonna happen, I can tell you that right now! I’d never say yes to something like THAT! That would be just asking for trouble!”

This is how I knew it would go. After all, this was the woman who’d made Denny and I pledge that WE’D never get any girl pregnant… right after some high school girl who lived four houses up the street from us got knocked up.

(And me? Why yes sir, I took that oath with all the solemnity of saluting the American flag! Because I was a good little soldier. (Of course, being only six at the time, I had no frickin’ idea whatsoever what the hell it was I was pledging not to do.)

Yes, this was the woman who angrily sent me (at about the same age) to bed early one evening for interrupting dinner simply by asking out of curiosity, “Say, just what is sex anyway?”

This was the woman who would never let us go to the movies on Sundays.

This was the woman who refused to let us play with cap guns on Sundays.

In short, this was the woman who really made me despise Sundays! God, my life sucked! I mean, what was I? A damn eighth-grade little Momma’s boy, that’s what!

And of course the call did happen. And I spy-listened to it from the next room. Man, that was one long, long phone call. And I really wasn’t liking what I was overhearing of the debate on our end. But…

After she’d put the receiver back in its cradle, she called me out to the kitchen. Still the mad old wet hen, she informed me that OK, I could do what was being asked of me, but on one condition and one condition only. That being… that there would have to be a third person present with Sandra (Dee) and me at all times.

“You’re actually saying it’s… it’s OK? That I can go?”

“Well, it’s not what I want! At ALL! But…”

I was thunderstruck! So it was true then? There really was a Santa Claus? But boy, she was still pissed.

“But still… you’re saying… it’s OK though…?”

“Not OK at all! Not with me. And I really don’t appreciate being browbeat about MY own children by someone outside this family!“

Happily, it turned out Sandra (Dee’s) mom had already cemented the deal with the promise that my girlfriend’s best friend Wendy would be spending the night at their house. So… there you were.

“But… you listen to ME, Mister. There had better not be any… trouble resulting from this! Or I don’t know what!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So there I ended up that Saturday night, sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by a ton of toys, and just having a ball with Sandra (Dee’s) baby brother. I loved him. It was a great evening we had going there. The TV was on and I was watching some of that too while rolling around on the floor with the little tyke. Couldn’t ask for a more fun night.

But then I was told it was finally time. Time for the little fella to hit the hay. Aw. That made me feel sad, because he and I were having so much fun. But… what were you gonna do? So Wendy, our third-wheel-in-residence, told us not to worry, that she’d take him upstairs. And up and away they went. So Sandra (Dee) and I were going to get some alone time. So we huddled together, cuddling on the couch.

Cuddling was such a new and welcomed step in my boyfriend-skills evolution. Another check-off on the old bucket list. And basically, it was just like being on a movie date. I had my arm around her, and we put our heads together and just watched whatever was going on, on the TV. And let me tell you: I was in seventh heaven right there! I was clam-happy! That was the life. What I’d been wanting and waiting for all along.

A real girlfriend.

At some point later, however, it occurred to me that we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Wendy, “our official babysitter.” One TV program had just ended, and another was starting up. The time was ticking right along.

Maybe Wendy’d gone to bed upstairs early. My curfew for that evening was 10:00. And there was still most of an hour left. I was glad. I was in no hurry to go home, that was for sure. I was having too good a time.

But then all of a sudden down the stairs came Wendy. She walked to the center of the living room and stopped right there before us, blocking our view of the TV. And she continued standing there.

I thought to myself, That’s odd. And it felt like she was… studying us… at least, to me it did. Standing there with her feet shoulder-width apart and her little doubled-up fists pressed into her hips, looking at us like some army little drill sergeant. I mean, why was her expression so serious… and maybe a little pouty? It felt like she was judging us or something. Like she was sizing us up, and what she was seeing was seemingly not meeting with her approval.

“What?” I asked her, thinking, UH-oh. Does she feel we’re being rude, cuddling as we are right in front of her? But my question just hung there in the air, getting no response.

On the other hand, I’d suddenly gotten this eerie feeling that there was some form of communication going on in that room that didn’t include me. I mean, first Wendy stared right at me. Then her stare swung over to Sandra (Dee). And her expression slowly morphed into a stern, but puzzled, look. It was giving me the distinct impression that Wendy was… soliciting a confirmation about something, but what?

And that’s when I felt my girlfriend hunch her shoulders beneath my arm, the way somebody does when they’re silently signaling, I dunno. Don’t ask me…

Wendy was shaking her head now. She seemed a bit exasperated by something.

“What?” I demanded a second time.

She sighed, did Wendy. And then, lamenting “Oh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!” in one of those What am I ever gonna DO with you? tones of voice, came over and plunked herself right down beside me on that couch! You wanna talk about confusing?

I thought to myself, I don’t have a clue what she’s up to, but at least she’s not blocking the TV anymore. But before I could even begin to get back into the television program, I felt Wendy elbow me right in the ribs, hard.

“Hey! EXCUSE me?” I said. That got no response. But then, after a moment, I felt her ramming me hard with her shoulder like she was trying to bulldoze me into my girlfriend seated on the other side.

“Hey! What… What’re you DOING?!” Me, eyeballing her now. “What’s going on?”

No answer. She was looking straight back at me, shaking her head and rolling her eyes, like I was some object to be pitied. By then, any thoughts of my girlfriend or the TV show had momentarily flown right out the window.

All at once, Wendy decided to sit straight up. No more bulldozing her bony shoulder into mine. And then the weirdest thing happened. Something that I totally could not understand at all. It seemed Twilight Zone-ish.

She reached down, took my wrist, and lifted up my left hand.

I was at a loss. I was like, “Uhhmmmm?” Then she softly clamped both of her hands, like a bracelet, around my wrist. And just… held my wrist tight.

NOTE: I can think of so many song lyrics that can perfectly express what I was feeling right then. Buffalo Springfield’s “There’s something happening here. But what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Or Bob Dylan’s “You know something’s happenin’, but you don’t know what it is… DO you, Mr. Jones.”

And then, slowly, gently, she began guiding my left hand straight across my chest.

“Uhhh… What’re you doing, Wendy?”

No answer. I didn’t feel comfortable with what was going on, so I began resisting. But jeez, she was stronger than I’d have imagined. For a moment, I found myself losing the arm-wrestling contest, or whatever it was we were having! Mostly because the whole sudden turn of events had taken me so completely by surprise. But the worst thing? I honestly had no frickin’ idea just where exactly my hand was being driven to, but… oh jeez, suddenly I did know, sort of: the destination appeared to be somewhere between Sandra (Dee’s) lap… and her chin! And the thought of that just scared the bejesus out of me!

“Hey, whoa! Whoa whoa WHOA! What’re ya…?” I hit the brakes and managed to yank my arm back. Thankfully, my hand fell safely into my lap. Oddly, I felt them both sort of ‘slump‘ beside me at the same time.

But I did not slump. In fact, my whole body remained hypercautiously coiled! I was a little man of steel! Stunned. Confused. Very very confused. Like, What the heck just happened here? And I felt myself grinning idiotically hard! A forced grin. Like… maybe I just hadn’t got the joke yet. In a moment, maybe they’d explain it all to me, and we’d all have a good laugh over it.

Maybe. But the three of us just sat there now in total silence. All of us just kinda vacantly staring down at our knees. Me wondering, Isn’t anyone gonna say something?

And then someone did. I heard my Sandra (Dee) softly say, “Never mind, Wendy.”

What? I thought to myself, ‘Never MIND??? Never mind WHAT?!’ But apparently, nobody was planning on divulging anything anytime soon. So, we all just continued sitting quietly for another little while. In a trance. Not moving for a bit.

Me, waiting…

Finally, Wendy turned to look at me and, with a frown, broke the silence. “Well, you’re a lot of fun, aren’tcha!” Then she got up off the couch and disappeared off into the kitchen.

Hmmmm…?

So I looked over to Sandra (Dee) to see if she had anything to offer by way of explanation. But all she did was turn to me with a blank look and say, “Ooops, I just heard the baby crying upstairs. I’d better go up there and check on him. I might be a while.”

“I didn’t hear him.”

“Yeah. But I did.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Yeah. He probably needs his diaper changed, you know?”

“Oh. Sure. I see.”

And no sooner than I said, “I see,” I actually was… beginning to see!

I was beginning the mathematical process of putting 2 plus 2 together. And oh boy, when the unexpected sum of 4 clicked slowly up into the display of my very-slow calculator brain… I was mortified!

My face was burning! Because I had just been slapped in the face with one very harsh reality! No wonder I’d been getting along so famously with Sandra (Dee’s) baby brother! Because compared to Sandra (Dee) and Wendy, I was a toddler myself!

I wanted to slap myself in the forehead! How could I ever have been so THICK?! There I’d been, all along, little virgin-brain me, imagining that all that wonderful hugging and cuddling was what people on TV or in the movies meant when they talked about getting to second base!

Second base? I wasn’t even the bat boy, for crying out loud! I had ZERO experience in the dating game, hadn’t I!

I didn’t belong in the dating game, did I!

God, no wonder, Wendy’s eye-rolls!

I mean, OK… I guessed they must’ve been thinking from the start that… you know… because I was a year older than them…

Hell, in reality? They were twenty years older than me! Apparently. At least!

Aw jeez, I’d just spent the better part of the night like a lamb in the den of a couple of she-wolves! And them hoping all along that I was really the big, bad wolf that they’d believed I was in sheep’s clothing…?

I was so embarrassed!

But still… it had felt so warm and nice, all that hugging and cuddling…

I mean, she must’ve felt at least some of that too… hadn’t she?

But whatever would’ve happened if I hadn’t resisted? I mean if I’d just let it go? How far would it have…?

Jesus. I wasn’t ready for this. My head was spinning.

You know what you want to do when something embarrassing like this befalls you? Run! And hide! You just wanna run away and hide! For months maybe!

So I forced a sickly smile. “You know… actually, it’s getting pretty close to my curfew. So… I mean, I guess I might as well take off now anyway.”

“Oh. OK. Sure then,” she said flatly.

“Uhmmm… I had a great time,” I told her.

“Huh?” she said, and yawned. “Oh. Yeah. Me too.”

Not so very convincing. So I did leave. Or… escaped, I guess. And began the long walk home. There was so much to think about…

But anyway. That’s the way the evening and the relationship ended.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. First of all, allow me to freely admit that I dragged myself home that night feeling like a freak. And my pity-party dragged on for the next couple of weeks. I couldn’t see any humor whatsoever in it back then. Unlike today.

Today, this story brings me a big chuckle. It’s just one of those typical Rites of Passage stories that we get to look back on many years later from an entirely different perspective.

And, funny thing— while I was tapping out this memory here on my PC, a funny thought occurred to me. See, all of a sudden my mind had just made this spontaneous warp-drive-jump to something from an entirely different time, dimension, and universe. To something that connects to what had befallen me in this story. Something I’d only seen once, but it was quite unforgettable. About how “dumb” (“dumb” being the key word here) I had been for the past couple of weeks, right up until that evening.

A scene from a movie. The final scene actually. I’ve included the YouTube clip of it below for you to watch. And PLEASE. Humor me. Really. Watch this clip, I beg of you. Even though you may have seen it before. It only lasts for a minute and a half. It’ll be fun for you to see it again. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a kick out of getting the joke.

And with that, let me just say Thank you. For reading.

Adios. For now…

—Tom

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ANIMAL HOUSE

Leading up to the summer of ’66, summers were just… summers— one hot and sweaty and dirty summer job after another. But in ‘66, my tiny resumé took a wide detour around the usual drudgery. I assumed the operation of the Sebec Lake Municipal Beach Concession located just five miles north of my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft. And one of the immediate benefits for me was the temperature-inversion. No more nearly passing out in the 101^o oven of the Guilford Woolen Mill spinning room. No more getting sunburned behind the oily exhaust of a Briggs & Stratton, rock-spitting cemetery lawn mower.

Sure, sometimes it did get baking-hot inside that cinder-block beach concession stand, but (a) there was often at least a bit of a cool breeze that you could feel coming in off the lake if you stuck your head out the concession’s screened take-out windows far enough to feel it; (b) and hey, check out the work uniform dress code: swim trunks, tee shirt (or not), and flip-flops; and (c) with nothing more than a “Hey guys, I’ll be right back in a jiff,” I could just sprint down over the burning sand and plunge down into the cold blue water for a quick cool-off.

No, I certainly did not miss those hot, long-sleeve and long-pants khakis of summers previous.

In so many ways the summer of ‘66 was the most upbeat summer for me ever, one of those old Nat King Cole “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer! Those days of soda, and pretzels, and beer!” You had the growls of those outboard motors buzzing the lake out there with water-skiers in tow. You had Coppertone and Off wafting in the breeze. And you had me, young, tan, and handsome to boot (no comments allowed at this time, thanks). In tip-top physical shape.

Now a “proprietor” of a business. An “employer” of employees. I mean, how respectable was that! And finally, getting to live in that gorgeous and luxurious all-expenses-paid, on-the-waterfront cottage.

In the meantime though, it still was a job, right along with my part-time Esso station gig. And despite all the obvious benefits, there turned out to be a lot more work and responsibilities to running the Concession than I’d imagined. But whatever it is you’re doing, you get used to it.

And I was getting used to it fast.

One blazing hot afternoon, I left the Concession and trotted down toward the water for that much-needed, cooling-off splash-dash. Then, wading back in toward the sand, however, I stopped short. Because there was a middle-aged man standing just off to my left, just standing-in-place knee-deep in the shallow water. He was wearing swim trunks and an anomalous, wrinkly-rumpled, long-sleeved white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A live cigarette butt crimped between his index and middle finger was smoldering.

The weirdo from Lanpher’s Drug!

And the thing was, he was having this ‘conversation’ with a couple of confused-looking, yardstick-tall boys standing hip-deep before him. Curious and more than a little disturbed, I veered left and sloshed toward shore in a path close enough to brush elbows with the guy, easily close enough to hear what he was saying:

“No no no, I said my father was the moose. Not my mother. She was the owl.”

What?! What kind of a conversation was that?! What was going on there? (Point in fact. This is exactly what I heard him saying to them. I swear. Those three sentences burned themselves indelibly into my memory.) And I sure didn’t like the sound of it. But I was as confused by it, as much as stunned. I mean, what the hell was I supposed with that!? I had no idea. Was anybody supposed to do with it? Who knew? Could be an innocent enough conversation, I supposed. But it didn’t sound like it.

I scanned all around the throngs beached on their blankets and towels to see if I might spot anyone who looked like possibly concerned parents staring out at this little scene. But no, there were just too many people. I couldn’t spot anyone, so I picked my way back up the beach to the concession.

I had a high school kid working the windows with me that day, one Richard Dority. A really cool young man, capable in so many ways of helping me out. So I pointed out the little odd-ball, unsettling conversation going on down there in the water.

“Oh. Shit. That guy!” he said.

“What, you know him?”

“No. I don’t know him. Know of him. Only cause he’s been hanging out and spookin’ everybody here at the beach. He’s got serious screws loose.”

“He’s also been spooking everybody back in town. Especially at Lanpher’s.”

“I think he’s got a camp around here somewhere. He’s started showin’ up here regular last week.”

“Tell you what. We’re kinda quiet for the moment. Why don’t you take a break. Say a half hour or so. Go down there and see what you can find out. Well, unless you see me getting mobbed up here all of a sudden. But you know, check him out for a bit. Actually, there’s such a crowd all around’em right now, I don’t think there’s really anything to worry about. Safety in numbers an all that. But you might even maybe butt in and strike up a friendly little conversation with the two kids, you know? Just to let him know somebody’s paying attention to what’s going on.”

“Ooh. OK. Here I go.” Everything was an adventure to him. “Goin’ deep undercover here.” And grinning, off he went.

So that was it, then. The Man was here, eh? So. We had trouble. Right here in River City. And that starts with a ‘T’ and that…

But in the meantime, I just went on cruising forward through the summer, seeing myself in a different movie. Me as Troy Donahue in A Summer Place, with Phyllis as my Hollywood Sandra Dee co-star.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Business was pretty good that summer. We were swamped with business on those really hot, picture-book-perfect summer days. And and even on the overcast drizzling days, we surprisingly did some business. But. Downpours and thunder? We shut down.

Throughout June and July, because of our cigarette Smoking Man’s presence, his name came up periodically in conversation. (Though I know his name well, for purposes of common decency I’m not using it in this post. Even after 50+ years, chances are that some of his family might still live in the area.) But rumor had it he was sometimes hanging out in our very dimly lit men’s changing room, waiting behind the opening door for people coming in to towel off and change. And when their eyes had adjusted to the lack of light enough that they’d spot him in there with them, his signature response was always something like, “No, it’s alright. Don’t mind me…”

Yeah. That raised some feathers.

The police had been notified and they’d spoken with him and warned him to desist. Rumor had it he’d gotten beat up pretty badly one night over at the roller rink. Apparently, he’d said something one hot-blooded young man found offensive. I was just glad I hadn’t witnessed that.

So there was that stuff going on intermittently. But mostly, by the time the first two weeks of July had slipped behind us in the rear view mirror, I put all that out of mind. For me, it was all about the impending wedding closing in. That was all I could think about.

Honestly though, I was as nervous as the proverbial cat with the long tail in a room full of rocking chairs. Ours had been a tumultuous relationship anyway. I know we were both passionately head-over-heels crazy in love with each other, but… we did have a history of lots of lovers’ spats. And that was worrying me big-time in the three days before the wedding. Why?

Because there were a bunch of relatively wild yahoos hanging out on the beach that week (more acquaintances of mine rather than actual friends), who were claiming they were going to throw me a bachelor party. Not Would you like to have a bachelor party? but You are going to have a bachelor party. I didn’t like the sound of that. A frigging bachelor party was the last thing in the world I needed right then. I mean, hell, if Phyl caught wind that I was having a quote-unquote bachelor party on the very night before our wedding, I just knew what she’d be imagining: a drunken bash with a stripper rising up out of a cake if not worse!

And I just couldn’t have that! (a) I wasn’t a wild and crazy guy at all back then anyway, and (b) those party-wanters weren’t even good buddies of mine. Oh, I knew just what they were thinking: A bachelor party’ll give us a great excuse to get blotto. Tom’s got that camp on the beach (“that camp” meaning a place for them to booze it up…), a place our parents will never even guess where we are!).

First of all, I told them no thanks. Didn’t want one.

They said, “But it’s never up to the bachelor though, is it.”

I disagreed and put my foot down. “No. No party, and that’s final.”

They just laughed.

“Not funny,” I told them. “I’m NOT having any party! I don’t want one, and so I’m not having one! So just forget it. And like I said, that’s final. End of story!”

But these guys were crazy, and I knew it. They wanted a place to drink and that was all there was to it. The legal drinking age in the state was 21. Hell, I’d just turned 20 myself, and they were younger than me. And I’m sure they couldn’t care less if I were even there to host their little speakeasy or not. To them, the ‘bachelor’ in this scenario was immaterial. A party’s a party, right? Who even cares if there’s a bachelor or even a host there?

The thought of the whole thing made me sick to my stomach. What would Phyl think? How would she react if she found out?

I didn’t, however, really have a lot of time to dwell on it. There were oodles of wedding details to attend to. The wedding rehearsal. Getting the grange hall reception squared away. Picking up my tux. Making the Quebec City honeymoon hotel reservations over the phone. Making plans to switch vehicles at the last minute to throw any post-wedding followers off our trail. Etc. Etc.

So at the end of the last day before the wedding, I was totally exhausted by the time I rolled up to the camp around 9:30 that evening. And what’s the first thing I saw? Some yahoo I barely knew elbowing a case of Nastygansett in through the now-jimmied-wide-open-door that I’d left locked earlier.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Something woke me up early the next morning. I blinked open my eyes and found that I was upstairs. In bed. I began to crane my neck around to survey my shadowed surroundings, slant-lighted only by a tiny window situated high up behind my head. First thing I noticed? The sleeping forms seemingly everywhere, all over the floor. Soundly sleeping, snoring bodies. Oh God, I thought to myself. That’s right. The bachelor party.

First of all, please know this: I hadn’t drunk a single alcoholic drop the night before. It’s not that I wouldn’t liked to have. But by sipping the night away nursing a quart bottle of Moxie, I was basically striving to save my own skin. And what a boring night it had been for me. Watching what could have been my desperately needed, very restful, and contemplative evening quickly deteriorating into madness. And just looking at those little bastards now, I couldn’t get over how they hadn’t even had the courtesy or the frickin’ decency to haul their sad, besotted, little asses back home after they’d ruined not just my night, but perhaps even my future in the process.

Christ, I could just see it in my mind’s eye: the part where the minister says, “If anyone here today knows of any reason why these two should not be wedded in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.” I mean, would Phyllis be the one? The one to turn to me at that point with blood in her jaundiced eyes and shock the entire congregation with her loud “Me! Me! I’ve got a reason!”?

Yes, just look at these little pigs, I was thinking to myself when suddenly… my eyes zeroed in on something that stopped my heart!

Standing upright at the other end of the room, the end that gave way to the crooked little staircase, was a large and menacing dark form! Six feet tall or more and heavy-set! And it was moving around slowly! What the hell was I seeing, moving slowly and furtively among the sleepers, looking down at them! Stopping to (Jesus!) bend right down silently at the waist and lowering its face down to just a couple of inches from each of their faces, examining them and one at a time and then… on to the next!

My first thought was the Cigarette Smoking Man! (Eeek!) But then No, too tall. My next thought? Serial killer! Selecting his first victim!

As my eyes adjusted and re-focused, I could pretty much make out the man’s face. And shit! Nobody I knew! What was a total stranger doing here?! I mean, think of it! There was some man, some giant of a man, somebody I didn’t even know, stalking his victims upstairs in my camp! And we had no phone! We had nothing! And then… horror of horrors!

I watched this fiend place both of his hands firmly down onto the chest of his first prey, right up close to his unsuspecting neck, and I thought, Oh Jesus Christ, here it comes! Here it comes! I didn’t wanna look! But…

This man, I saw then, had grasped two fistfuls of the sleeper’s shirtfront and was hauling his victim up, easily lifting him sound asleep right up, face-to-face, with himself. And I mean Jesus, if looks could kill…

“God damn it, Timmy!” he growled, and gave the boy a manful, wake-up shake. Timmy’s buttoned-up blood-shot eyes were trying to crank their eyelids open. “Do you have any idea just how goddamned worried your mother has been all goddamn night!!!!?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The wedding wasn’t until 1:00. In the meantime, everybody was gone from the camp. I had time to kill, but not the slightest idea what to do with it. All I know is that I just climbed into my old ‘50 Pontiac and drove away.

And much later, by the time my subconscious somehow tractor-beamed me up into my parents’ driveway (where, oh yeah, my tux was waiting inside), all I could remember of that little odyssey was that I’d pulled up at some Shell station somewhere, told’em to filler-up, after which it turned out I’d won $2.00 off on my gas with some little scratch-off-ticket-promotion going they had going.

Stepping out of the car, the thought hit me like a left hook: Jeez! Had Phyllis heard about the stripper coming out of the cake and all yet…?

By the time I had my tuxedo on and was combing my hair in the mirror, I had one of my life’s worst migraine’s going. And I’d get some real humdingers back in those days.

Man, I desperately wanted to rush over to see Phyllis, throw myself at her feet, sob out my confession about the previous night, swear on ten stacks of Bibles I’d done everything possible in my power short of murder to stop the damn thing from happening, and that I hadn’t even had one friggin’…swig of damn beer! But in those days, they were practically psycho about not letting the groom lay eyes on the bride before the ceremony on the day of. Supposed to be bad luck, or something.

I remember sarcastically thinking, Bad luck? Oh gosh, golly, and gee! Wouldn’t I ever hate to have anything as bad as bad luck!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So there I was. 1:05 pm. A sweating lamb to the slaughter, standing at firing-squad-attention in front of the Methodist Church altar with the Best Man and witnesses to my left, bridesmaids to my right. If asked, I would have said, “Yes, I’ll take the blindfold.” I believe it occurred to me at one point that maybe I should just stop worrying about fainting, and perhaps just give in to it.

And then the moment of truth: “The Wedding March” started up. Oh, the migraine!

The ushers swung wide the two entrance doors. The migraine was killing me!

But oh my! There she suddenly was!

A picture of stunning beauty! Knock-out gorgeous!

Her stepfather, Elden, started escorting her up the aisle to ‘give her away.’

If only I could just get a good look at her eyes. Then I’d know. If some fool had blabbed!? Or if she’d not heard about it yet? And if not, would she just end up hearing about it right after the ceremony? And how screwed would I be then? Should I tell her right away?

Or was it already too late?

She was too far away yet to be sure of anything.

Writing this, I’m reminded of the famous short story, “The Lady or the Tiger.”

But the reason for all my unnecessary drama? Me!

I had a such long, long way to go before I was… a real grown up. Even at twenty, I was a still a little kid at heart. I still thought of life in terms of all the movies I’d grown up watching.

But the truth is, all the unprocessed weight of this gigantic transition happening to me right then and there that very day was crushing. Yes, I was dying to get married. But yes, I was afraid about whether or not I could ever really man up to the new role as… husband. Like my dad was a husband. And had been a husband forever. He who had fought in the war, which made him “a man,” and there I was, just a boy still. He who seemed to know everything about everything. And what did I know? Nothing! Nothing at all about hardly anything!

Dad had been helping me get through my piddling little life every step of the way so far! I mean, what did I know about taxes? What did I know about insurance? Would I really be able to make enough money to pay for college so I could make enough money to live on? Would I make it as a teacher? What if Phyllis got sick? What if I got sick? It was the damn weight of all of it!

And so internally, I was asking myself that afternoon, Do I really think I’m adult enough to drive my wife, Phyllis, all by ourselves all the way to French-speaking Canada with my crummy two little years of high school French? I mean, who did I think I was?

I was suffering a last minute, 1-day nervous breakdown-with-migraine.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But guess what happened.

We went through all the clockwork motions of the ceremony, the exchanging of the vows, the slipping of the wedding ring onto the bride’s finger, performing ‘the old-you-may-kiss-the-bride.’ We actually became (for just a moment) that perfect, little, miniature bride and groom perched on the top tier of the wedding cake.

And then in a daze I drove us to the waiting grange hall reception, where we performed the cake-in-the-face, the garter thing, the tossing of the bouquet, all of it… also like clockwork.

After which, Mrs. Lyford and I sped away in our clunky, now-grotesquely festooned, old ‘50 Pontiac; ditched ‘The Grey Ghost’ in my parents’ driveway; hopped into my dad’s waiting, brand new, pre-luggage-loaded van…

and with Phyllis wearing the cutest, most prim and stunning little travel outfit imaginable… I drove my new, day #1 wife across the border to Canada.

And then, before we knew it, suddenly day #1 had already become day #2. And then day #2 became the next day. And the rest is (our) history.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And what an unforgettable, happy little adventure Quebec City and Saint George turned out to be!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We returned to our little hometown after the honeymoon as man and wife. We resumed our jobs, Phyl at the pharmacy, me at the Esso station, and the both of us manning the concession. We loved our crooked little honeymoon shack on the beach.

However, then reality had to go and stick its nose back in.

One morning at somewhere around 5:00 am, we were abruptly awakened by someone’s loud voice outside. It was a man’s voice, and whoever he was, it sounded oddly like he was making some sort of official announcement or proclamation to a large audience. And it was coming from the little diving-dock on the beach right outside, out in front of the camp:

“NAME?” (The man announces his name)

“AGE?” (The man announces his age)

“BIRTHPLACE?” (The man announces where he was born)

The man was giving the world his resumé, whether the world wanted it or not! We poked our heads out the door, and… what the hell? There he was. Our rumpled Cigarette Smoking Man. Apparently as mad as a hatter.

“CURRENT ADDRESS?“ (The man informs the world at large of his mailing address in Sangerville.)

“EDUCATION?” (And down he goes through the list, beginning with his primary school)

Et cetera. Et cetera.

And worst of all, after a fifteen-minute-long recitation, he broke into song:

“Beautiful dreamer… Wake unto me,

Starlight and dew drops are waiting for thee…

Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,

Lulled by the moonlight have all passed away…”

Et cetera.

These days, decades later, whenever that song happens to pop up on the radio or in the backdrop of some movie, Phyl and I pause, turn, look at each other eye-to-eye (spooked a little), and just know that we are both of us together back there once again, in that camp, gawking out the door at the sweaty little man with the smoldering cancer stick, standing there on that dock, staring defiantly into the rising sun and confirming beyond any doubt his existence on this planet, to God and anyone else he imagined was listening and hanging on his every word. I mean, even when someone good like Roy Orbison is the one singing it!

And see, this wasn’t a one-off. This was something that happened… let’s just say, a little too often.

But you know what? This man turned out to be, for us anyway, only a nuisance, basically. A Boo Radley that I feared and worried about at all times, but nothing ever came of it. I was still just young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, and was easily frightened.

Today we all know so much more about mental illness, enough so that I look back on this poor guy with empathy.

But anyway, it turned out that this man, this unfortunately rather disturbed little man, was to become a part of our lives for the remainder of that summer. The summer that was both christened and baptized by the dunking of a high-speed, getaway-wannabe car in the waters of Sebec Lake. The summer of our very first “home,” the beautiful and rent-free honeymoon cottage. The summer of a cleaner and much more enjoyable part-time employment for me. The summer of The Attack of the Invasive “Bachelor Party” and its nothing-burger after-effects. The summer of our wedding, and the honeymoon trip to Quebec City (which felt to us country bumpkins like…well, Paris). And finally, the summer soundtracked by ‘our song,’ “Beautiful Dreamer.”

And when the summer of ‘66 fizzled out at the end, Phyllis and I packed our bags and headed off to our second of many homes to come, the College Apartments in Farmington, Maine. And to our life-long adventure together with all its joys, all its painful twists and turns, and finally its blessed happy-ever-after. Leaving the Cigarette Smoking Man to Dover-Foxcroft…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You know, as I’ve been working on this episode over the last week, I’ve been re-hashing-over all these memories with my bride of 57 years, 58 years this coming July 30^th. And I was trying to impress on her, yet once again, just how heavily that dumbass, so-called “bachelor party” had weighed on me during those final sweaty hours leading up to our wedding ceremony. And once again, she laughed it off and re-reminded me that no, she’d never even had a clue about that. And that any look of serious concern I’d spotted in her eyes that morning was pretty likely only that she, like me, was also reeling a bit under the momentousness of the big steps she was undertaking in her life.

And you know what.

Phyllis is still the sweetest little bride ever… (sigh)

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CROOKED MAN, CROOKED HOUSE II: The Cigarette Smoking Man

I will forever remember Lanpher’s Drug Store in the 60’s as our special little oasis/after-school hangout, and that sweet bevy of 30-something ladies who worked the lunch counter as a blessing to us kids. All actual mothers themselves, they felt to us (in our high-school-drama, soap-opera lives) like post-Cub Scout den mothers or something, who were always there to listen and to take us under their comforting, little mother hen wings. And actually, I’m embarrassed to say we felt we were God’s gift to those women (Berle, Del, Marilyn, and Martha) because back then it was all about us, wasn’t it— we were just so interesting, right?

But I mean just kids, and yet we were made to feel welcomed at that long lunch counter to gab our afternoons away, even though we had very little money to spend. Looking back now, I’m seeing it as a kind of young kids’ Cheers bar…

“Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came…”

Plus, there were always a couple of attractive high school girls hired to work behind the counter as well, one of whom turned out to be my Phyllis (sigh!). And you wanna know what’s a dreamy fantasy for a guy my age back then? Having your cute little soda-jerk girlfriend, the girl you’re gonna marry in a few weeks, fuss over you and bring you the root beer Coke you just ordered. (double sigh!)

But to me at least, the whole place felt like “family.” I spent so much time there, weekends included. I even got to become somewhat of a friend of one of the salesmen who’d show up there every two weeks or so to take the orders for the candy bars, chips, and crackers, etc. needed to keep the soda fountain stocked. Later, I’d be giving him weekly orders to stock the Sebec Lake Beach Concession that was to turn out to be my main summer job in 1966.

Plus there was this one, odd, little, wonderful man, Bob Buzzell, who was as much a part of the scene as we were. I think he must’ve retired early with a disability of some sort, because he was there just about every day. We thought of him as old but, to us back then of course, every adult was “old.”

Bob Buzzell was a character and a half. A cheerful little elf, always entertaining everybody with his corny jokes and cool stories about the past. He was like an uncle to us; everybody loved him. But the one special thing about him that really bowled us kids over (although you’ll likely find it nearly impossible to believe it by looking at him in the photo below), was watching this guy go zipping around the roller rink floor out at the lake on his skates like some teenager. He’d skate fast, he’d skate backwards, he’d spin around in tight circles, and out-skate all the high school kids to shame. Of course he wouldn’t last out there as long as we could, so perhaps he was a little old. But it was a friend, and it was always a joy to watch him.

My whole point here is that, after school, Lanpher’s Drug felt like a little home away from home. It was so very comforting to hang out there with your friends. A place that was just… well, a haven in our little town. A place that was always felt secure and… safe.

Until it didn’t.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One afternoon I strolled in to find the place really packed. All the counter bar stools (OK, soda fountain stools) were taken, and there were even a few kids standing, crowding the seats from behind while they talked it up. The jukebox was playing, so that was a good sign. Normally due to the lack of available quarters among us, it simply sat there silent as a piece of furniture. So apparently somebody had some cash at least. Myself, over time I’d dropped uncountable hard-to-come-by quarters down its slot, mostly to listen to “He’s a Rebel” by The Crystals and The Cheers’ “Black Denim Trousers” over and over again.

But what a crowd that day. I was there only to dally a little with Phyl a bit, so I was feeling pretty impatient while having to wait for a seat. But as I was running my eyes up and down the line of crowded stools, hoping to spot somebody who might be getting ready to give up his seat and leave, my gaze came to a stop on someone who, for some reason, just didn’t seem to rightly belong in that shoulder-to-shoulder, Lanpher’s soda fountain crowd. I’d never seen the guy before. And I was struck right away with an unsettling What’s-Wrong-With-This-Picture? sensation.

For one thing, everybody else was seated back-to to me, facing the counter-length mirror on the back wall. But this guy sat facing my way with his back resting against the counter. But in that crowd wearing jeans, shorts, tee shirts, penny loafers, and sneakers, here sat a man, forty-ish probably (there was a touch of salt-and-pepper gray at his temples), in a white short sleeve dress shirt, slacks, and black shoes.

Cigarette Smoking Man (OK, yeah, I stole *this* one from *The X-Files*)

So there was that. But that was only a small part of the first impression he made on me. Where do I start? His shirt and matted hair was damp with perspiration. With a butt-filled-to-overflowing ash tray on the counter behind him, he was smoking like a fiend, gingerly pinching the last half-inch of a smoldering cigarette between a thumb and forefinger. Though smiling, he was definitely radiating nervousness? So in no way whatsoever was he a part of this young crowd he’d sandwiched himself into? And finally, I’m not sure exactly why, he looked to me like some sweating-like-a-pig Richard Burton.

But then I saw Phyllis, her eyes locked on mine, furtively nodding for me to meet her down at the far end of the counter. She looked uptight. That made me tense up. I made my way down there.

“What’s up?”

“That man’s been here for hours. Just sitting there, sipping on Cokes and smoking his cigarettes. And endlessly playing songs on the jukebox. He’s making us all really nervous back here.”

“Hours? Yikes. So… who is he anyway?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know. Nobody does. He just showed up. But I think something’s… I mean, I don’t know what, but something’s wrong with him. And he smells bad. All sweaty. And he acts funny.”

“Have you told your boss? You probably ought to.”

“Mr. Lanpher’s not in today.”

“Oh great!”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not good.”

“No it really isn’t. So… could you, you know, stick around for a while? I’d really feel better if you’d stay here.”

“Well sure, Phyl. Of course I will!”

Jeez, my beautiful little majorette girlfriend? It was like she was suddenly this… damsel in distress! Like in the movies. My beautiful and demure princess being threatened by the dragon! And she was asking me…imploring me… to be her knight in shining armor?! Her Saint George?

“You got it,” I assured her. “I’m staying right here and keeping an eye on him. For as long as it takes. Till the end of your shift. Don’t you worry. And then I’m walking you home.”

‘You’ll be safe with me,’ a wannabe-gruff voice that sounded more than a little like me growled inside my head. And I say, “wannabe-gruff” because truth is— there was something really off and disturbing about this ‘dragon.’ He was setting off alarms in my gut big-time. I mean, he was a grown man after all, wasn’t he. And what was I? Just a damned frightened kid when you got right down to it. And I knew very well way down deep inside that… hell, I was no fighter! I hated to own it, but I was more a Barney Fife than any Prince Valiant. Which was, of course, one of my darkest and best-kept secrets. And I wanted to keep it that way.

But what’d I do? I pasted on my best Marshall Matt Dillon face, moseyed on over to the jukebox, casually leaned up against it, and began keeping a dark stare focused gun-hard on him. Whenever he happened to look up my way, there was the best hairy eyeball I could muster waiting for him. (Hell, even Barney used to get away with it every once in a while.)

Eventually, a stool right next to him opened up, as the crowd was pretty much thinned out by then. So I nonchalantly stood up, surreptitiously stepped across the aisle, pretended to examine the band-aid display for a minute or two, and then came over and eased myself down onto it.

Man, he did really stink. An overpowering mix of swampy, armpit, sweat-stink a la cologne engulfed me. He was toxic. For a guy who dressed pretty sharp, you’d think he might want to take a shower every now and then, but apparently… no.

So, I braved myself to talk with him a little. As little as possible. Mostly monosyllables. Managed to pry his name out of him. Got him to tell me a few things about himself. Him, being a professor at the UMass Amherst. On a sabbatical leave. Professor of what, I didn’t ask. Currently living in Sangerville, a tiny town about eight miles or so from Dover. But he was really making me nervous so, you know, I didn’t come right out and ask him if he was a pervert or rapist or anything. I cut the conversation short and jockeyed my butt down a few stools for some oxygen and to get closer to my little damsel in distress.

It seemed he’d never leave, although of course he finally did. So yeah. I’d lucked out. Walked her home. Me, the conquering hero…

But after that you’d never know when you strolled in if you’d find him occupying one of Lanpher’s soda fountain stools or not, since he started hanging out there like that a couple or so days a week. And yes, there always hung over him the lingering presence of that undefined, swamp-gassy foreboding. Although there was never sufficient grounds for the management to ask him to leave or anything. I mean, he really wasn’t loitering, was he, not as long as he kept guzzling the Cokes and pumping those sweaty quarters down the throat of that Seeburg jukebox.

But it’s just that there never seemed to be any good reason you could put your finger on for why he preferred to be there, of all places. And then too, things were so different back in the early 60’s. Pretty much all moms were stuck at home throughout the day, trapped in their domestic ‘cages’ of housewife drudgery, while most dads were out there all day somewhere, busy earning a living. So honestly? There were hardly any parents ever shopping the pharmacy aisles during after-school hours to ever eyeball the creep with the kids.

But to us kids, he was just an oddity. One of those local head-scratchers in this crazy old world. And since I didn’t know doodly about much at that point of my life, I simply dismissed it out of hand after a while.

And why wouldn’t I? It was mid-June, 1966, and I was cruising straight ahead into those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Phyl working the soda fountain. Me pumping gas part-time across the street. And, oh yeah, me just beginning to take on my new Concession job duties at the Sebec Lake Municipal Beach.

We had a lot on our plate that summer.

But of course, more pressing than all of the new changes piling up, the two of us were eyeing our wedding at the end of July. I mean, we had our eyes on the adventure of a lifetime, didn’t we: THE REST OF OUR LIVES! It was all we could think about. Try to imagine our excitement and anticipation.

And hell, even fear! What, you think I wasn’t at least a little terrified, as well? Oh baby, I was! Would I be able to measure up as a husband, as a man? Would I be able to protect my princess? Would I be able to provide enough money? Would I be able to learn all the things that a husband needs to learn?

It was pretty daunting.

So something as odd and inconsequential as Lanpher’s Pharmacy’s stinky cigarette smoking man was totally off my radar.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Until he wasn’t, that is…

Next time: The Strange Summer of ’66.

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THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN… IN A CROOKED LITTLE HOUSE

1966.

The summer we got married.

At the end of July, the 30^th.

I’d just turned 20, Phyllis 18. Just kids really, like a lot of newlyweds. And no, it wasn’t a shotgun wedding. I got married because I was over-the-moon-crazy-in-love with my steady girlfriend of nearly four years. And in love with love itself, of course. Me, the hopeless romantic.

And you know, it’s not like we had any money to speak of. We just didn’t know any better. Phyl had just graduated from high school. And that August I’d be resuming my education as the now-married, man-boy, college junior. But we both had summer part-time jobs.

Her, clerking and soda-jerking over at Lanphers Drug Store and me, still gas-pump-jockeying across the street at Huey Cole’s Esso.

However, I’d also just lucked just out in securing a second additional job that summer, a very competitively-sought-after job in our little town. It was like winning the lottery. The ideal beach bum job.

Running the Municipal Beach Concession for the summer!

Of course when I signed on to that, I had no idea how much of eight-days-a-week work and responsibility it was going to require. Every week re-ordering the Styrofoam cups, paper plates, napkins and paper towels, cigarettes, hotdogs, hamburger, buns, chips and pretzels, sodas, candy bars, ice cream products, pastries, coffee and condiments— you name it. Plus having to show up there at such ungodly early hours some mornings to meet the various delivery trucks in order to get all those ordered goods inside and stored away. To pay the bills. To keep the books. To hire part-time help. And to always be doing those pesky bank runs back into town to keep myself supplied with the necessary stash of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and long green for making change.

A helluva lotta work. Especially for me, being one of the laziest little louts you’d ever want to meet back then. But guess what. Even if I had fully and completely realized beforehand just how much slaving away would be required, I still would’ve jumped at the chance to get it. Because the job came with one very unique and delicious perk. One of those offers you just can’t refuse.

It came with a quaint little rent-free camp! Right there smack-dab on the frickin’ beach!

And for me, the guy who’d otherwise have remained trapped and living under his parents’ thumbs at home all summer long? And for three whole months! An answer to a prayer!

Oh, I would be so envied.

And ta-DAH! Here she is. Just feast your eyes:

OK, “quaint” as my chosen adjective is a bit if a stretch. Kinda brings out the ‘bum’ in the expression ‘beach bum,’ doesn’t it. And how about those little luxury ‘yachts’ lying right out there in the front yard. Don’t they just have “poor man’s adventure” written all over them (provided I could scrounge up a couple of oars).

But to me? At that time? With my big-little-kid psyche peeking out through the eyes of my young-adult-looking boy-body? Jackpot! It was like I was finally getting that little “No Girls Allowed” clubhouse I’d dreamed of building back as a 10-year-old! I mean, weren’t the old bargain-basement Shangri-La sugar-plums just a-dancing around in my head.

But yes, that beach was mine, ladies and gentlemen! Day and night.

And then there was one other reason for me to feel happy about that job. Somehow my best friend, Neil Mallett, had always managed to skunk me by falling into so much better, and more desirable, summer jobs than I ever had. For instance one summer he landed two primo jobs. If I remember correctly (and I believe I do), during the daytime he was being paid good money for simply sitting in a chair in some underground Civil Defense bunker, just on the slight, off-chance that some major crisis alert might start blaring out over their Conelrad two-way radio, which of course it never did. So… you know, all I could imagine was him snoozing in some chair over there, and reading paperbacks.

But that was nothing compared to his night-owl job: being paid good money just to sleep, damnit! That’s right, you read that correctly. He was employed to sleep nights over at the Lary Funeral Home.

I’m guessing there must’ve been some regulation or other that required a living, breathing human being to be stationed on the premises at all times, maybe to alert the authorities if one of the corpses suddenly sat up, or perhaps it was to ward off the modern-day body snatchers. Whatever.

But just think how that had been leaving me feeling when there I was out there in the hot sun sweating my life away mowing cemetery lawns, or slaving on the 2:00 to 10:00 second shift (me missing out on prime dating time with my steady girl!) in the hellishly hot Guilford Woolen Mill spinning room, eh?

So anyway… you can perhaps see just how vindicating this might feel— me, suddenly emerging as The Cool Hand Luke of the Beach…?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So of course I moved right in immediately with all the necessities: sleeping bag, pillow and towels from home, stack of paper plates and cups, plastic ware, and my swimming trunks. And oh yeah: stupidly, with a box full of my college textbooks. Why? Oh, only because there was one rough-single-board shelf spiked to one of the walls, and I thought, Jeez, look. There’s a shelf. Oughtta have some books on that shelf. You know, for decor. For looks. (I mean, I wasn’t actually planning on reading any of them or anything.) Duh!

But turns out, the place obviously hadn’t been built by someone with carpenter skills. My shelf had been crudely nailed a bit crookedly to the crooked wall, so the books would slide off and fall to the floor in a heap every half hour or so (including in the middle of the night!).

Turned out the place did have a bed upstairs at least (Yay!) accessible by some rickety, cramped, and crooked little stairs. Also it turned out the place didn’t even have running water. So… consequently it also turned out the place didn’t have a bathroom either, which meant long nocturnal trudges across the cold midnight sand and up a little rise to the public restrooms in the parking lot. Turned out too the place didn’t have a phone jack, which irritatingly meant that to call somebody back in town I’d hafta dig up some coins and trot over to the lone phone booth located next to the concession building.

But guess what. It turned out the place did have electricity, so it wouldn’t be totally like Thoreau’s Walden Pond after all! Wow. That made all the difference in the world.

So yeah. I went to sleep that first night, a barefoot beach bum in his own little bachelor pad, happy as a hobo in an empty boxcar.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I can’t say the job didn’t have its stressful moments (OK, make that hours), but on the whole I was having a very happy summer. It was a social thing for me. I loved gabbing with the customers through the order/take-out windows, many of whom were re-visiting Foxcroft Academy alumni with whom I shared a common past. And then there were the visiting snowbirds from away, many of those with whom I was already acquainted as well. Plus I’d hired a couple of part-time helpers and had developed a good and friendly relationship with them.

But you know what the best thing was? I didn’t have a frickin’ boss! I… was the boss of me! Something I’d never experienced before (and, unfortunately, something I was never to experience again throughout my employable future). Oh yeah, I did currently have a boss at the gas station, but I liked him a lot, as everybody did.

So yeah, my summer of ‘65 was shaping up to be a pretty hunky-dory time. I loved feeling the dead cold sand under my bare feet on a hot night, while checking out the moon reflecting off the water. And my God, the stars! Wow. So unbelievably bright in all that darkness. And then of course there was often the music pumping out across the water from the roller rink off in the distance, soundtracking my halcyon nights. (Of course, I had to be learn to be careful and to watch where I was stepping at night while crossing the beach, as there was often the hazard of disturbing those… night-time lovers out there in the dark. Sitting together on blankets. Lying together on blankets. Not worrying about sunburns.)

And a big plus was having my BFF, Neil Mallett, come out and stay with me some nights. Yes, we’d been buddies since meeting each other for the first time in 9^th grade. Alphabetical order had seen to that: Lyford and Mallett. Since we were both taking the same college prep classes and since every single teacher back then lacked the creativity to try seating their kids in any configuration other than alphabetical order, Neil always ended up sitting right behind me in every class.

He and I had had so many experiences together. High school hijinks. Haying with his family on his farm. Playing our guitars. Double-dating, with his girlfriend-at-the-time being my girlfriend’s best friend. So yeah, the walks and talks we enjoyed together out at the lake felt so very comfortable in the days getting closer and closer to my wedding, after which poor Phyllis would have to join me in the ramshackle hovel I was currently calling home.

Something else: you never knew what crazy little ‘adventure’ might just pop up in your life, living out there next to the water among all the wealthy summer folks. I’ll share one with you right now in this post, and re-cap some of the other weird happenings in my upcoming Part II…

OK, one night, very shortly after I’d moved myself in, one of Neil’s-and-my leisurely night-time strolls got totally upended by something really bizarre. And later, it turned out that this particular little happenchance was really just the harbinger for a string of other unusual happenings waiting in the wings of the weeks to come…

So the road leading down to the Municipal Beach is known as Mile Hill. And as late at night as it was that night, close to midnight, there would be little or no traffic on it. Meaning that our world was deafeningly silent— the only exception being the occasional call of a loon.

Suddenly, however, that silence started getting ripped to shreds by some lone, unexpected racket coming from way up at the top of the hill: some vehicle roaring like a banshee with the pedal to the metal on a speed-limit-45 road, just a-barreling down in the dark like Robert Mitchum with his Ballad of Thunder Road’s revenuers hot on his tails. And gauging by the rising Doppler effect, we realized it would likely be on us in half a minute, or less. What the hell was going on?!

Now here’s the thing. Both Mallett and I well knew the geography all about where we were standing, which happened to be right beside the municipal boat ramp that drops straight down into the lake. Moreover, what was now weighing especially and urgently on our minds right then was the fact that Mile Hill completely dead-ends directly at the top the boat ramp. So of course normally drivers slow right down to make the left turn onto the rustic dirt road that accessed all of the many camps populating the waterfront, or simply to ease into one of the few available boat-ramp parking spaces.

But see, this car was a rogue fourth-of-July-rocket wannabe! Incoming fast! I’m talking Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen’s Hot-Rod-Lincoln”-fast!

Now, we’d sidled ourselves right up next to the boat ramp for a good view, and had just begun gawking expectedly up the road when… whoa-Jesus, here it came! Two demonic headlight-eyes looping ’round the bend and flying straight toward us like the proverbial bat outta hell, leaving us just enough time (say three seconds!) for our bodies to autonomically execute our twin-matador sidesteps! Whew!

Jesus H, but what a sight to behold! The car not plowing down our ramp but launching itself airborne right off the top of the it! (Now there’s an image I’ll never shake for the rest of my life!) And then of course The Big KER-SPLOOSH!– it doing its heavy, grille-first nose-dive like some breached killer whale disappearing back down into an ink-black sea! Only in this case (just for the blink of a second or two) bizarrely illuminating a thirty- or forty-foot arc of Sebec Lake’s floor bed with all its rocks and sand and small boulders off to each side… before buoying back up level on the water’s surface.

It was… magnificent!

After splash-down, the car had boated out quite a few yards but was now just sort of lolling in place out there, taking on water fast with both its front doors now opened, and settling down onto that sandy bottom. It wasn’t deep enough out there for it to sink totally out of sight however.

Its two occupants, after climbing out, were standing out there on either side now, armpit-deep and looking pretty confused and disoriented.

“What the hell were you thinking,” I yelled out to them, the two of us now standing atop the ramp, “barreling down here 70 or 80 miles an hour?”

They both gawked at us for a moment, motionless. Then they looked down and studied their egregious, opened-door car with the water up to the top of the steering wheel. And then back at us. “Where the hell are we?” the driver yelled back. A question that got Neil and I to share a frown at each other for a moment.

“You don’t… know?” Neil asked.

To which the response was, “This is the road to Millinocket isn’t it?”

“Uhmmm… no, not even close.” I said.

“This is the Lake Road,” Neil told them, “which is… well, you know, the road to the lake that you’re standing in at the moment.”

“Christ!” said one of them, hard to tell which one in the dark. “Well, I mean, the friggin’ sign said Millinocket. Comin’ through Dover, the signs… both of ’em… definitely both of ’em said Millinocket!”

“Oh, OK. Now I see what you did. You just missed the third sign. The one just before the post office. Would’ve been a right-pointing arrow. With Milo and Millinocket on it. You missed that one. And you were already on the Lake Road to begin with…”

“Yeah, and at your speed, it’d be easy to miss,” Neil said.

“So, you guys just gonna stand there all night?” I asked. “Don’t you wanna come in out of the water or anything?”

They did. They started wading in toward us. “Jesus, we gotta get this car the hell outta here! Hey, can you guys help us? You got a truck? With a chain, maybe?”

“No. But I do have a ‘50 Pontiac. With a straight-eight under the hood and a lot of power. But no chain. All I got’s a nylon rope.”

“That’ll work. Got get it.”

“No. It won’t. Rope’s too thin. It’ll just snap.”

“Better than nuthin’. C’mon, man. We gotta at least try!” They were pretty desperate. “We gotta get these wheels back on the road. Now! Please. You gotta give us a hand!”

I was actually starting to think about it. But by then I’d noticed two things about our guys. The first being that they were obviously drunk, big-time. That was obvious. No surprise. The second, that their faces now oddly seemed to be flickering on-and-off, blue. Took me a second to square that in my mind. But of course it was a patrol car having just cruised ’round the bend and slicing up the whole night with its blue strobes flashing.

So… yeah, this had been one of them high-speed chases you hear about. In a few more seconds, the cops had pulled in right behind us. “Well, I could try.” I said. “But the boys in blue here?”

“Oh… fuck!”

“Yeah. They’ll get your car towed right out of there in a jiffy.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oh well. It was just one of those odd but unforgettable moments like so many others that have inserted themselves into my life every now and again. Oh yes, my mind has so many such mini-‘adventures’ like this tucked away, little vignettes that have tended to sprinkle a little added spice into my life from time to time.

So Neil and I answered the few questions asked of us by the cops, and then we got to watch our out-of-town ‘visitors’ get handcuffed and escorted to the rear door of the waiting patrol car. But it was really getting late, so we didn’t hang around to wait for the tow truck to show up and haul the vehicle back out and onto dry land. We were tired.

And so off we went, strolling ourselves back across the cold sand in the dark, back toward my recent little home away from home.

It had been an interesting evening. To say the least. We both marveled over what it must have been like, barreling down that long hill shitfaced at such a high speed and then all of a sudden: WHAM!

I mean, try to imagine it! You find yourself unexpectedly diving nose-first while witnessing an inexplicable lake opening itself right up in your headlights like Moses’ parting Red Sea, and giving you a surreal and stunning glass-bottom-boat, freeze-frame flash of an unexpected lake floor!.

What a night. A night to remember. For them and us. But especially them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Looking back on it now, I kinda picture that little happening as the opening scene of some 1960’s beach-party-movie. Or, better and more realistically still, the once Perfect and Proper Ceremonial Christening (like the bottle of champagne shattered across the bow of a new ship) that it was, of the beginning of my new life as the summer beach bum, with that unimaginable string of even more abnormalities that were waiting for me in the wings of the weeks to come…

I mean “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” But can you say ‘the bachelor-party-from-hell?‘ Can you say ‘the mental patient at the door?‘ See you in Part II…?

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THE AMERICA THAT MADE AMERICA FAMOUS

“We were the kids that made America famous, the kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair.

We were lazy long hairs dropping out,lost confused, and copping out, convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care…

We all lived the life that made America famous. Our cops would make a point to shadow us around our town…”

— from Harry Chapin’s “What Made America Famous”

If you taught high school English in public schools for at least as long as I did and (for the most part) enjoyed it, you’ve likely found your mind traveling back from time to time to a parade of remembered faces you once ended up reacting with every weekday (for nine months at a pop). And then… well, just imagine the range of expressions that must have drifted across your face at one time or another. I mean, English being a required subject and all meant that every single kid in the school had to populate those English department classrooms, from the infamous Welcome Back Kotter “sweat hogs” to la crème de la crème. So yeah, that’s a lot of faces.

But if by chance you didn’t (for the most part) enjoy it, if you perhaps felt compelled to erect some ironclad emotional barrier between yourself and, say, those really challenging Kotter kids you felt you had nothing in common with, the ones for whom a college-they-could-never-afford-anyway loomed as the last possible thing on earth they could expect in their seemingly, already-cement-hardened futures, then I believe you may really have missed out on something. Something big perhaps.

Sure, it’s a common thing: teachers vying and hoping for the “best classes.” And I admit it, that’s the way I started out. I mean, being handed the list of the English classes you’re being assigned to teach each year is like Draft Day in the NFL. Of course you want the winners. Because they’ll be the ones most like you, won’t they. The ones you’ll feel the most comfortable with, the ones you’ll better understand and can more easily identify with and who, in turn, will most likely understand and more easily identify with you. The ones more likely to put up with your English Grammar and Composition, your Shakespeare, and your Poetry.

But… what the hell are you ever supposed to do with all those hands-on kids? Those shop-boys-with-the-grease-under-their-fingernail ‘English classes (well, besides wheedling them into grease-and-oil-changing your car over in the shop for cheap)? And those desperate and unhappy girls for whom the only seeming path out of the continuing hell of their blue-collar parents’ captivity is to get themselves pregnant and married as fast as they can? Or with all those future blue-collar hamburger-flippers and lifetime-convenience-store-clerk boys and girls, those future fathers and child-bearing mothers who will continue re-populating the town by making even more hamburger-flippers and lifetime-convenience-store-clerk boys and girls?

I’m talkin’ all the probable poetry-and-classic-literature-haters here. What do you have that they’ll ever need or find useful? But especially, whatever the hell do you have to offer to that one particular, rogue, all-boy class of junior members of the local biker gang, the Exiles, that I had to deal with?

You see what I mean? You feeling me?

Well, turns out the answer to that is… only yourself. You as the real person you are. That’s what you have to offer. Because that’s all you really have to work with, isn’t it. I mean it. And that begins by first having to sort of surrender to them right at the beginning. Surrendering and just embracing the fact that… well, of course they’re poetry-and-classic-literature-haters. Why wouldn’t they be? You’d be too, if you were in their shoes. And you and them? You’re stuck with each other.

Remember this? “In order to begin working out a solution to any problem, first you have to clearly identify and state exactly what the problem is.”

My advice to would-be public high school English teachers? Rather than beginning by going all-out NAZI on these more-experienced-than-you little ‘soldiers’ in the cold war against teachers (and oh I pity you if that’s gonna be your style) (which wouldn’t work anyway unless, that is, they were in the Army Basic Training and you just happened to be their Drill Instructor), you’re gonna be much better off beginning by actually listening to their bitching about the school. And about English classes in general.

And let that be your starting point, your springboard. Surprise’em by letting’em know you enjoy hearing about how much they despise school and your subject. That’ll throw’em off-guard. And besides, their honest, unvarnished opinions on the subject really can be… entertaining sometimes. Especially if you encourage them to be really honest at it. And you know what?

You’ll likely end up discovering that you honestly do harbor some common ground with them, despite what you’d perhaps prefer to think. Because all human beings do have common denominators. So yeah, in the long run I found it best to get to get right to work, digging down, and finding out just what those are. Tell them stories (talkin’ honest stories here) about your life and the bitching you did in school about your teachers and your crappy classes. Get’em to tell you some of their stories, assuring them that what they have to tell you… well, you know … “whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” (with the very big exception always being, of course, that by law, if it turns out that anything that’s divulged happens to include information indicative of some possible harm to themselves or others, etc. that has to be reported— yeah, you have to make that perfectly clearly to them right up front). But…really listen. Their stories are bound to be crazy-interesting. Probably a lot more interesting than yours. At least, that was my experience.

And you know what then? You’ll be on your way to respecting their points of view. And once you begin showing them your respect, you’ll already have begun garnering some of theirs. And then voila: I promise you that walking in through that damn classroom door each and every morning won’t feel nearly as much like such a real chore any more. Because you just might’ve started to (drum roll, please!) like them. It’s amazing.

And something else: I accidentally discovered that my particular kids (talkin’ my junior Exiles who, by the way, are featured exclusively back in one of my earlier posts titled “Bummer”– you should go back and read it) had a lot to teach me with their eventual honesty. Plus, I found those kids all pretty damned humorous and entertaining as well, if you want to know the truth.

Now yeah, yeah, yeah— sure, I know I’m coming across like some Yoda here, some wise old owl blowing his own horn and purporting to have all the answers. Truth is… it took me some years and many failures to wind up with the amount of the answers I finally did learn. I was pretty mistake-prone in all of the above in my first years. But way back, some very wise and passionate home economics teacher/colleague taught me this wise, old adage that really helped to set me on the path to sanity as a public school teacher: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Yeah. Sounds corny. But think about it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

BRAT PACKS

Cafeteria Duty with its Breakfast Club diversity

was always so much more vibrant than the

funereal dining doldrums of the faculty lounge,

what with the geek squad, the cheering squad,

the Romeos and Juliets, the Bettys and Veronicas,

the Dungeons and Dragons die-hards, a Ferris Bueller

or two thrown in, and possibly even a

future Stephen King seated at those tables

All those God’s-little-gifts-to-teachers whose

youthful honesty and sit-down-stand-up comedy

kept me in stitches and my aging soul decades

younger over the long career years

me, with half my life already slipped behind,

but them still with the Big Promise of Everything,

the whole damn shootin’ match, still looming

like some mirage in the desert up ahead–

yes, all of us unique salt-of-the-earth

stereotypes… breaking bread together

around the salt and pepper shakers,

spicing up each other’s lives…

from TO DIVERSITY AND DEMOCRACY: A TOAST!

Here’s to those too few and far-between bastions of diversity we’ve occasionally stumbled

upon over time… those vibrant, spice-of-life oases of heterogeneity in our deserts of

conformity: our talk-like-us flocks, our act-like-us herds, our pre-fab, chameleon-career lives—

And here’s to the public schools
of years gone by where slide-ruled, pocket-protectored

eggheads communed in cafeterias across the tables from Streetcar-Named-Desire Stellas

in the Archie-and-Jughead-hijinks melting pot, all waiting together in the lunch line of life

for the big segregation crapshoot of becoming somebody… some day…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But for now, back again to these particular song lyrics (which you’ll be invited to listen to shortly) from my featured singer/songwriter’s song, “What Made America Famous”:

“We were the kids that made America famous, the kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair.

We were lazy long hairs dropping out,lost confused, and copping out,
convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care…

We all lived the life that made America famous. Our cops would make a point to shadow us around our town…”

Listening to these lines has always sent a crooked, sardonic smile crawling across my face. Because they’ve always reminded me of some of the more challenging little Kotters I had at Mexico (ME) High School throughout the 70’s. Me, watching from a distance the little on-going cold war between the boys in blue and a number of my rebel-without-a-cause ‘students.’ Yeah. No love lost there.

See, weekends and after school my boys insisted on hanging out on downtown street corners, the most popular being the one right out in front of a pastry shop. Which of course was where the cops habitually roosted. And which consequently was where said cops were kept their busiest, busting up and dispersing just such “unlicensed assemblies,” mostly on the grounds that, well, it just didn’t look good for the town. And OK, truth be told those boys did make some shoppers nervous, of course.

Actually I have to admit they made my wife a little nervous. You know, we’d be strolling down the sidewalk on a sunny afternoon and up ahead we’d spy between eight and a dozen toughs leaning up against a store front like something straight out of Marlon Brando’s The Wild One (well, with the exception of that one biker-dude who usually had his cute, 12-inch-tall, curly-tailed pug-on-a-leash (rather than the pit bull guard dog you might expect to see accompanying a badass like him ).

“UH-oh,” she’d whisper in my ear, “think maybe we oughtta turn back around? Or cross the road?”

“Nah,” I’d tell her, “you’re with me, so you’re safe. Me? I’m protected by The Mark of the Phantom. They won’t bother us.”

Right after which a couple of the bigger ones (looking pretty ominous, sporting their shades and tattoos) might just playfully block our way for a moment and challenge, “Now just where do you two think you’re going…?”

To which my quick and witty comeback would always be something like, “Oh, I dunno. Straight through you if you decide not to move and instead wanna end up pickin’ broken glass outta eyes for the next two hours.”

And then of course there’d be the light-hearted little shadow-boxing horseplay between me and them (you know, that dumbass male bonding thing) but we’d always end up sailing right through them unscathed. And why? Because they’d learned to like me by then. And why was that? Because they’d realized that for some unfathomable… whatever-reason, they could tell I’d honestly taken a shine to them. Which in their world… for a teacher… was unheard of.

But anyway, after the near-daily shepherding-of-the-kids-off-the-sidewalks routine, the cops would mosey themselves on into the pastry shop, ostensibly turning a deaf ear to the retreating catcalls behind them referencing the ‘fat-ass’ physiques of a couple of those doughnut-devouring stereotypes.

However, that’s just what the kids would do overtly.

Covertly, the retaliation strategies they’d come up with could’ve earned them a place among the French Resistance Forces during World War II. The worst one being (in my opinion) to move their gathering on down the street to where the patrol cars were parked in order to (wait for it) set that poor, shivering, little pug right onto the hood of one of them— specifically the one with the drug-sniffing German shepherd left waiting inside.

Because oh, that canine locked in there didn’t like that little pipsqueak “hood ornament” rattling its toenails on the patrol car paint job one bit! And according to them (I never witnessed it myself, of course) that dog would be going bat-shit wild in there, leaping amok around the interior, and trying to bust out of the car to get at the lot of them, his berserk talons all the while just a-tearing the old stuffing right out of the upholstery!

Oh I’m sure they were exaggerating in their glory… but they sure loved telling me all about it.

However the most devious (or should I say most deviant) strategy they’d come up with was the ‘secret seeding’ of the police station flower garden with marijuana seedlings at night. The custodian there, who also served as the part-time gardener, ended up unwittingly watering and caring for them for quite some time. Right up until the moment one of Mexico’s finest eventually spotted the embarrassing extracurricular green and glorious growth among the camouflage.

Now that one made the Police Log in the local paper. And I’ve gotta say, they were oh so proud of themselves!

Vive la resistance!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now of course this Harry Chapin song that I’m honestly dying to share with you in a moment, “What Made America Famous,” isn’t about my little biker friends, per se. Rather it’s about America’s signature civil conflict between the “hard hats” and the “long hairs” that indelibly marked the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Think of the musical Hair. Think Easy Rider. But no, more than that, this ballad is all about about human decency. Pure and simple.

But first, allow me to share this particular little memory I’ve been holding onto over the decades:

So… I’m sitting in a warm, old-fashion barber shop on a frigid night in January, 1965. Whenever another customer sidles in through the door, an icy gust sparkled with blowing snowflakes shoulders its way in right behind him. There are five or six of us waiting to have our ‘ears lowered.’ I’m the youngest here, a college kid matriculated at the local state teachers college, the only one there not balding or with a head of white hair. It’s busy, but there are two barbers buzzing and clipping away, so my wait won’t be long.

So I’m just sitting back and contenting myself with listening to the old gents jawing away. Cackling about that ‘new streaker craze.’ Ruminating over the shipping off of American troops to Viet Nam. Weighing in on Muhammed Ali’s defeat over Sonny Liston, and who the hell does he think he is anyway, calling himself Muhammed like that, for Christ’s sake? This is much livelier than sitting me just sitting alone in my dorm room, poring over my World History text.

Suddenly whoosh! The door blows open. And standing half-in and half-out is a smiling young man with almost shoulder-length, snowflake-flecked hair. And he’s wearing a faded old Army field jacket.

“What’re the chances of getting a haircut tonight?”

I catch both barbers glaring at him. “Zero!” the older says. “Now get the hell outta here and close that fucking door!”

I’m shocked. But the young man acknowledges that he’s letting the weather in so, still all smiles, he steps inside and closes the door behind him. “No, seriously.”

“What? I don’t look serious? You didn’t hear me say ‘No?‘”

“But c’mon, why not?”

“Jesus, look around. Can’t you see the crowd we got in here tonight?”

“Well, if that’s it, I don’t mind waiting…”

“Beat it, kid!”

“Hey, come on. I gotta get a haircut. How much will it cost? I’ll be glad to even pay extra. Just tell me how much.”

The old guy studies him. “Fifty bucks.”

“What? Fifty…”

“And that’s only if. If… you take a bath, and shampoo the lice outta your hair first.”

“Lice?” No longer smiling now.

“See, we don’t do hippies in here, pal. Now beat it!”

The kid looked around the shop. At the grinning old men. At uncomfortable me. And then back at the barber. The kid’s got a pretty good glare going himself now. “Jesus Christ. I just wanted to get a fucking… Hippie!? Alright then! Fuck YOU!”

He turns on his heel, yanks the door open, and storms back out into the snow, purposely leaving the door open. Open wide.

I’m feeling bad for the kid. But I realize too that where the old fellas are coming from is their definition of patriotism. It leaves me feeling uneasy. Kinda confused. I mean, my dad flew missions in a B-29 during World War II and, man, I’m super-proud of him. And you know… I’m only a sophomore, but I’ve been entertaining some thoughts about perhaps enlisting myself, in the Air Force after college.

But this whole thing just leaves me feeling… not knowing what to think.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So anyway, the song and lyrics I’ve got waiting for you below I feel skillfully and emotionally capture the conflict I came to know back then as the long hairs vs. the hard hats. And there’s a recurring single line in the lyrics that pretty much kinda sums up my little barbershop example in a nutshell:

“There’s something burning somewhere.”

Please. Take a listen and follow along. I believe you will find it a powerful experience. I know I always do…

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ON PEGGY LEE, ONE OLD SONG, & ME

I fell in love with Peggy Lee in 1955. It was love at first sight. She was a tall, blonde bombshell. Thirty-five years old.

Me, I was nine. And short for my age.

**Your humble author, Tom Lyford (1946–20??)**

Some kids get a crush on a teacher. Never happened to me though. Why? Because all my teachers up to that point were wrinkly, mean, old bats who didn’t even like kids, especially boys!

So… I got a crush on sex symbol instead.

And so how did I ‘meet’ the famous Ms. Lee? Well, I’d seen the animated Walt Disney movie The Lady and the Tramp earlier that year. Of course, I had no idea who Peggy Lee even was, let alone that she’d played some part in that film’s production.

However, one night a couple months later, The Wonderful World of Disney aired a half-hour documentary on the making of that movie. And part of that program focused on the producing of that film’s soundtrack, with clips showing some of the behind-the-scenes work going on in the sound studio.

And there she was.

Now see, in the movie there are a pair of villainous, female Siamese cats named Si and Am. And together they sing this catchy little duet called “We Are Siamese, If You Please.” I was fascinated!

And I learned from the documentary that both of their voices were recorded by the same person: one Peggy Lee. And me being only nine, and it being way back in the mid-fifties when just about nobody had a clue about anything technological, I was confused as to how she could possibly have sung both of those voices at the same time! I mean, one person, yet two harmonizing voices? At the same time?

That she could do that seemed… magical… so (along with the fact that she was obviously some beautiful fairytale princess) she beat out Roy Rogers’ wife, Dale Evans, and Superman’s Lois Lane in the pageant of my current, preadolescent heart throbs.

Very soon after, I went to work pestering my parents to buy me the set of little, yellow, plastic, 78 rpm Disney records featuring the music from The Lady and the Tramp. And they’d succumbed. Then I practically wore out the single with Ms. Lee singing “We are Siamese.”

Plus… I used to think about her a lot of the time. I mean a lot of the time. Like I said, I had a crush.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. So, time went by, as it always does. Well, only a year, actually. And then, suddenly, there she was again in my life. Only this time as a disembodied voice coming over the radio! And it wasn’t some silly little ditty she was crooning this time. No sir!

By 1956, I’d become quite the little radio head. Mom and Dad had got me this small blue AM radio, and that had become my lifeline to the phantom Boy Friend-and-Girl Friend World that I was aspiring to enter. And with an extension cord, I’d snaked it right in under my bed, so at night I only had to lean down over the bedside and work the magic of the dial. So many stations. So many pop love songs. And yeah, I was learning fast that… there was a lot to BE learned by paying close attention to what the popular artists were actually crooning about in between the lines of the lyrics.

Now unfortunately Mom harbored some very repressive holdover-tendancies from her early, churchy, holy-roller-days’-upbringing, especially where the subject of ‘the birds and the bees‘ were concerned. So that meant that there were often fragments of mysterious (to me) conversations I’d overhear from the big people talking in the next room, say– topics that I quickly learned I hadn’t better show any interest in finding out about, not if I knew what was good for me.

For instance, one day I stopped the family dinner-table chitchat cold in its tracks by just innocently asking, right in front of God and everybody, “Uhhmmm, hey, what’s sex, anyway?” Man oh man, did I ever get rousted right out of my chair and summarily dragged straight into my room! “You know very well what it is!” she accused, just before slamming my door and leaving me, the new prison inmate, lost and confused… and contemplating, I do? I already know what it IS? How can I already know what it is when…I don’t KNOW what it is?

But radio broadcasts? They didn’t give one rat’s patooty about absolute censorship, at least like Mom did. Oh it was still the repressive 50’s and all so, yeah, they didn’t actually spell everything right out or anything (like that), but there were hints all through the music everywhere. So yes, you could get… hints… and then your job was to try your darndest to imagine what they must be singing about in between those lyrics’ lines…

It was like trying to crack a secret code. But– enquiring minds needed to know. At least mine did. So that was a mission I was usually on.

So one day I bought Johnny Otis’s 1958 hit 45, “Willie Does the Hand Jive.” And when Mom first heard me playing it, she got as prickly as some old wet hen. She just assumed it just had to be referring to something deliciously naughty. (Turns out it really wasn’t though.)

“I know a cat named Way Out Willie…

Got a cool little chick named Rocking Millie…

He can walk and stroll and Susie-Q

And do that crazy hand-jive too…

Hand jive! Hand jive! Hand jive…

Doin’ that crazy hand jive!”

“Don’t think I don’t know what that’s about!” she growled.

“What?! Jeez, Ma! I think it’s just some new dance they’re doing!”

She definitely wasn’t crazy about that song! Which meant I really liked it, even though I didn’t have clue #1 about what the hand jive might even look like. But, since any message it contained (which it actually didn’t) appeared too crafty for even her to figure out or put her finger on (i.e., it didn’t contain any blatant “blaspheming” like, you know, the actual word “SEX”), her argument was too weak to even get off the ground. So I got to keep that 45.

But you can see what I was up against…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So one day in the steamy summer of ‘1958, Peggy Lee’s signature new siren song came a-wafting right over the old WABI AM airwaves. Yes, I’m talking about that sweaty, hypnotic, little finger-snapping number. You know the one: Fever.” And boy, did I ever do a double-take first time I heard that song! (Actually I pretty much continued doing double-takes every time I heard it after that.) And whenever that song played on the radio (which was just about every hour on every station across America!), I’d just find myself ever-so-slowly swaying back and forth in time to its slow rhythm. I couldn’t help it. It just seemed to happen on its own. The song had me in its thrall every time.

And oh, those were some pretty intriguing lyrics for a ten-year old little monk locked in his monastery cell, like I was. And for the first time in my little life, I was listening to a song that projected… atmosphere! I mean “Fever” took me somewhere. Somewhere else. Somewhere dark and delicious and private. Somewhere (I had no doubt) that I wasn’t supposed to be. But somewhere I perversely… liked.

I listened to that song over and over and over. And my inquisitive, prurient little mind worked tirelessly on decoding its coded secrets.

“They give you fever… when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn…
Fever! Till you sizzle!
And what a lovely way to burn...”

My brain talking to me: Fever? When you kiss them? Fever if you live and learn…? Sizzle…? Oh please… let me ‘live and learn’ and ‘sizzle!‘ But… BURN…? In what way could burning ever be… lovely? I sorta wanted to find out, you know? And… would I ever… catch that particular “fever’?

(I really kinda hoped I would.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And then fourteen more years passed. And in 1969, Peggy Lee recorded another blockbuster. And just like “Fever,” this one too locked right onto me and wouldn’t let go. But by then I was a college senior, and the attraction had nothing to do with a physical or romantic crush. This time, oddly, it was purely… philosophical.

It was a dark song titled, “Is That All There Is?” Please listen and follow along:

I remember when I was a little girl
Our house caught on fire
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face
As he gathered me up in his arms and
Raced through the burning building out to the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas and
Watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over, I said to myself
“Is that all there is to a fire”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And when I was twelve years old
My daddy took me to the circus
“The Greatest Show on Earth”
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads
And as I sat there watching
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what
But when it was all over, I said to myself
“Is that all there is to the circus?”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And then I fell in love
With the most wonderful boy in the world
We’d take long walks down by the river
Or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love
And then one day, he went away
And I thought I’d die, but I didn’t
And when I didn’t, I said to myself
“Is that all there is to love?”

Is that all there is
Is that all there is
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep…

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
“If that’s the way she feels about it
Why doesn’t she just end it all?”
Oh, no, not me
I’m not ready for that final disappointment
‘Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
That when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath
I’ll be saying to myself…

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all… there is…

So, when I first listened to this song, I remember thinking, Wow! Your house burns down around you and you’re, what, not even impressed?

I could understand not being enthusiastic about a circus, because, personally, I wasn’t much of a fan of those things anyway.

But, Jeez! Your lover drops you and moves away? I couldn’t believe that anyone could just blow off that pain. I mean, I’d had that experience. And it had been a killer.

And then, to top it off, guessing that your own suicide just might be… yeah, right, too boring to even bother with? I mean, she actually laughed that off in the song. How jaded was she?

But then again, after listening to it over and over (which I did) and dwelling on it… well, after a while, I sort of got it. I could see how for some people that could be possible. Because looking within, I realized that if I were honest with myself (which I hardly ever was) well, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with depression, was it. I mean, I’d harbored some pretty dark thoughts myself, hadn’t I. And written some very dark and depressed poetry as a result. And in fact, philosophically I was really no stranger to the sense of meaninglessness in the world I saw myself living in.

So for me, the effect of this song was actually like merely slipping two or three extra shots of cappuccino into my mug of already pretty-rugged black coffee. And small wonder. Turned out the song was inspired by, and directly based on, a famous existential short story titled “Disillusionment,” written in 1896 by the famous existential philosopher Thomas Mann (1875-1955)– a man for whom Shakespeare’s quotation, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” pretty much summed up his take on life.

And me at that time? I was already (in my angry-young-college-man-youth-days) a budding little existentialist myself. Partly, I admit, because I was young and callow, and because existentialism was in vogue at that time with the college set, and like a little kid in a candy shop I guess I just wanted to try everything going. But then it had really caught on. Because my existentialism had actually gotten its first jump-start when I was a freshman back in ’64. I had enjoyed a well-acted performance of the play, “No Exit,” by the even more famous existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre. And alas, for me “No Exit” was a gateway drug.

I suddenly couldn’t get my sweaty little hands on enough Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre after that. And there’s an atheistic side of Existentialism, quite evident in “Is That All There Is?” So of course I flirted with atheism, but that outlook never really took complete root in my life, though I give it credit for having tried. But throughout the rest of college and for a fairly long while after that, I was just one more dark, little, agnostic, run-of-the-mill, wannabe-card-carrying “existentialist.”

Today at 77, I yam what I yam. I’m what I’ve eaten, what I’ve read, what I’ve watched, what I’ve listened to, and… the sum-total of everything I’ve ever experienced. And those old experiences? Man oh man, didn’t they just keep on barreling down the pike at me like cars and trucks the opposite lane, imperceptibly chipping away, nickel and dime-ing the reshaping of my overall personality and psyche a day at a time.

Today, each little chip is just a faded, barely-remembered memory-scar in my rearview mirror.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So yeah, looking back it was hardly any biggie that I just happened to catch The Lady and the Tramp, and then discover that documentary with Peggy overdubbing her voice-overs in the sound studio.

It’s just something that happened. Something that managed to get my attention when I was at a very impressionable age. And… inadvertently pinned the soon-to-become-influential Ms. Lee on my map.

And then as things do, one thing (my little Peggy Lee crush) led to another little thing (my bigger little Peggy Lee fever) and Hey, Presto! my sexual awareness got a precocious little jump-start. Which eventually did lead me down the road to…

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep…

… and then, perhaps, on to my own, honorary, self-awarded, red-neck ‘PHD’ in ‘Philosophy.’

In the meantime, there have been busloads of other regular people and other celebrity artists rolling down my highway as well. And some of the latter and their works have sort of saved my ‘sanity’ from time to time. Looking back at the lowest points of the depression in my life and remembering how the arts and the artists have unwittingly served me as my phantom medical staff, I’ve often said that I’ve had to rely on ‘the kindness of strangers’…on the virtual anesthesia of the Dead Poets and Living Artists Society… on the spiritual transfusions of the Leroi Jonses, the Kurt Vonneguts, the Leonard Cohens, Janis Joplins & Lawrence Ferlinghettis and all those brothers and sisters of mercy moonlighting as my tireless, albeit unwitting, personal psychiatric staff, keeping me on spiritual ‘life’ support, and dosing me with their daily regimens of music, cinema, fiction, & poetry…“

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. All that aside, I’ve always really loved “Is That All There Is?” and I always will.

But on another note, a radically different and almost completely unrelated note, I can’t help but say that there is something… funny about how this song secured its foothold in the top-100 charts (I’m talking ‘odd-funny’ here, not ‘funny-funny’). And it’s this:

I mean, c’mon, way back in that decade where most of the other pop-recording-singer/songwriters were dreaming up successful pap like “Sugar, Sugar,” “The Yellow Polka-dot Bikini” and “Who Wears Short Shorts”??? Like who back then … who in their right mind… would ever even think to come up with a dark, existential, and atheistic piece like “Is That All There Is?” and then push it as a candidate for a top-40 hit song?

I mean, this song is from far out in left field, isn’t it? Like… you can’t dance to it. Well… I guess you could waltz to it, if you really tried. There is an orchestra in the background. But it’s mostly a spoken-word ‘song.’

And yet… a hit song it became. It actually peaked at #11 on the pop charts, which means at one time or another it was edging out the likes of its very strange bedfellows, Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” and “Gitarzan” by Ray Stevens. And surprising as this might be, Peggy Lee and her “Is That All There Is?” took the Grammy in 1970 for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance, beating out Helen Reddy, Carole King, and Dionne Warwick.

I mean, according to Google, its success was reportedly “even a surprise for Capitol Records who, despite publishing it, predicted the song was too odd and esoteric to ever make it as a hit.”

So I’m asking rhetorically, Who woulda thunk it?? Besides me, I mean. Because… hey, I LOVE the song. It’s been a life-long favorite.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And now here you are, asking, “Is that… all there is…?”

Yep.

That’s it.

That’s all there is.

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DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART THE LAST

Mexico High School— Mexico, Maine… mid-1970’s

Author’s note: OK, dear reader, hang on— I’m going to tell you a true story which, when you read it, you’ll very likely doubt the veracity of it. It does read like fiction, I know. But it IS a true story. And since it happened in the late-70’s (pretty sure it happened right around 1977 or ‘78), that means that there are probably a couple hundred or so ex-students left out there who lived it, right along with me. Perhaps they will remember it with slight differences and from different points of view. But please, if you are one of them, please jump on board in the comments section to (a) verify it, and (b) make any corrections you find that need to be made. Thank you — Mr. L

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Catching Up— As a result of the latest bomb threat at the high school students had been told, via the intercom, that the gymnasium had been cleared and that each classroom would be called down to the gym, one at a time, in order to allow their particular classroom to be cleared. “Leave all coats, textbooks, and backpacks at your desks. Once your classroom has been cleared, you will be returned to your classroom, and then the next classroom will be called down.”

However, when I finally got to shepherd my homeroom kids to the gym’s entrance, my stewardship of them was abruptly commandeered from me by a handful of police officers who lined my kids up for a frisking, ostensibly looking for “bombs” but so much more likely looking for drugs. I was told to move on into the gymnasium by myself, and when I did that… there were three-quarters of our student body, sullen and nearly silent, all seated and languishing there in the bleachers. So… nobody but nobody had been returned to their classrooms after all!

And that statement that one of my boys had uttered back in the classroom, just after the first announcement had been made? “There ain’t been any bomb scare!” Well, he’d been right! This was something else entirely.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You know what stung? The fact that I, a teacher who had been working hand in hand with the cops all along, hadn’t been told anything about the plan to use a bomb scare as an excuse to pull off a major drug bust. It rankled, to be honest. But my position in the whole scheme of things was nothing more than that of a little a cog in the machine, was it. So yeah, it wasn’t up to me. And of course the rationale of their whole plan was this: IF (while in the process of responding to a bomb threat, and searching for a bomb or bomb-making materials) we just happen to stumble onto some illicit contraband concealed on one person, then we have probable cause.

So guess what. The cops netted lots of pot that morning. Lots of it! And put a lot of kids in a world of hurt with their little sting op— you know, having to wait for their parents to be informed, and waiting to find out the legal consequences were going to end up being.

Actually though, they missed a ton of pot, too. I don’t know how, whether a lot of the kids on the walk-up toward the gym saw the little trap awaiting them and quickly stuffed their stashes into their underwear or shoes or whatever, but… the custodians who had to sweep the gym floor later that day claimed it must have been raining nickel bags under the bleachers, for all the weed they found after pushing the collapsible bleachers back in place.

Wonder if any of them pocketed a little of it for themselves…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, let’s just take a minute and sum up what had happened here, and what had been happening. Let’s break it down. Here we had this high school which seemed… no, which had been, a sort of normal institution when the school year began. All classes going as normal. Activities like cheerleading, sports, school plays, band concerts and the like. All pretty normal. A typical school.

And then someone calls in a bomb threat as a prank, most likely one of the kids. A way to get out of school for a day, perhaps. It happens. Most schools experience them from time to time. More then, than now however, because back then they didn’t have a way to trace all phone calls in the entire world.

But then, just to wow his buddies and show what a daring smart ass he was, he pulls the same stunt again. The. Very. Next. Day. I mean, how cool was that, eh? Pretty ballsy cool! Only that second prank, unbeknownst to him, was actually a domino. A domino that got pushed and fell against another domino which, in turn, fell against the next domino like dominoes do, inadvertently triggering (what else?)… the “Domino Effect.” And then the metaphorical dominoes continued tumbling, one day by one day, one after the other, nickel and diming the days into four weeks, leaving the students and teachers of the school positioned in the middle of the whole thing like some ping-pong-table net in a tournament between the perp(s) and the administration.

Class time was missing big time. Homework was hard to take seriously anymore because the students’ minds, hell even the teachers’ minds, were now so firmly fixed on The Daily Question: ‘When will the bomb threat come today?’ And before you knew it, the Domino Effect had morphed into a virtual addiction. So the school had fallen ill. With a nightmare fever dream where everything had become way too chaotic and unmanageable for practically anything to get done. With everybody growing edgier and edgier, the edginess building and building until… eventually… something had to give!

And then something did!

BANG!

Everything was blown sky high in the volcanic eruption of a drug bust.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The student body was left shell-shocked the rest of that morning. Like the walking wounded. We had just weathered a high-end Richter-scale “earthquake” and no one, except maybe the cops and the administration, had a reliable tally on the extent of the damages just yet. But rumors were flying. And the last thing the building felt like by the way, from my point of view at least, was a freakin’ school. It was Crazy Town, with the dust constantly settling all around us.

But on the other hand, the drug bust was cathartic at the same time. Because at least SOMETHING had finally happened! Painful as it was, it did sort of feel like somebody had just lanced a months-long-festering boil. Somehow it seemed possible that everything, the whole damn shootin’ match, might just finally be over, because how could anybody really muster up the will and the energy to call in another one, after all this?

Or was that just wishful thinking?

And then it turned out that yes, it was wishful thinking. Because it’ ain’t’s never over till it’s over. Not that somebody called in another bomb threat. No, but that madness had just taken a new and unexpected turn.

Once the reading-the-riot-act assembly in the gym had finally come to a close, we were all dismissed to go back to our homerooms to await the announcement for how the normal schedule for that day would turn out to be amended. (Normal? Did I actually use the word ‘normal?’) However, nobody really felt a pressing need to proceed in any real hurry. So the big lobby filled up with kids and teachers and a cop or two, all of us just milling around like zombies. Time and Schedule just didn’t seem to be real anymore. It was so weird. That point of the morning seemed to feel like the end of some movie where all of the action had finally wound up, but the final credits were continuing to roll on and on.

And one of the possible items in those credits might have included the following:

Score— Bomb Threatener: 300+. Administration: 1000

And then, as unlikely as it could possibly seem… believe it or not, something ELSE happened…

There was one young man in the student body who held the distinct reputation of being your basic high school drug dealer. Kind of a scary little outlaw, he was. And whenever it had come to all the Mickey Mouse school rules— one of which was, of course, always getting to school on time— this kid had managed to sneer his way around that one from seventh grade through senior year, because rules like those? They applied to the sheep, never to him. So everyone had, more or less, gotten used to him being perpetually tardy.

And this day was no exception.

After all the insanity of the last couple of hours, a car pulled up and parked outside next to the curb. It was visible to any of us who happened to be looking out through the lobby’s tall glass panels that fronted the entrance. But it’s not like we actually noticed it so much. It’s like a couple of the cops did. And didn’t they just go a-charging out through those entry doors to get at him!

His mom was just dropping him off per usual, and he’d barely managed to get one foot out the car door and onto the pavement before… they’d grabbed him! In mere moments he was frisked, divested of his illegal contraband (baggies of pot), and taken into custody.

Now, this was a biggie for the cops! They’d wanted him for a while , but they’d always had to wait. Because they needed to do it right if they were going to have an arrest that would stand up in court. With evidence. Now… thanks to their little bomb scare cum drug bust scheme, they had achieved “probable cause,” hadn’t they! So as far as they were concerned, it would be Celebration Time at the police station that night. Whoopee!

Only guess what!

They. Didn’t. Have. Probable. Cause.

In their excitement and enthusiasm to nab their known dealer, the one they’d been wanting to pounce on for so long, they had inadvertently jumped the gun. If only they had waited until our young man had placed one foot inside our building, then their police-station-celebration wouldn’t have to be turned inside-out into a wake. Then their rationale would have passed muster, their rationale being ‘Hey, see, we got this bomb threat for the high school so we have to search everywhere and everyone inside said high school for said bomb. And if, and only if, in so doing, we just happen to find incidental contraband on one of said persons, well we then have legal “probable cause” to detain and charge said persons.’

But of course, they hadn’t realized that yet. And it would take some time to sink in. Basically right up until the moment the top brass at the station got contacted by the boy’s brand new lawyers, which didn’t take all that long at all. And guess who his new lawyers were. SURPRISE! The American Civil Liberties Union! Yes, those lawyers, those… nobody-expects-the-Spanish-Inquisition lawyers. Those guys.

And now the inevitable question was ‘So… why is it you felt you were within your legal rights to search an individual who (a) not only wasn’t in the building at the time of the search, but more so (b) hasn’t even managed to walk himself inside said building yet? So both the police and the school administration were finding themselves dancing lightly on eggshells and feeling a little vulnerable to becoming seriously entangled in the snarl of an unwanted legal court battle (i.e., can you say ‘law suit’?).

And then on top of that, finally someone had to go and bring up the issue of the veracity, the believability, of the ‘alleged’ phone threat that had started the whole morning— i.e., was there really a bomb threat called in this time, or was it just a some fabricated ploy to try to finally and conveiently squash all the bomb-scare madness?

Yes, once you’ve got the ACLU afoot, step lightly! Like the Incredible Hulk, you won’t like the ACLU when it’s angry…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

THE AFTERMATH

OK. It had to seem that our little epidemic must have run its course by then. Well, as far as anyone having the will or energy to phone in another bomb threat, yes, that certainly wasn’t going to happen again for a long, long while.

Yet a dark cloud of anger and exhaustion had settled over the school and, for that matter, the whole community. The academic kids weren’t happy with the toll the entire disaster had taken on their education and consequently, on their postgraduate ambitions. The stoners were definitely pissed off, of course. A lot of the parents of the stoners and, hey, even a lot of parents of the non-stoners, were pissed off as well. The community at large was none too pleased at the way the school up there on the hill had failed in handling the ‘pandemic.’ The administration was pissed off at the cops for botching the best laid plans of mice and men and bringing the ACLU down on their heads. The cops were pissed off at the ACLU.And both the administration and the cops were pissed off at the still unknown ‘Unaphoner’ who had started the whole the whole domino shipwreck and apparently had gotten away scot free.

So yeah, there was still a very bitter taste left in everyone’s mouth. And a day or two later everyone would find out what all this would lead to.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Once again it was during that same damn early morning homeroom period before classes were to begin, the period that was apparently cursed that year. As I looked out over my homeroom, it was impossible not to notice something was wrong. Only five kids were seated before me. Five seemingly nervous kids.

“So… where is everybody?” I asked.

The kids exchanged nervous glances. Then one of them said, “In the cafeteria.” As if that response answered the question.

I waited a moment, and then said, “OK. I give up. Why?”

One of them said, “Because they’re not coming.”

I let that sink in. “OK. Let’s try that again. Does anyone want to try to tell me why they’re not coming? And, you know, like, feel free to include a few specific details so I can get it?”

It took a long moment. “Because they’re mad. They ain’t going to classes today.”

One of them added, “Go look for yourself.” Jeez. I really didn’t like the sound of that.

“Be right back,” I told them. As soon as I opened the door into the hallway, I immediately became aware of a low, faraway roar of voices. I walked down the hall past the few classroom doors, turned right at the ramp, stopped, and looked down it. It was much louder now. And Christ, I could see thirty kids just milling around in the lobby down there, which was located right between the principal’s office on the left and the cafeteria on the right. Not only were they milling, but what they weren’t doing was making any effort whatsoever to be quiet down there, which seemed pretty daring considering they were basically right in front of the main office.

They were all obviously very agitated. There was anger and belligerence down there. This was not good. As I watched, I saw some of these kids drifting out of sight off into the café, while others from the café were joining the crowd in the lobby. So that was it then. Practically the whole student body was down there, apparently a lot of them crammed into the café.

I returned to my classroom. The bell to go to first period was chiming as I stepped back in, for all the good that was going to do. I mean, it was obvious. There wasn’t gonna be any first period that day. But just what the hell would there be? That was the question.

The principal came on the intercom. “The first period bell just rang. We expect all students to report to their first period classes at this time.” Listen to him, trying to make it sound like it was just a normal day. Even with my door to the hallway only open just a crack, we could hear the roar down below reach a momentary crescendo as an answer! Yeah. Well… expect and be damned, Mister Principal.

Five minutes passed. Nothing, not a thing changed. And then the principal’s voice came back on the intercom. Only this time his voice wasn’t broadcasting from within the relative quietude of the main office. This time his voice was embedded in the over-riding din and angry clamor inside the cafeteria. He was carrying a hot mic, i imagine for the benefit of the entire school, i.e. to keep the cooks and custodians and office personnel and we teachers holed up with our little bastions of mousey goody-two-shoes in the know. It was actually a little difficult to pick out his words because they were being pretty much drowned out by the rowdy crowd noise. “Listen to me! Please! Hear me out. OK? It’s obvious we need to talk. So that’s what I’m here for, OK? Let’s talk. I’m here to listen…”

His plea was met by another crescendo, now up much closer and personal. Only this time, due to the mic, you could so much more easily make out the f-bombs popping like popcorn in that wall of noise. “No, I’m serious here! Let’s…” But he never got to finish what he had started to say.

After an indistinct shuffling noise of the mic being roughly handled, one loud male voice much louder and clearer than anyone else in the cafeteria had suddenly taken over, yammering about how it was too late to talk, and the roar of voices then amplified sharply in a frightening assent. It was like listening to a live-action news report from some banana republic being overthrown! That’s when I bolted out of the room once again and down the hall to the top of the ramp.

I got there just in time to witness our principal forcefully threading his way back through the lobby crowd, and then storming his way into the main office. At least physically he didn’t look any worse for the wear. Within twenty seconds he‘d turned off the power to the intercom, and the mic went dead.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. This is the hard part for me. Bringing this story to a conclusion. Why? Because it’s easy, remembering all the wild and crazy outlandish things that happened. Those kinds of bizarre things are much more likely to engrave themselves indelibly in the mind. But I’m hard put to remember now how it all specifically came to an end. Because in my mind… it had all just petered out.

I do know the rest of that particular morning seemed long. It seems like for a couple of hours at least the students just continued to hang out, milling around angry and lost in the lobby and cafeteria. Probably not though. I know that I, and a lot of other teachers as well, joined them for a good part of the time, mostly to keep an eye on them. Funny, I can’t recall if lunch was served in the café, but it must have been, right? (I probably would’ve remembered if it hadn’t been.) And obviously the buses had to have run on time to take the kids home, since they would’ve had to pick up the junior high and primary school kids at the other locations. Although I have no memory of that either.

I can however remember one thing. And in telling it, it’s going to feel like I’m going off track and digressing, but have faith— I promise you, this story will dovetail right back into the saga of the of the Bummer Bomb Threat days’ demise.

So it just so happens that S.A.D. #43 was right in the midst of another, parallel, nightmare unfortunately coinciding with the bomb scare pandemic. Contract negotiations between the school board and the teachers’ union had long since broken down, and cosequently we’d been working without a contract for well over a year. It had become a nasty war, one which found us teachers, often with our families in tow, protesting en masse outside school board meetings and sometimes even downtown, waving our crudely made ‘UNFAIR!’ signs. The war (and yes, ‘war’ is an apt word) had been going on for far too long. The teachers and the board members had both employed various strategies of warfare.

(Sometime long after this particular day, the war would find us teachers actually going on strike, despite that fact that it was illegal for us to do so. But that’s a story for another day.)

One of the strategies used by the board ended up setting the bar at an unbelievably all-time low. Our previous superintendent had retired the year before. And when it came to hiring a replacement, we discovered that the selection committee had narrowed the open position down to three candidates. Two of the candidates were showing various strengths befitting a potential superintendent. One however stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. His name was Smith, and he came with the reputation as a one-year hired gun. One look at his credentials and you’d have to ask, Why is it that this Mr. Smith has a record of serving as superintendent in various districts for a single year only before moving on to the next? You couldn’t help but ask that question, you know?

So anyway, guess whom they’d hired.

Now it turned out I had a source of special inside knowledge as to what this Mr. Smith was like as a so-called “superintendent.” In a previous single year of employment mind you, he’d served (using the term’ served’ loosely here) as the super at S.A.D. #68, aka Dover-Foxcroft’s school district (D-F being my hometown). That year, when Smith left the #68 school district behind in his rearview mirror, he also left the schools in a shambles. So on recon missions, I was able to learn a lot from teachers I knew there.

However, the knowledge I was able to garner turned out to be superfluous. One week to the day after Smith had been hired at Mexico, a mysterious parcel in a plain brown wrapper arrived at our school addressed only “To the teachers of S.A.D. #43’s Teachers Union.” There was no return address.

When opened, we found written on a note at the top of what appeared to be a cornucopia of paperwork, “This is a HOW TO GET RID OF SUPERINTENDENT SMITH KIT.” We couldn’t believe our eyes!

This ‘kit’ was comprised of several newspaper clippings detailing unbelievably horrific things this man had been caught doing in SAD #68: (midnight harassing phone calls, blatant sexual harassment of female teachers, stalking, you name it) and lists of how-to suggestions to combat these behaviors, like “Work with the police (we did),” and “When you find out which teacher is getting the majority of late night/early morning harassment calls, have the police put a’ lock’ on that teacher’s phone line. (WE did that, too…)” and “Whenever Smith calls a female staff person into his office, that female staff person must insist on being accompanied by another staff person,” etc.

Funny thing: after leaving Mexico High a year or so later to sign on to S.A.D. #68, specifically at Foxcroft Academy, I was fortunate to be befriended by one Peter Caruso, one of the Academy teachers there who had actually participated in assembling the generous Get-Rid-Of kit sent to us when we needed it most. And I must say, the two of us have since enjoyed a few decades of chuckles and laughs at how cartoonish a villain Smith was, and how happy we both had been to escort him to the nearest exit of our respective schools.

Anyway, guess what. It uurned out that several of us teachers, most of us teachers actually (me included) had already been receiving such annoying anonymous phone calls for a week! So it had already begun, a week before we’d gotten the info. We hadn’t an inkling that the new ‘superintendent’ could ever be involved. Why would we?

And the very first time a female teacher was called into his office for a conference, and she arrived with an accompanying teacher, he angrily ordered the uninvited one out. And when that teacher said (and as a movie buff I like to think of it as reminiscent of the computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey), “I’m sorry… I can’t do that…” he summarily kicked them both out, threatening to put a note detailing their disobedient behavior into their permanent records.

So, yeah, in good ol’ S.A.D. #43, all told, things were already going to hell in a handbasket long before the bomb scare weeks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So finally, back to the Infamous Day the Kids Took Over the School! (OK, they didn’t really take it over, exactly.)

So of course it’s protocol in all S.A.D.’s that when an emergency occurs at one of their schools, the superintendent must be informed. I know a lot of the teachers (and even the principal) would have preferred not to have him called but, alas, he was summoned. And… he came. I need to say that by then he’d lost the respect of the entire body of teachers and principals and even the students, whatever the piddling amount of respect he’d ever begun with, that is. And you might be doubting the truth of my claim that even the principals were happily in (and rowing) the same boat as we teachers were. But that’s because back in the late ‘70’s, the principals and vice principals were on the same side of the contract bargaining table as the teachers. Our salaries were tied together as one unit during salary negotiations.

Here’s an interesting little tidbit: our principal actually enjoyed entertaining us teachers with a hilarious little Charlie-Chaplin-with-cane routine that specifically made fun of “Snuffy” Smith behind his back.

Oh OK.Want another? When later, as the school year was nearing its end and the school board was getting antsy about not having been given even a glimpse yet of the superintendent’s next-year’s proposed budget, they laid down the law and demanded he present said budget at an open town meeting. So a little later in front of a gathering of the interested tax payer citizens of Mexico, they asked him to hand it over for their perusal. This he promptly did. So the board members hunched themselves down over the pages for a minute or two. And what followed was amazing. One of them looked up abruptly and with a perplexed frown exclaimed, “Wait just a minute here! This is last year’s budget!”

To which Superintendent Smith, feigning surprise, countered with, “Oh my! OK, I get it. You see I was comparing the two budgets together on my desk at home. Why, I must have mistakenly picked up the wrong one! OK, I’ll be sure to bring my proposed budget to the very next meeting.”

But that didn’t fly. They were onto him like flies on horse puckey, just as S.A.D. 68’s board had gotten onto him back in Dover-Foxcroft. So no, they wanted to see the proposal right away. A demand to which he readily agreed. Only problem was, when they tried to get in touch with Mr. Smith the following day, the best they could do was get in touch with his lawyer. He was nowhere around. Believe it or not.

So anyway there the kids were, still angrily milling and muttering all around the cafeteria and lobby under the watchful eye of a number of us teachers. One of the students suddenly called out, “Oh great. Look who’s here!” A lot of us looked. And here came old Charlie Chaplin, aka Superintendent “Snuffy” Smith huffing and puffing toward us on a mission, hobbling up the walk with his signature cane. I figured he’d just hobble right on in, only it turned out the front doors were locked. He peered in through the glass and caught the eye of two of the closest kids.

“You two!” he barked. “Open this door now!” But all they did was sneer at him for a moment, and then just blew him off’. Turned on their heels and let themselves get swallowed back up in the crowd. Oh was he ever pissed! I was so proud of them.

So then he began rapping his cane, really hard, against glass. And to any of the fifty kids he could make out before him, he started yelling, “I want this door opened! Open this door now!” Strangely there were no takers.

My fellow teacher and I suddenly realizing that we were close enough to the glass doors that he could easily spot us, casually slipped our hands in our pockets, turned toward each other (leaving only our cold shoulders facing the doors), and launched into a make-believe ‘conversation’ meant to appear so all-consuming that it was small wonder we were failing to hear his outbursts, so out of sight and out of mind was he. Man, he went mad as a hornet. It’s a wonder his cane didn’t break the glass, while our faux conversation went on unabated.Finally the clatter ended.

We looked over our shoulders and there he went, his back to us now, hobbling off around a corner to circle the gymnasium. It would be a mighty long hobble to limp all the way around that building to come in through the one of the back doors, poor fella. But about fifteen minutes later he did show up in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub, barking orders.

I didn’t know to whom he was speaking at first (as I was purposely looking askance), but I heard him saying, “Well, I’ll tell YOU what! I’m in charge here and I’m going to end this mess right now! Iwant you, you, you, you, and… you! You five! You’re coming with me! And in the next hour, we’re going to get to the bottom of this and solve the whole damn fiasco right now! Come on. Let’s go!”

I watched the six of them lurching away toward the conference room, The Shanghaied Five looking oh-so-absolutely-mortified! By picking his negotiations panel straight from the hip, all willy-nilly like that? From an entire cafeteria bursting at the seams with Mexico High’s angry little Abbie Hoffmans and Patty Hearsts, he had just managed to form an ad hoc posse of… the Dungeons and Dragons dorks! All personally hand-picked to be the spokespersons for the stoners. Poor kids. Just innocent bystanders. Wrong place, wrong time. Tourists, really.

*But we don’t DO drugs, Superintendend Smith…*

But like I said. See, that’s really the last specific thing I remember. Or remember clearly. Like I suggested earlier, it’s mostly the really bizarre events that burn themselves permanently into the memory. So how things finally ended, the winding-down details of MHS’s gradual return to normal, or whatever passed for that year’s ‘normal’? It all seems like a fuzzy dream-ending now. I guess I just probably stopped paying attention after all the rigmarole that had been going on for so long. I think that’s when I started putting my focus on updating my resumé, and losing myself in researching any English teaching positions opening up across the state.

One job opening was in my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft.

But I am pretty sure that our infamous little high school drug-dealer was eventually able to wiggle off the hook with the help of the ACLU. And as part of the blow-back from that, I think the other kids who had also been compromised in that drug bust ended up making out fine as well. I believe everything was just dropped in the end. It was the adults who ended up with the proverbial egg on their collective face.

Oh yeah. And come to think of it, I don’t remember our ‘Una-phoner’ ever getting identified either.

So… the end of the story? The whole thing just seemed to fizzle, and then just dissolve dissolve away with time. And the school year limped on, following the school calendar to the end.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper“

—from “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot

home

DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART TWO “The Cold War”

(Third story) (the really interesting one)

Mexico High School— Mexico, Maine, mid-1970’s

The very first time it happens, you’re caught off guard. You might be knee-deep in a discussion of the Biblical allusions in The Grapes of Wrath or demonstrating the difference between phrases and clauses.Then, suddenly, the intercom crackles to life; you’re being informed that the main office has just received its first bomb threat of the year and all students and staff are being instructed to exit their classrooms in an orderly manner and prepare to board the buses that will be awaiting them.

You glance out your classroom window and yes, here they come, the long, yellow line of school buses snaking up the hill to cocoon your high schoolers in safety at a safe distance. And you think to yourself, Oh well. It happens. It’s a pain in the ass, but it happens. So… let’s get it over with and get back on with our lives.

And that’s what you do. Sure. An hour, maybe two, is lost. The class schedule for the remainder of the day is re-adjusted to compensate for the glitch. Eventually the bell rings in normalcy once again. A different class files into your classroom all a-buzz about the ‘adventure,’ The Grapes of Wrath just a fading memory until tomorrow.

And surprise, surprise—there was no bomb. So it goes.

But when the very next day, amid your demonstration of The Dynamic Elements of Good Character Sketches, gets interrupted by a second bomb threat in a row… you’re a little more than just a little irritated this time. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” or a bomb scare two days in a row. But damn it, I swear it happened. On the other hand, OK… admit it— you’re also a bit impressed by just how ballsy the little bastard(s) must be, chancing another one right on the heels of yesterday’s. I mean, don’t they realize they’re just asking for it. That the cops’ll track’em down and that’ll be the end of it. Just a matter of time.

OK, after that rare ordeal was over with and everybody was safely ensconced back in their little classroom desks once again, the principal, needing to rip someone a new one, if he only knew whom, came over the intercom with, “This stupidity will stop right here and NOW! Once was bad enough but it’s become a serious crime now, costing the taxpayers unexpected, untold money—compensating the bus drivers, the town having to compensate the police department—money that your parents, your very own families, will have to dish out because of this reckless and senseless act. What some airhead among you thinks is a game. But I can promise you that when the perpetrator or perpetrators are caught (and mark my words they will be caught), we are prepared to press charges to the fullest extent of the law!”

There. He had appealed to their common sense, common logic. So it was over and done with. And thank God for that.

But it wasn’t. There was another one. And believe it or not, another one after that! Quite a slap in the face to the principal.

Something had to be done. But what? OK. A plan emerged. It was kind of a desperate plan, and could even be seen as possibly irresponsible. But it went like this: From this point forward, whenever the office secretary answers the office phone and hears the beginnings of a bomb threat, she will hang up immediately. That plan was put into action. And it worked. Yes, the phone did ring, and of course the voice on the other end began, “There’s a bomb in the…”

Hah! Take that, Mister! Touché! And oh, I’m sure the office staff did some gloating and high-fiving after that, especially after the second follow-up call came in and was likewise thwarted. Can you imagine how pissed off the bomb-scare caller must have been? But the school administration’s plan had worked. Just like Nancy Reagan saying, “Just say NO to drugs.” Simple as that. Case closed. We could get on with… education, believe it or not.

But the flaw in the ointment was… see, Ms. Reagan didn’t know diddly. And this is where my (true story, I swear!!) anecdote here gets really surreal. Because in the afternoon of the day after the two squelched phone calls, out my window I suddenly happened to spy the long ghostly line of yellow school buses doggedly crawling back up over the hill to MHS once again!

And I thought, What the hell are they doing? They can’t be heading here. I mean, we don’t answer the frickin’ phone anymore! But sure enough, twenty minutes later, the evacuation orders were being given once again over the intercom.

What in the world had happened? Well, according to the cops, a bomb threat (for the school, mind you) had been phoned in to the little convenience store down at the bottom of the hill. The store owner had no knowledge of the trusted just-say-NO-and-hang-up strategy, so of course like any good citizen, he’d taken the call, had taken it seriously, and had reported it to the police immediately.

OK then— Bomb Threatener: 5 or 6, Administration: 0

So you can see what was happening here, right? A duel, of sorts. Like a game of chess. Unfortunately, personal pride had gotten into the mix, each side feeling the need for upping the ante. But… one side had the advantage: that of knowing exactly who its opponent was. But at this point the school’s administration had no clue who it was they were locking horns with. Interesting conflict.

So, it being the school’s turn raise the stakes: “From this point on, until the perpetrator ceases this senseless attack, school will be held in session on Saturdays. Every Saturday until it stops. We very much need to recoup the lost time we’ve been experiencing. And attendance will be taken!”

Hah! Take that! So you see? We were basically a precursor to the later 1985 film, The Breakfast Club!

How the administration imagined Saturday make-up days…

But just try, for a moment, try to imagine how well this ploy worked out: (a) half the student body simply opted to skip school that first Saturday. (And what a Breakfast Club detention list that would have made, had anybody complied. But they hadn’t.) Plus, with such a very large percentage of your students missing from the mandatory Saturday classes, making up for lost time and progress proved impossible. And it just felt so spooky-weird, looking out over your classroom desk and finding only six kids in a class of twenty, dutifully sitting there and staring back at you. Plus (b) for those who did show up, a bomb threat was called in that Saturday morning anyway. Seriously. And like, who didn’t see that coming?

Score— Bomb Threatener: 50 Administration: 0

Strange days indeed! So the ball was back in our court once again. And us no closer to discovering the identity of our nemesis. And by now, actually the conflict was beginning to lean just a tad toward something that smacked a bit of myth or legend. I mean, who was this guy? Or guys? Or even gals? Some kind of… Unabomber-Caller?

Of course after that loss, our principal called an emergency meeting in the library, which was then being referred to as ‘The War Room.’ Instead of just admitting defeat and cancelling school for the rest of the year (my prayer), he really wanted to play hard ball now. So we had to brainstorm. And we brainstormed! Brainstormed our brains out! And would you believe it? We finally came up with something! A plan so devious and dark, it boggled the mind.

Here it is: First we department heads were instructed to delve into the musty old book depository and dig up sets of twenty-five or so old retired texts within our disciplines: i.e., Math, English, Science, etc. That we did. And hah! There were a ton of Warriner’s English Language and Compositions in there collecting dust.

Secondly, each department’s teachers were instructed to design and produce one ad hoc general lesson plan that would rely on the use of these old books. Then the printed out lesson plans were placed in a temporary file for later use. They were allegedly ones that any teacher could just glance at, quickly get the gist of, and know what to do— pass out the books to kids, and have at it.

Thirdly, these book sets were then covertly loaded into the back of somebody’s pickup truck and then transported across town to… (you’ll never believe this!)… The Maine State Army National Guard Armory! Yes, I know!

See, somehow, we’d got the Maine Army National Guard Armory’s commanding officers to allow us to use their facility on any week day that we received a bomb threat. The armory was always a secure and locked facility. If by chance our bomb caller decided to try to call in a threat to the armory, they could just be told to buzz-off and go pound sand. The armory would provide just the very safe and secure haven for the students we needed, and… (here’s the kicker) …for the remainder of the entire school day! It would be like they’d be drafted for the day!

So, of course it didn’t take long for the next awaited phone call to come in. And then the plan went off without a hitch. The buses pulled into the school parking lot. The smirking kids boarded the safety buses as per usual. But this time a number of teacher volunteers boarded the buses with them as well, which raised some eyebrows of some of the kids.

I wasn’t one of those volunteers. No, for the very first time in my life I joined the cops as a bomb squad volunteer. But I made sure I was still out there in the parking when the bus doors slammed shut on those kids and the buses started to roll. In the past bomb scares, the kids would just remain seated on the buses— safe, warm, and dry, and usually with the bus door left leisurely open, just waiting until the cops had cleared the building. However, this time they were suddenly on the move. And the surprise of that, and the fact that they didn’t know where the hell TO, was written all over the bug-eyed, precious expressions on the faces pressed up against the windows as they were being hauled off and away.

And what a nice day that was for me! Virtually a holiday. It took a couple hours to comb the building, but that wasn’t hard. Plus, I got to socialize with the police officers, some of whom I already knew. And then, back to my empty classroom for the entire day. Unbelievable. Luxurious. A big change from my usual workday. I remember frivolously imagining that hey, maybe I should change careers from teaching to professional ‘bomb-squadding.’ But all good things must come to an end. “Nothing gold can stay.” —Robert Frost and Ponyboy Curtis

Around 2:20, the yellow bus-caravan finally rolled back into the parking lot. Again, I was standing out there in the lot, eagerly awaiting the reports on how well our anti-bomb-threat plan had worked . And as soon as the bus doors flopped open… Something didn’t feel right. Something was very wrong.

As they stepped down off the bus, everybody looked… so… disheveled. So… under a strain. Especially the teachers, who appeared weak to the point of just having to allow gravity to do the job of dropping them back down onto terra firma. Even the kids. Honestly, all the passengers had the look of the survivors of a plane hijacking, where the hijackers had kept their hostages sweating in their passenger seats out on the tarmac for twenty-four hours. Everybody was beat. When my English teacher colleague, Burt, got off I said to him, “Really? It was really that bad?” he just looked at me with an irritable, prickly glower and hissed, “Fuck you!” Comments from other departing staff included “Never again!” and “Just lemme at the bastard who came up with this plan!”

Later that afternoon, it all came out in ‘The War Room.’ By the way, I was curious to see that a couple of officers from law enforcement were sitting in on the debriefing. “Do you have any idea how many rabbit holes there are in that armory for 300-plus kids to hide-out!?” “One or more of our little shits broke the lock to the supply room! Fortunately the firearms weren’t stored there, or I’d hate to think…!” “These kids got on the buses with no idea they were going anywhere, so naturally they didn’t come prepared with anything! And yes, I know you sent us off with a big supply of pencils, but somehow they went missing!” “Lemme tell you something! That supply room had practically a friggin’ library of Field Manuals in there, at least two of which were labled Explosives and Demolitions!” “Jeez, those stupid so-called lesson plans weren’t realistic at all! Not that it really mattered since the kids wouldn’t stay put for more than five minutes!” “Try finding some kid hiding out down there in the motor pool!” “Such a zoo, and it’s pretty likely somebody got pregnant on our watch, from what I hear.” “You know what? Just… please! Don’t ever do something like that to us ever again, OK?”

Score— Bomb Threatener: 300+, Administration: 0

We, the foot soldiers in this war, were now more than a little discouraged and felt ready to throw in the towel and just hand the school over to the terrorists. But our principal? No. He seemed oddly very pensive and calm while listening to the rants of his underlings, but somehow not discouraged. And as badly as we felt, I’m sure none of us would’ve wanted to trade places with him and be in his shoes. Anyway, he adjourned the meeting fairly pleasantly, thanking the volunteers for their valiant efforts and saying we’d be revisiting the issue soon.

I left feeling guilty about having enjoyed what my volunteer-colleagues might have seen as a siesta in the shade compared to what they’d gone through. Well… let’s say a little guilty. And a whole lot more lucky, than guilty.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was odd. Nothing happened over the next few days. And lemme tell ya, nobody saw that coming. It was nice, yeah. However, I know we were all waiting on pins and needles for the next shoe to drop, me even fixed on continually scouting out the road outside my classroom window every chance I got. The waiting was like we were in a Cold War.

But… who knew? Maybe when our nemesis had seen and personally experienced the level of retribution the administration had been willing to go to last time (namely, the Armory fiasco), he or she or they (like ourselves) were seriously a little scarred by how badly things had already gotten out of hand. Maybe the ‘bad guys’ were actually a little gun-shy too, wondering just how far the administration might be willing to go at upping the ante next time.

But Time marched on. Until the other shoe did drop. And when it did, it came in the form of a very strange announcement over the intercom. The school was still in early homeroom period, just waiting on the passing bell for the first class of the day. “We have just recently received a bomb threat.” You could actually hear the school inhale its collective gasp up and down the hallways. Here we go again! And how far will it go THIS time? “The threat indicated that the explosive device is located in the gymnasium. So since the gym wasn’t being used this morning, and is located far at the other end of the school, far from our closest classrooms, the police and firefighters went right to work there and have cleared that area. However, to be on the safe side, now we are going to clear the entire building one classroom at a time.”

Now me, at that early stage of my career, I was a naïve little male English-teacher-Pollyanna. Yes, I realized that what we’d just heard was a little odd… but hey, I still had faith in the in the wisdom of the police in situations involving our safety. If that is what they were saying needed to be done then OK, that’s what needed to be done. I’m good. My only concern was wow, one classroom at a time? Man, that was going to take a long time.

“So, at this time, all students in room 103 will please report to the gym, accompanied by your teacher. Please leave all coats, textbooks, and backpacks at your desks. Once your classroom has been cleared, you will be returned to your classroom, and then the next classroom will be called down.”

So I was all OK, if that’s what we’re being told to do then hey, let’s do it and get back on with our lives. At least we weren’t being asked to board the school buses on another hell-ride headed for the Armory this time, right? But… I was totally surprised at the reaction of three of my boys to the announcement. They looked totally pissed off. One of them just blurted out, “There ain’t been any bomb scare!”

I answered, “What? How can you say that. I mean, come on—look how many bomb scares we’ve had over the past month! How can you be surprised we’re getting one more?” This kid wasn’t even bothering to look at me, let alone answer me. He was too busy just glaring along with his buddies, all three of whom were all shaking their heads seemingly in disbelief and anger. I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on in their heads, not that it mattered much to me. I just put it down as some kind of extreme conspiracy theory they must have bought into. I was like… Whatever!

Anyway, the time we spent waiting for our room to be called to the gym was really awkward. If it had been an English class, at least I’d have some class work to keep the kids busy with, something to keep their minds somewhat off what was going down. But no. I just declared a ‘study hall,’ without really expecting anybody to study anything, such was the tension in the room.

It was just a really long wait and it was getting on everyone’s nerves, including mine. But finally our classroom was called down.

My room, if I remember correctly, was 206… or maybe 201. Anyway, the ‘2’ in 206 simply meant, of course, that we were located on the second “floor.” Although… there really was no second floor, per se. See, our school was built on a fairly steep slope of land. And what I just referred to as the second floor was actually just a single-story wing of classrooms built up on the higher end of the sloping grounds. And there was no stairway to reach the 200-numbered classrooms, only an ascending, low-pitched, walk-up/ walk-down ramp. The classrooms’ hallway up there was built at a right angle to this ramp, so the hallway forked in the shape of a T. When we got called down to the gym, we made our way down the hall and took a right-angle turn at the top of the ramp. And so… as you’d start to head down the ramp, ahead of you you’d have a view straight down to the lobby with the principal’s office situated off to the left and the cafeteria off to the right. To get to the gymnasium’s entrance, you’d pass straight through that lobby and eventually come to a very small ramp, at the top of which were the gym’s doors. (By the way, the reason I’m giving you this description at this point is not only you can better picture the lay-out now, but more importantly because the lay-out will be an important factor in the exciting, DON’T-MISS-IT! conclusion to this ‘Cold War’ in Part III.)

OK. So… a ‘funny’ thing happened at the end of our little ‘journey.’ Odd– funny, not funny-funny. Lost in my own little air-head thoughts, mostly about how glad I’d be when we’d get this whole rigmarole over and done with, I’d led my class down the ramp and, as the point-man, and was just about to lead us up the…

“OK, that’s it. Stop right there!”

I stopped. And looked up to see who was there. What the hell? I found a uniformed cop standing there in front of me blocking my way. “Who… me?”

“Actually, you can keep going. Just go on right up into the gym.”

“Oh. OK.” I turned to look over my shoulder for my kids. “Let’s go…”

“No. Just you, Mr. Lyford.”

“Excuse me?” I looked around. Amazingly, there were four police officers. At least. That I could see. One of whom was a female. I looked back at my kids. They were being formed into a single line by one of the cops.

“Just you. Now, go on up to the gym, and you can help out.” This just didn’t feel right. Had I missed a memo? Or what?

One of my girls was at the head of the line. The female officer positioned over to the right addressed her. “Let’s go. You’re coming with me.”

“What? Whtta you mean? Where to?”

“Just around the corner. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Well, suppose I don’t want to come with you? What then?”

“Then I doubt you’re going to be very happy with the alternative.”

That was a threat. I was stunned. A cop who had just positioned himself onto the left side of the ramp said pretty much the same thing to the boy who was next in line. Apparently this was a two-officer gauntlet. Male and female. What were they planning to do? A strip search?

“Go ahead now, Mr. Lyford,” I was once again prompted.

Confused, shaking my head, trying to take it all in, I plodded up the ramp as I was told to, pulled open one of the four heavy doors, and stepped inside.

Jesus! There was three-quarters of our student body, sullenly and nearly silent seated up there in the bleachers.

So… nobody but nobody had been returned to their classrooms at all! What the hell was going on?!

I recalled that statement one of my boys back in the classroom had uttered, just after the announcement had been made: “There ain’t been any bomb scare!”

He’d been right! This was something else entirely.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so there will be a Part III that will take you the The Hot War and The Final Retaliation. So… STAY TUNED FOR THE FINAL ROUND….

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DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART ONE

As I pointed out at the beginning of my 44^th blog post, “Just Say No to Streaking,” a teacher’s professional life is comprised of so much more than just the academic subjects she/he teaches. The other fifty per cent of the teacher’s actual classroom existence is spent frittering away on such Mickey Mouse nuts and bolts as the following: lunch duty, hall duty, lobby duty, bus duty, detention duty, prom duty, bullying duty, graduation duty, bomb scare duty, steaking duty, school dance chaperoning, winter carnival chaperoning, study hall monitoring, being a class advisor, being a student club and activity advisor, being a coach of what-have-you, being a vandalism detective, not to mention the breaker-upper of the fights and the smoking in the boys’/girls’ room, and a warrior in the war on drugs in general, etc. And see… I strongly feel that the general population needs to be reminded of this fact from time to time.

So no, I didn’t spend my career only wallowing in adverbial clauses, split infinitives, and Romeo and Juliet. The following three anecdotes, arranged in ascending order from least to most complicated ( i.e., least to the most unbelievable and entertaining), illustrate my experiences with Bomb Scare Duty…

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(First Story) (the least complicated and least entertaining one)

Of the many, the very last time I worked a “bomb squad” detail (please notice the quotation marks, and accept my assurance that I choose the term with a metaphorical tongue in cheek), I was moving left to right, locker by locker, down the third floor hallway of Foxcroft Academy. This was approximately sometime between 1999 and 2001. There had been a one of those ‘bomb in the building’ phone calls to the main office, which was a little odd because it was the day before the very last day of the school year. I mean, what was the point? The seniors had graduated and vacated the premises days before, and the only thing left on the school calendar were the last few of the Final Exams.

So why was I on the so-called bomb squad? Boredom. I had a choice. I could allow myself to get stuck standing outside there in the hot and humid school parking lot chaperoning a good 300 rowdy juniors, sophomores, and freshmen (and oh they were wild and wound up) OR… I could simply raise my hand and shout “Pick me, pick me!” when the police asked for a couple of volunteers. I’d volunteered.

OK, you GOT me. This is not really me. It’s George Santos.

But don’t get me wrong— no hero, me. Everybody (me, the cops, the teachers, and the kids included) knew there was no bomb. So basically it was just a matter of me getting myself in out of the sun and humidity to enjoy some leisurely peace and quiet. And it was quiet up there on the third floor.

I was working the senior locker area. Most of them had been emptied out. A few had still had a few textbook sand some homework papers left in them, stuff some seniors had been too lazy to turn in; and those, we were just tossing out onto the hallway floor to be sorted through later.

But anyway, there I am, looking down at two or three textbooks piled at the bottom of some kid’s locker, and when I pick them up and toss them out onto the floor, I spy something else down there. A bomb? No. There are no bombs. What it is… is actually just a little sandwich baggie stuffed fat with green stuff inside. No surprise to me. (Well, surprised that any kid would leave such an expensive little stash behind.) So I call out, “Got something over here, guys. Not a bomb. Just something… that you might smoke in a bong maybe.”

“Oh yeah…” one of the two officers I’m accompanying says, bending down to retrieve it. On closer inspection, it’s immediately obvious that the Ziploc bag is swollen, as if with some kind of what… gas? The officer unzips it and, pffft! air escapes from it like from a poked balloon. “Jesus!” says the cop, with a wrinkled nose.

“That smell!” exclaims the other.

I smell it too. “What the hell! What kind of pot is that?”

“GAH!” The officer turns and tosses the baggie across the hall, plunk, right into one of the large trash cans on wheels we’ve been using for the paper junk. “Oh, just the very moldy, many-months-old , PB&J sandwich kind,” he says. “Phew!”

So yes, there you have it. My very last “bomb squad” experience turned out to be… a green, moldy, old nothing burger. So it goes. And I warned you not to expect much.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(Second Story) (a ‘You can’t make this stuff up! kind of story)

So my very first bomb scare experience occurred in Belfast, Maine back in the winter of 1969, the craziest year of my entire professional life. I was a first-year English teacher at the high school and as a first year teacher, I was finding that whole Ohmigod-I’m-a-freakin’-TEACHER-now! experience quite terrifying. I already expressed this in an earlier blog episode titled “Poet…? Peacenik…? Pugilist…? Part Three.” But for those of you who missed out by not reading this great story yet, here is a little excerpt:

“I was terrified. All my life I’d been suffering from stage fright and, now, suddenly having to face classes of thirty human beings six times a day (too many of whom looked a lot more adult than I did) just sitting there staring at me? Waiting for me to begin doing whatever it was I was getting (omigod!) professionally paid to do? Human beings all suddenly required to address me as none other than “Mister Lyford”? I mean… hell, I was no “Mister Lyford,” not the last time I looked!

“On top of that, they’d given me classes for which there weren’t enough books! They’d forced me to take the Dramatics Coach job when I’d never even been in a play in my LIFE! They’d dumped most of the worst classes on me (a common dirty trick school districts play on the unsuspecting new hires). And one of my two Speech classes was filled with “students,” not a single one of whom was willing to even stand up and tell me his/her name.”

So anyway, during a faculty meeting shortly after New Year’s Day, 1969, our superintendent (who, by the way, I’d learned on day-one was considered a buffoon by the teachers and department heads alike) brought up the unexpected topic of bomb scares. He shared with us that a number of other area schools were recently having to deal with bomb threats, so it was likely it was only a matter of time before we experienced one as well. Then he proudly let us know that he had hatched just the plan to catch the miscreants whenever it happened to us. I didn’t find out till later that Superintendent King was known for his cockamamie ‘just-the-plan’ plans. You wouldn’t believe it.

EXcellent. I’ve hatched just the plan to catch the miscreants…

The plan was this: “Whenever a bomb threat is phoned in to one of our schools, I’ve instructed all the respective principals go to the intercom microphone and simply say (all calm, cool, and collected, mind you) ‘Cole Alert.’ Now, when you hear ‘Cole Alert,’ you will know that a bomb threat has been received. But the kids? Hah! They won’t have a clue as to what that expression means. How could they? So, while they’re left in the dark— you, with your advantage over them, will be watching your classroom students like a hawk in that two- or three-minutes interim leading up to the actual School Evacuation Order. And in so doing, one of you will be in the position to witness, say, one student possibly winking at one of his buddies, or maybe grinning knowingly or, you know, perhaps elbowing somebody else meaningfully. So you will record their names, and see that I receive them at once! Then later we’ll have the police call them in for questioning, and together they and I will sweat them down into a confession.”

One of my colleagues whispered in my ear, “His favorite show is Hawaii Five-O. He sees himself as a Jack Lord. You know, Detective McGarrett.

A week went by. And then it happened!

Moments before the bell for the first class of the day was about to ring, I was monitoring my early homeroom period. Suddenly the distraught voice of the principal started barking over the intercom, “COLE ALERT! COLE ALERT! COLE ALERT!” with the same urgency of a World War II B-17 tail gunner yelling, “BANDIT AT THREE O’CLOCK!” Think Major Burns. From M*A*S*H.

I immediately (but surreptitiously, of course) began surveying my students, watching for, anticipating the telltale wink, the elbow, or the knowing grin. Ready to pounce. But all thirty-plus kids erupted simultaneously, every one of them asking similar versions of the same question to one another. “What the hell is this? A bomb scare?” “And who the hell is Cole?” But there were just so many of them, and it was all happening so fast, I just couldn’t see how I was supposed to be watching all of them at once! And I never caught a single wink, grin, or an elbow! I was a failure.

And then, of course, they all turned on me, their wise all-knowing ‘educator’ at the front of the room. “Is that what this is, Mr. Lyford? A bomb scare?” And loser me, wanting to be the ultimate professional, I quickly pasted on my best poker face and feigned ignorance. “Well, gosh… I have… no idea what this is all about…” at which point the entire classroom busted out in a volley of laughter at the flagrant silliness of my attempted white lie. And before the laughter had time to totally die down, the intercom crackled to life once again and began issuing the evacuation instructions.

Now… that was only the beginning of what was about to turn into the longest, most drawn-out days.

First of all, it was still early morning, around 8:00, far too early for a school building to suddenly flush its entire student body and faculty, ready or not, right out of the building and into a winter wonderland with its air temperature down around zero degrees. But suddenly there we all were, populating the sidewalk like a colony of National Geographic penguins on an ice floe. And secondly, our “super intelligent” superintendent had apparently planned his crafty Here’s-How-We’ll-Thwart-the-Malicious-Bomb-Scarer-Plot not one stinking millimeter further than just coming up with the cool-sounding, 007-ish code name, “COLE ALERT!” And that meant we were all left out there freezing on the sidewalk with nobody having any idea what to do with us!

A half-hour passed, while we watched the police cars and fire trucks pull up and park in the big school parking lot. Some kids hadn’t had time to grab their coats. I ended up lending my coat to one of them. Meanwhile, my toes were so numb it felt like they had disappeared.

Then down the line came our assistant principal with news of the superintendent’s emergency ad hoc Plan B (actually Plan A, if you think about it). Having phoned around town for some/any place to temporarily house our little army, a deal had been struck with the owner of the local movie theater. Suddenly we had a destination. We could go there. They would have room for all of us. A place to sit and warm up. So. We got our marching orders and off we marched. The theater was about three quarters of a mile away.

When we finally arrived en masse at the theater, it turned out the doors of the theater were still locked! Once again we had to assume the portrayal of a penguin colony, while the assistant principal went across the street to a pastry shop to use their telephone. Yeah. 1969. No cell phones back then.

After the proprietor finally showed up, in we went. And guess what. Now it turned out that the thermostat was still set at 55 degrees! And we were told that it would take a very long while to warm the place up. So we sat, watching our exhaled breath forming little mini-clouds before our faces with every breath we took. But hey, at least 55 degrees was like… plus yardage, metaphorically. Better than 5 degrees above zero anyway.

It was also very dark in that dingy theater. And I’m sure that you can understand that the kids were getting more restless and obstreperous by the minute from utter boredom, and who could blame them? Some were racing up and down the aisles, some singing songs, some just whooping it up, and a couple of the kids managed to get into a fight and had to be forcefully separated. Meanwhile, we teachers had formed ourselves in a line blocking the exits, so kids wouldn’t escape.

Man, we were there for such a long time.

But by the way, it just so happened that Belfast Area High School had earlier arranged for a school assembly that very morning. The assembly was to feature classical music performed by a visiting string quartet— two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. So our stable genius of a superintendent came up with the great idea of having that quartet appear and perform on the frigid movie theater stage to entertain us! Because you know, “Musick hath charms to soothe a savage breast.”

Somebody found and dragged four chairs up onto the stage. And then, voila! The musicians were trotted out onto the stage witho no introduction whatsoever. Or perhaps someone did introduce them but it was just too loud and chaotic there, that I simply missed it. I dunno. But watching the absurdity of the members of that doomed quartet sitting out there all swaddled up in overcoats and scarves and boots, diligently sawing their bows back and forth on the strings, their frozen breaths forming little empty cartoon balloons above their heads, and starting with their dainty sonata and hoping in vain to work their way toward the minuet…? Let’s just say… it didn’t go well. A loud boom-box blasting Bob Dylan or The Stones might’ve worked.

Ironically, the ill-timed concerto only exacerbated the savagery in the beasts’ breasts. Hoots and hollers and catcalls and loud boos! The stamping of feet! Everything was getting out of control fast, though we tried to shush them and weed out the worst of our little villains, but the anonymity in the darkness made thjat difficult!

Our musicians had found themselves playing with all the distractions of the band on the deck of the sinking Titanic.

What stopped it all dead in its tracks was the sudden, militaristic arrival of the superintendent and his henchmen! Yes, it seems that whenever and wherever he arrived, our ‘commandant’ always showed up with between four and six of his trench-coated tough guys (school board members no doubt, but definite mafia wannabes). They took the stage. The quintet-ers were summarily dismissed and immediately scampered off and away with their strings and bows and music stands in tow. Someone turned up the house lights way up while Superintendent King dramatically faced down the rabble with His terrible-swift-sword wrath… “WE’LL HAVE IT QUIET!”

And lo, suddenly it was quiet. And verily He saw the silence. And He saw that it was good!

He took the few steps from center stage to downstage, all the better to confront His adversaries with His odd mixture of disgust and pity. And He stood there with his feet shoulder-width apart during nearly a full minute of dramatic silence, just daring anyone to make a peep… and then, finally, He spaketh.

“This morning… somebody with a very sick and demented mind, phoned the high school principal’s office and informed them that forty sticks of dynamite were planted up in one of our classroom ceilings. Yes, that’s right. Can you imagine that, ladies and gentlemen? Can you imagine how diseased and twisted the pea-sized brain of this… this Neanderthal has to be? To do something as insane as that? No, you can’t. Because it goes beyond imagination, doesn’t it.

And we have reason to believe… and I’m sorry to have to inform you of this… that it was one of you… one of your classmates, perhaps the one sitting right next to you at this very moment, who made that that deranged call. As hard as that is to believe. Yes. I know. You see, a psycho did this. A sadly sick psycho made that call… and as a result, the rest is history. You were his victims. You are the ones that this psychopath sent out into the freezing cold and left you out there for more than an hour! This… mental patient…”

[Now of course I obviously can’t remember the exact words that Commandant King spaketh to us, because this was back in 1969, some 55 years ago. But I assure you this is very much approximately the speech he made, marked by the vitriol and political incorrectness that citizens of this decade would be shocked to have heard. But… it was just this vitriolic speech that led to the even more unbelievable… next thing.]

I swear, as I was standing there at the back of the theater listening to his words… (and you’re going to find this practically impossible to believe because… hey, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there) I heard, and a bunch of us teachers heard, a ‘noise,’ a low muttering, an ongoing muttering voice that was basically just a bare buzz under the thunder of the superintendent’s diatribe. Now we, the teachers, had no idea where the voice was coming from so, instinctively, like good soldiers, we all spread out, stealthily moving around the seats in order to home in on whatever the source of it was, because by now you could make out some of the words. And the words I was hearing? I‘d begun to find them more than a little disturbing.

But then suddenly, we no longer had to search for the source. Because a few kids in the middle section all at once just jack-in-the-boxed right up out of their seats and began jockeying themselves frantically, both to the left and right, away from a single, still-seated young man they’d been sitting near to. And what this fellow was saying was essentially this, only in lots more words: “And what, he’s calling ME sick? Hah! HE’S the PSYCHO!”

Of course the boy was quickly apprehended by a trio of phys ed. teachers (no, not by the likes of little ol’ me). The police were called to the lobby where, just before he was transferred into their custody, this young man (an obviously disturbed, solid, heavyweight of a Korean boy) managed for the first time ever to zip the lip of our officious, yammering, Superintendent King (of the Five-O) by delivering an iron-fisted gut-punch to his breadbasket, leaving him entirely at a loss for words as well as the ability to breathe temporarily.

The two immediate outcomes of that little altercation were (a) by the next day, our boy the ‘bomb-scarer’ seems to have been quietly… ‘disappeared,’ never to be seen or heard from again (as far as I know anyway), and (b) as a result, many of the faculty felt compelled to gather that night (as was their wont every night anyway) at Jed’s Tavern, to happily raise their mugs of grog in a toast to… (well, nobody really knew the Korean boy or his name, as it turned out, so…) to the young “Unknown Bombadier” who’d made, for their morning’s amusement, the utimate sacrifice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now dear reader, if you found this I-swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles- it’s-all-true remembrance of mine hard to believe (as I did myself while it was all unfolding around me as an innocent and unsuspecting first-year teacher) I can only warn you to fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, for… DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART TWO (coming soon)

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