The Adventures of Bloggard

Henrietta, Texas, Summer 1960: My parents were out of town, and I had the place to myself.

In the afternoon, Lefevre and I drove to Wichita Falls for beer. Pioneer Drive-Inn #3 was just inside the city limits, so that’s where we sat until we espied a disreputable-looking fellow who looked like he was over 21.

We struck up a conversation, and offered to buy him some beer. He liked that idea. He was a skinny guy, none too clean, with a Camels pack rolled into the arm of his t-shirt. We produced the money and he got the goods from the liquor store next door, and then for politeness sake we all sat in my car and drank a beer, and while sitting there, the guy did an amazing thing:

With one hand he opened a book of paper matches, pulled one forward and closed the cover behind it, bent it and ignited it, then lit his cigarette and tore the burnt-out match from the book! All with one hand!

I got him to show me slowly, and I practiced this over and over, because I just knew that it would make me very, very cool. I probably could still do it, but frankly I’m just not cool any more, and no longer smoke.

We soon said adios to our new friend, because we now possessed a case of beer and a large house all to ourselves. Naturally, throwing a party seemed like a good idea at the time.

Back in Henrietta, we sat around at the Lo-Boy Drive-Inn and when friends showed up, we invited them to my party. After a while, Lefevre left to fetch his 1967 Impala, him needing to drive back to Wichita Falls to collect a date for the evening.

Lefevre was a famous ladies man.

He was widely considered to be smooth of speech. We all believed that he could walk into any building and come out with a girl on each arm.

Lefevre himself was the first to promulgate this legend. He himself explained to me that he was no longer at the level of trying to get laid; he was at a higher level, where he concentrated on the best way to do it with each particular girl. There was more to this speech, but perhaps that’s enough for now.

That evening, when it got dark, people began showing up. More and more of them. Cars were parked on the street, then on the lawn. Upstairs was lottso beer. Downstairs in my beatnik’s lair, the basement, was cool jazz music, and a quiet spot.

Somehow, during the evening, Lefevre and his date became ensconced in that basement, and everybody else was locked out. Well, how typical, we thought.

We drank beer and told lies, and mostly it was just a bunch of guys sitting around, because all the girls but one had gone home. Paul H. I think it was also had a date, who was now complaining that she needed to go home.

The problem was that she was supposed to ride back to her home in Wichita Falls with Lefevre and his date, and they were inaccessible. Finally Paul H. gave up, and drove her home. The party was definitely thinning out.

Then somebody noticed the intercom system. My parents had installed this fancy intercom with a station in their bedroom, and one in the children’s room, and one in the basement. That was the same basement in which Lefevre and date were barricaded.

Naturally, wanting to give them every consideration, we refused to listen in for at least a minute or two. When we turned it on, we could hear them, but they couldn’t hear us. The girl was complaining.

“Take me home,” she said. “I’ll get in trouble.” Then we heard Lefevre.

“Come here,” he said.

There were some moments of silence and rustling, and then she began again that she had to go home, that he must take her home right now.

“Come here,” he said.

She objected, became angry, remonstrated with him.

“Come here,” he said.

She became tearful, pleading that she’d be in trouble.

“Come here,” he said.

This went on for a long time. Then there was a long silence and more rustling, for a long time.

After a while, Lefevre and the girl appeared in the living room. He said he’d be taking her home now. They left.

What a smooth-talking guy! No wonder he did so well with the ladies!

Henrietta, Texas, 1960: Once upon a time, Adrienne tells me, her parents packed her and her sister into their Renault automobile, for a month-long jaunt from New Hampshire to American landmarks like Gettesburg and tobacco fields, all on the way to Florida.

In order to satisfy the school, she agreed to a science project, where she collected soil samples from each location, and then gave a talk to her class. She remembers Chesepeake Bay and these other places, but she mainly remembers packaging the soil samples: the red color of this one, the gravelly texture of that one.

My own science project shines clear in memory, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t actually my project. In fact, it wasn’t really a science project at all, but rather a fraud disguising a speaker cabinet.

Let me explain …

My cousin Bobby is a sharp guy. He’s younger, as are all my cousins. He tended to be rotund as a child, an earnest kid who took life seriously. In college he did something smart: he signed up for a “co-op” program with Conoco Oil Company. He’d attend engineering classes for one semester; then he’d work at Conoco for one semester.

It took longer to graduate, but he learned what engineering was all about, and already had a good job from which he rose rapidly, becoming a vice-president at such a young age that he took to wearing granny glasses and dressing in a stuffy manner so as to be taken seriously by the other vice presidents around the place.

He’d showed promise years earlier, winning the Wichita Falls science fair with his Electronic Level. It was very clever.

In a normal carpenter’s level is found a glass tube slightly curved, filled with a clear liquid and one bubble of air. Mounted onto a straight board, when the board is lying on a level surface, the bubble of air is nicely centered between two marks on the glass tube.

Bobby took this glass tube and shined a light through the bubble onto two tiny photo-receptor panels. Then, with a circuit that measured the light output from the two panels, he operated a needle on gauge to show the bubble’s position with extremely high accuracy. Presto! He’d created an electronic amplifier to make the common level more precise.

Nineteen miles away and a year later, in my school in Henrietta, I had to do a science project.

I didn’t want a science project.

Instead, I wanted to build a speaker cabinet shown in Mechanics Illustrated: Into a plywood box of a certain shape, you mounted an 8-inch speaker. Because of the odd shape and an adjustable lid placed at an angle, the sound from the back of the speaker wove its way all around and then emerged in such a way as to obtain surprising hi-fi sound from such a simple speaker, it said.

So I pulled a con.

First, I made arrangements to borrow Bobby’s Electronic Level to represent as my own. I confess that being a crook and a fraud bothered me not at all.

Next, I got permission to attend the Shop class in my high school during my normal study hall period.

Last, using the shop tools I designed and built a fancy wooden exhibit, with a back panel to display the sign explaining the device, and two side panels across the front edges of which I placed a board. Upon one side of this board was an off-center wooden wheel which you could turn with a knob. This raised and lowered one side of the Electronic Level so that you could watch the device working.

I won a ribbon at the Science Fair with my most excellent fraud. Hooray for science!

But more important to me, after the fair, I disassembled the display. The display had been designed so that the wooden parts just happened to be cut to the exact same sizes as were required for the speaker cabinet. I took the display apart, then screwed the pieces back together in a different way. Presto! A Mechanics Illustrated speaker cabinet!

My wonderful speaker cabinet found a home in our home’s refurbished basement, which I was rapidly converting into a beatnik dive. There, extracting wires from my old record player, I luxuriated in beatnik heaven listening to the sounds of the Miles Davis “Porgy and Bess” album, along with Jimmy Smith, Barney Kessel, and Dave Brubek.

Life was good. “Hooray for science!” said the beatnik. Oops. I mean-

“Cool, man,” said the beatnik.

Henrietta, Texas, 1958: Eddy Frank and I were wandering in the halls of the courthouse. The ceilings are perhaps eighteen feet above us, the smell of old varnish and smoke clings to the walls.

There are two bathrooms. One says ‘White’ and one says ‘Colored’. The White bathroom is floored in tiny white hexagonal tiles, with ancient cracks across the floor. I do not know how the Colored bathroom is floored.

We had a reason for being there. A good reason.

However, now at 62 I cannot tell you the good reason we had at age 12, but I assure you that we had a darn good reason to be there, probably.

Perhaps it was the fire escape. This long metal tube was a wonderous slide. There was no ladder of course. Clasping the upper edges in your hands, step by step you ascended. Far taller than the kiddie’s slide at Lulu Johnson Grade School, at the top was a metal cage, just outside a lady’s window. Behind this window one sometimes found adults with angry faces; they yelled at us to get off the slide.

Slide down we did. Then labored again to the top. Standing in the metal cage, high above the courthouse lawn, you could see the death ledge clearly. A sandstone decorative ledge upon the outer face of the brick walls, with a great triangular chunk missing, about six feet away from our cage. The broken part was right above the metal-edge courthouse steps, so far below. Legend had it that a boy, perhaps like ourselves, had tried to walk along that ledge. Naturally, the ledge broke, throwing him to a horrible death on the steps below.

I know of no boy who decided to try it, though it was tempting.

So perhaps our good reason was the slide. Or maybe we were just taking a short cut. Or looking at the doors. Or visiting the White bathroom.

When we saw the key sticking out of a door, we stopped in our tracks.

Eddy Frank looked at me. I looked at Eddy Frank.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked. Eddy Frank, more thoughtful and less impulsive than myself, pondered.

“We could take it,” he said. I nodded quickly. By taking this key, we could make a smoke bomb of gunpowder. We could set it off in the middle of the night. Well, after dark, anyway. Wouldn’t that be a funny joke? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

We resolved to take the key. Eddy Frank pulled it from the door. We high-tailed it out of there. Our plan was go to the Western Auto store across the street. We would have a copy made. We would return the original key to the doorway where we’d found it.

But no sooner inside Western Auto when Eddy Frank, looking over his shoulder through the big window, said, “Uh-oh.”

A woman and two men had come from the courthouse door, and, standing on the steps, were looking in every direction. Somehow, they were on to us!

Evading the salesman, who was drinking coffee anyway, we slipped out through the back door and into the alley. For the moment safe from prying eyes, we paced. What should we do?

We could be jailed. Fined. Thrown out of school. We could get spankings. We were in a world of trouble. Eddy Frank stopped.

“We’ve got to take it back,” he said. Frantic, I argued.

“No, no!” I shouted. “Just throw it away. Hide it in that pipe!” But Eddy Frank was stubborn. In the end, we marched back into the courthouse. Nobody now seemed to be looking for us.

We found a room with large musty books and a counter. Eddy Frank walked up, placed the key on the counter, and said to the lady who peered down at us.

“We found this key in the alley over there,” he said, “and we’ve brought it back.” She glared cruelly at us.

“Uh huh,” she said. “That’s the ladies room key. Someone was inside, and heard the whole thing.”

“OK, then,” said Eddy Frank.

Then we left, while the leaving was good.

Henrietta, Texas (Special): Preparations for the 72nd annual Clay County Pioneer Reunion starting next week, September 18th, in Henrietta have started.

The rodeo office at the Pioneer Grounds opens at 9 a.m. Box seat ticket holders may pick up their tickets or call the office for delivery at (940) 538-5111. Rodeo will feature bull and bronc riding, calf roping, bulldogging, clowns, a greased pig contest, ladies fancy riding, music and comedy. A dance will follow the festivities.

Riders who plan to participate in the Pioneer Rodeo grand entries or parades need to have up-to-date Coggins test papers on their horses.

Float building has been under way for several weeks at the Pioneer Hall. To register float themes, call Sherri Halsell at the Clay County extension office at (940) 538-5042. After the parades on Saturday and Sunday morning, stick around for the fiddling contest and art show on the courthouse grounds.

The theme for this year’s float parades is “Pick 3, Any 3, in 2003.” The annual reunion gets under way with the cowboy kickoff parade Sept. 18 and continues through Sept. 20.

A hotel near the airport, Burbank, Fall 1991: Yesterday I attended a conference. I don’t remember exactly why. I’d been setting up my first 800-number voicemail company, and noticing that quite a few MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) people signed up, I’d decided to try offering a MLM resellers program. I’d flown down from San Francisco yesterday to visit this little conference, to learn more about how MLM worked.

Although I don’t now recall much about the conference, I sharply remember the morning after. On my way to breakfast, I learned that Miles Davis had died. The newspaper didn’t say why; later reports said pneumonia and a stroke. At the time, I assumed drugs.

Miles had called me one night.

Years before in 1969, at 3 am in Beverly Hills, all was quiet in the lobby of the Bevery Rodeo Hyatt House, where I was the night auditor. Miles’ wife — whom I was sure was the woman pictured on the cover of his ‘Porgy and Bess’ album — was staying in the hotel, and the night bellman was complaining that she kept calling him, wanting this, wanting that, fussing, acting oddly, he said.

When the switchboard rang, I answered and it was Miles.

Gravelly-voiced, he asked my name. He knew the hotel well. He frequently stayed there. I’d not seen him, but our highly-crispy morning bellman Roger, had reported in detail their many arguments. Roger, a young and zippy white kid with a full head of steam and vast assurance, was certain that white basketball players were clearly superior. Miles, never known for tact or modesty, was certain that black basketball players were superior.

I’m glad I wasn’t there and was never asked, for I knew nothing about basketball. Disappinted though that I’d not met Miles, for I’d been a fan ever since my friend Lefevre gave me that Porgy and Bess album as a birthday present during high school years. I’d played it over and over in the basement of our home.

In this basement, I’d painted three walls pale blue and one wall burnt orange, and with an intricate speaker-cabinet planned from Mechanics Illustrated and with materials salvaged from my award-winning and bogus science fair exhibit, the sound was magnificent in this basement, with Miles’ pinched tone sounding now and again in little short phrases.

Jerry described that sound as playing through fishnets, but that wasn’t it. I’ve heard that once Miles was asked why he liked the trumpet; he said that it sounded like the human voice. But that wasn’t what it sounded like, either. What it sounded like, was Miles.

So. Beverly Hills at 3 am, and the switchboard rings, and Miles’ gravel-voice asks my name. My name was then Richard, and I told him.

“Richard,” he said. “My wife’s there.” I agreed; she was. In room such-a-number. He thought a while.

“She’s upset,” he said. I agreed; she was. About something. Or about nothing. Who knows? We didn’t know. “She’s upset,” he said. “See if you can’t calm her down, OK?”

How the hell was I supposed to do that? Or, expressed differently, what would be the best approach for a 24-year-old white boy with acne, completely inept with women, an employee of the hotel, to deal with a lushiously beautiful black woman possibly strung-out and cranky on drugs in one of our rooms, to calm her down as a favor to the most famous horn player in the world, calling in from New York?

“Gee, Mr. Davis,” I stuttered, “I don’t know what to do.” He brushed my objection aside.

“Just talk to her,” he said. “Calm her down, OK? Just try, OK?”

OK, I said. I did call her, and asked if everything was OK. She told me off, and then, apparently, everybody was happy.

And now, years later, standing shocked and blocking the line to the breakfast buffet in this Burbank hotel, I read that Miles is dead. He’s gone. I don’t know the guy, but it hurt.

Why did it hit me so?

Recently, Johnny Cash died. It seemed like a part of my life had gone. Adrienne had rushed into my Mount Shasta office to tell me; she’d heard it on the radio. The next day, we were talking about trains, and she asked me what was the Johnny Cash song about the train. “Folson Prison Blues,” I told her, and started to sing the first verse. She burst into tears.

“Don’t!” she said. “Don’t, please.”

Why does it hit us so?

I think it’s this. Most of us have heard a trumpet. But we’d never heard that trumpet. Most of us have heard a freight train. But maybe we’d never fully heard the lonliness in that late-night whistle. In songs, the singer brings us something, and it becomes a part of our lives.

Miles gave us a trumpet, and a sound. Johnny Cash gave us freight trains.

Nashville, September 2003: At age 71, singer Johnny Cash died today at Baptist Hospital. The medical report will say complications from diabetes resulting in respiratory failure. Friends will say he died from mourning the loss of his wife, June Carter, who passed away in May.

I hear that train a-rolling, it’s a-rolling round the bend
I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps dragging on
And I hear that whistle blowing … down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby my mamma told me: Son,
always be a good boy; don’t ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
When I hear that train a-pulling, I hang my head and cry.

I bet there’s rich folks riding, in their fancy shining cars;
They’re probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars.
But I know I had it coming, I know I can’t be free;
But I keep on keep a-moving, well that’s what tortures me.

If they’d free me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine;
You bet I’d move it on a little further down the line.
Far from Folsom Prison, that’s where I long to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle … blow my blues away.

I think of Johnny Cash, lots of nights. A funny thing about our new home in Mount Shasta — a railroad runs through it. Amtrak comes whistling through, the deep two-toned sound echoing from the hills, and eternal long freight trains clattering in the night.

Does it wake you?

No, it’s soothing.

I’ve missed this sound, and hearing it again feels like home. When I was a child, the Katy line ran south of town. Katy means ‘MKT’, or Missouri Kansas Texas railroad. When the wind blew from the south, the soft clatter of the boxcars floated into my bedroom, and sometimes the far-off whistle.

Does anything capture lonely and vast space like that sound? And did anybody capture the lonely and vast spirit like Johnny Cash?

I think not.