Memory – Page 3 – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

THEY CAME FROM THE SKY!!

The Monsters Were Due on Pleasant Street

Another Lurid, But True, Tom Lyford Story!!

NOTE: BEFORE SCROLLING DOWN TO THE OPENING TEXT, PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS 10-SECOND SOUND BYTE, AND THEN PROCEED...

It finally dawned on me that I’d been listening to a noise, whatever it was, for quite some time. For too long. I opened my eyes. I was in bed.

I looked at the clock. 5:30-something. 5:30-something was not the agreed upon plan! Sleeping in till at least 9:30 was the plan. But just what was that God-awful noise? It sounded like, and I’m serious here, a frickin’ whale breathing through its blowhole. I’d been on a whale watch a few years back and, man, that’s pretty much what they sounded like, to me at least. It was certainly loud enough.

But come on, a whale? So what was it?

I turned half way over and checked on Phyllis. Yeah, still soundly sleeping. Probably wouldn’t be for long though, not with a whale on the roof. I rolled myself quietly out of bed, hauled on a pair of shorts, and tip-toed quietly downstairs.

Then I stepped out onto the porch to a near blinding blue summer sky, what I could see of it anyway. What with the freakin’ whale up there blocking the view. And (holy Moby, Batman!) he was BIG… and blowing loud!

OK, so the day before, Phyllis and I had spent most of the entire day up at the air strip exhausting ourselves standing way too long on our feet and packing away the old hotdogs, burgers, and fries during the big all-day, all-weekend balloon festival. And sure, those balloons looked really big when seen on a wide, flat, empty airfield with nothing but little cub airplanes beside them, but when you step out on your porch and discover one practically rubbing itself up against your roof (you, totally unsuspecting because you’d just woken up from the big sleep and forgotten all about yesterday), then those mothers look cartoonishly huge.

There were two of them up there floating above and around our property which felt a little ironic, considering Phyl and I had both totally agreed that we’d seen enough hot-air balloons yesterday to last the whole weekend. However… apparently the balloons hadn’t seen enough of us. They had hunted us down.

I noticed they were barely moving at all however (no breeze) other than settling downward and then lifting back aloft whenever the pilots fired their hot blasts of flame from the propane burners up into the balloons’ envelopes. And that was pretty much the only thing that was keeping them from thumping right down on our roof. Those deep blasts, of course, explained the unsettling, whale-lung-breathing rasps that had awakened me!

Hmmm. Felt to me like an unexpected ‘adventure’ might be in the offing. I mean, it was just so weird, finding a couple of those big-as-clouds floaters grazing down at tree level right on the street where you live.

I weighed the pros and cons of getting Phyllis out of bed, which sometimes could be like poking a hungry bear with a stick. I know we’d agreed to sleep in, but neither of us could have imagined they’d be coming over to Pleasant Street for an up-close-and-personal play-date. The thing was, I just didn’t want to end up having some kind of unimaginable Bill and Ted’s Great Adventure, only to then get told, “What? Why didn’t you wake me? Oh sure, keep all the fun for yourself, why don’tcha!”

So there I was once again, stuck between a rock and a hard place in Cliché Land, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea not knowing whether to fish or cut bait. But I decided I’d do it.

As I reluctantly headed back up the stairs, I was working at putting together just the right diplomatic words that could serve me as my metaphoric anti-bear spray. So… with my right hand on her shoulder which I squeezed lightly, I watched her eyes slit open and lock onto my desperate, shit-eating grin, and let the whispered words just tumble out: “Hey look, Phyl, I know you wanted to sleep in this morning and yes, you can do that if you want, you can go right back to sleep, that’s up to you, and then I’ll get right back out of here and leave you alone, but I thought you should at least know that something’s going on, the balloons have come here, unexpectedly, and yeah, they’re right over the roof right this very moment, you can hear them, and honestly, they’re practically landing on the roof right now actually, and, well, they’re just amazing, so I just thought, you know, maybe I should just… at least let you know, you know (?) just in case you might wanna get up and see them because it’s so unusual and all, and, whoa, did you just hear that (?)(‘cause yeah, that was one of them!) so anyway I just wanted you to know that, me(?), I’m going back out there to watch’em some more right now , so… but you go right back to sleep, if that’s what you want, and me, I’ll… I’ll just head out now, so, you know, you’ll know that’s where I am should you do decide to… OK, yeah…”

It’s always so hard to concentrate when she’s just been awakened and remains lying there, silently contemplating you with those jaundiced, komodo-dragon eyes like that, so I simply ended with, “OK, sleep tight then. I’m outta here. But don’t worry: I’ll take pictures. You just go on back to sleep now, OK? …See ya…”

And so I tip-toed the light fantastic back down over the stairs and popped out the door. Wow. Were those babies ever huge up there, or what?! And close? So close I could easily hear the balloonists’ chatter from one balloon to the other.

And meanwhile too, off in different directions in the sky, near and far, I could make out a couple more balloons of varying colors and designs playing peek-a-boo overhead and between the trees. But in the meantime there was just no way I could pry my eyes off the two close-ups that the slight breeze had wafted over my house and then (fortunately for me) just stranded them there!

They weren’t moving much, just a little, but they obviously weren’t going anywhere soon.

Our home in 2013, Pleasant Street, Dover-Foxcroft, Maine

Phyllis in white bathrobe in the above photo

I find it difficult to explain just how exciting all this was feeling for me. I mean, I was over the moon! It all just felt so crazily freakin’ WIZARD OF OZ-ish! I couldn’t believe it was actually happening! Fun to the max! And after watching them for five minutes or so, I did observe the passenger basket of one balloon actually drag itself slowly across the peak of my roof. It was creepily reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, with spooky shades of its character, the Dust Witch.

The other one drifted right into the upper branches of one of our maples. But each time unwanted contact, or the threat of unwanted contact, became an issue for either of them, the propane ‘flame throwers’ would roar on again, lifting the balloon out of harm’s way. And that’s pretty much all these balloons seemed capable of doing right at the moment: rising up, sinking down, and rising up in place again. It didn’t feel like they’d be going anywhere horizontally, at least anytime soon.

I heard one of the guys in the closest balloon shout down, “This is Oz, right?”

So… FYI, our house was situated on a big acre-and-a-half lot at the corner of Pleasant and Grove Streets. And at first I was recording all the goings-on while standing right in the middle of Grove Street, looking east, and facing our old gray house and the balloons above it. Actually though, the balloons were hovering over the expansive, well-trimmed lawn in back of the house. And as I zeroed my camera in on the pilot of the nearest one, I caught him pointing downward at our lawn as if contemplating a possible touch-down. And I was thinking, Yes! DO it. Please!

Suddenly I heard a familiar female voice cry out, “Tom! Damnit!” And that was when I caught a fleeting glimpse of Phyllis. She was up and standing ghost-like in her white bathrobe, hiding in the shadows on this, the west side, of our long wrap-around porch.

I yelled, “Phyllis!” but then one of the balloonist called down, “Good morning!” in my direction. And by the time I yelled back at him, “Good morning! Watch out for our house! How ya doin’?” Phyllis had vanished.

I stopped recording temporarily and headed around the house to the lawn out back, where it appeared a touch-down could possibly be imminent.

Turning the corner, all I could think to myself was, Holy crap, they’re so damn BIG! The nearest one was dwarfing my big barn! Nothing like this could ever have been expected and… I’ve got say it was exhilarating. Thrilling even. And when I heard one of them call down, “Got room? Can we land here?” all I could do was blurt out, “Oh yes! Oh yes!” So: it was happening! They were granting my wish. But what was I getting myself into?

Oh, and there she was again. Phyllis. On the east side of the porch now, hiding behind one of the pillars, going for incognito, but watching. Poor thing. Talk about being “stuck between a rock and a hard place,” her desperately wanting to be a part of the scene but not being properly “attired.” And knowing that if she were, right then, to fly upstairs, throw some clothes on, and battle with a comb at her hair… then, by the time she’d get herself back down there, the whole damn shooting match could very well be over and done with, and she’d have missed it all. So yeah, poor thing. One of those drawbacks of womanhood that makes me glad that, phew(!) I’m not a woman.

But what a wonderful thing this all was, this balloon festival, for a town our size. But especially what a wonderful thing it was to be happening right in our own back yard! Such a happy, crazy morning!

And omigod! One had already landed! And there it was, towering above a handful of people way out on the back lawn, actually on my neighbor’s property, but our lawns were adjacent, with nothing to mark a boundary. But hey, this one? This balloon? Hovering right above my back door, practically? Un-freakin’-believable! Wow. What a sight! What a Sunday this was turning out to be!

Somebody called for some help, and I went jogging over to the basket hanging in the air just above the lawn. “I’m your guy!“I cried. And then, “Who would’ve thought! We thought we were gonna miss the balloon festival today! Welcome to earth! And we just wanna thank you for choosing our property to land on!” What a treat!

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For the next two to three hours, it was like our whole neighborhood had somehow gotten sucked in through some wormhole and had popped out on the other side in an alternate universe of Rod Serling’s old Twilight Zone. A glitch in the matrix, some might say. For years, Phyllis and I had been living this very predictable, mundane life. You know– every day like every other day. Eating, working, watching television, reading books, doing the laundry and dishes, yadda yadda yadda. Very few surprises. And then…? Bang! Our boring back yard just morphed into an unannounced, flash-mob block party! And everyone came!

See meanwhile, a dozen or more balloons were drifting all over everywhere, a couple nearly straying off into a neighboring town. And what that meant was that each balloon had attracted its own little posse of cars and pick-ups which were dogging it along the way as best they could. The town had been affected with balloon mania, you see. It was like a combination of an humongous Easter egg hunt and scavenger hunt. On wheels. The day before, Phyl and I had been out there in our car chasing the balloons. It was all the rage.

So now, with two of those big bruisers planted in our back yard, standing so tall you could see them towering over the roof top, they’d become a calling card for the neighbors, neighbors who began trickling in onto our lawn in ones and twos at first. And these neighbors all had their cell phones of course. And what do you do with cell phones? You take pictures, don’t you. And what do you do with the pictures? Oh, you know what you do: you immediately post them right to Facebook.

So word was spreading fast about “the place.’The place where not one, but two hot air balloons were now tethered. “Where’s this place?”somebody frantically posted on Facebook. “Where’s this official landing site everyone’s talking about? I’ve been driving all over and I can’t find it!”

But so many did find it. Thus, the impromptu block party, a party with no music, no food. But so much better than music and food, they had their own balloons at ‘the place.‘ Two of’em! So come one, come all! And so… we heard the sounds of cars rolling in and parking along the roadside, the slamming of car doors, and the excited voices of kids from age five to sixty-five clmbing up the steep grassy banking from the road.

And meanwhile, our back yard population… ballooned.

It was amazing. I welcomed it. Everyone was having a festive time of it. It was shaping up to be a morning to remember.

It was fun, invigorating, talking to a pilot about his ballooning world. Where he’d traveled, how long he’d been pursuing the hobby, etc. Meanwhile, I kept glancing over my shoulder every now and then and there’d be Phyllis, my little, white-bath-robed wallflower, obviously really enjoying the fun but, alas, from afar.

But then, this pilot did something that totally surprised me. He went back to his balloon, leaned in over the side of the basket, rummaged around inside it, and pulled out… a bottle of champagne. (Well, actually it was non-alcoholic “champagne”).

And then he began telling me all about The Balloon Pilots’ Tradition, which goes like this:

Whenever an airborne balloon pilot yells down and asks permission to land on somebody’s property, and that permission is gracefully granted, it is incumbent upon said pilot to present the landowner with a bottle of champagne.

Huh! I’d never heard of such a thing. Of course, you could probably publish a set of encyclopedias about the things I’ve never heard of. Having been a one-horse-town redneck all my life.

By the way, on the Monday after the festival for instance, word got around about an incident that occurred at a farm three miles out of town. A balloon touched down there after the pilot received landing permission from the owner. The pilot and crew climbed out for a friendly meet and greet. But then, wow, the aeronauts actually pulled a tiny card table and four small collapsible chairs from their basket. Next, out came a little red and white checkered table cloth. Then came the champagne bottle, along with the half dozen, plastic, stemware champagne glasses! And they celebrated. What fun!

But OK, getting back to my pilot, he soon made me understand that he was not about to just unceremoniously hand over the champagne to me. No. The presentation of the balloonist’s gift to the landowner required just a tad more pomp and circumstance than that. I realized he was talking about a formal presentation. A speech. And, as it turned out, not just any old impromptu speech either. He had a piece of paper in his pocket with the speech all typed out on it!

I said, “Hold your horses for a minute there, sir. I think we need to get the other land owner out here to help accept this gift.”

“Well sure. Of course. So, where is this other land owner?”

“That’s her,” I said, pointing toward the porch. “The one in the white bathrobe, acting shy. The last thing in the world she wants is to get caught outside dressed like that. But as you can see, at the same time she’s fascinated by what’s going on, and I know she’s wishing she were out here.”

Fuzzy little snapshot of Phyllis hiding on porch with cell phone camera…

“Well then. So, what’s this other land owner’s name?”

“Phyllis. Phyllis Lyford.”

“All right. Good.” Then he cleared his throat importantly, took a deep breath, and bellowed, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! EVERYBODY! QUIET DOWN FOR JUST A MOMENT! PLEASE! I HAVE AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE!”

And amazingly the crowd mostly did quiet down, and practically everyone turned to face the Man with the Message…

“At this time, ladies and gentlemen, I would ask Phyllis Lyford to please step down from the porch and join us here in the center of the lawn.”

Man, I wished right then and wish right now that I’d had my camera ready to go so I could’ve captured the look on Phyllis’ surprised face. Consternation? Chagrin? Chagrin mixed with shock? She was like, WHAT!?

And this was just so Phyllis: “No. Thank you. But no, I’m good. Really.”

But then, with a little encouragement from the pilot, the crowd took up the chant: “Phyllis! Phyllis!”and “Oh, come on down, Phyllis!” etc. It was a silly, grand, and marvelous moment. I found it hard to believe that Phyl, instead of fleeing straight back into the safety and comfort of the house, actually succumbed to the peer pressure… and down she came over the porch steps wearing her Badge of Shame and Impropriety: that white bathrobe that had never seen the light of day! I mean, right out there in front of God, the mob, me, and everybody! And though she was obviously embarrassed, she bravely swallowed her pride and, side-by-side with me, listened to the incredible presentation that began, “And now, to express our gratitude not for only the generosity and hospitality shown to us by this charitable couple who…”

I loved it. Phyllis loved it. And from that day forth, her little white bathrobe became officially known among family and friends as “Phyllis’s Famous White Bathrobe.”So if you know Phyllis, or get to befriend her in the future, feel free to ask her all about it (heh heh).

I am so grateful that someone did have a camera ready this time, and was able to capture and share this photo with me, so that I now may share it with posterity.

And so? That day in May? A Sunday in 2013?

A wonderful time! An unforgettable morning! And forever one of the fondest of all the other million ‘moments’ that lie coded and catalogued somewhere in that little rat’s nest of brain cells I call My Memories.

It was just… all so Emerald City and The Yellow Brick Road. You know?

Home

JUST SAY NO TO STREAKING

“MOMENTS”

“When other nights and other days…May find us gone our separate ways…We will have these moments to remember.”

—“Moments to Remember” sung by The Four Lads, 1955

Let me begin with something about career public school teachers that you’ve probably never thought about.

Once you’ve spent the better part of your life manning the desk at the front of a public classroom with all that entails— i.e., (and just to scratch the surface here, mind you) lunch duty, hall duty, lobby duty, bus duty, detention duty, prom duty, bullying duty, graduation duty, bomb scare duty, steaking duty, school dance chaperoning, winter carnival chaperoning, study hall monitoring, being a class advisor, being a student club and activity advisor, being a coach of what-have-you, being a vandalism detective, not to mention the breaker-upper of the fights and the smoking in the boys’/girls’ room, or a warrior of the war on drugs in general… believe me, you’ve got some intriguing ‘war stories’ to share.

Me? I’ve got hundreds. And one of the things we teachers, retired or otherwise, love doing among ourselves once in a while is rehashing/sharing some of the crazy on-the-job shit we’ve been blessed to have witnessed over the semesters and years. Often it takes the form of a big I‘ve-Got-That-Beat Contest.

These ‘war stories’ are now just fleeting moments floating around like loose flotsam in our memories and in retrospect, I wish now I had titled this blog simply MOMENTS, because that’s basically all I’ve got going on in this blog.

But for instance, I’ll start off with this sample moment told to me by a sweet lady teacher: she shared this one with a bunch of us Ichabod Cranes about being on recess duty in a middle school one time back in the 1970s.

It was in the winter and the snowbanks encircling the playground were really high. Some of the kids were attempting a quick snowman or two here or there, and some were throwing snowballs at each other, while many just tended to stand around in klatches like a waddle of penguins on a frozen shore. Which was the norm.

What wasn’t so normal however was the big kid, a boy half-again larger than most of his peers. He was the loner out there, not at all interested in spending his recess time socializing.

Rather he seemed to be on a mission, a mission that for some reason had him walking the perimeter of the tall, dirty-white walls of snow and, yeah, inspecting them for something. Eventually he stopped. Whatever it was he was searching for, apparently he’d found it.

And then he went right to work, beginning to drill a sizeable hole straight into the wall with his mittened paws. But not on his hands and knees, mind you— if his little “project” had been the typical kid’s snow-tunnel, he’d likely have started his excavation down at ground level, the better for crawling into and back out of. Instead, he was busy hollowing out this wide, waist-high hole straight into the snow bank. He kept right at it for a while, too.

It didn’t take long though before his head, arms, and upper torso had all but disappeared into the wall. Only his butt and two legs were protruding, like laundry hanging on a clothesline. And all those hard-dug, scooped-out-mittenfuls of push-away snow had ceased being disgorged. Then his buttocks and legs suddenly went visibly relaxed. Went limp even. No more movement. The kid was just… parked there now, half in and half out. Just a pair of limp, seemingly lifeless jeans hanging out of the hole in the wall like some laundry.

Our storyteller says she then she experienced a sudden sharp uptick in her level of concern . Why had the legs stopped moving like that all at once? Had the boy managed to get himself accidentally wedged in there somehow? Stuck? Might there have been… a cave-in? Had he run out of oxygen? Did he need help? So she marched across the playground to him in a hurry.

When she’d gotten to him, she began poking him in the hip and calling out his name. And just as she was about to try to haul him out of the hole by his belt, she realized that she was hearing some muffled muttering from down inside the plugged cavity. Then the half-buried body began to squirm! And thrash! The kid was now worming his own way out. So he was pretty conscious, after all.

And then, finally, out he tumbled onto the snow-packed ground. Breach-baby style.

So she had to ask him, “What were you thinking!? Whatever were you trying to DO in there?” But before he could answer, she could smell it.

“All right, alright already!” he snapped. “Whattaya think I was doin’?! I was smokin’ me a damn cigarette, damnit!”

Yeah. Not what you might expect for a middle school playground story, is it but… it was one of her many moments.

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OK, I bragged that I have hundreds of teacher ‘war stories,’ and I do.

For instance, I could tell you about my very first professional field trip, that time I (as the lone chaperon) had to take a high school English class to Bowdoin College to watch an evening production of Romeo and Juliet. And being a green first-year teacher, I was terrified under the weight of such a momentous responsibility, being solely responsible for the busing of the thirty high school sophomore souls there, and the getting them back home again.

My kids had decided to spread out all over the theater to watch the play. But me, I was sitting way up in a balcony by myself, sweating it out, wondering what I’d do if, say, the head count ended up being one or two heads short when the time came to return home.

Suddenly I felt one of my “boy-heads” easing down into the seat beside me. He sat there silently for a long minute, watching the play I presumed. But then he whispered something into my ear.

“What was that?!” I whispered back.

“I said, ‘We have a problem.’”

“A problem!?” I was totally baffled. “We do…? Like… as in… us? You and me?”

He shook his head no. “It’s Frankie…” he said.

“Frankie?”

“Yeah, See, he’s having a really bad acid trip right now?”

A what?! Acid trip? “WHAT?”

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Or… I could tell you about the time that big crazy Korean kid drove his fist into the superintendent’s gut. Just about laid him out, too. (Was kinda wishing he had.)

Or how about that time all the kids in one of my English classes began surreptitiously inching their seats closer and closer to me whenever my back was turned, me too busy writing on the chalk board to notice. Until I finally turned around to discover I was… box-canyoned up against the wall!

Or the time an actual horse began chomping on the left shoulder of my sports jacket while I was trying to read a poem to my students in the school’s outdoor sanctuary…

OK. See, here’s the thing: some of my “war stories” are kinda cute, but some are kinda devastating. Experience swings both ways. And I’m positive that it’s the same with all career teachers everywhere. “We will have these ‘moments’ to remember…”

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OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

OK. So… here goes one of my special memorable ‘moments’:

It was very late in May, closing in on Graduation day. Late afternoon. The crushing temperature and humidity suffocating both me and my students.

I was keeping my classroom door and the windows wide-open for the air, for all the good that was doing. I was reviewing, or trying to review, Adjectives and Adverbs for the final exam. (Yee-HAH!) So yeah, you can just imagine.

All my kids were really thinking about, those who were still awake, was (1) summer vacation and (2) when were the frickin’ yearbooks finally gonna get passed out? And despite my valiant histrionics to keep their attention focused on me…? Yeah, most if not all of them were lost in that mental purgatory somewhere between awake and asleep. I could have sworn the clock on the wall had slowed down. The period seemed to be going on and on like The Never Ending Story.

Other than my own voice, it was dead quiet up there in the English and Social Studies wing. A desert wasteland. So quiet, you’d be able to hear literally anything that moved, or was going on, up or down the entire hallway outside. Which is why I had just suddenly realized that I was half aware of some faint, far off footfalls coming up the hall from the direction of the main office. Most of my mind was like, So what.

But another part of my mind had registered something unusual about those footfalls. There was a hard clop clop clop quality about them. But t my brain was pretty much languishing in the same purgatory that was anesthetizing the brains of my students. So it was way too easy to dismiss such a trivial distraction. Which is what I did. At first.

But the clop clop clops were drawing closer. You could tell that, thanks to the rising Doppler effect. But even then, I was still feeling… Yeah? So what.

Anyway, I went back to chalking up the chalkboard. But my eyes did stray somewhat lazily over to the open door. (All I was really waiting for though, quite honestly, was for that frickin’ final bell to finally ring.) And then, the Doppler thing reached its climax. And the second it did, over my shoulder and pretty much out the corner of my eye, I saw two guys go jogging past the open door.

Ho hum. Chalk in hand, I turned back to the board and continued to…

“MR. LYFORD!”

Now what? I thought to myself.

“MR. LYFORD!”

This time it was a different voice. A girl’s voice. And as I turned around, I was thinking, Can we please just finish this damned… Holy shit! I was stunned right to the core to find every single damned student was gawking straight at me, all gaping and bug-eyed!

“What!?”

“Didn’t you see!? They was NAKED!”

I’d never heard anything so unexpected and ridiculous in my life! “What? No, they weren’t! That’s…”

The voices let loose at me! “They were TOO!” “Didn’t you SEE them?!” “QUICK! Go the door and just LOOK!” “What’re you, BLIND?!”

“Aw, come on! That’s… That’s just stupid!” I countered as I walked the six or seven steps to my open door and belligerently looked out, up the hall, feeling like an idiot, knowing that this was just some idiotic prank they’d… all…

“Oh MY!”

A ‘flashcube’ flashed from behind my eyes and the little two-man tableau down at the end of the hall, down by the exit, was mentally ‘photographed’ and indelibly etched into my memory! For all my eternity, I’d be able to slide that image out of my head like some old family album Polaroid and re-examine it at will. And just as everyone my age can tell you exactly what they were doing when JFK was assassinated, whenever anybody asks me, “What were you doing when the streakers struck?” I’ll remember this image and say, “I was teaching ADVERBS!”

“THERE! You SEE!?” “They naked or WHAT!?”

I couldn’t believe my eyes! How could I have noticed them pass by and… not noticed…? Well, I guess I’d been distracted. But what I was watching then seemed like a scene playing out in slow motion. The rectangular dimensions of the hallway diminishing into the perspective of distance… the pastel sunshine diffusing its gauze of fire through the safety glass of the exit doors to silhouette these two foreground figures. Only ski masks, side-by-side, and the two pairs of white running shoes clothed these twin athletic gods, David and Adonis— lithe, animated, museum statuary now departing the confines of the fine arts museum in a leisurely jog.

Put some pants on, you guys!

Their Olympian tans glowing bronze in the light… only their un-sunned buttocks retaining the white marble of the sculptor. The exit doors swung wide upon contact, opening directly onto a lush green, freshly manicured lawn sloping down before them and away under an idyllic blue summer sky…

And of course there was a phys ed class in full swing down at the bottom of that slope and, yeah, you could hear the chorus of rowdy cheers going up just before the two doors swung shut on the scene.

My addled gaze lingered a few moments more on the closed hallway doors. Then, when I eventually craned my neck around and glanced back down the hall, I observed a teacher’s smirking face hanging out of every single classroom door, left and right all the way down the hall. Not only teachers’ faces, but also a lot of students’ as well!

And what a mood change had just swept over the wing! Everything was now all smirks, grins, and leers.

But… the second thing I observed was even more mood-altering. Up our hall came marching our grave principal, accompanied by his even graver assistant principal, both of them marching to an entirely different drum. Nazis on parade they were, marching to a silent military cadence on their very grave search and destroy mission! And as they passed each open classroom door, the teacher of that room was given the gravest hairy eyeball possible, along with a thundercloud, eye-to-eye, ‘NO!’-twin-shakes-of-the-heads. Of course all teachers immediately turtle-shelled themselves right back inside and out of sight behind their hastily closed doors, one by one as they were passed by.

But the silent message given us by their formal, grave, I-mean-business glares was oh so clear:

THIS IS OFFICIALLY NOT FUNNY! LOOK AT US, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! I SAID, ‘LOOK AT US!’ THIS IS THE OFFICIAL FACIAL EXPRESSION OF THE DAY! MEMORIZE IT. ASSUME IT. AND WEAR IT! NOW! THIS IS NOT A CLOTHING-OPTIONAL INSTITUTION!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes one of the most vivid and special moments stored in my lifetime of memories…

Now, of course what eventually happened over the next couple of days, is the administration rounded up a lot of easy-to-break kids, sweated them under the old lightbulb, and went good cop/bad cop on’em until some of them finally cracked, named names, and ratted out our daring David and Adonis. Both of whom were soon rounded up and brought in as persons of interest for questioning.

Long story short? They were suspended and forbidden to participate in graduation exercises. And lo, it was let to be known, then that the staff’s official, obligatory, from-now-on-reaction to their heinous crime must forever be SHAME. ON. THEM!

So: as usual, Blind Justice had won out in the end. And the school of course was a much better place thereafter for it, what with the egregious example that showed the student body (pun intended) that showing the student body is a vile, criminal act punishable by the most punishable punishment that the administration could imagine itself punishing anybody with.

So there!

Thus endeth the retelling of one of my Story-Moments…

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

So yeah, this is only one of the many I have locked up in the Educational Career vault of my brain. And I do harbor oh so many more. Some of which I will be sharing with you in the future…

And now, if you wish, just sit back and enjoy the music and lyrics of:

THE STREAK written and performed by Rat Stevens

Hello, everyone, this is your action news reporter
With all the news that is news across the nation
On the scene at the supermarket
There seems to have been some disturbance here
Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

Yeah, I did
I’s standin’ over there by the tomatoes
And here he come
Running through the pole beans
Through the fruits and vegetables
Naked as a jay bird
And I hollered over t’ Ethel
I said, “Don’t look, Ethel!”
But it’s too late
She’d already been incensed

Boogity, boogity
(There he goes)
Boogity, boogity
(And he ain’t wearin’ no clothes)

Oh yes, they call him the Streak
(Boogity, boogity)
Fastest thing on two feet
(Boogity, boogity)
He’s just as proud as he can be
Of his anatomy
And he gon’ give us a peek

Oh yes, they call him the Streak
(Boogity, boogity)
He likes to show off his physique
(Boogity, boogity)
If there’s an audience to be found
He’ll be streakin’ around
Invitin’ public critique

This is your action news reporter once again
And we’re here at the gas station
Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

Yeah, I did
I’s just in here gettin’ my tires checked
An’ he just appeared out of the traffic
He come streakin’ around the grease rack there
Didn’t have nothin’ on but a smile
I looked in there, and Ethel was gettin’ her a cold drink
I hollered, “Don’t look, Ethel!”
But it was too late
She’d already been mooned
Flashed her right there in front of the shock absorbers

Boogity, boogity
(He ain’t lewd)
Boogity, boogity
(He’s just in the mood to run in the nude)

Oh yes, they call him the Streak
(Boogity, boogity)
He likes to turn the other cheek
(Boogity, boogity)
He’s always makin’ the news
Wearin’ just his tennis shoes
Guess you could call him unique

Once again, your action news reporter
In the booth at the gym
Covering the disturbance at the basketball playoff
Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

Yeah, I did
Half time, I’s just goin’ down thar to get Ethel a snow cone
And here he come, right out of the cheap seats, dribbling
Right down the middle of the court
Didn’t have on nothing but his PF’s
Made a hook shot and got out through the concessions stands
I hollered up at Ethel
I said, “Don’t look, Ethel!”
But it was too late, she’d already got a free shot
Grandstandin’, right there in front of the home team

Oh yes, they call him the Streak
Here he comes again
(Boogity, boogity)
Who’s that with him? (The fastest thing on two feet)
Ethel? Is that you, Ethel? (Boogity, boogity)
(He’s just as proud as he can be)
What do you think you’re doin’? (Of his anatomy)
(And he gon’ give us a peek)
You get your clothes on!

Oh, yes, they call him the Streak
Ethel! Where you goin’? (Boogity, boogity)
He likes to show off his physique
Ethel, you shameless hussy! (Boogity, boogity)
If there’s an audience to be found
He’ll be streakin’ around
Invitin’ public critique
Say it isn’t so, Ethel!

Oh, yes, they call him the Streak
Ethel! (Boogity, boogity)

home

POET… PEACENIK… PUGILIST? PART III

WHAT HAPPENS IN BELFAST STAYS (not) IN BELFAST

Somewhere back in the 90’s, I had a teacher friend whose hobby was wood carving. He’d discovered I was dealing with practically terminal boredom, and suggested I take up “whittling” as a hobby. I decided to take him up on it. To me, it seemed perhaps he’d just tossed me a lifeline. His motif of choice was Christmas ornaments. Me, I was a little too dark right then for something quite as Jingle Bells as Christmas ornaments, but what should I whittle? Here I had this block of wood in front of me that could end up being… anything. I spent a long time just staring at it, very much I’m sure like Michelangelo stared at his block of marble before giving the world his David.

To me, it had to be something useful. I’m just not a doo-dads kind of guy. But what could I create that would be useful in any way? And to whom? Wait. How about something… psychologically useful. Yeah, how about something psychologically useful to… me? And then I did get an idea, albeit (like most of my ideas) one that was dark and complicated. But so me.

And here’s my finished product, my little own David though I like to call it myown little Tommy. And it’s been sitting on my shelf in the den ever since the 90s. Yeah.

This objet d’art (ha ha) commemorates a sad little childhood memory. Me, approximately age five, I’m guessing. My cousins, four or five years older than me. Meanies. Bullies. They owned two sets of boxing gloves. Too large for me, but they didn’t care. They’d just poke my hands down into them and cinch them on my wrists with twine.

And then there was the other little cousin, about the same age and size as me. They’d do the same to him. Then they’d gather round us and push us together as if we were a couple of bantam roosters in the cock-fighting arena and cheer, “There’s the bell! OK! Let’s go! Start punchin’, guys! Go for the faces! Go for the tummy!”

And this other little kid, who, I guess was a ringer? I’m pretty sure they’d given him some training. Because he knew what to do. Me? Not so much. I mean, basically I was just standing there with a big fat target on my nose, when WHANG!

And when my eyesight sort of slowly segued back into operation, I was on my back and blinking up at the too bright sky. And oh, all those mean and cruel cackles, hoots, and the catcalls.

So yeah, I guess you could say I’ve had a little experience in ‘the ring,’ metaphorically speaking. A sad experience. A humiliating one. But perhaps one that was instrumental in unconsciously encouraging me to make one of those altering-the-vector-of-your-life’s-path decisions I discussed earlier:

I became a lover, not a fighter.

I’ll give you the example, and then we’ll move on to what happened in Belfast…

OK. So I’m out in the hallway of my college dorm. A bunch of us boys (it was a mens’ dorm after all, no girls allowed ever) were horsing around, playing hall hockey. It was midnight, or a little thereafter. But there was this one kid I didn’t like so much who was seriously bugging me. He’d been rubbing me the wrong way ever since I’d first met him in the fall. (If you’ve ever read The Catcher in the Rye, think Ackley. Enough said?)

A couple of times already, just as ‘dI got the “puck” (think rolled-up-and-taped-ball-of-paper) lined up for a slap-shot with my broom (think “hockey stick”), he’d jab his finger into my rib cage to throw me off. And both times he’d done it so far, he’d giggled, which was super annoying. The first time I’d said, “Knock it off!” He giggled. The second time I’d said, “Cut it OUT!” and he’d practically giggled his head off.

The third time I simply stopped, turned slowly around, laid the hairy eyeball on him for a good fifteen seconds before explaining it to him in a slow, Clint Eastwood-like voice (OK, true, nobody’d ever really heard of Clint Eastwood back in 1966), “I wouldn’t wanna be you if you’re stupid enough to do that one more time. You dig?” So I turned to resume the game and guess what.

Yeah. He did it again. Sounding like some gaggle of flighty eighth-grade girls giggling it up big time at a sleep-over party. I threw the broom down, and turned on him. “What did I just tell you… Bob?” He was unable to answer, the due to the hysterical giggling shaking his bowl-of-Jello sides. I looked him over. Yeah, he was bigger than me. But all of the bad guys in Shane were bigger than Alan Ladd, so…

Now, keep in mind, yes, I was very aware of the fact that I had never even once in my life ever hit anyone, had never even swung on anybody. All the fights I’d gotten into in grade school were like grunting little wrestling matches, so yeah, I was nervous. But so what, I told myself, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there. So I studied his head, looking for the best spot to land my knuckle sandwich. The jaw. Yeah. He looked to me like the type of guy that probably might have what they called a ‘glass jaw.’ I’d hafta swing up though, since he was taller.

I doubled up my right fist. Whipped it in an arc back down behind my butt, from whence I would launch the powerful haymaker swing of all swings that would drop him on his giggling ass. Why was I hesitating? C’mon Tom, you can do this thing! OK, count down time: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0!

I swung for the fences!

And totally missed…

The momentum my haymaker swing had accrued actually hurled me into the cinderblock wall where, like Wile E. Coyote, I slowly slid down onto the hall floor. I was dazed and confused. Bob too was a little dazed and confused. But at least he’d stopped that insane giggling. Duly embarrassed, I pretty much closeted myself in my dorm room for a week or so after that.

That was the first and last time I ever took a swing at anybody.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, my first ever teaching position ever: Belfast Area High School. On the coast of Maine.

I was terrified. All my life I’d been suffering from stage fright and, now, suddenly having to face classes of thirty human beings six times a day (too many of whom looked a lot more adult than I did) just sitting there staring at me? Waiting for me to begin doing whatever it was I was getting (omigod!) professionally paid to do? Human beings all suddenly required to address me as none other than “Mister Lyford”? I mean… hell, I was no “Mister Lyford,” not the last time I looked!

On top of that, they’d given me classes for which there weren’t enough books! They’d forced me to take the dramatics Coach job when I’d never even been in a play in my LIFE! They’d dumped most of the worst classes on me (a common dirty trick, I discovered, to play on the new hires). And one of my two Speech classes was filled with “students,” not a single one of which was willing to even stand up and tell me his/her name! Please forgive me for so often making comparisons to literary characters, but at that time in my nervous, incipient-ulcer life, I was Catch-22’s Major Major Major Major! In my first week, I was sure I’d made the mistake of a lifetime, allowing myself to ride the collegiate merry-go-round only to get dumped off at the end of the four-year-ride as an “educator.” I was a wreck. I used to walk the streets at night with the superintendent’s phone number in my pocket (I swear this is true), look longingly at each phone booth I passed, and try to get up the courage to call in sick for the rest of my life. OK, reality check: that wasn’t happening all year long, no. Mostly just in the first few weeks of the culture shock I was going through.

But then something happened. The Phys. Ed. department purchased and installed a speed bag in a corner of the gymnasium. And if anyone needed an outlet that involved hitting something, I was that guy. Of course a couple of things got in the way. (A) I was still The Stage-Fright Kid. If I were going to use said speed bag, it would have to be after school when no one was around to see me. Isn’t that sad? Me, The Performance Anxiety Poster Boy. Plus (B) some Neanderthal Moron straight out of one of Gary Larson’s future Far Side cartoons took a single, brainless, Paul Bunyan swing and obliterated the bagand me along with it like a pair of flattened tires!

So, during the long, two-week wait for a new bag to be shipped, I asked the Phys Ed Department to please “educate” (if that were conceivably possible) their “students” (using the term charitably here) on the differences between a speed bag and a heavy bag. Which they graciously did. And at last, there it was. The shiny new speed bag hanging there, my own little bottle of tranquilizer tablets. It had been a long wait. But every week night from then on, after all the little Neanderthals had walked or ridden their school buses home to their caves, I would materialize there before it The Bag and then… right fist-bam bam bam, left fist-bam bam bam, right fist-bam bam bam… only at the speed of light, because I was that good. And oh! The relief!

Oh, of course custodians would show up to sweep the gym floor, and kids who were in after-school programs would pass through the gym on their way somewhere or other (and yeah, I could sort of feel some of them stopping behind me to watch for a bit, but that was OK since once I got in my groove, it was like I was cocooned in my own little bubble and the world outside no longer existed).

Ah! Mental health! It’s not overrated you know.

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

So, a week or so later, me ensconced in my desk before a very large study hall, my classroom door swung open. In the doorway stood the high school principal. My inner reaction was Oh shit! What now? Because I wasn’t quite ready yet for my English class coming up next period; no, I was striving desperately to flesh out some last-minute Hail Mary in that regard. Plus, I really had to wonder (worry-wart-me), had I possibly done something wrong to merit this visit? As a Major Major Major Major, I was always worried about that.

“Excuse me, Mr. Lyford,” he began, “but there are some students down in the gymnasium who were wondering if you’d be so kind as to go down there and give them a little demonstration on the new, err, punching bag.”

“What? Who, me? Um. No, I can’t right now. I have this study hall, you see.”

“Oh, not a problem, Mr. Lyford. I’m happy to sit in here to cover for you for the rest of this period. So…”

A fist had just clamped onto my Poster Boy heart and was giving it a crushing squeeze! “Well, I…”

“It’s a Phys Ed class. The teacher told me that a number of the kids have reported seeing you working out on it, and, well, they’d like it very much if you could give them a few pointers, you know.”

“Oh gosh… I dunno. I doubt I’m good enough to give anyone a demonstration…”

“Oh, sure you are. They say you’re very good. And it’ll be good for the kids.”

“Oh. Sure. Well, then.” With Irritable Bowel Syndrome threatening to come on, I took off my suit jacket and hesitantly draped it over the back of my chair. It was a very long walk (in my mind) down the halls, down the stairs, and out to the gymnasium on the other end of the building. When I pushed through the double doors and stepped into the gym, I was immediately mortified. My principal had said “some kids.” But my God, there had to be four Phys Ed classes waiting for me out there, if not more, all standing around the speed bag in a semi-circle. I nearly fainted. Phobias are powerful things, aren’t they. The human Red Sea parted, allowing me a slim corridor through which to pass. It really felt like most of my inner systems were shutting down. Sweat? I guess to hell I was sweating!

I have no memory of what I might have said to the kids and coaches. I stumbled through some kind of introduction I guess, but it probably didn’t make a lot of sense. I do know that I owned up to my nervousness. Whatever I said, eventually it was time came to face the bag. I know that my timing was way off, due to nerves, and I remember botching my routine on my first two or three tries which was so embarrassing, especially when I just missed getting slapped in the nose again by a rebound, as I had on day-one. “OK, I’m really nervous,” I confessed. “No shit!” somebody muttered in the crowd behind me. Yeah. Hecklers. All I needed.

But then my brain kicked in, telling myself I needed to begin slowly, as slowly as I had when I had my first lesson. So, that’s what I did. Slow-motion… right fist-bam bam bam, left fist-bam bam bam, right fist-bam bam bam, which I’m sure was disappointingly boring to the mob. But… as I gradually increased the speed, I began to feel my muscle memory kicking back in.And as I no longer was facing all those faces in the crowd, only the bag itself, I could concentrate better and with that, I could feel my protective bubble-cocoon forming around me…

And then, I was AOK! Houston, we no longer have a problem! Man, I started loosening up, and then really letting loose! I watched the bag disappear into the blur right before my very eyes! And then, before I knew it, my elbows came into play. And then my forehead was getting its licks in, taking turns with my fists at batting that bag back! Right fist-bam bam bam, left fist-bam bam bam, right elbow-bam bam bam, left elbow-bam bam bam, forehead-bam bam bam… I mean, what a show-off! You know, sometimes when you discover you’re performing well, you can feel the mood change in your audience, and I was suddenly more confident that all was well behind me.

And then the class bell was ringing, although I barely noticed it. But the kids were heading off to other classes. But there! It was done! Over! Ended! I could breathe.

Well, not quite ended exactly. Because after that day, after… the word got out, a couple or more things began to happen…

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

Something I need to tell you about Belfast in 1968. It was one tough little town.

For instance there was a movie theater downtown. And there were a couple of levels in that theater, so that it was possible to be showing a movie on one level while having some entirely different type of event happening on the other.

So one of the other types of events was local amateur boxing. Now that would have struck me as perfectly fine. But their definition of amateur boxing seemed to mean NO TRAINING NEEDED. So it was come one, come all. Come as you are. Walk-ins off the street were fine.

Now the way that showed up in the high school scene is that on many a Monday morning (or sometimes even by a Wednesday morning, depending on just how laid up or crippled the “amateur” had become) I’d commonly see boys coming back to school with a black eye, one or two teeth knocked out, a bandaged fist, or an arm in a sling. Seemed pretty sketchy to me, but that’s how it was.

How that showed up in my high school teacher’s life is that suddenly I started getting shadowed by these big, 200-pound bruiser-types would stop me in the hall, or show up in my classroom after school, to invite me to come on down! They thought it’s be just great to get to spar a few rounds with me, a faculty member. Of course I had zero interest to become one of their outside-of school “friends” or their sparring partner. That was a pretty uncomfortable feeling. I would assure them over and over that I was not a boxer. They’d laugh that off because to them it was so obvious that that’s exactly what I was, and everybody in school knew it.

For a lot of them, they felt they didn’t need any special training because they had their muscled arms, their scarred fists, and their pea-sized brains. What else could they need or want? They didn’t “get” the speed bag concept. They had no clue how to work that speedbag because… We don’ neeed no steenkin’ speed or timing. We just knock your block off. They were the infamous one-punch speed bag mutilators.

After assuring them over and that I was just an English teacher and nothing else, they’d ask, “Well, why don’t you come down to the theater and be my trainer then?” They were utterly confused when I’d tell them, “No, you know what? I’ll be content just staying home, rocking in my old rocking chair on the porch during the evenings, just reading a good book. But I could see it in their eyes. They were imagining, This guy’s a professional, that’s what. He just thinks he’s too good to bother himself with our amateur stuff.

Anyway, the invitations kept coming and coming, pretty much throughout the year that I lived there. Honestly, I found it a little scary.

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

OK, I’m going to bring this post to an end with an odd-duck little Belfast anecdote. There are so many of them. This one happened in one of my two Speech classes, the one where nobody was ever willing to make a speech, even a small one.

There was one kid there, Peter by name, who took that refusal to the ultimate level. He just refused to talk in my class at all. You would never even catch him whispering to one of his classmates. It was as if he had taken a monk’s vow of silence. Sometimes I wondered if he was honestly able to speak, if maybe there was something wrong with his vocal chords. But then, I’d see him talking to people outside of class. Imagine my frustration.

I been at my wit’s end trying to think up some really easy assignment that even the shyest, most obstinate kid could get behind. And what I’d come up with was basically a somewhat disguised version of Show and Tell. I asked them to pick some object, nearly any object that was in some way important to them (an object that would help us learn a little bit about the speaker) and then say just a few sentences about it. That’s all. Maybe tell why it’s important. Maybe tell how, or even where, they’d got it. A memento of some vacation trip they’d taken, perhaps. A picture of a friend. Anything!

And here was the kicker: Anybody who did this, anybody who could actually get up in front of the class, show the class an object,and then blurt out three or more sentences about the object will receive a guaranteed automatic A+ . (I was willing to do anything to get the ball rolling in those strange souls. Sometime you just had to prime the pump.)

It worked somewhat well. Some kids did stand at the front of the room. Some kids did manage to mutter something or other. Hey, I was really getting somewhere! I was on a roll. And those students did receive their automatic A+ as promised.

All except Peter.

At first I thought he was actually going to participate. I’d said, “Pete? OK. It looks like your turn. You’re up. Whattya say?” He grinned. He was good at grinning. Grinned big time whenever I acknowledged him, actually. Not so hot at eye contact though. Never once looked me directly in the eye, did Pete. Didn’t look anbody in the eye as far as I knew. But after I called on him, and after honestly a two-minute period of grinning hesitation, he bent over and started rifling through his large duffle bag on the floor for… something. It was a good sign.

At last he pulled out his object. A portable radio.

“A radio,” I said. “That’s great Pete. I’m guessing most of us can identify with that choice. Good. So, go on up to the front, and then we’ll listen to your presentation, alright?”

It was obvious, despite the big Cheshire cat grin, that he didn’t want to do that. It took quite a bit of coaxing, but (yay!) he did finally walk himself up there to the front. I was pretty excited about the progress. “Alright, Pete. Go ahead now. We’re all ready.”

It was so weird, the way he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look at anybody. His eyes would dart left, then right, up, then down, but never a hint of eye contact. It was sad. Easy to imagine something very negative had happened in his life. And here I was, a totally inexperienced “teacher,” flying by the seat of my pants with all of this.

“Pete?”

No response. Nothing. He was just standing there, holding the radio. “We’re ready, Pete. You can do this. Just a few comments now, and the A+ is yours.”

By now I pretty much knew he wasn’t going to speak, and that added to the sadness. sad. “Peter? This is your last chance. C’mon. We’re waiting…”

Suddenly Pete lifted the little radio up chest high, examined it for a moment, plucked the little antenna up out of its socket, and turned the it on. Suddenly we could all hear ome disc jockey’s voice, talking it up to his fans. I allowed myself to listen for half a minute, and then said, “Pete? It’s time to say a few words…”

And what did Pete do? He responded by turning up the volume. “Well, OK. Guess that’s just about it, Pete. Last chance. Either you say something, or I‘m gonna have to ask you sit back down. OK?”

Grinning a chilling Jack-o-Lantern’s grin, now he cranked the volume all the way up. I mean really cranked it! That little radio put out a lot more oomph than I’d ever have guessed. And there he simply stood, a boy with radio in hand.

“OK. That’s it Pete. Have a seat please.”

Nothing

“Sit down, Pete. I mean it.”But he didn’t, he wouldn’t. “Rightnow” Either sit down, or you’ll have to go to the office.” I realized I might as well have been talking to the wall. He wouldn’t budge. I was sitting at the back of the room for this assignment, and at this point I stood up. “OK, you know where the door is.”

As I started walking down the aisle toward the front, Pete sidled off to his right. As I moved to follow him, he started moving up an aisle two aisles over. I strolled over to his current aisle and started moving up it, causing him to execute a long u-turn at the back of the classroom and occupy another one three aisles over.

“Aw, c’mon, Pete. That’s enough, now. Let’s not make it any worse. Out you go on your own, or I’ll hafta call the assistant principal!” That ultimate threat obviously carried no weight whatsoever that I could see. It had now become a surreal game of Catch as Catch Can. With chess moves, him always keeping approximately two aisles away from me! They certainly hadn’t prepared me for anything even close to this in our Classroom Management seminars and classes What was I expected to do?

Enough was enough. My teaching career was only days old and I had never anticipated, or even really imagined (until this moment) having to lay my hands on anyone, but… the other kids thought this was the most entertaining joke ever, and were beginning to cheer and egg him on. It had to end.

I decided to take a short cut. There was an empty desk in the row between Pete and myself, so I muckled onto it and began pushing, to bulldoze it sideways out of the line of desks! Like all of them in that room, it was an ancient wooden thing so old that Abraham Lincoln might have sat in it prior to the Civil War. Pete, still clutching the loud radio, saw what I was up to and frantically started glancing forward and aft for the best possible escape route! Now, just as someone comically yelled, “Look out, Pete, he’s a boxer!” one of the front legs of my desk got hung up on something, sending it toppling forward to crash onto the floor with practically thunderclap! Pete whirled back around to face me! Then we both found ourselves gawking down at the thing between lying there between us.

Like him, I was shocked at seeing the old desk lying there in two main pieces, split right down the middle from the concussion! But unlike him, I actually knew what had really just happened. Pete on the other hand, with “Look out, Pete, he’s a boxer!” still echoing in his ears, did not. For all he knew, I might have busted the desk in half in a rage with a single, mighty blow from my Heavyweight Champion of the World FIST OF FURY!

The only good thing about that was that I didn’t have to ask Pete anymore to leave my classroom. He just went scampering out that door like a rabbit with its tail on fire.

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

So now you understand why a lady from Belfast I’d never met looked at me across the teachers’ lounge table and surprised me, surprised all of us really, with, “So… you’re the boxer.”

It’s as I told you near the beginning of Part II: “It so amazes me how one little decision you make can bend the vector of your life in future ways you’d never imagine. Just as a beam of light bends when it passes through a clear glass of water. And once you make that decision, and then go forward with it, you‘re living in an imperceptibly altered universe.

“I made a little decision back in 1966. I was a college junior at the time…”

And from that insignificant decision, simply to take up learning how to increase my timing via the use of something called a speed bag (a hobby basically no more momentous than, say, taking up baton twirling or coin collecting), I have been remembered through the decades by a high school faculty and student body, as the boxing English teacher.

“It’s a strange life, no matter how you shake it, it’s a strange life…” – Dave Mallett

Thanks for reading.

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POET… PEACENIK… PUGILIST? PART II

“POET … PEACENIK… PUGILIST? PART I” ended with the following:

“Omigod! A memory suddenly clicks on in your mind! Oh SHIT! I know what this is about!”

Everybody leans forward. The gorilla football coach, sizing you up with a crocodile grin says, “So how ‘bout you and me, we have us a little sparring session out in the gym this afternoon? You could, you know, give me some pointers.”

With a futile shake of the head, you mutter, “For crying out loud, I can’t believe this is happening all over again!”

But it is.

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

A JOURNEY OF 1000 MILES BEGINS WITH…

“It’s a strange life, no matter how you shake it, it’s a strange life…” – Dave Mallett

Please know that I can’t write fiction to save my life. Believe me, I’ve tried. So whatever it is I end up writing, it always comes directly from real experiences. The above little round-table dialogue happened just as I’ve described it, if not word for exact word. And the conversation left me feeling that our good ol’, typical, every day teachers’ luncheon had (whoosh!) just suddenly deep-sixed itself straight down Alice’s Wonderland rabbit hole!

I mean, put yourself in my shoes—someone you’d just met, somebody to whom you had spoken only those three, maybe four sentences (in your life), just suddenly willy-nilly turns the conversation inside out and upside down just like that! By outing you as a boxer. I mean, If I’d been as a matador, would that be any more bizarre? I was looking her eye to eye across the table thinking, OK, so who’s the dweeb that let the escaped inmatein here?

Meanwhile, it was a little excruciating, the way everybody just keptsitting there, silently gawking. Things had gotten creepy fast. I was like, C’mon people! Say something! Can’t somebody at least say, “Well. This is a little awkward, isn’t it!” I was all knotted up in frustration.

And then, like I said, it hit me.

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

You know, it so amazes me how one little decision you make can bend the vector of your life in future ways you’d never imagine. Just as a beam of light bends when it passes through a clear glass of water. And once you make that decision, and then go forward with it, you‘re living in an imperceptibly altered universe.

I made a little decision back in 1966. I was a college junior at the time.

I’d started hanging out in the gymnasium, basically because my roommate and I had taken up playing handball two or three times a week. I was experiencing a lot of stress from some of my classes that year (especially chemistry), and it helped me relax, and burn off some of my nervous energy. Plus, at the same time it was getting me into excellent shape. I’d been jumping rope there, doing pull-ups, push-ups, crunches, etc. almost every week day. And the feeling I was getting from the workouts was so satisfying, so incredibly therapeutic.

But anyway, I started noticing this young guy who was also showing up daily at the gym. A loner, it seemed, just about my height and weight, and short like me. Anyway, he was sticking to a regimen similar to mine, but with one big exception. There was a punching bag hanging down, over in one corner of the room. Not the big bag (no, not one of those Rocky Balboa’s frozen-hanging-steer-carcass-punching-bags in the slaughter house meat freezer), but the small one known commonly as the speed bag or peanut bag. About the size of a football.

And man, when he went to work on that thing, I couldn’t take my eyes off his “magic.” Yeah, I just called it magic, even though it wasn’t anything you can’s see in the movies from time to time. In fact, most serious athletes training for the ring could probably match this guy’s speed and timing on it. Because those guys all learn to do that, don’t they.

But here’s the thing: (1) I’d never personally witnessed someone doing the routine up close and personal, and never right there in the same room as I, and (2) it turned out that there was a kind of crude beauty to it. This guy’s fists made the little bag “disappear” in a blur! And even watching him up close, I could not see how he was possibly pulling that off.

He’d start off with a probing little punch or two at first, and then more taps, but once he’d let his fists go and got that little blur of a bag purring like a twelve-horse Yamaha outboard motor, his arms would seemingly no longer be moving. And surprisingly his fists didn’t seem to be all that busy either, although of course they were doing what they had to do. I mean, his mitts were just casually rolling, not that fast either, round and round about each other in the air like a large pair of twiddling thumbs. Or, so it seemed, almost like some little old lady’s’ hands when she’s crocheting.

But… man, he’d ply that bag into a frickin’ leather tuning fork! So from my inexperienced point of view, it looked amazing. I mean I saw his two arms, attached to that rackety blur, as a pair of biological jumper cables keeping that noisy little motor running. It just looked so cool.

I definitely knew I would like to try my hand at it.

But I was shy, so I waited till he’d left. Then I tiptoed over to the bag and gingerly gave it a couple of friendly, nothing-burger, taps. Of course the bag didn’t do anything more notable than swing back and forth a couple of times and then (not being at all impressed with my assault) fell right back sleep again. Just hanging there, practically taunting me with its superior, leathery That all ya got? Punk?

So I followed that up with a serious, sharp punch with my lightning right!

Before my left got a chance to fly up there into the fray to back me up, that rebounding bag of cement whapped my nose one hell of a nasty blow that raced shockwaves of excruciating pain right through my eyeballs and on back to my unsuspecting brain! I was wobbled, nearly dropped right there in a one-punch knockout loss! My eyes, immediately blinded behind a welled-up flood of tears; my wasp-stung schnozz oozing, but not with blood! I mean… hey. Baby, that HURT!

I staggered away like a drunk, desperate to get myself safely out of range before another attack of the damned thing! I mean, bite me once, shame on you! Bite me twice, shame on me!

The pain took only a little while to fade. But the black and blue bruises all over my ego would hang in there for days. I have to admit it: I’m a snowflake. I have a fragile ego. And this… it just felt so… unfair. Blindsiding me with Newton’s Third law like that. I never saw it coming.

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

I saw the guy again a couple of days later, approached him, and humbled myself. “How the hell do you do this?” I asked. “Not that I’m necessarily planning on trying it, mind you.” And yes, there I actually was. Momentarily lowering my self-esteem by allowing myself by playing the old See, I’m just asking for a friend card. “I mean, you make it look so easy.”

This young man was a true gentleman. He generously took me under his wing and walked me through the ABC’s of it. Who knows? Maybe he took one look at me and saw a potential future heavyweight champion of the world.

“First and foremost, this is not a punching bag,” he began. “It’s a speed bag. Idiots come in here, take one powerful haymaker swing at it, to show how tough they are, and bust the thing. Then, guess what. We don’t have a bag for another a couple of weeks. So. This bag is not about power or strength. It is about speed and timing only. OK?”

“OK!” In my mind, I checked off No punching the punching bag. “Got it.”

“So then…” And he began walking me through the exercise in slow motion. It was like stop-motion photography. “It’s a one-two-three count rhythm you’re after. Like in music. So, think of yourself playing an instrument. A percussion instrument. With your hands.

“So first of course you make fists, right? Only then… instead of striking the bag knuckles-first, you bat it away with the side of your fist. Picture yourself driving a nail into a plank of wood, bare-handed. You wouldn’t use your knuckles for that, would you. No. You’d bang it like your fist was a hammer. Or… think of knocking on somebody’s door. Normally, you’d tap with your knuckles. But if you were a cop serving a warrant, say, you’d hammer the door with the side of your fist: bam bam bam! It’s the police, OPEN UP!”

“Side of your fist… got it!”

“OK. Now for the rhythm part. Here’s the bag, just hanging there, right? OK. Watch what happens when I tap it with the side of my fist.”

He does that: the bag flies backward, strikes the rear of the overhead horizontal backboard Bang! to which the bag’s swivel is attached. It flies back (just as it did when it nearly coldcocked me the other day) and, in rebound, slams the backboard in the front: Bang! Rebounds back again, once again striking the rear of the backboard. Bang!

“See? Bam bam bam. One two three. That’s your percussion instrument rhythm.”

I was perplexed. “Uhmm… Wait. I counted four. The bag came back again and hit the board for a fourth bam.”

“Oh, right! But like I said, we only want three. So what you do is… you don’t allow the fourth one to happen.”

“Uhm… I don’t?”

“No. You stop the swings after the three-count. And you do that with the next strike of your fist, catching it in motion. Which starts the count all over again. See?” He demonstrates with the bag, very much in slow motion. “Fist! One two three. Fist! Bam bam bam. Fist! One two three. Fist! Bam bam bam. Fist! “And so on and so forth.

“So no, as you see, there’s no fourth bam allowed. And, as you also saw, I was only doing this one-handed. Which is the best way for you, a beginner, to get your timing down. OK, first do it for a while with your right; then switch over and do it for a while with just your left. Then when you get tired of that, you’ll alternate using both: right fist-bam bam bam, left fist-bam bam bam, right fist-bam bam bam…and so on.”

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

Oops! We’ll stop here.

OK, a little voice inside my head just whispered all private to me, “You’re getting boring, Tommy.”

So… suffice it for me to quickly say that (A) I managed to get so I could do this using both fists… still in slow motion. Then, (B) with both fists fairly fast. Pretty soon, you could say I was getting pretty fast indeed. Soon after that, if you saw me standing there working that speed bag, you could easily surmise, “Wow, check him out. Now that guy’s a boxer, if ever I saw one.”

But wait! It gets better! My gymnasium friend started teaching me little tricks, like getting my elbows and forehead involved in the fray. Without bragging, I have to say (again, without bragging now) that as a Speed Bagger… I… was… MAGNIFICENT! I had graduated Maga Cum Laude from Speed Bagging University. I should have had my own float in the Rose Bowl Parade!

It’s a shame they didn’t have Speed Bagger competitions back then. Just sayin’.

OK, OK, OK. Let’s just let it stand that I was… ahem… in my own opinion, pretty darned good at it, alright? (Not to blow my own horn, of course.)

SO, THANKS FOR READING, AND THANKS FOR SUBSCRIBING. AND KEEP YOUR EYE PEELED FOR THE FINALE: “POET… PEACENIK… PUGILIST? PART III COMING SOON!

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POET… PEACENIK… PUGILIST?

PROLOGUE

I present for your consideration a strange and very unlikely (but true) scenario. (Perhaps you might want to imagine me as Rod Serling, introducing the upcoming episode of The Twilight Zone.)

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

It’s lunchtime, and you’re seated at a long table in the teachers’ lounge, surrounded by a handful of your colleagues. You’ve been employed as a high school English teacher for twenty years or so now, but have only been teaching at the Academy for the last twelve.

You’ve come to know your co-workers well, as they have gotten to know you. Well, with one exception that is, being this newcomer seated directly across the table from you.

She’s been here for two weeks, but you two haven’t crossed paths yet. So one of your colleagues takes it upon himself to introduce you to this new face in the crowd.

You learn her name; she learns yours. Turns out she’s a temporary ed tech who lives in, and commutes from, Belfast. OK, fine. But you’ve noticed that her eyes have remained fixed on you for a bit longer than feels necessary. She’s studying your face.

“Your name is Tom Lyford,” she says finally.

“Yeah. That’s right. Pleased to meet you.”

She says, “And didn’t you used to work at Belfast Area High School, some twenty years ago?”

You say, “Guilty as charged. Worked there only for a year though. Why, have we met before?”

“No, but my boyfriend worked with you down there. Back then.”

“Oh. Really? OK. And what’s his name?”

So she tells you and, yes, you do recognize the name. You remember him, if only vaguely. But she continues to creepily appraise you a moment or two longer. Then… “So,” she says, “you’re the boxer.”

Everyone stops talking among themselves, and puts their forks down. This is probably one of the most absurd statements you, or anyone in that room, could’ve imagined. All eyes are on her, then on you, then back on her, and then back to you again as, after you do your double take, you laugh an uncomfortable laugh and ask, “The what?”

She says, “The boxer.”

“That’s what I thought you said. But… what? Boy, have you ever got the wrong guy. A boxer! Me? Hah! That’s a laugh and a half. I mean, I can’t believe you even said that. ‘Cause I was never…”

Jeez, the way your fellow teachers have their eyes locked on you now, it’s… embarrassing. All eyes roll back to her when she says, “Yes,” with conviction. “The name’s right. You both worked there twenty years ago. And the two of you remember each other, so… gotta be you. And he clearly stated you were a fighter.”

“No! Now, let’s put on the brakes for just a minute here, OK? This is a joke, right? ‘Cause… it is funny. Ridiculous but funny! OK so… somebody put you up to this, right? One of these jerks?”

She shakes her head, looking a little bruised. “Uh-UH. I’m serious. Look. I heard them say your name at morning assembly last week… when you made that presentation. And for some reason or other… I dunno… it just sounded kinda familiar. And when I went home last weekend, my boyfriend, Steve, wanted to know all about how my first week went, and among other things I told him, I happened to mention your name. And he said, ‘Tom Lyford? Hey, I knew him!’

And then eventually he got his hands on the right old yearbook, and there you were. Looking a little different back then, without the beard, but it was obviously you. ‘An English teacher,’ he told me. ‘And he was a boxer.’”

“Well, that’s crazy. I was NEVER…!” But man, the way everybody’s silently keeping their eyes locked on you like you’re some TV star in a live sitcom or something, it’s become so unsettling you’re a little at a loss for words.

And then one of the Phys. Ed. teachers/coaches leans forward and says to you with a twinkle in his eye, “So. You been holding out on us, eh, Tommy boy?” Which, jeez, puts an awful thought in your head: Gawd, are they all starting to wonder who the ACTUAL nut-job is here? The new stranger in town, or their self-proclaimed pacifist/poet/drama coach who, for all they know, might’ve been living among them all this time while secretly hiding out in the Witness Protection Program?

You remind myself to just say no to paranoia.

“Well, obviously, when you found me in that yearbook, it never said anything about me as a boxer, did it. No! It said English and speech, plus I was the drama coach, OK? C’mon now. it never said word-one about me being…”

Tom Lyford, Belfast Area High School Dramatics Coach, front row, far right–, NOT a boxer…

Omigod! A memory suddenly clicks on in your mind! “Oh SHIT! I know what this is about!”

Everybody leans forward. The gorilla football coach, sizing you up with a crocodile grin says, “So how ‘bout you and me, we have us a little sparring session out in the gym this afternoon? You could, you know, give me some pointers.”

With a futile shake of the head, you mutter, “For crying out loud, I can’t believe this is happening all over again!”

But it is.

So, PLEASE keep a sharp eye out for the second installment of POET… PEACENIK… PUGILIST?? coming out SOON!…

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“If you could read my mind, Love…” Part 2

“If You Could Read My Mind, Love…” Part 1 ended with…

“At long last, he launches right into it. And all of us, the vast, entire WGUY radio listening audience everywhere, is finally given the lowdown.

“And the lowdown is… kind of incredible.”

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

Yes, I’m here to tell you that the “lowdown” (note the quotation marks here) was indeed a tad incredible. And I remind you that you were warned in Part 1 that the story, though true, was a rather silly story as well. So there’s that.

But OK. The voice that came on the air came across as dark, authoritative, and rather harrumphing, leaving all of us 17 year old “adults” and younger (we, the demographic majority of WGUY’S listenership) suspecting that the man might be the President or CEO of WGUY, if not of the American Broadcasting Association itself. And in the following not-verbatim-nutshell, here is what he “regretted having to impart”:

(stock photo– not Jack Dalton)
It had long been no secret that our DJ, Mr. Jack Dalton, considers himself a champion of Democracy, and had long been feeling seriously distressed about the indefensible state of affairs in East and West Germany— namely the Berlin Wall.

Mr. Dalton, who was obviously feeling the frustration of his utter sense of powerlessness that many lone individuals feel in the face of his inability to take effective action when needed, decided to take it upon himself to perpetrate a one-man protest.

Consequently, and unfortunately, he arbitrarily chose our WGUY broadcast radio station to be the platform to rally the largest population possible into action.

In so doing, he impulsively locked himself inside the station’s sound studio, and refused to come out.

He then began the playing and replaying of that dreadful song that had become his personal anthem.

And finally, our listeners must rest assured in the confidence that any other such event such would never be allowed to re-occur at WGUY. Mr. Dalton had just had been summarily fired. End of story.

Now, I think a lot of us 17 year old and younger “adults”felt that firing the poor man was excessively harsh. We were used to seeing our own age group getting summarily punished, for our own little crimes and misdemeanors, all the time, but never an adult. Especially not an adult that we looked up to and who, in our callow opinion, had done little wrong.

First of all, the incident had given us something that was mysteriously fun to speculate on throughout the day. Something that wasn’t boring for a change. Secondly, we all pretty much loved our Jack the DJ Dalton. His was the disembodied radio voice that woke us up practically every morning, that spoke to us every day— an adult who actually seemed to ‘get’ us, you know? Plus, our daily entertainer; he’d come out with the wildest and craziest funny things sometimes. It was easy to feel he was one of the few adults who seemed… on our side. In a way, he seemed one of us.

But more importantly, he was the bringer of our MUSIC, which was our daily bread.

And then, there was something else to consider. Just what, exactly, was his “crime?” Standing up for something he believed in? Being against the Berlin Wall? I mean, who wasn’t? What, were we kids the only ones willing to look at this and see The Big Picture? I mean, the boys in my circle were starting to take the man’s firing personally. It was an injury, an injustice that had been perpetrated on them, damnit! And for them, this was a cause worth fighting for. The hornets’ nest had been stirred up. Oh, my pals were talking it up, big time. Like something needed to be done.

Honestly? I felt somewhat that way myself, onlynot nearly so strongly. In my home and upbringing, the parents laid down the law, and the parents administered the justice, so to speak. The rules were (well, mostly) common sense rules and you just had to go with them, didn’t you. I mean even to me, the little delinquent of the family, that seemed fair. Hey, I was a real little sneak when it came to breaking some of the rules, but every time I got caught at it, like it or not (and oh, I never liked it), it always turned out it to have been my own stupid damn fault.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I‘d grown up feeling that in the long run you just had to accept the status quo. Didn’t seem to me like there was that much of a choice anyway. So… when this WGUY flap went down, I felt bad for the guy, sure. And yeah, I felt some of the emotional turmoil too. But in the long run like I said, I was like, he got fired, that’s too bad. Yeah, I liked his show and everything, but… oh well then. What can you do?

Little did I know that an onslaught of angry phone calls were being made from all over the place. WGUY’s office phone was reportedly ringing off the hook. People didn’t like their DJ getting summarily fired, did they. They were angry. And they were busy making it clear to the fire-ers that they wanted their fire-ee summarily reinstated. But me? I was out of the loop. I’d just gone home, watched a little TV, and then to bed. I never found out until the following afternoon when I went back in to work and got the new “lowdown” from some of my friends who popped into the garage to tell me the “great news.”

Huey Cole’s Esso, 20 years before I worked there…

What great news? The radio station had been amazingly overwhelmed with the hundreds of protests and the owners had finally caved in to the demands!

Wow. I was shocked. Now my pals (who, like me, lived thirty-five miles away from the GUY studios) had found all this out through the grapevine, second-hand. They themselves personally had nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome. Yet, by the way they were strutting around and claiming victory, you’d think they’d stormed the Bastille and chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head.

Teen-agers. You gotta love’em.

But anyway, it was all over. It had been a bloodless coup. Jack Dalton was right back on the air that evening and right back on the old payroll, like nothing whatsoever had ever happened. The proletariat had won the day over their capitalist oppressors. The world that was WGUYville was still a democracy. So. There would be Jack Dalton’s music. And all was well in the land.

And sure, I was happy for our DJ.

But… SPOILER ALERT: everything I’ve told you… you’ve gotten from the point of view of my 17 year old self. A kid’s point of view. A kid’s version of “the lowdown.” But as always, there were other points of view. More about this soon.

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

The brain is a frickin’ file cabinet, isn’t it. And this one little pretty-much-forgotten event has been occupying one or more of my brain cells for almost sixty years. And in all those sixty years, I can recall only one other time that this incident conjured itself right up out of my subconscious memory. That happened ten or twelve years ago at the library where I work.

Four or five of us on the staff were, for whatever reason, chatting about some of our favorite novelty songs. Doctor Demento’s name had come up, bringing along with it such crazy titles such as Steve Martin’s “King Tut,” Tom T-Bone Stankus’ “Existential Blues,” Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha”, and “Junk Food Junkie” by Larry Gross, to name a few. And suddenly, bing!, the “West of the Wall” thing had popped up unbidden in my mind, seemingly out of the blue since the song is not a novelty tune in and of itself.

“Do any of you remember a particular song called ‘West of the Wall?” I asked.

The question got me blank stares and the shaking of heads.

So OK, I launched into the strange saga of WGUY’s for-me–memorable episode when, suddenly, one of our library clerks, Jeannie Tabor, joyfully interrupted saying, “Oh my god! I DO remember that happening! It was so… weird, wasn’t it!”

Actual X-ray of my brain…

So there were a pair of us then! Two of us each with a brain cell that had been harboring this identical data (no doubt in the form of ones and zeros), data that had been lying dormant all these years like a little time capsule waiting to be opened! So then, excitedly, we both went on, telling the story together, as each of us remembered it. What fun!

But it didn’t take long after that for our little time capsule excitement to subside, the fun little memory curling up again in our respective brain cells and going right back to sleep. In my case, never again to be awakened from its little vampire crypt until… one month ago, it just popped back up in my head (who knows why) and got me thinking of the incident as a possible topic for this blog. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But wait, there’s more! As I began to compose this post, I remembered how ridiculously surprised I’d been when Jeannie had confirmed my little story. And I started to wonder… who else, if anyone, might also remember it.

So what did I do? I fired up my laptop and did the standard twenty-first century thing. I went to Google. I figured there must be more people out there who remember it.

Well, even with Google, finding info on such obscure little happening wasn’t easy. For half a day, I worked my butt off like a private eye. And finally… I did manage to find a few conversational traces of a thread in the Facebook archives.

The following four quotations from old Facebook messages (once posted by a few now-disembodied texters) are all I was able to dig up from the some six decades of the digital graveyard:

“Kent Taylor Smith Hi Kent. Yup, I was listening that day and heard it. It was about the same time that I went into radio. BTW: Are you still with THE WAVE?”

“On August 13, 1961, East Berlin closed its border with West Berlin and erected a wall to stem the flow of Easterners to the West. This brought to mind a song, sung my Toni Fisher, titled “West of the Wall” which was released the following year, around June ’62. Well, one thought led to another and Bangor’s dawn to dusk radio station, WGUY, came to mind. They played all the “good stuff,” including “West of the Wall.” So, now I’m thinking did they really play “West of the Wall,” continuously, one day as a kind of protest, or is this just the confused memory of a 12 year-old adolescent? I don’t recall the names of the ‘jocks’ at WGUY who might be able to answer this torturous question. Is there anyone out there to help relieve this pressure? Perhaps the guys from Bangor, Maine – Radio & TV?”

“The event happened, it was so long ago nobody remembers it other than it happened. I first started working for WGUY in 2000 at the 102.1 incarnation. Nobody involved with the station then, or since, was involved. I even asked Bob Mooney about it once and he could barely remember it.”

“Your memory is very good, John. I remember that incident. Yes, a DJ on WGUY named Jack Dalton played “West Of the Wall” continuously for several hours. I don’t recall it being a “protest”, but rather a publicity stunt to draw attention to the station. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the aftermath, but if my memory is somewhat close, he was “fired” and then “rehired.” Someone else might have a clearer memory on that part. BTW, publicity stunts were quite common at that time. A DJ would “lock themselves” in the studio and play the same song multiple times, get “fired” and get “rehired” after listeners protested the firing. Side note: studio doors don’t have locks on them.”

So: there were some little data packets of the same ones and zeros lodged in the brains of these guys, just like they’re still lodged in Jeannie’s and my own. Cool.

I’m always finding it very fascinating to be reminded that each of us has one of these biological, state-of-the-art, digital recorders installed right behind our eye sockets and that they’re on all the time, picking up any and all of the vibrations of our five (known) senses and forever cataloging, collating, and cataloging them. I mean, jeez, who knows what all else is stored away in these things? Could be anything. Could be everything. Put’em all together and what’ve you got? Maybe only the entire history of the earth. One soul at a time.

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

So now, allow me to stop here and make this little shout-out to any of you (out there) who have happened by chance to stumble onto this particular post, right now… who were living here in the WGUY World greater area back in ’64, and who also have some first-hand knowledge of this event. If so, could you, would you (please, please, please) leave a comment or two about it in the comment field at the end of the post? Like, you know, what you were doing at the time, what you remember thinking about it at the time, etc. Who knows, maybe there’s a lot of us. Maybe we could start a club. Or a support group, lol.

But no, seriously, all kidding aside, I’d really appreciate you checking in if that’s the case.

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

Alright, I’m going to close here by swapping my 17 year old’s hat for my 77 year old’s one, and focusing us on the last few sentences of the fourth quotation from the Facebook thread I’d unearthed with Google’s help. This is what the gentleman said:

“My memory is a bit fuzzy on the aftermath, but if my memory is somewhat close, he was “fired” and then “rehired.” Someone else might have a clearer memory on that part. BTW, publicity stunts were quite common at that time. A DJ would “lock themselves” in the studio and play the same song multiple times, get “fired” and get “rehired” after listeners protested the firing. Side note: studio doors don’t have locks on them.”

Notice the use of all the quotation marks, where he says “fired” and “rehired”? That’s not the same thing as simply saying fired or rehired, is it. He has also called it what it actually was: a “publicity stunt.” And if you were an adult back then, you would have seen it for what it was too. But on the other hand, if you were a 17 year old or younger, all full of piss and vinegar, you’d probably see it as a call to arms, as many did.

It’s like the station put on a little play. And why? To generate more interest in WGUY… that’s why To do something that would increase the numbers of their young listeners, something their sponsors would appreciate. And of course, that’s what it did. It worked. The adults back then did know. Of course they did. And it’s easy to imagine them rolling their eyes and getting quite a kick out of it. It’s easy to imagine them sighing, shaking their heads, and saying something like, “These crazy teen-agers. They’ll believe anything.”

But it’s the guy’s last sentence, his “Side note” that’s making me smile today.

“Studio doors don’t have locks on them.”

That’s right.

They don’t.

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THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989– bonus track

I’ve gotta admt, several times during my one-month gig as… my little brother’s keeper, this song kept playing in my mind. It was quite popular in 1959, and it had been very popular with me ever since. Even if you’re very young and don’t recognize the name of the band, The Coasters, you are very likely familiar with their signature song “Charlie Brown.”

Anyway, here it is: “Run Red Run.” Hope you enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/vmQrP0m3MgM?si=vUhYNl7mpi102d3_

The Coasters are an American rhythm and blues/rock and roll vocal group who had a string of hits in the late 1950s. With hits including “Searchin’“, “Young Blood“, “Poison Ivy“, and “Yakety Yak“, their most memorable songs were written by the songwriting and producing team of Leiber and Stoller.^[2] Although the Coasters originated outside of mainstream doo-wop, their records were so frequently imitated that they became an important part of the doo-wop legacy through the 1960s. In 1987, they were the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989— CHAPTER 6 EPILOGUE (For Real This Time):

GETTING THIS MONKEY OFF OUR BACKS

Last words from Chapter 5:

“OK. This little piece was supposed to have been the epilogue, but… damnit, apparently it’s not. There was a little too much to cover. So once more I must say, once again, “Gee Whiz, be sure to stay tuned for Chapter 6, The Epilogue!“

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

So… FYI: something totally unexpected happened approximately nine days into Gizmo’s visit. I got a phone call from California. It was Sandy. Of course. I didn’t know anybody else out there at the time. And after all the hello’s and how are you’s and how’s Gizmo doing small talk, she got to the point: her return was going to be delayed for another week. Some technicality. But she was sorry.

And there it was: Gizmo was ours for another seven days or so. Just like that.

That sudden change in plans kind of rocked us, to be honest. A confusing, mixed bag of emotions. Confusing like, Oh my God… NO! and, at the same time, Yay! Because we’d come to love the little critter, no one (I believe) more than me. He was continually growing on us. All of us, not just me. He was becoming one of the family. To me, a tiny baby brother. Still, a real handful though, for all of us.

What could we do? Obviously nothing, while Sandy and Brian were on the West Coast. So inevitably, we just rolled with the punch. We looked at our work schedules and set to figuring how we were further going to tweak our lives. We could do another week. We had to. And life went on with the little bugger.

Missy giving the Giz a drink

Chris entertaining Gizmo; Gizmo entertaing Chris…

I have to admit, the notoriety was still fun, albeit quite a bit taxing on our energy levels. The Giz had turned us into local, small town celebrities. Phone still ringing off the hook from families and individuals just dying to come over to have a taste of the Gizmo experience. Appointments still being pencilled in. So many of them, our home run was like a doctor’s office. And Gizmo himself was still fun. A barrel-of-monkeys fun. He had more energy than the Energizer Bunny, tearing around the house for three hours non-stop, wearing us all out. And then bless his little heart, all of a sudden, dropping straight to sleep in his tracks. Usually in one of our laps. And then he was so cute. And tiny. A little handful of silent sweetness. A joy to behold.

Sleeping against Chris’s belly…

Of course then unthinking someone in the next room would do something, like noisily pushing a chair back under the dining room table. Gizmo’s eyes would blink back open and then, bang! Look out. In a single second, he’d leap right up off your lap and be right back on his happy little warpath! The monkey naps lasted only fifteen minutes, that being all he’d need for his next Tasmanian four- or five- hour tour of deviltry. I have to admit, I’m grinning just thinking about it.

He loved games. Every day, quite a few times a day, Gizmo enjoyed his “egg hunts.” But instead of Easter eggs, he’d be searching all over for my empty, plastic 35 mm film canisters. Empty of film rolls, that is. What they had in them back then were his favorite treats: raisins, grapes, and pretzels. He loved popping off those film canister caps for his “Crackerjack-type “prizes” within.

And boy, did that little rug rat ever love to wrestle!

Wrestling…

That was the fun that wore me out the most. I’ve always loved going at it with frisky little kittens and cats, to the point where my hands would always end up with happy those itchy little criss-cross cat-scratches all over. But Gizmo never bit me. Often he would playfully close his teeth on my hands in what I knew were little love-bites. Just like cats do, only when they do it they’re signaling you to back off. Gizmo. He was a wrestling ball of electric energy!

Of course his favorite game unfortunately was still snitching one of one of my cassette tapes and absconding, with me the easy-to-escape posse humping behind on his trail.

So, all in all, entertaining our little guest wouldn’t be all that hard to endure for an extra week. Just gloriously exhausting

But… oddly, there was something going on with me that at the time I was consciously unaware of. Something subconscious, and psychological. It’s like I had fallen under a spell. So much so it was like Gizmo’s and my brains had practically merged. And I was thinking about him all the time, whether I was in school or at home. If I wasn’t talking about him with somebody, I was probably worrying about him. So OK, I guess I’ll have to call it what it was: co-dependence.

I didn’t know it before Gizmo came into our lives, but I was just a damn simian co-dependent waiting to happen. When he was happy, I washappy. When he was sad,so was I. And when he was very, very sad, as he was every evening when it was time for him to be put back in lock-up for the night like some little prisoner (which he literally was, which he had to be), oh man, I felt so terribly guilty. A lot of it was still the guilt hanging over me from shutting his tail in the door.

But most of it was… well, he was just so damn human. So it was kind of like, Hey, is it humane to lock up a very human-like child alone in a cage every night? No! Of course not. Would I want to be locked up in a cage every night? No. I would not. And you know, if the damn cage had been a lot larger, I think I probably would’ve crawled right in there with him to keep him company and keep him from getting so damn sad and lonely. Yes, that’s pretty messed up exaggeration, I know.

Oh, Gizmo was an artist when it came to tugging at my heart strings. I mean big time. Because whenever he would finally allow himself to be placed back in the cage for the night, he’d drop heavily down into the bottom compartment of his cage; select one of his two security pillows (usually the Chicken, occasionally Garfield); pick it up and hug it in his arms ever so tightly to his little chest for all he was worth; and then begin his slow, tragic rocking. Back… and forth, back… and forth. And you couldn’t cheer him up no way, no how. I knew a lot about depression back then, and the word “depressed” would begin echoing in my brain. Gizmo seemed so depressed. I couldn’t blame him. And his depression began to osmose into my own head. Yes, unhealthy, I know but I was so wrapped up in him, I couldn’t think about me.

And the real kicker was, he’d make his face into the saddest mask you could ever dream up. The epitome of heartbreak. The Oh woe is poor old me! And nothing you might think of to do to try to cheer him up would have even a sliver of a chance of working. That expression would remain tattooed on for the night. It was his nightly night-time face and that’s all she wrote.

There used to be this very famous circus clown in the 1950s and 60s you might have heard of named Emmet Kelly. His signature “character” was the world’s saddest clown, “Weary Willie,” and his face was always SO sad, his audiences would be overcome with a sense of deep sadness even while they giggled at his antics.

I could swear that Gizmo was channeling Emmet Kelly. Yes, his Weary Willie’s face was killing me. And I was at a loss as to what ever to do about it. So that was it. On went his little life. Comedy during the day time. Tragedy during the night.

And time marched on…

Days later, the phone rang again. And yes, it was once again Sandy. So, I was thinking to myself as I picked up the phone, Wow, apparently the end has arrived. I said Hello,” with anxious feelings. Yes, I’d really become so attached to the little fellow but, you know, if he had to go… he’d have to go, right?

But that wasn’t what this call was about. At all.

Sandy, it turned out, was calling to let us know that, unfortunately, she’d just discovered she had been suffering all along from (wait for it) an allergy to Gizmo. While in California, all the hives and breathing problems she’d been tolerating for months had (poof!) just disappeared.

(Can you imagine what was starting to go through my brain at hearing this news?)

She went on. It was impossible therefore, she informed me, for her to keep on keeping the Giz. So therefore…

(Impossible? Again… can you imagine what was starting to go through my brain at hearing this news?)

…she was being forced to consider finding some alternate caretakers to assume the responsibility for not only caring for the little guy, but to also become active partners in the Helping Hands Foundation program, with all that might entail…

(By the way, back in 1989 the expressions OMG and WTF? had yet to be coined.)

… so, she went on, it would seem that the most likely candidates for this responsibility would be our family since Gizmo had so successfully bonded with, and taken such a monkeyshine to, us.

Bing! Freeze-framed!

Say what!? I felt as if somebody had just buried an axe in my already-stove-in chest. But even so, old immature and caught-off-guard me (a guy I just loved to hate),I was actually already asking myself, Should I say No?

(Wait, had I just actually asked, SHOULD I? See? What was I thinking? What was wrong with me?)

Should I say Yes? Should I say Maybe? OK, my world, my life was spinning. And slowly picking up speed.

On the one hand, I of course really loved little Gizmo. So much. But on the other hand, there were qualms. Lots of qualms. Tsunami qualms, without even considering the soon-to-come Phyllis Qualms. Oh, inside I knew I wanted to say No, of course not and say it right away. But…

I also somehow sorta wanted to give in and say yes, too. So there I was, standing in the center of a crossroads intersection with heavy traffic was barreling head-on at me from all four lanes.

I really needed to stall, obviously. Be wishy-washy about it, I told myself. The truth was I was honestly feeling awfully damned wishy-washy inside anyway. Plus, damnit, I was cursed as being one of those guys who, for whatever reason, always found it next to impossible to say no to most requests. Never wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings, you know. But meanwhile, my brain was playing ping-pong with Maybe this, maybe that… maybe I might even… really want to do it. I mean…? Agonizing that Jeez though, if WE don’t take him, then who will? Finding another caretaker for my little buddy wouldn’t be very easy, if not impossible. And even so, what would this mean for Gizmo? Getting bounced around again and again? How so unfair would that be?

So I stalled. “Uhmmm… not sure. Hafta talk to Phyl about it. See, I really don’t know, you know?”

Whatever! Damn, why hadn’t Phyllis picked up the stupid phone? I said goodbye and hung up, my stomach one big, churning, gastrointestinal merry-go-round. But at least I hadn’t said yes. At least there was that. But neither had I said no. I’d just bought me a little time is all. But after that call, it was Should I or Shouldn’t I? rolling around in my head. And… could I even sayI maybe even might… actually want to take on Gizmo for two or more years? Which is what the Helping Hands Foundation required.

Surprisingly Phyl did not automatically scream NO! ARE YOU CRAZY!? right in my face when I told her what the call had been about, which is what anybody who knew her would have expected her to do. That, in itself, unnerved me. I mean, what was going on in her mind? Everything would’ve been so simple if she had just put her foot right down then and there.

Then again, she hadn’t exactly said yes either, had she. Nope. It was like she was coming across as, OK, let’s take some time and think about it, me being like…What, really? On such a possibly life-changing decision as THIS? Just, what, up and suddenly increase our family by one more, that one being a hairy little mammal-with-a-tail to boot, and Phyl not even liking any animals one bit (except me, maybe)?

But wait just a minute. Maybe her game was Hey, if I just bide my time a little, the odds are that Tom’ll come around to his senses by time the final bell rings. So sure, let him paint himself into a corner and then, when the stark reality of just how much hard WORK for him a yes vote is going to mean (him being the totally lazy one), and how many drastic changes in his good-old, laid-back lifestyle a yes vote will require (heh heh), HE’ll be the one ending up saying no himself. So then it won’t be on MY conscience: he’ll have made the decision himself, not me.

It’s true, Phyl did have that wily side sometimes…

So much to think about! So hard to decide! Jeez! If I were the type of writer who was into clichés, right now I’d probably be tapping away, “I was between a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea. I didn’t know whether to fish or cut bait.” Fortunately, I never use clichés, so I’m not going to do that.

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

Back to the dilemma. So, I could say No, we can’t keep him and… then what? Poof! Life would simply go back to normal…? Well normal, except for the part where then I’d have to live with this painful hole in my heart and guilty soul for having heartlessly kicked the Giz to the curb. Could I live with that?

And if I said OK, we’ll keep him…? What all would that actually mean?

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

That night my guilty feelings doubled when faced with Gizmo’s sad Emmett Kelly face once again. And sure, how much sadder would his face become when I coldly showed him the door? I’d already been staying up later and later with him, but that night I lasted into the near-morning. Me, just inches away, just outside the cage for company; rocking in my rocking chair and reading Stephen King to myself (often aloud so he’d have a hopefully comforting voice); and Giz, rocking his woe-is-me chicken pillow back and forth down there in the basement of his living quarters.

Tom and Gizmo. The odd couple.

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

Finally. The hard decision came three days later. It had been a gut-wrenching, eternally long three days. There had been so much discussion pro and con, pro and con, ad infinitum, during which it had become more and more impossible for me to think. And damn, the onus had been placed on me and me alone to make the decision. Meanwhile, I could feel the family holding its collective breath. How nice of them to wait so patiently for me to see the light.

I remember sitting disconsolately on one of the sheet-covered steps one morning, half way up the staircase, and no doubt channeling Rodin’s The Thinker. I made myself take a good look around, all around, at my surroundings. And what did I finally allow myself to see? A home that now resembled the Badlands of the South Dakota hills. A desert of white-sheeted chair-sofa-and-dining-room-table “dunes.” Random monkey-toys spilled helter-skelter over the floors like random sprouting clusters of cacti. A traveler would do well to watch where he stepped. And behind and before me at the top and base of the stairs, my two foolish attempts at monkey barriers fashioned from anything and everything I could lay my hands on (short of barbed wire), both barriers with the same likelihood of keeping Gizmo out of our upstairs bedrooms as Trump ever had of getting the Mexicans to pay for his equally ineffective wall.

As hard as it was for me to admit, I realized I was suffering from Reverse Stockholm Syndrome. I, the captor, had totally and helplessly identified with, and surrendered to, the captive, rather than the other way around. Gizmo had made a monkey out of me! As joyful as it always was to be in exuberant Gizmo’s company, I’d become an exhausted but happy sad-sack. And for one brief, flickering moment, I knew what I needed to do.

And I knew I’d better do it in one hell of a hurry, lest I lose my focus and fail. Which was still somehow a naggingly tempting possibility.

I immediately stood, made my way down the stairs, struggled my way over the comically useless Gizmo barrier and, with a heavy heart, picked up the living room phone…

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

Now, I need to explain something about the layout of our house, before I begin moving along in this next memory…

Beside the kitchen’s main-entrance doorway from the outdoors, our rectangular kitchen had two more, one each on opposite ends. Now, these were doorways; that is… doorways without actual doors— I guess you could call them passageways. Anyway both passageways opened into the dining room. This made it possible for anyone to be able to walk in a loop, passing from the dining room into the kitchen through doorway #1 on the right, traversing the kitchen, and then exiting the kitchen back into the dining room through the left doorway. Doorway #2.

Over the years, we’d enjoyed watching our grandchildren furiously pedaling their tricycles in their little Indianapolis 500 around that loop, before zooming back through the rest of the house and then wheeling back around to do the loop again. And Gizmo loved that loop too, as it gave him escape options when running evasive action ahead of me, him usually unreeling one of my prized cassette tapes that he’d cruelly absconded with.

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

OK then. So Phyllis had met Sandy and Brian, finally back from California, at the door and invited them in. Me? I was otherwise temporarily engaged, but it would only be a matter of fifteen seconds or so before they’d witness what I was up to with their own eyes. And I have to say, the scene that welcomed them as they stood in our kitchen, waiting to retrieve their little man, was a bizarre one to say the least.

Before Phyllis and company could get their Hello’s and So how was California’s out of the way, here I came! Barreling recklessly into the kitchen through door #1 (nearly colliding with them), skidding in my stocking feet on the floor as I rounded into a wide turn, then gunning t across the kitchen floor, skidding into yet the second turn, and zip! disappearing out through door #2 in a flash!

I’m sure it must’ve taken them a few moments to reassemble in their brains just what in Sam Hell it was they’d actuallyjust seen.

What they had just seen was me with a long white bedsheet tied around my waist like a belt. The rest of that bedsheet had been dragging out behind me on the floor like the train of a wedding gown. And standing upright on that rear end of the bedsheet, and holding tight to side edges of the sheet in his clutched little fists, was our bold little Gizmo the Surfer, hanging ten, with the wind slightly feathering his hair as he’d beach boy’d past (artistic license here—The Giz didn’t really have long enough hair to feather).

And then before you’d ever have guessed it possible, the Giz and I were back once again, performing yet another skidding-across-the-kitchen-floor looptey-loop! And as we bombed our way back out of the kitchen through door #2, I heard Sandy yelling sarcastically at my back, “Oh, thanks SO very MUCH, Tom! We’re just SO DELIGHTED YOU DIDN’T SPOIL HIM while we were gone!”

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You know, Shakespeare was right. “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

After Brian had loaded The Famous Cage With The Infamous Tail-trap Door into the bed of his pickup and had trucked it off and away… and after Sandy had bundled up her little Gizmo all safe and warm inside the front of her quilted parka (with just his doll-like little head peeking out with those big dark eyes peering back at us… we closed the front door behind them, symbolically closing that door on our wonderful and heart-breaking month-long little odyssey. The little Giz was off to his homecoming. And as we surveyed the left-over hurricane clutter around us that would be taking us a few days to rake back into order, we collapsed in bittersweet “homecoming” that was awaiting us as well.

I was of a heavy heart for days. But as days went by, and the come-back-and-go-away-again heavy heart pangs lessened, the knowledge that I’d done the right thing in letting Gizmo go became so much more obvious. My relationship with the twerp had been way too emotional for me to endure for two more years, and I still can’t imagine to this day what the chaos of our daily lives would have been like. I seriously doubt that I would ever have made it. I mean, I practically had myself a P.T.S.D. flashback after re-reading aloud my entire 1989, 80-paged Gizmo daily journal to Phyllis, only just a few weeks ago. Yes I so wanted the adventure then, and that’s exactly what I’d received.

I can’t imagine now, at 77 years of age, how we ever managed a month of it. Youth is made of sterner stuff. But all in all, I’m happier that I took the adventure on for as long as we did. Better that than kicking myself for having passed it up and then looking back in regret. It remains one of the great little memories of my life.

So we never found out who received the joys of Gizmo’s personality after us. Only that it was some nameless and faceless family in some other county in Southern Maine. I sincerely hope it all went well for our little critter.

In the weeks following his departure, I’d grin bitter sweetly to myself whenever I’d find another one of my missing, unraveled cassette tapes hiding behind or under the chairs and sofas, and that one I found by finally spying just one corner of the thing barely poking out from under the refrigerator…

Gizmo.

He was such a good little friend.

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THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989— CHAPTER 5

HEADS AND TAILS

How and where to begin the end?

The Giz came into our lives some thirty-five years ago in 1989. I may have been forty-three years old at the time, but faced with the sudden prospect of getting a chance to spend some quality personal time with the cutest little monkey you could ever imagine…? Hey, Presto! I was a ten-year-old little boy once again.

And it’s no exaggeration to say that Gizmo turned my life (no, our lives) upside-down in oh so many ways.

First of all, during the first six or seven days of his “visit,” it being February school vacation week, finding adequate time to care for the little twerp wasn’t much of an issue. The vacation had been a key factor in our final decision to take Gizmo on in the first place. However it was also clear from the beginning that Gizmo’s stay would crawl “a few days” into the following week as well, meaning then we’d have to make some serious adjustments. I, Phyllis, and Missy had job obligations with specific times for getting to work, etc. and Chris was a student at Foxcroft Academy. I guess we figured we’d just deal with that when the time came.

Secondly our entire household was turned upside down. Every piece of furniture we cared about, which was all of them, was draped in sheets… ours looked like some home where the occupants had gone abroad for a couple of years after covering everything they owned to keep it dust-free until their return. Only we hadn’t gone abroad.

We were all still living there in what now looked like a furniture morgue. Hell, even the stairs were covered in a two or three tacked down sheets, as it turned out that the white paint on the wooden risers was ancient and had begun to chip off here and there; and little ol’ eagle-eye Gizmo (who, like any baby) wanted to put everything including the paint chips he’d break off straight into his little pie-hole.

Thirdly, didn’t Ol’ Giz just love my stacked stereo components: the receiver, the dual tape-deck, the amp, and the turntable. I mentioned earlier his fascination with movable parts, like buttons, knobs, and levers. Several often-recurring stereo-related occurrences included the following two, and more:

(1) Picture a perfect and blessed moment of peaceful, golden silence; Lyford family sprawled upon their sheet-draped sofa and stuffed chairs, soaking up a well-earned rest from all of their exhausting Gizmo-related exertions; Gizmo at the moment nowhere to be seen; the faraway strains of “Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts’ Club Band” suddenly beginning to waft in from the adjacent dining room; all the Lyfords eyebrows simultaneously raised with the immediate understanding that Gizmo has once again just switched on the stereo out there; then, hmmm, a slight increase in the volume and…

(JESUS H. CHRIST!) THE POWER-AMPED VOLUME CRANKING ALL THE WAY UP TO THE MAX… AND ONE SUPER-TERRIFIED CAPUCHIN RUGRAT JUST A-CANNONBALLING THROUGH THE LIVING ROOM FIVE FEET ABOVE THE FLOOR LIKE SOME FLYING SQUIRREL WITH JERICHO-JOSHUA’S BLARING WINDOW- QUAKING TRUMPETS HOT ON THE LITTLE GUY’S TAIL LIKE A FLASH JUNGLE-FIRE! (You’d think he’d learn…)

(2) And secondly… picture this little “Gizmo game”:

Tom, sacked out on the couch, engrossed in Stephen King’s Richard Bachman four-novelette anthology; everything quiet… too quiet; Gizmo, in his darling little pirate pantaloons, suddenly peering around the living room door; the little twerp then prancing jauntily into the room (skidding to a stop at a safe distance with arms held high to sportingly taunt Tom with the small object he was holding in both hands); Tom, duly eyeballing; Tom then ejecting himself up and off the couch with a roar; Gizmo, now a.k.a. the Looney Toons’ Roadrunner (mbeep mbeep!) having already rocketed off and away with Tom, his personal Wile E. Coyote, lumbering behind in his dust! in cold pursuit!

And that object? What was the precious little object that sent Tom barreling off on his fool’s errand of trying to tackle the little brat? Why, only one of his 500+ collected cassette tapes is all. And the one he’d just pilfered might have been Tom’s most sacred-of-all-time The Best of Leonard Cohen. Or perhaps his equally sacred Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home. It could have been his James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. But it really didn’t matter if it were his prized Ricky Nelson’s Garden Party, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Déjà Vu, The Stones’ 12 X 5, Johnny Cash’s 1964 I Walk the Line, 1972’s Doctor Hook, or even Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Volume II. Tom had spent a lifetime up until that week in February, 1989 meticulously collecting each and every one of those damn titles, first on 33 1/3 vinyl LP’s and then all over once again on cassette tapes! It was his damn collection and each one of those cassettes was one of his hard-earned possessions.

All of his cassettes were sacred!

Now you might be saying to yourself, OK, but so what, Lyford? You’d get it back from Gizmo eventually, right?

No. NOT right! What you don’t understand is this: as Gizmo would run away with one of Tom’s tapes, as he did often, he’d deftly pinch up an inch or so of the strip of that shiny brown celluloid tape and start unspooling it! Yes! Imagine that! Just like some crazy cat in the bathroom completely and irritatingly unrolling an entire roll of Charmin off the dispenser for fun! There’s be Gizmo up ahead with the already-long, ever-lengthening loop of tape in his wake as they rounded corners through every downstairs room in the house! And what could Tom do about it?

NOTHING! The Giz was just too fast, too wily! All Tom could do was give up eventually, sit in the living room, and wait for an hour to pass for Giz to grow tired and finally abandon it somewhere. And then later, after Tom finally did retrieve it, you’d find him toiling away at the dining room table with the cassette in his left hand, a #2 pencil in his right, and practically getting carpal tunnel syndrome re-reeling the whole damn tape back inside the plastic cassette once again. And looking as pathetic as some chimpanzee digging ants out of an anthill with only a twig for a tool!

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

Oh, the things that can happen when you home’s been turned into a monkey house! One of those things I still feel pretty badly about to this day, by the way.

See, Phyl and I have three children: Missy, the oldest; Kathy; and then Chris, the youngest. Kathy hasn’t been mentioned in this little memoir yet, due to the fact that she wasn’t home with us when Gizmo arrived. Instead, she was a student at Colby College in Waterville, Maine which was still in session. She was, however, due to return home nearer the end of Gizmo’s stay.

And me… I’m the idiot who came up with the this great idea:

Let’s not tell her about Gizmo! Let’s let it be a surprise! She’ll be so excited! It’ll be great!

The reason I was so sure it was a great idea is that, surprisingly, Kathy had a real thing about monkeys and gorilla’s already at this point.

When she’d been a lot younger, I’d read aloud the Michael Crichton’s sci-fi novel, CONGO, to all three of our kids. Although it had a very scary, and almost-Indiana-Jones-type plot, the book had a big impact on Kathy. This is because the story’s heroine, one Karen Ross, is a primatologist working with a female mountain gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language. (Michael Crichton admitted that his Amy was inspired by the famous Gorilla, Koko, who’d actually been trained to do the same thing.) Anyway, the novel was really inspirational for Kathy, leaving her at a very early age looking up to the likes of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, and even talking about considering a possible career in primatology herself.

That’s why I just knew Kathy would be delighted to experience the wonderful surprise of finding a cute little capuchin monkey in her very own home. Everybody loved Gizmo. Everybody! So Kathy was sure go nuts over him.

Finally the day arrived. Kathy came home to find me (for some reason) grinning like an idiot, I’m sure. (Wait, did I only say like an idiot?) She came shuffling in through the kitchen carrying a little luggage, passed through the dining room, and headed straight for the living room staircase that leads up to our second-floor bedrooms. Unbeknown to our daughter, Gizmo was perched on the stairs above her. I remember him looking like a silly little jailbird up there, peering down upon her through the railings as if through the bars of his jail cell.

I also remember me holding my breath for the big surprise when she’d see him and possible break down in tears of joy, saying something like, “Oh my God, we have a monkey? And look! Why, he’s so cute!” It was a beautiful scene. In my MIND, that is. (My dumb bunny mind.)

Reality? She screamed in terror! Something big and alive had just landed on her head! Probably it felt to her like an 8-pound spider in her hair. Her hands flew to her head! She muckled hard, violently gripped whatever it was, and started trying to yank it free!

Problem? To Gizmo it felt like he was the one under attack! He too was terrified! So he did what animals do when attacked. He sunk his two canines (Dracula fangs) into the back of Kathy’s hand! (Yeah. That’s what he did.) She screamed, of course! He screamed! We all screamed! It was a train wreck! My train wreck.

And when it was over, Kathy was hurt! Infuriated! Livid! Mad as a wet hen! And she immediately crossed Primatology right off her future career dreams list. Just. Like. That. Monkey? Monkey not good! Monkey, bad! Dad? Dad, bad as well. Dad, not good!

So, Iapparently that was day-one of Kathy beginning to switch “majors.” Kathy, no longer the primatologist. Kathy, the future chemist. Dad, in the dog house.

The whole thing made me so sad. And rightfully feeling guilty.

And Gizmo? How did Gizmo feel? Oh, he was pretty much over it in a half a minute. I’m pretty sure that from his point of view, he was like, “Jeez. What’s her problem? I mean, OK, I jumped on her head. What’s the big deal? That’s what I do. That’s how you get around. That’s how you meet people. And heads? They’re like stepping stones for crossing a brook anyway, right? Come on. I mean they’re there, aren’t they. Might as well use’em. And hey, that’s how I met Tom Lyford, right? And look how well that’s turned out. Well, other than him slamming my tail in the door…”

My brother Dennis is a photographer. When he learned we had a monkey, he asked if he could come over and do some videotaping. I said, “Sure. Why not?” So he came over. And while he was getting his video-camera out of its carrying case and set up, I pointed out Gizmo way over in the living room on the floor “wrestling” vigorously with Chris. But by the time Dennis had the cam up on his shoulder and was ready to shoot, Gizmo had spotted him! A stranger in the house! Someone new to get to know! So the little guy had already bounded through the dining room and had launched himself in a leap heading for Dennis’s head. Honestly, Dennis caught him in his lens as a head-on shot of the little Superman incoming, and only microseconds from impact!

The resulting video was hilarious. There’s the split-second HERE COMES GIZMO! and then for six or sevens seconds Dennis, not accustomed to wearing a live monkey hat, instinctively began to spin wildly around, the resulting video becoming a blurred ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl at the County fair! You almost needed a Dramamine to watch it.

But yeah, heads

Heads were the preferred Gizmo way of saying how do ya do?

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

OK. This little piece was supposed to have been the epilogue, but… damnit, apparently it’s not. There was a little too much to cover. So once more I must say, once again, “Gee Whiz, be sure to stay tuned for Chapter Six, The Epilogue, coming soon to the screen on your preferred device!”

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THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989— CHAPTER 4

TWEETER, JANE GOODALL, AND THE MONKEY MAN

(Previously, Chapter Two ended with…) “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.”

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

What had just happened is (A) I had been taught what I’d all along been doing wrong while trying to diaper Gizmo, and (B) I was just beginning to learn that the girl I’d married had somehow just crazily “channeled” Jane Goodall, right under my nose! I mean, come on! Not my mousey little Phyllis?

(Ahem. “Mousey” back then I’m talking, mind you— in 1989! Not the Twenty-first Century I am woman, hear me roar Phyllis of today…)

What, not the mousey little Phyllis who feared cats and dogs and bunny rabbits and chipmunks and lizards and lions and tigers, and bears, oh my!? Not the sweet, unassuming, little lady who, only a few weeks ago, had somehow succumbed to my sleazy used-car salesman’s “charms,” when I’d practically swindled into allowing (against her better judgement) one wild, hairy, tree-swinging, wannabe, nudist Tarzan into our living room and her life? Yes, her. I was flabbergasted!

But why should I have been surprised? Because If I’m honest, our marriage has always played out, and still does to this day, like a reverse variation of the I Love Lucy Show, wherein I’m the Lucy and Phyl is the level-headed Ricky Ricardo. But… whatever. At any rate, it had dawned on me that this no-nonsense Phyllis had stepped up to the monkey-business plate and… I’d been relegated back to the showers.

For instance, a couple of afternoons later, I came home from school and, dreading the answer, asked, “So. How did today go with our little friend today?”

And she answered me in a ho-hum, off-the-cuff voice, “Oh, I dunno. OK, I guess. I had to get groceries at the Shop and Save. Gizmo made quite a stir with all the shoppers…”

“What!? Let me get this straight… you, on your own… took Gizmo… our little Gizmo… out in public? To the grocery store? On your own!?”

“Yes.” Hmmm. Only that simple, matter-of-fact, little ‘yes?’

“Well, Jeez! That must have been pretty traumatic for you!”

“Nope.”

Me, with my jaw-dropping incredulity being cruelly teased by these single-syllable responses? “Well…? C’mon, tell me about it! I mean, I know it couldn’t have been easy…!”

“Actually, I just put him on his little leash, poked him into his carrier cage, and… just went!”

“What, that’s it!? That’s all you have to say?”

“Well, no. I mean, we were quite the celebrities, obviously. At least Gizmo was. Just trying to get up and down the aisles was the hard part, that little magnet attracted such a crowd. Everybody ooh-ing and aah-ing, talking to him in, you know, baby talk. I thought we’d never get out of there. So many questions to answer! And he cuddled in my arms most of the time, although a few others did get to hold him a little. But wow. I mean, we’re just doing this for a little over a week, so I can’t even imagine what Sandy and Brian’s lives must be like all the time, you know?”

And that’s the way it had become, you know? Suddenly we had so much company at the house! I mean, all the time! We honestly had to start setting up appointments. So many ‘friends’ were coming out of the woodwork, you’d have thought we’d won the Megabucks! Not that we weren’t enjoying the crazy ride, because we were. It was, however, beginning to become a little exhausting.

Meanwhile, I’d fell totally head over heels in love with the little guy. And he with me, with the exception of a few sporadic flashbacks of that unfortunate tail-in-the-door fiasco.

I really missed him when I was in school all day, though. So of course I suddenly came up with this ‘great idea.’ I went into the main office and asked Howard Ryder, the headmaster, “How about I bring Gizmo into my classroom for a couple of periods, to give the kids some time to meet and enjoy him? Both classes I have in mind are in the middle of our creative writing unit. This would give them something interesting and unusual to journal about afterward.” (Of course the creative writing plug was really just a cover for me to officially get my selfish “Bring Your Little Buddy to Work Day” rubber-stamped as… ‘legitimate.’ So yeah. Let’s make it legal…

Mr. Ryder, being the good guy that he was, readily OK’d the plan. Honestly, he was visually excited to have a little monkey-time himself during his otherwise relatively boring, day-long routines. So it was a go. The kids couldn’t wait. Me either! Phyllis (the really cool wife of the now-really-cool English teacher) dropped him off mid-morning. And what a day we were to have.

First of all, I had arranged the students’ desks in a wide circle, so everybody’d have an equally good chance of watching the Giz. And man, were the kids in both classes excited as they came pouring into the classroom! And of course Gizmo picked right up on that excitement as well. Inside the circle, I began by walking around with Giz in my arms and introduced the little fella to each kid. I gave some info about the Helping Hands program that he was in training for; gave the kids the warning that he was bound to be unpredictable, that he might want to climb up on their shoulders; that as cute as he was, he did have a set of vampire fangs; that I would stay close and vigilant, and be on the ready to remove him and answer any questions that might come up. In the meantime, Gizmo was squirming like a worm on a fish hook, wanting madly to get at this new audience. So eventually… I set him down on a student’s desktop. And let go.

And he was off!

Watching him tearing around that circle of boys and girls, stopping here, stopping there, I was reminded of the little ball on a roulette wheel table. With his speed, he was like a sweet Tazmanian Devil. He picked up and examined anything and everything a kid might have in her/his desktop or breast pocket: a pencil or pen, a paperback textbook, a comb… you name it. The world was his oyster.

Unfortunately for me, the Giz didn’t keep himself confined to just their desks. He leaped onto my bigger one, of course, and sent a blizzard of essays and quizzes waiting to be passed back up into the air, leaving me rushing to retrieve them and squirreling the away into my desk drawers for safe keeping. He was up on top of my file cabinet; he was examining my pencil sharper; he was sitting on a girl’s shoulders, examining her barrette with his little curious fingers; he was peering into my wastebasket! And then back down onto the roulette wheel of student desks he’d land once again, and round and round he goes, where he stops nobody knows…

He was… everywhere! It was wonderful. It was crazy. It was exhausting.

Soon the headmaster and assistant headmaster came in to join in the fun. And they ended up having as much of a good time as any of the kids.

Jim Smith, Asst. Headmaster with Howard Ryder (& the Giz)

Howard Ryder, Headmaster, Foxcroft Academy, 1989

All in all, it was a day to remember. And remember it, I always will.

Please stay tuned for Chapter 5: The Epilogue

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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.”

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

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.”

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

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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THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989 — Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO: THE PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT

(And yes, I know I said last time that Chapter Two was going to be called “Tweeter and the Monkeyman,” but it turns out that MAYBE that’s going to be the title of Chatper Three instead. (Or four?) My apologies.)

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

(But previously, Chapter One ended with …) “It seems she had to go to California for a week, and was at a loss as to what she was going to do about Gizmo. So yeah, you can see where this is going. Soon I was running like a 43-yearold little kid to Phyllis, my darling wife, begging her “Please, please, PLEASE! Can I? Come on, huh? I’ll feed’im, I’ll change his diapers, why… you won’t hafta do a thing, I PROMISE!”

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

OK. See, the reason I felt I had to dramatically beg like a little kid to be Gizmo’s babysitter is that Phyllis suffers from a lifelong aversion to animals. Hairy mammals especially. (However, she does strive valiantly to make an exception for me). Cats and dogs were anathema to her. Me, I passionately love cats and dogs. I love pretty much all animals.

Except bears.

So anyway, I instinctively I knew that a hairy baby-monkey-mammal was way too close to being a cat or a dog. So I knew my chances were slim at best. However… my acting like the pathetically hopeful eight-year-old begging for the puppy that had followed him home, or the bunny rabbit, or especially even the pony, might in fact, just might prove to be too overwhelmingly disarming. And if I could just get her to crack a grin, that just might be the chink in her armor I could use to get her flustered and off-guard.

Especially considering it was my plan to purposely perform my little comedy act with Phyllis in front of a random audience of YMCA members standing in the lobby. Who, by the way (yes!) ended up thinking it sufficiently “cute” to begin chanting at her in a chorus of, “Aw, come on, Phyllis,” and “Let the poor kid have his monkey,” etc. (See, I’ve had a lot of practice learning how to manipulate this woman.)

And hah! She did crack a grin (immediately wishing she hadn’t). Peer pressure is a marvelous tool. Her defense momentarily collapsed. I was in!

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

SO… a few weeks later, as a way to get Gizmo to feel more familiar with and closer to us, his future one-week monkey-sitters, Phyl and I were invited to a getting-to-know-you-better evening chez Gizmo. Giz was so excited to have company visit. Phyllis positioned herself on the sidelines, wanting to distance herself from the action and just passively watch me having a ball rolling around on the floor with him. I say “wanting to distance herself” because it was impossible for anyone to distance themselves from that frisky little ball of energy.

Gizmo had a super power. He could sense fear from a mile away and he was compelled to hone right in on it. In the future I’d see it time and time again. Those who fearfully tried to avoid the wild little simian were always the very people Gizmo was drawn to the most. Immediately, Phyllis sensed that she was a target, like her lap had the big Gizmo bullseye on it. That’s where he wanted to sit.

And strangely Phyl, who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any pets of the animal variety, had always turned out to be a frickin’ animal magnet. We’d be in a room with some dog and I’d be calling, “Here, fella!” or “Over here, girl!” and Phyl would end up with the dog at her knees. And cats? Just the same. They’d be rubbing against her ankles all night long. Me? I’d be only too happy to run defense for her. Because I wanted all that attention all for myself.

Looking around, I discovered there was another “monkey house” at their home as well, identical to the one at the Y. And this monstrosity would soon be trucked over to our house when Sandy and her husband, Brian, flew off to the west coast for a week. I couldn’t wait.

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

Gizmo and his monkey house arrived at our house at 7:30 pm on February 16^th, 1989. There were four of us waiting to answer the door: Phyllis and I, plus our daughter, Melissa, and our son, Chris. The temperature outside was +6 degrees Fahrneheit. If you’re wondering how I still know the exact date, time, and temperature, I kept a journal. Here’s a picture of the actual front cover.

Sandy and Gizmo waited in our living room, with Gizmo temporarily jailed in his pet carrier (like some cat on his way to the vet’s) while a couple of men muscled his cumbersome “abode” into our den. It was obvious poor little Gizmo, looking so forlorn, knew what was going on. He’d been through such a scenario at least once before, if not more. Home is where the heart is, yeah, but for the Giz home had to be wherever his little “house” went. And now that little house had just been noisily dragged into our strange one.

With our front door finally closed against the frigid temperature outside, the little guy was finally released from his travel carrier. Immediately he scampered right into Sandy’s lap, where he remained cowering, a little squirrel-size ball with sad little frightened eyes. I’m pretty sure the little fella probably felt he himself the orphan who was being ditched once again. It must’ve been very stressful.

And how did I feel? Also stressed. Both excited and scared. I felt like I had when we’d brought four-days-old Missy, our very first-born child, home from the hospital. We didn’t feel confident at all about knowing how to take care of a baby then. But there she was anyway: a little, helpless life lying there in her crib. Sure, we’d been given lots of pointers from people in general and medics, but thank goodness we had that Dr. Spock manual for child care.

Well, here we were again, another little baby getting thrust into our care. Only this one in no sense of the word was helpless. We’d seen him in action. This guy could walk. This guy could swing from the chandeliers if you didn’t watch him. This baby could saddle up your head and ride it to a standstill like a simian Urban Cowboy. But still, he was just a baby, too. In his own way. And there was no Dr. Spock manual for Gizmo.

With Gizmo nestled safely in Sandy’s lap, we gathered round in the solemn, final, how-to demonstrations, not that we hadn’t gone over a lot of it prior to this. We covered what foods he liked, what foods he didn’t like, what foods he must have, and what treats he favored (pretzels and grapes). We were cautioned again that Giz had a blazing curiosity which, coupled with his safe-cracker’s dexterous little fingers, meant lock up what you didn’t want messed with and anything that might be dangerous for the little fella. Because Gizmo could and would get into anything and everything not nailed down: closed drawers, jewelry boxes, cupboards, things with zippers, you name it. I remember that in the days leading up to our little sleep-over friend’s arrival, we had thoroughly monkey-proofed the house. (At least we thought we had.)

Sandy took out the diaper bag and emptied its contents. Among other things, it had a number of diapers, some with pant legs gathered just above the knees and some… pantaloons basically, with pant legs gathered below the knees. The latter made him look like a jaunty little swashbuckling pirate. So cute.

But finally Gizmo was temporarily locked into his seven-foot tall, toy-laden, security-pillowed monkey penthouse, for safe keeping while his foster parents got busy pulling on their heavy coats and shuffling out of sight, out into the kitchen. And sadly, when I watched Gizmo’s little body slump, and that beautiful little mug of his crumple into soft despair when he heard our front door open, then close, and then at last the whole house become so much more silent, I was so wistfully reminded of Shakespeare’s “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Yeah, so sorry little fella, they’re gone, aren’t they. And you’re afraid they aren’t ever coming back. Oh, baby, I know, I get it. But hey, you’ve got us. Right? And the thing is, they really are coming back. Trust us, Sweetie. But you and me? We’re gonna have so much fun! Every single day. It’ll be great.

Sandy had instructed us to wait about fifteen minutes or so before releasing him from his little “apartment,” to give him a some time to begin to get used to his new circumstances. A period of adjustment. Then, we could let him play with us to his and our hearts’ delight, which I could barely wait for. Then, when the Cinderella hour (or whenever it was we wanted to go to bed) finally rolled around, we could put him back in for the night. He’d been thoroughly trained to obey the simple command, “Cage,” she told us. “Say that just once and he’ll scamper his little self right back into it for the night,” she said. It was such a relief and blessing to us to have been given a magic word like that, as I was still feeling almost like we had a real human baby in the house again, and without the assurance of a Dr. Spock monkey manual.

When we opened up his door, we found him rocking back and forth nervously and hugging his cute little Garfield pillow. He looked out at us inquiringly for a moment. And then cautiously he hopped out, still with pillow, and continued watching us to see what we were going to do.

When he’d decided we weren’t going to eat him or anything, he was off! Bounding around the house from room to room, stopping here and there to inspect things, and then moving on. Slowly and non-threateningly trailing him, we found his Garfield abandoned on the kitchen floor.

He was hell on wheels! Practically a blur! He had so much to explore, an entire new world. He hopped up onto my desk and grabbed a pencil out of my pens-and-pencils holding mug. He was in the bathroom examining his own little self in the mirror. He was (yikes!) paused in front of my stacked stereo components, already pushing buttons and twisting knobs! He was examining our own toys that we’d laid out for him in anticipation of his arrival.

Me, I laid down on my back on the living room floor, waiting. It didn’t take long. He landed on my stomach just as I’d planned and boy, we went at it, the first of many fun “wrestling matches” to come that would all turn out to be more fun than (dare I say it?)… a barrel of monkeys. We chased him around. He chased us around. We wore him out. He wore us out. A little kid’s dream: I had a monkey!

It was nearing bed time. But we kept putting it off because, damn, it was just too much fun. Eventually however, common sense had to prevail. We were bushed. So… per instructions… I went to his dwelling, opened the door, looked down upon Gizmo, and spoke the magic word. “Cage.”

Giz looked up at me and blinked a few times. Perhaps I hadn’t said it clearly enough. I said it again. “Cage.” We were still looking at each other. Hmmm. OK, one more time, this time with gusto. “CAGE.”

And Gizmo moved immediately. Oh he understood that command alright. That was obvious. But rather than obey it, the little devil took off in the wrong direction, scampering out toward the kitchen! We followed him. And that monkey? He led us round and round in circles, being careful to stay just far enough ahead of us that we couldn’t lay a hand on him. We were a little parade, with Gizmo leading as the grand little marshall. Stupidly, Phyllis, son Chris, daughter Melissa, and I were bringing up the rear, chanting the now obviously ineffectual “Cage!” over and over in vain, thereby proving the time-worn definition of insanity. It had become a game for him, catch as catch can. And that twerp was so slippery and so evasive, our attempts at “heading him off at the pass” were just exercises in futility.

Eventually though, I was able to snag him. And feeling a little badly for the little critter as he and I approached his bungalow, I repeatedly assured him in a soothing voice, “Hey there little man, everything’s OK. Alright? It’s just that it’s time for bed. You’re worn out. I’m worn out. We’re all worn out. So what’re you gonna do, huh? But just think: tomorrow we’ll have an entire full day together. We’ll let you out and you’ll have the run of the house again. It’ll be great. Just a hoot.” And by the end of this babbling I was standing directly in front of the cage door.

I asked Phyl to open the door for me, so I could keep both hands firmly clamped on the inmate. As she did so, I could feel him tense all up, readying himself to spring for the great escape. I however was determined that that wasn’t about to happen. So I positioned him quite a ways inside, to give me a little wiggle room, because I had a feeling that as soon as I let go of him to close the frickin’ door, he’d bolt. So I held him in place a little longer, all the while reassuring him in soothing baby-talk that everything was OK. And then, on the silent count of three, I let go, backed away, and slammed the door fast!

There! I had him! Finally! But as I was fumbling with the lock, Gizmo let loose with a shrill wail! Oh, the poor little bugger, I thought as I leaned hard against the door to be sure to keep it closed. He misses Sandy and Brian so damn much. And who can blame him? I sure couldn’t. But then the wail increased in volume, becoming a piercing yowl that was honestly quite close to deafening. So I began showering him with earnest promises about what tomorrow would bring us, and how his loved ones honestly would return. Someday soon! But me, always the empath, I could imagine and feel his stark loneliness as clearly as if it were me there in that cage, locked away. But jeez, the heart-rending lamenting still hadn’t stopped! It had, in fact, gone up another notch.

By now my heart had started pounding in my chest.! I was sweating! I could barely even hear any more! And I could barely think straight! I mean, what the heck was wrong? What was I supposed to do? What could do? I hated to admit it, but I’d begun to suspect I had obviously bitten off more than I could chew this time, with this monkey-sitting gig…

“Come on low, little buddy. This’ll all be…”

What? Somebody’s hand was suddenly squeezing and jerking my shoulder from behind. Hard! What the…? Now, that was just one more distraction I didn’t want or need right then. I was busy! I was under duress! So I shrugged the damn hand off me! And…

My God, I was thinking, won’t this guy EVER calm the heck back down, for crying out loud? I mean, what’ve I gotta DO? I was going stir-crazy! Certifiably NUTS!

WHAT damnit it!” I bellowed.

And then, if things weren’t crazy enough, somebody started pounding me in the back with their fist! Equally as hard! WHAT? And amid all THIS? This was a freaking nightmare! I was just about stone deaf! I was at my wit’s end, and I was entering full panic mode for Christ’s sake, if I weren’t there already! So I spun around viciously, ready to start screaming myself and maybe biting somebody’s head off to boot!

Whoa…! There were three wild-eyed faces all gawking at me like I was crazy or something! And I could tell they were talking at me because I could see their lips moving, but in all the racket I couldn’t make out heads or tails of whatever it was they were yelling!

“OK, WHAT!? What the freakin’ heck do you WANT? Can’t you see what I’m…”

Suddenly, I noticed all three were pointing their index fingers, not at me, but at something… downward! They were pointing at something they urgently wanted me to see!

Insanely confused in all this madness by now, all I wanted to do was run away to some place quiet! But no– so with my angriest angry glare I decided to humor them, damnit, and finally look down! Just to get them off my back!

And then…

OH NO…

I saw it.

It was something… something down at the bottom of Gizmo’s door.

A little stub of… shit! Gizmo’s tail, just the tip of it, protruding out from under the door!

Oh. My. God! What had I done?!

Of course what I had done was accidentally slam the door on… poor little Gizmo’s tail! No wonder he…

I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t want to believe it, damn me all to hell!

I immediately yanked the door open a couple of inches. The tip of the tail zipped right inside, out of view. And likewise immediately… the pain-wracked caterwauling mercifully ceased!

I was instantly consumed with shame and self-hatred. It had been done accidentally, of course, but try to explain that to the baby Capuchin with the sore tail!

I looked to him and found his eyes boring two holes into mine. Standing there on two hind legs shoulder-width apart, and holding the tip of the assaulted tail up in his left fist at head height, like one might hold a torch, he was confronting me with the evidence, the evidence of my betrayal. Because surely, that must have been what it had to be feeling like to him.

Oh yes, oh yes oh yes! What in God’s name had I done!? I was having all I could do to keep from collapsing in anguish. I mean, the last thing in the world I’d ever wanted to ever do was…

“Oh Gizmo, I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry!” I blurted out, on the edge of tears. How could I ever make him trust me again?

Yeah. Way to go, Tom. Way to totally destroy an otherwise wonderfully perfect evening. Or week…

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.

home

THE GIZMO CHRONICLES, 1989

Throughout my life, I’ve been one of those guys to whom things just seem to… happen. I mean, right out of the blue. Unxpected things. And sometimes even rather outlandish things. Why? Because Life is The Joker, the Grand Comedian. Because Life seems to find it fun, having its way with me. Today, I’m hell-bent on sharing with you a sample of of one of those things…

CHAPTER ONE: WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE

I was still in pretty good shape at 43. Big into push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, running, and even doing a little weight-lifting. This was back in ’89.

(And so man oh man, when and why did I ever let myself go like I have?)

Anyway, ’89 was the year my wife, Phyllis, and I got memberships to the Y and added a daily morning swim to our routines. I remember getting up so damn early, long before breakfast, and doing those laps: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. A somewhat boring regimen, sure, but it did feel great in the long run, pushing the envelope by adding on a couple of extra laps every week or two. Plus, it seemed to be having a pretty positive effect on my attitude and general outlook. And that was great.

Ah, to be young again…

(Oh wait— yeah, now I remember why! I was forgetting about the ‘GETTING OLD’ part. I’m 77 now. It must’ve been somewhere between 43 and 77 that I let it happen. So I guess maybe I can lay at least part of the blame for my slacking off on all the arthritis, surgeries, and all that other geriatric medical yadda yadda yadda.)

But I digress. So anyway, we’d show up at the Y half-asleep, zombie-shuffling in, barely aware of our surroundings. Speaking for myself at least, I know I was pretty much flying on autopilot those mornings, barely alert enough to swap the nominal good-mornings with the friendly staff on our way to the locker rooms. Basically sleep walking. That’s just the way it always was. So yeah, no wonder I was taken totally by surprise when…

wait for it…

A MONKEY literally (not figuratively) crash-landed down onto my head like a little sandbag?

I mean, who wouldn’t be?! I was like, I dunno, did somebody slip me an LSD mickey when I wasn’t looking? I didn’t have clue-number-one what the hell the thing even was. I mean come on, it was the Y! Not the frickin’ jungle!

So I went a little berserk, didn’t I. And by berserk, I’m talking about emitting one long, not-so-very-macho wail; pirouetting round and round; and all the while, clawing and batting away at the very alive Davy Crockett coonskin cap I thought was trying to burrow into my brain! I mean you know, I had seen Alien with all those creepy giant eggs just waiting to hatch one of those flying face-huggers at you! But a flying monkey?! Shades of The Wizard of Oz!

Mercifully, I was rescued by one of the staff ladies who leapt out of her chair, stopped me mid-spin, and carefully began extricating the four little limbs and long tail of what turned out to be an eight-month-old, baby Capuchin monkey! What the hell was a monkey doing at the Y?

Turns out what the monkey was doing at the Y was this:

The staff lady, Sandy, was keeping him with her during her workdays because reliable monkey-sitters were impossible to find. He, Gizmo, was totally under her care. Not as a pet per se, but as part of the national non-profit foundation, Monkey Helpers for the Disabled, Inc. (now known as Envisioning Access). Their motto: “Meet a monkey. Adopt a monkey.” So Sandy had “adopted” a monkey. Gizmo.

The “adoption” wouldn’t be permanent, however. It would only last for three years, after which he would be returned to the foundation to begin his actual training which would last many years. Sandy’s job, in the meantime, was to give him a home, bring him up from babyhood, and train him to be not only accustomed to people but be safe and people-friendly (think user-friendly).

I hadn’t noticed it at the time but when I came to, there it was, standing tall right there in front of me in the Y office like some huge, wooden, open-faced armoire. But I guess “kennel” would be a more accurate term for it. It was huge and roomy, seven-feet tall and at least five-feet wide— and so much more than just a simple “cage’” even though of course a cage it was. It was obviously Gizmo’s living quarters/play pen. Inside there were roped rings hanging down for swinging on, soft bedding, an assortment of toys, and what I came later to call his soft security pillows, one looking like Garfield and the other looking like a mother hen.

Turned out Gizmo was only seven months old, a baby. And after my fear-induced adrenalin rush had worn off, I began to see him as the cutest little head-hugger I could ever imagine laying eyes on. He was undeniably adorable.

And after a few minutes of getting to ‘know” him, I have to admit it was practically a case of love at first sight for me. (And it wasn’t just me. As I was soon to find out, everybody who came into contact with the little guy fell head over heels in love with him too.) But admit it. What child at some point hasn’t wanted a monkey? They always look like such fun, in the movies and on television. And OK, granted, I was no longer a child. But of course I’d fantasized about having one as a kid.

And isn’t there always a little inner-self kid left over somewhere inside each of us after we’ve aged? So I was a child at heart.

So guess what. I swam a lot fewer laps in the pool that morning. Seems Gizmo had taken to me as much as I had taken to him. And that felt so special. (Of course, Gizmo simply loved people. All of us, in fact. Of course I just preferred to think that what he and I were building was an extra-special relationship. But…)

So yeah, it took me about twenty minutes to pull myself away from him and trudge myself off to the pool.

Next morning went exactly the same way. And ditto for the morning after. Not swimming was suddenly threatening to put a dent in my physical regimen. But as far as I was concerned, who cared? Not me. The joy that I was getting playing with hat little rascal was so addictive.

Then, some mornings I didn’t swim at all. Hell, some mornings I didn’t even bother to bring my swimming trunks. What a loser I was becoming. But what a happy loser. Because just like they appear on TV and in the movies, monkeys really are a lot of fun.

OK. So let’s do the long-story-short thing:

Gizmo’s and my rapport seemed to really be pleasing Sandy. To the point where she took me aside one morning and offered me a proposition that would (temporarily at least) change my life. It seems she had to attend a conference in California for a week, and was at a loss as to what she was going to do about Gizmo.

So yeah, you can probably see where this was going. Soon I was running like a 43-year old little kid to Phyllis, my darling wife, begging “Please, please, PLEASE! Can I? Huh? Come on, huh? I’ll feed’im, I’ll change his diapers… why, you won’t hafta do a thing! I PROMISE!”

(Stay tuned for Chapter 2: “TWEETER AND THE MONKEYMAN”)

HOME

WINGS

In remembrance of our Dad on this Veterans’ Day, Raymond Edward Lyford (1920-2016), who served in the Army Air Force and flew 35 missions as a radar operator on the B-29 Superfortress Bombers in World War II. His B-29 was shot down in a jungle in China. However, the aircraft was patched back together to fly more missions, thus being dubbed “Patches” (pictured below)

strange, me

being past middle-aged

balding

& not just a little insignificant

& still looking up to

my john wayne

ted williams dad–

knowing intellectually that

there are no heroes

not really

but having to plead guilty

to the charge

of hero-worship

of romancing with my

inner schoolboy heart

the mystique of that silver

b-29

terry and the pirates

fly-boy chapter

of your story

where you

flight-suited

& bomber-jacketed

all zippers & insignia

roared the wild blue yonder

in your seat-of-the-pants

roger-wilco world

of cabin pressure

intstruments

radar bogies

mae wests

bomb-bay doors

clamoring hearts

white knuckles

bated breath

curses

prayers

Home

THE LAWNS OF THE DEAD…

Even as a child, Dad was my job agent. I never had to hire him; he worked free-lance. Most of the jobs I worked at, right up through college freshman year, he got me— thank you very much.

So, one sunny, blue-sky, summer afternoon I was channeling Otis Redding. You know, just “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, way-hay’-stin’ time.” Instead of on the dock of the bay, however, I was lazing away my time sittin’ on our front step. Wastin’ time was a main hobby of mine back then. One I took very seriously.

It was summertime, and the livin’ was easy. School was out, so there was none of that annoying high school homework to ruin my day. Life was just the way I liked it: I had no plans. Whatsoever. My day was wide open.

Outta the blue a pick-up truck came wheeling into the driveway. Dad was sitting shotgun with Nelson, his co-worker, at the wheel. Now, what was unexpected about this is Dad was officially “at work.” At only like 1:00 o’clock, he wasn’t due back home until 6:00, or later. Something was up…

He was beckoning me to come over. Which, I can tell you, gave me an ominous queasiness in the pit of my stomach. Against my better judgement, I walked over.

“Had lunch yet?” he wanted to know.

And instinctively, without thinking, I said, “Yeah.” Then kicked myself. I should’ve said, No. Not yet. You should always say no,

“Good. Get in.”

“Get in? Why? Whatta you talkin’ about?”

“C’mon. You’re late for work.”

“Work? What work? I don’t have any work…”

“Hop in. Tell you on the way.”

“Jeez! Now wait just a minute, OK? I was planning on… doing stuff!” Dad scooted over. Reluctantly, with all the alarms going off in my head, I hauled myself up into the passenger seat next to him.

I couldn’t help but notice Nelson was grinning a shitty Cheshire Cat grin. And then we were off, me casting an annoyed look back over my shoulder at the warm spot on the front steps already beginning to cool. I was devastated. I should’ve taken off on my bicycle right after lunch.

“So…? Where we going?” I stifled ‘this time.’”

“Dover Cemetery.”

“WHAT? Dover what? Dover cemetery?!”

“Yeah,” Nelson answered for him. “You’re a professional now.”

“Huh? Professional what?’

“Grave digger!” he said, with an evil grin.

“WHAT!?” Old people loved to needle teenagers.

“Lawn mower,” Dad said.

OK, I wasn’t going to pay any more attention to wise-ass Nelson. “Lawn mower?! What, at Dover Cemetery?”

“You got it.”

“But maybe you can work your way up to grave digger…” Nelson pointed out, but I cut him off.

“I don’t wanna be no… graveyard lawn mower, Dad. I mean, what’re you talking about? I don’t know anything about cemeteries! Isn’t it enough that I mow our lawn? But jeez… come on, a cemetery? I mean, what’ll my friends think!?””

“Oh, I dunno. That you’re gainfully employed, maybe?”

“Well, still though, you could’ve asked me!”

“Hey. You’ll thank me when you get your first pay check.”

“I doubt it.”

“Which goes straight into your bank account, by the way. For college.”

“Oh, of course. See? What’d I just tell you? Yeah, like I’m just dying to slave my summer away just to not have any extra spending money!”

Damn, we were already pulling into one of the graveyard’s many access roads. And oh my God! I could spy a dozen or so old-timers, lost-cause-zombie-skeletons, plodding every which way behind mowers. I mean, come on! Halloween in June?!

“Think of it this way,” Nelson said with a wink to Dad. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

“Just for this summer, Monday through Friday,” Dad said.

“What? Dad, the whole…summer?!”

“And see that guystanding right over there?” he said, pointing a finger. “That guy’s your new boss.”

“I don’t need a new boss.” Everything was happening so fast! It was unbelievable! One minute, I”m free. Next minute I’m being sold to a band of gypsies!

We pulled up next to the new boss-of-me. And when I got out (Dad didn’t even have the common courtesy to get out with me) I saw him wink at the guy when he said, rather callously I thought, “He’s all yours, Bub.”

My heart was pounding. But OK, I knew I had to man-up. So I did, though it was a struggle. And by that I mean I held my breath, bit my tongue, and willed myself not to fall down on my knees begging, “No, please, Dad! PLEASE don’t leave me here with these horrible old people!”

But with a boa-constrictor separation-anxiety squeezing the life out of my heart, I just stood there watching my “Judas agent” drive away. Back into the world that, only minutes ago, was my world.

Bub flopped a beat-up lawnmower down off a flatbed trailer with a bang and said “This one’s yours.”

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

So all afternoon I mowed. I mowed my brains out. And all throughout the afternoon, I felt sick to my stomach. I mean, it was bad enough that I’d been consigned to this chain gang in the first place. But I just couldn’t help dwelling on what my best buds were doing that afternoon while I slaved under a hot sun. Probably hitchhiking out to the lake for a leisurely day at the beach, the lucky bums!

But what was making me really ill on top of that is that I’d been informed (A) we were responsible for mowing a dozen area grave yards throughout the summer, but also (B) at the end of each day we were responsible for taking our lawnmowers apart, cleaning all the parts, putting the damn thing back together again, draining out the old oil, and putting new oil back in! I mean, where the hell was I? And what the hell did I know about lawn mowers, beyond how to gas one up, start it, and how to shut it back down again? Which before… was all I’d ever needed to know. Which was all anybody’d ever need to know, as far as I could see.

But anyway, I had one desperate glimmer of hope I was hanging onto. That being that when the time came to take the damn thing apart, it’d become glaringly obvious that I was totally useless at it. Like, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again if it was up to me. That hiring me had been a big mistake, and finally I’d get fired on the spot! Yeah! My uselessness was my best hope. And, oh, wouldn’t that just piss Dad off. But hah! Take that, Dad! Take that, Nelson!

Thank God everybody stopped for a ten–minute break at 3:00 o’clock. I puttered my mower over to where everybody’d seated themselves on the grass in the shade of some trees. And, aw jeez, they were all swigging down their ice-cold Moxies, Cokes and root beers, leaving me the only one with nothing to drink. Oh sure, let the new kid collapse with severe dehydration, why don’t you!

I just had to wake up from this nightmare. Somehow.

I hadn’t shut my lawn mower down yet, so I began trying to pop the ignition tab off the spark plug with the toe of my shoe. Keep in mind, this was 1963, back before the automatic shut-off safety assembly became a required installment on mowers. Today as soon as you take your hands off the handlebar, your lawnmower shuts itself right down. But back then if you let go of the handlebar, so what? Nothing happened. The machine would just continue on running until it either ran itself out of gas or you disengaged the spark plug. Which is what I was fumbling around trying to do with my foot.

“Holy mackerel there, son!” one of the geezer squad yelled at me.

“Huh? What?”

“You tryin’ to get yourself killed, or what!” He was shaking his head in disbelief. “Jesus, kids these days! Look son. You’re doin’ it all wrong, OK? Now if that there was your lawnmower. I mean the one you got back home. In your yard? Then OK.”

“Uhmmm… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I always felt pretty uncomfortable around people of that age if I didn’t know them. And really? All I wanted was to be left alone to wallow in my misery. But weirdly, I became aware that the whole crew suddenly stopped gabbing and oddly seemed to be taking quite an unsettling interest in our conversation. And their expressions had all taken on a tone of serious gravity. Why was that?

“All I’m sayin’ is that piece of equipment you’ve been mowin’ with all afternoon is a commercial machine, not some domestic toy. And that spark plug you’re ticklin’ with your toe’s got at least ten times the wallop on it of any home mower. What, nobody warned you about that when they hired you on?”

I found this as disturbing as it was confusing. “Nobody told me nothing!” I said. “I mean, there wasn’t time. My dad… he just dropped me off. And Bub… or whatever his name is… he just…”

“Oh, Jesus H. Christ!! Wouldn’t our dear old town manager be some pleased with the lawsuit he’d be lookin’ at if… well, never mind. No, son. You wanna shut one of these machines down? You gotta use somethin’ that don’t conduct electricity.”

“What? No, at home all I ever…”

“Hold your horses a minute…” He walked over to a nearby gravestone and began poking around in the weeds surrounding the base of it. Meanwhile my mower kept puttering steadily away.

Somebody offered, “That tall one over to the far right, right by your foot, looks about wide enough, Dave.”

He scowled. “The day I need your help, Pops, I’ll ask for it.” But then he did pluck the very blade of grass Pops had pointed out, and walked it back over to me.

“Yeah, this one’s good enough. Long and wide. Strong. And dry as a bone. Been bakin’ in the hot sun all day, is why. Water conducts electricity.”

What, did he think I was stupid or something?“Uh huh. Yeah.” I was being obviously sarcastic. “Water conducts electricity. Thanks for telling me. Got it.”

“‘Course. I figured you’d know that. But… whatta I know ‘bout what they’re teachin’ in school these days?” He shrugged. “Anyway, here you go.”

Not having a clue as to why, I accepted it.

“OK, son. Now, whatcha gotta do is just poke that very carefully down in behind that there little tab you were tryin’ to nudge off the spark plug. And then with your other hand, grab the low end when she pokes out down below. OK?”

What the hell was I doing listening to this old nursing home buzzard anyway. Why was I even here? “Alright. OK. Yeah. Guess so.”

All righty. Then… you’re gonna yank it right back. Towards yourself. And that’ll pull her right off the spark plug. Safely.”

I thought the move through, and shook my head. “Funny though,” I said. “At home I swear I can always just nudge the damn thing off with the toe of my boot, you know?”

“’Course I know. We all of us got one of’em at home, just like you. I mean, because who can afford one of these souped-up industrial jobbies anyway? Not me, that’s for damn certain. But hey, college kid, nobody’s tellin’ you what to do. I ain’t your boss.”

“I’m only in high school.”

“But all I am sayin’ is, it’s your toe. And you wanna try your toe on one of these commercial industrial mowers? Well son, better yours than mine. You’re free to do whatever you want.. It’s a free country. Jus’ tryin’ to offer a bit of friendly advice. You go on right ahead and do as you please. Only jus’ don’t say you wasn’t warned.”

“Hey, I was just sayin’. That’s what works with mine. At home, is all.”

“Well, I’m not sayin’ the shock will kill you. All I’m warnin’ you about is you could burn a couple of toes right off at the knuckles down there, you know? It’s happened before. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“All right, all right.”

So. I bent down and poked that fat blade of grass down in behind the ignition tab. Then I managed fish the lower tip and snag it, so that finally I’d got both the top and bottom tips pinched, thumb-and-finger, with either hand. “Like this?”

“Yeah, that’s it. You got it. But… you gotta hold both ends firm and tight? You don’t wanna let it slip when you pull on it.”

“OK. I guess.”

How the hell did I know? Maybe there was something to what the old man was babbling on about after all, you know? He was the expert. Not me.

I realized I was my breath. It was quiet. Seemed like the whole crew was holding their collective breaths too. I mean, how crazy was that?

“You ready, son?”

I just wanted to get whatever this was over with, so I said, “Yeah.”

“Then go ahead. Do it, but… be careful.”

So…

I yanked— BZZZZZZZZTTTSSNNAP!!

Ouch-Whoa-JEEZUM! What the…? Wow! Liked to’ve just got my fingers bit by an electric eel! And…

…there was this raucous roaring going on. What was that? I mean, talk about confusion. It took me a full ten seconds to clear my head and figure out just what had actually happened! But by the time I got my bearings, it was so embarrassingly obvious.

And it was awful.

Because you never saw such a damn bunch of knee-slapping, haw-hawing old crows in your life.

“Young pups! Every SINGLE damn time, I kid you not! HAW-HAW!”

“Got’im, you did! HEE HEE HEE!”

Why those… bastards!

I couldn’t look up and face them while they continued to bust a gut at my expense. I was too mortified. But finally the noise was dying down some.

“Well. Time to get back at it. Can’t sit around jawin’ all day. Break’s over! Start’em up, boys!”

And there I was. Amid all the yankings of the pull cords; the clatter of the Black and Decker engines all firing back to life; and the blue, oily exhaust smoke being released all over everywhere: the butt of the friggin’ joke! The red-faced little Dumbo, the high-school-kid baby elephant! And oh, had I just made those old bastards’ day or what!

And boy, hadn’t they’d really yanked my damn cord, damnit!

The last one to leave leered at me. “Best be countin’ your fingers, boy. One or two of’em might be missin.’”

I felt about two inches tall. I was so flummoxed, I couldn’t get my lawnmower started for five minutes!

And lemme tell you something. When you were a boy back then, especially my age, you wanted to be the cool one. You wanted to be the Roy Rogers, not the comical sidekick! Not Gabby Hayes or Jingles! And especially never the fool. Man, I was burning with shame. They’d just crushed me like a stink bug under their stinkin’ boot heels. Enough so that over the next few days I’d be avoiding the bathroom mirror worse than Count Dracula, lest I catch a glimpse of the little fool I’d been reminded I really was.

Damn them all to hell was playing like a broken record in my brain.

You know, I’d never ever really hate Dad, ever. But I sure felt like I hated him right then that day, for willingly collaborating in me getting shanghaied by a crew of old, pot-bellied, toothless, nursing-home pirates like those old crones!

Yeah! Thanks one whole hell of a lot, Dad!

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

But I’d learned something about life there, hadn’t I though. There’s something called Initiation. And it’s universal. And I’d just been initiated.

But actually, it hadn’t really been my first experience of the phenomenon. I’d experienced it with little the cliques back in the playground days. I’d experienced it as a freshman at Foxcroft Academy. We all had, us freshmen. It was a tradition, after all.

And though I never would have suspected it at the time, and wouldn’t have wanted to believe it on that embarrassing day, I was fated to undergo yet several more prickly-feeling initiations while I would continue my way-too-long growing up process.

I would get played the fool when I got hired as a common laborer on a summer construction crew during college. Then again, I’d really get taken as a fresh fish when I signed on in the spinning room at the Guilford Woolen Mill the following year (that’s a story for another time).

And sadly, the list wouldn’t end there either.

Turns out, though I hate to admit it… I have been one naïve dude, over the better part of my life.

Oh well, guess I’ll just have to focus on the character-building aspects of my initiations, and on the growth of humility they bring.

Yeah. Right. Keep telling yourself, Tommy boy.

And hey, maybe it’s not so bad.

Being the comical sidekick.

Rather than the Roy Rogers.

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