POOR, POOR ME

Back before TV, in 1941, 42, 43, somewheres back then, a very curious puzzle happened on the radio. There was a big censorship uproar. Censorship in those days rested with the sponsers of the various radio programs. The problem was with a comedy skit that went like this: One guy says, "I'm a thinker." The comedian goes, "You thirtenly are."

Now that's a pretty lame joke, but it caused a sensation, and back then there was no "politically correct" brouhaha like there is now. It was kinda understood that if a comedian used this joke, he was subject to being fired. It is my own personal belief that somehow the joke was too "racy." Don't ask me how that could be, because I don't know.

Two comedians - one of them I am pretty sure was Bob Hope, said they were not going to do the joke, Jack Carson said he was going to use it, he didn't care what they did to him. He wasn't afraid. Can you imagine?

Now that is bad enough, the commotion that bad joke caused , but think on this:

At least three national comedians were publicly stating that they would use jokes that originated with other comedians. They didn't care about telegraphing a punch line in the papers even before the show aired. I was about seven years old at the time and even at that age something seemed kinda crazy about the whole thing.

I remember listening to Jack Carson and hearing that joke - just like he said he was going to do.

I didn't laugh.

STUFF AND NONSENSE - MOSTLY NONSENSE

I happen to have a singlular honor. I am the only person I know of, the only person I have ever heard of, or that anyone else that I know of has ever heard of, that has slipped on a banana peel.

I know, I know, you have seen it in movies or in cartoons, but have you ever actually seen a real live, on-the-street person do it? Or heard of a person doing it, or have actually yourself done it? No.

Well, I have slipped on a banana peel, and lemme tell you, it is NOT as portrayed since time immemorial. Your feet do not go out from under you. The foot that hits the banana peel slides forward in the direction it was going when it hit the peel, the other foot stays where it was, resulting in an unexpected , extreme, and if you are not used to it, painful, split. Like the cheerleaders do. A seventy-four year old man doing a beautiful, graceful, full split. Something to see.

My claim to fame.

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When I was a senior in High School I happened to wonder how it came to be that females were called, "women." Were they wo-men? Obvious to me that there were "men" and then therewere these other kinds of "men." How did this happen? Fortunately. in the study hall, there was this extremely thick dictionary left open on a stand at the front of the room.

I looked in the dictionary and I came across the word, "woom." And the definition of "woom" was, "One who breeds in secret." Well, that made sense. I knew that women had a thing against fornicating out where God and everybody could see them. All the women I knew had a thing against fornicating even if no one could see them. So one who "woomed" was a "wooman." Perfect.

So I go along in my bliss about education and one day I told this to someone and I looked in a dictionary to show him and Viola'! no "woom." Obviously I needed a bigger dictionary, so one day when I went to the public library, I looked in their massive dictionary, really, really, expecting to find it - and it wasn't in there! What is this? In order to shorten the story, ever since, I have frequently, when in the presence of a large dictionary, looked for my word. I looked in a Barnes and Noble dictionary just a few days ago. I have never seen it again.

Now. Did I dream that whole thing? Even the definition? I don't think so, but then how could this be? And if the definition didn't fit so well the word, it wouldn't be so bad. I could forget it. But this is a beautiful word and I want it back!

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I was in the Air Force, stationed in Sacramento for nigh on twenty years. I worked on obsolete equipment, so this was the only place - except for the training base at Denver, that used these obsolete electronic things.

Radomes on the underbelly of T-29 trainers were what housed the antennas for the radar used by the Bomb/Nav equipment upon which I worked. Sheet Metal used to remove them for repair and general inspection and cleaning.

We had a couple of gung-ho inspectors and one day they took it into their heads to start writing up the least little thing wrong with the radomes, so for that month, in the reports, the number of radomes removed increased dramatically.

There was this Sgt. I worked with - a recently converted Mormon with whom I used to argue quite a bit. He seemed pretty smart, but he had a quirk with his logic at times.

In those days, Lyndon Johnson was President and the Viet-Nam war was on.This guy worried a lot about Communists. One day he took me aside and asked me if I thought that the Communists were sabotaging the radomes. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. These radomes - used for obsolete equipment - on an aircraft used for TRAINING, during a violent war, IN the United States, on an Air Force base, were being sabotaged by Communists!

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I was in downtown Sacramento waiting for my 5:50 P.M. bus to take me to my home twenty miles away when I see, coming down the street, this guy dragging this little but heavy old Chinese woman. She would not take a step although he kept pleading with her to do so. All he would get by way of reply is some mumbled Chinese words.

As he finally came up to the bunch of us waiting for the bus, he began pleading with us to help him. He said he'd been carrying and dragging her all the way from "K" street - which was a distance, doing what he was doing. He looked directly at me and begged, "Please help me."

I told him that my bus was due any second and he replied, "Oh, sure. Everybody's too busy to help. Thanks a lot. Some people!" And on like that. Eventually, realizing I could catch a bus an hour later, I told him I would help him. Down the street I could see my bus coming. Shit!

So the two of us carried and dragged this heavy old Chinese lady, occasionally asking her where she wanted to go, getting mumbled Chinese words in reply, asking people around there if anybody knew where she lived, nobody knew. Somehow we wound up at the door to the building that stood on the corner where I had been waiting for my bus. A man came out and said, "Dammit, (I forget her name. Let's call her "Cherry Blossom.) Cherry Blossom! I told you not to go out by yourself! You always do this!."

He was furious. We asked if she lived in the building. He says, yeah - just get her upstairs, and as we took her upstairs, he continued to berate her.

Around this time, a miracle happened. The Chinese lady began answering our questions in English and she was able to walk unassisted. Evudently she would always find someone to carry her home whenever she was able to sneak out alone.

KEEP IT HOT

One early morning I'm walking down 21st street on my way to Weatherstone's and as I'm crossing the intersection of 21st and "H," I see, lying in the crosswalk, a loaded clip from an automatic. I pick it up and I start thinking of what I am going to do with it. I don't want to throw it in a dumpster where somebody might find it and mess around with it. I didn't want it. And then I remembered a coupla cops often came to Weatherstone's for coffee. I would wait for them and give it to them. Good idea.

I arrive at Weatherstone's, go up to the barista, ask her what time the cops usually come in and did they come in every day. She says they don't come in every day. Asks me why I want to know. I show her the clip and she suggests that I call the police station and have them send somebody down. Good idea. I do that.

After I make my call, I sit facing the large window in front, drinking my coffee, reading, keeping an eye out for a uniform. I hear a voice over my shoulder asking if I wanted to see a policeman. I look up, it is a man in a suit - not what I expected, no wonder he came in and I missed him.

I say, "Yes." He sits down at the table and I show him what I got. He looks it over, thumbs out a cartridge, puts it back, turns it over several times. All this while he's asking me questions. Where, exactly, did I find it. I tell him. A few other questions I forget now, but what mostly catches my mind is he keeps checking out the clip. I get the feeling he is trying to trip me up, make me admit to some nefarious activity. Finally I ask him, "What caliber is it? I knew it wasn't a forty-five, I thought it too small for a thirty-eight. He starts checking it out again, finally says, "Looks like a nine millimeter."

Now, this is a cop, been on the force for some time, I imagine, he's been checking out the clip all the time he's been sitting there, he must have seen hundreds of clips of nine millimeters - being the gun of choice for the police, so why does he have to look at the clip again and make a guess as to the size of the caliber?

I go home, told my son about the experience and I volunteer that the detective was trying to trip me up. He says, no, think about it. Some guy calls up saying he found a clip, wants to give it to the police. Who they gonna send? Not some guy they need to do police work. They're gonna send some dork that's of no use at the office, right? Yeah. That sounds right. The dork's activities make sense now.
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There was this guy that hung out at the coffee house where I hung out that was on SSI because he couldn't handle the slightest bit of responsibility. One day he told me that he didn't get his check and he went to the people that help guys like him and they told him to just go down and get the check. He said he told them, "The reason I get the check is because of my inability to do such things as to go and get my check."

He told me that he once had a job tarring roofs and he bought a new pair of boots and he was being very careful not to get any tar on them. He said that one of his working partners said, "You gotta get those dirty," and wiped his tar-mop across his boots. So he pushed the guy off the roof. He said he told the boss that he guessed he'd better leave and the boss agreed.

He had gotten hold of a printing press and my son and I were publishing comic books and we couldn't find a cheap printer, so I went looking for him to see if I could borrow his printing press.

A mutual friend known as "Porno Ray" told me that he told this guy that I was looking for him and he said that he disappeared - like "It seemed he thought you wanted him to do some work."

I went into Weatherstones shortly after that and he was sitting at a table with a friend and I said,"Hi," and went up to order coffee, turned around and he was gone! We always got along really well, so I think it really true that he was avoiding me, and thus what he thought was work. I finally tracked him down and it turned out that the printer didn't really have an owner. I don't remember what happened to it. Those things cost up in the thousands of dollars.

There is a side story to this. I was told by this guy that had responsibility problems that there was some kind of a lawsuit concerning the printer with him and and another guy that used to organize week-long poetry readings on street corners downtown as antagonists. This poetry guy at one point said to the judge, "Don't you know who I am?"

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There was this really fat lady who used to hang around Weatherstones. She lived in one of the halfway houses for disturbed people. She was very aggressive and nasty. One day this Hungarian immigrant threw a cup of coffee in her face because she wouldn't leave him alone. Once she spit on our car with my wife and I standing there.

One day we were driving by, looking for a parking place and we saw her go in Weatherstone's with an opened umbrella. We started laughing because we knew she was going to do SOMETHING with it. We came around the block and the umbrella was way up in the tree that stood in front of Weatherstone's. Nobody around. We never did find out what had gone on, but it was probably interesting.

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I was standing in line to order coffee and in front of me was this older middleaged guy, kinda dumpy. In front of him was this young girl. I heard him say to her, "We don't have places like this in Montana where I come from."

She answered, "Oh. Where do you come from?"

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Around the corner from Weatherstone, down the alley, was a Seven Eleven mini mart. One night I went there to get a pack of cigs and there was a bunch of people crowded around the cement slab in front. A black man was kneeling on the parking lot pavement, laying out three cards on the cement. Several men were standing on the cement pad, facing him. The black man would look up at someone and tell, him -"Take a guess. Free guess. Where's the red card?" The guy would point, and he would get it right. He once looked up at me and said, go ahead - where's the red card - free guess. I smiled and said no. I wasn't about to get into three card monte in any way shape or form.

Now, I don't know exactly how this next happened. It was pretty confusing and I kept trying to pick out the shill, but the ones I picked for some reason or other did something that didn't make any sense,. but I know a shill was in there somewheres. This one guy says to this other guy - "C'mon. Gimmie twenty. I know where it is. It's a sure thing. C'mon! I'll give you your twenty back right away." This was the guy I was most sure was a shill until the guy gives him the money and he picks the wrong card.

The manager of the store comes out just then and tells us to break it up and as we were walking away, this one guy kept asking this other guy, "Where's my twenty? Where's my twenty? Where's my twenty?" The guy never answered.

I figured out that how this particular three card monte was working was that the guy was looking up into our eyes, following where we were looking. If we had the right card, he would give us a "free turn." If we had the wrong one, he would say, "Take a guess. You'll win twenty dollars."

I wish the manager hadn't broken it up so quickly.