EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 THE SOUTH

Novels and films set in the American South, take lower Arkansas (LA) for example, love to picture southern neighborhoods as containing one eccentric but colorful character. It adds color and commands attention to the dull parts. Those who have lived in such places know better but take it in stride.

It’s better to laugh with than acknowledge being laughed at.

If I, though, were to be able to write a novel about such places, I’d try to include at least one person partially based on reality.

Take “Turnrow Thompson” for example. I’d say of him that he was known for his concentration. His acquired middle name honored, as Jimmie Buffet said of a character, his ability to "stick right to the task." It made him popular with football coaches, young women, sergeants, and bosses.

Folks claimed that the attention to duty was inherited, even resulting in the name Turnrow carried through life. Rumor had it that his mama was so dedicated to helping produce a bale of picked cotton a day that she had delivered him on a turnrow, deposited him under a cotton trailer and had gone right back to picking. No one had ever gotten her to verify the rumor. She would just answer inquiries with, “He never was no troublesome baby.”

A child with a reputation like that never found himself destined for greatness.

Dream a Little Dream

Sometimes I think it pays not to think too much, or at least to take a break from thinking about current problems and let your mind soar, like an eagle on an updraft, with loftier and more regal rumination. Put the cell phone away and try it sometime. I do.

Here’s the deal. We still have Brenda’s grandfather’s farm in north Lonoke County. It comprises 120 acres, of which maybe two thirds are cleared pasture.

Now consider the situation and make a couple of guesses.

Who gets to mow it each year?

Why is it particularly grassy and overgrown this year?

Right on both counts.

I go out each day that I’m not busy actually earning money for working and try to mow for two to four hours. My IOT, i.e. “instrument of torture” is a 1960 John Deere 60 HP tractor held together with bailing twine, bubble gum, and a bobby pin. No, wait, that’s Brenda’s smaller tractor that’s held together with a bobby pin. I’ve tried to get her to let me replace it with an actual cotter pin, but her explanation? “It’s worked just fine with a bobby pin for two years, so shut up.” (Apologies to Ring Lardner.)

Anyhow, back to my original point … let’s see … what was it? Oh yes, it had something to do with thinking, and mowing. Yes, quite right.

Sometimes, when I’ve cleared the edges by the forests, and the grass left is in a nice, semi-rectangle, the tractor nearly drives itself, and I think.

Oh, I don’t think of how we seem to becoming a nation fueled by hatred. I don’t think of how a group of madmen seem to be pulling the strings of America. I don’t think about how racial prejudice seems to be the prime moving force of politics today.

Hell no. I think of movie scripts. Yeah, movie scripts. Like yesterday.

During lunch break, I watched a bit of one of those 1950 science fiction films about how a major disruption to the earth’s crust had unloosed a terrible insect monster. You know, the kind in which the denouement always begins with, “It just might work.”

Naturally, as I mowed a large piece, I wrote a movie script in my mind.

It’s in the future, see. A group of forward-thinking women had taken over the country, educated women who believed in linear thinking, kindness, contemplation, and the ability of government to be a positive force in the lives of all. Together, they had moved men into inferior position without power. Their main job was to follow orders and remain silent. It worked like magic.

They had brought about an end to the escalation of global warming.

They were beginning, with the help of their sisters around the globe, to balance the demands of food production with population control.

They had replaced the cruel teachings of the old religion with one that blessed the least privileged of society.

The had eliminated war as a solution to religious problems by institution a universal requirement for public service.

They had formed an efficient working relationship between government and free enterprise.

We felt good about ourselves. Poverty was disappearing, replaced by goodness and concern.

Then it happened.

The San Andreas Fault showed its ass. Big time. It showed its ass all “ …down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.” The state of Mississippi disappeared under a sheet of brown, roiling water. The state of Alabama split into.

Then the trouble started. There, from the pits below Alabama, as from the pits of hell, wild creatures flowed out, hell bent on making up for eons of bondage. These creatures, part human-like and part furry, four-legged monsters, exhibited a ferocious appetite for all things good and wholesome.

Food began disappearing. Shortages appeared in all goods that had made the nation prosperous. Neighbors fought one another for scarce resources. Some began joining bands of the recently released monsters, forming great packs that controlled areas of the country where the population was most in need of enlightened administration.

Leaders arose who directed the human-monster packs. These leaders promised all resources to their followers. They chose groups of their foes and branded them traitors to society. They began attacking resistors, and resistance began to disappear. The resistors began turning on their own leaders in desperation.

The earth began to turn brown.

Well darn. I finished the patch I was working on about then. Time for Happy Hour. It’s nice, though, to quit thinking about current affairs for a while and just dream.

Perspectives

The film Easy Rider made quite an impression on the Baby Boomer crowd back in the late Sixties (1969). It resonated for a number of reasons, I suppose.

- It represented, for that “spoiled beyond redemption” group, freedom, freedom from what it never was quite clear, just freedom.

- It had perhaps one of the best music scores in cinema history.

- It had a couple of titillating scenes. The boys liked that.

- It had excellent acting save for some ultra-corny lines uttered stiffly by Peter Fonda.

- The cast enhanced verisimilitude, they say, by actually getting stoned for some scenes.

- It introduced a relatively unknown actor, someday to be a mega-star, named Jack Nicholson.

- It was anti-social enough to appeal to the young and disillusioned.

It became a phenomenon. I think I went to see it three nights in a row, each time with a different bunch from our ship moored up the Cooper River beyond Charleston.

That was many years ago. A lot of water has flowed from the Cooper River into Charleston Harbor since then. I’ve encountered a trophy wife and more than a few changes, including a career as a piddling fish in a small pond. Now I spend a few minutes each morning thinking. I don’t like to do that—think that is—so I do it early and quickly to get it over with.

What I’m thinking is that my perspective changes over the years, hard as I try not to let it. Here are some thoughts.

After all the communities, neighborhoods, small towns, and families I’ve seen destroyed by drugs, I’m a little put off by the concept of freedom purchased by wicked or nefarious means.

Of course, even back in 1969, I considered it ludicrous to think about a bunch of hippies planting seeds in the desert and expecting something to grow. Why do films never picture “back to the Earth” groups settling in the Arkansas Delta where one could buy (cheaply) some of the richest soil on the planet and really live off the land?

Back to the film. Even then, if I were to go “looking for America,” I don’t think I would start in east Texas or south Louisiana. And … now this is going to aggravate my neo-hippie friends, but … I might even try to blend in a bit.

And, the last national election in our county proved that, even 50 years later, bigotry and blind prejudice lie waiting in most areas of our country, not just the deep South. It’s a national curse, brought on, as William Faulkner suggested, by the practice and allowance of slavery.

So there. I still like the film, to a large degree for the music. Speaking of which, isn’t it amazing how music can ease the rough edges of what later proves a troubling film? Oh yes, it can for me. In 1967, I watched the film The Graduate at some lonely Navy base somewhere. At the end, I said, probably aloud, “Far out, man.”

A few weeks ago, I watched it again after a long hiatus. This time, at the end, I turns to my wife and says, “I think she just ran off with the sorriest summich in the state of California. That ain’t gonna end well.” Even Simon and Garfunkel couldn’t save me. Nor could Creedence Clearwater or Percy Sledge redeem that narcissistic group of "navel-gazers" in The Big Chill.

Why are people
staring at us?

Thinking about good and evil ...

Yes I know it’s odd, but I like to get up early of a Saturday morning and multi-task on the computer with three hours of Hopalong Cassidy films in the background. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. I like Hopalong Cassidy films and I like mindless tinkering with the Internet early when there is no one else about. It all fits well together.

The movies are formulaic and predictable. They provide a certain appeal, though. Back when they were made, even B-movies deserved high-quality attention. The photography is well-composed and stunning, if repetitive. The dialogue is trite and sparse, if maudlin. Even a person advanced in age can understand the words, a welcome relief from the mumbled incoherence of today’s band of “actors.” The filming formula follows the practice initiated by D.W. Griffith in Intolerance. As the films enter the final denouement, the scenes get shorter and more dynamic. This contrasts well with the aggravating practice of modern directors who aren’t above a forty-minute car chase spoiling the final solution.

In short, old Hopalong benefited from a professionalism that eludes the angst-ridden “bumbalongs” that produce today’s offerings. Best of all, goodness, morality, and admirable motives always rule the day as the hero carries out his business. As an added bonus, one can sometimes catch a glimpse of then-unknown actors. I’ve noticed Jason Robards, Robert Mitchum, George Reeves, and others doing bit, or sometimes major, parts. Hope springs eternal.

There is, sadly, a lack of African-American characters in these films. The works emanated from the 1940s and 1950s, after all. Native Americans, Hispanics, and Chinese appear frequently, and Hoppy, on his horse Topper, always serves as their protector. The films also contain a parade of strong female character, some as mean as snakes. Hoppy converts those he can and sends the others away for safekeeping. Ethical confusion never spoils the ending of a Hopalong Cassidy film.

It all takes me back to a time before “situational morality” became an acceptable social motivator. Those old films remind one of Ansel Adams photographs or Dickens novels. In the photographs, Adams creates a range from pure white to pure black with the tones between providing our eyes a feast. And, like a work by Dickens, a “Hoppy” film includes characters from purely good to purely evil. Much of the crowd operates somewhere in between, but the good always wins.

Hopalong would never have mocked a disabled person. Nor could he have told a lie for personal gain, only during a ruse to trap an egocentric evildoer bent on deluding the honest but reason-challenged town folks. He solved problems by straight talk and righteous reasoning. His job was to join the community through love, not divide it through hatred. What a concept that is.

Yeah, yeah. The films are fluff, and watching them, even as background, seems to be a strange gig for a person of such taste and sophistication. But early mornings are for eccentricities, and, if you ask me, America could benefit these days from more Hopalongs and fewer “Liealongs.”

Here he comes.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Five (Cont._2)

Payday came again and I had a little extra money with which to live. I wasn’t in tall cotton, but I wasn’t depleting savings anymore. My brother had decided to play the unemployment insurance game, so he came up on occasion and we drank beer and swapped stories about military life, although his had lasted a mere six months or so.

As it had turned out, he learned, after completing Marine Corps boot camp, that something in the leather of combat boots caused in him a rather severe skin reaction. He had finished radioman school and, I found out later, learned that his next orders would be to “WESTPAC.” That meant Vietnam. After repeated hospital stays for serious skin reactions, the Marine Corps decided that a trooper who couldn’t wear combat boots had little utility as cannon fodder. They gave him an Honorable Discharge and sent him home.

Perhaps there’s a name missing on “The Wall.” Who knows?

At work, we were completing the projects in somewhat orderly fashion now, and so far without a major mistake. Tensions eased, and the atmosphere became quite pleasant. We would work until five o’clock, whereupon everyone would go home for supper. Around 7:00 p.m. we would reassemble at the office and put in a couple of more hours.

It was about that time that I discovered “happy hour.”

No, it didn’t involve libations. But, it did involve popcorn. Back then, there were three “first-run” theaters in downtown Little Rock. The Arkansas was directly behind and to the south of our office building. The Center sat a ways up on Main Street. The Capitol was near the corner of Capitol and Broadway, on my way home. All showed newly released movies.

At a little after five o’clock, the theaters all presented “happy hour” shows for a dollar. When new films arrived, I would often take “supper” at one and enjoy a box of popcorn, a coke, and a movie before going back to work. Since the others didn’t see me leave, nor did they see me return, what business of mine was it if they may have assumed that I had worked through the “supper break?”

Very often, as I was beginning to find out about the world of business, it is useful to dole out information as an investment rather than as idle chatter provided with no intention of return. Thus, the massive redaction due this humble narrative of one young man’s battle with the vicissitudes of life.

My legend grew, and for the next two years, and for the only time in my life, I had seen every American film considered for Oscar nominations.

I still had no social acquaintances in Little Rock, only work and a little cheap entertainment. We generally worked half a day on Saturday and I would drive home to see the family. It was beginning to seem to me that success was an easy thing if you had nothing else to do.

As I say, I had no contacts in the city. That was about to change.

Is there a  hint of
the devious lurking
behind that smile?

Morning Thoughts: March 21,

I have some pet peeves about films that drive anyone me around crazy. Take handguns. No, don’t “take” them. Just consider an example.

Make notes from this, by the way. It’s important. When a semi-automatic pistol fires its last round, it doesn’t keep going “click click” when you pull the trigger. After the last round, the slide stays back and it looks pretty silly, which is probably why they don’t portray it accurately in movies.

As an inside, and you won’t be charged an extra cent for this, an Army-Issue 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol has three safety devices: the regular kind, a pressure-sensitive bar on the handle, and a disabling feature on the barrel if you press it into someone.

When I was a star-garnished member of the United States Navy (that’s a LOL for those who don’t know me) the Army-Issue 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol was responsible for more accidental deaths than any weapon in history. A drunk discharged one while going through a checkpoint once that sent a slug whistling by a foot from my leg and embedding itself into a pile of sandbags. I was left to ponder the question forever whether, had the round nipped my leg, would I have earned the Purple Heart and the CIB?

Later, there was a Marine on our ship who killed his relief while showing him his “fast-draw” technique. It was a sad and tragic affair that should remind us that weapons of war are not playthings. I can still see the face of each Marine, both very nice guys.

Now how did I get off track? Oh, I remember. Pet peeves in movies. My most despised involves music. Incidentally, I have found no examples of accidental, or intentional, deaths from a musical instrument, even a banjo or accordion. I think Bing Crosby threw a sweet-potato whistle at Bob Hope once, but he missed.

No, my peeve involves bio-pics of the lives of musicians. Let me ask you. In all the films you’ve ever seen about the lives of great musicians, have you ever witnessed a scene in which they were practicing?

I doubt it. The scenarios generally run like this.

- A child witnesses someone playing beautiful music on some instrument

- The child is intrigued

- The child is too poor to obtain an instrument, but obtains one somewhere

- The child immediately plays music on a street corner but makes no money

- The child has to pawn the instrument

- The child works a series of meaningless jobs and, along the way, falls in love

- Love gets the instrument back somehow

- Love produces scene after scene of amorous adventure and disharmony

- Love triumphs and the couple spends a year abroad doing God knows what

- In the penultimate scene, the hero or heroine is playing a Paganini violin concerto in a packed concert hall

Scenes of passionate love: dozens. Scenes of bitter poverty and despair: dozens. Scenes of a musical performance: dozens. Scenes of practice: none.

It’s like a child can get a guitar for Christmas, open a tab book, and play the guitar break from Hotel California (both parts simultaneously) that evening for his family. We don’t need no stinkin’ knowledge or practice. Everything in life is simple and easy. Just ask a Libertarian.

Is it any wonder that we have elected such a bunch of clueless clowns to run our country?

I don't think he learned his craft
by running a reality TV show.

Sunrise With Schubert: March 5, 2018

Let’s see, the last time they presented the Oscars, and I had seen all the movies nominated was April 10, 1972, a long time ago.

I remember it because I was dating my future wife at the time. In fact, I think we were engaged. I had proposed to her atop a mountain in West Little Rock at sunset, a romantic setting if I do say so myself. My memory of the event was that she said. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.” Her memory is that she said, “I don’t even have to think about it. Yes.”

Those who know us well can pick their own version.

Anyway, the fact that we were dating isn’t the only reason that I had seen all the films. I was working, at the time, at Fifth (Capitol Ave.) and Louisiana in downtown Little Rock. I lived at Fifth and State streets, so I walked to work. I can still see the astonished look on the faces of my co-workers when I told them this. None had ever heard of a person “walking to work.” Was it even legal? Was I a hippie, or a drug-crazed sociopathic Vietnam Veteran? Those were the only ones who walked the streets by choice and not necessity. I declined to enlighten them. That reduced the amount of talking I had to do.

At that time there were three movie houses within a few blocks from where I worked: the Arkansas, Capitol, and Center. Those showed all the first runs except those fit for the big screen cinema out at Asher and University. The downtown ones had a “Happy Hour” movie at around 5:30 each day. Admission was a dollar. Since the firm was busy and most all workers went home for dinner and came back at 7:00 p.m. to work a few more hours, I often opted to go to movies and have popcorn and a coke for dinner, with entertainment.

So, I had seen all the movies that year, except for The Last Picture Show. I took my girlfriend to see that one. She was underwhelmed.

I liked it. I had, upon separation from my beloved U.S. Navy, decided to on a private study of literature. (On a salary of $400.00 a month, reading, dollar movies, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and chasing women on an empty pocketbook, constituted the bulk of my entertainment). A detailed study of Eliot’s The Waste Land led me into so-called “Grail Literature,” so I understood the classical themes within a simple film about a dying Texas land that was losing its king (Sam the Lion played by Ben Johnson), and how the health of a land was tied to the health of the king in classic “Wasteland Literature.”

Bored yet? Okay. I’ll quit.

Let me just say something about the “chasing women” part. I quit that. As Rick Bragg put it, “I found me one.”

So we watched the 44^th presentation of the Academy Awards together. A most interesting thing happened when Johnson won the award for Best Supporting Actor. Controversy had invaded the Oscars (both George C. Scott, for Patton, and Marlon Brando, for something, had refused to accept theirs). So when Ben Johnson held his award to his chest and announced that he was about to “say something controversial,” Hollywood, braced itself.

In the some deadpan but meaning-filled manner in which his characters had followed so many commands by John “I’m no hero but I played a bunch in the movies” Wayne, Ben Johnson looked out at America, held his Oscar for us to see, and said, “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

True that, a nice guy, great actor, and someone who "marched to the beat of a different drummer."

It was a nice evening except that my girlfriend threw a fit when The French Connection barely beat out her favorite movie of all time—A Clockwork Orange.

After that, I always knew she also marched to a different beat.

Nice Guy, we need a few more
 of those in America now.

Morning Thoughts: January 28, 2018

I have no authority whatsoever to do it, but I’m claiming this as National Curmudgeon Week, in honor of myself. Today is Brown Shoe Day.

For the young, who have missed out on many funny things in life and are now experiencing an era of ordained non-levity, this refers to the old admission that “I feel like a pair of brown shoes in a world full of tuxedos.”

See, that used to be funny. Time was, one didn’t wear brown shoes with tuxedos. That’s when the saying meant something. Now we live in a world in which it would either be acceptable, considered “awesome,” met with indifference, or unnoticed if it weren’t on a cell phone screen.

At any rate, here are some things, new and old, about which I feel out of step with the rest of humanity. Please feel free to add your own under “comments” or on Facebook. They won’t hurt my feelings. I’m a brown shoe, remember? In the meantime, here is my Top Ten List of unfathomable “Things I Don’t Understand.”

10. Katherine Hepburn. She had a voice like a prostitute’s fingernails being hooked up to a large Marshall amplifier and dragged down a slate chalkboard. She had a figure that would make a popsicle stick look sexy. She had a file of acting moves that wouldn’t have taken more than a kilobyte, and an air of haughty arrogance that would have made her the primary subject of any girl’s locker room of my generation. I’d rather be forced to stare at Steve Bannon’s face or Kim Kardashian’s ass than watch Hepburn in a movie.

9. Food Trucks. I know. I know. Unload your weapons. It’s my take and my take only. You’re welcome to eat at the nasty things for three meals a day with my blessings. As for me, I worked my way through two college degrees so I wouldn’t have to, and to think, they helped cause Dixie Café to close.

8. Men and boys wearing hats or caps indoors. It’s stupid, unseemly, unsocial, and indicative of a lack of breeding that would make Donald Trump look sophisticated. I know I can’t change history, but could we at least remove them at funerals?

7. Calling anything other than a drink composed of Gin and Vermouth a “Martini.” At long last, have we no sense of decency?

6. Watching movies on cell phones. Has anyone’s life become that meaningless? Hell, we’ll be watching football games on them next.

5. A commercial TV series. Watching five minutes of storyline and fifteen minutes of fast food commercials is no way to change the Universe.

4. Cirque du Soleil. Entertainment, I’ve always thought, was supposed to be, well, entertaining, not weird and scary except in Stephen King movies. It’s only a short, tragic, step from this to watching hordes of mentally impaired Irish-folk tap dancing in unison.

3. Fox “news.” If my only desire in life is to destroy brain cells, having mass quantities of Jack Daniels sipping whiskey and playing the banjo with friends is a lot more fun and educational.

2. Giving the slightest damn about the British royal family. Didn’t we fight a war or two over this?

And…

1. Cars equipped with GIS. Please, please, please … if you can’t read a map, street names, or road signs, don’t drive. Get drunk and go walking along busy streets instead.

Extra Blog Bonus: If by now, you are not pissed off, let me know. You are eligible for a drawing coming up soon.

Morning Thoughts: September 30, 2017

Our perspectives on some things in life change as we age. Books and movies do for me. A friend started me thinking on this.

I had posted an ending of a movie I liked and said it was my favorite. He voted, instead, for the ending of the film that brought Dustin Hoffman into fame: The Graduate. It wasn’t a bad choice, but would not have been mine.

The director produced a well-crafted ending for a well-crafted film. It started me along this line of thought, though. That film represents one of what I call “age-perspective” works.

I’ll explain.

When I first saw that film, I had just returned from overseas duty in the United States Navy. Respect for others was not high on my list of worthwhile endeavors. I watched the film at the time, marveled at its “groovy” music, and said to myself, “Yes!”

Years passed. I watched it again not long ago, marveled at the timeless music, and said to myself, “That young woman just ran off with the biggest loser in the state of  California.”

That’s just me. But I wonder if other people have similar reactions to works of fiction as time goes by. Do you reckon?

A book that has that effect on me is Catcher In The Rye. After its publication in 1951, it became the icon for teenagers feeling alienated and disaffected. Of course, I fell in with the angst-ridden. As the years have progressed, I continue to respect the superb writing for its rhythm and style, unmatched, in my opinion, in American literature. Old Holden Caufield, however, has seemed a bit more insane each time I have read the book, which is maybe 20 times or more.

I do think Salinger left a lasting influence on American literature. It remains as a lasting axiom that almost any novel since “Catcher” is filled with angst-ridden characters bent on self-destruction. They aren’t teenagers, though, but adult characters that become tiresome two pages after they appear in a book. That’s why I read so few of them, modern novels, that is.

Ahh. The great ones don’t change. Tortilla Flat , The Brothers Karamazov, and Heart of Darkness still ring with the same epic themes as they did on first readings decades ago. The heart still floats on their clouds of majesty. (How’s that for gibberish)?

Speaking of great themes, though, certain aspects of novels only appeared following careful study, after my formal education. It was only after I undertook a protracted study of Eliot’s The Wasteland, for example, that I began more fully to see the “grail” imagery in The Great Gatsby. Without such study, I wouldn’t have picked up on the marvelous imagery of the actors driving past the local landfill on their way to their various searches.

Oh, well … enough babbling for one day. Think I’ll go start re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. Maybe I’ll make more sense out of it this time. Then maybe I’ll watch The Wild One, again. Boy, that Brando character was a lousy creep.

Or was he? I didn’t think so at one time.

Just thinking …