LindyOne's Favorite Quotes
Reporter offers a handful of memory-sticking quotesBy Bill Lindau
Many times when we have questions, we turn to things famous people have said for answers, for guidance or for moral support.
My personal favorite comes from Henrik Ibsen: “The strongest person in the world is the person who stands alone.“
I’ve been reading his plays since I was 17, and every time I find the world ganging up on me, this is the quote I remember.
An instructor I had in college once advised his students to write down every clever remark they hear or read. It could come from Shakespeare, the Bible, your mother, your best friend or the town drunk or your favorite TV sitcom. Keep them in a notebook throughout your life and never stop adding to it.
Here are some of the ones that have really stuck in my head. They come, from my latest personal collection:
* “Don’t panic.”
-- Douglas Adams, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
* “The art of falling involves learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
-- Douglas Adams, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
* “I wouldn’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
-- Woody Allen
* “Just because I read ‘Winnie the Pooh‘ doesn‘t make me Tigger.”
-- Anonymous friend, on being accused of treason for reading certain works of literature
* “Can’t you imagine a hair wart on your lip?”
-- Anonymous friend
* “All you need is love.”
-- The Beatles, “All You Need is Love”
* “Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day/I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta get a belly full of wine.”
-- The Beatles, “Her Majesty”
* “Life is much too short and there’s no time/for fussing and fighting, my friend.”
-- The Beatles, “We Can Work it Out”
* “He’s the wackiest two-legger I’ve ever met in my life, but he’s the dude with the food!”
-- Blacky the cat on his father, Bill Lindau
* “If heroin is a monkey on the back, what’s a morphine suppository?”
-- Lenny Bruce
* "I never saw a porno film where anybody got killed in the end. Or even punched in the mouth.”
-- Lenny Bruce
* "You can't get snot off a suede jacket."
-- Lenny Bruce
* “His squeegee doesn’t go all the way to the bottom of the pail.”
-- Expression quoted by George Carlin
* “A children’s museum sounds like a good idea, but I would imagine it’s not easy to breathe inside those little glass cases.”
-- George Carlin
* “I finally figured out what e-mail is for. It’s for communicating with people you’d rather not talk to.”
-- George Carlin
* “I wish the ecology people would save one species that would make a dramatic comeback and then wipe us all out.”
-- George Carlin
* “I wonder if a person who comes out of a coma feels refreshed and well rested.”
-- George Carlin
* "I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me."
-- John Cleese
* "If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."
-- John Cleese
* "If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'"
-- John Cleese
* "Lights will guide you home/and ignite your bones/and I will try to fix you."
-- Coldplay, "Fix You"
* “Don’t try to get yourself elected/if you do you’ll have to cut your hair.”
-- David Crosby, “Long Time Gone”
* “Where’s your will to be weird?”
-- Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in “The Doors” (1990)
* “I think most of us have many personas inside us at the outset, but over time we lean to the one that is dominant and the others atrophy for lack of use.“
-- Jane Fonda, “My Life So Far”
* “Friend…Good.”
-- Boris Karloff as Frankenstein monster to blind hermit in “Frankenstein”
* “If a man don’t go his own way, he ain’t nothing.”
-- Montgomery Clift as Robert E. Lee Prewitt in “From Here to Eternity” (1953)
* “I’d trade a troop of Campfire Girls for the bunch of you.”
-- Burt Lancaster as Sgt. Milt Warden in “From Here to Eternity”
* "I definitely pretend to be glamorous in my real everyday life. I wouldn't characterise it as very glamorous. I'm mostly in sweat pants with my daughter, wiping hummus off my shirt."
-- Gywneth Paltrow on motherhood, speaking on America's Access Hollywood TV show
* “Nothing I like better than a well-organized set-up.”
-- Gregory Peck as an Allied commando in “The Guns of Navarone” (1991)
* “I‘m not so easy to kill.”
-- Anthony Quinn as a Greek commando in “The Guns of Navarone”
* “White collar conservative walking down the street
Pointing their plastic finger at me
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high.”
-- Jimi Hendrix, “If Six was Nine”
* “You should never put your best trousers on when you fight for freedom and truth.”
-- Henrik Ibsen
* “The strongest person in the world is the person who stands alone.”
-- Henrik Ibsen
* “Trying to learn about American culture from public radio is like trying to learn about basketball from your grandmother.”
-- Garrison Keillor
* “Revenge is a dish which is best served cold.”
-- Klingon proverb, from the “Star Trek” TV series
* “Imagine all the people/living life in peace.”
-- John Lennon, “Imagine”
* “Go tell him, ‘Nuts.’”
-- U.S. Army general’s response to the Germans’ request to surrender at the Battle of the Bulge
* "Conservative Republicans are living proof that white people mated with wharf rats."
-- Bill Lindau
* “Intelligence is one thing I tend to avoid.”
-- Larry Linville as Maj. Frank Burns, in the CBS-TV series “M.A.S.H.”
* “What sad times are these when traveling ruffians can say ‘Ni’ to old women.”
-- Eric Idle as Roger the Shrubber in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975)
* “You empty-headed animal food-trough wiper!….Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”
-- John Cleese as abusive French knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
* “When people pop a nice little chocolate in their mouths, they don’t expect to get their cheeks pierced.”
-- Monty Python’s “Crunchy Frog” skit
* “Feel a little smaller and in stature you will rise/A hobo or a poet must kill dragons for a bride/and humble pie is always hard to swallow with your pride.”
-- Graham Nash, “Humble Pie”
* “I once fought for two days with an arrow through my testicle.”
-- Liam Neeson as Godfrey, a medieval knight in “Kingdom of Heaven“
* “Vengeance is mine; I shall repay, saith the Lord.”
-- Matthew
* “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”
-- Proverbs 17
* “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
* “The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.”
-- Shakespeare, “Othello”
* “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
-- Southern saying (origin unknown)
* “Every day we learn more how to hate/shut the doors/and then we tell ourselves we can relate.”
-- Stephen Stills, “We are not Helpless”
* “God is a comedian everyone is afraid to laugh at.”
-- Voltaire
* “Meet the new boss/same as the old boss.”
-- The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
Tales from the life of LindyOne
MORE HUMOR FROM BILL LINDAU
1. SPLIT DECISION
When I moved from Winston-Salem to Southern Pines, I had spent the whole summer looking at men’s magazines and studying current styles, not for kids my age, but for older guys. This included tweed sport jackets and touring caps. I also purchased an Italian cable-knit shirt called a Rapallo. I was the only 13-year-old kid at East Southern Pines Junior High School who wore a tweed sports jacket and solid slacks. The style for adolescent boys that year was plaid slacks (man, I’m glad those hideous things have never come back in style!).
In October the whole school had picture day. That meant Sunday go-to-meeting clothes for everybody -- jackets and ties for boys, best dresses for girls. Other kids groaned, but I loved it. I came dressed to the nines and loving it.
But one time that day in social studies, the teacher called me to the front of the class to write something on the blackboard. I forgot what it was, but that’s beside the point. Just as I was about to go back to my seat, I dropped an eraser. I bent over to pick it up, when I heard a loud ripping sound.
It came from the seat of my pants and lasted for three seconds.
Suddenly I felt a cool breeze behind me and just below my waist. I discreetly felt back there.
The rip had occurred right in the middle of the seat.
I didn’t look up. That ripping sound was so loud you could hear it down the hall and I just knew every kid in the classroom was shaking in his seat, about to explode with laughter.
I spotted a hole in the floor. I wanted to find a lamp to rub really quick, and if a genie came out I’d have asked him to make me small enough to fit into that little hole.
I slowly straightened my legs, stood upright again, and tried to cover up the split in my pants by pulling the tail of my jacket over it.
I still didn’t look at the kids as I slinked back to my seat.
That’s because the 56-year-old teacher was giving them all killer looks, just daring one of them to crack up. If looks could kill, she would have vaporized the whole class.
I went home with my jacket tied around my waist. I told my mom what happened.
It took her 15 minutes before she could stop laughing enough to drive to a clothing store to buy some more trousers -- in a bigger size than I had on before.
Unfortunately, in the lazy, hazy days of summer, I had found it too hot to do a whole lot of exercise, but it never got too hot for cold sodas and ice cream.
In my quest to dress as well as those male models in the popular magazines, I had fallen way short of looking like them, with their Olympic-swimmer physiques. I remained a stout, slow kid all through high school, and only trimmed down when I graduated and had to pay for all my food.
2. NEVER TOO SLICK TO PAN THE PREZ
One year (I won't mention which year because I want to entertain both Republicans and Democrats) my mother went to the hospital for something serious but not life-threatening.
When the technicians and a registered nurse were wheeling her in for treatment, the RN asked her a few simple questions to assess her mental state: "What year is it?"
Mom told her the right year.
"What state are we living in?"
"North Carolina," Mom said.
"What year were you born?"
"1919."
Then the nurse asked, "Who's the president of the United States?"
Mom looked her right in the eye and said, "A damn jackass."
Matt and Gary
Here, There & Everywhere With Bill
‘Learn and Earn’: A father-and-son success storyBy Bill Lindau
Can you believe this? Father-and-son high-school dropouts.
No, really. I know of both an old friend and his son who quit high school and went on to get their GEDs (general equivalency diplomas) at their local community college.
A lot of my classmates went that route, and a lot of kids today are still doing the “Learn and Earn” thing in the North Carolina school systems. A report in the Thursday, Sept. 1 edition of The Fayetteville Observer describes this phenomenon.
It says about 13,000 16- and 17-year-old dropouts earned their GEDs or adult high-school diplomas during the 2003-04 school year, according to information from the state community college system.
The report, from the Wilmington Star-News, pointed to one young woman as an example of this trend. She quit high school and has enrolled in Cape Fear Community College, to get her GED and take college courses. She told the reporter she wanted to be an orthopaedic surgeon.
“Robbie” (not his real name) the son of my old friends “Hank” and “Maddie”, quit school in ninth grade after having flunked one grade. But this year his parents got him into the GED program of an area community college, where he also takes college courses, including some music lessons.
Robbie’s father told me that the boy (Robbie just turned 17) is happy as a clam going to school. When I talked to Hank about a year and a half ago, Hank told me about Robbie failing a grade, and all the trouble he has at school. “He’s going to be 60 before he graduates,” Hank said.
Man, what a turnaround!
I’ll bet if it hadn’t been for this college, Robbie would be standing on street corners, pushing crack cocaine or something.
I know about this case because Robbie happens to be one of my classmates; I’m auditing a course in voice at the same college.
Here’s the ironic thing: Hank went to the same high school.
He dropped out early in his senior year and later got his GED at the college. The same college.
Hank was a really bright youth. I have known him since we were both juniors. The high school we attended opened that year, after the county schools became consolidated.
That high school was great, featuring courses in dramatics, accelerated English, advanced math, auto repair, graphic arts and a bunch of other vocational programs. We actually looked forward to school. I once entertained the idea of purposely flunking some courses when I got to be a senior, just to stay in the school another year.
Then the school went to the dogs. Many of our friends had graduated, and a great many teachers quit. Some of their great courses folded, too. It got to be a drag. Hank dropped out, and so did a lot of kids in my senior year.
As bad as it was, I stuck it out in my last year in the public schools system. I wanted to do the whole high-school thing, going to the senior prom and then walking across the stand in cap and gown and snatching my long-awaited diploma out of Principal J.R. Brendell’s hand. Free at last! So long, you old tyrant, you!
That’s one of the high-school experiences kids who quit and go through the college route seem to miss: That and the friendships. I can see the reasons for home-schooling, but I wonder what the parents are doing as far as finding companions for their kids goes.
The report says educators cite a lot of reasons kids quit high school. High-school dropouts aren’t all a bunch of dimwits with low I.Q.s, or a bunch of delinquents. Like my young friend Robbie and that aspiring orthopaedic surgeon, some of them really have a lot upstairs, and could end up becoming college professors, doctors and lawyers. Many of them come from lower-income families, and they may have to quit school to go to work and help support their families. Others have different learning styles that may not be compatible with their teachers’ methods. Others quit because of bullying, and still others are so bright they become bored, because the material’s too easy for them, the report says.
I have another friend, whom I met when we were in our 20s, who also quit high school. He got his GED at the local community college two months later, just before he would have completed his sophomore year in high school.
I’m glad to see so many kids going through the “Learn and Earn” initiative, which allows students go earn their GEDs and an associate degree at the same time, or earn credit’s toward a bachelor’s degree. If it weren’t for the GED program, a lot of kids would be working at dead-end jobs or selling dope on the streets.
But in the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for such a program.
We pay for the public schools to give our children the education they need, and ideally, they would all be graduating on time. The dropout rate has decreased tremendously over the years; in 1960, only little more than 40 percent of students nationwide graduated from high school.
But still, kids are still dropping out of high school. There are some great courses, and some quality teachers, but still you have a lot of people not waiting to go through the graduation line to get their high-school diplomas.
A community college official I talked to about this phenomenon said, jokingly, “Bring them here. We’re glad to have them.” At the same time, the principals and instructors are shaking their heads each time a kid bids them “Arrivederci!”
I hope all the kids who are going to college early will achieve the success they hope for.
Now here’s a real task for our educators: Give the kids already in the school system the same kinds of hopes, so they’ll figure it’s worth sticking around for.
As soon as you see a kid who’s hitting the skids, for Pete’s sake, don’t leave him/her to wallow in the mire. Let’s see to them tout de suite! They don’t have to be destined for wretched, non-productive existences.
Go to the kid and lend a helping hand. You’ll never believe what a delight it is to rescue some troubled youngster from the abyss, turning that kid from a crabby person with a defeatist attitude to an adolescent filled with a lust for life, a joie de vivre that makes him/her want to do something with his life.
Let’s have more success stories such as Hank and Robbie -- in both the high schools and the colleges.
---
Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.
Scamming senior citizens
Here, There and Everywhere With Bill
Lessons from Scam Jam – & those we learn ourselvesBy Bill Lindau
It was good to see so many senior citizens at the Scam Jam last month. A tip of the hat goes to Judy Estridge of FirstBank of Troy and the other participating institutions for helping to put on such a quality, informative seminar, and to everybody who took the time to come to the outskirts of Troy and tell us what they known.
We hope all those senior citizens remember what Sheriff Jeff Jordan, prosecutor Kristian Allen, David “The Hammer” Kirkman of the state attorney general’s office and others told them. And I hope I can remember it all many years from now, when I’m ancient and feeble and my mind and body aren’t what they used to be.
So many of those ways to avoid scams, frauds and ripoffs come from common sense. I’m not the street-smartest person in the world, but I do know better than to do stuff such as give out sensitive financial information over the phone or fall for every friendly but down-and-out looking stranger with a sob story to tell. As for e-mails: Well, I very seldom look at my bulk box any more. I’ll hit the “delete all” button without opening a single one of those messages.
I think it would’ve been a good idea to set aside some time to let some of the audience come up and tell about their own experiences with rip-off artists. Tell us either about the time they got fleeced or the way they avoided being fleeced. Might be a good idea to hear out only five or 10 people, however. Because talking to many members of the audience, I got the impression that everybody in that room has found himself/herself on the receiving end of a scam. If they let everybody talk, we might have been there all day and all night.
That’s really a sad thing to see. That’s no way for people to treat somebody’s father or mother, grandparent or great-grandparent. These people worked hard all their lives, raised their children to be hard-working, law-abiding citizens and done an awful lot to make this world as nice as it is. They ought to spend the few years they have left sitting on the front porch talking about their lives, fishing, going to the theatre and otherwise kicking back without a care in the word. Instead, we got a bunch of no-goodniks who don’t care anything about making a quick buck, cowards who would put guns to 85-year-olds’ heads just to grab their Social Security checks.
So what happens? You remain on Red Alert until your dying day. Or your children have to spend most of their lives keeping the scavengers from you door.
I think the world of the sheriff, but I wouldn’t deal with a panhandler the way he said he usually does: Give him/her $2 and send him on his way. I say if you’re going to do that, you need to tell them not to bother you any more, in no uncertain terms.
I tried doing that to one person. Gave a bloke 50 cents so he could buy a cup of coffee (that’s what he said). He had sat down to my table at a fast-food place – uninvited – and struck up a conversation with me until the subject came a tiny bit of change I could spare.
I kept running into the same man afterwards, and – man, he was like a deerfly on a hot summer day, Jim!
He always came at me with some sob story about business being slow or his car getting towed away (not that I ever saw him driving one) and hitting me up again and again and again and again and again.
I said no every time, but he never gave up. He kept popping up for about two more years, before he disappeared. Maybe I should have been a little more aggressive from the start and said, “Now get your cup of coffee and find another table.”
There may be more street hustlers and panhandlers in larger towns and cities, but these little towns in Montgomery, Richmond and Moore counties to have them. I can say this because I’ve encountered quite a few of them.
They’ll hang around banks, stores, shopping malls and other public places. They’ll approach you in the most polite manner, using honey rather than vinegar to catch that particular fly (namely, you). They may either ask you for a ride or ask you for some money with the promise to write a check and give it to you later. If you’re in a coin laundry, they may come up out of the blue and help you fold your clothes or put them in your car (I’ve had two men – two white men – do that to me).
One of those men in the coin laundry then asked me for some money for a pack of cigarets. I said no. “Come on, you’re bound to have some change,” he said.
“I’m telling you, I spent all my money doing my laundry, man,” I said. “I’m flat broke. Get it?”
Another man took one of my loads of laundry and carried it out to my car. He started to put it inside, but I took it from him. “I’ll take it from here,” I said. “AND THAT’S ALL.”
He scampered away, knowing the chances of getting a quarter from me was a lost cause.
Everybody who knows me knows I’m so liberal I make Abbie Hoffman look like a Southern Baptist Minister.
But while I contribute to a fair number of groups that take care of animals and people who are down on their luck, I do not -- or the sake of my own survival – dole out money to every pathetic-looking individual who claims he’s starving to death or doesn’t have a way home.
It really pains me to turn my back on somebody who may really be in trouble. But we got so many shrewd, crafty people lurking around the streets these days that you can’t tell who’s telling the truth. Some of these people should audition for plays at their local community theatres, with all the talent they have.
Citizens of our fair country, help the down-and-outers all you please by volunteering at hospitals and soup kitchens. But you have yourselves, your children and your own finances to think of first. You’re not a one-person charity organization.
If somebody’s telling the truth about his kind of dire straits, the police, a doctor or the Department of Social Services should help him out. If somebody comes at you with his hand out, I’d steer him to a cop.
Say, “Maybe this nice public safety officer will help you sort yourself out, my friend.”
Then watch his reaction.
I’ve just about reached the point where I can smell a street bum a mile away.
Even if he’s just taken a shower.
One day at a gas pump a nattily dressed gentleman approached me and took a piece of paper away from the pump so I could grab it. He had on a bright red cashmere sweater, he was lean and tanned and his hair was white and close cropped.
The rotgut wine on his breath blew his cover.
If you don’t think somebody could get drunk off second-hand alcohol, you should have met this fellow. He almost knocked me over with the smell of whatever he’d had to drink, Jim.
He must have consumed enough of that stuff in his lifetime to build up a tolerance, because he didn’t appear drunk at all. But I knew exactly what to say when he asked me for two quarters: “Try somebody else, boyo!”
And what’s up with this promise to write a check later? I hate to admit this, but I fell for that once when I was in New York. I let this well-dressed serviceman on leave take a $20 bill, and within minutes I just knew I’d never see that money again.
Several people have tried that on me before. No way, doesn’t work on me anymore.
I mean, if you really don’t know where I live, how are you going to send that check? Do you have a pet carrier pigeon or what?
The big cities are full of street people who make quite a mint hanging around airports, train stations and bus terminals. You’ll get off a bus or a train with all your luggage and one of them will grab it and take it to a waiting taxi, for example. Then he/she charges you $2 or $3 before he lets go of your bags.
This happens all over the world. I remember going to Italy one time and an old woman almost made off with my bags.
I was traveling around the city of Florence on a streetcar. I got off the car and the old lady got off with me. We happened to be several blocks from the train station and she started carrying my bags in that direction. After two blocks I remembered enough of the Italian I’d learned in school to say, “Please, good lady, I no go to train station.”
She abruptly put my luggage down in the middle of the street, uttering a few phrases they don’t teach you in school.
I almost wish I’d given that old signora the money she was angling for. I had to admire her for having such spunk. That was a happy ending – for this American tourist, at least.
That’s all folks. And as the late Michael Conrad said on the TV show “Hill Street Blues,” let’s be careful out there.
Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.
opening day of school
Here, There & Everywhere With Bill
Well done! Starting the new school year with song and dance‘I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.’
-- John Lennon, “Imagine”
By Bill Lindau
I couldn’t believe it -- singing and dancing our way into the new academic year!
That’s the way Montgomery County Schools began its 2005-06 term -- with a rockin’ Convocation, on Monday, Aug. 23.
At a time that not every kid’s that thrilled about, the faculty and administration showed everybody they weren’t always a bunch of stick-toting tyrants. There were some good musicians and one good clown among them, just letting their hair down and otherwise cutting loose. We had “The not ready for comedy player” doing Elvis, my pal John Ward trumpeting the National Anthem, among others.
Bernadette Montes, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing later in the day, showed the crowd that many of those that can do, teach as well. She told me later on that many countries this accomplished classical musician has performed have invited her to stay in their lands, and listening to her that morning, I can see why.
The Candor School faculty doing a song-and-dance medley paying tribute to the jukebox was a nice way to wrap it up.
I had a real blast watching these shows, and after finding out a lot of the things the schools are offering this year, I wanted to buy a toupee, develop a crack in my voice and lie about my age so I could enroll in one of the schools myself.
I never knew of any other school that featured a course in taking care of horses, for example, until I visited East Montgomery High School. There are computer skills, good music and art programs in this and other schools, among other things. The teachers I have met have fabulous attitudes, and I hope they can pass it all on to their students.
I wasn’t exactly a goody two-shoes, or any kind of apple polisher, but I remember at least two years when I actually looked forward to starting a new school year. The public schools in Moore County became consolidated right after my sophomore year, and I spent the next two years at Pinecrest, where I got my diploma. The school also featured a variety of courses the old schools did not have before, such as dramatics, graphic arts, auto mechanics and ROTC.
My senior year featured an advanced literature seminar in which we studied such works as Beatles songs and Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice.” I was into dramatics in my junior year and had the lead in two plays. My former dramatics teacher, Brenda Phelps, only stayed at the school one year, but later she moved back to Southern Pines to do some other jobs in the school system, and we still keep in touch from time to time. We communicate via e-mail and haven’t seen each other in quite a few years, and I’ll bet if we ran into each other now we wouldn’t recognize each other.
There was a lot about the public schools that was actually fun. I know everything wasn’t all hunky-dory, but nowadays, when I run into one of my old schoolmates, we can look back and laugh; most of the time, if we had to do it all over again, we wouldn’t change much about it.
That’s how I hope this generation of public-school students will take with them as they progress through the system and beyond. Just as Tom Sawyer got his friends to help him paint the fence by convincing them that this task was a supreme pleasure, we hope the administration and faculty at all the schools will instill in their young charges a boundless thirst for knowledge, a look at the beautiful things we still have in this world, and the opportunities they have before them that can make them happy, productive human beings, and give them a means to help make this world a better place.
I can think of one thing the schools could do. Start the day by playing some really upbeat song over the intercom.
My top choices are the theme from “Friends”, by the Rembrandts (“It hasn’t been your day, your week, your month/or even your year, but/I‘ll be there for you….”); or John Lennon’s signature solo piece, “Imagine.”
Those don’t have to be the only choices: The Beatles songs “Good Day Sunshine” and “Here Comes the Sun,” would be good, as would the 1940s swing hit, “Accentuate the Positive,” the Italian songs “Volare” (“Flying”, once covered by Dean Martin) and “Mattinata” (“Morning Serenade” a favorite of Luciano Pavarotti) wouldn’t be a bad idea. I’d like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” (the theme from “Working Girl”), Frank Sinatra’s hit single “Night and Day” and Duke Ellington’s signature piece, “Take the A Train.” “A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square,” the unofficial song of the Royal Air Force in World War II, would be a nice, mellow thing to listen to in the morning.
This would be a great way to set the tone for the school day. It would put both faculty and class into a really upbeat frame of mind. And we all know, everybody -- young and old -- needs all the upbeat ness we can get.
It’s amazing, how at the end of every summer most people can feel as if they are going back to school themselves.
***
The next day, I took a trip down memory lane myself, but under sadder circumstances. My old friend, classmate and fellow Cribber (I’ll explain that term shortly), John Cuff of Southern Pines went to his eternal reward earlier this month. He had been suffering from a long illness, and it was some sort of small consolation to his family and friends that he was out of his misery. He left behind three grown children and a lot of memories.
John played football at East Southern Pines High School and later Pinecrest. He played all four years. He didn’t accumulate a lot of impressive statistics, mainly because he fractured his collarbone every season.
Most people would not have returned to the team after one or two seasons of such an injury, but that’s how much he loved playing football. Certainly, it was a disappointment, but it wasn’t enough to back it in. That’s the main thing about him that impressed so many people.
Many of his old classmates came to the funeral, even though it took place on a weekday morning. There was Joe Robinson from the Sanford area, Sam and Patty Amato of Southern Pines, Robert Buchholz and his family, which included the officiating clergyman, Robert’s, John’s and Diane’s kid brother Jimmy, who has become an ordained Catholic priest; Eddie Howell of Charlotte and his brother Ken; Carol Prevatte, the widow of one of our other old friends; and Sherrill Parker, the former wife of still another friend.
Just as I was leaving the church after the services, I met John’s oldest son, John Jr. We had met each other only once, when I went to a baseball game in which the younger John was playing for Pinecrest.
Although I knew his father’s funeral was anything but a joking occasion, I found myself telling young John about the last time I saw his father.
I was covering one of the NASCAR races at Rockingham for the local newspaper. I went to the speedway early Sunday morning, to grab an early parking space. There were some volunteers directing what little traffic there was at this time of day. It was still dark and I could not make any of them out.
I was asking one of the volunteers how to get into one of the lots when suddenly this wild man hollers, “Wild Bill Lindau!”
Somebody grabs my left forearm, turns it upward, pushes down three of my fingers so that I’m giving the Italian salute and gives out a war whoop.
Sure enough, it’s John Cuff.
With fellow Cribber (that’s the name our little gang called ourselves) Joe Parker, and our friend Robert Buchholz’s brother John in tow.
John Jr. is a grown man and nothing’s too delicate for his ears. He broke into a smile about my little anecdote.
Most of us who attended the funeral of our deceased friend have all gone our separate ways, but we have still remained friends. We all cried when our friend left our earthly company, but it was so wonderful for us to see each other again, to laugh about the young and foolish days that John shared with us.
It’s amazing how many funny stories people wind up telling at funerals. I was glad John’s son managed to laugh at my little anecdote; if it had upset him I would have felt like such a villain.
I hope when I meet my maker, that all my friends who are still around will tell funny stories about me. I don’t think it shows any disrespect to the dead at all, not if it’s negative humor. The fact that you can laugh when you think of the deceased shows how much that person brightened up people’s lives. The world may not be such a funny place without him anymore, but the people he left behind should keep those wonderful moments in their memories for as long as they live. It’s the way to keep him alive, too.
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Contact Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.
Rock 'n' Roll here to stay
Here, there & everywhere with BillPop music -- a truly American product“Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay.”
-- Title, lyrics to 1958 song by Danny and the Juniors
By Bill Lindau
July is a great month for all of us Americans, as we remind ourselves of the good things about this huge bit of real estate: The Constitution with its Four Freedoms, baseball, mom and apple pie, barbecue. And last but definitely not least, our music.
No drum-beating speech I’ve heard all weekend warms the red, white and blue cockles of my heart as much as a Rolling Stone piece about a Swedish rock band called Mando Diao. It said two of the band members had “plundered their parents’ Beatles and Motown records” when they were in their teens, and that was how their band got started, said the June 30-July 14 issue of Rolling Stone.
As a teenager, I had never realized just how much people on the other ends of the globe enjoyed Motown.
Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Beyonce, 50 Cent, Wyclef Jean and other American music stars continue to draw huge crowds in London, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris and even Moscow, Tokyo, Sydney and Beijing. The people who listen to them might have a stereotype of all Americans as a bunch of wealthy, spoiled cowboys and gangsters, but at least they have no problem with those Americans they see in front of them with guitars and mikes and drums. Maybe they don’t like Bush and what we’re doing in Iraq, and maybe the British musicians are giving us a run for our money, but Filipinos, Italians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Japanese, Ukrainians and Brits still go for American-made music.
Besides, if it weren’t for Elvis, Little Richard, Benny Goodman, the 1960s black girl bands, what kind of music would the Beatles, Cream, U2, Spandau Ballet and Coldplay sound like? Still singing 500-year-old ballads about knights and fair ladies, I guess.
The Rolling Stone article further cooled me out when it tells how Mando Daio first got started. When they were 16, members Gustaf Noren and Bjorn Dixgard (now both 24) got together with two other friends and played anywhere they could.
“’We played Chuck Berry songs for hours out in the woods for some woman’s 70th-birthday party,’ says Noren, ’then helped her in the kitchen.’”
Years ago, when I spent some time in England, I’d tell some of the Brits I came from North Carolina, and they’d say, “Oh, you live near Elvis.” I honestly believe I had more conversations about Elvis than I did the Beatles or Led Zeppelin (at the risk of dating myself, nobody in Coldplay was even old enough to start school during my trip over there).
No matter what people think of the atrocious way the president is dealing with Iraq, American pop music is something nobody has any quarrel with. At the end of the First World War, our doughboys turned the people in France, Germany and England on to jazz, blues and later rock ‘n’ roll, and the world continues to fall in love with our musicians, from the Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday to Elvis, to Jimi Hendrix, to Bob Dylan, to Joan Baez, to Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow and a slew of hip-hop artists.
If you were born way after the British invasion, you ought to get out some of your parents’ old LPs by the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, the Animals and a couple of others, and listen to their vocalists. Not one of them sounds English. That’s because these British youths got into American blues, the sounds of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon etc., and they got it down pat, even down to the American accent. About all they added were the electric guitars and keyboards.
You had college students from Cambridge, and working-class kids from Leeds, Manchester and Blackpool sounding as if they’d never come any closer to England than New Orleans. (Listen to the Animals’ rendition of a century old folk song, “House of the Rising Sun,” for example).
Now an international coalition of musicians all over the world have gotten together to help raise millions and millions of dollars for the poverty-stricken continent of Africa. The brainchild of Irish rocker Bob Geldof, the Live 8 concert series kicked off last weekend with a show in Philadelphia. Their lineup included the Dave Matthews Band, Bon Jovi, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, P. Diddy, Maroon 5, Rob Thomas, Stevie Wonder, the Kaiser Chiefs, Sarah McLachlan, Will Smith and Keith Urban. They played at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Other groups will get together and play in London, Berlin, Paris and Rome. They include Coldplay, Elton John, Madonna, Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and Crosby, Stills and Nash, among others -- man, these concerts are like all-star games!
Recently I splurged on a T-shirt that had the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine on the front. As I was washing it, I spotted something on the tag:
“Made in U.S.A.”
I almost burst out laughing. Of all the garments I have that come from India, China and Honduras, my shirt with an English cartoon vessel on the front is more American-made than some of them.
And when it comes to the Beatles -- with all the music by Little Richard, Elvis, Chuck Berry and Dylan that influenced them -- that shirt’s “Made in U.S.A.” in more ways than one!
Keep on rockin’
It recently dawned on me why people tend to get old-fogified as they grow older. They keep on listening to the same music they did before they turned 21 and think everything that came along after that has just gone to the dogs.
I can tell you this because I was one of those people myself.
I became convinced rock ‘n’ roll went down the toilet after the Beatles broke up and Hendrix and Janis Joplin died. I’ve never even listened to U2, and I’ve heard more of Bono’s spoken comments than any of his lyrics, but judging from what he says, I’m sure that 40-something Irishman has a lot on the ball, and soon I’m going to pick out one of their albums.
I have within the past decade or so “discovered” musicians young enough to be my children who sound amazingly good. This includes Jewel, Alanis Morissette and Coldplay. I have recently purchased two of Coldplay’s latest C.D.s, “A Rush of Blood to the Head” (2003) and their new release, “X&Y”. I had never heard any of their tracks before, and only knew of Chris Martin as Gwyneth Paltrow’s husband, but I got so cooled out.
Hard to describe their music except as perhaps a combination of the Beatles and Pink Floyd, with space-agey instrumentals and songs that range from gentle love ballads to killer guitar-heavy pieces.
Plus -- you parents will especially love this -- none of the tracks on either of Coldplay’s CDs has a single foul word in the lyrics. I can tell because -- another blessing -- you can actually understand the lyrics, without all the instruments drowning out the words.
I am utterly tired of hearing how awful people think their kids’ music is today. One person told me of hearing a song by 50-Cent on MTV, with a string of rather adult-ey words on it. “Pete” said he promptly switched the channels and said he didn’t want to hear anymore.
This is where you could nail him logically. I mean, if he didn’t listen to anything else after that one single piece, how could he know the other tunes he could’ve heard had the same content? Oh, no, he’d say. “They’re all that way.”
I hope what I said about Coldplay shows people you can’t tar all pop music with a single brush. I’m not the only baby boomer who likes a lot of today’s rock music. My 46-year-old friend Mark is a big Coldplay fan, too.
I find out the key to preventing premature old-fogyitis is to update your tastes in popular music. If you don’t like what you hear at first, schlep it out and try the next sample. You’re bound to find something that jacks you up. There’s a lot of new stuff that I think is trash, but I don’t make that kind of judgment before I listen to it first. Then look for something better.
There’s nothing wrong with listening to older music. I like Frank Sinatra and a lot of the Big Bands as well as the oldies I grew up listening to. But waking up one day and realizing all your teen idols are very old or very dead can leave an awfully weird taste in your mouth. That’s when it’s time to try out somebody with a bit more life left to them and a vast musical career ahead of them.
That brings me to the other cool thing about this distinctly red, white and blue art form. When I was 14, I never dared to tell any of my classmates that I liked Frank Sinatra as well as the Beatles.
But now, we have grandparents, parents and grandchildren going to Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney concerts. And you don’t have to take the youngest ones kicking and screaming. The 14-year-olds like those 60-something rockers just as much as their elders do.
That group who sang “Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Stay” 47 years ago didn’t know how prophetic they were. Nobody wears ducktails or saddle shoes anymore, but they certainly still listen to rock ‘n’ roll.
Rock on, America!
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Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.
hurricane benefits
Here, There and Everywhere with BillSo much owed by so many to so -- manyBy Bill Lindau
We wouldn’t wish anything like Hurricane Katrina on our worst enemies. Most of us in Montgomery County, in North Carolina and in every other place in the world including Sri Lanka weren’t personally affected by the event, except for those pain-in-the-neck soaring gas prices. But so many of us pitched in to help all those people in the Deep South who found their homes destroyed and their loved ones dead.
To put a variation on Winston Churchill’s famous comment on the Royal Air Force fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain, never has so much been owned by so many to so -- many.
It has been such a treat to see so many merchants, so many religious organizations, so many individuals taking up collections of money, food, anything to help the refugees from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And you cannot say enough about the firefighters, emergency medical technicians, police officers, military personnel and just plain compassionate people who have gone down into those areas and gotten out the people -- and animals -- who couldn’t get out in time.
Rave reviews go to the Rolling Stones, P. Diddy, Paul McCartney, Sheryl Crow and other artists for putting on concerts to benefit all the hurricane victims. We don’t care what a bunch of sanctimonious right-wingers says about those celebrities. They donate and raise about as much money as anybody in the world. They don’t do it with anybody’s taxes and they keep us entertained in the process.
I was astounded to hear of so many countries -- including those in Europe and Asia -- pitching in to help out the richest nation in the world. They may have a huge problem with that cretin in the White House and his gang of yes-person, but they know that’s not what the American people are all about. So many people in the world still love us, “Simpsons” and all. I knew that when I went abroad a number of years ago and met a lot of people who thought we were pretty cool, all things considered.
It was sad to see so many dogs, cats, horses and other animals left behind to fend for themselves. It was also good to see so many people caring enough about them to go in there and find them. The newspapers, magazines and TV programs are full of stories with happy endings -- namely, animals reunited with their owners.
A recent issue of People magazine ran a front-page photo I’m not likely to forget: A rescue worker carrying a large dog on his shoulders through chest-deep water. I think somebody should put that photo on a T-shirt, Jim.
This is a problem I have with certain rescue organizations: They won’t let anybody using their shelters bring their pets with them.
Somebody said people come first. But I think these groups should make allowances for dogs and cats. It so burns me up to see some vapid bureaucrat who doesn’t have any companion animals make rules like that. Some compassionate individual that is!
If I had been down there with Blackie, my oft-reported on black tomcat, nobody would’ve been able to separate us. If somebody told me I had to leave him behind, I’d have said, “Fine, then you can leave me behind, too.”
I mean, I’d want them to take my parents (if they were alive), my lady and any kids I may have. Of course I care about the members of the two-legged species in my life. But to leave one of my best friends behind, on two legs or four?
As my late friend Pete Walls would have put it, I have two words to anybody who’d tell me to leave Blackie behind, and they aren‘t “Kiss me.”
You might say, “Well, somebody will have to go back there and find them.”
Yeah, right! Those rescue workers and other volunteers were having a hard enough time finding three-to-six and one-half foot tall individuals, let alone six-pound cats and 20-pound dogs.
Responders in the American Humane Association deserve medals for what they did, rescuing as many animals as they did. The American Red Cross has been taking care of people, while animal-welfare groups such as the AHA dealt with the companion animals those people left behind.
The AHA cites one incident in which two of its responders heard what sounded like a human crying.
“They notified the federal emergency team in the area (Gonzales, La.), which broke into the house, followed by American Humane,” a Sept. 12 AHA log said. “Then, mystery solved! Inside was a tiny Chihuahua, happy to get food and water and be rescued to safety. Needless to say, John (Marrett, the AHA responder) and his partner got a little ribbing from the federal emergency team.“
The log also said three volunteers in Gonzales had been doing relief work for 14 days. They were about to catch some shuteye when some of them saw a dog running around and went after it. Although it was about 1 a.m., “they wouldn’t be getting into their beds until they’d gotten the dog to safety.”
A log from Sept. 8 describes how much tougher it is to do water rescue operations that require breaking and entering, than to just get people and animals off roofs of flooded buildings.
For one thing, it takes a lot more time, the AHA said.
“In situations where animals are just plucked from roofs, etc. a good team can average 4-6 animals an hour but a difficult access may take an hour just to get in,” the log stated.
“You need to remember that in floods, your platform is your boat and that is not the most stable area to put a ladder. Couple that with never really knowing what you are going to find on the other side and you have all the ingredients for a scary rescue.”
The writer recalled a situation years ago when responders had to break out the front window of a home to look for something inside.
“As we were shining our light in, out jumped a 100-lb German Shepherd taking the remainder of the window and frame with him,” he said. “He had had about enough of the water rising in the home and decided to take his chances outside.”
Rolling Stone says these groups are the best bet for anybody who wants to help:
* The American Red Cross. It is the largest non-government organization handling the crisis in New Orleans. Call the area office in Albemarle to help, at 1-704-982-0070 or long on to www.redcross.org to donate, find out further developments or otherwise help out
* Moveon.org now has a Web site, www.hurricanehousing.org, than links refugees with people offering spare beds
* A nationwide food-bank network called Second Harvest. It feeds people in situations such as this. Its Web site is www.secondharvest.org.
The same issue of Rolling Stone, dated Sept. 22, listed several benefit shows that have already taken place. The major TV networks carried one of them on Friday, Sept. 9. Man, I am so mad! -- but let me explain: I was at home and so zonked that I fell asleep right before it came on. I missed the whole thing. I really needed the sack time because I had a really busy morning the next day, and that Saturday night we were going to see Coldplay in Raleigh, at the Alltel Pavilion (by the way, they were bloody awesome!).
That same night, the Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, the Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, Green Day and other performers got together for a telethon on MTV, VH!, CMT and VH1 Classic, Rolling Stone reported. Proceeds are going to benefit the Red Cross and other relief groups. On Sept. 2, NBC aired a telethon that sparked a real brouhaha, when Kanye West said “George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Black Entertainment Television put on a benefit show as well, on Sept. 9, featuring Stevie Wonder, Chris Rock, Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others. A show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre took place Sept. 12, with Dave Matthews band among the acts.
We believe there are more benefit concerts that will take place these next few weeks, with Coldplay among the other groups committing.
Man, that is so great. This is what human compassion is all about. Rock on!
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Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.
unprinted column -- Here, There & Everywhere
Here, There & Everywhere With Bill
A guy who knows his mosquitoes, and an activist with chutzpah
By Bill Lindau
I never heard of vegetarian mosquitoes, and I've never met anybody who knows as much about the little buggers as John Vinroot. Also, for those who haven't heard about a certain Canadian ex-mayoral candidate, see the item further on down in this column.
Vinroot, an environmental specialist with the Montgomery County Health Department, came to Brutonville Community Center last week and talked to some senior citizens about the little pests. He told us a lot of things about mosquitoes that aren't common knowledge.
He especially surprised me by being about to tell the species of mosquito that I had just swatted on my arm. He was maybe five feet from me and rattled off the name at once. He has eyes like Sherlock Holmes, Jim!
A ranger at the Uwharrie National Forest said this county has several different species of mosquitoes, and Vinroot really didn't have to think too hard to determine it. Still, that didn't lower my sense of amazement. It's amazing that he managed to identify the species from that squashed little corpse lying on the table.
Here are some other things I didn't know about mosquitoes:
* Most of us only know about the species that bite people. There are others that suck the blood from other mammals alone, or from birds, amphibians and reptiles. Some of them don't bite animals at all; they feed on the nectar from certain fruits. My mistake. Those are really fruitarian mosquitoes. Heck, tomato, to-MAH-to....Cool! Do they wear Birkis, listen to Paul McCartney or watch Pamela Anderson on old episodes of "Baywatch"?
* Only one in 10,000 mosquitoes carry the West Nile Virus. Unfortunately, the media all seem to zero in on that one case in 10,000, especially if somebody gets horrendously sick and dies.
* Males never bite anybody or suck blood. It's always the female, Vinroot said, and only when she's ready to reproduce. Then she sucks the blood as protein for the next generation of pests.
Sorry, but I can't have too much sympathy for these flying, long-nosed mothers-to-be. I have some advice for you lady skeeters with a hankering for human blood:
"Keep your proboscis out of my arteries, Mama!"
You don't think of mosquitoes as having different species, like spiders and snakes. I mean, I always though a skeeter was a skeeter. One of them bites you and it'll itch like mad if you don't flatten the (rhymes with itch) in time. End of story.
The program about the mosquitoes reminds me of the time Doug Marlette came to Pinehurst.
Marlette, a longtime political newspaper cartoonist, held a book signing in Sept. 2004. He had a collection of his more controversial cartoons titled "What Would Mohammad Drive?" and his novel "The Bridge".
To make a long story short, one of his cartoons in that book featured The State Bird of New York -- a mosquito.
I was seated with members of a booster club for the Given Memorial Library, for whom the luncheon with Doug Marlette was a fund-raiser. I showed the cartoon to a woman who happened to come from New York. You should've seen the look on her face, Jim. She couldn't have given me a dirtier look if I had told her a really crude "damyankee" joke.
She was entitled to her reaction, but man, a couple of days in Laidbackburg.
John doesn't talk with a Dixie accent, but he comes from Ellerbe. He worked in New Jersey for several years and that's how he lost his Southern accent. His environmental views are right up my alley. No bringing back DDT, for one thing. He said he worked for a chemical company for 8 to 10 years. He didn't like their idea of a bottom line, so he found a more environmentally friendly profession. All right!
I ain't -- ah -- lying, man!
Late last month, an environmental activist who calls himself "Mr. Floatie" and goes around in a costume that looks like human excreta, ran for mayor of Victoria, British Columia.
If I'd been a resident of that city, I would've voted for him.
Unfortunately, the city decided to challenge Mr. Floatie's (aka James Skwarok) candidacy in the British Columbia Supreme Court. So he withdrew his name as a candidate.
Mr. Floatie has made headlines this year by wearing this big brown suit to protest the dumping of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean. Reports have appeared in regional newspapers. This is no baloney, Jim.
"(Skwarok) said the city apparently took issue with his candidacy because only real people can run for municipal office," the wire report said.
The report quoted Skwarok as saying earlier, "Of course I'm not a real person. I'm a big piece of poop."
People would see Mr. Floatie quite a bit. One of the stories on the Internet has a photo of him in his costume; it even has a face. The costume reminds you vaguely of Chris P. Carrot, the PETA character who goes around the public schools and gives speeches about vegetarianism.
Not quite the same thing.
At these gathering, which have included city council meetings, Mr. Floatie has been passing out pamphlets indicating that the city of Victoria is pumping sewage directly into the waters "after only a screening to remove solids."
Skwarok is a member of POOP (People Opposed to Outfall Pollution). Earlier this spring, he tried to get into a Victoria all-candidates meeting, but the town wouldn't let him in.
The report said Victoria dumps 120 million liters of raw sewage a day into the ocean, and that's what Mr. Floatie wanted to bring before the candidates.
Whether or not you agree with somebody like this, there's nothing in the world like good street theater, coupled with one of mankind's biggest guilty pleasures, namely, good old GI humor. I have taken part in my share of demonstrations, but I never had Skwarok's kind of nerve.
I wonder if any kid in this country or Canada learned about that costume in time for Halloween. Float on, Mr. Floatie!
Contact correspondent Bill Lindau at (910) 582-6610 or email blindau52@yahoo.com
Local theatre anecdotes
My brilliant career (local theatre)
By Bill Lindau
Here's a story based on my acting experiences, both in my teens and lately, after landing some roles. I sent this little group of anecdotes for my friend Jonathan Farlow, a twice-published novelist of Archdale, N.C., for use in one of his speaking appearances. For this blog, I have added another incident from my high-school acting days.
The play I was in turned out to be a bust, namely because I had a lot going on and didn't have enough time to memorize my roles. I do have a smaller part in another play, so the director and I are still on friendly terms. And I even got some funny moments out of my attempts at the first play.
Michael York talked about some comic moments from his early years on the stage, in his 1991 autobiography, "Accidentally on Purpose." Also, from his part as Tybalt in the 1968 film version of "Romeo and Juliet". You ever see it? He wears a codpiece. He wrote that it was the first film in which "I entered the scene from the crotch upwards."
Bill
Playing it for laughs
You know what I think everybody ought to do at least once in your lifetime? Get a part in a play -- your school, your local community theatre, your church, whatever. Even if it flops, the effort you put into it will leave you with plenty of things to look back on. I think it'd be a great idea if somebody could bring a camcorder to rehearsals.
I (or "My friend Bill Lindau") had the lead in two plays in high school and has recently gotten back into local theatre. One of his high-school plays was a comedy. To get the cast used to the laughter from the audience, the teacher who was directing the play impressed some of the actors' friends into service, to laugh at the funny parts. Well, one of the hired laughers had the most raucous guffaw you ever heard. You cracked up just hearing Bobby laugh, even if you didn't know what he was laughing at, and even if you just heard the saddest news in the world.
Bobby's half-donkey, half-hyena noise stood out among the five other kids, and the actors couldn't get through the scenes without breaking up, too.
Bill said there was one person who managed not to laugh: Miss Phelps, the poor director. I mean, she was fuming.
Bill also remembered another part of stage drama you had to get used to: Makeup.
If you're in theatre, you usually wear some kind of makeup even if you play an ordinary person, close to your own age. In Bill's high-school play the cast marked the lines in their faces so the audience could see their expressions better.
The first rehearsal in makeup was a bust. One of Bill's scenes had him coming to a door and the maid answering. Bill introduced himself and both he and the maid went into hysterics at the sight of each other's makeup. Miss Phelps had them try it over and over, but each time ended up the same way, with Bill and Sherry pointing at each other, doubled over with laughter.
The fourth time, the petite teacher upped and hollered, "I'LL GIVE YOU THREE SECONDS TO STRAIGHTEN UP OR I'M GONNA KICK YOU BOTH OUT OF THIS AUDITORIUM!"
Talk about scared straight!
Recently, the lead in one play had a line that referred to an act by the legendary escape artist Harry Houdini, in which he got out of a pair of handcuffs inside a milk can in 10 feet of water. Now are any of you old enough to remember milk cans? Or even those wax cartons?
During an early rehearsal, the actor said "Ye Gods, Houdini opened his cuffs inside of a milk carton in under 10 feet of water."
If looks could kill, the director would've turned Bill into a pile of ashes.
Wouldn't that be a trick, escaping from a milk carton? Only if it was a regular quart-sized carton.
Now, the trick would be to fit you in it?
Can't you imagine that? You're about to make breakfast one morning, you get your quart of Pine State out of the fridge and a little man about 8 inches tall in a top hat and tux bursts right through it!
That's another thing: How many of you actually knew a real person who said "Ye Gods"? Or "Good thunder!"
Maybe Clark Kent's editor at The Daily Planet. Or somebody in the antebellum South.
Nobody else, honestly. Don't know if I'd ever want to. I'd have to check a calendar to see what year I was living in.
The high-school play I mentioned was not the first time Bill gave that instructor a fit.
Earlier that year, the drama class produced a radio play, a version of “The Hitchhiker” by Orson Welles. Bill got the part of the narrator.
One night the group put together what was to be the final cut of the play. A senior student who worked at a local radio station did the taping. The cast took a break midway through. Bill and two other youths in the cast went to the parking lot, where a friend who was waiting outside had some liquor. The young men put away several drinks and so much for stage fright.
But Miss Phelps found out about the boozing and made everybody tape it over.
This took place Saturday night of Thanksgiving week. Steve, the student radio announcer, told Bill right before the retaping, “You read good as hell.”
But by the end of the night poor Steve was fit to be tied. When one of the cast flubbed a line, he pitched a fit, his face growing redder and redder.
Bill said he was just glad Miss Phelps did not report him and his friends to the principal.
Two years before, in Bill’s freshman year, one of the English classes put on Charles Dickens‘s “Great Expectations.”
Things were going pretty well until the scene between the adolescent Pip (the main character) and a wheelchair-bound spinster named Miss Havisham.
Anybody see the 1947 B-movie “Kiss of Death”? Richard Widmark made his screen debut as a gangster who pushed an old lady down a flight of stairs.
Well, Robert B. (Pip) did a re-enactment of that scene when he wheeled Ginger W. offstage. Two seconds later you heard poor Ginger’s chair come crashing down and her cry out. She was unhurt, but the audience cracked up.
Another challenging test for a director: Dealing with Yankee actors for the parts of Southerners.
Bill was recently cast as Mitch in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The first time the cast got together, they all did a read through. Everybody had to talk with a Deep South accent, even the New York Irishman who played Stanley Kowalski. Sean, who played Stanley, came off sounding like Elvis.
Ever hear how antsy Southerners become when somebody makes a movie set in their part of the country? Especially a Civil War movie? When “Gone with the Wind” came out in 1939, one Southerner said, “Well at least she’s not a Yankee,” when hearing the British-born Vivian Leigh was playing Scarlett O’Hara. I heard a similar reaction when Nicole Kidman played a Southern belle from Charleston, S.C., in the film version of “Cold Mountain”. “At least she’s not a Yankee!”
