Summer Jobs

Summer Jobs

            Golden spoon? What’s that? In my circle, the only golden spoon was a shovel, and you dug with it. And you dug, and dug, and dug until either the shovel broke or your lower back broke. Few in my neighborhood had the luxury of wiling away our summers at the beach or lounging about at a parents second home in the country.

            My first paying job was a paper-route delivery boy at age fourteen. You got up at five o’clock in the morning, rode your bicycle to the distribution center, picked up your papers, and shoved them into the basket located on your handlebars. Then you delivered them to the customer, got home at seven, bathed, and prepared to go to school.

            I always had some form of job. At a very early age, my sister and I were assigned various cleaning assignments around the house we had to complete each day, both before and after school. However, several jobs I had will forever stick out in my mind.

            One summer, I got a job with Ebasco Engineering Consultants. I thought with the lofty company name, I would be assisting some high priced engineer with his intricate calculations. Instead, on my first day, I was assigned as a ditch digger at a power plant construction site in Norco, Louisiana, a small community next to the Mississippi River. It was me and twelve African-Americans digging ditches all over this construction site from ‘caint see to caint see.’ That is, from dawn to dusk.

            One day I heard a particularly perplexed superintendent ask his subordinate, “Where are they?” He was peering into a space I assume we were supposed to dig, and hadn’t.

            “Where’s who?” asked the redoubtable subordinate.

            “Jesus and the Twelve Apostles; that’s who.” the superintendent shouted back at him. He was deadly serious. I guess it’s what the upper level employees called our ditch-digging team.

            Another time, as summer rapidly approached, I realized I had not yet located a job and the best ones offered in my neighborhood were already taken by more aggressive youths. I panicked and sought out work wherever I could. Unfortunately, work was scarcer than hen’s teeth and I spent most of my time begging merchants for any type of job. Finally, one of my friends suggested he knew of a job as a swimming instructor at a summer camp populated by the offspring of the well-healed residents of our city. The only glitch was, an applicant had to have passed the Red Cross Swimming Instructors examination, something I had not done, primarily because I could barely swim without consuming great quantities of a pool’s chlorine water, and would sink like a stone shortly thereafter.

            But I really needed a job, so off to the Red Cross office I trotted to try and obtain an instructors license without having to undergo either the written or the in-the-pool swimming examinations. In reality, I didn’t know a swimming stroke from a cerebral stroke. When I got to the office, for once in my life, my luck held. I knew I needed an instructor’s manual and the only way the Red Cross would part with one, was to pass the requisite tests. As I said, I had no time to study the materials and also, no time to learn how to swim.

            The young lady at the desk was very nice to me and I chatted her up, telling her how much I needed this job at the rich-kid’s camp. I spied a small pile of instructor’s manuals sitting atop a credenza behind her desk and knew I had to have one of those in order to compete for the swimming instructor’s job. Finally, she excused herself and left her post. I swiped the top manual. Yep; I stole the damn thing and darted out of the Red Cross building as fast as I could. My father photostatted the manual for me and the next day I returned the original to the kind lady saying, “I had found this copy of the instructor’s manual on the pavement outside your building. Someone must have lost it.”

            She looked at me suspiciously and finally said, “If you had asked, I would have given it to you.” My first stab at thievery was a total failure.

            In the interim I found out not only did I need the manual, but also I needed merit badges to bestow on those erstwhile Michael Phelps types who, in my esteemed judgment, passed the minimal Red Cross requirements for competitive swimming. Back to the Red Cross I go, this time to get the badges, by any means necessary. The kind lady at the desk totally surprised me by giving me a whole bunch of the badges and made me promise to never again come into her office or she would call the police.

            I am quite sure I am the only ‘certified’ Red Cross swimming instructor who conducted all of his classes from the side of the pool, never once getting wet, and who passed out merit badges like ham sandwiches.

                                    The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,

                                    Many in the sworn twelve have a thief or two

                                    Guiltier than them they try.

                                                Shakespeare – Measure for Measure

            The final summer job I will relate to you is not one for the faint of heart. To this day, when I think of it, I cringe. Apparently, the Sewerage & Water Department of the City of New Orleans wanted to know the rate of flow of water through their subsurface sewerage pipes located throughout the city. They contracted with a company to produce those figures for them, and I was hired by the successful bidder as the lowest level Indian on the totem pole. The job began at eight o’clock at night and ended at five in the morning.

            When I showed up for my first night on the job, I immediately noticed a great sigh of relief on the faces of the other three crew members. I soon discovered why. The lowest man on the totem pole, unfortunately it was me, had to open up the man-hole cover located in the middle of a street, climb inside, go down the iron bars they called steps, and wait at the bottom near the water flow to hear a second colleague yell at me, “Okay.” He was relaying a signal to me because a third man had opened a man-hole at the opposite end of the street and was pouring a red dye into his sewer hole.

            When I heard the “Okay,” I would shine my flashlight into the water, and upon a first sighting of the red dye flowing past me, I would look up and scream a responsive, “Okay.” The fourth, and oldest member of the crew, would record the time between “Okays,” and this procedure determined the rate of flow between those two points. I would think the City of New Orleans Sewerage Department could have asked a Sherpa climbing the side of Mount Everest what he thought the rate of flow was in the sewers of New Orleans, versus the method we used, and my money is on the Sherpa, every time.

            If this were the end, it makes a nice little story. But it ain’t. When I climbed down into the sewer for the first time, I had my light pointed straight down at the water running at the bottom of the steps. The immediate thing that got my attention was the smell. I almost threw up the first time down, but I held my breath for as long as I could, and survived. Thereafter, the smell became tolerable as my breath-holding capacity improved.

            Also on that first time down, I noticed my hands and head began to itch like crazy while waiting for the appearance of the red dye. After calling out the obligatory “Okay,” I began my ascent and looked at my hands and arms. They were covered with dirty, grimy, disgusting, ROACHES. I couldn’t take my hands off of the iron ladder, lest I would fall into the muck below. So I climbed out of the sewer pipe as quickly as possible, and began swatting at those filthy beasts scurrying all over my body. That scene replicated itself every fifteen minutes during the night.

            I now know why the sigh of relief was on the other three faces when I showed up the first night. One of us, unfortunately me, had to climb down into a three-foot wide sewer pipe every fifteen minutes, while roaches defiled my body in every conceivable place. I’m not talking about a little brown roach that scurries across your path and gives your heart a tiny flutter. I’m talking about the mother of all roaches that thrive in low, swampy, humid environments. The New Orleans variety is about two inches long, fat and black, and when you least expect it, can fly across a room like a hummingbird. It lurks along every street in the city and will drop on an unsuspecting passerby from the overhanging oak trees lining the city’s avenues.

            Why in the world would Jean Baptiste La Moyne, Sieur de Bienville in 1718, establish New Orleans at this God-forsaken location? He did it so France could control the entire North American interior, and this was the ideal site he chose. What he didn’t take into account was the intolerable weather, the low swampy land, the annual flooding of the Mississippi River, hurricanes that decimate all structures, and for damn sure, he didn’t take into account those bloody roaches.

            At the end of my job with the Sewerage Department, I looked like an astronaut ready for flight, with all of the clothes I had on. I could barely squeeze my body down the three-foot sewer pipe. Of course, it was ninety-something degree temperature with the humidity approaching one hundred percent. Many times I would yell out “Okay,” long before the red dye had reached me.

            I attribute the fact New Orleans tends to flood every time a bird urinates, or possibly when it has a hard rain, to the total inaccuracy of the study done during the summer of my youth. One day the entire city will probably float away into the Gulf of Mexico, but I’ll bet a dollar to a donut the three hundred million year old cockroach will survive.

BERLIN 1987

            In June of 1987 I traveled to Berlin with novelist, Laurence Snelling. We stayed at the home of the Commander of the Allied Forces in that divided city; a fellow Larry knew. I was struck by the beauty of this thirteenth century city’s parks, wide boulevards, and new modern buildings. One day we crossed into East Berlin or the Russian Sector where the contrast between an oligarchy and a democracy was never so stark.   

            As soon as we passed through Checkpoint Charlie, it appeared that a pall was draped over the Eastern Sector and hung there like a smoke filled room. Eating at the best East German restaurant, I was appalled at the paucity of selection on the small menu and the inflated prices charged for this terrible meal. It reminded me of how spoiled we Americans are and how we take for granted our lifestyles without a second’s hesitation.

            But the highlight of the trip was a visit to the Brandenburg Gate where we sat in VIP seats and listened to the President of the United States deliver what has become one of the greatest speeches in modern history. Yes, I was there when The Gipper delivered his twenty-seven minute tirade against the Soviet Union.  Actually shook his hand as he descended from the dais. He received a more boisterous reaction from the crowd when he said “Open this gate, Mister Gorbachev,” than Kennedy did when he implored the Soviets to tear down the wall they had erected in 1961.  I also remember him saying that because the United States would remain militarily strong, the Soviets would return to the negotiating table on nuclear arms. They did, shortly thereafter. But in our era of proliferating nuclear arms, it is an ominous specter who roams our globe as more and more countries develop nuclear capabilities with impotent powers helpless to stop them. It’s only a matter of time before one of them becomes our Armageddon.

            Two other things are lodged in my memory about the Berlin trip. Larry and I ventured to the outside of Spandau Prison where Rudolph Hess was the last remaining Nazi prisoner housed there. Unfortunately, the Russians were on duty that day and we were not permitted to enter the prison. Hess died two months later and the castle-like building was demolished.

            One day, Larry said to me, “Let’s go find the place where the Nazis murdered Claus von Stauffenberg. He was the handsome and badly crippled Colonel who set the charge in the Wolf’s Lair that wounded, but failed to kill, The Fuhrer, and cost von Stauffenberg his life. We found the place where he was shot and it was located in the headquarters of the communist party in Berlin. I guess things never change. Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

                

THE FRENCH MARKET

            The first time I went to Paris, too long ago to cite here, my then wife and I had a rather late evening – actually an early morning – and we wound up at Les Halles located in the first arrondissement. It was a place surrounded by little cafes who served piping hot coffee and onion soup to die for. The location was there from the twelfth century until they demolished it in late 1971.  To see the butchers in their bloody smocks hustling around the large tables, cleaving their dead animals, live chickens, produce, and every kind of seafood imaginable, was something I’ll remember all my life. It was the world’s quintessential marketplace. Every restaurateur in Paris bought their fresh ingredients from the merchant stalls in Les Halles and served it to their customers that very day.

            The first time I want to the French Market in New Orleans – it dates from 1791 – I was much younger than my first time in Paris, but was similarly impressed with the fresh produce, seafood, meats, and other food products on display. Many of the New Orleans restaurant owners could also be found perusing the display exhibits to maintain their high standards on a daily basis much like they did in Les Halles. It was a wonderful experience to walk through the market as the smells from the stalls wafted through the air, and the sounds of laughter emanating from the vendors selling their food resonated throughout the building.

            Today I returned to the French Market and found one of the most disappointing things since returning to live in the city. All of the produce sellers are gone, except for an extremely small exhibit of a few tomatoes and some anemic cucumbers stuck at the end of the market as if they were selling the Black Plague at bargain prices. Replacing all the food vendors were a sea of T-shirt, cheap jewelry, and even cheaper clothing splayed out on tables with hundreds of people milling about, oohing and awing about how magnificent- or in this case, “cool” – all the awful stuff was.

            What happened in Paris with the demise of Les Halles was replicated in New Orleans. At least in Paris the replacement shopping center is nicely kept with fairly nice merchandise, not this crap on display in our French Market. I think the city has of late abandoned calling it the French Market as I understand it is now officially known as the Flea Market. I was worried as I meandered through the center of the buildings that I might be assaulted by the pesky flea if I brushed up against one of those odious displays.

Naomi

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

Ernest Hemingway

I often think of Ernie's words when beginning or ending a book. Right now, I am midway between finishing my thirteenth book and beginning a new work. My latest attempt is a new genre for me, since I primarily write historical novels and crime theme books. This new work is a mainstream literary story about a young girl, Naomi is her name, and she became my constant companion over the last ten months. Because of something that happened to me about a year ago, my life was drastically altered and the shock-waves are still reverberating in my psyche. Naomi is my attempt at placating the demons by giving them an outlet; allowing them to vacate my innermost thoughts and leave me with only an echo of memory; one that no longer gives pain but accepts reality for what it is.   

The Wedding Crashers

The Wedding Crashers

            No one crashes weddings anymore. I believe that particular art form has gone the way of the typewriter; which incidentally, is the era we’re talking about in this story and long predates the movie Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. Many years ago, my fellow crashers and I would scan the weekend newspaper for a large wedding with an appropriately large reception we could invade. Such an invasion had to be done as inconspicuously as possible to avoid detection by the hosts. Meticulous plans had to be drawn, much like the invasion of a Japanese held island during World War II. With pad and pencil in hand, we set about perusing the marriage section of the morning newspaper, striking those nuptials who were most likely to discover several uninvited guests were noshing at their table, and have security toss them out on their ears.

            I guess I should explain why we were crashing weddings. We had no money. We were in college or graduate school and all of our limited funds went toward survival. In undergraduate school, we had athletic scholarships or we never could have afforded the tuition, room, or board at our expensive private university. In graduate school, all money was allocated for rent, utilities, cigarettes, and the rare date, so there was nothing left for food and booze. Summers were dedicated to jobs that allowed us to save enough to go to school. Generally, we all held jobs during the school year to supplement the funds we earned during the summer. 

            We had this La Bohème existence, where we got up, went to class, studied, hung out, had discussions, and went to bed. We couldn't help notice the better endowed (money-wise) students, were throwing about their parent’s cash, like it flowed from an endless stream. Possibly their stream was endless, but our little pool of funds had to be defended to the last penny.

            So, when things got particularly tight, and our ration of food and booze slowed to a trickle, we crashed a wedding reception. If we possessed a modicum of intelligence, we would have gone to the marriage service first to establish our bona fides. One can easily gain acceptance if, at the service, one mingles with all of those who had actually possessed a valid invitation. But it was simply too onerous for us. Our eyes were focused solely on the reception’s bar and buffet lines.

            In retrospect, it would have been so easy to attend the service at the church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, shuffle around with the crowds leaving the service, chat them up, and promise to see them again at the reception. But no. Our heroes eschewed the nuptials and dove directly into the champagne fountain. This was followed by copious quantities of canapés, little meatballs with toothpicks stuck through them, and crustless, white-bread finger sandwiches with chicken salad oozing out from all sides that had to be wiped off with a “Congratulations Brittney and Todd” wedding napkin.

            The most important part of the wedding crash is the vetting. Since our little white faces would stick out like sheet-wearing KKK members at an NAACP convention, we were forced to eliminate all black services from consideration. We knew our black brothers threw the best receptions in town, (rated first in music and booze), but we just couldn’t get past our pasty color to gain acceptance.

            The Jews hosted the second best receptions in town (rated first in food and ice sculptures), but since all the Jews in our city knew each other, again we would have stuck out like an inexperienced mohel at a circumcision brit milah.

            So we were left with the white Catholics and Protestants who were tying the knot that particular weekend. In our town, the Catholics were subdivided into the Italians, the Irish, and the others. For sheer quantity, the Italians win the blue ribbon, hands down. Heaping trays of Sicilian delicacies were spread over multiple tables, while the obese patrons wolfed down plate after plate of spaghetti with Italian sausage, anti-pasta, and desserts from heaven. There was one major caveat to crashing an Italian wedding reception. The Mafia ruled over our city like Henry the Eighth, and if we were discovered partaking of their delectables at their beloved child’s reception, our fate would have been similar to most of Henry’s wives. Discretion was always used in the final selection. If we were in doubt or we felt uneasy, we opted out for less violent venues.

            The Protestants were easy. You eliminate all the Baptists and Born-agains (no booze), most Methodists (ugly women) and Presbyterians (limited booze and limited good looking women), and you are left with the Episcopalians. Since one of my fellow crashers belonged to this particular sect and couldn’t go to that sect’s reception, I was left with a red-necked ex-Baptist boy, who had fallen from grace faster than Adam after eating the apple. He sucked down the proffered liquor like it was the last brewed batch on earth. It was a tricky proposition when he was along. Not only did he drink great quantities, but when he became sated, he got mean, generally insulting the bride and groom, both sets of parents, and about half the invited guests. We only stayed a short time at an Episcopal reception when I was with him.

            However, on a fateful morning, when the final choices had dwindled to the one target wedding, I would brush off my only suit, polish my only pair of dress shoes, comb my tangled hair, and head for the door with my fellow crasher in tow. It should be pointed out here, wedding crashers hunt only in pairs. One, or three-or-more, is way too conspicuous; so two becomes the proper crasher amount.

            In order to get enough food, and more importantly, drink, one had to look the part and had to adopt an air of belonging. Laughter was key. Pats on the back were acceptable, particularly after everyone at the reception had gained their sea legs. I once danced with the bride twice and was told by the groom, if I continued to dance with her, he was going to break every bone in my body. You see, I had this hunchy dance move I though was real cute. Needless-to-say, I beat a hasty exit from the room since the groom made Lucca Brazzi look a little like Hannah Montana.

            Most humans embarrass easily; wedding crashers, less so. Lying in bed one Saturday morning, after a night of debauchery, I was shaken awake by a fellow crasher. “I got a good one,” he said, flinging the morning newspaper onto my bed. “Check out the one that’s circled.”

            Through bleary eyes I viewed the circled wedding announcement. “So what?”

            “So what! This is gold. Get up. We’re going.”

            And go we did. On arrival at the reception, which was held at one of our favorite haunts, we noticed the bride’s mother had strategically placed the bridal party so anyone entering the reception had to interface with the entire string of bride, groom, bridesmaids, groomsmen, and parents of both parties. It was the only way to get into the salon with the goodies, so my partner and I either queued up with the others, or returned to our dormitory rooms, hungry and thirsty.

            Many times we were forced to greet one or another of the participants in the play, but this time, we had to greet the entire cast. I figured we had already dressed for the occasion, plus my stomach was growling like a star-struck coyote, so into the queue we stepped. Things went well until I reached for the first hand in line. She was a girl I had dated for a while in high school and I noticed she still harbored a modicum of resentment against me. Probably arising from the time I passed out on her sofa and awoke the next morning with her father shaking me like a rag-doll and accusing me of soiling his daughter’s impeccable reputation. One that had been previously soiled by every other boy in my class. 

            Since I grew up in a small community located on the wrong side of the Mississippi River from New Orleans, most weddings and receptions of people from our area were held within a fifteen block radius from my house.

            This time, the social climbing bride’s mommy wanted to hold her daughter’s affair, “where proper city folks hold their events.” Naturally, I intimately knew everyone, and do mean everyone, in the lineup. As I was passed from one to the other, I kissed all of the girls, most of whom I had kissed previously, until I reached the bride. I had dated the bride a few times, and like most of the girls I dated, she was not overjoyed to see me again.

            I gathered my courage, kissed her cheek and congratulated her in my sincerest voice, which went well until I heard the maid-of-honor mumble, “What’s he doing here?” I was hastily passed along to the groom, who also resented me, and to the other groomsmen, who did not, and all began laughing and slapping me on the back. My fellow crasher, Cameron Gamble, realized before I did, this was not a good thing that I knew all the participants, particularly when the bride’s mother began scowling at us and demanding, much louder than was necessary, we be removed from the event. It did not end well. We were escorted from the premises, post haste, tail between our legs, sans food and drink.

            When I returned to my room, my mother had called to tell me she had disowned me for at least the tenth time, since the bride’s mother had already called her to report our minor indiscretion. My mother was so embarrassed, “She could never leave the house again.”

            Well, she did leave the house again. This time for my first wedding several years later. As fate would have it, my new mother-in-law came up to me at the reception and pointed to several youths she described as “gate crashers.” I immediately saw they were not gate crashers at all, but merely two hungry and thirsty youths who had balls enough to crash the reception and hope to hell they weren't discovered before they were sated.

“I invited them,” I lied to her. A simple wink over at the two youths told them, “Everything was okay. Eat and drink your fill boys.” I often wonder how many times one of the grooms covered for me?

            Occasionally, someone I don’t know will sidle up to me in a bar and say, “Don’t I know you from the ‘so-in-so’ wedding?”

            My stock answer is, “Yes you do. Hell of a service, wasn’t it?”

Ashes Kuhn

Ashes Kuhn
       For some inexplicable reason, the coaching staff at Tulane University felt I was a likely candidate to make their football squad. Upon graduation from high school, they presented me with an athletic scholarship to that august institution. Unfortunately, it was an era when every player had to play both offense and defense along with covering the punts and kickoffs, all without the benefit of substitution or a facemask to ease the pain. Tulane had given up physical education several years before I got there, and we were forced to play with people who could actually read and write. At least, a little bit.        Our head coach was Anton “Andy” Pilney, whose only claim to fame was in 1925, as a Notre Dame third string halfback, he staggered off of the bench in South Bend to drunkenly score the winning points against rival Ohio State. The Greater New Orleans sports crowd lionized this man as though he were a pre-depression Emmett Smith. Pilney once told his team, “Never trust nobody. If you yaz wanna loin somthin', go to yaz teammate.” Pilney never learned the more dulcet tones of the Southern dialect and choose to speak, either in parables, which no one understood, or by crying throughout every sentence. It was particularly true if he was giving one of his stirring half time speeches to an exhausted and outmanned team, already crushed by the loyal opposition.
     We had other coaches whose nicknames will stay with me forever. Ironhead, Motormouth, Burpie, Little Ray, Stanley-Watch out-for-them-collier(sic)-dogs, and Legs were only a few of the many who were recycled through our system, always looking for greener pastures where they could hang up their coaching jockstraps.
     Our trainer was also a rare piece of work. Earl “Bubba” Porche was a mental wreck. I never heard him speak to anyone in a normal tone. In fact, he rarely spoke to anyone. When he did, it was in the surliest, most disrespectful manner. He walked around with his head down, never looked anyone in the eyes, and never had an encouraging word for any player. He was married to a distant cousin of mine, who I always called “Cuz,” particularly around him. For some reason this really pissed him off. I guess he didn’t want anyone to know his wife was related to such a horrible athlete.
     But the piece de resistance was the team doctor, “Ashes” Kuhn. I never learned the man’s first name, since “Ashes” was the absolute perfect moniker for him. I never saw Ashes without a cigarette in his mouth throughout the five years I labored at the school. Yes, five years; I was red-shirted. Plus, I was a very slow learner. Ashes never took a cigarette out from his mouth like other smokers did. He let it dangle from his lips, dragging on it until the ashes formed this parabolic curve from the end of the cigarette to the butt part in his mouth. Most times the ashes would fall off and cascade all down the front of the man. Occasionally the ashes would be shaken off prematurely by one of his coughing fits, during which the cigarette remained glued to his lower lip. In either case, by days end he looked like a fireman exiting a burning building with ashes covering him from his neck to his shoes.
     One spring, when all other students were sunning themselves at the lakefront or drinking gin and tonics at a local college bar, the jocks were having a party of their own called Spring Training. It was a time when the coaches were able to thin out the fall squad by running off all the less talented athletes. They put them through a rigor of bone-crushing exercises that forced most of them to pack up their meager belongings and head for the door. The ones they wanted to keep were also put through hell, but our hell was designed to make us better players, not run us off. It did neither. I never figured out why I was not included in the first group that was run off, because throughout my career as a jock; bitty-ball, grammar school, high school, and college, I never made one tackle. I once concluded, with all the practices (about 2000) and games (about 150) never to have made one tackle while playing defense and covering all those kicks is mind boggling. Surely, someone must have tripped over me. But it never happened.
     At any rate, this particular spring training session, we were having an intrasquad scrimmage and the offensive team was running a play around my end. As usual, the pulling guard knocked me down to the ground and the trailing halfback inadvertently stepped onto the back of my leg on his way to the goal line. In those days, we wore plastic cleats screwed onto our shoes to gain better traction. One of the cleats had fallen off the halfback’s shoe, leaving only a metal post, which opened a large gash in the back of my leg when he stepped on me. I really didn’t mind so much, because it meant I would be out for most of the remainder of the spring training practices and could join my fellow students tanning at the lakefront or preferably, in the college bar slugging down those gin and tonics.
     As they dragged me into the locker room and threw me up onto a table, I saw Ashes approach, hacking and coughing his way into this makeshift operating theater. “This won’t hurt, son,” was the prophetic words Dr. Kuhn always uttered, no matter what the injury. Dislocated or broken arms, knees with meniscus tears, mashed toes, or separated shoulders always brought forth Ashes’ fearless prognostication, “This won’t hurt, son.”
     In my case, Ashes looked a lot like Betsy Ross, as he had already whipped out his sewing kit and had begun to sew up this great hole in my calf. I turned my head around, as best I could, and saw Ashes was about three-quarters through with his smoke. I know a lot of you readers think I’m joking, but you would be dead wrong. Ashes couldn’t wear a surgical mask because he would have to cut a hole in it for his cigarette, so he stitched au natural.
     When I turned my head around a second time, the ashes were all the way up to his lips and were teetering on the brink. In order to see better, Ashes bent over as close to the wound as possible, which made me think he was trying to cauterize it before sewing it up. However, I just think he forgot his bifocals again and wanted to make sure he sewed the right two things together. Once more Ashes coughed and the falling residue went straight into the gaping hole in my calf. Not to be deterred by this, Ashes spit out the little butt remaining in his mouth, and began blowing on the ashes in the hopes of extricating them from the unsewn portion of my gash.
     Presumably, some of them were blown out, but to this date, I have a salt and pepper scar on the back of my calf; a present from the great Doctor “Ashes” Kuhn.

The Joy Theater

            My Mama told me never to go to that part of town. “It’s where some really bad people are,” she said. But the fellows I hung with heard it was a great place and told me I should get myself over there. I know the older boys all went, so I decided to take the plunge.

            I remember, just like it was yesterday, passing the Joy Theater on Canal Street. “Lickety Split” was the title flashing on the marquee. I was sure it had something to do with race cars and since I was a thirteen year old, pimple-faced kid, car speed was my first love. I jealously witnessed the older boys driving their rods around my neighborhood, with hot chicks practically sitting in their laps. When Friday rolled around, our local movie house, The Abalon, showed one of their third or fourth run features, and attendance by every kid under eighteen was mandatory.

            So, up to the Joy Theater ticket booth I step, and ordered my stub, “One adult please.”

            Unfortunately for me, the ticket seller was a twenty-something year old woman who looked as if the jury had just returned to her a verdict of death by a thousand cuts.

            She said, much louder than was necessary, “How old are you, little boy?”

            “Old enough,” was my rapid retort.

            “Old enough for what? You look to be about ten or eleven; tops. What you think dis here movie is about?” she questioned, exhibiting her eighth grade education to the fullest. She chewed her three sticks of gum at a record setting pace, while interspersed between every five or six chews, she created a loud popping sound. It was sort of like a tree branch snapping underfoot and would violate even the least sensitive ears.

            I guess I should have walked away from this surly beast, but looking at the great mound of dyed red hair piled aimlessly on top of her head, and with her chewing and popping that gum, it made me bow my young back.

            “I know what this movie is,” I raged. “This here ‘Lickety Split’ is a movie about race cars and I want in.” With that, I plopped a one dollar bill down on the kiosk ledge.

            She damn near swallowed her great wad of gum. “Hoib,” she yelled back toward the lobby. “Come’ere. You gotta see dis here.”

            Out from the lobby pops Herb, or ‘Hoib,’ as our demure ticket seller affectionately knew him. “Dis here little punk wants to see da movie about race cars. What you tink? Let ‘em in?”

            Now Herb was about six feet two; tall for those years, and about one hundred thirty pounds; skinny for those years. His head was so small it looked like a replica of one of the head hunters of Borneo’s trophies. But Herb packed a cool attitude befitting the floor manager of the Joy Theater. After all, they were offering “Lickety Split” as a feature to their discerning customers. Customers I immediately discerned were conspicuously absent. I didn’t see anybody flocking to the popcorn machine dispenser or ordering a coke, like we did at home at the Abalon Theater. In fact, I didn’t see anybody in the lobby at all. Surely, the cool, laid-back guys were inside watching the Daytona 500 being replayed for them; hopefully in slow motion. That’s what I came to this part of town to see. An action movie, not those kissy things they often showed at the Abalon.

            Herb looked down at me; saw my one dollar bill on the ledge. “Dis here foist run feature is t’ree dollars, my boy. You got dat much on ya?”

            By now I’m assuming the feature movie may be a replay of not only the Daytona 500, but the year’s most exciting races at Talladega and Indianapolis as well. I reached down deep into my Levi’s and pulled out the last of my money, extracting two one-dollar bills, and realized I didn’t even have enough left for my bag of popcorn and a coke. But what the hell, I was going to see seven or eight hours of the year’s best auto races. I’m really beginning to like this part of town.

            As ‘Hoib’ tore my ticket in half, he said, “Hurry up boy. Da preview done started five minutes ago. And one other ting; don’t sit in da back. Dem prevoits is all in dere.” I assumed my new friend Herb knew what he was talking about and just wanted me to see the movie better, ‘cause I didn’t know nothing about no prevoits.’ He was just chasing me closer to the front where I could observe, first hand, all the action on the track.

            I then entered the theater proper, which was totally dark. I had my head down seeking a seat in front as Herb had advised, when I heard these great moans coming from the screen and saw from the corner of my eye, the “prevoit” section, in the back. Naturally I assumed it was the sounds of an injured driver following a particularly nasty crackup on the Daytona track. But since this was the previews, I changed my mind. It had to be the Coyote being banged around by the Roadrunner.

            I reached my seat, looked up, and to my shocked little face, there appeared on the silver screen at the Joy Theater, a tiny little man with the longest wee-wee I had ever seen. I was thrown into a complete state of shock. Now, everybody at home knew ‘Turkey’ House had the biggest wee-wee in our neighborhood, but this man made poor ‘Turkey’ look like a new born baby in an incubator. He was strutting around a king-sized bed, eyeing three naked women who appeared not to notice his gigantic thing.

            The women in bed kept calling the little guy ‘Tripod,’ and I finally guessed why. Well he climbed into the king-sized bed and commenced doing things with the three women the older boys at home told me about, but I, up to this moment, doubted anyone wanted to do that stuff with anybody. I was glad when it was over because I was starting to fell real funny, particularly down in my drawers.          

            This Joy Theater certainly had different previews than The Abalon Theater did in my

neighborhood. We always had Woody Woodpecker, and our favorite, The Roadrunner precede our flicks. All this nasty stuff was a real change for me, and I knew it would take some getting used to.

            Then the feature attraction came on. While I was still anticipating an exciting day at the races, the feeling in my drawers lingered a little. Unfortunately for me, the feature, “Lickety Split,” was nastier than the preview, and I began to be suspicious about this place. I never saw so many naked people in my life. Even at gym class or in the swimming pool locker room in summer, nobody looked like those folks. We used to look through the peep-hole into the girls locker room at school, but this was different.

            Four skinny guys looked to me almost as big as Tripod, were jumping up and down on four women, who looked surprisingly like the redheaded ticket seller in the booth outside. After about ten minutes of the same thing, I got out of my seat and trudged back up the aisle to talk to Herb, who was busy chatting-up the ticket seller as though they were about to do the same nasty things the actors on the Joy Theater screen were doing.

            “Hay, Herb. When do the races come on?”

            Herb slowly turned his head and said, “You just seen the races, my boy.” He continued his conversation with the piranha chewing ticket woman, who ignored me.

            “I want my money back, Herb. There ain’t no cars racing in there.”

            The redheaded gum chewer broke away from Herb’s death-like clutches. “You ain’t gettin’ no money back kid, so you might as well go look at what we got in dere and play wit ya’self  like them prevoits are doin’ in da back.”

            That was it for me. I stormed out of the Joy Theater with three dollars less in my Levi’s, but with a newly acquired knowledge of what goes on in the bad part of town. I returned to my neighborhood, gathered my friends around me, and told them all about my adventures at The Joy Theater. I felt bad because ‘Turkey’ House became extremely upset someone had bested his long-standing record of having the largest wee-wee in our part of town. But he got over it when they all went to see “Lickety Split” and got a funny feeling down in their drawers, too.

            Turkey lost his title that day, but as for me, those Roadrunner previews at The Abalon were never the same.