MUSIC CRITIC: Rolling Stone's Top Ten Beatles songs - Are they nuts?

Rolling Stone’s Top Ten Beatles Songs – Are they nuts?

Most often, “bests” lists are really “favorites” lists.  But you'd think that Rolling Stone - the Bible of Rock, isn't it? - would demonstrate at least a stab at  journalistic intelligence with its newly-published list of the "10 Best Beatles songs."  Alas, not so.  But then these are the people whose “Top Guitarists of All Time” proclaimed Jimi Hendrix the greatest guitarist in history.  Anybody who thinks Jimi Hendrix was the greatest guitarist in history needs to get to rehab very soon.   

An ugly truth if you’re a Beatles zealot – read: Don’t touch my sacred cow - is that some of their later efforts wear The Emperor's New Clothes.  You know the ones – disjointed electronic mish-mashes, incomprehensible, drugged up lyrics, intelligentsia-anointed works of “confessional genius” and so on.  Artsy songs, songs with a “deeper” meaning, songs that grate the ear rather than please the ear, but we’re supposed to accept them as works of musical genius because…well, it’s the Beatles, for God’s sake, and they can do no wrong.  Ill-conceived experiments.  Avant-garde wanna-beism.  Amateur surrealism.  Songs we’re supposed to believe are great because – well, they’re heavy, man.  Why?  Because the influential critics tell us – the sheeple - that they are.  A Day in the Life fits squarely into this category.  So does Eleanor Rigby (Yawn).  So does much of the White Album.  I Am the Walrus.  Across the Universe.  Polythene Pam.  Rolling Stone is stuck in this  morass of pretentious dreck.

            So I’m picking the greatest Beatles songs – the ones with the unique combination of lyrics, music, and performance that are the original reasons the Beatles still continue to be called – all these years later - the greatest band of all time.  I share only two choices with Rolling Stone, and I believe even those two songs were gratuitous additions for them.

But let me begin with Rolling Stone’s list, and I’ll show you why they’re idiots.

1.  A Day in the Life.  The Beatles recorded over two hundred songs, and Rolling Stone would have us believe that this 1967 effort from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the greatest of them all.  John Lennon’s drowsy stoner lyrics were based on newspaper snippets he had seen – four thousand holes in Blackburn Lancashire refers to potholes, for instance – and the normal reaction on hearing the song is “What the hell is it supposed to be about?”

The song only wakes up in the middle eight, McCartney’s Woke up, got out of bed sequence, which is a snippet of a song McCartney had that was placed into A Day in the Life because Lennon couldn’t come up with anything to fill the middle.  The most famous line in the song – I’d love to turn you on - is reputedly McCartney’s also, and it caused great consternation among the establishment at the time because all the old folks thought it was a drug reference.  Which, of course, it was.  Screw you, mom and dad, yes, Beatles songs ARE about drugs!  The song demonstrates what happens when four musicians – but I’m talking about Lennon primarily - with drug-fueled delusions of musical grandeur and unlimited studio time can do.  The “symphonic” ending isn’t impressive, it’s just boring and self-indulgent.  The result is an ten on the Yuck-o-Meter.  

2.  I Want To Hold Your Hand.  Rolling Stone gets one right.  The song belongs in a Beatles Top Ten.  (See below)

3.  Strawberry Fields Forever.  Rolling Stone, please share some of whatever you’re passing around here.   This dirge is another insufferable Lennon stoner song from 1967.  Wikipedia calls it “one of the defining works of the psychedelic-rock genre” and I suppose I’ll have to agree with that just to shut up the people who think it is actually a decent Beatles song.  The lyrics are befuddled – but wait:  it must be a work of Liverpudlian genius, right?  It's autobiographical, right?  Maybe there will even be a hidden message in it!  Highly engineered, tricked up in the studio, overproduced and manufactured more than recorded, the glutinous Strawberry Fields Forever is an ode to pretentious self indulgence. The jarring, descending glissando change in the first line – Let me take you down – makes my teeth itch.  I think John Lennon was capable of great lyrics, but: 

No one I think is in my tree

I mean it must be high or low

That is you know you can’t tune out

But it’s all right

That is I think it’s not too bad 

Please.  Of course by 1967, the Beatles and in particular John Lennon had been anointed not only spokesmen but prophets, and anything they did had to be genius, right?    

4.  Yesterday.  McCartney’s huge success of wistful wondering and lost love.  Yesterday is a great ballad, it makes musical sense throughout, and is the most covered song of all time for a reason.  The only problem is, it’s not a Beatles song.  The only reason the Lennon co-writing credit appears is for publishing reasons – contractually, it could not at the time be released as written and performed solely by Paul McCartney.  The other Beatles were nowhere in sight when it was recorded and had absolutely nothing to do with it.   But this list is about the Beatles – the group, you know - not Paul McCartney.

5.  In My Life.  Rolling Stone gets this one right too.  See below.

6.  Something.  Abbey Road 1969.  Years ago in Dallas I saw Frank Sinatra perform Something, and when he finished he credited it to “Lennon and McCartney.”  Poor George, no respect.  While Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps are generally regarded as George’s best songs, I’ll vote for Here Comes the Sun – a refreshing, unusually structured and lovely tune from Rubber Soul.  I’ve got nothing against Something, it’s a very nice song.  Rolling Stone may think it’s a Top Ten Beatles tune.  I don’t.  I detect Dead-Beatle homage bias here.

7.  Hey Jude.  McCartney tune released in August 1968.  Written for John Lennon’s son, Hey Jude is the Beatles’ most famous sing-a-long and is solid both melodically and lyrically.  There’s beauty in its simplicity, but it demonstrates more what a deceptively great songwriter McCartney is than how great the Beatles were.  I especially like the melodic line under the phrase Take a sad song – the word “song” soars up to F natural against a C7 chord,  briefly 'suspending' the chord by topping it with the fourth.  Lovely and unexpected.  Somehow Hey Jude seems life-affirming.  Let’s all of us just gather around with some flowers and sing Hey Jude and the world will be a better place.  Na na na na to you too, brother.  Peace.  Was it one of the best ten tunes the Beatles ever recorded?  Maybe, I have an open mind about it.  But it doesn’t make my top ten.

 

8.  Let It Be.  Another McCartney tune, released in May 1970 after the band had broken up, and if nothing else, a fitting coda for the boys and a message to the fans to…well, just let it be, dammit.  A nice song and a favorite for McCartney’s concert fans – he’s been performing it for years.  Nothing wrong with it.  A nice sentiment.  Let it Be. Let's all mellow out.  Mother Mary.  Words of wisdom, you know.  Fine and well, but this song is more popular for its advice than it is notable for its musicality.  It's a fine McCartney song, but not a great Beatles tune.

9.  Come Together.  From Abbey Road, 1969.  Anybody who calls this grungy throwaway one of the Beatles' greatest songs needs his walrus-gumboot-head examined.  Self-indulgent, indecipherable acid-based nonsense from Lennon that I'll bet McCartney hated.  Not only that, Lennon stole it from Chuck Berry and had to pay a settlement with Berry’s music publishers.  Some blistering guitar work from George is the only redeeming feature.  A ripped-off piece with a harsh, druggy garage band mentality one of the Beatles greatest songs?  Not in this lifetime, Rolling Stone.

10.  While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  George’s mystical tune from The White Album.  It's been called one of the “greatest guitar songs” of all time by our friends at Rolling Stone.  Far be it from me to argue with those boys, right?  But I really don’t have anything against this song.  I like the middle part a lot.  Good for George and his I Ching.  I look at the world and notice it’s turning.  I look at the floor and see it needs sweeping.  Blockbuster lyrics, they’re not.  The fact that Eric Clapton plays the guitar solo – very nicely too, in fact – shoots it down the list for me.  NOW APPEARING:  The Beatles featuring George Clapton on lead guitar.  Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

            If this is Rolling Stone’s Top Ten – and it is - I can wait to buy the magazine.  Like forever.  You can’t see the rest of the list on the Internet, though. Rolling Stone, the voice of the counterculture, has a pay wall on its web site.  That’s a blessing, if you ask me.  Thank you, Rolling Stone, for not subjecting us to your choices of next ninety best Beatles songs.     

Now, here’s what you’ve been waiting for.  This hasn’t been easy, because I loved the Beatles band and I still love Beatles songs – most of ‘em, anyway.  I’m one of those people who hears a Beatles song and instantly flashes back to the time and place.  There was a time I could play most of them on the piano from memory.  To this day, I’ll bet you I can recall more Beatles song lyrics than you can.  I was part of it.  They changed my life.  I’ve worn out five tee-shirts. 

To begin, I scanned a list and wrote down thirty-three titles that have, for one reason or another, special attributes.  Narrowing this list down to ten forced me to cut some truly great, rocking or lovely tunes (See Honorable Mentions) and was like picking your favorite children.  But these aren’t necessarily my favorites – they’re the top ten BEST Beatles tunes.  My favorite Beatles song, I Will, doesn’t even make the top ten BEST.

10.  In My Life.  From 1965’s Rubber Soul, In My Life was a song that we grew wiser with.  It expressed what we knew but had not yet experienced – that there were people, places and things yet to come in our lives, and we knew that this song of looking back with wistful acceptance and abiding love for those important to us was the right way to feel.  In 1965, death was seldom mentioned in popular song.  But when John sang “Some are dead and some are living” it brought the message home.  It was honest.  The Beatles were singing about the real world of human relationships, and this is a grown-up, powerful love song that taught us something about life.

            The tight three-part harmonies and backing vocals are superb – All these places have their moments – and taken apart from the music, the lyrics are pure poetry.

With lovers and friends, I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life I’ve loved them all…

            The authorship of the song is in dispute, with both Paul and John claiming it.  McCartney says:  “I find it very gratifying that out of everything we wrote, we only appear to disagree over two songs, the other being Eleanor Rigby."  Regardless of who wrote what – often, one contributed the main verse and the other the middle – the two sections blend seamlessly.  George’s Martin’s baroque harpsichord solo was unheard of in a pop record at the time, and gave the song a kind of classical feel that perfectly complemented the gravitas of the lyrics.  A huge, transcendent leap for the Beatles and pop music in general.  For what it's worth, my guess is that Lennon wrote the bulk of it.

9.  Because.  From Abbey Road, a John Lennon song that blew everyone away when they first heard it.  Nothing even remotely similar had come before, and the incredible originality of the song – coupled with the stunning vocal performances – make it one of the most compelling pieces of popular music ever recorded.  The marriage of words and music here is absolutely perfect, and this song represents the highest standard the Beatles would achieve in the studio.  The eerie, soaring vocals – triple-dubbed, there are actually nine voices singing - are hand-in-glove with the otherworldly lyrics.  The harmonic shock we receive when the chord changes from C# minor in the opening verses – Because the world is round it turns me on – when it reaches the word on the song unexpectedly and almost inconceivably changes to a D# minor 7^th with a flatted fifth.  The voices then soar to ethereal skies.  Because is a confounding, inexplicable piece of music.  Nothing like that has ever been done before or since.  On paper, it shouldn’t work at all.  In performance, it’s a gorgeous masterpiece of the Beatles artistry. 

8.  If I Fell.  1964 from Something New.  This seemingly simple little tune makes my list because it’s just so damned pretty.  But it’s very interesting musically, breaking a few compositional "rules" and showing that Lennon and McCartney could write a sensitive love song with the best of them even in the early days.  The introduction – If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true – is in the key of D flat; but when the verse begins, the key changes to D.  This is very subtle to the ear and – just a guess – is such a sophisticated device that I think George Martin may have suggested it.  Lennon and McCartney hadn’t written anything quite as advanced harmonically at that time, I don't believe.  The sung harmonies – including a beautiful passing F diminished chord in the verse – are perfectly executed and the message – If I fell in love you would you promise not to hurt me?  – resonated with us and spoke to our young fears and excitements. But mostly, it’s just…well…a beautiful little song. 

7.  Hold Me Tight/It Won’t Be Long.  All right, I’m cheating here but this is a top ten list, not a top eleven list.  These two songs from 1963 are related, though, in that they’re both early all-out rockers that showcase the Beatles as a performing rock and roll band:  Original, brash, tight and confident as hell.  The tunes are performed with utter abandon and both feature call and response – Hold (hold!)  Me tight (Me tight!)  Tonight (tonight!)  - that they did so well.  Songs like this are the soundtrack of Beatlemania.  Listening to them, you can understand why people went wild.   

6.  You Won’t See Me.  This sparkling jewel typifies the huge leap the Beatles made with Rubber Soul.  Pristinely impeccable and tasteful throughout, the song bounces with panache and élan.  The harmonies are imaginative and sweet.  The middle eight – Time after time, you refuse to even listen - is masterful.  The vocal work throughout is original, enticing and full of fun.  You could get drunk on this song, it's so delicious. If I could freeze the Beatles at any moment in time, it would be during their Help-Rubber Soul-Revolver period, where they emerged as songwriters and musicians of the highest caliber.  Which leads me to…

5.  Michelle, another ground-breaker from Rubber Soul.  To this day, the harmonies transmit chills.  Nobody expected the Beatles to pull a French ditty on us, and McCartney has said that he wrote the song as an arty French love song, even before he had the title or lyrics down.  The sophisticated backing vocals are sublime, using a series of totally unexpected ascending diminished chords sung in harmony, probably by McCartney himself overdubbing.  It all works beautifully, exotically, and it’s a flat-out wonderful bijoux of a love song.  It also represented the Beatles’ acceptance by the American musical community, winning the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1966.  Well-deserved.

4.  Here There and Everywhere.  Probably the Beatles best love song, from Revolver in 1966.  McCartney dazzles with a exquisite melody line, simply but perfectly underscored. In the introduction – To lead a better life I need my love to be here – the chord change from B minor to B flat to D seventh is very  sophisticated.  The middle part with George’s sly chromatic counterpoint is exceptional:  I want her everywhere, and when she’s beside me I know I need never care.  This is a Master Class in songwriting and execution and one of McCartney’s finest songs.  

3.  Tell Me Why.  John Lennon song from A Hard Days Night in 1964.  I’ve long called this tune the quintessential Beatles song.  From the opening instrumental sequence serving as a prolonged downbeat, to the completely unexpected jazz progression at the coda, Tell Me Why has all the things that made the Beatles great.  Exuberance, soaring harmonies, falsetto, bluesy middle, honest feelings and expressions of love, confidence, indefatigability, and it simply rocks from beginning to end.  Relentless and driving, this is early Beatles at their rocking best.  John’s classic-rock, raspy chorus – Well I beg you on my bended knee, if you’ll only listen to my plea – is delivered with outrageous perfection and resolves explosively: Is there anything I can do?  ‘Cause I really can’t stand it I’m so in love with you…       

Listen to McCartney’s revolutionary walking bass line, George’s off-beat slash chords, Ringo’s laser-fine timing;  this song is all four Beatles doing what they do best.  It’s got it all.  Fact: And I Love Her and If I Fell were recorded at the same session as Tell Me Why.  A few years later, it would take them years to make a record.

2.  I Want to Hold Your Hand from Meet the Beatles, 1963.  Their first number one hit, recorded in October 1963.  For many of us in America, this was the first Beatles song we heard.  I remember where I was – the neighborhood Katz Drug Store in Kansas City – when it played on the jukebox in December 1963.  The Beatles had me from hello – it was so fresh, so unusual, so fun, so in-your-face, and most of all, it was unlike anything ever heard before.  To give you some perspective on the state of pop music in America, when I Want to Hold Your Hand hit the top of the charts in February 1964, it displaced Bobby Vinton’s There, I’ve Said It Again.  Popular music was NEVER the same after this song.      

Why is it a great song?  Well, you could talk about the insistent, pulsing introduction that foretells something important must happen… the abrupt vocal syncopations, the hand claps, John and Paul singing in unison and harmony…George’s twangy lead guitar fills… the sexy, yet still innocent middle:  And when I touch you I feel happy…inside…and the glorious, extended ending – I want to hold your ha-ha-ha-ha-nd…..The triumphant final G major chord. The utter newness of it.  A true collaboration, Lennon and McCartney composed this song together at the piano, as opposed to the separate composers they would later become.  If you don’t understand why this is one of the greatest songs in pop history, then…then…well, I’ll just buy you a subscription to Rolling Stone.   

1.  She Loves You.  The Beatles Second Album, 1964.  This is what Beatlemania was all about, kiddies.  She Loves You is the Beatles signature song, the desert island one, the time capsule one, the one to leave on the moon, the take-me-to-your-leader one.     

I hate to overuse the word, but She Loves You is the pinnacle of the Beatles joyous exuberance.  It’s an explosive, happy, celebratory, delirious song.  The Yeah yeah yeahs were at first considered improper by the proper British – Paul’s father suggested they change it to Yes, yes, yes!  Its musical vocabulary and arrangement are shot through with quirky details and nuances that were soon to develop into trademarks of the group; their special "sound" is apparent.  The sweet trio of voices… the twangy guitar licks preceding the verses…the falsetto - the juggernaut pace... the orgasmic Oooo!  that drove all the little girls wild.

The Beatles unique, instinctive harmonic sense is on full display here, and the voicing gives the song much of its unique flavor.  With a single solo voice, it wouldn’t have been as effective as when John and Paul split into thirds and sixths.  She Loves You is another true Lennon/McCartney collaboration and incidentally a radical departure from pop songs of the day in that the singer of the song is a third person, not a protagonist in the romance. 

It’s a triumphant, confidant romp with unexpected sophistication and rocking delight throughout.  Who, on hearing this song, doesn’t begin to tap their foot and sing along?  George Martin tried to talk them out of ending the song on the G6th chord – he thought G major would be more appropriate.  But the boys knew what they wanted and got it.  The way that chord hangs out after the song is over makes you want to play it again to see how they did it.  One last thing – there was a time when bands could actually replicate in concert what they had done in the studio.  In other words, no tricks, overdubbing, re-dos and so on.  You can watch any number of live performances of the song on You Tube and hear the exact studio arrangement.  What you see is what you got.  Yet another thing that makes it special – just four guys making a noise that rocked the world.

Honorable Mentions: 

All My Loving, Blackbird, Drive My Car, For No One, Good Day Sunshine, Got To Get You Into My Life, Help, I Will, Nowhere Man, Oh!  Darling, Please Please Me, Rain, The Night Before, You’re Gonna Lose That Girl, and many others.

So Rolling Stone, have a nice life and all that.  Toe-jam football, monkey finger, spinal cracker….and peace.   


John Dawson
August 26, 2010

Pineville Swap N' Shop

Do you ever think about cow romance?

Well, I am right now, because it’s Saturday mornin’ and me and the dog are sittin’ here watchin’ old cartoons – I do it for him, not me - and we got one on now where Clarabelle Cow and her equine paramour Horace Horsecollar are dosey-do’in’ around the barnyard in a frenetic pas de deux of animal husbandry.  Why Walt Disney had Clarabell, a cow, havin’ a romance with Horace, a horse, of course, I’m at a loss to explain.  It don’t make horse sense.

  Maybe Walt, who was a farm boy when he was a lil’ animator, didn’t want the children of America to see a couple of actual bovines goin’ at it – it can be a frightenin’ sight - right there in their Merrie Melody.  Or, maybe he figured that educatin’ the kiddies about the birds and the bees by showin’ moony anthropomorphic barnyard critters was a good idea.  That, I can understand to a point, but cross-breedin’ ‘em like that sends a puzzlin’ psychic message to the youth if you ask me, because even a dunderhead knows horses don’t fool with cows and never will.

 What’s a kid to think when Walt – the most trusted man in America until Walter Cronkite came along – gives him the facts of life by glorifyin’ miscegenation down on the farm?  I mean, if horses romance cows, what’s next and where do you draw the line?  Somebody ought to look into that.  It could be one of the clues to the reckless chaos in our present day anything-goes society.  But what do I know.

Well, it’s Fall and the air is full of those harbinger deals that foretell somethin’s about to happen, weather-wise.  Like when the falling autumn leaves of red and gold drift by your window and clog up your gutters, which they are now, they’re lil’ harbingers of winter.  I got more autumnal leaves around here than a hillbilly in October. 

            I’m up and foolin’ around like I said, watchin’ TV with the dog like we do every Saturday mornin’, chowin’ down some breakfast – Eggo and sausage for me, Fido Chicken Vegetable Medley for him -  and fixin’ to pop over to Aunt Mary’s because she wants to tote me out to the Swap N’ Shop today.

            The Dog wants to go too, so he’s got his sappy Will-Follow-Master-To-the-Ends-of-the-Earth look on, the two-faced mongrel.  The only way he’d follow me to the ends of the earth is if there was an Alpo factory there.  But he gets all bent out of shape if I go somewhere without him and throws a fit like James Brown singin’ Please Please Please.

            Do you have a Swap N’ Shop in your home town?  They call ‘em different things in different places - Ruil en’ Winkel in Ghana, for instance - but what it amounts to is people haul out somewhere and set up a table in front of their truck and trot their junk out and hope some fool buys it.  Sort of like K-Mart with gravel, but instead of shiny, polite salespeople in blue vests you get whatever the cat drug in.  But Aunt Mary likes to go because she’s always on the prowl for a pig knick-knack.  Last September Peggy Pendleton had a purple pen and ink Pablo Picasso print called – you guessed it, The Pig - so she plucked the lil’ porker up and now he’s presidin’ over her patio.

 “You don’t run into a pig portrait by a prominent painter all that often,” she explained, pryin’ her purse open to pay for it.  

 “Particularly from his Purple Period,” I mused, addin’ a lil’ artistic gravitas.

  Pretty near all Pineville goes out there from time to time, eyeballin’ the junk and marvelin’ at the bad taste some people have.  Half the stuff you wouldn’t be caught dead with – I saw a rat-gnawed stuffed swordfish there once and had fish nightmares for a month – but people just sling it up on their table like they’re proud of it and sure enough, some shopper shuffles by and snaps it up.  Maybe a stuffed-fish aficionado, you know, searchin’ for a fresh swordfish.  People collect anything.

But you might also come across somethin’ you need, you never know.  There’s some good deals out there if you don’t mind frayed wirin’ on your new G.E. toaster oven – mine works good but you got to tweak the cord to get it fired up - or a chip on the lip of your Franklin Mint Princess Diana Memorial Coffee Cup.

Or, perhaps a dead Pope photo.  I don’t know why but we seem to have a passel of pre-owned Pope pix in Pineville.  He always poses in a fancy red and gold getup – his Sunday clothes, I’m guessin’ - in his official pictures.  Shoot, put him in the Ozarks in October and you couldn’t find the man.  

So anyway, it’s a cool beautiful day in Pineville like I said – just imagine some nice weather superlatives - and there you go.  Me and the dog, respectively, stroll on over to Aunt Mary’s beamin’ at the townfolk and peein’ on the trees.    

 And just like every  Saturday mornin’, good old Aunt Mary’s out on the porch in her rocker, sippin’ Jack Daniels out of a china pig teacup, smokin’ a Pall Mall and howdyin’ out at all the  Pinevillean passers-by.  She’s been doin’ that ever since Hector was a pup, and he’s older than Methuselah’s hound dog now.

  Simon – her cat, you know – he’s up in his birdbath twitchin’ his tail and imaginin’ what he might do if a squirrel with a leg cramp limped by.  The dog’s keepin’ a wary eye on him and lookin’ for a place to curl up and take his mid-mornin’ nap.  We got a nice gentle breeze and a lil’ nip in the air.  In Aunt Mary’s teacup, too.

            “Well,” she turns to me, “I hear your dog got in some trouble the other day.”  Aunt Mary knows everything about everybody and evidently his dog.

The accused moaned and got that embarrassed look on his face like he does when you catch him doin’ somethin’ stupid.  Last April, for one, when he chased Patsy Calhoun’s one-legged pet parrot – a cage escapee on the lam – into the sewer at Sixth and Evergreen and got his head stuck in it with his mangy butt stickin’ up in the street and his fool tail waggin’ back and forth for two hours, barkin’ into the sewer like a seal at Sea World.  

Patsy’s parrot, down below, was hoppin’ mad too – deservedly so, in my opinion, she’d been mindin’ her own business until he come along – and she’s screechin’ and squawkin’ and chortlin’ out insults up at him that echoed – we got good acoustics in our sewers - throughout the Pineville drainage system and was heard emanatin’ out of a toilet a mile and a half away, causin’ consternation - and constipation - to Reba Calhoun.  I mean, you don’t expect bird shrieks and dog barks to be all of a sudden comin’ out of your toilet at eight o’clock in the morning.  

We finally had to call the volunteer fire department to come pry the flea-bit parrot pirate and the poor dodo bird out.  Patsy’s parrot Polly Wolly Doodle, in case you’re wonderin’, was perfectly fine, although shook up and needin’ a metoserpate hydrochloride – bird dope - pill and a lecture.    

Anyway, Simon opened an eye and smirked at him.  

“Well,” I go, “it’s his own fault.  I’ve told him a million times when he eats pizza he’s supposed to stay outside until it’s all over with.”

I had Pastor Robinson and his wife Joyful over for some Mamma Mia the other night – Kwanza’s comin’ up, so why not - and I go ahead and give a piece to the dog because one, he loves pepperoni pizza and it drives him insane to watch somebody eatin’ some and he ain’t.  And two, I don’t want him to embarrass me and act like he ain’t been fed for two months in front of company.  So I tell him to take it outside.  But no, he sneaks under the table and after about three minutes there’s this pffff’t’n and blappin’ and permeatin’ odor like you get when you go to the fair and stand downwind of the prize-winnin’ donkeys.    

Well, Joyful looks at Pastor and Pastor looks at Joyful, and I’m fixin’ to explain hey, it ain’t me it’s the dog, when here comes another even more grievous eruption followed by even more malodorous vaporin’.  They glare at me like we’re sittin’ at the Last Supper table and I’m Judas.  Well, all of a sudden Pastor’s rememberin’ a soul he promised to go save, and Joyful’s snappin’ her fingers and goin’ darn, I just remembered I need to call the widow Jones with my fried collard greens recipe, so up they get and out they go, lookin’ relieved to be out in the fresh air again. 

Out slithers the sly dog with a twinkle in his eye.  The son of a bachelor did it on purpose, he ain’t foolin’ me, and I know what it is, too. I can read that dog like a cheap novel.  He wanted to watch Wild Wild World of Animals Monday night and I wanted to watch Criminal Minds – Aunt Mary calls it Criminal Plots - and since it’s my remote, I won.  So he’s been harborin’ a grudge like a aggrieved sailor and this is how he takes it out on me.  He’s like that.  Well, a foul and odiferous deed ne’er goes unpunish’d, like Shakespeare might say if he had a gassy dog.  Plus I, for one, don’t want to be cooped up in the house all night with a canine Vesuvius, so I yell at him and he spent the night in the doghouse. 

But it doesn’t surprise me that Aunt Mary knows all about it.  She must have been gossipin’ with Joyful on the phone.

“So did you tell Joyful the dang dog was under the table and it wasn’t me?”  I go.  I got a reputation for bein’ a semi-decent host and don’t want Flatulent Fido here to go despoilin’ on it.

“No,” she goes, “we had a good laugh about it.  She said maybe Santa’ll put some Beano in your Christmas stocking, har har!”  She reaches down and scratches his – the dog’s, not Santa’s - fool head like he did somethin’ good instead of somethin’ odious.  

“I know how you feel though,” she says, spewin’ apologist doggerel and tryin’ to make feel better about all Pineville spreadin’ unfounded rumors about my digestive tract.

 “Simon’s the same way with garlic toast, so when he eats it I make him stay in his room all night.  Pewwwww-eee.”    

            Simon cracked open an eye and looked over at Aunt Mary with a let’s-not-wash-our-dirty-laundry-in-public look.

“Hey, Miss Mildred!  How’s your eczema, darlin’?”  Aunt Mary hollers out.  

“Just fine and dandy, Aunt Mary,” Mildred cackles up from the sidewalk where she’s focusin’ her cataracts on watchin’ where she’s goin’ because, havin’ always been the superstitious sort, she don’t want to step on a crack and add to her mother’s troubles. 

“Thanks for sending the Cloverine over!” 

            That Cloverine, although Mildred don’t know it, is left over from when I was a lil’ nipper and some comic book said I could get a new bicycle just by sellin’ it to my friends and neighbors.  Well, I tried all my friends and then I tried all my neighbors, but nobody wanted any, so Aunt Mary gave me two dollars for the whole mess of it.  The Cloverine people were pretty ticked off about it and I never got my new bicycle. 

            Eventually they got in trouble with the Federal Government – I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would say about the government stickin’ it’s nose into the people’s salve – and they made ‘em stop advertisin’ to kids in comic books because it amounted to child labor or some such foolishness.  So they went out of business because nobody but a kid or an idiot takes a job sellin’ ointment door-to-door.

           

            I remember years ago knockin’ on old Mr. and Mrs. Harmon Pratt’s front door  with my box of Cloverines and a can-do attitude, and to my surprise they – unlike everybody else in Pineville - invited me right in and said they’d be delighted to talk.  The problem was, the Pratt’s were Jehovah’s Witnesses and for the next two hours – you can’t forsake Jehovah’s Witnesses when they’ve got you cornered – they talked the benefits of salvation at me and I talked the advantages of salve at them.  Well, I didn’t want savin’ and they had all the unguents they needed, so we finally agreed to call it a day.     

I had a job sellin’ encyclopedias door-to-door once too, and they ain’t any easier to sell in Pineville than Cloverine, either.                  

            I never did learn to stop sendin’ away for stuff in comic books.  One time I sent away for some X-Ray glasses – I figured they’d come in handy, I guess – and when I tried experimentin’ with ‘em in Religion class, Sister espied me lookin’ at Eileen Applebottom with what my detention report called a “leering gaze.”  Which I resent to this day, it wasn’t any such thing.  It was more youthful scientific curiosity – which the schools ought to encourage if you ask me - than anything else.   

            Another time the Littleton philately people persuaded me to start a free stamp collection.  It was a good deal and educational too – old stamps teach you the names of countries that don’t exist anymore -  but about every two weeks they kept sendin’ me more dang stamps “on approval” - which means pony up or send ‘em back - and this goes on for like six months.  Well, I was a deliberate buyer as a youth, and what with one thing or another – I’m busy, you know -  haven’t ever got around to decidin’ whether to keep ‘em or send ‘em back.  They’re still here somewhere, though, if Littleton – or one of his stooges if he can’t come himself - wants to come get ‘em. 

            Well, Aunt Mary finally shoots off her rocker with a materteral grunt and out we head Swap N’ Shoppin’.  I made the dog stay, because the last time I took him to Swap N’ Shop I had to buy him three hot dogs – garnish ‘em too, he’s picky - and I ain’t puttin’ up with all the whinin’ and grovelin’ today. 

Have you ever seen that old movie where Frank Sinatra’s a dope fiend and he’s tryin’ to kick his habit so he’s writhin’ there on the bed, sweatin’ and moanin’ and cussin’ his brains out?  That’s the dog in a nutshell when he smells hot dogs.  He begs and whimpers and bows and scrapes, you know, then he rolls on the ground  and chases his tail, then he runs up to the hot dog stand and barks at it,  then he lopes back at me all  pantin’ and slaverin’ and slobberin’ and sputterin’ and spittin’ and emittin’ the abjectest of sorrowful hunger pangs you ever heard.  If he was a lost soul in Purgatory beggin’ for a drop of water he couldn’t do no better.  And he just ate an hour ago.  It’s disgusting, and people walkin’ by look at me like I’m the guy who wouldn’t give Oliver Twist any more gruel. 

            If you didn’t already know, we’re goin’ out to the Starlite Drive-In, out there off Highway 57 past the trailer park, this side of the Hogg dairy farm, where Elmer’s boys, if they ain’t hung over or dealin’ with brucellosis, make real good milk and butter.  Sometimes, to mix it up, they make buttermilk too.

The Starlite goes back to the golden age of drive-ins.  Gene Snavely built it in the late forties – his wife Evelyn was a movie fan and he’d do anything for that gal -   and for a long time it was one of Pineville’s main attractions, primarily because it was the best place to go gropin’ with your tootsie-wootsie on Saturday night.  When I was at Pineville High, me and Eileen must have gone to about fifty movies out there, and to be frank with you, I don’t remember none of ‘em.

Wait, yes I do.  I distinctly remember seein’ one called “A Shot in the Dark” out there with her one time.  Which, come to think of it, is exactly what I was takin’ myself with Eileen that night.     

Anyway, Gene passed on, electrocutin’ himself one April Fools Day when one of his drive-in speaker boxes got a short in it and he tried to fix it in the rain after  drinkin’ a quart of Old Granddad.  Sozzled and Sizzled is what the morose headline said in the paper next day.  I was sad too, because Gene’d promised me a job pickin’ up all the trash and beer cans in the lot on Sunday mornings. 

So I never got that job, and in my philosophical moments – when I have time for ‘em - I often wonder how my life would have been different if I’d started my career pickin’ up garbage.  I might have been the Waste King of America by now.  Fate, you know, it does what it wants with you.  

Anyway, Gene’s scrawny son Travis inherited the Starlite, but it wasn’t the same after that.  For one thing, Travis has a fear of heights – he’s only 5’3 in his stockin’ feet - and he was too chicken to climb up the ladder and change the marquee whenever they got a new movie in.  So that’s why we round the bend and see:

   STARLITE DRIVE-IN   $2.00 CAR NO EXCEPTIONS OR PEOPLE IN TRUNK  NOW SHOWING –  ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST PICTURE THE SOUND OF MUSIC  BONUS DOUBLE  FEATURE LATE SHOW  VAMPIRE VIXENS OF URANUS   Conc ssions*** play area ****No refunds

It’s been like that for years.  And now that I see it, I remember me and Eileen saw some of that one too.  Somethin’ about Julie Andrews frolickin’ on top of a mountain is about all I remember, but the Hogg cows were out yonder so there was a certain stereophonic verisimilitude to it.  You know, Julie goes “Yodel-ay-he-hoo” and the cows go “Moo!” back at her in sort of a Tyrolean counterpoint.

So Travis, eventually faced with a deserted drive-in because nobody goes back to see Julie Andrews twice – she gets on people’s nerves - started up the Swap N’ Shop, and he does real good on weekends rentin’ out space for people to come sell their junk and chargin’ three dollars to get in.  What you do is drive on in and park anywhere you can and get out and mosey around.  Don’t park next to a speaker pole or you might ding your door when you open it up, and watch out for broken glass and spiders.    

The best thing about the Starlite, if you ask me, is the back of the screen facin’ the highway.  The Nehi soda pop company come out one time and painted a huge smiley gal on it, and she’s winkin’ at a frosty bottle of Nehi Grape and sayin’ “Time for a Nehi!”  You can’t miss it when you’re drivin’ by, and every time I see it I get a yen like a thirsty Chinaman for a Nehi Grape. 

I don’t know if they make Nehi anymore, but it sure was good, especially with a little vanilla ice cream in it like Aunt Mary used to make when I was a lil’ nipper.  She used to tell me that I could give Twinkies to the birds, but never Nehi to a grasshopper because they can’t tolerate it, and I believed the old goat for years.

   

Well, everybody’s got somethin’ they don’t want any more, and if you take it out to the Swap ‘N’ Shop and stand there long enough somebody might come along and take it off your hands if it ain’t too beat up.  Whoever said ‘one person’s trash is another person’s treasure’ sure knew his idioms, and Heckle and Jekyll, the emus at the trailer park who eat their breakfast out of the dumpster, would agree with him.

I don’t use ‘em too often because they’re valuable, but I got my set of Welch’s Grape Jelly  Flintstones Limited Edition drinkin’ glasses out there, and they’re the envy of all who know their  commercial cartoon glasses.  Fred, Wilma, Barney, Betty, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.  And the piece de resistance – pardon my French - is Dino the Dinosaur, which is the last one they made before Tom Welch’s endorsement deal with the Flintstones petered out.  By that time, Flintstones fans were so sick of grape jelly that they only made about ten Dinos I guess.

I saw on the Antiques Roadshow one time some big old fat gal had the same set as me, except no Dino, and the appraiser dude shook his head and looked at her real pained, you know, like he’s fixin’ to tell her that her that what she thought was her eighteenth-century Chippendale chiffonier is actually 1961 Taiwan.  

 “Too bad you ain’t got Dino, because he’s rare and on a good day at auction he would have doubled the value of your collection.”  I got Dino. 

Every Monday night is Antiques Roadshow Night at the De Drop.  Chloe has it on the TV and everybody gets drunk and makes fun of all the people and appraisers and stuff.  And the more they drink – they got a shot-drinkin’ contest based on the final appraised amount - the worse they get.  By 8:40, they’re shoutin’ extremely personal remarks at the better-lookin’ female appraisers and makin’ up dirty limericks about the twin blonde brothers.    

 

Well, the best guides - Writing for Fun and Profit, for one - say what I need to do here is to create my atmosphere by describin’ everything you’d see if you were out at the Swap ‘N Shop instead of sittin’ in your house or wherever you are.  Well, if it was up to me, you’d just take my word for it, plus I got tired of writin’ stuff down after Row A, so you’ll have to make do with this:

A Western Auto fly swatter.  It’s got a lil’ grinnin’ fly dressed in red smock with a WA on it.  Pretty good condition, too, for a used fly swatter.  It was a little mucked up on the mesh with petrified Musca domestica viscera, but you expect that.

Next to that is a Lawrence Welk Presents the Lennon Sisters Holiday Favorites LP 33 1/3 record.  The Lennon sisters were four cute teenage girls – well, one of ‘em was a dog – who Lawrence discovered one day and put on his show and they sang up a storm and captivated America and sold millions of records.  There was a scandal one time when Lawrence got caught drillin’ a peephole in the wall of their dressing room, but nothin’ ever came of it because the girls evidently said they didn’t really mind all that much.     

Next, a plastic turquoise Maybelline tote box full of spiky hair curler deals.  They’re sittin’ atop these lil’ electric poles, and when you plug it in the curlers heat up and you slap ‘em on and get that snazzy I-Just-Used-Electric-Hair-Curlers look.  Eileen had one of them things.  She always got compliments on her naturally curly hair, too, but I knew her secret. 

I asked Aunt Mary if she was interested in it, and she asked me if I was nuts.  No woman, she goes, would ever wear another woman’s used hair curlers due to the cootie factor.  You don’t know where they’ve been, she said, and I reckon that’s true.  

Next we got about sixty mismatched hubcaps sittin’ in the back of Charley

Kane’s El Camino, and there’s Charley, relaxin’ in a lawn chair, nursin’ a quart of Pabst, watchin’ college football on a lil’ battery TV and scratchin’ his belly.  I don’t think Charley’s ever actually sold a hubcap to anybody.  What he does is tell Candace he’s goin’ to work – sacrificin’ his weekend, he says - because they need the extra money, which satisfies her, and then he loads up his hubcaps and  drives out to the Swap N’ Shop and drinks beer and watches football all day.  They’ve been peaceably married for forty years now.   

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you – a good editor will ferret it out for me – but Pineville’s sort of a Mecca of velvet deer tapestries.  You know what I mean, those painted black velvety deals you hang up on the wall for that restful lodge effect.  They usually show a flock of nervous-lookin’ fawns and deers and what not in the forest gathered around the waterin’ hole. 

Accordin’ to my research, art of the Cerfs sur le mur school is supposed to bring you a sense of bucolic peace, like you’d have if you were tucked away in a cozy log cabin in the Montana forest, lookin’ out your picture window at the fauna and stuff and all snugged up with a warm fire and a refrigerator full of cold beer.  Sometimes your variant Cerfs sur le mur pieces show some stags hidin’ behind the trees eyeballin’ the deers, lookin’ like they’re fixin’ to spoil the bucolic goodwill by rampagin’ down to the waterin’ hole and engaging in some rapacious ruminant ruttin’ with a docile doe or two, if they can catch ‘em - something Walt Disney, a surrealist, would never show.  Which one might surmise - let’s not beat around the bush, one does surmise -    is why the deers always look so skittish in their velvet pictures.

But we got ‘em all over Pineville, so it’s no wonder they end up at the Swap N’ Shop.  You know, Person A – let’s call him Joe Schmo - likes velvet deer paintings so much he buys one and enjoys it in his den all his life, havin’ a cocktail and enjoyin’ a bucolic buzz.  But one day he has the big one and keels over dead.  So his widow – let’s call her Ima - always havin’ hated the dang ratty thing in the first place, takes it out to Swap N’ Shop the next weekend, gettin’ it out of her hair forever.  So Person B comes along, espies it and buys it, but, life bein’ ephemeral,   one day he or she kicks the bucket too, and his or her kids, cleanin’ out the house, haul it off with all the other heirlooms and it ends up at Swap N’ Shop again.  Then Person C, searchin’ for something restful for the home to calm his nerves, ambles by.  You get the idea.

Chloe’s got two of ‘em hangin’ up in the De Drop.  There’s one big one on the wall to the right of the bar – we’ll call it Group of Fawns Gettin’ a Drink of Water While One of ‘Em, With Cocked Ear, Hears an Ominous Rustlin’ in the Trees.  The other one is Two Majestic Stags on the Top of a Mountain at Sunset, and they’re surveyin’ their wooded, primal domain and keepin’ an eye out for thirsty does.

 

One day Floyd was sittin’ there all drunk up and starin’ at it, and all of a sudden – bing, just like that - his sozzled cerebellum went plumb haywire and he convinced himself that he was in a boat in the forest and the stags were bucolic interstellar aliens – Floyd’d had a lot to drink and he’s a conspiracy nut anyway – and that they’d come to earth in the guise of deers to enslave mankind, startin’ right here in Pineville.

I know, it sounds ridiculous, but this is Pineville and you know Floyd.

  So out of the clear blue sky – everybody’s just sittin’ there mindin’ their own business - he starts hollerin’ “Captain, Captain!  Full speed ahead Mr. Boatswain, full speed ahead! ” And he’s cussin’ and shoutin’ terroristic threats to the poor innocent deers until Chloe finally had to call the Sheriff to come haul him off.  It was a sight all right, Floyd paddlin’ his imaginary boat and arguin’ with the intergalactic deer on the wall.  Ever since, whenever he’s leavin’ the De Drop all the regulars caution him not to let any Martian deers bite him on the butt.

Anyway, that should explain why velvet deers are next on my list.

 Skippin’ over the details or I’ll never get finished with this story, then we got a tableful of eight-track tape players and a fine selection of Johnny Mathis and Conway Twitty and Olivia Newton-John classics, a rack of men’s clothes featurin’ a snappy pastel green leisure suit, a pair of shiny imitation alligator shoes, some Smurf footie pajamas with a hole in the knee, and a home-made toothpick and macaroni Nativity set.

 Let’s see here, on the next table we got a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial coffee cup – it says “I Had a Cream” on it – a Clue game without murder weapons, a Monopoly game without money, a Candyland game without Gum Drop Mountain,  a card tableful of Danielle Steele books – Danielle’s popular in Pineville, just like velvet deers -  a stuffed possum with rhinestone eyes – folk art, you know -  a stringless Star Wars guitar,   a barbieque  apron  with a friendly freckled gal on it sayin’ “Whatcha Got Cookin?.”

 A balding, amputee Barbie doll, a pink flamingo with a bullet hole in his tummy,  eight Elvis whiskey decanters – most of ‘em of the Fat Vegas school -  some colonial figurine knick-knacks, authentic Waffle House plates and coffee cups, a picture of an angel helpin’ a kid across a bridge, some of them colored aluminum drinkin’ glasses all dented up, a bean bag chair taped up on the back, a lava lamp that looks like it don’t have too much zip left – the glop’s just sittin’ there -  and two different Popes.  One of ‘em’s up on his balcony wavin’ to the tourists, and the other one’s sittin’ there lookin’ pontifical as all get-out in all his red and gold robes and chasubles and albs and miters and what not and, if you ask me, probl’y wishin’ he was in a cabin in Montana with a refrigerator full of cold beer in his underwear. I know I would.

That’s just Row A, and if that ain’t enough atmosphere for you, I don’t know what to tell you.  Some authors will sacrifice anything for their art, but I ain’t gettin’ writer’s cramp for nobody.

One of the first places everybody – especially if you’ve been a crime victim - goes at the Swap ‘N’ Shop is Junior’s truck, because you never know when you might find your  new garden hose or your kid’s birthday tricycle or somethin’ that mysteriously disappeared from your garage that time.    

One time I was missin’ my hummingbird feeder – so were the hummingbirds - and there it was, sittin’ in back of Junior’s truck.  I told him hey Junior, that sure looks like my ex-bird feeder, and he goes, well, that’s a Acme bird feeder and they was mass produced without no serial numbers and I found it out at the dump and restored it.  Lyin’ through his teeth, you know, and he calls me his best cousin.  Plus, he had a four dollar tag on it and it’s worth ten, and it pains me to see my stolen property gave away like that.        

I told Aunt Mary about it and she called the Sheriff – hummingbird feeders are thicker than water, she said – and she said what he said I should do is carve my name on  all my future hummingbird feeders so there wouldn’t be any question about it if crime strikes again due to our lawless society and permissive courts.  But, unless I had proof that Junior was the miscreant – photographic evidence, eyeball-witnesses, you know – there wasn’t nothin’ he could do.

Well, if I’d been out in the back yard in the dead of night with my camera takin’ nature photos – unlikely, but I don’t know what else I’d be doin’ out there - when Junior boosted my bird box, I’d have evidence even Perry Mason on a good day couldn’t laugh off.  But if you ask me, the Sheriff didn’t want to get involved because he don’t want to tangle with Junior’s lawyer, the intrepid barrister of Pine Street, Hiram Socrates Peabody III.

Last time Junior got caught in the act – he was stealin’ scenery from the Pineville Community Players – Hiram convinced Judge Moody over lunch and a cocktail that the District Attorney’s evidence was contaminated due to improper police procedures – i.e., jelly donut jam on it – and the Judge yelled at the Sheriff and threw it out of court.  So he’s been wary of Hiram ever since.

Well, Aunt Mary decides to go on over to the St. Jude’s tent – imagine you died and went to Slightly-Irregular Knick-Knack Heaven - to see if there’s anything new in the porcine department, perhaps of the porcelain persuasion that ain’t too impaired.  While I, turnin’ into row B, spot the Pineville Pumaettes Pep Squad –you can tell ‘em by the teeny blue and white skirts and the peppy attitude.  They’re millin’ around under a sign sayin’:

 

      GO PUMAS!!! CHOCOLATE ALLMOND BARS $3.00 SEND YOUR DIVISION CHAMPS PUMAETTES!  TO STATE!!!!!!!!!

Erica Applebottom and Kaitlynne Sue Armbruster are sittin’ in back of a mountain of candy bars commiseratin’ with each other.  They’re agreeing, in essence, that their like stupid freaking parents and the stupid school ought to like totally pay for the stupid bus trip to the retarded championships in the first place, instead of making them – as if like they didn’t have better things to do - duh - than waste the whole stupid day out here in the freezing cold at the freaking deserted drive-in trying to sell lame candy bars which are like yuck in the first place.  I’m paraphrasin’ the girls’ here, but you get the idea.

Set up right across from them is the Elm City High Pep Squad table:

 RICE KRISPIES TREATS  ONLY $1.00!!!  HELP SEND EAGLETTES STATE PEP CHAMPINSHIPS   !!!!!!!!!!  BUY TEN AND GET A KISS!! 

 And there are the Eaglettes – you can tell ‘em by the teeny green and white skirts and the pimples – and they’re dealin’ with a line of mangy Elm City boys with mullet haircuts   who’re standin’ there tryin’ to figure out plausible lies to their wives and girlfriends to explain why they brought a whole bag of Rice Krispies treats home and why they smell like Tabu when they get there.

Only an idiot or an Elm Citian would pay ten dollars for a plate of Rice Krispies Treats in the first place – you can probl’y whip up enough to make you puke for five – in order to kiss a thunder-thighed cross-eyed girl with fake blonde hair who looks like she was up just a little too late last night – in other words, Elm City Eaglette Myra Sue Baggerly, who’d eagerly volunteered for the job of Official Kisser when the girls were brainstormin’ promotional ideas.   

As the Eaglettes hatched the plan, they got all their mamas – eglesses, for my ornithologist readers – to stay up past midnight last night messin’ with marshmallows and butter and Rice Krispies and slavin’ over a hot stove– there was no labor actually involved for the girls so that was a freaking plus – and then all they had to do is sit out there at the Swap N’ Shop and get the lame-os to pony up ten bucks.  Then one of the Eaglettes – maintaining proper, no-touching Baptist distance - would grimace, shut her eyes, and – yuck – put her mouth on your cheek for a millisecond, pucker, smack, shudder, and then go wash off with Listerine and try to recover from the ordeal and hope she didn’t get anything.  

But the boys interpreted the sign in a more graphic way, and instead of standin’ there waitin’ for a buss like a patient boy scout, they were grabbin’ Myra Sue and bendin’ her over like Rhett Butler did with Scarlet that time, you know, liftin’ her feet off the ground and kissin’ the livin’ daylights out of her with her feet kickin’ up in the air and Myra Sue’s squirmin’ like – if you ask me – she’s enjoyin’ it.

Well, it don’t take Jimmy Carter to tell you that we got conflict with a capital C brewin’ right here on several levels.

As you already know, Pineville has a rivalry deal with Elm City, us bein’ the Chippendales and them bein’ the cheap reproductions.  So naturally, this extends to our well-brought-up youngsters, and the Pumaette girls think the Eaglette girls are lame,  retarded, and freaking unbelievable if even human.  A ten on the cootie counter.

The Eaglettes, wallowing in envy at the superior looks, grace, and talent of born-and-bred Pineville women, naturally feel disenfranchised and embarrassed, and like oppressed species all over the world they act out a lot, which is a psychobabblic term for behavin’ like the wild lil’ tramps – Aunt Mary’s term, not mine – they are.      

Then we got the competition for the Pine County dollar.  Take your average Elm City couple – we’ll call ‘em Pete and Priscilla Pecker – strollin’ through the Swap N’ Shop, lookin’ for bargains – maybe a good deal on a velvet deer – and they come up and on the one side there’s The Pumaettes sellin’ chocolate almond candy and on the other side the Eaglettes sellin’ Rice Krispies Treats.  Well, Pete and Priscilla have to make a choice with their consumer dollar – they can’t afford both - and the point is, the free market system causes natural tension among competitors due to the finite number of customers in the first place, which any Economics teacher will explain to you.         

But Pete, espyin’ Myra Sue in her lil’ green and white skirt and – I’m guessin’ here – size 40 letter sweater, well, he sends Priscilla off to see if she can come up with a new Pope picture, and, combin’ his mullet, ambles over to the Eaglettes table and forks a Hamilton down for ten Rice Krispies Treats, which Priscilla has always liked and he can tell her he bought for her.  But his main interest – I’m just bein’ honest here - is in havin’ a Rhett Butler with Myra Sue, which she – Priscilla - don’t have to know anything about.  

 

Peering into the Pumaette mind, we find that they feel that not only is Pete Pecker a totally freakazoid individual – just to get that out of the way - but that the Eaglette’s introduction of the S-e-x motif into an otherwise proper candy drive is an unfair trade practice – maybe Taffy-Hartley – and just because those little tramps – their word, not mine – don’t care who or what they put their mouth on, it doesn’t mean everybody does it because we, the Pumaettes, have self-respect and we reserve our kisses for our boyfriends in the back seat in the dark where they belong, in private, not out here at the freaking drive-in with freakazoid Elm City mulletheads  and all Pine County starin’ at  ‘em.  Seriously.  Freaking yuck about sums it up.  Plus, we haven’t sold a stupid candy bar all day because all the men are standin’ in line for the freaking Elm City Tramp Express over there. The whole deal is lamer than your mom.

So the two squads are standin’ there shootin’ malevolent glares at one another and up to their ears in candy, angst, acne, and the vast differences in class distinctions.  Boilin’ tensions were seethin’.  Seethin’ tensions were boilin’ too, for that matter.  They were lil’ festerin’ pre-eruptive teen Vesuviuses, you know, waitin’ to squirt all over the mirror in a metaphoric eruption of bottled emotion.

Well, you know these things get started.  A whispered comment.  A subtle gesture.  A glance being directed across the way with a pointed finger and a giggle.  The phrase “zit-face” wafting across the aisle.  An innuendo about the pregnancy rate at Elm City High.  A remark about one’s mother having been seen at Motel Six with the softball coach.  An allusion to a night at the bowling alley with a bunch of Mexicans.  An indistinct comment with the only clear word being “hygiene,” followed by laughter.  The deadly S-word, which cuts like a knife through the hearts of virtuous women everywhere.

Next thing you know, a well-aimed World’s Finest Chocolate bar - Erica  throws javelin on the varsity -  goes  catapultin’ through the air across the aisle and bonks  Sarah Troutwine – Eaglette Pep Squad Vice-President -  right on the tip of the geezer, where she’s been fightin’ off a pimple for two days so it already hurts like the dickens to begin with.  She looked like a pig does when you step on his foot and then when you turn around to apologize, you poke him in the snout.  Surprised and hurt, you know, in addition to the sore nose.          

Thereupon – next, in other words - followed a raucous spate of excitated, excruciatingly shrill post-pubescential carryin’ on – sort of like a bunch of outraged teenage parrots- with exclamations of surprise, astonishment and disbelief, followed by muttered asides, exhortations of anger, hurled insults, taunts, startling accusations, angrily raised fists – as much of a cute lil’ fist as a girl can make - all of which was culminatin’ into an Adagio Agitato of dudgeon and dueling Pep Squads  (Go Pumas!)  What we had was alarums and incursions in a No Man’s Land of velvet deers and dead Popes.  A Rice Krispies Treat – the Eaglettes throw like girls – whizzed by my ear.         

It was threatenin’ to turn ugly.

Well, my motto is if there’s gonna be a Pep Squad fight, I want to be sure to be there in case any of the girls gets her shirt torn off so I can cover her up with my jacket so she don’t catch her death of cold in this weather.  Outside of that, I figure it’s their business and not mine, and wisdom has taught me not to insert myself as peacemaker – Jimmy Carter’d be disappointed in me, I know - into a fracas full of fingernail-wieldin’ female teenage cutthroats – peppy lil’ Vampire Vixens, you might call ‘em.  I say, let the rambunctious youngsters blow off some steam.  

 So I turned around to go find some popcorn, and there was Aunt Mary, clutchin’ – believe it or not – a velvet pig tapestry which I immediately identified as of the offshoot De porcs sur le mur movement.  She tells me it might be a good time to twenty-three skidoo – dinosaur slang for leave - before it starts rainin’ knick-knacks and eight-tracks and marshmallow snacks on our fool heads.  Plus, she says, those World’s Finest Chocolate bars can poke your eye out if they catch you just right.

“That would be totally lame,” I mused.   

           

Some dang spoil-sport called Sheriff Badger, and he came out and quelled the melee - primarily by threatenin’ to cancel Prom over his bullhorn unless they all shut up – and he and Deputy Oates hauled  the girls off to jail in their squad cars  where they wrote ‘em a ticket for hooliganism and called their parents.  It took the Sheriff two hours to vacuum all the Rice Krispies out of his squad car, but it still snaps, crackles, and pops when you sit down in the back seat.

            Myra Sue mysteriously escaped, though, and an informed source – I’ll have to withhold her name because the old goat gets a lot of her gossip from Deputy Oates’ wife and I have to protect her confidentiality – said that Charlene thought it was suspicious that when the Deputy got home he smelled like Tabu and his nightstick was awry. 

            Jail, according to a statement Kaitlynne Sue made to her parents, was “so freaking lame it was like barf.”

            We decided to stop at Mamma Mia’s and pick up a double pepperoni -  anchovies on one slice for Simon, he’s picky about his pizza - and a double order of garlic toast to go.  So we’re sittin’ at the table chowin’ down, and of course the dog, having smelled it comin’ from two blocks away, starts goin’ into his freakazoid Ethiopian starving-dog vaudeville routine.

           

            Rememberin’ what happened last time he had pizza, I shot him a piercing look, but it went right over his head. 

            “Oh go ahead, give him some,” Aunt Mary says, and she reaches down and gives Simon a big hunk of garlic toast.  “Let ‘em eat all they want and then we’ll take ‘em and shut ‘em up in Simon’s room.”

           

            I smiled and doffed my Porky Pig tumbler – about $3.00 on a good day at auction – at her.