Love – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME II: Oh, Danny Boy— It Is What It Is…

First: A Flashback from the End of Part I…

OK. One evening, right after dinner, I was sitting in my stuffed chair, reading some book or other, when I heard the phone ringing. I heard my wife picking up the phone in the next room and saying “Hello?” Then I could hear her murmuring something quietly.

Next thing I knew, she was standing next to my chair and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a phone call,” she said tentatively, looking perplexed.

“Who is it?”

“The County Sheriff.”

“The who?! The… County sheriff?! Jeez... what the hell?”

I got up, walked out to the kitchen, and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi. So… is this Mr. Lyford? Mr. Thomas Lyford?”

“It is. Why?”

“Tell me. Are you familiar with a Danny Brown, Mr. Lyford…?

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

Part II

“Ohmygod, yes!” That question! Coming right outta the blue like that! And from a sheriff! What the hell? What the hell had happened?! And why was I being called, for crying out loud?! “Why?! What’s this all about?!”

“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Lyford. But when I told Danny I’d call his dad, he became really adamant that he didn’t want that. Instead he gave us your name. Insisted we call you. Which struck me as a bit unusual. So, just what, if I may ask, is the nature of your relationship with Danny?”

“Jesus. He’s alive then. Was he in an accident or something? Is he hurt?”

“Oh no. He’s not hurt. But again, I’m just curious here. What is it you are to him?”

“Well, after he got kicked out, expelled I mean, from MHS, the district hired me to be a tutor after the fact. To placate his mom. I was his English teacher anyway, before that. And it turned out I was apparently just about the only teacher Danny didn’t want to kick in the teeth. He liked me. So I sorta took him under my wing. And I’m no counselor or anything, but… well, it was sorta like I was… almost.”

“OK. Yeah. That square’s with what Danny’s telling us.”

“But anyway. I haven’t heard from Danny for a long while. And I’ve been seriously worried. So it really jumped me when you called. He just sorta up and disappeared on me. Ran away from home, you know?”

“Oh yes, I definitely know. So anyway, here’s the thing. A few days ago, Danny escaped from the Juvenile Correctional Center over in South Portland.”

“He what?! Wait… he was… inprison??? And then you’re saying he… escaped?!”

“Well, escaping from there is pretty easy to do. I mean, it’s not Rikers. Or Alcatraz.”

“Oh my God, I had no idea…”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I mean, shit!”

“Yeah. So anyway… instead of his dad, he’s asking for you.”

“Me?! But what for?”

“Well, I guess… you could call this his one phone call.”

“Uhmmm… OK…?”

“So… if it’s at all possible, we’d like you to come down to the station.”

“What? Who, me?”

“Yeah. You busy?”

“What, you mean right now?!”

“Can you? I’d really appreciate it.”

“Well… whatever the heck can I do down there?”

“I don’t know. But he’s asked for you. You said you’d taken him under your wing. Maybe it’ll just give him a little comfort while we continue to interrogate him?”

“Interrogate? You’re interrogating him?”

“Much more like interviewing him. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. We’re not sweating him under a light bulb and beating him with a rubber hose. We’re just asking some questions, is all. Maybe with your presence, here it’ll make him feel a little more comfortable enough to level with us. You’ll see, when you get down here? OK?”

“Christ. OK. Be there in a few minutes.”

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

I can’t tell you how weird, how kinda scary it felt to walk into a county jail under those circumstances. The place smelled pretty much like my National Guard armory, the smell of uniforms and guns and sweat, I guess. The man at the desk said, “One moment. I’ll get him.”

And the next minute I was shaking hands with the county sheriff. “Good of you to come down,” he said.

“I hardly know what to say, under the circumstances. It’s… nice to meet you?”

“Thanks. Likewise.”

“So. What now…?”

“Basically I just want you to sit in on the interview. I want you to watch him while it’s ongoing. Listen to his part of the dialogue, and then afterwards, just tell me what you think, OK?”

“I dunno. I can’t imagine how that’ll… OK. I guess.”

“So. Come on in. There’s a chair waiting for you.”

He opened the door and escorted me in. Man, that felt spooky. But Danny’s face brightened right up, the moment he saw me.

“Everybody? This is Mr. Thomas Lyford. Danny’s special tutor…”

“…and friend,” I added, shooting Danny the warmest smile I could muster. “Hey, Danny!”

I got a quiet, little, twinkly-eyed “hey,” back.

There were four other men in the room plus Danny seated around a table— two uniforms and two in civilian clothes. I don’t know who the hell they were, and there were no other attempts at introductions.

“So Danny,” said the sheriff. “I was about to ask. How long you been back in town before we pulled you in?”

Danny smiled, as if happy to finally be included. I have to say, he was looking very confident for a kid just freshly incarcerated and then interrogated. “Oh… I dunno.” Then looking calculatingly at the clock on the wall for a moment. “Maybe six, seven hours, give or take?”

“Hmmm,” said the sheriff, also consulting the clock. So… you weren’t in town last Saturday then?”

“Nope. Not even close.”

“So, exactly where were you? Saturday last.”

Danny cocked his head just a tad, one eye closed, looking within and flipping back through the pages of that calendar we all have in our heads. “That’d be Lewiston,” he said, nodding to himself.

“And what were you doing there?”

“Me, hey I got friends all over.”

“And you definitely weren’t here the day before yesterday?”

“Heck no. No way.”

“You’re absolutely sure about that. Right?”

“I said. Truth, I really wasn’t in no big hurry to roll back into town. And obviously, turns out I shouldn’t’ve come back here this afternoon, right?”

The sheriff, smiling. “Right. So then, why did you?”

“What, come back here?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. “Guess I just missed the old hometown, right?”

And I was thinking, Jesus, Danny not only seems overloaded on confidence here. I get the feeling he’s actually ENJOYING this! And I don’t get that.

The sheriff seemed a tad flustered. Throwing up his hands, he said, “Well, if you weren’t here this past week, that leaves you out of this.”

This seemed to immediately pique Danny’s interest. He leaned in, frowning, to focus on the sheriff. “Out of what?”

Sheriff pushed himself back into his chair, getting himself comfortable like he was about to start telling a campfire story. “Well, to tell you the truth, a lot of copper’s been going missing all around here this week. Copper tubing. Pipes. You name it.”

“Hmmm,” Danny said, appreciatively. “No shit.”

“You know anyone around these parts that would be liable to pull that sort of caper off, Danny?”

At that, Danny barked a laugh right out loud, which startled everyone, especially me. “Come off it,” he said jovially. “You and I both do! You know I could name twenty-five kids, just up to the high school alone who, pulling off a stunt like that would be right up their alley! Same as you. On top of that, I could give you half a dozen names of some dumb-ass hillbilly adults in town, who’d be even better at it.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re right about that. Yeah.”

Danny’d got the sheriff nodding and grinning. And I was beginning to look at Danny in a whole new light.

“My best suggestion?” he said. “I’d check out my old man, if I was you. He ain’t no stranger at it, just sayin’.”

“OK. Will do. Want me to tell him you said Hi when I do that?”

I noted a flicker of darkness pass over Danny’s face before he put on a bigger grin and said, “Sure. He and I go way back.” Which got a little chuckle around the table. Which Danny noticed and seemed pleased by.

Sitting there and watching this gripping little drama unfold was like watching some weird docudrama on television. Because I was strictly a spectator, wasn’t a part of it at all. I mean, yeah, I was there. But what the hell was I even doing there?

“So Danny, another question. Maybe you can help me out on this. Where would anybody be likely to go, say, to try to unload a stash of copper around here? I mean, where would I go if, say, I wanted to ditch a haul like that? You see what I’m saying?”

At this, Danny frowned, jutting out his jaw like he was giving that problem some very serious thought. And that’s when it hit me. I was watching a ‘game of chess’ here. Between a couple of fairly talented opponents. And Danny obviously liked playing the game, despite the fact that he was obviously in deep shit, that he was under arrest, and that he had more than likely already lost the game. So obviously, this wasn’t his first rodeo. So there he was, playing the consultant for now. And that boggled my mind. I mean, what did I really know about my little Danny after all?

“Well, for one thing. You wouldn’t wanna try fencing it anywhere near this town. That’d be too obvious. Right? First places they’d check on. I mean, sure, there are two or three junk yards around here, but no… you’d want to drop it over in the next two or three counties, at least.”

Look at him, that little cock of the walk, I thought to myself. Loving being the center of attention. Loving sparring with the big dogs. Is he… showing off for me…?

Sheriff was nodding appreciatively, chewing on that information and even jotting it down in the little open notebook he had. And goddamn, if he wasn’t play-acting too, right along with Danny. This was more of a poker game than chess. All this back-and-forth bluffing going on around the table. But Danny? He was in his glory. Appeared to be seeing himself as running this interrogation.

I could see I’d never realized who it actually was I’d taken under my wing. Not really. How many sides of Danny were there? I was beginning to ask myself. This boy was loaded with charisma, had it to spare, and damn— didn’t he know how to use it! I was looking at a sprouting little conman in the making. Obviously a conboy already. And damn, wasn’t he just keeping his cool like you wouldn’t believe. How out-of-my-depth I was feeling. I was in awe.

In all, I watched that drama play out before me for a good forty or so minutes, and then bang, it ended. Just like that.

The door I’d entered through opened just a crack, and the guy manning the front desk poked his head in, got the sheriff’s attention with an ahem, and announced, “They’re here…”

“OK. Send’em in.”

And bang! in they came. Two of’em. Two practically seven-foot gorillas in matching white sweat suits, muscles bulged beneath the sweatshirt sleeves. So huge they instinctively ducked their heads down as they emerged from the open door. Two of’em… each of whom, one-handed, could’ve easily muckled onto Danny’s infamous high school phys. ed coach’s shirt front and pinned his dumb-ass, beer-gutted body up against the wall a foot off the ground, leaving his smelly Nikes dangling beneath him like like a pair of ballet slippers.

Their sudden appearance had instantly chilled the atmosphere. Danny’s face had paled and gone blank. I felt mine had too. I watched him shut right down and slump, like somebody’d violently yanked his plug out of the wall socket. This was like watching a TV tag-team of professional ‘wrestlers’ suddenly leaping over the ropes and landing in the ring. There would be no chess game or poker with them. There was no trace of Danny’s bravado now.

And these two guys had no interest in talking to any of us. They simply moved like a pair of gigantic spiders on our little trapped conboy. “STAND!” one of them ordered. And the back of Danny’s chair banged off the wall behind him as he lurched up out of it. I nearly collapsed out my own chair. They had him cuffed and lifted by the armpits in the blink of an eye; and then they were walking him around the table to head back for the door. And Jesus, Danny was so, so tiny now. One of them muttered a gruff, “Thank you” to the sheriff, almost as an afterthought.

And just as they began to pass through the door, I called out in a weak voice to Danny (too subdued to be heard by anybody, I’m sure), “I’m gonna come down and visit you in a week or two, Danny…”

And then he, they, were gone with the wind, leaving me feeling just awful.

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

The sheriff surprised me moments later with, “Actually, we knew it was Danny all along, with the copper and all. We knew it before we hauled him in this afternoon.”

“Jeez. Really? How?” My heart was still racing from the adrenalin of having just witnessed what looked like a snatch-and-grab abduction of a friend, a very good and special friend whom, I was realizing, I hardly even knew apparently.

“We got one of his buddies to cop to it yesterday. And the funny thing is, their big little gang actually did try to fence the stuff at a junkyard it right here, just outside of town. Why’d you think he was laughingly advising me to look outside the county only? That boy’s really something, ain’t he.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I see that he… really is. But… I mean I wanna tell you, he and I? Christ, we’ve gotten along so damn well.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“No, I’m serious. As his tutor… outside of school? I’m telling you that that kid was really doing his homework. I mean, we actually discussed his history assignments, him and me— you know? Because he’d actually read them. And he was totally responsible for showing up, every time, whenever he was scheduled to. Damn it all to hell, we really had a good thing going, him and me. And hell, I’ve really warmed to that kid. I like that little guy.”

“Hell, I like him too. He and I go back a ways. Unfortunately. He kills me though. And like you, I’d like to see someone, like yourself, be able to turn him around. But you know what? That little bugger has already left that station. And he’s traveled too far down the track to turn around. That’s my sad opinion anyway, based on years of experience. It is what it is.”

“Sad is what I’m feeling too right now, where he’s concerned. Then too, my eyes have been opened, sitting here, as to what a little manipulator he is. He’s got such charisma, for a little twerp.”

“Yeah. Charisma’s the main required asset for a con artist. That, and being a chameleon. Danny? He can be whatever you want him to be… if it benefits him.”

“A chameleon. Yeah. He’s that, it turns out. I guess I have to face that. But… I’m having a hard time accepting that that charisma is the only thing that’s charmed me into liking him. Well, not totally anyway. I mean… I did, I swear, I discovered some goodness in that kid. I never had one single discipline problem with him. I treated him with friendliness and respect, and that’s what he gave me back in return. And jeez, all or most of the other teachers are so down on him over there at school and, sure, I can imagine all the reasons they have for feeling the way they do, too. But… he never stood a chance over there. He had ‘Failure’ rubber-stamped on his forehead long before I ever met him.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. But unfortunately… it just is what it is.”

I try that on for size. “It is what it is.”

“That’s about all you can say.”

“Tell me something. Why the hell did you want me to come down here anyway. I mean… I was no help. Just a silent spectator. Although I guess I’m glad you did. For… some reason.

“Because Danny really wanted you here. That’s why. I told you, I like the little bastard too. I guess I was impressed that somebody… anybody… had touched him in some way. But I dunno. I have to admit… I just wanted to get a look at ya.”

“Well… thank you. I am glad I came down. Again… for some reason.”

“So… you really gonna go down and visit him at the correctional center?”

“Yeah. I am. Really.”

“Well, good.”

“I mean, I never even knew he was down there. And now that I do know… well, after all this, I imagine he’s gonna be stuck down there a heck of a lot longer than even before. So… well, I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye tonight. And the way I’m feeling now? I really want that chance. To say a proper goodbye.”

“I hear you.”

“Plus, I really want a chance to just talk with him again. One more time. You know. To try to wrap my head around this whole thing. Because it’s really bugging me, all this. I need to ask him some questions. Questions about how he sees his future. What life is like down there, on the inside. But… more than that, I guess mostly I really just want him to know that someone, at least, cares. I want him to know I’ll always remember the time I had with him. As bleak as his life’s probably gonna be, I want him to have that at least, even if my telling him that is the only, single, solitary, damn positive note he ever gets over the rest of his life. I want there to be at least that.”

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

Two Weeks Later at the State Juvenile Correctional Center

(Please allow me to begin the closing here by digressing for just a moment. Back in the day, Readers’ Digest had a regular feature titled “The Most Unforgettable Person I Ever Met.” Over my lifetime, I’ve encountered more than my share of characters fitting that description, not the least of which was Danny. And that being said, welcome to one of the most unusual conversations I’ve ever had in my life!)

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

So, I did it. I made the appointment, traveled the two and a half hours down to South Portland on a Saturday morning, and got the chance to meet with Danny to offer him a proper goodbye.

It had seemed pretty strange, me going down to the county sheriff’s office to see him there that time but, man, it was much more of a bizarre experience jumping through all the administrative hoops to get myself admitted deep inside that prison. And just like the two seven-foot bouncers that had come to escort Danny back here that day, it turned out practically every working man in that institution was built like Sherman Tank. It was like stepping into a Gold’s Gym. I mean me? I stood five and a half feet tall back then but, relativistically, I was feeling like some little horse-racing jockey in a paddock of Clydesdales. Until, that is, little shorter-than-me Danny was escorted over from somewhere in the facility to the table I’d been assigned.

He was surprised to see me. I mean really surprised. And glad to see someone whom he was pretty sure he’d gotten to like him. Sadly though, it hit me that he still looked as tiny as he had when he’d been forcibly removed from the county jail.

We shook hands and went through the small talk. The old howya doin’ thing. But then I got down to the brass tacks of the heart of things. I assured him that the time he and I had spent together, especially those carefree tutoring sessions over coffee and everything from breakfast to apple pie, was one of the better times in my teaching career at that point (a period which was, yeah, only a half dozen or so years, but still…), and that I’d never forget them. I told him that, yes, I realized I didn’t know him as well as I’d thought I did, but that I really liked what I’d had the opportunity to discover in him. That yeah, I was aware that that was coming across as pretty mushy, considering where we were. And throughout this part of our conversation, he’d remained pretty much subdued.

But finally… (and this is the part I’m really wanting to share with you, dear reader) came Danny’s Story:

“So anyway, I’ve got this question, Danny. Whatever happened between the time (A) you slammed my classroom door, called the coach a fat fucker, and took off running… and (B) now? What happened to you that ended up with you incarcerated here? I mean, can I even ask you that? It’s impossible for me to make sense of it, you know? But hey, just go ahead and tell me to go to hell and mind my own goddamn business, if I’m out of line. And that’ll be OK, that’ll be fine. But man, I hafta admit I’m curious. Just trying to imagine how the dots connect between then and now...”

He smiled at me. And that signature twinkle in his eye had returned. “Oh, I can tell you,” he said. “But you’ll never believe me.” And it was good to see the old Danny beginning to peek through at me again, even if I probably should add ‘whoever that was…‘

“Oh. I won’t?”

“Nah.”

“Can you at least try me?”

“Sure. I can do that. But like I said…”

“Alright. So…? Come on. Lay it on me.”

“OK. It is what it is. But here goes. So first of all, just so you know, I ducked quick around the side of the school that day. Circled around the back of the building. Lost myself in some trees. Then made my way down to Route 2 ,and hitch-hiked my way outta town. I mean… I’d just had it, ya know?”

“Yeah, I got that at the time. And believe me, I understood it.”

“Long story short, I eventually ended up being charged with every single count in the books.”

I think about that. “Every SINGLE one, huh?”

“You got that right.”

“Oh. OK. So… Who’d you murder?”

“Hah! Well, no, you got me on that one anyway.”

“Phew!”

“Everything else though! Everything from littering to kidnapping.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. Listen to you! Danny… come off it. You did not!”

“Told ya you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Now wait a minute! I’m supposed to believe this… ‘littering to kidnapping’? That’s sounding like… quite the tall tale, kiddo.”

“Swear to God it’s true.”

“Jeez. And here you are, sounding proud of it!”

“Hey. It is what it is. What can I say?”

“Come on. I mean, littering to kidnapping don’t quite seem to go together, do they. That’s… quite the stretch.”

“Well, littering’s what started the whole damn thing!”

“OK… OK. Go on, then.”

“It was like this: a couple days after I took off, and I’m in this car toolin’ down the road with my girlfriend, OK? Next thing you know, I got the flashing blues behind me. So I put the pedal to the metal and try to lose him, OK?”

“Of course you did. Right. Great idea, Danny…”

“So for just a minute, see, I get some distance between him and me, and I go flyin’ ‘round a corner, temporarily outta his sight. So I tell my girl, ‘Quick! Throw that bag of stuff on the back seat out the window!’ But she’s a little slow on the uptake, and by the time she finally does toss it, he’s right behind us!”

Good Ol’ Danny, he’s back in story-telling mode mode, happy as a clam now.

“So OK…” I say, “that explains the littering charge. And hey. I’m sure you don’t need me telling you this, but… not the best timing on your part, was it? Not exactly the best time to litter. Just sayin’.”

“Yeah, yeah. OK. But guess what. That bag had my burglary tools in it. Little wrecking bar. Suction cup glass-cutter…”

“Ohmigod! Burglary tools? You had a bag of…? Oh Danny!”

“Uh huh. Like I said. It is what it is. So now we’ve got what,” him counting them out on his fingers now, “littering, speeding, resisting arrest, driving to endanger… and burglary!”

I was shocked. My God, if this was true… the trouble he was in!

“And… it didn’t help that the car I was driving was uninspected. Plus unregistered….”

“Stop it! You’re making this up.”

“Hey. Ask whoever it is you hafta ask. You’ll find out.”

“So… dare I ask… about… you know… the kidnapping charge?”

He shook his head, thinking back, and sighed. “It wasn’t really a kidnapping. She was my girlfriend, for crying out loud. It was her idea to come along with me. She wanted to. And she did.”

“So… where’d the kidnapping charge come from then?”

“Well, number one, her parents didn’t like her hanging around me. At all. They didn’t like me… is really what they didn’t like. Number two, getting informed by the fuzz that their daughter was in custody (along with me)? Well, that didn’t sit very well. And of course, number three… considering she was under age and all…”

“WHOA! Damn it, Danny! I mean, jeez!”

“Well, whattaya think, she was thirty years old or something?? I mean, look at me, bud. I’m underage too, damnit. Right?”

“Well… yeah. True.”

“So number four. It was up to them, wasn’t it. Whether to press charges or not. And her being a minor and whatnot — well, they had her over a barrel, didn’t they. She had to go along with it, right? So: long story short, I guess they made her sign some papers on me, or whatever. And here I am.”

When I exhaled, that was the first I realized I’d been holding my breath. “Jesus H. Christ, Danny. You have a lawyer yet?”

He snorted. “Well, yeah, I guess you could call him that. Yeah.”

“So… then I mean, have you been given some estimation about, like, how much time you’re facing? Or anything about what you can expect at all? I probably don’t even wanna know the answer to that though, right?”

“No. Nothing specific. I’m going to be here a while, that’s for sure. But, he keeps telling me that the bright side of all this is that I’m a juvie. So it’s not gonna be forever. And if I keep my nose clean, that’s gonna help.”

“Keeping your nose clean. I’m guessing he means starting over. Now. After your just-recently-busting-out-of-this-place…”

“First of all, I really didn’t bust out of here. I just walked out. Simple as that. Just walked right out through a door. Simple as…”

“UH-oh, Danny. One of your gorillas-in-charge here is heading our way, coming right up behind you. And I believe he’s signaling time’s up.”

“Figured that was about to happen.”

“Yeah.”

I stood, and addressed the guard with a polite thank-you. Danny took his time getting to his feet.

“Danny. Just so you know: our time together, back there in English class and those café and restaurant discussions we were having? KNOW that that was such a damn good time for me. Just what the doctor ordered. You brought a much-needed breath of fresh air into my otherwise repetitive, routine-teaching-life. And I’m never gonna forget you OR forgive that dick of a gym coach for taking that away from me. I really like you, kid. I want you to know that.”

“Same here, Mr. L.”

“So sorry, Danny.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is.”

And the man behind him barked, “LET’S GO! TIME’S UP!”

I just waited and solemnly watched until the two of them, in my mind looking like a forlorn Mutt and Jeff, passed back out of sight through a door that would take them somewhere else among the warrens of cages, or whatever was out there waiting for his return in this, his new world.

And my God, I was twenty-five years old, a quarter of a damn century old, but I was still having to learn all these unexpected and uncomfortable new-to-me truths about this world I was living in. In fact, I hadn’t totally figured out exactly what I had learned out of all that had happened.

That was gonna take time.

But at least I wasn’t quite as naive that day as I had the day before. Right?

Plus yardage.

It is what it is.

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

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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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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 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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THE AMERICA THAT MADE AMERICA FAMOUS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You see what I mean? You feeling me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRAT PACKS

Cafeteria Duty with its Breakfast Club diversity

was always so much more vibrant than the

funereal dining doldrums of the faculty lounge,

what with the geek squad, the cheering squad,

the Romeos and Juliets, the Bettys and Veronicas,

the Dungeons and Dragons die-hards, a Ferris Bueller

or two thrown in, and possibly even a

future Stephen King seated at those tables

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

youthful honesty and sit-down-stand-up comedy

kept me in stitches and my aging soul decades

younger over the long career years

me, with half my life already slipped behind,

but them still with the Big Promise of Everything,

the whole damn shootin’ match, still looming

like some mirage in the desert up ahead–

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

stereotypes… breaking bread together

around the salt and pepper shakers,

spicing up each other’s lives…

from TO DIVERSITY AND DEMOCRACY: A TOAST!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right after which a couple of the bigger ones (looking pretty ominous, sporting their shades and tattoos) might just playfully block our way for a moment and challenge, “Now just where do you two think you’re going…?”

To which my quick and witty comeback would always be something like, “Oh, I dunno. Straight through you if you decide not to move and instead wanna end up pickin’ broken glass outta eyes for the next two hours.”

And then of course there’d be the light-hearted little shadow-boxing horseplay between me and them (you know, that dumbass male bonding thing) but we’d always end up sailing right through them unscathed. And why? Because they’d learned to like me by then. And why was that? Because they’d realized that for some unfathomable… whatever-reason, they could tell I’d honestly taken a shine to them. Which in their world… for a teacher… was unheard of.

But anyway, after the near-daily shepherding-of-the-kids-off-the-sidewalks routine, the cops would mosey themselves on into the pastry shop, ostensibly turning a deaf ear to the retreating catcalls behind them referencing the ‘fat-ass’ physiques of a couple of those doughnut-devouring stereotypes.

However, that’s just what the kids would do overtly.

Covertly, the retaliation strategies they’d come up with could’ve earned them a place among the French Resistance Forces during World War II. The worst one being (in my opinion) to move their gathering on down the street to where the patrol cars were parked in order to (wait for it) set that poor, shivering, little pug right onto the hood of one of them— specifically the one with the drug-sniffing German shepherd left waiting inside.

Because oh, that canine locked in there didn’t like that little pipsqueak “hood ornament” rattling its toenails on the patrol car paint job one bit! And according to them (I never witnessed it myself, of course) that dog would be going bat-shit wild in there, leaping amok around the interior, and trying to bust out of the car to get at the lot of them, his berserk talons all the while just a-tearing the old stuffing right out of the upholstery!

Oh I’m sure they were exaggerating in their glory… but they sure loved telling me all about it.

However the most devious (or should I say most deviant) strategy they’d come up with was the ‘secret seeding’ of the police station flower garden with marijuana seedlings at night. The custodian there, who also served as the part-time gardener, ended up unwittingly watering and caring for them for quite some time. Right up until the moment one of Mexico’s finest eventually spotted the embarrassing extracurricular green and glorious growth among the camouflage.

Now that one made the Police Log in the local paper. And I’ve gotta say, they were oh so proud of themselves!

Vive la resistance!

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

Now of course this Harry Chapin song that I’m honestly dying to share with you in a moment, “What Made America Famous,” isn’t about my little biker friends, per se. Rather it’s about America’s signature civil conflict between the “hard hats” and the “long hairs” that indelibly marked the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Think of the musical Hair. Think Easy Rider. But no, more than that, this ballad is all about about human decency. Pure and simple.

But first, allow me to share this particular little memory I’ve been holding onto over the decades:

So… I’m sitting in a warm, old-fashion barber shop on a frigid night in January, 1965. Whenever another customer sidles in through the door, an icy gust sparkled with blowing snowflakes shoulders its way in right behind him. There are five or six of us waiting to have our ‘ears lowered.’ I’m the youngest here, a college kid matriculated at the local state teachers college, the only one there not balding or with a head of white hair. It’s busy, but there are two barbers buzzing and clipping away, so my wait won’t be long.

So I’m just sitting back and contenting myself with listening to the old gents jawing away. Cackling about that ‘new streaker craze.’ Ruminating over the shipping off of American troops to Viet Nam. Weighing in on Muhammed Ali’s defeat over Sonny Liston, and who the hell does he think he is anyway, calling himself Muhammed like that, for Christ’s sake? This is much livelier than sitting me just sitting alone in my dorm room, poring over my World History text.

Suddenly whoosh! The door blows open. And standing half-in and half-out is a smiling young man with almost shoulder-length, snowflake-flecked hair. And he’s wearing a faded old Army field jacket.

“What’re the chances of getting a haircut tonight?”

I catch both barbers glaring at him. “Zero!” the older says. “Now get the hell outta here and close that fucking door!”

I’m shocked. But the young man acknowledges that he’s letting the weather in so, still all smiles, he steps inside and closes the door behind him. “No, seriously.”

“What? I don’t look serious? You didn’t hear me say ‘No?‘”

“But c’mon, why not?”

“Jesus, look around. Can’t you see the crowd we got in here tonight?”

“Well, if that’s it, I don’t mind waiting…”

“Beat it, kid!”

“Hey, come on. I gotta get a haircut. How much will it cost? I’ll be glad to even pay extra. Just tell me how much.”

The old guy studies him. “Fifty bucks.”

“What? Fifty…”

“And that’s only if. If… you take a bath, and shampoo the lice outta your hair first.”

“Lice?” No longer smiling now.

“See, we don’t do hippies in here, pal. Now beat it!”

The kid looked around the shop. At the grinning old men. At uncomfortable me. And then back at the barber. The kid’s got a pretty good glare going himself now. “Jesus Christ. I just wanted to get a fucking… Hippie!? Alright then! Fuck YOU!”

He turns on his heel, yanks the door open, and storms back out into the snow, purposely leaving the door open. Open wide.

I’m feeling bad for the kid. But I realize too that where the old fellas are coming from is their definition of patriotism. It leaves me feeling uneasy. Kinda confused. I mean, my dad flew missions in a B-29 during World War II and, man, I’m super-proud of him. And you know… I’m only a sophomore, but I’ve been entertaining some thoughts about perhaps enlisting myself, in the Air Force after college.

But this whole thing just leaves me feeling… not knowing what to think.

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

So anyway, the song and lyrics I’ve got waiting for you below I feel skillfully and emotionally capture the conflict I came to know back then as the long hairs vs. the hard hats. And there’s a recurring single line in the lyrics that pretty much kinda sums up my little barbershop example in a nutshell:

“There’s something burning somewhere.”

Please. Take a listen and follow along. I believe you will find it a powerful experience. I know I always do…

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A SINGLE SONG FOR ALL HUMANITY

When it comes to me and music, basically I’m a lyrics man. Of course I do love a good melody and I appeciate a skilled and creative arrangement, but my favorite music primarily comes from the recordings of talented singer-songwriters (with the emphasis on songwriters) like Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, a duo I saw in concert out in Albuquerque years ago; Harry Chapin; Bill Morrissey; Tracy Chapman; David Mallett; Randy Newman; Kate Campbell; Greg Brown; Mary Chapin Carpenter; Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan; etc. [and yes, I do live in the past]).

And in the same way I can’t stand watching a poorly scripted movie (where you know fifteen minutes into it what the ending will be, and which feels like some flick you’ve seen a dozen times before), I tend to embrace songs whose lyrics are seriously creative and cleverly written. Lyrics that wake me up and surprise me with their uniqueness, lyrics that take me places either where I have never been before or places I have been but are described in such more perfect ways than I ever could.

Along with this, I discovered long ago that I’m a romantic at heart where lyrics are concerned. And no, I’m not talking about a fondness for boy-meets-girls romances. It’s just that what I hope to find are lyrics that are powerful in some way, lyrics that tell a story or describe a situation that will make me deeply feel something. I want to be punched in the breadbasket and heart by the lyrics.

That being said, the story told in the following narrative ballad is not fiction. It’s inspired by an actual historical event that went down on Christmas Day, 1914, during World War I. You’ve probably read about the senseless and inhumane carnage of the trench warfare that both the British and the Germans endured on a daily basis for so long. Or perhaps, like me, you may have read one or more of the handful of non-fiction books that cover this incredible event. And actually you may, in fact, have already experienced these lyrics before, as the song is a well-known ballad.

After the song plays, I will share a few additional details that I’ve garnered from historical accounts of that unimaginable day (which actually ended up being more like two-and-a-half days) .

The song is titled “Christmas in the Trenches” and was written and recorded by singer/songwriter John McCutcheon circa 1984.

So, are your emotional seatbelts fastened securely?

“CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES”

My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear

It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away

I was lyin’ with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I “Now listen up me boys”, each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear

“He’s singin’ bloody well you know”, my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war

As soon as they were finished, a reverent pause was spent
‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen’ struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was ‘Stille Nacht”. “Tis ‘Silent Night'” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky

“There’s someone comin’ towards us,” the front-line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night

Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell

We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”

It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more

My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War One I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same

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

I can barely imagine the sheer human need and relief that the combatants on either side felt when they had tentatively stepped across the barbed wire barriers and into each other’s camps only to find… regular blokes just like themselves! And so both sides did share around their cigarettes and chocolates and souvenirs. And then of course… soccer! Wouldn’t that be a nice way to wage war? With a soccer match?

But the thing that delightfully still surprises me from my reading is the following unbelievable scenario:

While the cats are away, the mice will play. Both war parties (consisting of the privates, corporals, and sergeants) had been virtually left to themselves by their majors and colonels for hours at a time that day, leaving the ‘grunts’ to fight it out as best they could for just a while on their own. I mean, hey, it was Christmas. So it’s pretty likely the superiors were snug and safe, somewhere well enough behind the respective enemy lines, and drinking up their Christmas toasts to one another. Because rank does have its privileges.

But here’s the truth of it: all of the soldiers on both sides, in the name of the Christmas spirit, had deserted their posts! The soldiers on both sides had just committed treason, a crime punishable by the firing squad! But… they had done it anyway because… well, it just seemed like the thing to do. At the time. I guess you just had to have been there. And more importantly, because war is senselss and stupid. And life is precious. And… OK, sure, because the cats were away.

But of course any time “the cats are away,” there’s a risk that the cats might just come back! And guess what! Their superior officers did come back. They came back from time to time to inspect their troops, measure any progress or lack of it, to see how their trench fortifications were holding up, and maybe even to count casualties.

And just what did these superior officers on either side discover?

Absolutely… nothing. Everything… as usual. And why?

(Now, I know this is going to sound like a poorly written, silly episode of HOGAN’S HEROES, but…)

Because the grunts on both sides had posted lookouts just for their officers returning. And when the alarm sounded, alerting them that officers were incoming (!), why the men just scampered right back behind their sandbagged posts like good little boys, manned their rifles and machine guns once again, and opened fire on one another! Funny thing was though, their respective ‘aims’ ‘seem’ to have gotten so bad all of a sudden that they apparently couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.

No casualties.

But it LOOKED good. It was theater. And then of course, they all scampered righ back to their little yuletide party after the brass had departed once again.

It. Just. Doesn’t. Seem. Possible…

Does it.

You know in John McCutcheon’s introduction in the above video, I honestly just love his sweet anecdote of that little bevy of ex-German soldiers who “were THERE seventy-five years before,” showing up at John McCutcheon’s concerts to hear ‘their‘ story… being validated… in his song.

Just one of the many books that have covered this most unique military occuerence in the history of the Twentieth Century

What follows below was taken from a page posted on this url: https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/12/good-will-toward-men-the-great-wars-christmas-truce/

The fighting in Europe had been growing for almost five months when Pope Benedict tried to arrange a truce between nations in early December 1914 for Christmas. But his efforts failed when Russia declined the truce. The notorious trenches of World War I were filled with weary, cold soldiers. But along the British and German lines, a sudden rise of the Christmas Spirit among the soldiers created a phenomenon that wasn’t seen for the rest of the war—the soldiers decided not to fight on Christmas. Stories of this unofficial Christmas Truce were published in newspapers around the world.*

The Chicago Herald printed part of a letter from a British soldier describing what took place. “On Christmas eve we were shouting across ‘Merry Christmas!’ The Germans shouted, ‘Don’t shoot till New Year’s day!’ Christmas morning the weather was foggy and there was no firing. We started wandering over toward the German lines. When the mist cleared we saw the Germans doing the same thing.”

Climbing from their trenches onto the battle-scarred “no man’s land,” British and German soldiers shook hands, swapped cigarettes and jokes, and even played football. “We all have wives and children…we’re just the same kind of men as you are,” one German said.

Gifts were exchanged between soldiers: pies, wine, cigars and cigarettes, chocolates, pictures, newspapers. Whatever they had with them in the trenches. Some even exchanged names and addresses to reconnect after the war! “We exchanged souvenirs; I got a German ribbon and photo of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. The Germans opposite us were awfully decent fellows—Saxons, intelligent, respectable-looking men. I had quite a decent talk with three or four and have two names and addresses in my notebook.” (New York Times, December 31, 1914, World War History: Newspaper Clippings 1914 to 1926.)

The day would be remembered and memorialized as a moment of peace during the long First World War. A day when soldiers put aside their orders and listened instead to their common decency and humanity. As one German soldier noted, “You are the same religion as we, and today is the day of peace.”

SIGH !

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THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989— CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER THREE–

TWEETER AND THE MONKEY MAN

(Previously, Chapter Two ended with…) “I had no doubts whatsoever that it wouldn’t be me putting the little man to bed tomorrow night. Or perhaps any night. No. I definitely got it that he’d never allow himself to get anywhere near both me and the tail-trap door at the same time any time soon, not even with a ten-foot pole.

And I was damned if I could ever blame him.”

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I couldn’t get to sleep for a long time that night, I was so guilt ridden. Over and over, my mind continued to harass me with the why’s and the what if’s. What if I’d paid more attention? Why couldn’t he have just obeyed the “Cage” command? Why didn’t I just realize right away that his howls didn’t even sound like separation anxiety? Why couldn’t I have been more careful? I’m always going off half-cocked. What if we had tried to put him to bed a little earlier? I mean, you never know– chances are that maybe it just might not have happened then. Right? Who knows?

Anyway, next morning, I certainly made sure that it was me who let him out of his cage. I wanted to be the one to present him with the gift of his morning-after freedom. At least I was good for that. For something!

And was he ever ready! I mean, he practically flew out and was off to the races! Round and round the house, seemingly as happy as the proverbial clam. That did my heart some good.

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

I’, including the following from my “Gizmo Chronicles” journal of that morning—

“The problem was now two-fold: (1) beginning to work on somehow regaining his sense of trust and comfort, and (2) getting Gizmo back into his cage before I had to get to work. And sure enough, as time for work drew close, Gizmo was making of quick backtracks at all of our approaches (and who could blame him?) But sheesh! Why hadn’t I gotten my clothes ready the night before? I kept asking myself, noticing the clock had crept to 7:05! I mean, I was seriously beginning to cringe at the prospect of how the headmaster of Foxcroft Academy might respond to a possible very late phone call from me, saying, ‘Hi. Howard? Uhm… uhhh… Hey, surprise. Guess what. I… er… can’t make it to school today. See, I can’t get Gizmo back into his cage.’ Yeah, right!

“So I suggested we trychild psychology. I allowed myself to collapse to the floor, just sitting passively with my back against the wall. And then none of us went after him. We just left him alone.

Gizmo seemed to really appreciate this. He began chattering and squeaking at us fairly conversationally while still running around and inspecting everything. It almost seemed like he’d forgotten about out tip-of-his-tail fiasco, but I didn’t really believe that. And after a while (surprise), he actually landed in my lap. However, I was dead sure that even the slightest hand movement toward him would put him straight into I. E. A. mode (Immediate Evasive Action). Holding my breath though, I tried it. And sure enough, he bolted.

And the clock was ticking…

“So our new strategy came from my having watched several Jungle Jim movies back in my childhood. I had the four of us form a wide-sweeping line, and then we proceeded to ‘beat the bushes’ so to speak, hoping to flush our prey forward toward, and hopefully into, the cage. Good theory, right?

But apparently Gizmo’s P.T.S.D. from the previous night’s rat-trap-door nightmare experienced a flashback that provided us with a too serious psychological obstacle to overcome. And on top of that, Giz was a just too amazing a prodigy of on-the-job escape artistry. However, on the third sweep of our indoor veldt, our prey must have become a little desperate. He decided to strike a bargain with one of his his tormentors. Suddenly he just scampered right up the leg of Chris’s sweat pants and began cuddling in his arms.

“‘Chris!’ I whispered. ‘In the cage! Now!’

“Chris slowly walked him over to it and, wow, Gizmo slipped right in (unfrickingbelievable!), albeit with one quick flashback-mini-shriek just to rub some more salt i’nto the wounds of my guilty heart. He must have been exhausted. Then he just hunkered right down into the cage’s lowest level (there were three levels, or ‘stories’ if you will, divided by platforms), began hugging his Garfield The Security Pillow, and rocking himself back into some sense of comfortable security.

“Before leaving for school, I made it a point to sit and talk softly to the little guy for a while. Finally, I passed the prisoner two pretzels, which he accepted gracefully, and put my face down really close to the cage’s screen. And (yes!) Giz did likewise! So we had ourselves a warm little moment, gazing into each other’s eyes, nose to nose, me apologizing to him from the bottom of my heart and telling him that I loved him.

It seemed too good to be true. But it felt… promising, at least.

“Despite that, suffice it to say that it was pretty much a hollow, emotionally exhausted husk of a man who managed to report to my classroom just barely on time (OK, a little late) on that last Friday morning before February vacation was to begin.”

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So yes, Giz had to spend some time in is little “apartment” alone in the house. It was unavoidable, but was never for long. We’d scheduled ourselves best we could to his needs. Phyllis would take her lunch at home and sit with him from around 11: 00 to 12:00. Twice a week I had a free period around noon so I’d scoot right home to the dear little critter on those days. Missy came home from work at around 1:00. Chris arrived from school around quarter to three. And finally I’d show up at 3:30 or thereaboutsfor the rest of the day. Meanwhile, we always made it a point to keep the TV going, volume turned down low, so perhaps he’d find at least some comfort in the babble of human voices.

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

Now. Let me tell you what one of the things coming home usually meant for me during those Gizmo days: the Diaper Ordeal.

OK, “ordeal” would be too strong a term if we’re talking about Phyllis. However, we’re talking about me. “Ordeal” very accurately describes my experience when it came to diapering the Giz. And no, it’s not what you’re probably thinking. I’m not talking about any… mess, or whatever. Honestly, attending to Gizmo’s hygiene wasn’t nearly as much a messy task as you might believe. He was a baby, after all. A tiny little thing. I mean, it wasn’t like we were babysitting a full grown gorilla or anything, thank goodness! Giz made only a few little “problem” messes (most of them confined to his living quarters) and they were likewise tiny. Easy to clean up. So that wasn’t the problem at all, nothing more than just a minor little inconvenience we had to deal with now and then. No, see, the main problem was me.

See, I’ve always been this frickin’ empath. I’m always feeling other people’s pain as if theirs were my own. But with Gizmo, it turned out to be a fullblown curse back then. It’s true. Gizmo brought out the bleeding heart in me big time…

Me: Hi. My name’s Tom, and I’m a bleeding heart.

The Bleeding Hearts Anonymous Crowd: HI, TOM!

But so what! I’ve always said we’re all of us occupying our own personal spots somewhere on the vast expanse of this Great Social, Psychological, Spiritual, Intellectual, and Physical Spectrum. And hey, I’m just here to tell you I’m more than comfortable occupying my personal spot, over here in the Bleeding Hearts’ Neighborhood. Better than serving time over there in the Cold, Spartan, Nazi Precinct at least. Because…

Yeah, I’m that guy who slams on the brakes, stops the car, gets out, and lugs the turtle the rest of the way across the road before some Neanderthal, beer-drinking ass hat purposely veers his goddamn pick-up truck across the road to run over the innocent little guy for“sport!”

I’m that guy who once caught a pesky skunk in his Hav-a-Hart Trap^©and, after waiting two full days for the Animal Control Officer to finally show up, just gave up and began poking pieces of water-soaked bread down through the top of the cage throughout the day to keep the poor critter alive in the meantime.

I’m that guy who, after the officer finally did show up, late, decided to take the responsibility of releasing future critters back into the wild by myself, it being the more humane thing to do.

But yes… I’m also that guy who accidentally slammed Gizmo’s tail in the door. And I wasn’t about to be getting over it any time soon, apparently.

So how does my bleeding empathic heart relate to my inability to simply change the Giz’s cute little pirate pantaloons diapers? Here’s how…

I was obviously feeling very guilty after our pinched-tail incident. And very nervous. So, when I was lucky enough to finally succeed in coaxing the poor guy to have enough trust in me to actually sit in my lap (which he did allow sometimes after those first couple of days), I was a lot tenser than he was. I mean, I was just so conscious of him probably remembering how I’d hurt him that I just knew he was going to bolt any second! And the truth is, whenever I tried to get those pants on him, I’d find myself actually holding my breath without realizing it! And then my hands would begin to shake! I mean, the whole process so damn awkward! Never a walk in the park for me even under the best of circumstances, me trying to jockey him into those damn pants. It was pretty difficult, threading those squirmy matchstick legs all the way down in through those long pirate’s pant legs, mostly because they were each gathered in a tight pucker at the bottoms! And also because the pantaloons’ legs were so long, they’d end up getting all bunched and twisted up! It was nerve wracking!

I’ve already told you that Gizmo’s super power was sensing fear, even from afar. So I’d always be pretty damn convinced his radar was picking up on every twitch of my mounting frustration as well, and that he’d be wondering, What the hell was taking this dumb human so long? (Told you I’m am an empath. Did I also tell you that I’m a frickin’ mind-reading empath?) It always felt as if Gizmo had a ticking stopwatch timing me! Like I was on that old TV game show, Beat the Clock! The pressure would be crushing me, me fearing that every second he was gonna give up on me and bolt! And guess what: he always would give up on me and bolt!

However, one time I at last did manage to get his feet finally poked down through the little holes, get the waistband hoisted the up around his tiny waist, and get the little velcro strip thumbed up against the fabric in the back! And I was all, Eureka! I had achieved the impossible! My self-esteem was soaring.

As I gently placed him down onto the floor between my knees, I found him gazing up into my eyes. Was he… what, proud of me? As proud as I was of myself? I wasn’t sure. But probably. Maybe. And then…

He backed away a few short steps, and stopped. I was about to blurt out, “I did it, Gizmo! Can you believe it?” But suddenly, my boy broke into what looked like a crazy combination of a happy little tantrum and the Chubby Checker Twist! And in two seconds flat, his not-so-tightly-whities were lying in a heap on the floor down around his ankles!

And the look in his little eyes? I swear: smug! I mean, way too smug for a tyke his age! And then what did he do? He started capering around the living room floor, dancing sassily right back up in front of me only to snatch up that contentious diaper and fling it into the air above his head! Then he was gone.

He’d scampered off and away, out toward the kitchen… leaving me with gravity, just tugging on me… pulling on me… sliding me down onto the floor. Me, dead weight… settling… seated with my back against the sofa… sitting slumped there, all alone.

And grateful to be alone. The house, silent. Me, still sitting there. Sucker-punched. A little dazed. Done in. And with no plans to be getting back up any time soon, if ever.

But that was OK…

The final score? Gizmo: 1, Tom: nada...

And that was OK…

I didn’t care. It had been an eternally long day and I didn’t have the energy to care anymore. So I just sat there. And continued to sit there. And time went by. Yes time, but no longer the stopwatch. Time was just time, is all… standing still…

And that dark little mote, that rorschach flicker in my eye that resembled a hairy cavorting little nudist pausing intermittently at a safe distance near the broken down trainwreck… the trainwreck that was happy to be me…

It was OK…

Eventually, however, I was aware of the sound of the front door being opened. And then there were… footsteps. Something loomed over me, shading out some of the sunlight gleaming through a window pane. I willed myself to move. I looked up. And there was Phyllis, home from work, looking down.

“Hey. What’s happening?” she said. That question tended to mildly jumpstart my stalled life somewhat.

“You’re lookin’ at it,” I answered.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I failed.”

“At…?”

I nodded over my shoulder toward Gizmo, bounding into the room to check on the voices.

“Oh,” she said. “He’s naked.“

I shrugged. “Yeah. The diaper thing.”

She looked down at my white surrender flag lying on the floor. “So I see. OK.” She was peeling off her coat and heading to the hall closet. “Be right back.”

“Not if you’re smart…” I warned.

She did come back though, plucked up the deflated pantaloons from the floor, sat herself down in the stuffed chair next to the couch, and dropped the diaper at her feet.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now, we wait.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said. “You wait.” Me, the Doubting Thomas.

But waiting was unnecessary. Because, giving me a wide berth, Gizmo sauntered somewhat close to her chair, her not being the threat of someone who had recently rat-trapped his tail.

“Hi, Giz,” she said. “What’s up?”

Being addressed personally drew him a little closer to her. And then…

SHE POUNCED! Had him quick as a spider abducts the fly that’s barely feather-touches its web! Rolled him over her knee as if for a spanking, pinned him there, worked those whitey pant legs up his legs, yanked the waistline up over his hips, and had the little bugger velcroed, done, and dusted before he knew what hit him.

It was amazing! Like watching a rodeo cowpuncher rope and hogtie a calf in record time! Of course with three kids already under her belt, this wasn’t exactly Phyl’s first rodeo.

When she placed him back down on the floor again, the look he gave her was priceless. Pure… chagrin!

He immediately dug his tiny opposable thumbs down under the waistband and started pushing down for all he was worth. They didn’t budge. His puzzlement was a wonder and a joy to see! He danced around, hopping up and down, still trying to force what was stubbornly refusing to get out of the way of his wanting/needing to be au naturel.

It was a losing fight. He slowed down fast.

“How did you do that?” I demanded.

“What do you mean? You watched me, right?”

“Well, yeah, I did. Only… when I did that… and it looked just like what you did… his pants just fell right off him like a ton of bricks. And after the whole thing took all my energy! All my energy for nothing! I don’t get it.”

“Ah!” she replied. “I bet you didn’t properly fasten the velcro strap in the back.”

“But I did. At least, thought I did anyway.”

“So. You attached the velcro strip to the little sticky patch on the back of his pants.”

“What? What little sticky patch?”

“Oh, OK. What’d you, just stick it right on the plain diaper cloth? Just any old where?”

“Maybe. I dunno. I guess. Nobody told me anything about any stupid patch.”

“So it’s no wonder his pants just… fell off then.”

“OK. So…what, you gonna show me where the stupid patch is?”

“Sure. Go get the diaper bag.”

“So there’s a glimmer of hope for me then? Even though I don’t have an ounce of energy left for it?”

She shrugged. “You’ll catch on. It’ll get easier. With practice.”

“Yeah? So why do I feel so doubtful then?”

I pulled myself up onto my feet at last. Gizmo was watching me tentatively. So I leaned slowly down and looked him right in the face.

“Next time, buddy!” I growled softly. Which sent him scampering! “Yeah! You just wait till next time!” I called after him.

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LYFORD ON LOVE

PART ONE

(I’m calling this one “Part One,” not because I have a specific Part Two in mind at all. It’s just that, knowing me, I’ll probably have a couple hundred Parts on this theme. I mean, who knows?)

We begin…

As a 34-year teacher (a career that came to an end over two decades ago), I was forever unearthing priceless little tidbits of poetry from the many literature anthologies I’d inherited in whatever classroom I was assigned. That was one of the big English teacher perks, for me. I collected any and all the ones that touched me in one way or another, and now I carry around a gazillion of them in my iPhone (well, technically they’re warehoused in the cloud). But… anyway, sometimes when I’m languishing in a doctor’s waiting room, manning the circulation desk during the quiet moments at the local library, or riding in the passenger seat while my wife, Phyllis, drives the car, I can simply pull out the phone and alter my mood with a poem, just like that. And I have so many genres: love poems, war poems, protest poems, sci-fi poems, beat poems, horror poems, anger poems, hilarious ones, short ones, endless ones… you name it. Strange little things, smart phones. You never really know who’s packing what.

Sometimes there have been these important-to-me poems in my life that I’ve somehow managed to lose and, consequently, I’ve ended up investing a great deal of my years tracking them back down. Which is next to impossible if they’re ancient and especially if you can’t for the life of you conjure up the title or the poet’s name. But if and when I ever do recapture one of those, there’s a little celebration that goes on down deep inside me that flutters my heart (somewhat like A Fib only more fun). I kid you not.

Here’s a true story. About three or four months ago, a TV commercial was advertising an upcoming boxing match featuring a boxer whose last name was Saavedra. I probably shocked my wife when I leapt up of the sofa and shouted, “That’s IT! THAT’S HIS NAME!” Then of course I had to explain to her what the hell I was yelling about.

Well, a little poem that I’d discovered way, way back when had somehow vanished from my collection. It was just a snippet of a thing, a little love poem only a few lines long. Wouldn’t be deemed important to most of the citizens of our planet but, as I often say, we’re all occupying our own little unique spaces on the social spectrum, aren’t we. And yes, it was a love poem. I’m a sucker for love poems if they’re well-and-creatively written. The main reason I was having no luck recovering this one is because of the hard-to-remember-let-alone-pronounce name of the poet: Guadalupe de Saavedra. Plus wrack my brain as much as I could, the title refused to leave the tip of my tongue. For years! And then…

Bingo! There was some unpoetic dumb-ass boxer named Saavedra going to box some other unpoetic dumbass palooka on TV. And finally (and serendipitously) gifted with the boxer’s name, I only had to seek the help of the Great God Google. Ding! Retrieved it in five minutes!

The poem is titled “If You Hear That a Thousand People Love You.” And today is the perfect day for me to share this love poem here, it being Phyllis’ and my 57^th anniversary today (7/30). So that’s got me feeling all warm and fuzzy here. Spoiler alert: I’m such a damn romantic. But now that I’ve talked about it and put it on a pedestal, I imagine you’ll look at this piece off fluff and say, “What the hell does he think is so special about this thing?!” And that’s OK because, right after this poem, I’m going to share two or three poems I’ve written to Phyllis over time and, yeah, sure, they’re bound to be deemed head and shoulders above this one, right?

IF YOU HEAR THAT A THOUSAND PEOPLE LOVE YOU

by Guadalupe de Saavedra

If you hear that a thousand people love you
remember… Saavedra is among them.

If you hear that a hundred people love you
remember… Saavedra is either in the first
or very last row

If you hear that seven people love you
remember… Saavedra is among them,
like a Wednesday in the middle of the week

If you hear that two people love you
remember…one of them is Saavedra

If you hear that only one person loves you
remember…he is Saavedra

And when you see no one else around you,
and you find out
that no one loves you anymore,
then you will know for certain
that… Saavedra is dead

Yeah, not really such a great poem perhaps. But when I first found it, I was smitten. My favorite line is Saavedra is among them, like a Wednesday in the middle of the week. I dunno. I can identify with a love like that.

Story of my life with Phyllis: since I was a high school junior and she my freshman sweetheart in 1962-63, I went crazy writing poems for her, about her, and about us. I was a rhyming fool, a creator of bad doggerel (poetry written by dogs, I was once told). I don’t know why, but I was madly driven to capture The Adventure of Our Old-fashion Crush with all its ups and downs on reams of notebook paper. Each verse was honestly a sonnet in itself. I get this feeling I might still have a few “chapters” of those maudlin verses lying around somewhere, in a box maybe, but I couldn’t find them. Just as well, I imagine. I’m pretty sure I’d be embarrassed by them today.

Funny, immature me, I’d go to the movies and hear how cool Clark Gable or Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart would speak to women, and then I’d try to model my own ‘lines’ after some of theirs. One time at Phyllis’ home, I was sitting at her kitchen table and watched her making me a cup of coffee. Then, as she brought it over to me, I dunno, the whole scene felt so domestic and she so wifely, that I Abruptly came out with this one: “Hey, you and me? Let’s grow old together.” Now how corny is that?

OK, I’ll tell you how corny it is. It’s laughingly as embarrassing as a Harrison Ford line in the 1973 film, American Grafitti. The year is 1962. Ford plays Bob Falfa, the reckless badass dude driving a hot, souped-up, black ’55 Chevy. Bob wants to prove his car is the fastest car in the valley. So, he’s itching to go up against Paul Le Mat’s character, John Milner, who drives the locally famous yellow 1932 Ford 5-window coupe, the hot rod that had long been the fastest car in the valley. Before the race, however, badass Falfa picks up Laurie (Cindy Williams) who’s virginal, vulnerable, and on the rebound from having just been dumped by her steady, Steve (Ron Howard). Unfortunately she’s about to become the lady-in-distress as Falfa has decided she will accompany him in the ill-advised speed race out on the outskirts of the city. But first, he tries to come on to her, in his way (who wouldn’t) but the way he attempts it is something that is so weird and awkward it caused me to cringe. First he grows all serious, then looks her straight in the eyes, and after a moment (what?) begins ridiculously singing “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific. I know, right?! Don’t believe me? Stream the flick. It’s a wonderful film (with the exception of Ford’s musical come-on). But as awkward as that was, it’s a little bit too similar to my out-of-the-blue “Let’s grow old together” attempt. Oh well, it’s funny now. And of course it’s taken 60+ years, but Phyl and I eventually did succeed in accomplishing just that.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

you crossed the square heading west on main… we were the yang and the yin

i was the fire & you were the ice, the odds stacked against us had loaded the dice

but we didn’t know that then

i watched you walk with your new friend & talk, unaware i was being reeled in

that was the fateful momentous day in our tinytown lives so mundane

just a fall afternoon with the sun dropping down

autumn leaves underfoot, yelloworange&brown

on the corner of north street and main

i watched you walk with my cousin & talk

(through the drugstore display window pane)

the gambler in me told my heart & my soul: though opposite charges attract

i’d look you in the eye & retain full control…

our fate’s cosmic die rode the crapshooter’s roll

& rolled boxcars— the odds had been stacked

(magnetic north pole & magnetic south)

our futures were processed & packed

the bi-polar pull of our gravities’ force set our orbital paths for collision

inevitable contact… there was no recourse

our hormones alone were our single resource

the dice roll had made its decision

no time for reflection, no room for remorse

the outcome was nuclear fission

when matter and anti-material collide: cataclysmic, the chain reaction

its thunderclap echoes through all space and time

it alters the future’s & past’s paradigm—

twin suns, we were lock-stepped in traction

each destined to fall as the other would climb

the orbital dance of co-action…

you crossed the square heading west on main (we were the yang and the yin

i was the fire & you were the ice

we were starcrossed as soulmates—indelibly spliced

but we didn’t know that then)

i watched you walk with your new friend & talk

aware you were reeling me in

FETCHING

needling your quilt in your lamplight halo

you look over and catch me

your “RCA dog”

gazing into your eyes

my spiritual tail beginning to wag

and me growling some humorous

something or other—

this old dog’s old trick

for fetching me

the biscuit

of your sweet

laughter

THE BIG CHILL

“we got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout”

— johnny & june carter cash

you were the spark

that ignited the fuse

for the

big bang

of my hitherto

relatively uneventful

love life

it flashing incendiary

roman candles & rockets

molotov-cocktail love

flame-thrower love burning

magnesium hot

launching me in a straight trajectory

right over lover’s leap at

e=mc²

but that was in my callow youth

today

like the olympic flame

my love for you

still burns

patient now & serene

fireplace cozy

cup of cocoa hot

electric blanket warm

Happy 57th anniversary to us (7/30 /1966 -7/30/2023)

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