“BREAK A LEG: Part Two”

(On Making Me Look Good)

My high school dramatics-coach career lasted an incredible quarter of a century+. I’ve counted and before it was over, I’d directed/co-directed fifty-two high school plays and/or musicals. But believe me, had some crystal-ball fortune teller ever prophesied such a terrifying future to me, I would have run away and joined the circus. Nobody knew more than I just how unqualified I was to fulfill such a prediction.

So what happened? A rocky start. That’s what happened. So many things would go wrong. No big surprise considering I was the guy who’d virtually wilt at the prospect of being commissioned to pilot such an above-his-pay-grade helm.

Take for instance the ordeal of my first time being tasked with three one-act plays to produce and direct on my own at Foxcroft Academy. I say on my own because it wasn’t like it had been eleven years ago at Belfast when I’d inherited an army (The Footlights Club) who could’ve/would’ve managed just fine with or without me. No, there was no army to carry me through and make me look good this time.

So what went wrong? Well, right off the bat, two of my best and brightest plays fizzled right out from under me due to critical absenteeism at scheduled practices. That was crushing. The professional embarrassment over such a failure! I couldn’t figure out how other directors somehow managed to strong-arm their players into seeing that showing-up-at-rehearsals is a very big priority. Me? No General Patton. All I was is just some passive little ‘know-little’ who happened to have accidentally parachuted into the “director’s” chair, and was just going through the motions because, honestly…? I’m ashamed to say I simply didn’t know how to do it.

So there I was, Nervous Norvous me, left only with my B-side play, the least important of the three; a silly, childish piece of fluff titled “Once Upon A Playground,” the one I’d basically inserted into the program only as a filler. Talk about feeling naked.

So despite the fact that I wanted to gather up my family and run away to Canada, we were required to do the play in front of the Academy’s student body first, once that evening, and then once more for the kids in the lower grades the next day. I was going to die!

I remember the feeling of abject shame right down to the pit of my stomach while hearing the sound of the audience, quieting right down to watch as the curtains finally swept apart for our first performance of my fiasco. It was Zero hour. D-Day. And oh how I pitied my kids for having had the bad luck to end up with… me. And now everybody would know, would see with their own eyes, just what an incompetent loser I was as the so-called “director.”

Backstage, and following along with my script, I listened to my kids out there begin delivering their memorized lines. What an empty little play, the voice in my head harangued. What was I ever THINKING?

About three minutes into the play, I was startled practically out of my shoes by a thunderous, raffish noise that sounded something like a crash! Two seconds later in, I’d identified the ‘concussion’ as… laughter. Audience laughter!

Ohmigod! Was that a contemptuous laugh???

Utterly confused I looked down upon the last delivered line. Huh! OK. Yeah, it was… kind of a funny line… but that funny? And by then of course the show was moving on at its inevitable clip, totally out of my control. But before long…

It happened again! Another volley of belly laughs. And not sounding one bit mean-spirited either! And then another one. What the heck was going on?!

What was going on was that the play was working! Somehow succeeding way beyond my mousy, second-guessing expectations. It had never occurred to me that, duh (a) the playwright knew what he was doing when he wrote the thing, that he was good at what he did for his living, and that (b) the kids I’d cast could be trusted to do their part at making the thing work. What a surprise.

But here’s the real reason this dinky little offering somehow finally got off the ground? It turned out that I had two little freshman firecrackers in that cast, two young women who had SO much Pollyanna-esque-optimism and drive to, first and foremost, just be in plays and secondly, once cast, to do everything in their power to make those plays succeed.

That’s the truth. And my God, I had no way of imagining the walloping impact this duo was destined to have on not only me over the next four years but also on Foxcroft Academy’s dramatics program overall. God bless the freshmen, Sarah Thistle and Marliese Eberbach!

So know this: the overall, underlying purpose of me writing this post is… all about me setting the record straight. Because of them, I ended up getting one hell of a great reputation over a number of years as an award-winning drama coach. But that’s not where the bulk of the credit should have gone.

So here it is: this is all about me giving credit where the credit’s due.

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

OK. Let me back up a little first.

The first time I held auditions as the new director, something quickly became clear to me: on the one hand, I had a handful of underclassmen who’d come in with the greatest of hopes to be chosen. It was obvious that The Try-Out was something of great importance to them. And… not only had they come to me so admirably prepared, but also with an unbelievable ethic of teamwork and support for one another. Like, I mean they were altruistically helping each other get prepared for their readings, giving each other selfless encouragement to others in the hopes that they too might succeed, rather than approaching the whole ordeal with the hostile intent of a dog-eat-dog competition.

On the other hand was the gang of upperclassmen boys and girls who arrived all cocky, smirking, and openly sneering at their inexperienced, younger counterparts… and right in front of me. Oh yes, they knew this was an open “audition” alright, and yet their vibe was, We don’ neeed no steenkin’ try-outs. Us getting all the juiciest parts? That’s a foregone conclusion, it’s in the bag. Because we’re the varsity and that’s just the way it goes, you losers.

And although I had serious qualms about doing it (and as a result had to endure a long period of guiltily second-guessing myself thereafter)… I assigned roles not to those who seemed to have the most credentials necessarily, but to those who actually demonstrated the most skill, energy, and desire during the audition. Meaning that a lot of those juniors and seniors got dumped in favor of underclassmen who had just honestly earned their places with hard work and talent, damnit!

And oh, what a high school, drama-queen scandal that turned out to be! Upperclassmen’s parents were not happy campers. And the dumpees? Dumbfounded, yet mad as wet hens. But... in the long run, it turned out the best thing I ever could have done. For the kids, for me, and especially for the Academy’s drama program.

And so yes, my directorial career had to get shakily jump-started with the frivolous “Once Upon the Playground.” And I couldn’t believe it got such an enthusiastic reception. Because I guess me, being the dyed-in-the-wool college English major, I was feeling my job required more literarily-meaty offerings with dark and complex themes, overtones, symbolism, double-entendres, and elements of existentialism… which is pretty much why shortly after “Playground,” I opted to put on Albee’s “The Zoo Story,” the one-act featured in my last post.

How pretentious of me. I had so much to learn.

So my tenure got off to an embarrassing, molasses crawl over the first couple of seasons. Reason being, (besides not having a hint of a clue as to how to proceed) I was choosing my plays from among the same musty, curmudgeonly classic titles that F.A. had been putting on since back when I was a student. And my God, weren’t they ever talky and boring!

So one day, I pushed myself to begin to look for something new. Something unique. And I started sending away for play catalogues from all over the country. And as summer vacation loomed, I was deep into poring over the descriptions of many much-more-interesting-sounding, just-published scripts.

Script-reading turned out to be fun. To me, the script catalogs were like the old Sears and Roebuck Christmas Toy Catalogs, each play description sending visions of sugar plums of all the props and costumes we would need to get dancing in my imagination.

So I started ordering. Like a madman! Perusing scripts became my newest hobby, and I found myself rabidly getting into it. For a ‘know-little director,’ at least this was something I could do. And my burgeoning script-library began filling up mostly with some very odd titles such as “Postponing the Heat Death of the Universe,” SECOND Prize: TWO Months in Leningrad,” and “Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music.” As time went on it got so that before I felt confident about a purchasing a title for my program, I’d honestly ended up reading close to a hundred scripts. And I’m talking each year! (Did I mention that I’m a little obsessive-compulsive?)

Picking the Perfect Play developed into one of my unique Super Powers (OK, let’s just call them my stronger suits, my forte if you will). Say anything you want about me but, damn, I could pick a great play. The other super power being that I was actually very good at coaxing kids out of their little shells, and really releasing and expressing their emotions effectively. But that’s it. That’s all I had. Other than that… I was just some friggin’ moron in the field. But anyway, one day…

Ding! I’d found it! The best play out there! Something brand new and odd and unique in the catalogs, something just published too, something that no one in the entire state had probably heard of yet, let alone had seen performed. Something deliciously unusual.

(from the catalog…)

INCIDENT AT SAN BAJO by Brad Korbesmeyer Short Play, Drama / 4w, 3m

The residents of a trailer camp have quite a story to tell. A stranger tried to sell each of them a mysterious elixir which he claimed would make them live longer. Most, of course, did not buy the elixir –and they are now dead, the water supply having been poisoned by the stranger. Only seven are left to tell the tale– the seven who drank the elixir which, it turned out, was an antidote! Each of their stories is told in a series of interlocking monologues directed at an unseen interviewer. The effect is somewhat like a “60 Minutes” segment.

Yes! This was the one! And when I ordered my dozen copies of the “San Bajo” script, I actually felt excited to be committing us to a different sort of play at least. And when I began our first meeting with my, “OK kids, here’re your copies. This is the play we’re doing. First read-through is right now… I felt a curious little spike in my heart-rate, a little blip of passion that was beginning to go right to work at countering the usual dread that normally handicapped my heart in these endeavors. Because this one was unlike any play I had read before.

What I had no idea of was that this was the play that was going to change everything.

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

Early on, I’d decided (in order to set the dark and mysterious tone of the piece) that the first thing I wanted the audience to hear while waiting for the curtains to open would be Bob Dylan’s “The Man in the Long Black Coat.” That song is captivating, lurking, spooky, and evocative of some mysterious event so very like “The Incident at San Bajo” it was uncanny.

You don’t have to listen to the whole thing, as we were only going to use the first minute and a half. But here, take a quick listen if you will and try to imagine you’re seated in a packed auditorium waiting on the curtains to swish open, and then this mood-setter starts up. Close your eyes and see where the music takes you. Listen to the tone. Listen to… the crickets:

Most often I’d have that piece playing while the kids came in and took to setting up the rehearsal stage. And right away a positive sea-change overtook the spirit of our rehearsals, which were becoming a labor of love.

Because this little newcomer in the catalogs was a unique ensemble piece wherein each actor is given a coequal starring role, it is an actor’s dream. Each of the seven individual players is intermittently a star in his/her own right, simultaneously occupying one of the six “stations” spread left-to-right across the stage (one station being occupied by a “married couple” together). When the single spotlight is highlighting one of the stations, the other five are left frozen, out of sight in silent darkness. Each “station” is an off-and-on little “micro-world” of its own.

Sure, the entire play is set in the one-and-the-same trailer park— each character being one of the trailer park’s trailer-trash losers. But each is being interviewed in his/her own “mobile home” individually— one, a guy a who’s a conspiracy-theory-ranting gas station attendant; an octogenarian spinster; a wannabe-suave ladies’ man in a smoking jacket, sipping bourbon; a middle-aged, new-age, lady-psychic scammer; and a shallow yuppie couple hell-bent on keeping up with all the latest trends. Point being: the physical space each character occupies on stage is a disparate little time-space microcosm, replete with that character’s emotional, educational, psychological, and spiritual plane. An actor’s dream.

The audience never hears the interviewer’s voiced questions, but of course the characters’ responses make the prompts obvious.

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

So along with the two other one-acts, we put “The Incident at San Bajo” on in front of the school and then the community. We were a big hit. Then it was time to board the bus and head out to the Maine State Principals’ Association Regional One-Act Play Competitions.

The Regionals never know what hit’em. We took them completely by surprise and by storm. “San Bajo” steamrolled right over the other schools. Not only did we take first place, but each and every individual of the seven took home his/her own much coveted All-Cast Festival Award, a rare accomplishment. And when it was all over, everybody was talking about the play itself, and about us.

(below, an encouraging note from our supportive headmaster)

So two weeks later, we hit the States on a roll… but immediately found ourselves humbled. We were up against the much bigger schools, a lot of them, and it showed— bigger schools with fatter wallets, humongous programs, and decades of greater experience, schools who were used to winning.

We were the small school underdogs, ripe for failure…

Such an interesting thing though, these competitions. Your big yellow school bus stops at a local motel for you all to drop the bags and suitcases into your assigned rooms, and then you rush to get right back on the bus. Next, over at the host school, you unload all the props, register yourselves at the welcoming table in the school lobby, get your festival badges, get escorted to your assigned to a classroom (which will be your home base over the next two days), get handed your programs, discover what time of day (Saturday or Sunday) your play is scheduled to hit the stage, and then you just sort of dissolve into the chattering crowds for a bit.

It’s a time for all the kids to meet and befriend their competitors, while the directors do likewise. There are three sessions each day: morning, afternoon, and evening— each one followed by The Unnerving Critique where your cast and crew (with their little tails between their legs, most likely) get herded into the designated ‘Judges’ Classroom’ and face the music.

It’s kind of like a rodeo.

Over the entire weekend you’re seated with your crew in the auditorium (watching all the other schools perform their little hearts out), seated in the cafeteria for the lunches, or seated in your assigned classroom going over and over your lines.

But you know, it’s a wonderful thing, getting to watch the spunk and the amazing creativity of all those various high school students on parade. Often daunting too, because you do find yourself struggling with imagining just how well your play might get measured up against the ones you’re watching.

But somewhere during those seemingly endless two days comes That Heart Attack Moment! It’s… your turn!

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

Thank goodness I’d chosen the first two-minutes of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in the Long Black Coat” as our intro for “San Bajo.” Because while we were toiling at the last-minute tweaks of our props set-up back-stage, in the semi-darkness back there behind those closed curtains, the lethargic tempo of that music (which was soft and slow, and contained the sound of the night-time chirping of crickets) felt familiar and comfortable, and seemed to calm us all right down. Seemed to make the whole thing feel that this was nothing more than just another dress rehearsal back home.

My visual memory of those last moments have the actors, like busy, little, methodical shadows, silently tip-toeing about the stage, and moving things around in slow motion.

And then OMG! The curtains swept open. And there we were.

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

OK, so no, we didn’t win. The competition was really stiff. Still, what we did do is knock the socks off everyone! So it was a moral victory. There is no third place trophy, at least there wasn’t at the time (1990), but according to the judges’ notes, that’s where we placed. Sure, we’d have liked to have won, but the enthusiasm that was showered upon us from all the other directors and cast members throughout the rest of the festival left us all very proud.

Two signs indicating how well we’d done were (1) in the following year, and the years that followed, we saw many, many other schools choosing to enter their versions of “The Incident at San Bajo” into the competition, so I’d say the Samuel French Publishing Company owed our school a big debt of gratitude for the free advertising, plus (2) before heading for home, we were profusely congratulated on our performance by the judges and were informed that in the following year we’d be placed at the highest level competitively (i.e., we’d be judged specifically against only the top-tier schools). And see, I didn’t even know that then, that there were two levels of the competitions. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since at that time an encyclopedia could have been published containing all the directorial things I wasn’t aware of.

But… look at us: WE’D MADE IT TO STATES!! And so yes, this was the play, and the cast, that began making all the difference in the Academy’s dramatics program over the next ten years back then.

So with FA’s student body back home already awed by our stellar performance on the hometown stage, some changes were in store. For one, it immediately became a lot easier for me to get boys to try out for the plays. When I’d begun, 98% of those trying out were females, while 98% of the scripts I could get my hands on called for mostly guys. Secondly, over time our productions began drawing larger and larger audiences, not just the parents and families of our cast members anymore, but seriously interested theater-goers from the neighboring towns and general area were showing up. So we were steadily building a reputation, which meant our program was beginning to haul in more money on ticket sales for a change.

So, “Incident at San Bajo” really had put us on the map. But does that mean I finally got over my Nervous Norvousness as a director? Hah! Nope. Not at all. It just meant more ulcers for me. Don’t get me wrong. I loved seeing the plays I’d selected do so well. But there were always, every single time, those lingering terrors threatening to, you know, unexpectedly collapse everything… all those what-IFS that could end a play in disaster in the wink of a poked eye.

I just wasn’t cut out for a tension-filled career.

But my actors were. They thrived on it. Things did go wrong, of course. But my kids always took care of those things. They were amazing. So it’s embarrassing for me to have gotten the credit for the way our dramatics program took off over the next decade. Yes, I picked great plays. I can take credit for that. And yes, I was pretty good at getting kids to let their emotions loose, and to project their voices. But that was it. The only other thing that I was good at was… well, letting go of things, letting my amazing crackerjack kids loose on each play. They were wonderful.

So here I am, setting the record straight: The lion’s share of the credit for making Foxcroft Academy shine in dramatics and helping the drama program grow and improve during my tenure goes to the kids, the little actors I was so blessed to get the chance to be associated with. And this is especially true for the three above, my drama wunderkinder: the amazing Sarah Thistle, Marliese Eberbach, and Pat Myers, all members of the class of 1994. They put their magic into those “great plays” I selected. They made each one simply fly. They made me practically famous as a director.

Only it wasn’t me. It was them.

I was only picking the plays and sort of going along for the ride…

And look at what a ride it was…

**THE SECOND-BEST PLAY WE EVER DID**— **GOT US A COUPLE OF MONTY- PYTHON-ESQE LETTERS OF COMPLAINT FROM LOCAL MINISTERS, HEH HEH**

Et Cetera…

Ah, those halcyon days (with ulcer)…

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STAGE FRIGHT: Always Say ‘Break A Leg,’ Never ‘Good Luck’

When I was a high school freshman, the dramatics coach tried to recruit me to audition for a play he was doing. The very thought of that terrified the hell out of me. I’d had stage fright all my life, and I’d never even been on an actual stage. And I told him so. He said not to worry. I told him I freeze whenever I even have to do an oral book report in front of the class. He told me not to worry. I told him it wasn’t even possible for me to memorize anything. Again, not to worry. So, I flat out told him I didn’t want to be in a play.

He told me to meet him in the library right after school that afternoon. And back then, we were all pretty much duty-bound to do whatever a teacher told us to do. So… I showed up.

But in the meantime though, dumb-ass little me got to stupidly wondering, What would it be like to be… a stage star? And then I got to thinking that… maybe this coach actually could, no— that he obviously could, get me over the terror that always gripped me whenever any number of silent eyes were locked onto me. That his job, after all. So yeah, it occurred to me that just maybe my life could be about to change. BIG-time. Because I’d always been a dreamer.

I’d begun imagining the glory of the thunderous cheers and applause while I, standing alone up there on the stage, was taking my final bows. It felt… good. Exciting. Where might it l all lead? I was asking myself. Hollywood? It made sense. Because I assumed that many a Paul Newman might likely have begun their super-star careers on humble high school stages just like ours. After which… well, one thing had just naturally led to the next thing which could just as naturally lead to… well, being a heartthrob eventually. And getting to sign thousands of autographs. I was getting excited.

So right after school I strolled my way to the library with as confident a smile as I could paste onto my face.

A sign taped to the door sternly warned, AUDITIONS. NO ADMITTANCE.

I stepped inside. “Close the door,” I was told, rather curtly.

He in a bad mood or something? I wondered. I closed the door behind me, but suddenly, once inside, I was unexpectedly overtaken by a slightly creepy, ominous feeling. I’d been expecting droves of my classmates being there, all clamoring for the big part I was probably going to walk away with. But instead, no, it was only me. Only me and the director. One on one.

I would’ve preferred the door left open…

Then, checking his watch like we’d already run out of time, he slapped a dog-eared script into my hands, turned on his heel, and headed off for the opposite far end of the long library. “Page 36!” he called over his shoulder. Well, the script was already opened to page 36, so… “Read the highlighted passage!”

For some reason, my chicken-livered little heart had begun to worm its way up about three inches in my chest. I tried swallowing, but it didn’t want to go back down. Looking down at his own opened copy, he barked, “Begin reading!”

I cleared my throat a few times first, but then managed it. I read the passage. And looked up to find him contemplating me with a puzzled look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“I couldn’t hear what you said, is what. I couldn’t hear a thing you just read. You know, if I can’t hear you… in here, with just me and you, how’s even the first row of the audience ever going to hear you? So OK. Once again, once again. From the top! Louder this time. Project your voice!”

Well, I’d thought I’d read the words exceedingly well, but…

His terse manner was crushing me like a cigarette butt under his toe. Yes, I know. I can easily see it now. I cringe to admit it, but I was one exceedingly fragile little wuss back then.

Anyway, I took a deep breath and bellowed out the lines.

“OK. I did hear you that time. But there was no emotion. None whatsoever. You’re not reading telephone book listings, you know. I mean, look at what you’re reading. Look at it. What’s the character feeling there, do you think? Happy? Sad? What??”

Jeez. I didn’t know there was gonna be a quiz. I looked down at the words. “I dunno,” I said. “Mad?”

“Bingo! Angry! But not just angry. Angry as hell! Can you show me angry as hell?”

Well, I knew he wasn’t ready for the honest answer to that. “I dunno,” I mumbled. “I’m not sure.” Inside I was dying for some reason. Fading fast. Becoming the deer in the headlights.

“OK OK OK,” he said. “Lemme show you. Watch me…. OK?”

So… yeah. I watched him. He began by looking down at his feet for a few moments. Taking a couple of deep breaths. And then… whoa! His head snapped up so suddenly, I recoiled! His face was flushed. And his eyes? They were locked on me, and he was seething! And before I knew it, he’d started pacing, back and forth, in a rage that seemed just too great to contain, and needed more damn room!

Wham! He launched into a loud, raving tirade! He started going nuts right there in the library where you were only supposed to whisper! And even though yes, I realized intellectually that this was just a demonstration… I was feeling a scold stab of guilt anyway because emotionally… I couldn’t unconvince myself that it was really me personally he was raging at because he’d simply just had it with me and my little chicken-shit hesitation! I mean, Jesus, I was watching a temper tantrum growing right before my eyes! An all-out Jeckyll and Hyde!

And when he was finished (well, whenever he was finished), the only proof that I’d ever even been there was a dog-eared script I’d left dropped on the library floor and the click of the door closing behind me!

Little Elvis had fled the building! And from now on, Little Elvis was gonna be content spending the rest of his spineless little life cowering somewhere off in the shadows where it’s gonna be safe…

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

So. Guess what happens. Five-plus years later and drenched in nervous perspiration, I’m seated before a school superintendent, having just inked the very first contract of my future thirty-four-year high school English-teaching career life.

Wow. Quite daunting for little ol’ shrinking-violet me; however it’s done and dusted. I heave a big sigh of relief. I’m rich, for cryin’ out loud. I’m making $5,618 bucks a year! I’m gonna buy me a new car!

But… as the super is shaking my hand, sealing the deal as it were, he hits me with this: “So. You’ll be teaching four English classes, two speech classes, and taking over as the new dramatics coach. Again, welcome aboard!”

“Excuse me?” My blood is running cold! “What was that?”

“I said, ‘Welcome aboard…’”

“No. Not that. ‘Dramatics coach?’”

“Yes. And congratulations.”

“Oops. Uh-oh! Wait wait wait. Uhmmm, look, I’m sorry. I thought I was just signing on to teach English. Right? I mean… OK, honestly? See, I’ve never even been in a play in my life. I’ve hardly ever even been to any plays. I mean, I don’t know the first thing about dramatics. So… I guess what I’m saying is… I don’t think I can possibly…”

“And yet…” and here he’s studying me over the top of his glasses, “you just signed a contract agreeing to be doing exactly that.”

I do the old double-take here. “What? I did?”

And while my eyes crazily careen down through the words and lines and paragraphs on the top page lying before me, I hear him say, and with an ice-cold, razor-sharp edge… “I must say… this is odd, because I definitely thought you’d just told me… that you wanted to teach here this year…”

Yikes!

(If I’d had any of my wits about me, and any amount of courage at all (which I hadn’t), I suppose I could have told him, “Why no. Says here I just signed up for ‘DRAMAGICS,’ whatever the hell THAT is.” Truth is, though, I was so nervous I’d missed the misspelling and only right now just noticed it.)

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

Long story short? I did “become” the dramatics “director.”

I lucked out somewhat, though. I inherited a student army of thespians known as The Footlights Club.

And more fortunately, those kids, unlike moi, really knew what they were doing, thank God.

So, throughout that year I ended up surviving co-directing one syrupy, patriotic, three-act play titled This Is My Country, which gave me two or three heart attacks on a weekly basis;

“directing” one two-act comedy (ditto on the heart attacks); and then “directing” three one-act plays, one of which would be required to compete in the Maine State Principals’ Associations Area One-Act Play contest. For that one, I chose a stodgy, dry, classic British drama titled “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence. It was a clever little thing.

But get this, and wouldn’t you just know it— somehow (much to my chagrin) the damn thing actually won!

For me, this meant two more long weeks of rehearsals, and then a bus-trip over to Bowdoin College for the State level competition where, thankfully, our play earned nothing more than an Honorable Mention.

And by the way… the administration was oddly flabbergasted by the surprise of us winning. It was like… they didn’t know how to take the news. The school had apparently never ever won at the drama competition before and, being so totally baseball, basketball, football, wrestling, and golf oriented, it had apparently never even occurred to them that such an event might conceivably be a thing. I mean… it was almost as if I’d done something wrong. You know, like… nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

So you see, this fiasco turned out to be one of what I call the many “successful-failure stories” of my life. I’ve had a slew of them. I mean, look: without even a stinkin’ clue as to what I was doing, I came out of it a first-time winner. Not that coming out of it a winner was what I wanted, mind you. All I wanted was for it just to be over. But no. Beginner’s luck. Now I had to keep on having rehearsals every day until it was time, two weeks later, to load up the bus and take the show on the road to Bowdoin College for the States..

Why ME?

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

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to bail on that town after only a year (for tons of reasons). And I immediately lucked out, landing a position at a school that not only had an amazingly successful drama program already in place, but one that was manned by a simply incredible drama director. Phew! And so, for the decade I spent there, I was able to just sit back and enjoy his (not my) productions from the comfort and safety of an audience seat, right where I wanted to be. It was great. Ten years without having to “direct” a single play. I was living the dream.

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

But after that, I ended up moving back to my old hometown. Took an English-teaching slot at my old alma mater, Foxcroft Academy. It felt good to be home. Yeah, I did have duties of course. I ended up being the advisor of the school newspaper for one thing. But as long as it wasn’t coaching drama, that was OK with me…

But before long, alas… the need for a high school drama coach once more raised its ugly head and began looming over me. And I was not happy about that. I sure as hell didn’t want it. That was the last thing I wanted, my mantra being, Let somebody else do it! I tried fighting off the pressures the administrative mafia was putting on me, using any and all the excuses I could come up with.

I mean sure, I get it, the headmaster didn’t realize that, deep down inside, I was that same, mousey-little, neurotic, post-traumatic-stress-disordered ‘high school freshman’ who’d once actually run for his life from the library of this very same school! I mean… I guess I looked like a normal human being and all.

Anyway, they finally got me box-canyoned-in between a rock and a hard place. I caved.

But you can’t imagine not only the cruel irony, but the stress of being the so pathologically self-conscious, stage-frightened, shrinking violet who’d never even been in (could never have been in) a frickin’ play in his whole damned lifetime! Finding myself back living in the same nightmare all over again? The nightmare of being lashed to the helm of the Good Ship Foxcroft Drama Club? The nightmare of the large crowds. Moms and dads and their families! School board members and (shudder!) administrators! Colleagues! And, I dunno, just… random people walking right in off the street. And to do what? Gawk at me and my pathetic little productions with their cold, glassy, and judgmental Medusa stares!

And me backstage, sweating it out with… What if one or more of my kids suddenly gets a lethal case of stage fright (like I would have) and just freezes right up in place? What could I do then?! How could I ever help them?! Or… What if my slapped-together little “opuses” happens to turn out really really bad?! I’m talkin’ a major flop! I’m talkin’ tanked! I’m talkin’… stink, stank, stunk here! What then?

Talk about feeling naked! You know, if anyone ever decided to make a biographical movie of my early drama-director life, they’d hafta steal Don frickin’ Knotts out from under The Andy Griffith Show to play me.

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

OK, so obviously one of my standard drama duties was again going to include co-directing the annual musical, like before. I had no idea then it then, but we were destined to eventually pull off Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, Oklahoma, Carousel, and Guys and Dolls, before I was through. And again, my task would only be to handle all the speaking parts (as opposed to the choral). But I was fortunate there, as the musical director was more way than competent as the real guy at the helm, so each one of those plays were going to come off a success with, or without, me.

And on top of that, I was also expected to choose and direct either a two- or 3-act drama, plus the usual two or three one-act plays, one of which would again be expected to compete in the Maine State Principal’s One-Act Play competition.

So there I was once, a decade later and once again, wallowing in the same utter dysfunction again as did Catch-22’s lost soul, Major Major Major Major…

Long story short, I just had to make myself put my big-boy pants on, bite the bullet, and man-up. Just get on with it. Despite the fact that things would, and did, go wrong sometimes, of course. Well… actually, practically all the time.

Oh, I’ve got lots of war stories. Stories that’d make you cringe. But, we’ve only got time for one here. Maybe if I can pull off a Part II, I can torture you with two or three more. But anyway, here goes:

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

One of the one-act plays I selected very early on was “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee.

I chose that one because (A) lazy me back then, there are only two characters in it (easier to get two kids to show up for practices at the same time), (B) it required only a minimal set, simply a single park bench (easy peasey), and (C) I wanted to do something a little avant-garde and “relevant” (I mean jeez, Albee wrote the shocker-classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, didn’t he. So by going with this one, I suppose I was sorta praying that this particular play might just make me look… (alright, dream on) somewhat cool, probably.

The play is a little existential slice of the Theater of the Absurd… and dark. Right up my alley.

So this very odd duck of a play was to be performed for two nights (thank God, not three!). It ends with the two characters getting into a nasty argument wherein one of them whips out a switchblade knife. And during the ensuing tussle, one of the guys gets stabbed in the abdomen and dies. (See? Dark. I know.)

So the thing obviously was… I needed to procure a switchblade. But from where? They were illegal.

Well as fate would have it, I’d been to Boston a couple of times as a kid. And each time I’d gone, I’d made sure to visit the rare and wondrous, Ray Bradburian emporium, Jack’s Joke Shop. Which is where I ended up blowing most of my vacation money, both times.

That store was a mid-1960s preadolescent boy’s dream! It stocked every thinkable novelty imaginable! You know, the realistic looking fake ice-cube (with the housefly frozen in the center) to casually drop into somebody’s ice tea glass! The fake boutonniere with the flower designed to ‘squirt-gun’ water right into the faces of anyone you could con into trying to give it a sniff! Professionally marked cards to cheat your friends with!! Electric joy-buzzers! Those very realistic-looking ‘puke pads’ to drop on somebody’s clean carpet! Itch powder! And something else. Some very realistic looking “switchblades,” only instead of an actual blade, it was a little steel, fine-toothed comb that would pop out of them when you pushed the button on the handle. That seemed to be just the ticket! I’m tellin’ ya, that place was a play-props heaven.

And luckily, I discovered they still had those switchblade-combs for sale. Two types, actually: the chintzy inexpensive ones, where the comb would ‘jack-knife ‘out from the side,

and the much more expensive model where the comb would telescope forward right out of the handle. And OK, the latter seemed just the ticket. I was craving realism. For with that one, you could (1) after menacingly brandishing the knife under the stage lights, keeping it deceptively moving so that the lights flashing off the steel would not allow the audience to focus on it sufficiently to see that it was actually just a comb), (2) craftily push and hold the release button which acted like a clutch, and then (3) ram your guy right in the guts with it, thereby ‘sending’ the “lethal blade” right back up inside the hollow handle (presto change-o!) instead of burying it deep into the ‘victim’s’ dramatic intestines! At which point the ‘victim,’ feigning obvious ‘pain,’ would conveniently grab and hold the handle in place there (to make it appear embedded, but more honestly to keep the little contraption from [boing!] accidentally launching itself (on its tightly-coiled spring) right off his belly and flying right into the first row of the audience, possibly poking someone’s eye out!

So anyway, we had our little “switch-comb” to practice with for two whole weeks, my two of actors going through the numbers (1,2, and 3) over and over, in slow-motion at first, and then speeding up the action. Simple choreography.

(And by the way, let me just say that that was one of the few things that was actually turning out to be fun about play preparation: playing with fun props. Even for me. Oh, the little boy in me…).

Consequently, the switchblade scene, then, was becoming the least of my worries. What was keeping me up nights was the nightmare what-if-specter of one or both of my actors forgetting his lines on stage! I mean, I’d have nineteen nervous breakdowns if I were an actor and that happened to me! But jeez, just what the hell does one do if and when that horror ever goes down? Other than simply throwing in the towel, looking out at your audience, and saying, “Hey, we’re sorry, but at this point, the show will not go on. You may all collect your money back over at the ticket table at this time. Thank you. Thank you all for coming…”?

No. Somehow I had to come up with a way to insure that I could bail my kids out and not leave them (and me) in the lurch if they did forget their lines. And the best thing I could come up with was… just lying on my belly on the stage floor, stage-left, just barely out of sight of the audience behind the edge of the curtain with script in hand, and me on hair-trigger-tenterhooks staying at-the-ready to hiss their forgotten lines out to them.

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

“The Zoo Story,” Opening Night…

Here’s a little basic, bare-bones synopsis of “The Zoo Story”:

PETER, a publishing executive in tweeds, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, smoking a pipe, and reading a book, is seated on the park bench near the zoo. Then, JERRY enters stage-right, charging right up to the bench and insinuating himself into Peter’s serenity by first beginning to tell Peter a story about his visit to the zoo, and eventually starting to ask Peter some unwanted personal questions about his life. Before long, things between them go downhill. Jerry wants Peter to move over and give him room to sit, which Peter prefers not to do. Jerry, just the kind of stranger you don’t want to meet alone, by yourself, begins poking Peter, demanding he move over. When that gets no results, Jerry begins punching Peter harder, telling him he now wants the entire bench for himself. And finally, Jerry just outright challenges Peter to a fight. Peter finally agrees to fight Jerry. Jerry pulls out a switchblade, and throws it at Peter’s feet, to give Peter a fighting chance. When Peter picks up the knife in a defensive position, Jerry rushes him— thereby impaling himself on his own knife. Jerry staggers, the knife embedded in him, and falls onto the bench. After a brief exchange of bizarre words from Jerry, Peter grabs his book and runs off screaming “OH MY GOD!” as Jerry dies on the bench.

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

So OK, it’s a thirty-minute play approximately, but it’s rapidly drawing down to the climax now. Thankfully, not a single line has been forgotten. Plus the play has gone very well so far. You can’t imagine the relief I’m feeling.

And as the end draws near, I begin doing a little play-by-play, in my head:

OK. Here it comes! The fight scene.

Good! They’re tussling!

And voila! Jerry pulls Jack’s-Joke-Shop knife-comb out of his pocket! Snick! Out flicks the blade! Perfect!

He drops it intentionally at Peter’s feet as the initiative for Peter to grab it up.

Now, with Peter holding the blade defensively, Jerry charges him, and impales himself on it!

…WHOA there!

They freeze! And remain frozen, as in a dramatic tableau, for six, maybe seven, long and silent seconds!! Longer than in our rehearsals!

And you can hear a pin drop in the gym!

It’s genius! So… why didn’t I think of this?

And then they fall apart, with Peter fleeing off-stage bellowing his final line, “Oh… my… God!“

And Jerry, now bleeding to death on the bench, delivers his last:

“Could I have planned all this?

“No… no, I couldn’t have.

“But… I think I did.”

Long silence…

He slumps.

(dies)

La Fin.

Curtains starting to close!

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FROM THE AUDIENCE!

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

Wow. While I, so deliriously relieved and crazy with emotion now that everything’s gone off without a hitch, have struggled myself dizzily up onto my feet, I see Peter marching toward me across the stage.

“My GOD! Wonderful job!” I exclaim. “You nailed it! Flawless, you guys! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better death scene. You… outdid yourselves! Congratulations!”

But something’s off. Standing before me now, in place, Peter isn’t smiling. No, that’s an understatement. His face is a mask of horror…

And Jerry, still collapsed over on the bench, is positively glaring up at me. But… why? What is it I’m missing here? “What?!”

Looking down at Jerry, I see that he’s slowly beginning to hike up the front of his shirt.

“Well… I’m confused. I mean, what the hell, guys…? You’re scaring me here!”

But then I see it!

Oh my God!

Jerry has two navels!

No, of course he doesn’t have two navels. The “navel”-navel, the one a little higher up and off to the right of his real one, is not a navel at all. It’s… a dent! A deep… dent in his belly! A hot, reddening, sore-looking, deep, little dent!

“Oh my!” I say.

The stage crew is shouting, “Curtain call, you two! C’mon! Let’s go!”

Peter leans in closer to the both of us, and moans, “Jeez! I’m SO, SO sorry!! My God, I just… I panicked! My thumb just… slipped right over the button, Mr. Lyford!! It slipped! And I didn’t manage to get it pushed down in… the button… so…”

“Curtain call! Come on!”

I’m thinking, Omigod, as the two back away, turn, and head over to center stage. The curtain fully opened now, they take their bows, soaking up the applause and whistles. Stupidly, I even get called out to join in.

But after the curtain closes, I see Peter picking up the switchblade from the floor. “You got a replacement for tomorrow night?” he asks, handing it over to me. Jerry joins us from behind.

“Whatta you mean?”

“I mean this,” Jerry whispers, nodding down at it.

Oh jeez, the blade is still locked in the ‘out’ position. And the once proud and straight little comb is now bent, snaked into what I can only describe as three wide little S-curves!

Peter’s face is a mask of horror. “I’m sorry,” he whines. “So sorry. I panicked and froze! My thumb slipped off the damn button! It… It never collapsed back in! It stayed locked in place! I pretty much stabbed him, Mr. L…”

“Pretty much?” Jerry growls. “I mean… look at my stomach!”

“You can’t believe how sorry I am!”

I’m studying Jerry’s wound. “God, that looks painful!”

“Ya think?!“

And here I’d thought all along that the thing was made of steel. Thank God it wasn’t!

“Wow. Well, at least there’s no blood. But damn, no wonder it looked so real out there! You think you’re gonna be OK?”

“I guess. It stings like hell though.”

“Look, I mean it! I’m so sorry!“

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

I shake my head, looking at my crumpled prop. “And that’s a big No on a back-up knife,” I say. “I wish to hell I’d bought two, but…”

“So… what’ll we do about tomorrow night’s production,” Jerry asks. “How’s that gonna work?”

“I have no idea, guys. I have no idea whatsoever.”

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

Next morning what I did do was rush the “knife” over to the shop, looking for any help I could get. “Can you put this in a vise or something,” I asked the shop teacher. “You know… straighten it out? Flatten it out somehow?”

The shop teacher scratched his chin, tsk-tsked over it, hmmm’d and hawed over it a bit and finally said, “I dunno. I guess we’ll find out.”

Well, they did manage to straighten the comb out… somewhat. But not nearly enough to get it to slide back and forth in and out of the handle. It was still too bent for that, alas. But you know what they say… “The show must go on.”

Next night, as I’d instructed, Jerry pulled the pathetic, no-longer-a-switchblade “knife” out of his back pocket and kept it in motion all the time under the lights, us hoping nobody would notice what it was really looking like. I really missed that dramatic, switchblade SNICK! from the night before though.

But we got through the play. And from all the accolades, we were pretty much a success. There was a larger teenage crowd on the second night. I guess that’s because the word got out in school that there was a pretty realistic, friggin’ knife fight in it. Something probably never seen in an Academy play before.

I believe we even broke even, or better, on admission fees. That, in itself, was seen as remarkable…

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

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ON THE LIFE-AND-DEATH IMPORTANCE OF ONE-INCH MARGINS…

A DAY IN THE LIFE

My free period unexpectedly got blown out of the water this morning. Thanks to me having to round up three senior girls, escort them to the Guidance Office to meet with their parents and counselor, and deal with the ugly allegations that this trio’s bullying has been seriously making some freshman girl’s life not worth living. And without said free period, I’ve been running behind six ways from Sunday all day

The copier in the teachers’ lounge’s gone belly-up again. Murphy’s Law. Par for the course, what with all thirty-four of us desperately champing at the bit for the printer, semester exams needing to be ready to go by Monday morning.

I’m on the second day of an at-least-two-day headache, and this one a real doozy. The ringing of the bells the bells the bells out in the hall keep setting my teeth on edge. Can you say “frayed nerves”?

And the icing on the cake? It’s my week for manning after-school detention-hall duty. Yeah. So here I sit, once again, locked in the cage with a tiny tribe of Welcome-Back-Kotter’s sweat hog and yahoos.

And wouldn’t you just know it, here he is, God’s little freshman gift to teachers, loitering before my desk with some wrinkled notebook page in hand that might’ve just been fished out of my wastebasket.

And he’s smiling. Smiling like a car salesman.

Someone should clue him in: Warning, Will Robinson! This teacher is a powder-keg with a short fuse this morning...

Ah. I don’t really mean that. That’s just the headache and the stress talking. I’m especially fond of the freshmen. Even Wes, here. I like to think of myself as the freshman welcome committee here at the Academy. Because, I mean they need some teachers who aren’t nazis too, right? And besides, Freshmen are new here, meaning they haven’t already heard my dad jokes, bad puns, and stories. My kind of audience.

Although as I focus on the paper in his hand, I realize I need to put on my Tough Man Persona, at least for a while.

“It’s late, Wes,” I point out. “Due yesterday.”

“Here now, though.”

“Ah. Yes. Now.”

“A day late and a dollar short,” he adds, smiling winningly. “But. See, I did do the assignment.”

“And… I’m guessing that’s it?” Me, nodding toward the fist holding the paper.

“Yep. And I think you’re gonna like this one.”

“You… think. Hmmm. OK. Lay it on me then, I guess.”

Dutifully he does. Lays the “essay” before me on my desk, face-up.

I eyeball it for all of four seconds, return my gaze to him and, then with the eraser tip of my pencil, push the page three or four inches back across the desktop toward him. The same way murder squad detectives on TV always ‘suggest’ that their prime suspects take a hard second look at the photo of some victim’s corpse.

“Do it over,” I say simply, knowing it sounds harsh but you know what? I’m just not in the mood today.

His face, gone from smiling now to… kind of beaming for some reason (which is a little maddening) asks, “OK, but…why’s that? I mean, you didn’t even read it.”

“Nor will I… until it’s rewritten.” Doing good here as Bad Cop…

“But … it’s good. I even used irony in it.”

“Which you’ll have to wait for me to… ‘appreciate’ it, once it gets rewritten.”

We look at each other for a few moments. The hairy-eyeball I’m trying to give him ought to be making him turn tail and scamper away. God, why does he all the time hafta keep that smile on high-beams like that? Why can’t he just be pissed off like any normal kid would, for crying out loud? I mean, that Howdy Doody mug of his!

Since he’s not saying anything, I do. “Oh come on, Wes. Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

No answer.

“Oh. Sure. Right, of course I do. OK. I’ll tell you why. The assignment sheet (hey, you remember the assignment sheet, don’t you?) lists four specific criteria you had to follow on this one. And, as I told you yesterday, no more getting away with your lazy sloppiness.”

“Yeah but the irony...”

“Stop!” (I mean, listen to this guy, right?)“Don’t you be yeah-butting me, Wes, OK?Man, you’d think I would’ve tape-recorded this speech years ago. That way every time you guys claim to have lost the assignment sheet, I could just send you back to your seat with a cassette player and say, ‘Sit down. Press Play!’”

“Hah. and ‘Be kind. Re-wind.’ Yeah.”

“1: Final draft of essay to be written on white composition paper.”

“Check,” he says.

“Right. You did do that. Moving right along.”

“2: Essay to be written in ink. Not in pencil.”

“Check again. Oh-oh-oh... but not in crayon, either. Hah. See? I remember you saying that in class.”

“Bully for you.” Gawd, he’s so good-natured?

“3: Essay will be neatly written in cursive.”

“Check, check, and… TRIPLE- CHECK! Hey, see? I’m acing it. Well, I mean I will be, especially when you read my irony.”

“4: Final draft will employ ONE–INCH MARGINS.”

“That one sound a little familiar?”

“Oops.”

“Yeah. Oops. I’m not seeing any margins here.”

“I guess you got me, boss,” he says.

“Right. I got you. Now… there’s your paper. Take it. Go and do it over. With… the one-inch margins this time. Then, and only then, will I read… will I enjoy… your captivating irony. Capiche? Now— go, and sin no more.”

“You got it,” he says. With a nod and a wink, he picks up his paper, turns, and shuffles off toward back his desk (thank God), leaving me pitying his parents.

Phew! That’s over. Oh, my head!

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

But… as little as five minutes later, here he is again. Back. And with what looks to be that very same damn shabby page still in hand.

“Done,” he says with obvious pride.

“Wait just a darn minute,” I say. There is no way, absolutely NO way you’ve re-done that essay this quickly!”

“Hey I really did. Check it out.” And with that, he once again graces my desk with his allegedly ironic opus. So what else can I do? I look down at the thing. And man, I can’t believe it! Because yeah… it is the exact same damn shabby piece of writing that it was five minutes ago!

“LOOK at this! I told you I re-did it!”

“You did. And hey! I fixed the margins. See?”

“NO! What you did w…”

But then, what I’m actually looking at fully registers. Jesus. On each the left-and-right-hand sides of the page, this wise-ass little weasel has Scotch-taped a long, one-inch-wide, ten-inches-long strip of paper! I mean… he taped-on frickin’ margins!!! So immediately, I start trying to pump myself up to properly muster all the deadly venom of my… chagrin… in order to lay him out good in lavender!

(See, I had to say ‘trying’ there because… well, something’s wrong. Blowing my stack just isn’t coming as easily as I want it to! I mean, I dunno, it’s kind of like my wannabe-aggressiveness is… stuttering or something! Even though I’m surprisingly impressed with this kid’s surprising brass, what I want to do is let this kid have it with both barrels, but… what’s going on with me? I mean, something’s bubbling up inside me that’s… well, something that’s bubbling up autonomically… like what happens when you’re seconds away from vomiting and you just KNOW there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it, nothing you can do to keep it down!

I try to muscle this down anyway, but it’s like I just felt my frickin’ diaphragm burst like Mount Vesuvius! And God help me…up the autonomic belly laugh COMES!)

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

“Uhmmm…? Mister L? …Mister L??? Are you…alright? You’re not… cryin’, are you?”

My face, hidden beneath convulsing shoulders (down upon the hide-away pillow of my crossed arms) comes jack-in-the-boxing straight up from my desk so suddenly he recoils! “Of course not! I’m laughing my butt off here is what I’m doing!” And I tack on a quiet little “…damn you!” just for him.

But God, it’s frustrating when you’re mad as a wet hen and… and laughter just comes barreling right out of you without your permission. Your self-control just gets kicked to the curb and runs rampant for just about however long it wants. You can want to will yourself to be steamingly pissed-off but, no, your body’s in control, isn’t it— not you! So you just have to ride it out.

But oddly, after you have been so out of control like that, for some reason when it’s over you just end up feeling so free and fresh and good. I mean, it feels like this outburst just breached some flood-stage gate inside of me or something, punched a hole in it, and released an out-gushing of all my silly, uptight, Ichabod Crane hang-ups of the day in a wonderful, though violent-as-a-sneeze, catharsis.

Human behavior. Go figure, right?

And even though I have finally ridden it out, my mouth is still stretched in its autonomic, idiotic grin— I can feel it. Apparently, I’m having a good time

But something’s happened here. And I’m left pondering what the hell’s this kid just done to me, the little jerk! Up-ended me, that’s what. Caught me right off guard, big-time! Because… well, that whole thing was just so unexpected… and so damn funny! I mean, it hit me right between the eyes when I wasn’t even looking….

“So… you OK now?”

“What, me?” I’ve gotten myself pretty much under control now. Enough so I can communicate again, at least. “Not entirely,” I tell him. “Because something really weird and back-assward just went down here.”

“Man, I’d say so!”

“Because me and you? We just had us a moment, didn’t we. I mean, there I was, going to war with you practically! About to wrestle you down, pin you to the mat, and shove the importance of margins down your throat. Even if it killed us both to do it.”

“Jeez. OK…???”

“And then you went and yanked the mat right out from under me! Had me body-slammed and pinned before I knew what hit me! And I mean, look at how you did that! You didn’t even use force! You just did it with… nothing but your unusual off-the-wall humor! Oh! yeah! And with irony.“

“Really?”

“Really. And hey, how ironic is that, huh?” But no, what you just did? It really got my attention there. Big time. I’m serious. I mean, in the blink of an eye, you… my outwardly mediocre student… just taught your high school English teacher, me, something I’ve really needed to take a serious look at. My priorities.”

“If you say so, man. But…. hey. You’re not… like, off your meds or something are you?”

“No! I’m on my stupid meds. But you know, it’s like you just gave me a refresher course… well, refresher lesson… on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

**MARGINS ARE BOTH RELATIVE AND CONTROVERSIAL**

See, that’s what I can’t get over. Because… well, after all, everything is relative, isn’t it. And I mean, margins? Hell yeah! They’re relative. Of course they are. And so over-rated. And you just practically toilet-plunger-ed the honest absurdity (the sheer and utter ridiculousness of margins being thought of as so all-that-important) down my throat! Well done.”

“Er… so, what, does that mean... margins are out? From now on? No more one-inch-margins?”

“No, of course not. But it does mean I have to go back and recalibrate how much weight I put on them when it comes to grading.”

“But… why keep them at all? If they’re so relative and all. Why not do the class a favor and just dump’em altogether…?”

(click!) (that’s me, doing the classic double-take right here) “Whoa whoa whoa!” And then, looking him straight in the eye until I know I’ve got his full attention focused squarely and seriously on me. “Just a darn minute here, kiddo. No.” And I say that with a weak laugh. (heh heh)

“Yeah. That’s what I figured. Sure. But why not, though?”

“But anyway… just NO! OK…?”

“ That’s what I figured. Sure. Surprise surprise. So much for the Theory of Relativity.”

“Well Wes, there’s also something called Chaos Theory, you know? (You should know. I mean, from what I’ve observed, in some ways chaos seems to be part of your lifestyle.) Now, we don’t want the world to descend into the Dark Ages Void of Chaos, do we.”

“What, I’m getting a vote then?”

“Which is pretty much what might happen if we start whittling away, one at a time, all these little rules that keep us in check as a civilized society. You need to look at The Big Picture: Get rid of margins today. Then complete sentences tomorrow. Next thing you know, we’ll be back to living in caves and painting the stories of our lives in pictograms on the walls.”

“Can you also say windbag?”

“Yeah. I can. I majored in Windbagology in college.”

“I can believe it. How about hypocrisy? Can you say that?”

“Me? Hypocrisy? What’s that? Never heard of it.”

“Well you should’ve, Mister Relativity. Mister margins-are-no-longer-important-but-we’ll-keep’em-anyway.”

“Hey. Don’t forget. This English teacher who needs to keep his job.”

“Oh yeah. Mister sell-out.”

“Or Mr. Lyford who… oh gimme a break, Mister Lazy, Mister I-Don’t-Care-About-My-Future.”

“Well, I don’t.“

“Well, I do. I really do! So. Let me tell you what I am willing to do. I’m going to cut you a deal.”

“Big deal, yeah? OK, let’s hear it.”

“Yes, but first of all, tomorrow… when I wake up, shower, get dressed… this conversation never happened, OK? One-inch margins will still go on ruling the world as they always have. And one-inch margins will, as always, be regarded as crucial absolutes, not the secretly-acknowledged relative entities we’ve acknowledged and agreed on this afternoon, you dig?”

“Ooh. An offer I can’t refuse! Right. What I figured.”

“Hey. There’s a Part 2 in this deal, which I’ll get to in a minute. OK?

“But… let’s be clear. You and I? As people? Not as teacher and student? Sure, yes, we both know that what’s written in between those margins is the main thing. But as teacher and student, we both have to realize that how you learn to present yourself in the future job market is going to become very important. And that presenting yourself with a wrinkled, messy, sprawling jumble of unreadable writing spilled all over the page is something you need to practice NOT doing. Bad habits tend to stick.”

“Blah blah blah. Save it.”

“Alright. I’ll save it. But OK. Here’s the deal. Guess what: you just scored yourself an A on this paper. Sight unseen. (Although I will read it and get back to you.) You also get (…wait for it) my respect today, having shown yourself to be a lot brighter than you’ve previously been letting on. I hope that means something to you.”

“Well, I won’t be saying no to the A at least…”

“Whereas… on the other side of the coin, when the next assigned essay comes around, you not only will have those absolute one-inch margins in place, but the paper? The physical paper it’s written on…? It will not be some wrinkled or food-stained scrap you stole from my waste basket, you dig? It’ll be pristine. You dig? The paper will come in on time, or suffer the consequences. You dig? And as far as your grade on the next essay is concerned? I honestly can’t imagine it’ll end up being an A; however I can easily imagine it being a big fat zero. So, you’re on notice.

“And by the way, the worst thing you’ve done today is let it slip that the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz actually has had a brain all along. And that, dear friend, is something that can, and will, be used against you in a court of… I dunno… of English Grammar and Composition.”

“Well… that’s harsh,” he says with a sarcastic grin.

“And in the meantime, gimme your essay back. I do intend to read what you’ve written. And I’m curious about your use of irony as well. But whatever I find in it, the A is written in stone. We’ve just jump-started a winning streak where your grade in English is concerned. Don’t. Blow. That. Off. OK?”

A few moments go by in silence.

“Hey Wes. I’m waiting for my thank-you over here. Once given and received, and what with your detention sentence just now officially adjudicated as ‘time-served,’ you will hereby be ordered to take ownership of your sleazily-weaseled A and vacate the premises. Any questions? No? OK then. Go. And sin no more?”

“Uhmmm… well, thanks.”

At the door, he turns and says, “Next essay? I’m writing it in crayon on a brown paper bag!”

“Beat it, Freshman!”

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

Man, how do these damn kids keep getting me to like them so much???

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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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I, YOUNG CYRANO PART II

From the conclusion of Part I:

“Yes. A whirlwind romance. Lasted a couple of weeks. And then, poof! It was over. Done with. Gone with the wind.

Turned out I was kind of… boring, apparently.

But for me, it was plus yardage: I had had a girlfriend! It was kinda like me belonging to a new and exclusive club.

What would come next?”

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

Part II:

(just a little flashback tidbit)

Kind of… boring? Unlikely, but possible I suppose. But it did feel kinda like belonging to a new and exclusive club. My whole outlook and attitude had gotten a much-needed shot in the arm. Now I was a little more like…

So ME? Yeah. I’ve had girlfriends.

(I’d had that girlfriend.)

It felt like a major step in the ending of the sad little Charlie Brown chapter of my non-love-life. Like moving forward.

THE HERETOFORE IMMATURE AND ANNOYING LITTLE ME

I mean, like before Lynette, I was just another one of those immature and annoying lookitME! LookitME! little snakes-and-snails-and-puppy-dogs’-tails SHOW-offs, whenever some cute girl happened to be around.

For instance, up through third and fourth grades, I’d been Roy Rogers’ biggest fan. In fact my very first bedroom pin-up wall poster was Roy Rogers on his rearing palomino, Trigger.

I mean, I loved everything Roy Rogers. In fact, I wanted to BE Roy Rogers. So when I caught Roy doing some trick-riding on Trigger in one of his movies, I just had to emulate him.

Of course I didn’t have a horse. But I did have a bike named Trigger. So…

I lived up on Pleasant Street, a street that sloped gently downward past our house, meaning you could easily get a good down-hill coasting going on your bicycle. That slope became my training area. And the best trick-riding I ever saw in the Roy Rogers movies was him securing a firm, two-fisted grip on the saddle horn, while getting Trigger galloping at a very fast gallop. Then… wonder of all wonders…

Holding on tight and using that horn as a fixed fulcrum, Roy would launch himself right up out of the saddle, swing his hips and legs down to the left of Trigger’s flank, bounce his boots off the ground there, swing his entire body back up to sail right over the empty saddle only to drop himself down again (off to the right side this time), bounce his boots off the ground on that side, swing himself back up over the saddle once again, and then right back down to the left… and, you know, just repeat that flip-flop maneuver over and over a few more times, left and right, left and right before smoothly just dropping his holy little cowboy butt comfortably right back down in the saddle just like nothing had ever happened.

I know that’s all very hard to imagine, unless you’ve seen it done. But what might be even more difficult to picture is little-fourth-grade-moi coasting my bike at a good clip down over Pleasant Street’s little hill and performing that exact, same stunt! I mean it.

It took a month or more of practice. I had to begin first with the bike at a stand-still, me just holding onto the handlebars and practicing leaping back and forth over the bicycle’s seat. Once I got my balance down pretty pat, I began to up the ante by doing the same thing with the bike slowly moving. Then it was just a matter of increasing my speed day-by-day. And you know what? It became easy after a while. I got good at it. I swear I did.

And lo, Pleasant Street was suddenly blessed with its very own junior Roy Rogers Daily Wild West Show. I mean, damn, I was frickin’ rodeo-ready! (You remember how Tom Selleck was always saying, “This isn’t my first rodeo” on those idiotic Reverse Mortgage commercials? Well this was… my first rodeo, of sorts.)

So it wasn’t totally unusual for the occasional lucky Dover-Foxcroft pedestrian or automobile passenger to get to witness The Amazing One-Trick-Pony Cowpoke fearlessly barreling hell-bent-for-leather down Pleasant Street on any given day at any given time throughout summer vacation.

And I was so proud of myself. Not to mention magnanimously delighted to ever-so-generously perform this daily feat gratis (although I surely would’ve charged admission if I could have thought of a way to pull it off). But each and every time I was lucky enough to have an audience, I could console myself by just imagining all the exclamations of wonder going on inside the minds of those passers-by:

My God! Would you look at that kid! He’s not only BRAVE, he’s extremely SKILLED!

A kid like that? I mean, HE’S GOING PLACES, you know?

Well, all I can say is… you couldn’t PAY me to try something like that!

(And from all the sweet little back-seat daughters):

And he’s SO CUTE, too.

Heck, MY stupid boyfriend can’t do daring tricks like that!

I bet he’s got A ZILLION girlfriends, though!

(OK, yes, I admit it. I did seem to have a little of The-Christmas-Story’s ‘Ralphie’ in me back then.)

RALPHIE of The Christmas Story

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

So anyway— one late sunny morning, I was flying down the road for my third performance of the day. And just as I’d leapt off the seat to begin the ol’ left-to-right-to-left-to-right, a musical little voice off up ahead to my left cried out, “Wow! Look at you, Tommy!”

And of course I was going too fast to look at ‘myself,’ not that that would’ve made any sense, but I did look up and…

There she was! Betty-Jane Stanhope!

The very reason I’d been patiently sticking to Pleasant Street over the past week! So. She had finally, at long last, just happened outside while I was potentially enthralling the neighborhood. (I had such a crush on her.) (I mean, what boy didn’t?)

But as you will recall from a previous episode, I was pathologically shy around cute girls. Our eyes locked. And I froze. Which was when…

The handlebars suddenly strong-armed me, yanked me to the right! And WHOA! My rodeo-bronc-bicycle ka-thump-thumped! us over a shallow ditch, slamming my bum hard and pretty much sideways back down onto the seat! Somebody’s Then somebody’s driveway and lawn looked like they were flying beneath us like a rug being yanked out from under us! And Jeez, that damn maple tree trunk was coming at us like Casey Jones’ locomotive!

All that in a blink-and-a-half!

Oh. My. God!

Trigger tried to run itself right up the damn tree like a flag up a flagpole, I swear to God! The tree trunk’s roots were spread out at the base, curving out and down into the earth, providing a curved, though precarious, path for speeding wheels. So with a bone-jarring, ninety-degree change of direction, the bike went alley-oop-up! But not me.

Unfortunately, my body wasn’t built on wheels. I was a high-speed, arrow-straight vector!

Now, I swear there was a one-to-two-second, still-life Wile E. Coyote moment there… with my bike pasted to the trunk and aimed at the sky with me splayed-out-splat! like a June bug on a windshield!

Then after another blink-and-a-half, gravity deigned to peel the bike and I off the bark like a wet band-aid and dropped us in a heap onto the grass.

I mean, can you say “out-of-body experience?” Instantly transported to some Danté-esque alternate universe, I lay momentarily paralyzed and prostrated before the sadistic Pain Gods of the Gonads! Meanwhile I was being on-and-off flash-blinded in the pulsating strobes of the corpse-cold, crotch-to-brain aching!

I sorta came to fetal-positioned, sweating like a snowman in the desert, and struggling to roll myself over and crawl myself away from those torturous throes of…

“Are you alright?”

Ohmygod! There she was! Standing right over me! Staring straight down at me! At ME! What with my legs crossed bladder-tight and everything! Clutching my…

“Are you alright?”

“Unnngthhh?”

“I said, ‘Are you OK?’”

Me thinking, Oh please… just… go away! Don’t look at me! Go back inside your house! You shouldn’t be here right now. This is so… I’m so ASHAMED! I was longing to cry, but not in front of her!

I finished getting myself rolled over.

“Should I go get my mom…or… ?”

“What…?” I barely whispered, “No…no…”

“You sure?”

On my hands and knees now. Shaking. Still in a raspy whisper, “Positive.” And then, “Just… don’t!”

“Well… OK, I guess. But where are you hurt?”

Where am I…? Oh my God! Really? I couldn’t believe she just had to go and ask that! “My... knee,” I said, barely able to breathe, and wondering, Does she know? Does she know how it is with us boys? Hell, until that day, that moment, I didn’t even have a clue about just how bad the pain could really be (with, you know, ‘us boys.’) “Yeah. Think I… must’ve bruised it. My knee.”

The physical pain was so extreme, I worried about throwing up! But the embarrassment-‘pain’ was making me want to run away and hide my face. I mean, what had just happened was definitely not something you could just… explain… to a Betty-Jane Stanhope. The word, ‘unmentionable’ comes to mind. It was like… what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, you know?

All I knew for sure was that I was going to spend the rest of my life hiding from Betty-Jane. I was a pariah, even though I hadn’t learned that word yet.

But OK, somehow I did manage to get up on my shaky legs, get my bike up on its shaky wheels, and begin the Long Limp of Infamy back to my house. Thinking to myself (as much as the severe pain could allow me to think coherently), Well, Gloria Cole knocked-me cock-eyed off a playground swing seat, and now I have to accept it that Betty-Jane probably knows something horribly unmentionable about me that she shouldn’t.

The prospect of ME ever finally getting to become some girl’s boyfriend seemed a grim impossibility.

By the way, the bike had fared much better than I had. At least there was that…

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

But hah! Just imagine, though, how surprised I’d have been if I could’ve looked into some Gypsy fortune teller’s crystal ball and caught just a glimpse of the lurid, two-weeks-long, hand-holding affair I was destined to enjoy in fifth grade with my first real girlfriend, Lynette Barnes, the following year!

Although feeling pretty down and out, I somehow knew that I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel just yet though…

Stay tuned to join me in I, Young Cyrano Part The Last

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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…?

home

“LOOKIN’ FOR THE OLD BLUE OX…”

You know who I envy in this life? Let me tell you. The Songwriters. And yes, I just capitalized the word Songwriters because I hold them in such high esteem. But at the same time, who I don’t envy so much are the so-called ‘songwriters’ (lower case ‘s‘). I’m talkin’ those ‘songwriters’ who are in it solely (and often soullessly) for the money and quick fame. See, I sorta need to feel the signature of the writers’ souls along with their unique talents in their offerings. Not that I can blame anybody for just wanting to earn a living. You know, live and let live. I just don’t find myself envying anybody who writes crap, even crap that sells big. That’s all.

Take the Beatles. The Beatles began as songwriters (small ‘s‘), not Songwriters. In my humble opinion. Oh, and I’m the first to admit, they became Songwriters Extraordinaire. “Eleanor Rigby.” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” “A Day in the Life.” “Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite.” “In My Life.” Because hey, please know I grew to love the Beatles.

But what an overwhelming disappointment it was when the very the first song I heard by them in November of ’63 was “I Want to Hod Your Hand.” I mean, really, just how creative are these lyrics?

Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something,
I think you’ll understand,
Then I’ll say that something,
I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand.

Oh please say to me
You’ll let me be your man,
And please say to me,
You’ll let me hold your hand,
Now let me hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand.

And when I touch you
I feel happy inside,
It’s such a feeling
That my love I can’t hide,
I can’t hide, I can’t hide.

Yeah, you got that something,
I think you’ll understand,
When I feel that something,
I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand.

And when I touch you
I feel happy inside,
It’s such a feeling
That my love I can’t hide,
I can’t hide, I can’t hide.

Yeah, you got that something,
I think you’ll understand,
When I feel that something,
I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand.

“Nuff said.

In my life, (now there’s a real Beatles’ song) I’ve tried my hand at poetry. I was inspired by the so many poets and poems I’d fallen in love with. But, to become a poet, you pretty much have to start out at the bottom, don’t you.

So I was clerking at the local library, when this sweet little old lady began pestering me every other week to join her poetry writers group. And yeah, sure, I’d been struggling with… ‘my poetry’ for a long while, but only privately. I had no self-confidence. I had never shared any of it. The thought of sharing felt… risky.

But one day I just threw in the towel, gave in to her persistence, and said “OK, OK OK!” I showed up with a very humble poem. But a safe (for me) poem. And by safe, I mean I felt it was a somewhat fairly clever little thing I’d concocted… but mostly because it rhymed. Because I just for some reason assumed that all these oldsters would exclusively be into the rhyming poems. OK me, I’d moved pretty much exclusively into free verse by then, but… I mean,hey, I didn’t know who the hell these old buzzards were, circled around the library table like a séance. And I definitely didn’t want to risk having one I really cared about getting shot down.

And then, finally: it was my turn to read. So OK, I cleared my throat three or four times; took, and held, the required deep breath; and then nervously proceded headlong to read what I’d brought.

When done, I looked up. Everyone was silently looking at me, and some were nodding, which made me sigh in relief. But then that little old poetry mistress who ran the group locked onto me with her suddenly mischievous, beady little eyes and said, “Why, that’s… doggerel,” followed by “and doggerel is poetry written by dogs!“

To my chagrin and terror, everybody burst out laughing!

Turned out, this lady had pulled the same stunt on everybody who ever joined the group. It was sort of a first-day initiation of hers. And (who woulda thunk it?) after a little period of adjustment, it turned out that this lady and I were destined to become a great lifelong friends. I even dedicated my first full-length memoir to Anne Kucera.

But she was right, wasn’t she. So much so-called ‘poetry’ really is doggerel. And if I had known this poetry-written-by-dogs expression back in 1963, that’s exactly how I would’ve assessed the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” And yes, sure, I got it that that particular little ditty sounded pretty lively and all, and I noted that sure, all the girls were doing the Elvis thing, screaming and fainting, so they were definitely a phenom, but… I mean, just look at those pathetic lyrics. I’m sorry, but the Beatles began as doggerel songwriters (lower case s). Case closed.

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

Now… here we go. And OK… I admit it. I’m still on my juke box kick. So here comes a song. Hey, I can’t help it. I’m really just very passionate about the special singer/songwriter music I’ve meticulously collected over my lifetime because… well, because of the effects that music has had, and still has, on me. So I’m not going to apologize for wanting, actually needing, to share some of the best of it.

And right now, please trust me– I have a songwriter, and a song of his, in mind that I want to share with you, hoping you’ll be willing to give it a shot. But first, allow me to refer you back to the song, “Christmas in the Trenches,” featured in one of my recent posts titled “A Single Song for All Humanity.” The lyrics of that song tell of something big and important, something unusual and truthful and heartfelt… something well worth experiencing. Which is what I look for in the music I collect. And I’d be willing to bet real money that those of you who did listen to “Christmas in the Trenches” were also pretty powerfully moved. As I was. Because lyrics like those in that piece are a humane and generous gift… to you, to all of us, from a real bona fide (capital ‘S‘) Songwriter. A rare gift.

However, today’s gift isn’t about some big and important 3-day event that has established its place in the annals of world history. Rather it’s about a seemingly small five-minute encounter. And it’s not really about the encounter per se as much as it is about what this little, universal encounter reveals.

Today’s gift is a unique, poignant piece, composed by one of the more talented singer/songwriters catalogued in my vast juke box: the international singer/songwriter David Mallett from Sebec, Maine. Dave’s compositions have been recorded by a number of famous recording artists from John Denver, Kathy Mattea, Emmylou Harris, to Arlo Guthrie. You’ll likely know him from his signature song, “The Garden Song,” (a.k.a. “Inch by Inch”) popularized and sung (in a number of languages) throughout the world.

But he’s composed so many other long-time perrenial favorites as well, such as “Fire,” commemorating the Mallett family’s long ago loss of their homestead in a calamitous conflagration; and then of course “The Ballad of the Saint Anne’s Reel,” which has been happily adopted as the official folk anthem of Prince Edward Island and the surrounding Maritimes provinces of Canada.

Famous American singer/songwriter David Mallett

Now, I gotta admit this one comes with a title that’s a little bit unexpected, one that might raise the eyebrows of someone scanning the playlist of songs on Dave’s The Artist in Me CD for the first time. It’s titled “The Old Blue Ox.” However (much needed spoiler alert here) the title is definitely not referencing the famous, fictional tall tale of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Big Blue Ox, which is more than likely the only “blue ox” most Americans would be familiar with. And like me, you may never have realized that there really is such a thing as a ‘blue ox.’ I mean, I had to look it up for myself: “Blue Ox: a blue brindle cow or ox which is usually the result of a roan Shorthorn which is bred to a black and white Holstein.”

OK. Yeah. I mean, Who knew?

Well, the apparent answer to that is… farmers (and alas, no farmer, me). But yes, farmers are very likely to know of this breed.

OK: time to relax. So breathe… and now lean back to get comfy in your chair and try to imagine you’ve just been puttering about your house for the afternoon, a house situated in a rural part of Maine’s farmlands, when suddenly there comes a knock at your door. You open it to find… on your doorstep… one sad, confused, little old gentleman leaning on his cane…

"THE OLD BLUE OX"

"Good afternoon, I'm lookin' for
the old blue ox," he said,

And he said, "I don't believe it,
but I heard my father's dead.

And just where is the Curtis place?
My God how things have changed!"

He was a little ol' man, he was almost blind,
and he was walkin' with a cane.
 
"Now I know this is the place,
because I climbed the Severance Hill,

I'd know that hill in a hundred years,
and how her rule and will."

"Earl Parkman moved away," I said, 
"Will Green, he died you know,

And Willis Pratt has grown a man,
and gone on years ago."
 
Now our conversation was quite short,
five minutes at the most,

But he stood before me like a boy,
and conjured up the ghosts

Of friends and kin folk from an older,
and a slower time,

How fifty years, disappeared 
like minutes in his mind.
 
"The blue ox was gone the day I left,
been gone a week or so,

And I've come around to fetch him home,
cause I always did you know.

Pa will be glad." He started off,
and I stood and watched him go,

Down the way to yesterday 
lookin' hard and lookin' slow.
 
Now apple trees just wither,
and barns grow old and fall,

And ancient lady's sit in rockin'
chairs, wrapped in their shawls.

But this old fella does the things,
the things he has to do,

He's lookin' for his past,
he might stop and talk to you.

"Good afternoon, I'm lookin' for
the old blue ox," he said,

He said, "I don't believe it,
but I heard my father's dead.

And just where is the Curtis place?
My God how things have changed."

He was a little ol' man he was almost blind
and he was walkin' with a cane.

What this song does is deliver a bittersweet little punch to my heart, leaving me with a warm and kind of teary-eyed smile every time I listen to it. So no, it’s not exactly a happy song, although the vocals and the jaunty instrumental accompaniment combine to nearly disguise it as such. But yeah… I really love this one.

I love the artful way it’s written. Because in no more than a handful of lyrics, it hands us such an easy-to-grasp foreshadowing of a reality that very likely awaits us, but one we seldom consciously imagine will ever touch us: that some time in the near or far future, maybe right in the middle of us just happily going about our lives, with everything moving pretty much right along all hunky-dory… it’ll eventually come. Very much like a sudden and unexpected knock at the door:

Somebody we know and probably care about, and maybe even love and depend on, will have just been diagnosed with the reality of dementia. Because shit happens…

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

Our extended family has owned a lake-front cottage since the 1940’s, the ownership of which has been passed down within the family from generation to generation. One sunny, blue-sky, summer afternoon back fifteen years or so, a number of us were lounging out on the cottage’s porch that overlooks the lake. And all of a sudden my mom said something that didn’t seem very logical at all. “What a beautiful lake this is. It must have a name. So, what’s the name of this lake?”

Suddenly that had us all sitting up a little straighter in our chairs. And after a short pause, someone said the obvious. “Why… Sebec Lake, of course. You know that, Violet. Sebec Lake.”

My mom thought about that and then simply said, “Oh.” But then, after a lengthy pause, she spoke again. “And this is such a nice camp.”

“Yes. It is,” we all agreed.

“So… whose camp is this? Who owns it?”

That question brought a much longer and more uncomfortable silence to the porch gathering, as we all looked to one another in… well, astonishment. Then Dad, flummoxed and nervous, looked her right in the eye and said sternly, “Why, you do, Violet. This is your camp. You own it!”

“What… me?” she laughed in disbelief. “Me? I own it…? Oh no, I don’t think so. How could that be?”

And that was that. Our ‘knock at the door.’ And it was unnerving. Frightful. Oh I mean, sure, looking back, there’d been signs. Of course there had. Road bumps had been coming up in conversations quite a lot with her actually, which we’d find frustrating, but... still… we’d just pooh-pooh them into the background, log them under the category of ‘just natural aging,’ just a little forgetfulness here and there which can be expected.

But… that was our knock at the door. The end of any more hopeful denial.

It took years for her dementia to play out in our lives. Years to go from that first cottage-porch incident to the point of her often confusing our dad, her husband, with her long-dead father. To the point of her packing up her little suitcase at home most nights, parking it right by the front door, and continually asking us when was somebody, anybody, ever going to get around to taking her home, to ‘her house’ so she could go to bed? But once in a while there’d be little periods of time when the old, real Violet would just pop right back in among us. Of course this was all devastating, long past the time we finally had to move her into the local nursing home and right up until the day passed.

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

Now I swear I certainly did not decide to write about this topic to depress anybody, and I sincerely hope I haven’t done that. It’s simply that I treasure my collection of unique and creative singer/songwriter recordings so much that I’m kinda driven to share them, because to me they’ve always been such an important lifeline to my inner peace, comfort, sanity, and even knowledge. Because my God, they cover just about all genres. Humor and comedy. Tragedy. Romance. Novelty. Philosophy. Nostalgia. Politics. Protest. Spoken word. History. You name it. And I can’t help feeling that the experience of them is just way too valuable a commodity for me alone to greedily keep, them just languishing here on the dusty CD shelves in my little apartment and in my PC’s digital ‘jukebox vaults.’ They need to be shared. And I feel a real need to put them out there for you, too, to discover.

Yeah. I know. How very Don Quixote of me, right?

But I find the talent and craft of these songwriters irresistable. I mean, just take another look at this one, “The Old Blue Ox.” Look at the dialogue between the little old man and the narrator:

“Now our conversation was quite short,
five minutes at the most,
But he stood before me like a boy,
and conjured up the ghosts
Of friends and kin folk from an older,
and a slower time,
How fifty years, disappeared
like minutes in his mind.”

Yes, clinically it’s just one man conversing with some unfortunate old fella locked in the grip of his dementia, but the tiny encounter is painted within these lyrics with an almost paranormal feel about it. Like one of them is a ghost… or… like they’re both two time-travelers, each ensconsed in his own time-period-‘reality,’ but somehow briefly communicating with one another straight through a… wormhole maybe that has suddenly pierced the nexus of their two worlds?

How spooky is that! And how intriguing…

But that’s what it was like sometimes, talking to my mom. I soon came to understand very well that she was speaking to me from a long-dead world of sepia-toned, black-and-white photographs and the living ghosts of her brothers and sister. And I was speaking to her from a magical science-ficton world of cell phones, iPads, and remote controls lying around all over the living room furniture. How amazing.

But hey, I’m guess beginning to sound like the cursed old seafarer in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” aren’t I. (Can’t shut up.) So let me just sum up with a single statement regarding not only all of the (in my opinion) crème de la crème lyricists I keep in my collection, but especially this particular Dave Mallett’s song, “The Old Blue Ox”:

This song transcends the simple term ‘song’; what it is, actually, is a slice of pure Literature suitable for inclusion in any American literary anthology.

So that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!

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

And now I’ll end with some scribbling I penned years ago, having been inspired by “The Old Blue Ox.” Thanks for reading.

“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

You took it for granted…

just assumed Memory Lane

would forever remain

your Yellow Brick Road…

overlooking, way back then,

those sleepy seeds borne

on the winds of time

sewing themselves

between the cobblestones, and then

all those little spearheads–

the crabgrass, unsheathing itself

underfoot… choking the undergrowth of

Memory Lane in an overgrowth primeval–

and now you’ve gone missing in the outback

of your own hardening cerebral arteries…

all your Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs

disappearing like hourglass-sand

down the little rabbit holes,

leaving you needing a damn macheté

to hack your way in circles

through the foliage of

your own life’s back pages…

unable to find the forest

hiding in your trees

home

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…

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

(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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