Tom Lyford – Page 5 – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

LITTLE BOY SAD

THE GIFT

As a child, I was so spoiled at Christmas time it was embarrassing. See, Mom had grown up in the abject poverty of The Depression. She hadn’t gotten doodly-squat at Christmas when she was a little girl. One of her personal legends was the Christmas when the lone present she received was a coat hanger personally decorated by her older sister. And damn… she’d loved it. Yes, I know. It kind of makes you want to cry, doesn’t it. And it sounds made up, like something right out of the musical, Annie. It wasn’t though, according to my dad who eventually rescued her with a wedding ring. Now, how’s that for a family legend? And he hadn’t had any picnic himself when he’d been a kid, either, but he’d fared a whole lot better than she had.

The sad thing is, she’d gotten somewhat psychologically bent by all that poverty. And as a result, beginning on New Year’s Day (if not earlier) when January had already begun chugging slowly toward the following December, she was once again the volunteer soldier in the lifelong war against poverty-stricken Christmases. Not only for us, her kids, but for all of her nieces and nephews, regardless of what faraway states they lived in, all of whom were living in some degree of poverty themselves. Meanwhile, at home, our Christmas trees were alwaysburied alive in bright holiday-wrapped presents, large and tiny.

So I was lucky, right? Honestly, in retrospect, a little bit too lucky. The bounty of our Christmases wasn’t all that great for my character development, if you must know. Not that I needed any help in that department with the bad genes I’d somehow inherited. I just became more and more all about the getting, getting, getting despite the fact that I was already getting,getting, getting. And I’d get such great gifts. We all did.

For instance, I got a beautiful Lionel train set. I’ll never forget that. It was a dream come true. You’d set it all up on the living room floor and then… you were the engineer. But, and here’s the rub, there were only enough tracks to for a tiny little oval. The beautiful engine and the realistic box cars would go whizzing round and round, over and over. Round and round. Over and over. And you know what? That gets old in a hurry. And why weren’t there more tracks, is what I wanted to know. I wanted a figure-eight railroad. (OK, I probably wanted enough tracks to lay down rails going from room to room all throughout the ground floor of our house.) And then, you had to keep taking it all apart and putting the pieces back in the box again, ‘cause you couldn’t just leave it on the living room floor forever, right? It was a small living room. So that quickly got old as well.

I suppose I should tell you about the cool Lone Ranger ring I got. It was silver and featured a small embossed rendering of the Lone Ranger astride the rearing stallion, Silver. Yes, the very ring under which I brainlessly jammed a pebble between it and my ring finger just above the knuckle, where it got stuck, causing my finger to swell all up. All I can remember now is the horrendous emergency car ride to some old guy’s house, a guy who had some kind of a power saw.

Most Christmas gifts were basically toys and clothing. They didn’t have Amazon gift cards back then. Clothes were just clothes. The toys were appreciated of course, if only for a little while. Why? Because they’re just…things, aren’t they. Days or months later you haul them out of the closet and look them over and you discover they’re the exact same old objects you tired of a long while back. Things. Things that you’d gotten oh so used to, ho-hum. And maybe you’d play with them one more time but…you’d find yourself just going through the motions somewhat.

And yes, I do realize now what a petulant, ungrateful little jerk I was.

As far as gifts go though, I hit the jackpot in 1956 on my tenth birthday. What I got wasn’t a thing. Well, of course it was a thing. It’s just that it was so much more than a thing. A gift that could, and did, keep on giving. Day after day, year after year. It was nothing expensive at all. Small, plain little box— perhaps 10 by 4 by 4 inches. A metallic blue. But I swear, it changed my life. Bent my life like a glass of water bends a ray of light passing through it. And I’m so gratified that it did. Even today.

I got a radio for Christmas that year.

Now when you hear the word radio, you have to keep these things in mind because this was the mid-1950s.

So first of all, to turn it on you first had to plug it into a wall-socket. It wasn’t portable.

Secondly, the broadcast voices and music received were amplified by 3, maybe 4, glass vacuum tubes. So when you turned your radio on, the vacuum tubes would first begin to glow, getting warm and then warmer, till they were radiating an orange glow (which you could never actually see without taking the back of the radio off). The innards of radios were like little ovens back then. Due to the fact that the tubes had to really get red hot in order to amplify the stations’ signals, you always had to wait almost a full minute before the thing would actually start working , unlike today where everything is instantaneous due to the invention of transistors.

Thirdly, almost all radios ran on AM back then, and mine was no exception. With FM, you can listen to your music clearly regardless of the weather; but with AM, any thunder storm 25 miles or so away would be breaking up your programs with unwanted static crashes that could drive you nuts.

And fourthly, with FM you could only pick up stations within about a 30-mile radius, all depending on the height of the stations’ antennae. With AM, especially at night, you can pick up stations thousands of miles away, but with one problem: stations with relatively weak signals would tend to fade in and out, which could also drive you nuts if you were trying to listen to a faraway baseball game.

We had a table-top radio in our kitchen. Mom usually kept that on throughout the day while doing her housework, and I listened too. WABI out of Bangor was always playing the top-40 hits of Johnny Cash, Ricky Nelson, Peggy Lee, The Big Bopper, Elvis Presley, and Buddy Holly. And man, didn’t I just think WABI’s top DJ, Jim Winters, was real-deal cool! He had such a deep voice and he knew everything about the artists. I was gonna grow up and be a DJ myself sometime, for sure. Along with a number of other things.

Funny thing about Jim Winters. He’d host the sock hops over at The Crystal Ballroom, the old renovated church out on South Street. The Crystal was off limits to me because “that’s where the high school crowd hung out.” So who knew what tings might be going on over there? Not me. I didn’t. Not my mom either, but… she could just imagine. But I’d watched a dozen high school rock and roll flicks at Center Theatre, and they were siren songs to me. So one Saturday night, my rug rat buddies and I pedaled our bikes over there and slipped in while Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” was blaring from the loud speakers. So exciting! So forbidden fruit! I know my heart was pounding.

Well, the first thing I noticed was, wow, the great big crystal ball slowly revolving from the ceiling, lighting up the darkness with twirling fireflies of red, green, and blue swimming about the hall. I’d never seen anything like it!

The second thing that hit me was… oh my God, was that him? Yes it was! There he was himself! Jim, the DJ, Winters! But wait, it couldn’t be. What, this was the DJ I’d been putting up on a pedestal all this time?? Holy cow! He looked like some… creepy car salesman. And his head was way too big for his little shoulders. And partly bald? I was aghast.

Thirdly, something stated happening that made me nearly faint from a combination of forbidden-fruit ecstasy and fear. Winters was suddenly announcing over the loudspeaker, “At this time, all the young ladies who’ve signed up for “the Golden Garter Beauty Contest” should now approach the stage.” WHAT? WHAT WAS THAT? And before you could say Sodom and Gomorrah, a line of high school beauties had formed up there amid a raucous roar of hoots and catcalls and wolf-whistles. And holy-moly, didn’t my knees tremble as my eyes followed Young Lady #1 as she marched coyly up to the waiting chair, took a seat, hiked up the hemline of her skirt, and displayed for God and everybody to see… some frilly little lacy elastic encircling her thigh maybe 3 inches or more above her knee! I mean, What would her mother ever think!? And then I thought, Jeez, what would my mother ever think if she knew where I am and what was going on?! Here, a timid little Sunday school voice from my one of my shoulders gasped, “Tommy! You must run home now! This instant!” while the carnival barker voice that lived on my darker shoulder reasoned, “Oh come on, kid. What your mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her… right? No, Stick around. We’ll skedaddle soon, I promise.” Now, I’d heard the word “garter” before, but I had no clue what one actually was until that dizzy night at the Crystal Ballroom!

But I digress. We’re talking about, what… oh yeah, the radio I got as a gift. OK, back to that.

So I imagine you’re probably thinking, OK, you got yourself a radio. What’s the big deal? Because, like, getting a radio today is nothing. But hey, I’m here to tell you that for a ten-year-old in 1956, it was a very big deal. Especially since I was I was transitioning right then from the age of late prepubescence to the age of near puberty. And the songs I was getting interested in were about that mysterious world of guys and girls and… garters and stuff? And sure, we had the kitchen radio. I just couldn’t hear it so well from my bedroom for one thing.

So I plugged my new radio into the wall socket and tucked it away on the floor, right under the head of my bed in easy reach. That way I could just be lying there, reach down, and fiddle with the station dial to my heart’s delight, bringing in the music from the out-of-reach, nearby city stations. But when it got really dark, like when I was supposed to be sound asleep, I found myself reeling in DJs in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and amazingly sometimes as far away as California. I’d never realized what a small-town redneck Jim Winters really was.

But… regardless of all that, I now had… a night life.

When Paul Anka was singing, “I’m Just a Lonely Boy,” then I was that lonely boy. When Elvis was “All Shook Up,” so was I. When the Everly Brothers were frantically trying to “Wake Up, Little Susie,” I was feeling frantic about what I was gonna hafta tell her old man, waiting on us at her front door. And I was getting hip to the ways in which “Love Is a Many Splendid Thing.” But itching to find out what was going on behind “The Green Door,” though I suspected it was probably more of the same (or worse) as what I’d witnessed going on over there at the Crystal Ballroom. And yes, I knew what it was like to be “The Great Pretender,” even though when I listened to Peggy Lee, there was no pretending that I was coming down with “Fever.” Face it, I was in the onset of going batshit girl crazy. But… “what a lovely way to burn…”

Of course the sad thing was, I didn’t have a girlfriend, nor did I have any real clue as to how to get one. I was the shortest kid in my class, after all. And I was deadly shy around girls. One girl I had a crush on stood a foot and a half taller than me. An amazon. So I was doomed. Doomed to be a listener. Just a dime a dozen listener of love songs. And in that capacity, what I did do is get myself a little notebook. Kept it under the bed right next to the radio. Then night after night after night, crawling slowly up and down the dial from 55 to 160 khz, I sampled all radios stations I could find, searching for just the right ones, finding any and all songs that would try to have their way with my bleeding, lonely heart. I’d enter the call signs of the best stations into my log, along with the frequency points on the dial so I could easily find them again, plus each DJ’s name, a listing of the song titles I’d heard and fancied, and the artists’ names. I was becoming quite the bookkeeper. My all-time favorite stations and DJs were WMEX (AM) in Boston with Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg at the helm, and “Cousin Brucie” of WINS (AM) New York.

I had a few cronies very much like myself in this regard, and we’d swap our gleaned info next day on the playground. I had it bad. We had it bad. And then, afternoons after school, my notebook and I would stroll down to the neighborhood convenience market where I’d stand in front of the magazine rack, surreptitiously (lest the proprietor catch me) lift one from the display, and hurriedly scrawl as much of the desired song lyrics as I could manage from the two or three pop song magazines that would publish them. I couldn’t afford to buy one on my allowance.

So yeah, I’d become a bookkeeper, a miserable scribe, a lonely hearts chronicler of heartfelt doo wop. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and, sure enough, I was on my way to becoming the hopeless, lifelong romantic I am to this day.

I can clearly remember one particular night of listening when my ears particularly perked right up. The DJ du jour (no, make that DJ de nuit) announced that he was about to play a brand new song, that this would be the song’s exclusive debut, to be performed by a brand new, up and coming group calling themselves The Elegants! Desperately I clawed my little log out and pencil out from among the dust bunnies under the bed. I mean, it was well past midnight and the whole town I languished in was probably sound asleep, so it was like being Superman’s sidekick, Jimmy Olsen, getting a scoop for The Daily Globe! The song title was titled “Little Star,” and opened with the forlorn line, “Where are you, little star…?” It was such a sad song. Another song by some sad and lonely soul like myself. Where was my little star? Next day on the playground, all puffed up with self-importance, I (numero uno, the self-appointed president of our Lonely Hearts Club) altruistically enlightened my sad disciples with the new found data. As it turned out, “Little Star” did reach #1 on the Billboard Charts, stayed there for one week, and spent 19 weeks in the Hot 100. Unfortunately it was doomed to become just a one-hit wonder for The Elegants.

As it is with most people on the planet, I don’t believe I could feel whole without music. Music has become such a major part of my life. It soundtracks me every step of the way. A sad example: when I was a sophomore in high school, my steady girlfriend (yes, it took me that long to finally acquire one of those) gave me my ring back and just flat out and out dumped me. She’d found somebody else, alas. I was devastated. So what did I do? Sat in my room all day pitying myself for a whole month, that’s what. All the while wallowing in my Johnny Cash 45 rpm record collection. There were so many songs to choose from. “Guess Things Happen That way.” “Home of the Blues.” “Cry, Cry, Cry.” “I Still Miss Someone.” “Thanks a Lot” “Walking the Blues.” I mean, oh what an epic pity party that was! But… Johnny helped me pull through, didn’t he. Yes, he did.

Now it’s odd, but in what I call my jukebox brain today, random lyrics get automatically triggered by almost anything anyone says. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but I find it entertaining, personally. Often during conversation among friends, I find myself just coming right out singing a couple of triggered song lines. However I’ve had to learn over time that it’s usually a lot more polite to try to stuff these little outbursts down inside because, understandably, some people can find this Tourette’s-like and, well, just a tad annoying. Just ask my wife.

Now I made the claim earlier that the little radio gift I received bent my life, changed it, and in such a good way. Oh sure, I realize if I hadn’t received my little blue box right then, the music would still have found me, would still be a big part of my life. But it came at a good time. It was something I hadn’t known known I needed, but as soon as it arrived it immediately became an integral part of my emotional life. It definitely filled some gaps.

See, my bedroom was my little fort. Just as the bedrooms of teens today are their fortresses of privacy, their domains. But one of the biggest differences is that my fort didn’t have a smart phone in it. (Hell, it didn’t even a have a phone of any kind in it.) And before 1953 our family didn’t even have a television in the house, let alone one in my bedroom. So I didn’t have some screen to stare down into during every minute of my free time. Those distractions were totally non-existent. Our 1950s “social media” was a physical hang-out, the lunch counter at Lanpher’s Drug Store, right after school got out every afternoon. It was comprised of real face-to-face kids, nothing digital or virtual about it. And for a half hour to forty-five minutes, you’d load up on all the school drama gossip and then head home. Where maybe you had some chores to do first, after which maybe you’d hang out on the family phone for a bit…but you weren’t allowed to live on it. You’d have dinner, maybe do some homework (maybe not, as was often the case with me), but eventually you’d retire to your room.

My bedroom was a quiet, peaceful sanctuary after 9:00 pm or so. I could be alone with my thoughts. Maybe I’d had a rough day and my thinking might’ve gotten hung up on dwelling on what’d happened, so I’d spend some time licking my emotional wounds. Maybe I’d spied some new girl in school that had caught my eye, and I could sorta daydream what she might be like, and what maybe she liked, and OK, wonder if I might ever be one of the things that she could possibly like as well (probably not.) Maybe I’d work on building my model airplanes, or dabble in trying to write out my feelings in a poem or two. But it was my time, me time. We kids had a lot of me time back in the fifties. It was built right in.

And then my radio showed up. AM. Mono, not stereo (stereo wouldn’t be available for a few years, so I didn’t know what I was missing). A plain, homely little thing. But it was a conduit. A conduit to worlds I hadn’t discovered yet. Emotional worlds. It was like a little ride on of the amusements at the carnival, me being the only kid there. I could just strap myself in, and ride any old time. It was a new adventure, one I would never tire of. Rock and roll. Then rock and roll turned to folk songs, which in turn became protest songs, and I was on my way. All because of a little inexpensive AM radio my parents had given me as a gift.

Today, I have Sirius XM. It’s great, it really is. I can stream songs from just about any genre and any time period. So I’ve got it all now. But you know what? It’s great, yes, but it all seems so easy. Too easy. The truth? All these modern-day streaming abilities feel too convenient. It’s a convenience that, I dunno, sucks the serendipity right out of it.

Oh well…

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BUMMER III

So after a not-so-successful attempt at instilling the beginning of a love of poetry in the hearts of my little motorcycle EXILES with the poem “The Family” by Jacques Prevert (yeah, Jack the Pervert from my previous BUMMER II episode), I had to reach deep down into the dark recesses of my Poetry Arsenal. And the lethal weapon I pulled out (heh) was as ticklish as nitroglycerin: Bukowski!

A movie based on Charles Bukowsi’s life was aptly titled Barfly. Apparently, that’s pretty much what he was. Mickey Rourke played Hank, “Hank” being Charles’ popular nickname. Most of the film takes place in sleazy barrooms and hotel rooms with his sleazy girlfriend, Wanda (Faye Dunaway). Guess why. Right.

Hank lived his adult life as a functioning alcoholic.

Despite that life, he was a prolific and surprisingly successful writer. According to Wikipedia, “Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career. One of these works he titled Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window,” (a title that hints at a darkness within the man). Songwriter Leonard Cohen once said of him, “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”

The Wikipedia article further says, “Bukowski’s work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City… In 1986 Time magazine called Bukowski a ‘laureate of American lowlife.’ Regarding his enduring popular appeal, Adan Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, ‘the secret of Bukowski’s appeal … [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp fiction hero.’” So Bukowski, sleazy drunk that he was much of the time, enjoyed a global popularity, as the number of biographical texts dissecting the man will attest.

The first of his poems I selected for my EXILES (others were soon to follow) is “Me Against the World,” a seemingly appropriate motto for my boys. I’d discovered it serendipitously. One afternoon, browsing the Poetry Section of a Borders’ Book Store, I happened to pluck a random book from a display, flip it open to the middle like cutting a deck of cards and… Jesus, there it was. And it had already had me in its death grip after only the first six or seven lines. It felt as if I were to look into a mirror, I’d discover that I’d just suffered a metaphorical black eye! That was honestly a day I can’t forget.

Now I need to point out that this book was an anthology in the annual Best of American Poetry series, so “Me Against the World” wasn’t one of those elegant, cerebral pieces I apparently was expecting that day. I bought the book immediately. I’d become a Hank Bukowski fan immediately. I was taking my first step on a counterculturally sentimenal journey of a thousand Bukowski poems.

Back in the classroom, I opted to dramatically read the poem aloud first, before passing out the lyrics sheet. I wanted to grab their rapt attention the same way the poem had initially muckled onto mine in Borders. I began with the opening, “when I was a kid one of the questions asked was, would you rather eat a bucket of shit or drink a bucket of piss? I thought that was easy. ‘that’s easy,’ I said, ‘I’ll take the piss.’ ‘maybe we’ll make you do both,’ they told me.”

Now if you happen to be new to Bukowski, you are probably finding yourself as much in a state of shock as I was at first. Even nearly every one of those Exiles’ jaws had just landed in in their laps, not because the language came as a shock, but because the language had occurred spoken out loud by a high school English teacher in a public school classroom. It was an unusual moment indeed. But please, dear reader, please hold on and bear with me. You will be rewarded, I swear.

Back to the poem:

ME AGAINST THE WORLD

by Charles Bukowsky

when I was a kid one of the questions asked

was, would you rather eat a bucket of shit or

drink a bucket of piss? I thought that was easy.

“that’s easy,” I said, “I’ll take the piss.”

“maybe we’ll make you do both,” they told me.

I was the new kid in the neighborhood.

“oh yeah?” I said. “yeah!” they said. there were

four of them “yeah,” I said, “you and whose army?”

“we won’t need no army,” the biggest one said.

I slammed my fist into his stomach. then all

five of us were down on the ground fighting.

they got in each other’s way but there were

still too many of them. I broke free and started

running. “sissy! sissy!” they yelled. “going

home to mama?” I kept running.

they were right. I ran all the way to my house,

up the driveway and onto the porch and

into the house where my father was beating

up my mother. she was screaming. things were

broken on the floor. I charged my father

and started swinging. I reached up but

he was too tall, all I could hit were his legs.

then there was a flash of red and purple

and green and I was on the floor.

“you little prick!” my father said, “you

stay out of this!” “don’t you hit my boy!”

my mother screamed. but I felt good

because my father was no longer hitting

my mother. to make sure, I got up and

charged him again, swinging. there was

another flash of colors and I was

on the floor again. when I got up again

my father was sitting in one chair and

my mother was sitting in another chair

and they both just sat there looking at me.

I walked down the hall and into

my bedroom and sat on the bed.

I listened to make sure there

weren’t any more sounds of

beating and screaming out there.

there weren’t. then I didn’t know

what to do. it wasn’t any good outside

and it wasn’t any good inside. so I

just sat there.

then I saw a spider making a web

across a window. I found a match,

walked over, lit it, and burned

the spider to death.

then I felt better.

much better.

This gut-wrenching piece of creative writing still affects me, to this day. And believe me, did we ever have a great discussion, or what!? A discussion on the significance of this one, on them, and on me; a discussion on poetry, on creative writing. God, I was clam-happy at the end of that class period. Stories were triggered and told. I felt myself really starting to bond with these yahoos. And once again, I was left with the distinct feeling I’d won implicit “permission” to try one more poem. As long as it was written by this dude, good ol’ Hank Bukowski. Or somebody very much like him. You know. No Daffodils, no clouds. But I had a number of them waiting in the wings.

Stay tuned for a few more of my fave Bukowski hits coming up in my next episode, “Bummer IV.”

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LYFORD ON LOVE

PART ONE

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

We begin…

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

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

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

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

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

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

IF YOU HEAR THAT A THOUSAND PEOPLE LOVE YOU

by Guadalupe de Saavedra

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

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

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

but we didn’t know that then

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

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

just a fall afternoon with the sun dropping down

autumn leaves underfoot, yelloworange&brown

on the corner of north street and main

i watched you walk with my cousin & talk

(through the drugstore display window pane)

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

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

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

& rolled boxcars— the odds had been stacked

(magnetic north pole & magnetic south)

our futures were processed & packed

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

inevitable contact… there was no recourse

our hormones alone were our single resource

the dice roll had made its decision

no time for reflection, no room for remorse

the outcome was nuclear fission

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

its thunderclap echoes through all space and time

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

twin suns, we were lock-stepped in traction

each destined to fall as the other would climb

the orbital dance of co-action…

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

i was the fire & you were the ice

we were starcrossed as soulmates—indelibly spliced

but we didn’t know that then)

i watched you walk with your new friend & talk

aware you were reeling me in

FETCHING

needling your quilt in your lamplight halo

you look over and catch me

your “RCA dog”

gazing into your eyes

my spiritual tail beginning to wag

and me growling some humorous

something or other—

this old dog’s old trick

for fetching me

the biscuit

of your sweet

laughter

THE BIG CHILL

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

— johnny & june carter cash

you were the spark

that ignited the fuse

for the

big bang

of my hitherto

relatively uneventful

love life

it flashing incendiary

roman candles & rockets

molotov-cocktail love

flame-thrower love burning

magnesium hot

launching me in a straight trajectory

right over lover’s leap at

e=mc²

but that was in my callow youth

today

like the olympic flame

my love for you

still burns

patient now & serene

fireplace cozy

cup of cocoa hot

electric blanket warm

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

home

BUMMER

One of the all-time, proudest little moments of my high school English teaching career was the day I faced-off against a sophomore, all-boy classroom of the junior Exiles Motorcycle Club and announced that we were about to begin the required poetry unit. I’d been dreading the day since they and I first got the chance to look each other over back in September. I was a hell of a lot more intimidated by them than they were of me. Each wore the signature jean jacket with the sleeves torn off, leaving it pretty much a vest, with “EXILES” stenciled in an arc across the shoulder blades.. Despite the lack of the black leather jacket, which I’m guessing was above their pay grade, in my head I was quietly hearing the lyrics of a rousing 1950s song:

Click the YouTube link to enjoy the entire classic 50s ballad: https://youtu.be/TYFfgM78hJY

Black Denim Trousers (1955) by Vaughn Monroe

He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots
And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back
He had a hopped-up ‘cicle that took off like a gun
That fool was the terror of Highway 101

Well, he never washed his face and he never combed his hair
He had axle grease imbedded underneath his fingernails
On the muscle of his arm was a red tattoo
A picture of a heart saying “Mother, I love you”

He had a pretty girlfriend by the name of Mary Lou
But he treated her just like he treated all the rest
And everybody pitied her and everybody knew
He loved that doggone motorcycle best…

from “Black Denim Trousers” –songwriters: Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller

I was really nervous. However, by then I’d had a few weeks to better get to know the little badass wannabes as the unique and colorful individuals that in reality they were. And I’d been able to use that time to sweat over preparing possible strategies for this High Noon showdown. I’d come up with only one clever, albeit somewhat iffy, plan. It was a gamble. And if I lost, damn, I’d have to kiss my beloved poetry goodbye. Still, it was pretty clever. In the long run, it had been my jukebox brain that handed me the possible key: music! Because as Google tells us today (Google didn’t exist back then), “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast…” Yes, and one day, somewhere between September and November, the ghost of Harry Chapin had stepped forward to potentially save this English major’s ass.

Now, these dudes dwelled on believing (actually knowing) that they were the ones in charge, regardless of who was being paid to be. And in that they could often be very (gulp!) convincing. So when I unsteadily announced, “OK guys. Starting today we’re diving into poetry for a few weeks…” I wasn’t entirely surprised by the volley of snide laughter that interrupted me mid-sentence, though it left me standing on shaky ground.

After the merriment died down, one of the guys (apparently the leader and spokesperson of this little band) mansplained to me (and yes, I realize that the term “mansplain” wasn’t even coined back there in the 70s but, in retrospect, that’s what it was) that no, we wouldn’t be taking part in any… poetry unit. Whereupon I felt obliged as “their teacher” to mansplain back to them that, yeah, I understood how they felt and all yet, still, it was mandated by the curriculum and all so there was really nothing we could do about it. Another volley of laughter!

(OK. Now before I go on, let me mansplain to you, dear reader, the actual reality at play here. Honestly? The administration couldn’t have actually cared less about what went on in my classroom with those particular yahoos, as long as it didn’t bring down any bad publicity on the school district. In other words, the principal himself knew that even he wouldn’t try teaching the appreciation of poetry to this crowd so… if I‘d wanted to (and as long as no one set fire to the classroom, got killed, and we didn’t get found out), I probably could’ve kept them busy all year doing book reports on Playboy. But the truth is, I love poetry, always have, and what I was feeling was the dire need to do something (anything) to save my own my sanity in that particular classroom! Poetry would do that for me, if I could only pull it off.

“No, guys, I’m serious. We don’t have any choice.”

“OK, fine. Go ahead then. You do it. Just wake us back up when it’s over. Or not. See, we don’t care what you do up there at the front of the room, do we, guys. We won’t pay any attention. But hey, whatever floats your boat, man. Have fun.”

I purposely let our give and take play out for a minute or two longer. I wanted to allow their egos to be wallowing in their little victory over The Man, confident they had easily crushed my frilly little poetry plans like a cigarette butt beneath their collective steel-toed boot. I wanted them in a festive, patting-themselves-on-the-back mood similar to the Trojans, drinking it up to excess as they lay beneath the deadly shadow of the infamous Trojan horse. Hopefully all the better to unload my supposed, and-hopefully-not-a-dud “ace” up my sleeve, heh heh. So I hoped anyway. I dunno, perhaps I’m a student of the art of war.

But finally I laid the ace down on the table before them. “OK, men. Looks like you got me. However, if you’re not too chicken to…gamble, I have a little proposition for you.”

“Gamble? You wanna gamble with us? Sorry, homeboy. I mean come on, dude. Poetry? Get real.” Another volley of laughter.

“C’mon on. Hear me out. I mean, if I’m gonna lose my job thanks to you yahoos, the least you can do is listen.”

“Whatever.”

“So. Tell you what. How about this? You let me try one single poem on you. Alright, it’s actually a song. But the lyrics? Lyrics are poetry. So…”

“What kind of music? Lawrence Welk? No, don’t think so.”

“I can’t stand Lawrence Welk either, so no. Feel better?”

“No. Not really.”

“But here’s the deal. All you hafta do is give me one shot. But the stipulation is… a half-hour shot, a full half hour, because I do want you to wait till I’m finished with it, right? No interruptions. At the end of which I call for a vote. Thumbs up. Thumbs down. Totally up to you guys. And I guarantee I will abide by your decision. Guarantee it. And so think about this. A) By doing this I can, in all good conscience, report back to the principal that yeah, I did poetry with you guys. I just don’t need to mention it was just one poem, eh? So you’re saving my bacon,” I lied, “and I won’t forget that. And… well, this is just between you and me, OK? And B) You get to trade away what might’ve turned out to be a three- or four-week unit of the dreaded poetry for you (yeah, sure, I know, just hearing me do it all by myself at the front of the room, but still…) all for a lousy, stinkin’ thirty freakin’ minutes of it. What a deal, right?”

“Yeah, you say guaranteed and all, but what if it turns out afterwards you’re lyin’?”

“Well, the way I look at it is, you’re the fierce biker gang here, right? I’m the Ichabod Crane.”

“The… what?“

“I mean, if I stiff you on this, you guys’ll probably kill me, so…”

“Oh yeah. There is that.”

“’Course I’m one pretty rugged fella…” Another volley. “But remember, I want your attention throughout this. And considering what you’re likely to gain in the deal, I think that’s a fair trade, don’t you?”

The little man in charge looked over his shoulder. “Guys?” There were a number of silent, cautious, almost imperceptible nods. He swung back around. “All right. We’ll give you a shot. But I’m warning…”

“Thank you. For your vote of confidence.”

“We ain’t voted yet.”

“Fair enough. OK. So here’s how it’s gonna work.”

“What’s it called? This so-called song?”

“Bummer.” They all grinned a little. “Yeah, you were imagining “Clouds” or “Daffodils, right?.” But… here’s how this is gonna work. I’ve printed up copies of the words,” I said, holding up a stapled, two-page, two-sided, single-spaced document.

“Jeez. What’s that? A friggin’ book? It’s long enough! I thought you said a poem.”

“It’s long. Yeah. But I believe you agreed to the stipulation that you hafta pay attention…

“Oh, believe me. I’m paying attention all right.”

“Sarcasm is cool. OK. But this song, “Bummer,” has a fairly long instrumental introduction. Sorry about that. It’s kinda gonna sound like some cop show theme, Starsky and Hutch maybe. I’m gonna let that play for a couple of minutes to set the tone. And meanwhile, I’ll be coming around passing out these lyrics to you. I’m asking you to follow along carefully, word for word, OK?”

And when, a moment later, I dropped the needle into the vinyl groove, I heard somebody mutter “Christ!’

(Bythe way, dear reader, do us both a favor and click on this YouTube link to listen along while you read the lyrics. I’m betting you’ll be impressed by both the content and the very creative arrangement. Hopefully, you’ll feel like one of the Exiles, if you do.) https://youtu.be/mL3eXX-na64

And here are the lyrics:

Bummer

by Harry Chapin from Portrait Gallery

His mama was a midnight woman
His daddy was a drifter drummer
One night they put it together
Nine months later came the little black bummer

He was a laid back lump in the cradle
Chewing paint chips that fell from the ceiling
Whenever he cried he got a fist in his face
So he learned not to show his feelings

He was a pig-tail puller in grammar school
Left back twice by the seventh grade
Sniffing glue in Junior High
And the first one in school to get laid

He was a weed-speed pusher at fifteen
He was mainlining skag a year later
He’d started pimping when they put him in jail
He changed from a junkie to a hater

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

They threw him back on the street, he robbed an A & P
He didn’t blink at the buddy that he shafted
And just about the time they would have caught him too
He had the damn good fortune to get drafted

He was A-one bait for Vietnam
You see, they needed more bodies in a hurry
He was a cinch to train ‘cause all they had to do
Was to figure how to funnel his fury

They put him in a tank near the DMZ
To catch the gooks slipping over the border
They said his mission was to Search and Destroy
And for once he followed and order

One sweat-soaked day in the Yung-Po Valley
With the ground still steaming from the rain
There was a bloody little battle that didn’t mean nothing
Except to the few that remained

You see a couple hundred slants had trapped the other five tanks
And had started to pick off the crews
When he came on the scene and it really did seem
This is why he’d paid those dues

It was something like a butcher going berserk
Or a sane man acting like a fool
Or the bravest thing that a man had ever done
Or a madman blowing his cool

Well he came on through like a knife through butter
Or a scythe sweeping through the grass
Or to say it like the man would have said it himself:
“Just a big black bastard kicking ass!”

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

When it was over and the smoke had cleared
There were a lot of VC bodies in the mud
And when the medics came over for the very first time
They found him smiling as he lay in his blood

They picked up the pieces and they stitched him back together
He pulled through though they thought he was a goner
And it forced them to give him what they said they would
Six purple hearts and the Medal of Honor

Of course he slouched as the Chief White Honkey said:
“Service beyond the call of duty”
But the first soft thought was passing through his mind
“My medal is a Mother of a beauty!”

He got a couple of jobs with the ribbon on his chest
And though he tried he really couldn’t do ’em
There was only a couple of things that he was really trained for
And he found himself drifting back to ’em

Just about the time he was ready to break
The VA stopped sending him his checks
Just a matter of time ’cause there was no doubt
About what he was going to do next

It ended up one night in a grocery store
Gun in hand and nine cops at the door
And when his last battle was over
He lay crumpled and broken on the floor

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

Well he’d breathed his last, but ten minutes past
Before they dared to enter the place
And when they flipped his riddled body over they found
His second smile frozen on his face

They found his gun where he’d thrown it
There was something else clenched in his fist
They pried his fingers open— found the Medal of Honor
And the Sergeant said: “Where in the hell he get this?”

There was a stew about burying him in Arlington
So they shipped him in box to Fayette
And they kind of stashed him in a grave in the county plot
The kind we remember to forget

And just like the man from the precinct said:
“Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better off dead
Someday they’re gonna have to put a bullet in his head.”

I’ve gotta say, it was fun watching their changing expressions as they pored over the handout, following along, and it was especially a real hoot when Mr. Chapin sang the line, “Sniffing glue in Junior High and the first one in school to get laid.” One kid’s head popped right up looking at me wide-eyed, and he almost gasped in wonder, “Can you say that? In school, I mean?” to which I responded, “I dunno. Probably not.” (Keep in mind this was the early 70s after all, years fifty some ago.) But it also gave me a rush of inner joy to witness my kids, already budding outliers in their world, become emotionally affected, probably the very first time, by something at once both so crude and artistic. It felt kinda like one of those To Sir, With Love moments, you know?

Anyway, that was the day I began to fall in love with this little badass biker class.

home

URBAN LEGENDS BLUES

“i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed

by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging

themselves through the negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix…”

— howl, by allen ginsberg

it was almost practically an honest-to-god fact …

(all the older cool guys confirmed it)

& we could all recite all those well-known anecdotes

seething with that rebel-without-a-cause wildness,

the same walk-on-the-wild-side jazz we’d seek out in

the breathless teen-angst movies like

joy ride… & party crashers:

“a single aspirin swigged down

with a mouthful of coca-cola

will render you staggeringly,

knocked-on-your-ass drunk”

one medicine show demonstration: a normally

“sober” & “respectable” older kid rapidly developing

outrageously slurred speech patterns & flopping with

histrionic helplessness on the playground lawn

where he was reduced to a giggling,

gravity-pinned, dying cockroach

impaled on its back: proof-positive!

so later, in the sanctuary of my room,

after surreptitiously gulping down the

deliciously-illicit white pill with a glass of Coke

(which, as anyone could tell you, can completely

dissolve a steel spike left in it over night!)

& waiting over an hour for the magic…

nothing… happened!

boy, was i ever pissed! it was just like that time

I swallowed the chokecherries & drank the

glass of milk, which everybody swore

would kill you… but it never did.

it just tasted bad.

i didn’t even get sick!

I thought, face it:

there’s no magic in this world—

only lies

back

FORTUNE’S FOOL SYNDROME

So once upon a time I found myself on a jumbo jet headed for something called Basic Training. I say found myself, not because I was just waking up from amnesia. And not because I’d been drafted, either. Nothing as exotic as that. And in case you’re wondering, I was stone cold sober. Oh, I could’ve listed off the steps that had placed me on that plane. It’s just that the Big Decisions in my life never seemed entirely real… until, that is, I’d end up landing on both feet in some rock-hard consequence that I might not be too happy with. That’s just the way most of my life was— always sort of discovering myself somewhere or other, involved in doing something I really hadn’t particularly chosen and didn’t necessarily want. Strange, huh. I was born without foresight.

Something other than me seemed to be the force that determined what I was to become, and when. Consequently, I’ve felt a strong kinship with Juliet’s Romeo when he cried out in anguish, “O, I am fortune’s fool!” (act 3, scene 1). Remember, he’d just accidentally executed Juliet’s favorite cousin Tybalt, something he hadn’t planned on doing at all. In fact, it was the last thing on earth he’d wanted to do. But nonetheless, there he was, stuck with the consequences. That was so me of him. Well, I’ve never killed anybody. Still, I see myself suffering from something close to acute Fortune’s Fool Syndrome.

My parents were loving parents. I know they loved me and my siblings dearly. We were blessed. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was me. See, they made the decisions. All the decisions period. And I guess I didn’t always like that so much. For some reason I’d been born downright contentious and I had a dark side. (I wasn’t all bad. Half of me was good… I swear). But as the black sheep of the family, I never saw much fun in practicing responsible-decision-making. There was just something off about me. Dad tried his darndest to teach me responsibility, but all of his lessons just seemed to drip off me like water off a duck’s feathers. My mind was always elsewhere. I dunno, was it my DNA? I often wondered. I really did.

For instance when Disney’s Pinocchio hit our local theater again, I know I identified with Pinocchio. The movie left me feeling guilty for some reason, and chewing on some probing questions about who and what I was, even at age ten…

ON FIRST WATCHING PINOCCHIO

Did the virgin-pure, see-no-evil hearts

of any of those other little boys in the

fllickery moviedark leap up (like mine?)

at all those all-night carnival-barker

come-ons amid the sparkleworks of

Pleasure Island?

Those free Big Rock Candy Mountain

Cigars, say?

That stained-glass church window just

begging you to pitch a brick through it?

The punch-somebody-in-the-face-&-

get-away-with-it “Rough House”?

And the mugs of free draft beer served at

The Pleasure Island Pool Hall Emporium?

Did the NO MORE CURFEWS concept set

their y-chromosomes a-resonating like

little tuning forks? Did Disney’s Pinocchio

arouse the snakes & snails and

puppy-dog tails in

those guys too?

Or (good lord!)

was I the only

donkey boy

in the

crowd?

Anyway, I know I never liked my parents’ lessons and rules, but it was made clear to me from the beginning that I didn’t have to like them. It just was what it was. I always fought against them, but pretty much all my rebellions were firmly and promptly squashed. Dad was military after all, served as an NCO who, a few years prior, saw extreme combat in World War II. So… obedience, and all.

But Ma’s rules were crazy. Her being a fundamental evangelist, she was always on guard and ready to exorcise the devil in me. Would you believe she once made me swear not to get a girl pregnant, simply because some high school girl right up the street had gotten in the family way? And would you believe I was in third grade at the time; knew ZILCH about how to, or how not to, do that particular thing but swore up and down and crossed my heart anyway that I would never do it? Poor Ma. She also made me pledge that I would never fall in love with a Catholic girl. And then one day, my sophomore biology lab partner (a year older than me) said she’d like to meet me at the hometown basketball game that night. With a fluttery heart, you bet I showed up. We sat with our backs against the wall in the top tier of the bleachers and… before I knew what was going on, I found myself lip-locked in a make-out embrace! I know! I came back home from the game later that evening just in time to hear the tail-end of my older brother squealing on me, “…and she’s Catholic too, Ma!” Yep. That was every bit as shameful as when Jerry Seinfeld’s “parents” found out their son had been spotted making out in the movie theater during Schindler’s List! But what the hell. Later in life, yeah, I married myself a good Catholic girl.

So anyway, I ended up just floating down river of my life through the puberty years and beyond like some youthful Long John Silver on The Good Ship Lollipop. I lived only for the moment, totally oblivious to any real decisions and future planning that I needed to be making. They’d take care of themselves when the time came, right? They always had. Somehow. The only gnawing problem was, as time went by, I began feeling this ominous, not-so-far-off-and-getting-nearer metaphoric roar of Niagara Falls up ahead, that drop-off where I’d someday find myself deep-sixed down in Adultsville and on my own..

Back through fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, our teachers would subject us to The Annual Career Planning Unit. Each year the student must select a career that he/she might possibly to pursue for consideration in her/his possible future. The assignment: a three or four week project wherein an encyclopedia entry on the selected career might be painstakingly copied down verbatim (no computers, no Google back then), a worker in the selected field might be contacted for a personal Q&A interview, informative pamphlets might be sent away for, etc. I was excited about this project. If you’d asked me back then I’d say, “I can tell you exactly what I’m going to be when I grow up.” It was gonna be the same thing I’d always wanted to be since giving up being a singing cowboy movie star like Roy Rogers: a bona fide United States Air Force jet pilot ace. So yeah, I hit the old library encyclopedia, sent for some packets, talked to the flyboy down at the local recruiting office, and presented my report to the class as glowingly as the infamous Ralphie of The Christmas Story movie ever delivered his eloquent plea for his Red Ryder BB rifle. But…right off the bat, I had luckily stumbled upon the two most critical keys to becoming America’s next flying ace: simply a minimum height requirement (I wasn’t there yet, but it was still early), and a vision score of 20/20. Bingo! I already had 20/20 vision! Simply grow a few more inches and I’d be in like flint! So there. I was practically flying my Sabre jet already.

By the time I got to high school I had only another inch to grow, so things were looking up. I loved talking about my future in the wild blue yonder. Actually I talked about it too much because as my junior year rolled around, I was abruptly sat down at the dinner table to have the talk with Ma and Dad. (No, not that talk. I never got that talk, actually.) It was a rather grim family meeting. The topic was that my future beyond high school was not up to me. (What?)It was up to them. ( I said, What?!)And it didn’t involve the service. It involved college. (Wait a minute. As Cool Hand Luke was once informed, What we had there was a failure to communicate.) I didn’t want to go to college, I informed them. It was gonna be the Air Force for me. No, I was informed, it was going to be college for me. “We’ve thought about this, your mom and me, and what we’ve decided is… well… you’re going to be the first one in our family ever to graduate with a college degree.”

I was dumbfounded! “Oh. You’ve thought about it, have you? How nice! Funny, I can’t remember me thinking about it. Now why’s that? Oh yeah, now I ‘member: it’s ‘cause: That’s. Not. What. I. Want. Let somebody else do it!” It was for my own good, I was told. No, I argued, it was for my own bad. It would be a waste of my time. Because maybe they didn’t realize it, but (and oh boy, here came my two aces in the hole!) I had just that year met my height requirement (barely) and plus, I already had 20/20 vision.

“What, you think that’s all it takes to be a pilot. I’ll tell you what it takes. It takes a good solid math background for one thing. And your grades in trigonometry aren’t too stellar right now, are they. Listen, I had to take calculus.” Hell, I didn’t even know what calculus was. Whatever it was, it sounded awful. But anyway, long story short— ever hear that song, “I Fought the Law and the Law Won”? I was destined to lose. It couldn’t have gone any other way. Why? Because my whole little lifetime, I’d been brainwashed into knowing that I was under their thumb. Stockholm Syndrome. Losing was all I knew.

Growing up, Dad was “my agent.” He was always getting me jobs I didn’t want. I remember one beautiful, sunny, summer afternoon. I was just sitting on our front steps staring blissfully up at the clouds, chewing on a stalk of grass. Suddenly, dad’s pick-up stormed into the driveway. He rolled his window down and called out, “Get in.”

I was confused. “What’s going on?”

“You’re gonna be mowing lawns at the local cemeteries this summer.” Hey, I didn’t even like having to mow our lawn, let alone somebody else’s, but cemetery plots? Alas, within minutes I found myself a fresh-fish kidnap-ee among a rag-tag brigade of whiskered old scarecrows trundling behind lawn mowers. Another summer he got me two wretched custodial jobs which I thought way too demeaning for the likes of me, as the last thing I wanted to be known as was a friggin’ toilet-cleaning, garbage-hauling “janitor.” But the topper was that evening he came home from work grinning and told me I was now an employee at the local ESSO station. “What!? Hey, I… no offense but see, I don’t know the first thing about working at a gas station! I’m…not even qualified.” That seemed to tickle his funny bone as he assured me that the proprietor had personally assured him that, not to worry, he’d turn me into a grease monkey in no time flat. “A grease monkey?”

OK. But before I go on here, allow me to pause and come clean about something. Me wanting to be a flyboy ace? That was stupid. An irresponsible childish fantasy, just as stupid as my once wanting to be a singing cowboy movie star. Very likely I would have washed out of flight school in the first day but of course, I couldn’t see that then. A) I was oh so immature, B) a drama queen, C) a spoiled little brat, and D) a wuss to boot. Ma and Dad were right much more often that I was wrong. It’s true. I was the problem. I’m embarrassed right now traveling back there in my mind and witnessing, in retrospect, my childish behavior. All my whining and complaining would’ve fit right into some black and white 1950s sit-com like Father Knows Best or My Three Sons. Shame on me. OK? OK. There. I feel better now. Young Tom, drama queen extraordinaire.

That being said, my immaturity didn’t do me any favors in my actual young adulthood. Sure, I ended up enjoying a 34-year career in education, but how did that happen? Answer: by default. I’ve said that a thousand times. By default. (I’m smiling to myself now because that just reminded me of a comical quote from Homer Simpson: “Dee Fault Dee Fault!! My two favorite words in the English language!”)

And the fact that I became a teacher by default points right back to that very time I was having the spat with my parents about Air Force vs. College.

When I‘d finally caved on the issue (I always caved), and when it was obvious to all three of us that I’d really caved, Ma and Dad were excited. Me? I was left feeling sad, powerless, bruised, and happily wallowing in self-pity. So when the prodding started as to what I might want for a career and where I might like to apply for school… my martyr’s answer: “I don’t care. Why don’t you pick.” And when they started really pushing it, I’d get passively aggressively sarcastic. “Oh I dunno. Brain surgeon? Maybe a rocket scientist? I figure with my grades, I might as well go to Harvard. Or if I can’t get in there, then Yale is a shoo-in.” Then my Guidance Counselor got into the act of course. Pick a card. Any card. So I ended up picking the Joker, the least expensive card in the deck, which just so happened to be a state teachers’ college. Maine residents like myself were gifted with a seriously much reduced cost of tuition at state colleges. Did it matter to me that it was a teachers’ college? Not in the least. Because who cared? What difference did it make? Bring it on. Oh, pity-party me… So the die was cast by default.

So, off to college I went. And you ask, How was college? Great. I loved being off on my own, away from the parents. I loved living in a dorm. I loved making new friends. Hell, along the way I accidentally fell in love with the courses I was taking, not that I meant to. And of course as time went on I also fell in love with learning to drink and being quite utterly irresponsible. Goes with the territory. But when it was over, boy didn’t it ever used to piss me off when I’d catch Ma proudly telling her friends, “Oh, you know I’ll never forget that exact moment when Tommy announced that he had a calling to be a teacher!” Jeez, Ma. Gimme a friggin’ break.

The first two years passed in those ivy-covered halls. And then, on the second week of my junior year, something life-altering happened. During an educational class on Classroom Management, the professor herded us across the street to the local junior high school (think middle school) where we got to sit in the back of a classroom to watch a real live teacher in action. Two things happened to me. A) I was utterly knocked out by the (wow!) unbelievable mastery in action of that teacher, and B) I was (oh shit!) hit over the head with an epiphany that, once again, I’d ‘found’ myself somewhere. Only this time found myself strapped like a saw mill log on a conveyor belt that was barreling me toward the Big Buzz Saw straight ahead : an actual teaching job! An actual life-long career of teaching, oh my! I was suddenly terrified.

You’ll no doubt find it strange that I’d just lived through two whole years taking classes in a four-years teachers’ college and hadn’t realized, what… the obvious? I know. I get it. So do I, I still find it strange, not to mention embarrassing. I dunno, maybe I have ADHD or something. But the truth is, never in my wildest imagination had I consciously comprehended the cold, hard reality of what the academic motions I was robotically going through actually meant. In my mind, I was still in high school and going to nowheresville. Don’t forget, pity-party me had left high school in a real dark zombie funk, and I’d entered that college feeling like nothing more than a wooden pawn in somebody else’s chess game. And then following that, I’d become way too distracted by the joys and opportunities of campus life to even focus on the fact that my non-decisions carried actual responsibilities.

See? Romeo’s Fortune’s Fool Syndrome.

But long story short, sure enough, I became a teacher. Didn’t like it much that first year. Felt I wasn’t cut out for it. So instead of hanging in for a second year, I joined the Army National Guard instead. Why? Because my best friend had just done that. But then BASIC Training sucked so bad, I took the path of least resistance again and sort of allowed myself to fall back into a second teaching job. Which turned out to be a great thing because… well, I fell in love with teaching there. And then I worked very hard at becoming good at it. So many great memories from the various classrooms…

You know, I’ve heard a lot of people repeat the old adage, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” The ironic thing is…they say it like it’s a bad thing.

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A MAN OF SUBSTANCE

One of the great perks of being the septuagenarian today is that I get to be that guy who harps on and on ad nauseum about the horrors of growing up way back there in the 1940s and 50s…

However, it requires being able to walk a fine line: teetering on the tightrope between being seen as an interesting and entertaining informer (like a Ted Talk guy), and unwittingly coming across as a throwback to the violent caveman days (especially to you of the much younger and more recent generations). In fact, I could be in grave danger of being judged pariah material in these political correctness years. Because let’s face it, a lot of aspects of life in “the good old days” can’t help but be perceived as behaviors shamefully barbaric by today’s standards. I mean, (especially speaking as a male), we really were (shudder) the sexist, wolf-whistling, cancer-stick smoking, firetruck-and-ambulance-chasing, no seatbelt kids of the mid-twentieth century.

And what do I have to offer in the way of a defense? Only this pathetic little bouquet of pathetic, wet-limp-noodle, looking-down-at-our-toes-in-shame alibis. Hey you know, we were just kids—not grown-ups! It wasn’t our fault! We didn’t make the rules. It was the times, you dig? And like… when in Rome, daddy-O, do as the Romans do, right? OK, ya jus’… ya jus’ hadda be there, man!

Perhaps it would be a great idea if, before you read my following, autobiographical poem, you’d try looking objectively back on my decades as one might look upon an ancient anthropology museum diorama. And don’t you worry, I do feel dutifully guilty about having been alive during such a Neanderthal past. Hell, I’m still looking back and apologizing for the hip-hugging bell-bottoms and leisure suits of the disco 70s too. But it’s easy to play armchair quarterback after the game is over. Nevertheless, the times just are what they are, and were what they were.

Anyway, moving right along… and without further ado, allow me share with you this little autobiographical piece of creative writing I penned back around 2001.

rhymes with ‘euphoric’

once upon a time

way back there in the 50’s…

the very minute we started teething

the nursery crib became

baby’s first opium den

mom still marvels

how i’d stop crying & drop right off to sleep

just like that!

after she’d massaged a dollop of her favorite

over-the-counter opiate

into the tender & swollen teething sores of my

poor little five-month-old

gummy-gum-gums

paregoric:

the mom’s best friend

a product that really worked for once—

& my brain

(no dummy, even as early as that)

was as eager to learn as any pavlovian dog

& the old messages started flashing in & among

the axons & dendrites:

brain to gums, brain to gums, come in please

roger, brain, this is gums, go ahead

10-4 gums, that last dose was a beaut.

whatever you do, just keep’em coming. you copy?

roger wilco that, brain. Over & out…

yes, message received:

laugh & the world laughs with you

cry & you cry & get stoned

i try to imagine my cunning little self

in my powder-blue security blanket…

jonesing for my next fix—

bet i did a lot of gratuitous ‘crying’…

wonder if i snored like a banshee

as a swaddled little babe coked to the gills…

hell, i’d have cut excess teeth if i’d known how

True story, I swear. An odd one for sure unless, like me, you were born in 1946 into a generation of “considered-very-respectful-moms-and-dads” who happened to believe in the application of that magic, over-the-counter, no-prescription-required opiate known as Paregoric (yeah, think about what you’ve learned about today’s oxycodone) to the sore gums of toddlers in the throes of teething.

It was the conventional thing to do then, and the humane thing to do, right? I mean, it allowed the child to have a much needed respite from the constant pain, didn’t it. And what parent wouldn’t want that? The baby would stop yowling almost immediately. And the big added plus was: it usually knocked the little twerp right off to sleep in some playpen la-la land. And again, what parents don’t love it when their beautiful baby takes a needed nap, especially one they’ll blissfully be very unlikely to wake up from for perhaps an hour or two?

And yet… it was an opiate. Just think: a pre-rugrat, and I was on the receiving end! Who remembers how often?

Take a look at these two illustrations (with a thumb and finger pinch you can zoom in). Read the labels if you dare. These are the same labels our parents gave the cursory glance at when innocently hauling the little bottle out of the medicine cabinet, from its place among the Vicks Vaporub, mercurochrome, aspirin, and the other wonder drugs of the decade. Check the suggested ages. Check the dosages. How powerful were those doses?

Well, I have a memory of six hyperactive little Connecticut cousins of mine arriving in the dead of night after their long, cramped ride up here to Maine for a week-long visit. I was about nine. They ranged from one to eight and were wound tight as drums after being packed like sardines in their station wagon for so long. A wild and joyous scene immediately ensued, with yelling and laughing and wrestling and telling stories. But 45 minutes later their mom lined them up like little soldiers in a row, had each step forward one by one, and spooned (eye-droppered for the baby) Paregoric into each dutifully opened mouth. Fifteen minutes later there was a dead silence. Every last one of them had fallen sound asleep and was being carried off and away to bed.

And… has it affected me? Well, quite obviously it did at the time I was dosed. I mean I was (to borrow the title of one of my Bob Dylan albums) “Knocked Out Loaded.” Yes, but that was the immediate effect. Did it have a long-term effect on my life? My later life?

Well, first of all, I think we’ll all agree that it’s unreasonable to give an opiate to a 6-month old baby, and it’s hard to imagine there would be no long-term changes. Of course we didn’t have Google (let alone computers). If we had, we might have been interested in this assessment from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: “The risk of addiction to opium smoking appears to be somewhat less than to parenteral use of heroin, but appreciably greater than to alcohol. Even in countries where its use is traditional, opium smoking carries substantial risks of harm to health and social functioning…“ And speaking of alcohol by the way, when I related the story of my 1950s infantile brushes with Paregoric to my high school English classes of the 1970s, they confessed to me that many of their parents had dipped the tip of a rag into a glass of whiskey and allowed them to chew on it for gums relief. But I digress.

Who can say what long-term effects this practice has had on my life? I believe that I can argue very convincingly that there have been some direct long-term effects. But how much of that was brought on by DNA? Nature or nurture?

Let me say this, though: my little poem, “Rhymed with ‘Euphoric,’” is the one I chose to be the introductory piece in the last of five poetry chapbooks:

As a whole, the book pretty much stunk. But there are a few winners within, in my opinion. More about this later perhaps, perhaps not.

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