Classic Movies – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

A couple days ago I was haphazardly streaming my way through YouTube heaven when I happened to stumble upon a clip from a 1984 movie I hadn’t thought about in decades, a clip that got an immediate giggle out of me and, at the same time, felt like an old friend. That movie is Teachers.

**TEACHERS (1984)**
**Tagline: They fall asleep in class. Throw ink on each other. Never come in Mondays. And they’re just the teachers.**

And despite being the typical, somewhat cheesy 1984 comedy that it is, it really caught on with us teachers all over the country back in the day, leaving us all feeling somehow exonerated (you know, from always getting ragged on for having such the cushiest job in the world, getting all our summers off with pay, and then forever being the butt of that old adage: “Those who can, DO; those who can’t, TEACH”).

Now, there are a number of great ‘teacher movies’ out there on Netflix, Prime, Tubi, or whichever, a few of my all-time favorites being Up the Down Staircase (1967), To Sir With Love (1967), The Paper Chase (1973), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Dead Poets’ Society (1989). These five are equally as entertaining as Teachers, but seem to have been scripted with just a little more class.

However, whereas they can be characterized as maintaining a sharper focus perhaps on particular aspects of the classroom world, Teachers manages to leave no stone unturned. It manages to hit on practically every conceivable thing that could go wrong (and often has) in that school-calendar-world of students, teachers, and administrators.

And in the same way M*A*S*H and Catch-22 expose the absurdities of war—

and Office Space exposes the virtual Chinese water torture of mundane cubicle-life with its personnel chained to a daily grind of filling out useless forms, fighting with faulty office fax equipment, and putting up with obnoxious superiors—

**…STOLE MY STAPLER… BURN THIS PLACE DOWN…**

Teachers exposes practically every single one of the possible chaotic frustrations of the profession. Basically it’s a comic catalog of all the classic “zoo” foibles common to the professional educators’ world.

And sure, “Zoo” is likely to come across as a little too harsh an over-exaggeration for you remembrances. But that could partly be due to the fact that school boards and administrators always strive to represent their schools publicly as professional ‘well-oiled machines,’ especially in the eyes of the taxpayers, parents, and even their students. In other words, a lot of the (let’s call them) ‘less savory occurrences‘ get effectively swept under the rug of PR.

But hey, what if I’m not even referring to the student body when I say “zoo”? Surprised?

I mean, we can all look back on our high school days and remember our teachers, can’t we. And sure, you loved some. Some were boring as hell. Or even stupid. And some you may remember as being kind of rotten and/or downright mean. But regardless of all that, you felt confident that you knew them, right? And of course you did. To some extent.

To the extent they allowed you to know them. But never fully. Because face it: you were the students, and they were the teachers. They, the adults. And you, the kids.

But… what if I told you (me being the whistle blower here) that behind closed doors, your faculty… yes, your teachers of English, French, Latin, German, Spanish, mathematics, sciences, home ec., orchestra and marching band… your principals and assistant principals… were, in general, surprisingly… not one whit more adult than you or any of your classmates back then?

That behind that faculty lounge door was a bunch of… old “kids?”

Sure. Some were twenty, or maybe twenty-five. Some were in their forties or fifties. And some were shamefully (Good Lord!) still gripping their tenured status with white-knuckled-fists well onto five years or more past their retirement age. Some married, some divorced, and some about to be divorced. Some of them even being bullied, some even doing the bullying? Some ADHD. Some doing drugs. Many needing anger-management classes. And all of them insecure in one way or another.

Well, I kid you not. And yes, I know. They looked like adults, didn’t they. I mean, man, they had looking like adults right down to a science. But let’s get to the truth.

And in so doing, I ask that you join me in watching that clip from Teachers. So for a good time, click on the link below. Then I’ll join you for a little discussion on the other side.

And just so you know, the man in the clip turning the crank on the ancient “office copier” has been nicknamed Ditto by his peers. Why? Because (A) this type of caveman “copier” machine was known as a duplicator, a mimeograph, or… a “ditto machine” (welcome to the past, boys and girls); (B) because Ditto is the one always hogging the office ditto machine with no regard for others; and (C) because he hates teaching, so he’s always cranking off dittoed worksheets to keep his classes busy so he doesn’t really have to teach.

**1980’s CUTTING-EDGE, STATE-OF-THE-ART COPIER**

His classroom management style is this: he keeps all of the students’ desks facing away from him, so they won’t view him while he sits in the back of the room reading the newspaper. His students have been trained to pick up their daily copy of the freshly-dittoed worksheets from his desk upon entering the classroom, to sit quietly at their desks working on that worksheet, and, when the bell rings, to deposit their completed worksheets back on his desk upon leaving. This goes on day after day after day. No other interaction between ‘teacher’ and students.

One day Ditto drops dead from a heart attack behind his newspaper. Still, throughout the day, the kids come and go, come and go, none never noticing that the man seated behind the newspaper is a corpse!

(And by the way, every school I ever worked in had a copier-hog pretty much like Ditto. Yeah, Teacher World in my experience was a lot like the world of M*A*S*H, character-wise.)

Anyway… I hope you enjoy this silly clip depicting a teachers’ lounge altercation (which I personally find much more realistic than you might be inclined to believe):

OK. First, let’s be honest.

(1) The movie’s old. Forty years old to be exact. So yeah, it’s dated.

(2) Dated, and a little cheesy, but not cheap. I mean, just look at the stellar cast:

Nick Nolte

JoBeth Williams

Judd Hirsch

Ralph Macchio

Richard Mulligan

William Schallert

Laura Dern

Crispin Glover

Morgan Freeman

(plus a host of wonderful, now-all-but-forgotten character actors

(3) And yes, this scene is silly. Not quite slapstick, but silly. Meant to be silly. The movie’s a comedy.

(4) But the movie’s a satirical comedy, a lampoon. And satires poke fun at situations that actually… are.

So if you are judging this scene as being totally unlikely, a scene that would-never, could-never–happen in such a place as a work room for professional educators… think again. Because in a moment, I am going to share with you a scene that I once personally witnessed, very similar to the one in this film.

Allow me to present my qualifications, my credentials, to even have an opinion on this:

I served 34 years in the trenches of schools (both public and private), and just like all other lifetime career educators, I’ve had the opportunity to witness a patchwork quilt of sometimes unbelievable ‘situations,’ so many in fact that had some gypsy fortune teller ever shown me in her crystal ball scenes of my teaching career future… who knows? Perhaps I would have remained the hapless gas pump jockey to this day.

But OK, here we go. Let’s take a quick look-around-peek (with the dimming flashlight of my memory) at my past, real-life Teachers ‘movie’:

Oodles of bomb-scares, of course. Wherein I sometimes, along with a squad of my equally untrained bomb-squad colleagues, helped the cops check out every locker in the building.

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

Breaking up tons of boys’ room fights and, more than once, getting slammed into a wall, so doing.

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

Enduring a three-weeks-long scabies epidemic that took out three-quarters of the school population (including the teachers) throughout that time.

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

Getting a surprise day-off from school one mid-morning due to a ‘temperature inversion’ caused by the paper mill’s stench-bucket-smoke from the towering stack right next door, commingling with the dripping 95-degree humidity outside to form actual CLOUDS inside the building (I’m dead serious here), floaters right up there against the ceiling tiles, clouds that actually began drizzling a toxic “rain” down upon us, the hapless school population—

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

Participating (yes, illegally) in a couple days of a sign-waving labor strike during our three-years-long contract negotiations.

Not actually a strike photo, just a news clipping of one of our many protests leading up to the strike. (BTW, I’m the menacing, moustachio’d dude in the jeans jacket, 3rd from the left)

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

Oh, and this one’s a riot: being ‘schooled’ by a (pretty-much “brain-dead”) Special Ed administrator during a mandatory faculty meeting that “It is an infraction, by law, for any member of the faculty to share the records of one of our students with any party outside that student’s family or school counselors.” Guess what. Within a couple of weeks of that presentation, that particular “administrator” (who couldn’t administer himself out of a wet paper bag) inadvertently did just that: he himself inadvertently sent one male student’s private records to the family of a totally unrelated female student! As you can imagine, the parents of said male student threw a fit, and threatened to sue the school.

But see, that’s only Chapter One of the saga. Because in the following school year, right after officially warning all of us teachers again of the legal importance of never giving out any student’s info to any other party, this man, this idiot… (wait for it) did it again! And not only did he do it again… he accidently sent that very same male student’s records to the very same female student’s family! AGAIN! Swear to God on a stack of Bibles! I have old teacher friends who will back me up on this. You can’t make this stuff up.

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

At one point in time, in one particular school I taught at, anyone (teachers, students, cafeteria help, custodians, and even students) were allowed (for a while, anyway) to just drop by the main office and place any needed, public, school-related announcement into a designated box. Such announcements (i.e., “The Chess Club will meet tonight in room 222 at 6:00 this evening”; “Wrestling practice is canceled this evening”; “Would Billy Greenwood report to the office at this time”; etc.) would then be read daily, before and right after school, by the high school principal.

This practice came to an untimely end however after some wise-ass kids put the following ‘announcement’ into the box for four days in a row. “Mike Hunt must report to detention hall this evening. If Mike Hunt fails to do so, there will be consequences.” After two days of the principal’s booming voice reading “Would Mike Hunt please report to detention hall this evening!” the third day’s readings got a little cranky: “Would Mike Hunt please report to detention hall tonight! If you’ are MIKE HUNT, I personally guarantee you will regret failing to do as you’re told!”

The message, it turned out, was not repeated on day four. (1) No Mike Hunt was enrolled in the school at that time, and (2) the way “Mike Hunt” sounds if you say it fast… (Uhmmm… ok, sorry… yeah, I’ll let myself out…)

But this is a true story, and that’s when the practice of the open announcement box in the main office ceased forever.

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

Anyway, after 34 years in front of the chalk boards, I’ve garnered thousands of these never-a-dull-moment, “text-book -looney-bin” anecdotes (to pilfer a Stephen King quotation from his book, On Writing). I’m sure all career teachers have. But the capper of all cappers in my life was that year a certifiable, text-book looney-bin sociopath and career criminal conned his way into the headmaster’s position and took the school for an unforgettable ride.

He lasted almost the whole year, but not quite. And as a result of my calling him out and getting him fired, even long after he had disappeared into the ether, I received a couple of spine-chilling threats from him (that’s over an eight-year period). And as tempting as it is for me to launch into tell you that story, I can’t allow myself to do it. Neither you nor I have the time, since I when I’ve done so in the past, I’ve always become a veritable Rime of the Ancient Mariner storyteller once I get started on that one.

But it’s also a true story, and that man became my personal albatross.

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

No, instead, I’ll conclude with the memory of another little account, one that got triggered in my mind by that film clip from Teachers… a dining room story.

Well, calling it a dining room is a gross exaggeration. What it was in reality was an oblong, boxcar-like box with a single door and no window. And it sat off to one side, against a wall like… something out of place, like an afterthought on the floor of the student cafeteria. The cafeteria itself was a fairly spacious hall with the usual kitchen-side, take-out windows where you’d pick up your trays, napkins, silverware, and the daily entree of your choice, and carry your loaded tray over to any of the circular tables surrounded by cafeteria chairs. But off on one side was that box. The faculty’s box.

I’m not sure what its measurements were, but it housed a long table inside, long enough to accommodate probably eight, maybe ten chairs to a side, meaning the room could seat a very crowded dozen and a half teachers at a time. Close quarters. Barely room enough to push your chair back against the wall behind you when you were finished and would be making your exit from the table.

Yes, this is where each mid-day, we of the faculty would come together to commune and break bread together (I’m tempted to say feed— the arrangement, such as it was, so much resembling a trough). Meanwhile, outside the box, a little sea of kids chattered away at their special, clique-designated tables.

Likewise, the faculty was comprised of its cliques as well, only in this setting, all cliques were sardined together around the same table. You had your jock clique (coaches and P.E. teachers); your smug intellectuals from the English wing clique; your politicos (the hawks and your doves, the hard-hats and your hippies); the newbies and the tenured; your misogynists and your pro-feminists; those who loved kids and those who obviously didn’t; and those who felt comfortable in their own skin joined right next to those who obviously did not.

All at one table.

Oh, and by the way… down the middle of the table, among the salt and pepper shakers and napkin holders, you also had the ashtrays because you also had the smoker and non-smoker factions. Which was an ongoing problem. Because back in the 70’s and earlier, the smokers had rights. The non-smokers? Not so much. Just the frickin’ way it was.

So if you were breaking bread at this table and the carcinogenic haze was tickling your throat and making you cough; if it was aggravating your asthma; hey, even if it was slowly killing you: just SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP. I think some rationalized it this way: I mean, what the hell? What difference does it make? We all live and work right under the paper mill smokestack anyway, so…

Yeah. I know.

But eventually that little controversial kettle of fish finally managed to get added to the faculty meeting agenda. And as a result of that meeting, after everyone who had something to say had aired her or his particular grievance, the issue was brought to a vote. And wow! The motion to ban smoking in the teachers’ dining area (if only DURING the actual lunch period) actually carried!

It really wasn’t so much though, was it. I mean, if you were already in there on your free period, (actually, we weren’t allowed to say “free period”— we were instructed to always say “planning period,” so it wouldn’t sound like you were sleazing off with nothing to do) you could smoke to your lung’s content right up to the first second of the ringing of the lunch period starting bell. So you know, obviously your smoke would still be right there, in the room, fresh as a daisy as the faculty and staff came filing in with their trays.

So no, it wasn’t much, but it was a start. Better than nothing.

Until that day…

A typical day, really. Conversations about… who knows what?…Richard Nixon, maybe; or who was getting stuck chaperoning the upcoming prom; or Jaws, the movie perhaps; or the long-lines-at-the-pumps gas shortage… whatever.

And then something happened.

We had this athletic coach, OK? He was seated a couple of chairs down from me. And what he did is suddenly pluck a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. Yeah, he did it just like he’d done it hundreds of times before in there. I guess something like that pretty much gets to become muscle memory after so long. You don’t even have to think about it. Maybe you probably don’t even realize you’re doing it, half the time. It’s a habit.

But two or three people noticed him do it, and somebody said, “Ooops.”

He stared back at her and said, “Ooops what?”

And she responded “Ooops, weren’t-you-at-the-last-faculty-meeting-oops?”

But by now he’d already tapped the ends of three filter tips out of the pack. “Ooops. I can’t remember if I was… or not.”

“Oh, you were there,” the man seated directly across the table from him said. “You were there.”

“So?” Suddenly all the side-conversations had stopped.

“So we took a vote.”

“Huh!”

“And we all voted that there’s no more smoking in here during lunch hour. While we’re eating.”

“Well, no. We didn’t all vote for it. For instance, I didn’t vote for it.”

“Yeah, well… the majority voted for it. And the majority rules. Maybe you haven’t heard, but this is a democracy.”

By now he had a Marlboro dangling from his lips. “So, uhh, exactly WHEN… did you, all in the majority, vote for this new rule to go… into effect?”

Somebody else said, “It automatically went into effect when the vote was tallied.”

“That right?” Coach said, but he wasn’t looking at the person who had just spoken. He was looking straight ahead at the guy seated across from him. The elderly gentleman.

“That’s right,” the gentleman said.

“Funny. I don’t remember anybody announcing that at the meeting.” A grin was starting to spread over Coach’s face, and he’d begun fishing for something in his pants pocket. It was pretty obvious he was fishing for his lighter.

“Didn’t hafta be announced,” said the elderly man (whom I shall henceforth refer to as Mr. Ellison.) “It was understood.”

The Zippo was out now. “What, so… if I didn’t understand, you’re calling me, what, stupid now?”

Somebody with a frown said, “Hey. Come on, Coach…” but failed to explain his point in words. I know I was feeling very uncomfortable. I’m betting most, if not all, of us were.

Coach was smiling, Ellison wasn’t. “You’re not stupid.”

“Well… thanks. For that.“

Damn. It felt like we were in some dumbass wild west movie all of a sudden. The poker game scene in the back corner of the saloon where one guy’s just told the other guy, ‘I’m sayin’… you cheated!’ And the trouble was, Coach really was stupid. And he lived inside this big, muscly body with a great big ego and a little boy-child’s brain. He was a bully. A might-makes-right bully.

A sudden metallic click! His Zippo, popped open now, had a little finger of flame burning above it.

Ellison spoke like some steely-eyed Marshall warning the hot-headed gambler he’d better leave his Colt revolver right there where it was, in its holster. “You’re not gonna light that cigarette, in here.”

“Oooh! I’m not? Why? Oh no! If I do, you gonna run and tell on me?”

A female voice further up the table snapped, “Jesus Christ! Hey, little boys, no fighting on the playground, OK? For cryin’out loud, would you listen to yourselves?! Do you have any idea how silly you sound?”

But Coach went right on. “Hey, who made you my old man all of a sudden?”

Somebody said, “Aw jeez!“

“I said,… Who made you my old man?” And he poked the tip of his Marlboro into the flame. Smoke arose.

After thinking for a moment, Ellison began, “Truth be known, I bet if your father was here, he’d wipe that shitty……” but stopped when he saw the wiggily smoke ring expelled from Coach’s pursed lips traveling across the table toward him.

“You were saying…?”

With a brush of his hand, Ellison waved away the smoke ring as if a fly. “I was about to say… if truth be known, and I was your… daddy…”

Coach tensed at the word.

“… I’d be slapping your punk face six days from Sunday again, wouldn’t I… sonny boy? Now here, stub that cigarette out,” he added, sliding an ash tray sliding over across the table.

“Hey, I know what. How ‘bout I stub this butt right in that ugly kike face of yours?!”

BAM! The back of Ellison’s chair whacked the wall behind him as he struggled to rise to his feet! “OK! Now you’ve done it!”

BAM! Coach’s chair! “Not YET I haven’t!”

Amid tipped-over sodas and shouts of “GUYS!” “CHRIST ALMIGHTY!” “WHAT THE FUCK!” “STOP IT!” and “IDIOTS!” Ellison, caught up in what looked like a wild paroxysm of a Saint Vitus’ dance, was tearing at his sport jacket, futilely trying to rip the damn thing off his shoulders while Coach had already crawled a quarter of the way across the tabletop, only thing holding him back being the grip somebody’d managed to get on the back of his belt!

It was pandemonium! It was a ruckus! It was a…

ZOO!

And when the first teacher to bail reached the door yanked it open, (surprise!) two horrified boys on their hands and knees (having had their ears glued to the doorjamb all the while) toppled inside and pretty much had to be stepped over.

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

So yeah, I don’t find my Teachers clip to be that unrealistic, although it was a little over-dramatically done. And secondly, I do think that our needy little inner child (I suspect I’m talking about the ID here) remains with us all of our lives, hiding out inside us, right behind that Look-at-me-I’m- an-adult façade we project before ourselves like some medieval shield. And when things get too stressful in our lives, it steps out of the closet and, yes, look out, here it comes!

I guess I’m sounding a little… Lord of the Flies, huh.

So anyway…

When I first decided to focus on my memory of that violent little lunchtime incident for this post (the fight over smoking in the teacher’s “dining room” box), a film clip from another movie-favorite of mine kept nagging at me, wanting in on this discussion. I thought about letting it and finally, yeah, I’ve caved.

The film is of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And I call the scene, the I Ain’t No Little Kid, Nurse Ratched! scene. And yes, I believe it provides a suitable little capstone for the topic at hand…

Thanks for reading, by the way.

TAGLINE: If he’s crazy, what does that make you?

Please leave a comment if you’d like in the field below, and then click on “POST COMMENT.” I will read it and respond.

RUMFORD ROSWELL?? PART II

**ME ACTUALLY IN ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO IN SEPTEMBER, 2009**

Back in the 1970s, hardly anyone would dare admit to having seen a UFO, lest they’d be ostracized as a “nut case” and lose the respect of their peers, friends, and even family. This was especially true of airline pilots, who would likely be grounded first, and then secondly lose their cherished careers. It really happened.

This little clip from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind dramatically illustrates that professional dilemma. Today, in 2024, airline authorities have eased up on their restrictions, and pilots are generally allowed to make their reports without fear.

Click and enjoy…

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Of course, there are those who’d like nothing better than to have a close encounter of the extraterrestrial kind. For instance, here’s a ‘friendly’ old geezer, also from the Close Encounters film. Apparently when word got out that his city was getting inundated with UFO sightings, he decided to start hanging out most nights in a reported UFO hotspot, high up on a hill overlooking the cityscape. And he wasn’t alone for long…

***EARTH’S SELF-APPOINTED FRIENDLY AMBASSADORTO THE ETs***

FIRST, A RECAP OF PART I’s CONCLUSION:

(Jack Rogers’s speaking): “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 up at him with imploring eyes, and then his gaze dropped back down to the toes of his shoes again. In the saddest, softest little voice you could ever imagine, he confessed.

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

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

PART II

“You’re not ALLOWED to…?! What the…?! Whatta you mean you’re not allowed to talk about it? Who’s not allowing it, for cryin’ out loud?!”

Silence. Then a mousey “… my dad.”

“Oh yeah? And why would he not allow you to talk about it…?”

“’Cause… he don’ wanna get in trouble.”

“Oh, really!?”

So this is where I butted in. “Son? Believe me. We’re not here to get anybody in trouble. Not your dad, not you, or anyone else, I swear. We’re only here because well, my… friend here saw something in the sky last night, OK? And see, it made him really really... curious, you know? And it’s been bugging him all day. So all we’re here for is to try to find… an answer. Just, you know, only the knowledge about what it was, nothing else. I promise. Just… knowing.”

“And I don’t want to get me in trouble, either, like him getting mad at me ‘cause I told.”

“OK OK, I get that. We get that. And no, of course not. That’s the exact last thing in the world we want, too.”

“‘Cause Dad’s a Forest Ranger.”

“Oh… Ah.” That was a lot to take in. “Hmmm. I see. OK then. So here’s what’s let’s do. You tell us what it was my friend saw up there in the air last night, and poof! we’ll disappear, just like that. We’ll get right out of your hair. He and I, we’ll get in the Jeep right how and go right back to our homes. It’s almost past our bedtimes anyway. OK? Nobody gets in trouble or anything. How’s that?”

“Uhmmm, I dunno.”

“Please, son?”

“… Oh, OK. I guess.”

“Aw, great. So. Just what was this curious thing?”

“Well, Dad makes’em.”

The two of us let that sink in for a moment. “So. You say he makes… them, eh? So… he’s made more than one, I take it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“OK. That’s cool. Yeah. And your dad. He does this… why?”

The boy thinks for a moment and says, all matter-of-fact, “For fun.”

“Wow. Yeah. I can see that would be kinda fun. Kinda a hobby, I guess. You know what? I think your dad and I maybe have a lot in common.”

“OK.”

“And what does he call them? I mean, does he have a name for these things?”

“Oh, just… UFOs.”

“Just UFO’s. And so, he does this because… well, I know you said for fun but, if I may ask, exactly where’s the fun in that, mostly, d’you think?”

“Well. There’s no such thing as UFOs. Not really. But Dad says a lot of people around here actually believe there are. Which is silly. And so he makes’em, and flies’em at night. So that the next day or two, somebody’ll probably call him on the phone to report seeing a flying saucer, because he’s a Ranger.. But he’s the guy who made it. And so he’ll says stuff like, Oh my! That’s scary! Tell ya what. I’ll get right on it. I’ll keep my eyes peeled on my night patrol. Stuff like that. And when he hangs up the phone, boy does he ever laugh and laugh. And he’s got a very funny laugh, too. It always makes Mum and me laugh right along too.”

“Wow. Sounds like your dad’s a funny guy. One good ol’ boy fun-loving guy, too.”

“Oh he is, he is! He says it gives’em a little… spice in their life. That’s the way he says it.”

“Well yeah. All he’s doing is just giving them something to think about. Just making life a little more interesting for’em, I’d say.”

“Yup.”

“Hey, you know what that reminds me of?”

“Uhmmm, no. What?”

“Halloween. You know how much fun Halloween is. The one day of the year everybody’s lovin’ the fun of being spooked and freaked out? Well, sounds to me all he’s doing’s just spreading Halloween fun around, off and on, other times in the year. And good for him, I say. There’s no harm in that.”

“Uh huh.”

“I mean, they might not be getting actual little kids all dressed up in scary costumes knockin’ on their doors, calling out, Trick or Treat. But what they do get, after they see one of your dad’s ‘UFOs’ go by overhead, is something that gives’em that same spooky fun, right? For a few days they’ll be peering out their windows at night, a little spooked and hopin’ they don’t come face-to-face with a bunch of little green men peering right back at’im, right?”

“Hah! Little green men! Yeah. That’s funny, ’cause that’s exactly what Dad calls’em too. The little green men!”

“Your dad sounds like a very likable guy. A lot like myself. But OK, you know what?”

“Nope.”

“I just want to say thank-you very much for telling us what it was my buddy here saw last night, to put his mind at ease.”

“OK.”

“And whatta you, Jackie ol’ boy, have to say to our little friend here?”

“What? Oh! Yeah, thank you very much, son.”

“You’re welcome, Jackie.”

“Thanks to you, kid, Ol’ Jackie here will be able to get some much-needed peaceful sleep tonight.”

“OK.”

“Now, one more last question before we go. OK?”

“Uhmmm, I guess…”

“Your dad. How exactly does he make these UFOs anyway. Only asking because, being sorta like your dad, I’m thinking I might like to make one or two of these myself, you know?”

“With straws!”

“Straws? Ummm, whattaya mean, straws?”

“Drinking straws. Plus his plastic bags. And a candle.”

“Drinking straws? You mean like, plastic drinking straws? Really?”

“Yep. We got a whole box of them.”

“Oh. OK. So that’s what he uses to make them. But, like, how does he… you know, put’em all together?”

“Oh sure. He sticks the straws together, kinda like Tinker Toys. And next, he starts by building… well, what he calls ‘a cage’ with’em. It’s kinda like when we was puttin’ that box kite together we built last year.”

“Oh yeah. A box kite. Sure. That’d sorta explain why it might have that top-of-a-tower look about it. So, he’s using the straws he sticks together instead of, like, your kite’s… long, wooden sticks?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause they don’t weigh nothin’. Cause it’s gotta be like… light, you know? And then he bends the bottoms of the straws over into the middle. And tapes them all up with the candle, all together. Yuh, right in the middle.”

“Ah. The candle. Heat supply! And a.k.a., the flickering light, yes!”

“’Course, the last thing: he pulls the bag down over it.”

“Uhmmm… what kind of bag does he use, by the way.?”

“The bags his uniform comes in.”

“You mean… when he buys his uniforms, they come in a bag?”

“No. The plastic bag when it comes back from the cleaners. And that’s only his dress uniform. Mom washes all his regular uniforms.”

“Oh. I get it. You’re talking plastic dry cleaner bags. Right! They have no weight whatsoever.”

“Yup. That’s why.”

“OK, little man. I can’t tell you enough how helpful you’ve been. And I really apologize that we probably made you feel a little nervous at first, a coupla big adult guys like us just pulling up into your driveway and banging on the door like we did. Well… like he did,” I say, frowning at Jack. “But this whole evening’s been very… educational. For the both of us. But…

“Oh well… it’s getting late, isn’t it. So, time to say adios, I guess. But I gotta tell ya son, and we both mean this: you… are one good man, Charlie Brown.”

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

A couple of minutes later we were tooling back down those pitch-dark, spooky, Deliverance roads, back toward our safe little-green men-free lives…

But: an ‘interesting’ evening was had by all.

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

Now, I don’t know if any of you’ve gathered this from many of my previous posts, but… I suspect there’s probably something… a little weird (?) about me here. Well OK, a lot of things. I mean, what better a ‘for instance’ than this? Go figure:

(A) I’d serendipitously been treated to a nice, late-evening, Unsolved Cosmic Mystery Ride in a Jeep— great entertainment;

(B) the mystery had been solved— Robert Stack, eat your heart out;

and (D) Jack Rogers could now sleep soundly at night knowing that his world (and ours) was not under at least an immediate threat of an extraterrestrial invasion.

Quite a day, right? So, wouldn’t you think that would be enough? For anybody? Well surprise. It wasn’t. Not for me. Because I was one of those people for whom enough is never enough. Right. I guess you could say that maybe I… had a “problem?”

“(ahem) Hi. I’m Tom. And I’m a prankster…?”

Church basement Pranksters Anonymous Gathering responds (in unison): “Hi, Tom! So. Go ahead. Talk to us about your problem.”

“OK. The first prank I remember pulling was the time I screwed the cover off a brand new, previously untouched jar of peanut butter, fresh from Ma’s grocery shopping. I was in fourth grade. You know how flawlessly smooth the peanut butter’s surface always is when you first get that cover off?

“Well guys, I don’t know what devil or demon must’ve whispered in my ear to get me to do this, but with the pointy end of a toothpick, I actually etched the following message into that smooth surface: “RAT POISON.”

Then not only did I screw the cap back on tight, but with a couple of Dad’s tools from his workroom, I managed to screw it on so tight that there would be no question whatsoever that the jar must’ve been tampered with before leaving the food processing plant.

“Hey, I don’t know why I did that. Bad genes, I suspect. Plus… I was only nine and I thought, you know, it’d be funny. And it was the 50s, right?

But oh, didn’t the family just go nuts over that one. Of course I obviously confessed to the crime before, you know, they called the police. Anyway, after the scalding scolding I got and everybody’d calmed back down, I realized I felt hungry. So I made myself a fluffernutter sandwich.

“No surprise: Harold and Maude has been one of my top ten favorite films ever since I first saw it.”

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

With all that in mind, you should know that I came away from that flyjing saucer episode with Jack with what people colloquially call “a bee in my bonnet.” I came away from that episode with sugar plums of straws and plastic bags and candles dancing in my head. And I was chomping at the bit.

So I began chatting up my colleagues as to whether or not they happened to have any dry cleaning bags in their closets that they could part with. Didn’t actually tell’em why. Just that it was a project I was working on. And then (duh!) I checked my own closet, and it turned out there were a couple in there “protecting” sport jackets I hadn’t worn or even seen for a decade or more.

So: dry cleaning bags: check!

And of course the drinking straws and a candle? No problem. Grocery store: check! and check!

Oh yeah. I was locked and loaded!

But here’s the thing. In those days I was always more of a dreamer than a doer. Plus as I’ve attested in previous posts, laziness was definitely another one of my character flaws back then. So, as fun as the idea seemed (you know, to simulate a War of the Worlds attack on the population of Rumford, Maine), time just kept on slipping by. (yawn) And slipping by…

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

But then eventually, it just so happened that Bruce (my kid brother, twelve years my junior) came to stay with us during a good part of the annual school summer vacation. Which put the onus on me to find something entertaining for us to do together.

One thing I came up with was taking him camping over night up in the woods in a place called Moody Mountain. I was in the Army National Guard at the time, so I raided the armory for the pup tent, canteens, and other supplies. That day or two remains in my memory as a fun, idyllic, little adventure.

That, plus having him stay at our house for an extended period of time gave me an opportunity to really bond with him. And I’m grateful to this day for that.

Anyway, later it dawned on me that Bruce would be a great partner in crime for my War of the World dream. I mean, he and I both were the biggest fans of the comical and popular late-night, radio-talk-show host, Jean Shepherd, who entertained his listening audiences throughout the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s with humorous and bizarre stories based on his own life.

(Now you may claim to not know who the heck Jean Shepherd was, but… I believe you do have a connection.

He’s the one who both wrote the story of that perennial favorite holiday movie, A Christmas Story, was based on, and performed the narrated voice-overs throughout the film. You know— that story of little Ralphie who nearly shot his eye out with his new Red Ryder BB gun. (Man, I can think of few fictional characters with whom I identify more than that kid.)

But I only mention this because Bruce and I were both inspired by one particular episode from his radio show, set back in his college dormitory days. A bunch of the frat boys supposedly decided to prank New York City with a Halloween UFO scare. Here was their recipe for chaos:

(1) First collect some of those black, Glad, 39-gallon lawn and leaf bags and then, with scissors, cut some of the bags up into long strips

(2) With a flat iron set on a not-too-hot setting, hot-iron the strips together to eventually form a hot-air balloon ‘envelope’

(3) Fashion the plastic ‘sheets’ together as a ‘balloon,’ so that the balloon you’re making has an approximate golf-ball-size hole at the top and a softball-size one at the base

(4) Then with aluminum foil, fashion a little, light-weight, open-topped ‘tray’

(5) Attach the ‘tray’ to the base of the hot-air balloon

(6) Inflate the balloon with hot air from a hair dryer

(7) Push each inflated balloon outside your 15^th-story dormitory room window and hold onto it

(8) Fill the tray with a generous measure of lighter fluid

(9) Ignite the lighter fluid, and let the balloon go!

Bombs Away!

Now Shepherd claimed that he and a bunch of other students (most likely drunken frat brothers) actually did this on one dark and windy Halloween night. Thus around the witching hour of midnight, several silent, evil-black ‘drones’ beset the city like a squadron of flying monkeys. And because it was a windy night, according to him the balloons were prone to swaying back and forth at times. And when this happened, some of the flaming lighter fluid sloshed out of the aluminum trays, dropping fiery driblets down toward the city below. Consequently, calls started coming into precinct headquarters from all over, with terrified citizens reporting dark UFOs shooting flaming death rays down upon the unprotected citizenry!

A silly story to be sure, and very likely 95% exaggeration, but inspirational nonetheless…

So anyway, Bruce and I went to work. We had the bags, straws, and candle. And if I remember correctly, we were planning to use one of those tiny little birthday candles because of its weightlessness. And English-teacher-me thinking, How hard could it be to recreate the thing Jack Rogers had witnessed that night up in the sky?

So down we went to work on our knees on my living room floor.

OK. I challenge you, dear reader— just try to build yourself a usable, five-foot-high, cage-like framework out of drinking straws sometime. I mean without going mad. Surprise— straws are not like is Tinker Toys! Each one was virtually refusing to allow itself to be inserted into its fellow to form a longer strut. And we were probably going to need five or six five-foot-long or longer struts to build said frame, down over which we would then slip the dry cleaner bag. And oh yeah, if you do ever manage that, then try to figure out a way to bend all the bottom straw-ends into the center and… connect them in such a way, with tape perhaps, that an upright birthday candle can be mounted firmly there!

I was no engineer. And we had no manual, only that kid’s list of the main ‘ingredients’ his dad used, along with that inspirational Shepherd broadcast to go on. And me? I was that frickin’ useless English teacher!

Great Idea #1: never ask an English teacher for practical help. Unless it’s for something like diagramming a frickin’ sentence.

By the time I was just about ready to scream and give up…

I actually gave up. Well, I rationalized it in my mind thinking, We do have the bag. Maybe we should take a little break, run a test first, and check it for leaks or something…

At least that sounded do-able. So I confiscated Phyllis’ hair drier from the bathroom, plugged it in, and began inflating the bag. And up she ballooned, like a breaching Moby Dick bumping and nudging its head against the ceiling! The hair drier heat was so hot I worried that the sheer, cobwebby plastic would go all Hindenburg on me at any second. So I was quick to switch the dryer back off and then I tied a string around the bottom of the bag.

Now here’s the thing. A Chinese lantern (which is what, in reality, this contraption is technically classified as), is supposed to look like this:

or this:

Our “thing,” however, looked discouragingly like this:

So I had to come to terms with the facts. With my skills (diagramming sentences, etc.) this big bag of hot air was never going to get its upright candle secured firmly in place and, therefore, would never be visible if flown at night.

Disheartened, I threw in the towel. “To hell with it. Let’s just take her outside and fly her now. As is.”

The only thing was though, the balloon was not floating in either a vertical, or a horizontal, posture. It looked wounded, tilting up there against the ceiling at a 45 degree diagonal, like the minute-hand of a clock pointed at the ‘2.’ I felt it would look less embarrassing (heaven knew why) if it were at least to launch from my house floating straight up and down. So we needed some ballast, and for that we ended up hanging a small plastic sandwich bag of coins from her. Turned out a quarter, dime, nickel, and a couple of pennies were just heavy enough to keep her floating upright. Yup. 42 cents.

We opened her up for one last infusion of hot, hair-dryer air; cinched her back up once again, at the base; and escorted her outside. It was a perfect sunny, blue-sky day outside.

As soon as we let her go, it became immediately obvious that she was practically invisible, being of such gossamer, see-through material, but up she rose, as upright as a chimney., a shimmery gleaming thing in the sun. It looked at first like she’d be piercing the stratosphere in no time, but she leveled off in a minute and then was being carried by the wind toward downtown Rumford.

Bruce and I trotted along beneath her. We could see her up there because we knew right where to look, but it was doubtful that anyone else would be likely to. She was spectacularly unnoticeable. And then she started moving faster, so we had to keep up with a spirited jog. Eventually we were crossing the big bridge that leads over the Androscoggin River and into the downtown business section of Rumford.

The bridge actually had a lot ot traffic on it, pedestrian and four-wheeled traffic (unlike in this picture).

So what did we do? Why, we hitched our wagon to a fast-paced group of five or so walkers and theatrically (shamefully theatrically) began looking up! Pointing up! And loudly and inanely asking each, other back and forth, “What in the heck is that thing up there, in the sky” “My goodness! Gee, I dunno! Never saw anything like that! How ‘bout you?” Et cetera…

But did anyone pay any attention to our not so well thought-out ‘dialogue?’ Did anyone else, besides us, even look to the sky for a single second in wonder? Catch even a frickin’ glimpse of our transparent, ridiculously invisible UFO?

Of course not. Not a one. They were all too wrapped up in their own, much more realistic and apparently more interesting, worlds and lively conversations to notice a couple of babbling crazies who didn’t seem to belong in that picture at all. Two guys who didn’t amount to much more than the shadowy flash of a transparent glitch in the matrix?

I mean… how rude!

So then we tried butterfly-netting the equally elusive attention of people passing by in the opposite direction, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that for some reason we we’d somehow become as transparent as that hot-air bag quickly dwindling in size as it continued its flight path following the river down below it.

No, it was just not in the cards for that day to be one wherein we were gonna get to garner even a minute of fame. It was a classic Wile E. Coyote failure.

So what could we do?

Well, all we ended up doing was leaning ourselves up against the concrete sidewalk guardrail to watch… what? Our Unidentified Flying Bag?

THE VERY TREES (LEFT) THAT RECEIVED THE “THING”
PLUS 42 CENTS

(Hmmm. Can something be said to be unidentified if absolutely no one ever saw it even? To you know, unidentify it?)

Anyway, we watched the deflating bag gradually banking to the left, heading for the taller shoreline trees. We watched it alight, like a faraway eagle, among the uppermost branches of one of the taller ones. And by squinting, we could actually make it out from time to time hanging up, way over there, especially when the breezes fluttered the bag because then it glinted in the sun.

What could you say but… oh well!

Except maybe “not with a bang but a whimper.”

Sometimes I imagine, hundreds of years from now, some extraterrestrial archeologist doing a dig along the sides of the mighty Androscoggin (who knows what its name might be then?) and becoming excited when they come across a tiny little pocket-lump of five ancient coins.

I hope they’ll still be in good shape.

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

As always, I invite you to leave a comment below…

THUNDER ROAD

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