Epistle 20 – Juke Boxes

Back when there where diners with padded red and green plastic booths, on the Formica table next to the window there was a juke box, a machine that didn’t look like a box or a juke, whatever a juke is.  It had chrome sides, a glass face and a half-dozen pages of type-written songs that you could flip through with little levers on the bottom.  Some of the list was even legible.  The songs were an interesting combination of the very popular, the very obscure and Frank Sinatra.

For a nickel (or five songs for a quarter if you were really flush), you could punch a couple of buttons indicating your favorite tune, and the juke box would magically send instructions to headquarters, a mammoth 4-foot machine that held all the vinyl records (no CD’s, thank you, only 78’s or 45’s), standing on edge, hoping somebody would punch their buttons.  The lucky selection would then roll out of its slot and lay flat on the turntable while the arm with the needle would descend on the first groove (usually) to play your favorite song.  Of course, you could also put your money in the big machine and punch those buttons but that wasn’t nearly as mysterious.

Apparently, the record selection was changed periodically to reflect the modern tastes in music, plus a seasonal song or two like “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, but you couldn’t prove it by me.  Did anyone ever see somebody change the records or type up a new song list?  I didn’t think so.  Of course, the obscure songs and the Sinatra songs never had to change in my lifetime . . . and probably didn’t.  Maybe the hot modern hits by the Andrews Sisters and Frankie Laine were installed in the dead of night when the diner was closed so the owner wouldn’t be blamed if the tune was really bad.

Now, of course, everyone has an i-Pod plugged into their ears so you don’t even need a clunky old juke box to entertain you and your friends.  You can get a vaguely similar experience in a nightspot with some kind of electronic gadgetry, but it’s too loud to recognize the tune, if it even has one.  That’s probably a good thing because nobody had to type anything, nobody had to push any buttons, and it’s probably not Sinatra.  Hell, I once tried to play one of those modern music machines, and it wouldn’t even take my nickel.

We Will Win

Epistle 19 – Tis The Season

Here it is again. Tis the Season, and it’s about time Joy to the World is duly recognized as the most important Christmas Carol ever. Not because it is a great work of art and adoration, but because it was always the last song of the Christmas Eve service at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, and I could finally race home and tear open every present as fast as I could and then wonder if that’s all there was to it. Of course, I did have to first endure a tedious ceremony wherein my brother passed out all the presents, just because he could read and I couldn’t. The tension was unbearable, a bit like waiting for the bell to ring and the gates open at a horse race, followed by a flurry of flying paper and bows. If there had been a horse doofer among the presents, no one would have noticed.

Of course, now that I am wiser and more mature, I realize that the joy of Christmas is the anticipation leading to the big event. It’s the journey, not the destination; and all my fond memories of Christmases past are of the weeks before. Like the time I learned the truth about Santa Clause. Actually, that happened about an hour and a half before the big event. I was on my way to church with my mother and my brother and suddenly realized I forgot something dreadfully important—probably my lucky plastic gold doubloon—and panic stricken, did an immediate about face and raced for home. I’m sure my mother screamed for me to turn back before it was too late but, her voice was drowned out by the bells on Santa’s sleigh. Or maybe it was the bell on the door to the Gopher Hole tavern.

Anyway, you can just imagine how shocked I was to find Santa, who was a dead ringer for my father, crawling around under the tree distributing presents. After a moment of mutual recognition, a moment frozen in time, I retrieved my lucky doubloon and raced back to church, wondering if my father would already be there, proving that Santa was real and the man under our tree was just another MIA from the Gopher Hole.

Of course, the spell was broken but that did not tarnish the wonders of Yuletides to come. Like the time my brother broke his wrist as we raced downhill on his sled, him on his stomach at the controls and me on his back, bravely breaking the sound barrier. Or the tears in our eyes the time I forgot to open the chimney flue as the Yule log blazed in the fireplace. And who could forget all the times the tree toppled over, thanks to the elves crawling around under it to gaze up at the marvelous lights . . . and thanks to the crooked trunk that took a left turn about a third of the way up because those were real trees, by God, and not these fake plastic ones with perfectly straight trunks, factory installed lights, and eternally green branches. Back in the good ol’ days, needles fell off real trees, usually long before the season ended, leaving the gay lights, silvery tinsel and beautiful ornaments dangling from a brown stick. Man, talk about festive.

Yes, children, they don’t make Christmas like they used to, but I still love to sit back after all the hustle and bustle of decorating, shopping, Scrooge and the Grinch, to bask in the beauty and true meaning of the Season. I’d love to but I have to go now and rip open a present.

God rest ye merry, Gentlemen . . . and Ladies.

We Will Win

Epistle 19 – The Three Martini Lunch

I was fortunate to start my business career in New York when white shirts, gray suits and wingtips were the only acceptable professional attire. Hats were strongly encouraged, especially when you were summoned to headquarters, but we young Turks held firm on that one and brought the establishment to their knees . . . sort of. One tradition I did not rebel against was the 3 martini lunch, a worthy tradition, indeed. My boss wanted me to drink gin martinis rather than vodka so the customer would know I was drunk, not stupid. Since they made me even more eloquent than I was naturally, I failed to see his point. In fact, I was quite proud of being able to glibly order “an-extra-dry-Beefeater-martini-on-the-rocks-with-an-olive-please”. It was quite a mouthful, especially with a mouthful of olives.

Of course, not everyone in the Apple shared in this ritual. Take the man in the Jersey City upstairs warehouse, for example. He was my very first sales call. After getting hopelessly lost and arriving late, he gave me 5 minutes to say whatever I was going to say to get an order, and then get out. Undaunted, I raced ahead, rattling off everything I knew about anything, coming to a breathless close with about 2 minutes to spare. “Well, young man,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not going to get an order, but that was the damnedest sales pitch I’ve ever heard. Here, help yourself before you go,” he said, pointing to a display case of briar pipes. I chose one that made me look quite distinguished and shuffled down the warehouse steps, thinking my sales career was off to a grand start. My army aptitude test said I should have been a plumber, but how could you deny the profits of my first sales call? This was the game for me.

Now, having been shaken, not stirred, for decades and the three martini lunch having gone the way of leisure suits, I can philosophically look back on that phase of my career and honestly say . . . I missed most of it. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. No, sir. The Big Apple haze is probably best remembered through a Beefeater haze. And gin-soaked olives were all I got to eat some days. Sure, there were probably a few misguided adventures, like the time I leaped into a cab like Gene Kelly and split my pants; but I was part of the fabric of American history. And I was still ten feet tall and bullet-proof.

So, all you young people in the audience considering a grand and glorious business career in the Big Apple, don’t let them talk you into a martini at lunch. Wear a hat instead.

We Will Win

Epistle 18 – Halloween

Autumn in Brewster’s Mill was my favorite time of year. As a lad I could still block out the season that came next and enjoy the brilliant colors, the sparkling sunshine, crunching through the falling leaves, and that special spicy scent in the air—the smell of death. In the good ol’ days, you could burn all those leaves you raked to the curb, and the curling columns of smoke on every street were a cozy end to the green season.

Of course, you can’t burn leaves anymore—to protect the environment, I guess, not to mention all the lawns that caught fire. Maybe burning dead leaves also produced hallucinogens that made young Boomers goofy, sort of a giant, outdoor pot party. Anyway, instead of burning the leaves, today a truck comes along and some guy sucks them up in a big hose. The town leaf sucker.

Of course, the crowning event of autumn is Halloween, the one night when your natural weird habits are encouraged. My first memory of Halloween festivities was the neighborhood Kornstalk Karnival for which my mother dressed me as a really scary . . . Chinaman. There I was, a 5 or 6-year old, tow-headed kid wrapped in an orange oilcloth sheet that came down to my ankles, a Fu Man Chu mustache painted on my face, and a cardboard wok tied on my head.

Terrifying, huh? I can’t imagine where the inspiration for the costume came from since there were no Asians in Brewster’s Mill. Maybe it was that Chinese restaurant we went to on vacation in Milwaukee. Whatever. Anyway, while my brother was honestly earning his treats by ringing door bells, soaping windows and putting fire crackers in mail boxes, I wandered around the Kornstalk Karnival in my Chinese suit, wheedling the adults in charge into tossing candy into my shopping bag. It’s a shame nobody thought to take my picture. I could have been the first Bruce Lee.

Now, the cute little trick-or-treaters are out with their parents and an armed guard on alert for any candy not in a sterilized, vacuum-sealed package. Then, the treats are carefully doled out in exact proportions designed to prevent sugar overload and other assorted dietary maladies. Can you imagine these kids bobbing for apples in a washtub with a bunch of other kids with runny noses? How will they ever build their immune systems?

Of course, thanks to really cool special effects, today’s tykes can get the bejeezes scared out of them by psychos with chainsaws and other instruments of torture.
We had to make do with a stiff Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, a hairy Lon Chaney, Jr. as the wolfman, and James Arness as an arctic carrot, old friends that I’d love to see again but I have to go now. I have an interview for the leaf sucker job.

We Will Win

Epistle 17 – The Iron Lung

I just knew I had it. Polio, that is. No worse fate could befall a young person. I had seen plenty of newspaper pictures of kids in iron lungs to know. Imagine spending your life lying in a steel tank just so you could breathe. Horrible. Polio was the scourge of the earth before cancer was invented and I knew I had it. I just knew.

It was one of those hot, humid, summer nights in 1955 BAC (Before Air Conditioning) when you just rolled around on top of the sheets, sweatin’ like a butcher, without a wisp of air through the window screen. The lacy curtains hung there as dead as I was. Everything was lifeless. Even my brother, who’s twin bed was pushed up next to mine, was too inert to accidentally whomp me across the chest with his arm.

So there I lay, in the upstairs flat of the Bates Motel, our lodgings in the mid-50’s. With it’s porch roof posts leaning toward each other below the two blank 2^nd floor windows, the place looked like the Scull and Crossbones. And behind one of those ghostly windows, I lay with a really stiff neck, unable to move my head in any direction. It was polio for sure . . . and I had it. Would they carry me downstairs to put me in the iron lung or bring it up to my bedside to gently lay me in it? Nah, probably make me walk to it somewhere with my head in a cast. It was a cruel time.

I suppose the cynics among you are thinking that by morning my stiff neck was gone as I merrily rode off on my bike in search of a sandlot baseball game (which is what we played before Little League was invented—honest). No, sir! We’re not talking about some shallow, tow-headed kid here. I had to go stand in line in the school gym—during summer vacation, for God’s sake—to receive my first Salk vaccine shot. As you all know by now, Dr. Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine to conquer polio and spare thousands of young people the torture of that terrible disease. It’s a shame he discovered it too late for me. True, my stiff neck was gone but I remembered it clearly and knew it was still just a matter of time. Who knows? Maybe I’d have a major attack right there during the shot. Maybe pass out even. Everyone knew that the vaccine itself was full of evil polio germs.

Well, as you may have guessed by now, I am fully recovered. I survived the shot plus a booster or two and even sampled the Sabine oral stuff. By some miracle, I narrowly escaped a brush with death and the inside of school during summer break. I could tell you more about the perils of growing up without national health care or air conditioning, but I need to sign off now. I have a stiff neck.

We Will Win