"Ruby, get the ball"

 

I lived in Austin, Texas for a couple years in the mid-nineties. I had many jobs over that short time, true to an alcoholic's resumé. I also packed about seven years of a normal person's life into those two and a half years, like a dog has to do.

               Over part of my term in Texas, I had two jobs at once. I had gotten a lovely girlfriend, and she decided to start up a high-end tamale business. I don't particularly like tamales, but I dove into the fledgling company, plunked my hands into it, and I even named it. It was called "Hot Damn Tamales," which came from an Elvis Presley outtake. I am in the tamale 100,000 club. I have extruded, wrapped in husk, steamed, and packaged more tamales than one person could healthily consume in a lifetime. Between my girl and I, we sold, gave away, and traded about a quarter million of those Hot-Damn things. We traveled all over midland Texas establishing our business at barbecues, fairs, and, primarily, farmers' markets. We made these tamales at home, but, to be in accordance with the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission, we also rented the kitchen at Captain Quackenbush's on "the Strip," in Austin. After we started renting their kitchen, that horrible restaurant asked if I would help them out as a cook for "a few weeks." Thus came my two sapping jobs. Captain Quack's began at 6 a.m. and ostensibly ended at 2 p.m., and from 6 p.m. to midnight, Hot Damn Tamales would, as we ought, make tamales.

                Don't get me wrong; each job was a good one. They were right in finding me to be a "character" at Captain Quack's, but they paid exceptionally low wages, and I was a tool, bespoken in no uncertain terms by the management after those first few weeks, at a staff meeting. They asked me to be their kitchen manager. Boldly, I responded, "So you want me to order your produce and your Sysco delivery, do inventory, schedule your irresponsible college student workers, work their missing shifts myself, and take the blame for whatever isn't done on time as a result. Oh, and I don't suppose I'll be getting a raise for all that, right?" They looked at each other around the table, wide-eyed, in that false, taken-aback manner and literally laughed about what I had said.

               "Yeah," said the restaurant manager, "That's about what it is."

              I laughed along, but I continued to wake up at 5 a.m.,  show up at 6 a.m., and I completed, daily, what to them was a chuckle.

               The nascent tamale company with my girl was, what? A labor of love for a product I didn't actually like to eat? At least I didn't cut into the profits. She, however, in a somewhat controlling way, was the creative one. I was the muscle, and I had to defer to many of her decisions. I worked hard at both jobs, and we took Hot Damn Tamales to many, many, farmers' markets throughout that Great State, and I enjoyed some of the finest organically grown fruits and vegetables the USA has to offer. Texas grows some of the best tomatoes in the nation, and I love "love apples," as they are known.

               I took one Saturday off from the farmers' markets in lieu, I believe, of a televised baseball game, a consistent case of manic-girlfriend-induced sleep deprivation, or both, and early that evening when she returned, I learned that I had A Third Job. She couldn't have come back with a bagful of sweet corn (although she actually might have) or Fredricksburg peaches, or wild grapes.

              No.

               She brought home a puppy.

              I am not a dog aficionado, I am an unrepentant dog lover, and this poor little thing was not yet even a dog. She (an easy call) was only about six weeks old, and I could hold her in the palms of my hands. To tell, at her pint-size, she was some sort of shepherd that any shearling lamb would easily trample, but I knew she would grow into her non-breed's height and weight. My girlfriend beamed. I asked, "Are you going to take care of this little thing? Do know what she needs to eat? Are you going to pick up her shit?"

               "No," answered my lovely date, "I thought you would. She was the last one, and nobody wanted her. Don't you like her?"

              I sure did, immediately. I believe it was that evening that we named that puppy "Ruby," and she was my favorite kind of dog; she was a mutt, and she was the runt of the litter. That makes a bitch smart and tough. She hadn't been properly weaned, so that made her smarter and tougher.

               Tiny Ruby's stomach was distended with the farm-borne worms that had filled her intestines, and on that first frightful night off the farm, I counted her six week-old respiration at around 130 times per minute. I fed Ruby homemade chicken broth (from the tamale stock) mixed with over-cooked, mashed carrots and heavily diluted green tea as a laxative, to maybe poop some of the worms out and so that she might stay awake and not over-pant herself into puppy heaven. Of that Saturday night, cradling Ruby, I could not find a veterinarian by phone. She looked up at me with barely opening eyes in the apologetic way that dogs have when they think they're going to die on you. I cupped her in my hands and kept her warm all night long, in spite of the fact that it was late August in Texas. That night, I cried unashamedly and often over that poor little shivering dog.

               I got to the vet on Sunday morning, and was told that I had done a good job keeping Ruby alive through the night. She was poked and prodded, and I got the damn worm medicine. Ruby liked the car ride home, and she seemed to understand that I had to jostle her in my lap while I operated the stick shift.

               She began to thrive, loyal, healthy... but intelligent? True to her farm-bred nature, she was a herder. She was poised and strong. We had a fine backyard, and she did not have to be paper trained. Ruby also liked to do with me just about anything that I liked to do. She ran alongside me when I rode my bicycle. If I ate celery, she wanted to do that with me. She sat, rapt, as I did push-ups. She knew how to pay attention. That is, until it came to the word, "ball."

               I don't think I have ever met a dog or a puppy who was not enthusiastic about a sphere. I have met Chihuahuas who will try for hours on end to get their jaws around a regulation NBA basketball. I have spent time with large-breed dogs who understand as many as thirty commands, look at a blue handball for the three-thousandth time like it was their first-ever experience seeing something they could go and chase, bring back, and do it all over again. When I say "ball," any dog I have ever known widens its eyes and expects me to do something with one and, if I'm not holding one in my hand, will at least make the pretense of looking for one or point me to where one might be. Not Ruby. She learned many words, and she loved to play ball, and I know she wasn't simply being obedient, but I could not, in spite of her overall intelligence, get her to pick up that word. She would tilt her head and gaze at me in wonder. This astounded me. She loved to play with a ball and knew what to do, but she just wouldn't get the darned word.

               Over the days and weeks and months, I repeated the word "ball" to her at least 10,000 times. That count may not be accurate, because it might have been more like 12,500 times. She would not understand that word. Mind you, this was a puppy who, when I said, "No potato chips for dogs," would walk away and sulk.

                "Ruby, get the BALL." "Where's that BALL, Ruby?" "Ruby, go find that BALL." "Here's the BALL, Ruby." "Do you want the BALL, Ruby?" "Here's that BALL!" "Ruby, do you like that BALL?" One hundred and fifty times a day. A guy can't do everything, and I want my dog to go find her own damn ball. I mean, why not? It's one syllable, and what a great toy! On the lawn, on the street, in the house, she gave me nothing but a longing, blank, probing stare.

               One mid-afternoon, I got off from my Captain Quackenbush shift on time, for once, and I walked home. I walked Ruby, brought her home, cracked a can of Lone Star, and I plopped down in a big easy chair. She looked up at me. Just for the hell of it, for the twelve-thousand, five hundred and first time, I asked, "Ruby, where's the ball?" She tilted her head and gave me the perplexed doe-eyes. I thought I was going crazy. How could this seemingly loyal, intelligent, energetic dog not understand the one bonding, desirable word which the most moronic mastiff would comprehend before he could even learn the word "food?" My shoulders slumped. Dejected and tired, for the hell of it, I monotoned, "Ruby, get the ball."

               She started whimpering. I didn't know what to think. She laid her head between my feet and poked her nose under my chair. I had a brief notion that I was not crazy, but that Ruby was. Ruby jiggled her tail, looked up at me, and continued whimpering. It dawned on me that this time, maybe, the ball was under the chair! My kitchen-weary knees cracked as I stooped down to look under there, and I pulled out one of her hairy, dusty, blue handballs from where Ruby couldn't get to it. We had broken through! She, on the twelve-thousand, five hundred and second time, not only knew what I was talking about, but she knew to tell me that she couldn't reach it.

               I almost cried, and I rubbed her pink belly like the first night I met her. We played ball for hours after that, and you can be sure that, upon that afternoon and evening, potato chips were for dogs too.

The Scenic Route

 

              I was six years old today, and I was just beginning to learn what a birthday means. It wasn’t and isn’t only about getting presents and getting attention from the adults around you. It is about having been born. As a child, it is about being borne by the adults upon whom you rely. Later on, you find that a birthday is about the life you must carry with family, friends, acquaintances and strangers who, encompassed, carry you further. It is about what you give to all of them in return.

           

            I attended Lincoln Elementary School, in Augusta, Maine. I had a new mom and a new home. I had a baloney sandwich with mustard in a brown paper bag, because it was any day other than Friday, the day when we Catholics had to bring tuna fish sandwiches or at least meatless lunches to school. I do believe that bagged lunches helped all Catholic moms remember which day of the week it was. I also had an apple in the brown paper bag. I had little youthful trust in my new mom, but, heck, she had my lunch ready most every morning, and she made Maypo for breakfast most every day.

Who hoards brown paper bags? Ecologists? Puppeteers? Practical moms? Many women are expected to be all three. I guess my new mom was getting to the end of the under-sink, brown bag reserve that day, for the bag was huge; she had scissored it down to a manageable height, but it still had far more interior than a boy’s lunch would ever require.

            I was six years old today. I ate my Maypo, got my big bag of lunch, and headed off to school. I decided to take a shortcut and eat the apple as I went.

            Dearly I ask you, do you know what a shortcut means to a six year-old boy? In all practicality, I needed simply to take a right turn out the front door, walk down Prospect Street, take Winthrop Street straight downhill for about a quarter mile, and go left at the huge, red brick public school. Not on your life. I knew then what I know now about shortcuts, and those in-the-know call them “the scenic route.” Eating my apple, there were fences to hop, brambles to untangle, neighbors to meet, and, eventually, thistles to pull from my socks, shirt, pants, and hair, as I would stand line for the morning bell.

            How is school for a six year-old boy? If one may not have an adventure in transit, one must make an adventure of the classroom itself. To my experience, most schoolteachers are dismayed by young boys’ school day “adventures” in the classroom, so we try to get them while we can. That morning, I first decided to take the shortcut though Mrs. Spencer’s hedges, yard, and driveway. Mrs. Spencer and Betsy were a latter-day pair of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Mrs. Spencer had dementia and an Oldsmobile 98 with the original Maine State license plate of number 99. Betsy drove the Olds and was Mrs. Spencer’s caretaker. My shortcut had me climbing over that car to get behind their house where there was an embankment I could slide down on last autumn’s slippery oak leaves.

            “What are you doing out there, boy?” Mrs. Spencer shouted through a window, “Bring about my horses!”

            Of course, there were neither horses nor a stable boy since she had been a young girl. Now it was just the Oldsmobile 98 and Betsy. I slid down the hill on the leaves and lost my half-eaten apple. I dug around for it for a few minutes and gave up. I stuck some acorns in my pocket instead. My butt was muddy and wet. I crawled through some brambles, stood up, reached up, and tugged down a handful of lilac blossoms. I would suck out their pollen later. I put them in with my lunch, and then I crossed the street at the bottom of the hill. My shortcut continued toward an expanse of front, side, and back yards; there were quite some neighbors to meet and fences yet to climb. I ran through an open lawn toward an apple tree. It was near a short chain-link fence leading me to the next yard. I figured jumping from the crotch of the tree would get me over the little fence. It did not. I caught my pant leg on the top of the fence and plonked my head onto a spongy lawn. A woman wearing Bermuda shorts, an oxford shirt, a pith helmet and gardening gloves, holding a pair of pruning clippers, looked up from her gardening.

Stuck on the fence, my feet pointed to the sky, I had an earful of sod. She walked over to where I was hanging. She smirked.

“So, what’s up?”

            “It’s my birthday.”

            “Let’s get you down offa there.”

She unhooked my pants from the fence. I stood up and rubbed my ear.

She looked at the driveway toward a motorcycle. “You know, I have a boy a lot like you,” she said.

 I saw where she was looking. “Is he still in bed?”

            “No, he’s in Viet Nam.”

            “Oh, is he in the army?”

            “Uh-uh. He’s a Marine.”

“I wanna be in the army.”

“I want him to be a doctor.”

“Okay, well, I gotta go to school.”

She ruffed my hair. “Yes, my darling, you really do.”

“It’s my birthday.”

She pulled a piece of grass from my eyebrow and nuzzled in my ear, “Now it’s mine too, kiddo.”

I thought it strange that we had the same birthday.

I ran out her front yard, making sure that I closed the little chain-link gate behind me. As I did, I took a look back at the motorcycle, and I guess she had just washed it. There was still soap in the sand, and it shone in the sunlight. I hoped that lady wasn’t lonely.

The gate across the street was of blue picket fence, and I hopped it without catching my pants or hitting my head on the ground. I whipped around the house to the backyard and checked that brown bag with my lunch. It was losing its creases.

“HEY!” I heard, “What are you doing?” It was a man, sitting on the back steps, reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette.

“I’m going to school. It’s my birthday.”

“Oh, is it? Well, let me see what I got.” He went to reach for his pockets, but realized he was still in his boxer shorts. “Hold on, kid.” He stood up and went into his house. He returned, clanking coins in his hand. “Here ya go sport. Happy birthday.”

He gave me thirty-five cents, two nickels and a quarter. I was rich.

“What time do you have to be at school?”

 “Eight.”

“Well, it’s five after. You’d better run, birthday boy.”

I stuck the coins in my pocket with the acorns. “Thanks, mister!”

Jumping his back fence, run I did. I got to Lincoln School ten minutes late. I scrambled up the staircase to Mrs. Brown’s kindergarten room and knocked on the door. They had already said the Pledge of Allegiance, and I interrupted her reading aloud to the class. She approached.

“Michael. You’re late.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brown.”

“Wait here,” she ducked her head back in the door. “Class, please behave for a moment.”

She clacked to the first-grade classroom.

“Miss Harden, will you please watch my class while I bring this boy to the principal’s office?”

I was filthy with leaves, soil, and grass stain. I clutched my deteriorating lunch bag. Miss Harden glowered at me and said, “Yes, Mrs. Brown, of course.”

The first-grade class tittered. Mrs. Brown snagged me by the shoulder hem and pulled me back down the interminable stairs and halls to the principal’s office. He was Mr. Jordan. We marched to the front of his secretary’s desk.

“Hello Dorothy, is Mr. Jordan in?” Still holding my shirt, Mrs. Brown waggled me, as much to shake off my accumulated grime and foliage as to indicate her subject. “Michael is late today.”

We could all hear Mr. Jordan through his half-opened door shouting at somebody on the phone, so he was obviously in.

“Let me see,” Dorothy answered. She pushed a button on the intercom.

Mr. Jordan yelled, “What is it, Dorothy?”

“A tardy student from Mrs. Brown’s kindergarten class, Mr. Jordan.”

“Well, get him in here.”

I didn’t know what was the use of the intercom. They could hear each other fine.

In his office, Mr. Jordan was pudgy, seated, wore a dark, wrinkled suit, and his non-neck led up to a bright-red face stuck under the graying, balding pate of a television banker.

“Good morning, Mrs. Brown, what is this?”

“Michael Chandler was late for school.”

Mr. Jordan’s eyes narrowed, and he didn’t take them or his half-glasses off me as he opened a file drawer in his desk. He barely glanced down, and he drew out a mimeographed sheet of paper.

“Should we call his parents?” he asked.

“I think we should,” said Mrs. Brown.

Mr. Jordan looked at the piece of paper, pressed a button on his phone and dialed. “Hello?” he demanded, “Is this Mr. Chandler? Your son was late to school today.”

His face got redder.

“What? No. Who is this? Is Mrs. Chandler there?”

My folks had a party line which we shared with Mr. Burliss, a cranky old man who lived about five doors down and and didn't really know how to use the party line. He picked up about half of our calls. Mr. Jordan’s face got closer to purple.

“Yes, yes, I see,” and he slammed down the phone. He locked eyes with me. “I don’t like this, and I don’t have time for this. Why are you late?”

I looked down at my messy clothes.

“I guess because I took a shortcut.”

Mr. Jordan rose, and his clip-on necktie caught on the key of his top desk-drawer, yanking the tie from his shirt collar. He leaned on his big oak desk and shouted, “What do you think this is?! Your birthday?!!”

“Yup.”

I reached into my lunch bag.

“Do you and Mrs. Brown want some lilacs?”

The Butch

My years in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades of grammar school at St. Joseph's, were the worst years in my life, and I have spent at least thirty more years of independence trying to make up for those three formative years robbed of my youth. Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that I have much of the preteen still embedded in me.

Sister Janet was our fourth grade teacher, and I have the mis-notion of what her age might have been, but, trying to uncloud what was my youthfully skewed mind as to the age of adults, I figure she could not have been over thirty. She was oppressive and sexist, and compared to few other students in our class of about 36, she truly had it in for me. She, however, picked on all the boys in our class in one mocking way or another, sometimes with truly good humor, more often with embarrassing sexual overtones. Carrying the rudimentary nuggets of what I know of womankind today, I have no doubt that she had her worst days when she was menstruating, and that what she really needed was a good, long, satisfying fuck.

She mostly ignored the girls in the class and almost daily set upon the boys. There were a few "cool" boys in our class, and she would rib them in a jocular tone; although, they too were subject to her front-and-center stabs at humiliation.

If a boy had his shirt untucked, she would pull him to the front of the class, unbuckle his belt, unsnap his pants, unzip his fly, tuck in his shirt, and do him back up again. The girls tittered, and the rest of us boys, you'd think, would have gotten the message, yet this process happened many times after recess.

During the winter, there were snowbanks to play in. She warned us that if we came back in from the schoolyard with wet, snowy pants, that they would come off and be hung on the radiator to dry. Pity the boy who sat red-faced, staring at the floor in his long-johns or, God-forbid, his underwear. Most of us wore two pairs of pants at a time, lest our recess shenanigans would have that terror befall us. Many boys, many a time were down to one pair; damn if the slush leaked through them both. Michael Malia, one of the "cool" boys, one winter morning, had his pants stripped off and sat, boots on, chin up, in his tighty whities, and Sister Janet fairly blushed and beamed at his unashamedness.

To this day, as back then, I keep a messy desk. Several times, this met Sister Janet's wrath. I clearly remember a few mornings walking into the classroom with the feeling that today was actually a good, new day and then seeing the contents of my desk in a pile on the floor, and my desk next to hers at the front of the class. Before the "Pledge of Allegiance," I was to pick up my books and papers, pens and pencils, ruler and eraser from the floor, neatly arrange them into my desk, and spend the rest of the day next to her, facing the class. Titters all around. That smartass bitch; I raised my hand all day and gave her every right answer that everybody in the class didn't know. I'm sure that didn't help my relationship with her. When the bell rang to let us out, I would carry my desk back to its spot, and, as I remember, Maria Taliento would help me, blushing.

At one point during that school year, there was some scandal or another about corporal punishment in public schools, and some ACLU people or parent group had it outlawed. Ours being a Catholic school, we were above the laws of mercy, tolerance, and compassion, so we were, all in our school, handed permission slips to be signed by our parents, to allow the nuns to continue to hit us. I brought mine home, sure that my mom wouldn't sign it. Surely, she didn't want them doing that. She and my dad had exclusive smacking rights. Her response, as she signed the slip of paper was, "I hope they sock it to ya!" A line from "Laugh-In." I carried that slip back to school and dutifully placed it on Sister Janet's desk. I felt all alone.

I had two very close friends in those terrible years, Patrick Keeley and Angelo Mazzone. Patrick, pale, freckled, and obviously Irish, was probably the smartest kid in the class (I was probably second among the boys.), and Angelo was squat and exuberant and wanted to be a policeman. We were imaginative and inseparable. They told me great stories of their summer vacations and adventures with older sisters and brothers, and I made up tall tales of speedboats and Corvettes that had no basis in reality, because my life seemed so dull in comparison. I guess they were good stories, and they were never questioned.

One day, after the recess bell rang, the three of us were being rambunctious, and Sister Frances Claire, the fifth grade teacher, grabbed me by the ear and pulled me up the stairs to Sister Janet's fourth grade room, Patrick and Angelo meekly following. She told Sister Janet that if we thought we were so smart, we'd spent the rest of the afternoon upstairs in the fifth grade class. Sister Janet curtly smirked at us and said that would be fine with her. The three of us were introduced to the class of older kids to a round of laughter, and we got seats in front of the class. It was time for English, and Sister Frances Claire asked what is a diphthong. Her class went silent. I looked around, and all of her students were trying to avoid her gaze. Time stopped. I hesitantly put up my hand. She cocked her head and said, "Michael?"
"It's when you have two vowels next to each other that make one sound together, like 'around.'"

Patrick and Angelo's eyes were like dinner plates.

"That's right", she said, "Anyone else?"

Their hands poking the air, the fifth grade class exploded with answers now that the convict had broken the ice. We had Sister Francis Claire the following year, and hard-assed as she could be, I think that bold move softened her attitude toward all three of us when we got there.

At the end of my fourth grade year, as the trees bud and bloom, wet, snowy pants become grass-stained, and the bugs come out, I did something stupid. My parents called it "bad" and"wrong," and I can't, for the life of me, remember what it was (breaking a window? playing with matches?). Whatever it was, it was to be punished with the final humiliation of that fourth grade. Instead of waiting for school to let out before they did it, my parents sent me to the barber to get "the Butch."

I believe that the term "the Butch" comes from "the butcher," and it is a crew cut with a waxed-up front. It was a rite of summer, and, because it was so embarrassing, especially as this was the beginning of the 1970s, the days of long hair, my parents would mercifully let me get the Butch after school let out. Not this year. Whatever I had done warranted getting my hair lopped off and spending the last week of school, downcast, among my classmates, all of them knowing that I was being punished.

I went to school on Monday of the final week, staring at the ground, and it was a beautiful Spring day. I remember the lilacs. Patrick Keeley and Angelo Mazzone met me and they said the buzz job was alright, and I said no, it wasn't. I felt like hell. I was the only bald kid in the class. And buck teeth besides. Sister Janet's eyes sparkled; it was punishment that she didn't even have to mete out. My parents agreed with what she thought I deserved. At the end of the day I skulked home.

I got to school on Tuesday morning and both Patrick and Angelo ran up to me, and I'll be God-damned if both of them hadn't each had their hair shorn off. They had both gotten a Butch! To this day, it mystifies me how two nine year-old boys would conspire to such solidarity for a friend. Their act - they must have each asked their parents to bring them to the barber after school - still, to me, defines friendship, to share a friend's humiliation in an act of unity and defiance of convention. If one of us was not going to be "cool," we would all not be cool together, and it did not matter what anyone thought. We were friends, and everyone could see it.

I wonder what Sister Janet thought of that.

Trilingual Pets

I speak very little French nowadays. I studied the language for about nine years in the Great State of Maine as a child and as a teenager. My accent got good, as I am a fair mimic, and my French grammar, as with my English, was learned as much through my knuckles as it was through my noggin. Given two weeks in France, people think that, partly because of my size XL nose, I am a native.

I do not speak French to Puck.

Puck, my dog, grew up in New York City, as I did not. I lived in Spain for a few years as Puck did not; however, having lived in Madrid and on the Island of Majorca, I returned to the USA, years before Puck was born, with but a rudimentary knowledge of the Spanish (less so, Majorquin) tongue. My friends overseas were either American or British, or they were Spaniards who wished to learn American vernacular. I studied the Spanish language while I lived there, but, in large part due to my own laziness, I lapsed. Hell, I taught English while I was there to people who insisted that I not speak Spanish during the lessons. There is another aspect that displaced Americans and foreign Europeans – Dutch, German, Irish, English, Belgian - found it a relief to speak English to somebody, anybody.
When I returned to the USA, I found that my fledgling knowledge of Spanish helped a true communication with the people who work in bodegas and elsewhere in the service industry. That I tried to communicate in Spanish made many daily acquaintances pleasurable and entertaining. I helped them out with their questions about English, and they were happy to oblige my grammatical queries. I would ask (and still do) a Dominican counter person or a Columbian waitress, for instance, what is the difference between a certain phrase in Castellano, versus the same in South American or Caribbean Spanish.

I do not speak Japanese, but, in a Pavlovian manner, I enjoy learning things which appeal to me. So does Puck.
The Raunch Hands played a short tour of Japan, again, long before Puck’s birth, and our entourage – and please do not diminish the exact meaning of that term – referred to me consistently as “gitchee guy.” “Tsandra-san” was another moniker, but I understood that one (“Chandler, sir”). I asked what is the meaning of the word “gitchee,” and I was told that it means “cool and crazy;” although, they said “clazy.” I translate the term to mean “nutty.” “Gitchee guy” also pairs up with “gitchee gar,” meaning, “gitchee girl,” so the idiom is not gender-exclusive. I selectively learned that term, and “arrigato,” as my only Japanese words.

Now back to little Puck, the eternal puppy.

Certainly, he is not little; however, I think of him as such, and that is a defining element in our man-to-dog relationship. In our early days, I gave him a ham bone, which he promptly took into his mom’s (my girlfriend’s) bed. I scolded him, and I tried to take that bone away, to bring it into a drool-proof environ. I know, now, what Siegfried and Roy dealt with daily. Puck bared his teeth and lashed out at me with same. I was frightened, but I realized that I had to put him in his place. I yelled at him in the way that I reserve for the microphone in a rhythm & blues performance, and my howl, though much out of fear, beat him down. I felt like a lion. He unequivocally understood what I meant, and not only did he drop the ham bone, but he perceived, in no uncertain terms, who was his master. That instance changed our relationship.
Certainly, Puck responds to the sound of my voice, as much as he recognizes my scent... umm, as, admittedly, I do his; however, we refer here to language. When I use the words, “walk,” “food," “treat,” “ball,” or “beach,”, Puck knows exactly to which I refer, and he is a ready dog. When I tell him, as his affirmed master, to “stay” or to “behave,” words which he very well knows, he makes a decision.
Puck is trilingual, and there are no three ways about it. Not only does he know the above English words, but he responds well to “enough,” and the phrase, “knock it off!” When we walk together, he knows the Spanish terms “vete” and “venga” and “basta,” and, I hope he finds endearing the term “idiota,” which he hears from time to time when he would, and does think he should, “walk,” when to a person who is lucidly aware of rapidly moving automobiles and who is not color blind and who, by the way, is holding the leash, knows better.
Happiest of all languages that little Puck understands, is my microscopic knowledge of Japanese. When I call him “gitchee guy,” he knows exactly what I mean. When I call him by his name, in whatever tone, to him, it could really mean anything, “Wanna Treat?” “Wanna ball?” “Wanna go to the veterinarian?” etc. When I call him “gitchee,” in any circumstance, will he follow proper direction, but he, under more comfortable, domestic conditions, happily, obediently, soundly, plunks his big, furry, black head on my chest. Those eyes, that sighing breath...

65-pound little Puck, indeed trilingual, is cool and crazy.

The rock 'n' roll element.

Near-Death Experiences Part ll

I have spoken of the railroad tracks and my fascination with them. I have always kept far from oncoming trains. To pedestrians, they are imminent death. Wanna do it? That is one way. From 1979 to 1980 I attended Fordham University in the Bronx, as long as they could stand to take my money, and I gave them a run for it. Running alongside our dormitories was the ConRail Westchester line. The easiest way over the tracks was a skinny, wooden pedestrian trestle. I think if you were to hang your legs over the side of the trestle, the tops of the diesel trains would have taken your feet off at the ankles. The trains came from Manhattan, at that spot, on an incline, and the triple engine locomotives roared to get out of town. I learned the schedules, and I would sit, cross-legged on that walking bridge, waiting for diesel locomotives to pass inches below. As they did, the enormous topside exhausts blew my hair and shirt up. I learned the feeling of being blown away by a train, and that feeling was liberating.

A year and a half later, I moved to New York City for good and true. I had just gotten my job at the ostensible “bookie joint,” and after a long day, got a fair wad of cash. I was walking across town to have a few beers with my new co-workers, and I was on a dark street. I heard running footsteps behind me, and I turned around. The man ran past me, and I thought everything was okay. Ten yards ahead of me, he stopped and turned, walking, back toward me. A hand plopped onto my shoulder, and there were three guys behind me. There was a handgun shoved into my back, and they told me to be quiet. They all four surrounded me, and two of them rifled my pockets. Of course they took my money, and they took my wallet, which contained nothing else of interest to them. They stole my phonebook, they stole half a pack of Kool non-filters. They stole my fucking matches. As they were about to run away, the one with the gun demanded, “Are you gonna yell when we leave?”
I trembled, “Oh, no. Oh, no, no sir.”
One of the other guys shouted in my ear, “Yes he is! Let’s kill him. Let’s just fuckin’ shoot him.” My knees went weak.
“Oh man, please don’t,” was my meek reply.
“Yeah, come on, fuckin’ shoot him!”
They looked at each other, dropped their shoulders, and all four darted off. I met my friends at the bar nearby, and I don’t know that I have ever needed a beer more than at that moment.

The second time I was mugged at gunpoint, I was walking home at about 4:30 AM with my short-time roommate, Carlo. We were sharing a sublet near Avenue C, and we were both finishing work at Club 57. The tips we had made that night didn’t stack up to more than seven dollars apiece. As we neared our tenement, two kids ran across the street towards us, one of them shamelessly brandishing what was either a .357 or a .44 blue/black Magnum. It was freezing outside, and the kid stuck it in Carlo’s neck. They shoved us into the ante way of what they didn’t know was our building. They thought we were in that desolate spot to buy drugs. I know that they wanted to get us off the street to cover the hold-up, but I am sure that half the reason they brought us into the building was that it was about ten degrees below zero outside, and they wanted to keep warm during the robbery. The barrel of that gun was nothing less than awesome. They took our meager cash, and Carlo and I kept our wallets, phonebooks, cigarettes, a bag of pot – and our matches.

When I am a drinker, I am a provider, and at the onset of the Raunch Hands, I had a good job at the “bookie joint,” so I would buy the beer for the band at our rehearsals. We rehearsed in Staten Island, and often, instead of taking the ferry, Mike Mariconda and I would meet our drummer, Vince, in Hoboken, and Vince would drive us over the Goethals Bridge to rehearsal. In those days, Vince would become either quite angry or quite silly when he drank. He had a few at rehearsal one night, and Mike and I got in the car with him. Drunk driving laws were not so stringent back then. It was snowing to become a blizzard. Vince was silly, and he drove that way. He was swishing fishtails across the Goethals and along into New Jersey. Both Mike and I nervously warned him to quit it, but Vince was in his cups, and he said he knew what he was doing, and he made more treacherous swerves in the heavy snow. There was very little traffic on the road, except for the bold or foolish.

Routes 1 and 9 arrive in Hoboken off the Pulaski Skyway, and it is a high approach. We were in Vince’s silver 1971 Chevy Nova, a fairly heavy automobile. Vince laughed heartily as he did another fishtail, coming down off the Skyway. He lost control of the swerve just as the car hit a patch of snowless pavement where the tires caught, sending us at a straight line across three traffic lanes toward the bridge abutment. When your life is in danger, everything slows down. That Nova did not. I looked at the speedometer; it read 45 miles per hour. I looked into the window of a sixth-floor apartment that was dead ahead of us. The abutment was about three feet tall, and I knew that if it collapsed under the weight of our car, we could not be saved. We bounced off the short wall, and the bumper sliced open one of the front tires. The radiator burst. Mike and I had to push it the rest of the way down the ramp, across some bare railroad tracks (a nightmare, in the snow) and into a parking lot. Vince was hardly even embarrassed. Mike and I walked to the Hotel Victor, soaked to the skin, and got hammered on 35-cent Schmidt’s draught beer with the old men.

A few years later, the Raunch Hands were on the road in London, Ontario, Canada. We were being driven by The Real Neil Meal Deal (Neil Vickers-Harris), and we were traveling with our buddy Rob, from Toronto, who habitually came along for our entire Canadian tours. We had heard of a party after the show and, of course, went to find it. We found the street, and the Raunch Hands galloped off to the house. I stayed in the van for several minutes to jaw with Neil and Rob. They went to find the party, and I lingered, I guess, smoking a hash joint and drinking an excellent Canadian beer, of which we used to buy cases – not to share with the hoi polloi. Well, I had the address of the party, but those screwy Canadians hadn’t done their streets like we do them here. There were even numbered and odd numbered homes on the same side of the street. Between houses, there were ten-digit skips. I looked all up and down that damn block, and no place exhibited a party. I was damn good at finding them too. There were lights on in the top apartment of a three-family home. I rang the bell and got no response. I walked to the backyard and there were porches on every floor, and I peered up, but I couldn’t tell if that was where the party was. I rang the front doorbell again, and received no response. I went around to the back, but there was no way up to the third floor. I went back to the front of the house, and there was a guy, about my age, standing on the porch. It looked like he had his hands in his back pockets. He asked me what I wanted, and I asked him if there was a party upstairs. I was astonished when he pulled a rifle from behind his back and leveled it between my eyes. I know my .22s from my Mossbergs, and I believe this was a Winchester. The barrel was about eight inches from my face, and the guy cocked the gun and asked me what the fuck I wanted. I told him that I was from America and that I was only looking for my friends and the party. He wasn’t buying. He told me I had better get out of there and poked me in the sternum with the barrel. I hastily obliged. I eventually found the “party,” and it was a madhouse. There was a nearly empty keg, the Raunch Hands, and maybe a dozen shitfaced Canadians. One guy had a flirty girlfriend, and he was being repeatedly pounded in the face by some guy she was coming on to. Both were very loaded, and when one would get weary of punching, the other would start pummeling back, until he had to stop. It was a ridiculous, lugubrious fight, and I watched for about ten minutes until one guy got his head smashed through the window of the storm door in front. The Raunch Hands left, and we never returned to London, Ontario.

I am sure there have been other near-death experiences in my past, but these posted are elemental. Although I am an alcohol and drug abuser, those incidents have not yet been caused, on my part, by alcohol or drugs; although, many times on them or afterward, I have wanted to die.

The rock 'n' roll element

Guitar

Whenever I see someone smash a guitar, I see someone who does not love music. I was walking down LaGuardia Place one day, and I saw three men, in the demolition phase of an apartment renovation, and they were flipping a beautiful art deco piano down the brownstone stoop, in the process, destroying it. Further, they humped it into a garbage truck and crushed it. My jaw dropped, and I could not look away. It was preposterous. I felt as though I was watching an execution, a slaughter.

I have seen "fine art" painters who have slashed their own canvasses. Would one think that I, if I were to be a fine artist in the field of stained glass, would smash my own work? Do you think that either Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis would destroy his own piano. Have you ever seen Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley or Hound Dog Taylor or John Lennon smash a guitar on stage? They never needed to do that.

That is not rock 'n' roll.

Where I come from, musical instruments are regarded as sacred. We use them so that you, in the audience, may feel something. Maybe I wish to send you angry chords and angrier lyrics. I do not get on stage to send you shards of wood.

Very truly,

The rock 'n' roll element

Near-Death Experiences Part l

As far as what I did or did not know about death, as a child, I experienced a few circumstances of what could have ultimately been. Since then, I have been in situations with handguns, rifles, drunken drivers, muggers, hard narcotics, and seemingly accidental circumstances which have brought me as close to my Maker as He will charitably allow.

Have you ever sniffed up a line of rat poison? How about a bag of Ajax that you just had to have? If so, would you admit this to your loved ones? When I was about four years old, I snorted up a whole salted Spanish peanut. It got way the hell up there, and I got an infection in my sinuses that made my nose and ears bleed profusely. As a four year-old, it was hard to admit, finally to my adults, what I had done up my nose... It required an operation, which, I suppose saved my life. I think I got off light. In my twenties, I experienced another, more harrowing, death-defying food experience from someone other than myself; a guy at a barbeque in Tennessee fell backwards, drunk, off an outdoor bench, onto a glass pickle jar; the jar smashed, a shard piercing one of his kidneys. You want to talk about ants or rain spoiling the picnic? How about Emergency Medical Services?

It wasn’t but a year or so after the peanut incident that I jumped into a swimming pool, for the heck of it, at a motel on a family vacation. To this day, as then, I swim like a pebble. I remember looking at the bottom of the pool and looking up through the water, which I was breathing, at the refracted rays of the sun. I was relaxed, and I suppose I felt confused, but not panicked. My uncle Bill Sitnik swam like a seal over me and plucked me out by my shoulders. I was not embarrassed by the worried response of my adults. It was one of those things I did.

When I was about seven, now in Portland, Maine, I was on my way to school, and I was not paying attention while crossing the street. I don’t suppose I had the light, and a car screeched to a halt, inches from clapping me to the pavement. The driver blasted his horn in guilty, frustrated fury. My wrist stung from where the car’s grille had rapped it, and I ran away, scared as hell, across the intersection. Quite an intersection it was. It was known (and still is, as far as I know) as Morrill’s Corner. It was home to The Brass Rail, a hard bar where I saw my very first bullet hole in a window. A few months after the personal bounce with the Ford Town & Country station wagon, I was walking home from school, regularly, crossing toward The Brass Rail; figure that this was about three-thirty in the afternoon. As soon as I crossed Forest Avenue and got onto the sidewalk in front of the bar, a man in a Fox Lumber uniform stumbled out. Fox Lumber was just the other side of the railroad tracks from there. The man was white-haired, balding, red-faced and short. He had to have been in his sixties. He was reeling drunk. He had a handsaw in his hand, and I caught his attention.

“I’m gonna saw your head off,” he slurred, and he stood so not to let me pass.
“Oh, no you’re not,” I gave him and went to take the circuitous route around him, streetside.
He blocked me, I, wearing a Catholic school tie and hauling my damn bookbag.

He growled, “I’m gonna saw your head off.”

Fear crept into my voice. “Oh no you’re not.”

“Oh yes I am! I’m gonna saw your head off!”

I darted one way and the other, but this drunken little man expected each move I made to get past. He laughed a hearty drunken laugh and said again, “I’m gonna saw your head off!”

What an adversary! I was trembling. I could not imagine, in any capacity (pun intended), what was going to happen to me in that moment. There was a grassy alleyway next to The Brass Rail, and I had never dared to explore it; it led to Hell. Would he drag me down there to kill me? To saw my head off?

“Oh no you’re not,” I quavered.

“Oh yes I am!”

From above my shoulders, in a deep voice, came the words, “Oh, no you’re not.”

I turned my chin straight up, and I saw a cop, a glimmering Police Officer. He was staring down the guy from Fox Lumber who had the saw. He told me to get home, and I did not look back. I have never, before or since, seen a cop walking a beat anywhere near Morrill’s corner. The only guys around there with guns – and saws - were always in The Brass Rail.

The rock 'n roll element