Well, it's more like he found the Dragula Myspace page, but still Toby is alive and kicking. He sent me a message and "cold beers" were mentioned and I have to say I approve his message. It's good to be back in touch with a friend.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Toby Has Been Found!
Well, it's more like he found the Dragula Myspace page, but still Toby is alive and kicking. He sent me a message and "cold beers" were mentioned and I have to say I approve his message. It's good to be back in touch with a friend.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Practical Stylists Video
Youtube is truly an amazing thing. I missed out on seeing Nashville band The Practical Stylists live due to my youth, but thanks to the digital age I can now see them perform and so can you. The Practical Stylists were the most Anglo of the local New Wave acts back in the early 80's and it's a shame they didn't go on to a major label deal.
Fashionista Don't Allow Buddies Or A Wicked Mullet
It's fashion week in NYC. I know this because I heard it mentioned on Bob & Tom. I don't keep up with fashion. It can only lead to disappointment. I wear what I wear. It may be ugly, it could be cheap, it will be comfortable, it might even be in fashion, it might not, but I view clothing from a utilitarian angle most of the time. Did I ever try and be fashionable. Yes, yes, yes. I made attempts, but these either failed as in I never purchased or received the clothes I wanted or I did manage to buy fashionable clothes that either were already on the way out of fashion or cobbled together by me in a way to render them unfashionable. The outsider ethos of my life mixed with innate shyness around people could easily sabotage any look I conceived. However I can look back with fondness at my past clothing fits and wonder the what if's...like what if I had managed to talk my parents into buying me parachute pants my sophomore year of high school. Would it have changed my life forever? Perhaps some super cool heavy metal kid would have talked to me and we would have formed a band and changed the face of music. If that sounds stupid to you then you don't understand the power of clothes. I may value clothes primarily for utilitarian reasons, but I'm not dumb. A JFA concert shirt once got me a date with a girl which led to a several months long romance.
I was oblivious to fashion as a child which is how it should be. I wore Sears Tough Skins, lots of corduroy, tennis shoes bought from the local Pic'n'Pay, and really loud 70's pullover shirts. The tennis shoes were the one item you got the most fun buying. A pair of tennis shoes had to last a good 4-6 months so you wanted some that looked cool; the kind that made you imagine you'd run faster when you wore them. So it's no surprise that tennis shoes were the first items of clothing that became important in a fashion sense. It was in 6th grade that I learned that I wore buddies.
We were changing classes and a kid who wasn't in any of my classes started laughing at me and pointing at my shoes. When he said I was wearing buddies I didn't know what in the hell he was talking about. My comic book geek friends didn't know either, but my juvenile delinquent friends did. Once I found out, I didn't care. I was much more into comics, Hot Wheels, and television to care. It was the crushes on the girls that did me in.
I started hitting the roller rink in 7th grade and while I didn't become a slave to fashion I started to notice what the girls liked. Levi's jeans (always button fly) replaced the Tough Skins. I wore a fat comb in a back pocket even though my curly locks resisted taming. I never could get that feathered look that was all the rage for girls and boys. I got a sweatshirt with my school's name, Central Middle, emblazoned across it. I got into the corporate rock and roll marketing machine purchasing some Kiss shorts. This was all mild compared to 8th grade.
I got the greatest pair of shoes I'll ever have had: canvas Nike tennis shoes with the light blue swoop. They had the classic sole that could squeak even on dry floors. They went with everything too. I pleaded for them. I cajoled. I begged with every fiber of my being to get a pair before school began. I was in a new town. I needed all the help I could get to meet the cool kids. It worked too. The preppies and jocks accepted me right into their cliques. Being me, I promptly started hanging out with some of the rock and roll freaks. I even started wearing Keds before the school year was over which was just one step over the buddy line. You wouldn't catch any of the freaks wearing an Izod Lacoste shirt like Bucky Rice - he had Lacoste shirts for every day of the week.
But I wasn't a freak. I was just some in between kid that got along with most everybody. 9th grade saw us moving back to Murfreesboro. I would be in another new school. I wanted an Izod Lacoste shirt to help me fit in this time. They were a bit more pricey than the shoes and it took some doing to convince my mother. I nagged her enough until one day she packed me in the car and we drove across town to Harveys which was the only store in Murfreesboro that we know harbored any of those polo shirts with the alligator on them (yeah I know it's really a crocodile). So I ended up with an item that was technically in fashion, but in what would set the tone for future fashion purchases I ended up with the most godawful ugly alligator shirt ever made. It was a green and yellow striped thing. The word garish might have even been on the wash and wear tag. If it wasn't it should have been. It wasn't my choice. It was my mother's wallet's choice.
I wore the damned item for picture day and then chucked it into the closet. I couldn't make friends at Oakland High. I started wearing whatever the hell I wanted to which meant jeans and flannel. It was the era when I slept in my clothes and I'd wear the same items for days. Imagine...me not making any friends! I liked to wear concert t-shirts over the flannel shirts. If that was ever a trend; I'm taking responsibility for it. The only fashion trend that year I briefly rocked: ag-boy chic which fit right in with my flannel wear since all you needed was a Co-op cap with the brim made into a duck's bill and a pair of work boots. Taking agriculture didn't hurt either. I can still spot a Poland China from a mile away.
Farm life looked good from the city, but when we moved to a farm before 10th grade started I found out I wasn't much for farming. So the look I suddenly wanted included penny loafers and a striped Oxford shirt. The penny loafers part was easy. The shirt was easy to mess up. I wanted an Arrow shirt with a button down collar. So I got a pink shirt with white stripes. This was bad enough, but to make it worse it didn't have a button down collar. It had a big white collar that was kept in place by a gold pin. It was like I was Charlie Brown - heck I would have looked better dressed like Chuck.
So I went back to the old standby of Levi's, concert shirts, and freak shoes. Freak shoes are normally called wallabees, but just like it's only preppies and jocks that liked Timberland boots back then only stoners and heavy metal fans wore wallabees when I was in high school; hence freak shoes. Then it turned cold and Member's Only jackets became the thing to have. I didn't even want one and my parents didn't disappoint me there. They bought me this huge bulky black nylon thing that had zippered pockets all over it. If it had been leather people would have thought I was into S & M.
The nylon I wanted was parachute pants. Jeff Blair had a pair and Jeff was one of the coolest cats around. He drove a Trans Am, played electric guitar, and went to all of the rock concerts in Nashville. He'd wear the latest cool t-shirt with his black parachute pants which always had a bandanna or two tied around a leg. He also rocked a wicked mullet along with a penchant for camouflage pants. I never did get a pair of parachute pants, but I did get some camo pants inspired by the film The Wild Life and Jeff.
The camouflage pants were a good springboard toward my senior year wish it was punk rock but New Wave will do look. The thrift store suit jacket was the most vital component of this look. It gave a person lots of room to place rock and roll buttons and it went great with a t-shirt. My friend Bruno was a maniac about buttons covering the front of his along with rocking a fedora. I took an old denim jacket and turned it into a punk jacket with Sharpie slogans covering the back. The best fashion moment of the year was in the spring at a world history academic contest where the teacher told me I needed to take off the DIY anarchy button I had made.
I had found my look! Thrift store garb was the way to go for me. Overlayered with a suit jacket filled with buttons screamed intellectual to me. An old USMC trench coat completed the picture in winter. I thought I was something walking across the college campus smoking a clove cigarette. This look would get me through most of one semester until I dropped out. It was the era of Wally's disillusionment.
I went to work and I got drunk. That's what I did for almost two years straight. Then my life was saved by rock and roll and skateboarding. I started singing with The Dislocated and then I started skating with the Gonz and Papoose. I even got back into college. When I went back to Riverdale High to play a gig in front of the whole student body with The Dislocated I wore camouflage pants, the JFA t-shirt that would later land me a chick, Chuck Taylor's, some John Lennon granny style sunglasses, and a Cubs baseball cap. It was a dreadful look, but it was me. We filmed the show and maybe someday we'll put some of it on Youtube.
If that fashion mistake wasn't enough I spent the next few years wearing day-glo flavored shorts, Vans skate shoes, and rock and roll t-shirts to go with various hairstyles like the buzzcut, the dyed blonde, the 90210, the long and shaggy, the long and shaggy but shaved underneath aka the Jason Newsted, the shaved except for one shock of hair aka the modified Zippy, and then the dyed red trying to dye it blonde haircut. It could have been worse, the Gonz liked the Body Glove look.
By the mid-90's the skater shorts were gone, but now I was prone to wearing lots of plaid. That's how I was dressing when I met the future Soulfish wife. I had gone back to the thrift stores in earnest which at the time were stocked with Izod Lacoste shirts. I bought dark colors. I liked button up sweaters, khakis, and low top Vans. I could have passed for emo even though that musical movement was many years away from becoming a codified thing. The Soulfish wife helped to tighten up my look and it hasn't changed much since then.
My fashion sense today is primarily dictated by work: khakis and a company polo shirt. When not at work it's the casual daddy style: rock and roll, button down, or rugby shirts, shorts or jeans, tennis shoes or loafers, and perhaps a baseball cap. Add a sweater during the winter and I'm happy. Gone are the days when I might rock an African dashiki (picked up in D.C. at an African festival during the Iran-Contra era), a tie-dyed shirt with the Soviet cross and sickle (Fat Sammy told me I'd get my ass kicked wearing that shirt when visiting Ripley, Mississippi one summer - I should have been beat for pairing the shirt with a pair of pink plaid Bermuda shorts), tortoise shell Raybans, or a hooded Baja shirt.
I now get to survive my own children's fashion wants. The girls' big thing this summer was getting a pair of Crocs. They didn't mind when they got knock-offs. They're only 7 and 4 so the peer pressure isn't so great, yet. I'm sure it won't be long until we're being asked, cajoled, and begged for the latest hot item and while we won't acquiesce to all of their demands we'll try and make them happy when it's appropriate and I promise no green and yellow monstrosities allowed.
I was oblivious to fashion as a child which is how it should be. I wore Sears Tough Skins, lots of corduroy, tennis shoes bought from the local Pic'n'Pay, and really loud 70's pullover shirts. The tennis shoes were the one item you got the most fun buying. A pair of tennis shoes had to last a good 4-6 months so you wanted some that looked cool; the kind that made you imagine you'd run faster when you wore them. So it's no surprise that tennis shoes were the first items of clothing that became important in a fashion sense. It was in 6th grade that I learned that I wore buddies.
We were changing classes and a kid who wasn't in any of my classes started laughing at me and pointing at my shoes. When he said I was wearing buddies I didn't know what in the hell he was talking about. My comic book geek friends didn't know either, but my juvenile delinquent friends did. Once I found out, I didn't care. I was much more into comics, Hot Wheels, and television to care. It was the crushes on the girls that did me in.
I started hitting the roller rink in 7th grade and while I didn't become a slave to fashion I started to notice what the girls liked. Levi's jeans (always button fly) replaced the Tough Skins. I wore a fat comb in a back pocket even though my curly locks resisted taming. I never could get that feathered look that was all the rage for girls and boys. I got a sweatshirt with my school's name, Central Middle, emblazoned across it. I got into the corporate rock and roll marketing machine purchasing some Kiss shorts. This was all mild compared to 8th grade.
I got the greatest pair of shoes I'll ever have had: canvas Nike tennis shoes with the light blue swoop. They had the classic sole that could squeak even on dry floors. They went with everything too. I pleaded for them. I cajoled. I begged with every fiber of my being to get a pair before school began. I was in a new town. I needed all the help I could get to meet the cool kids. It worked too. The preppies and jocks accepted me right into their cliques. Being me, I promptly started hanging out with some of the rock and roll freaks. I even started wearing Keds before the school year was over which was just one step over the buddy line. You wouldn't catch any of the freaks wearing an Izod Lacoste shirt like Bucky Rice - he had Lacoste shirts for every day of the week.
But I wasn't a freak. I was just some in between kid that got along with most everybody. 9th grade saw us moving back to Murfreesboro. I would be in another new school. I wanted an Izod Lacoste shirt to help me fit in this time. They were a bit more pricey than the shoes and it took some doing to convince my mother. I nagged her enough until one day she packed me in the car and we drove across town to Harveys which was the only store in Murfreesboro that we know harbored any of those polo shirts with the alligator on them (yeah I know it's really a crocodile). So I ended up with an item that was technically in fashion, but in what would set the tone for future fashion purchases I ended up with the most godawful ugly alligator shirt ever made. It was a green and yellow striped thing. The word garish might have even been on the wash and wear tag. If it wasn't it should have been. It wasn't my choice. It was my mother's wallet's choice.
I wore the damned item for picture day and then chucked it into the closet. I couldn't make friends at Oakland High. I started wearing whatever the hell I wanted to which meant jeans and flannel. It was the era when I slept in my clothes and I'd wear the same items for days. Imagine...me not making any friends! I liked to wear concert t-shirts over the flannel shirts. If that was ever a trend; I'm taking responsibility for it. The only fashion trend that year I briefly rocked: ag-boy chic which fit right in with my flannel wear since all you needed was a Co-op cap with the brim made into a duck's bill and a pair of work boots. Taking agriculture didn't hurt either. I can still spot a Poland China from a mile away.
Farm life looked good from the city, but when we moved to a farm before 10th grade started I found out I wasn't much for farming. So the look I suddenly wanted included penny loafers and a striped Oxford shirt. The penny loafers part was easy. The shirt was easy to mess up. I wanted an Arrow shirt with a button down collar. So I got a pink shirt with white stripes. This was bad enough, but to make it worse it didn't have a button down collar. It had a big white collar that was kept in place by a gold pin. It was like I was Charlie Brown - heck I would have looked better dressed like Chuck.
So I went back to the old standby of Levi's, concert shirts, and freak shoes. Freak shoes are normally called wallabees, but just like it's only preppies and jocks that liked Timberland boots back then only stoners and heavy metal fans wore wallabees when I was in high school; hence freak shoes. Then it turned cold and Member's Only jackets became the thing to have. I didn't even want one and my parents didn't disappoint me there. They bought me this huge bulky black nylon thing that had zippered pockets all over it. If it had been leather people would have thought I was into S & M.
The nylon I wanted was parachute pants. Jeff Blair had a pair and Jeff was one of the coolest cats around. He drove a Trans Am, played electric guitar, and went to all of the rock concerts in Nashville. He'd wear the latest cool t-shirt with his black parachute pants which always had a bandanna or two tied around a leg. He also rocked a wicked mullet along with a penchant for camouflage pants. I never did get a pair of parachute pants, but I did get some camo pants inspired by the film The Wild Life and Jeff.
The camouflage pants were a good springboard toward my senior year wish it was punk rock but New Wave will do look. The thrift store suit jacket was the most vital component of this look. It gave a person lots of room to place rock and roll buttons and it went great with a t-shirt. My friend Bruno was a maniac about buttons covering the front of his along with rocking a fedora. I took an old denim jacket and turned it into a punk jacket with Sharpie slogans covering the back. The best fashion moment of the year was in the spring at a world history academic contest where the teacher told me I needed to take off the DIY anarchy button I had made.
I had found my look! Thrift store garb was the way to go for me. Overlayered with a suit jacket filled with buttons screamed intellectual to me. An old USMC trench coat completed the picture in winter. I thought I was something walking across the college campus smoking a clove cigarette. This look would get me through most of one semester until I dropped out. It was the era of Wally's disillusionment.
I went to work and I got drunk. That's what I did for almost two years straight. Then my life was saved by rock and roll and skateboarding. I started singing with The Dislocated and then I started skating with the Gonz and Papoose. I even got back into college. When I went back to Riverdale High to play a gig in front of the whole student body with The Dislocated I wore camouflage pants, the JFA t-shirt that would later land me a chick, Chuck Taylor's, some John Lennon granny style sunglasses, and a Cubs baseball cap. It was a dreadful look, but it was me. We filmed the show and maybe someday we'll put some of it on Youtube.
If that fashion mistake wasn't enough I spent the next few years wearing day-glo flavored shorts, Vans skate shoes, and rock and roll t-shirts to go with various hairstyles like the buzzcut, the dyed blonde, the 90210, the long and shaggy, the long and shaggy but shaved underneath aka the Jason Newsted, the shaved except for one shock of hair aka the modified Zippy, and then the dyed red trying to dye it blonde haircut. It could have been worse, the Gonz liked the Body Glove look.
By the mid-90's the skater shorts were gone, but now I was prone to wearing lots of plaid. That's how I was dressing when I met the future Soulfish wife. I had gone back to the thrift stores in earnest which at the time were stocked with Izod Lacoste shirts. I bought dark colors. I liked button up sweaters, khakis, and low top Vans. I could have passed for emo even though that musical movement was many years away from becoming a codified thing. The Soulfish wife helped to tighten up my look and it hasn't changed much since then.
My fashion sense today is primarily dictated by work: khakis and a company polo shirt. When not at work it's the casual daddy style: rock and roll, button down, or rugby shirts, shorts or jeans, tennis shoes or loafers, and perhaps a baseball cap. Add a sweater during the winter and I'm happy. Gone are the days when I might rock an African dashiki (picked up in D.C. at an African festival during the Iran-Contra era), a tie-dyed shirt with the Soviet cross and sickle (Fat Sammy told me I'd get my ass kicked wearing that shirt when visiting Ripley, Mississippi one summer - I should have been beat for pairing the shirt with a pair of pink plaid Bermuda shorts), tortoise shell Raybans, or a hooded Baja shirt.
I now get to survive my own children's fashion wants. The girls' big thing this summer was getting a pair of Crocs. They didn't mind when they got knock-offs. They're only 7 and 4 so the peer pressure isn't so great, yet. I'm sure it won't be long until we're being asked, cajoled, and begged for the latest hot item and while we won't acquiesce to all of their demands we'll try and make them happy when it's appropriate and I promise no green and yellow monstrosities allowed.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Nashville Rock Post Replay
Last year I put up a 4 part series written by myself and friend DD Blank on the Nashville Rock Scene circa 1978 up to recently and there are still folks out there stumbling across it. Often, they read one part and can't find the next part or read just a couple of the entries not realizing there's more. So, in the interest of these people kind enough to waste some time visiting this blog I'm posting links to all 4 parts in this post:
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 1
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 2
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 3
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 4
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 1
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 2
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 3
Rick Champion Opened A Hot Dog Stand Part 4
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Wally's Trip To NYC 1990 (My 9-11 Remembrance)
I went from Nashville to Lynchburg, Virginia one fine summer afternoon with the ultimate destination being Manhattan. I promptly developed a nose bleed somewhere around Knoxville. It must have been the higher elevation. We were to spend the evening at DD's grandmother's house. We must have left on a Sunday because we were excited about getting to see 120 Minutes in the basement of her home. Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" debuted that night and we were sure we had seen the future of popular rock and roll. The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies made an impression on us too. We rambled around the Virginia countryside and took in Colonial Williamsburg and DD's alma mater William & Mary too. We ate fresh baked bread made by his grandmother knowing we wouldn't have it so good until we stopped for the night on our return. DD ate my salad while his grandmother's back was turned so she wouldn't be disappointed in my appetite.
Appomattox was next on our list to visit. We stopped in the early morning haze to indulge in history. I was Civil War mad as a youth and I would visit Stones River Battlefield outside of Murfreesboro often. Appomattox was such an unassuming place to have witnessed such a momentous event. Somehow it was totally fitting. We didn't stay long since we needed to get to Richmond where one of DD's college friends, Randy, had offered us a night's lodging. We also wanted to devote some quality time to record store hopping.
We hit the Fan section of Richmond including a visit to Plan 9 Records. I wondered about how GWAR could have come from the VCU environs with all of the brightly painted pretty houses. We ran into a weird record store owner in some small shop in downtown Richmond who tried to peddle us some Ramones bootlegs. He detailed how gruesome the Jersey Turnpike was when we told him where we were headed later on our trip. What makes tourists want to open up before complete strangers; especially nutty record store proprietors.
I was the Bundini Brown to DD's Ali, the Kerouac to his Neal Cassaday until it came time to play softball that night with Randy. Randy and his fiancee Karen played for her accountants' team and they were shorthanded. DD refused to play since his hand eye coordination just wasn't suited for the slow paced world of softball, but I jumped at the chance to join their team. I hadn't played in years so I figured they would stick me in right field, but instead I was placed at first. I promptly committed a boneheaded error when I let a lazy blooper fall between me and Karen.
My first at bat was almost a disaster as I hit a slow roller into the infield, but I couldn't take another blow to my fragile ball playing ego that early in the contest so I made like Ricky Henderson and beat the throw to first for an infield hit. The rest of the evening went smooth as butter flavored popcorn as I made defensive stops at first and bashed out hit after hit to help lead the accountants to a victory. Their ultra-competitive third basemen that had been angry at me earlier had changed his tune asking me if I would join the team for good. It was tempting to remain in Richmond for the summer, but DD and I had to stick to our plan. We checked out Monument Avenue and then wished goodbye to Randy and Karen. We had a big day of driving ahead.
Baltimore, Delaware, and then North Brunswick, New Jersey were on tap. We caught a big break when the backup in the harbor tunnel at Baltimore was headed south. The bridge over the Delaware River loomed massively before disappearing briefly and then we on it excited at what lay in wait on the deadly Jersey Turnpike, which turned out to be just as dull as most highway systems are with none of the carnage or crazy drivers promised to us by the wacky record store owner in Richmond. We made better time than expected and ended up with time to kill in North Brunswick waiting for DD's bud Derek The Great to get off work.
DD and I made like good dumb Southern rubes when we decided to turn into a mall to waste time. The street system there was not like it is in Nashville and while we waited to make a left hand turn irate motorists behind honked their horns and screamed epithets at us. We just thought it was typical Yankee rudeness until we later figured out how the highways worked. We'd have yelled and honked at us too.
The mall was your typical suburban wasteland of junk filled to the brim that season with Simpson's merchandising. We killed time by killing our souls and then made it to Derek The Great's home where we were shown great courtesy by his gracious parents. Derek The Great showed us around North and South Brunswick that evening bragging about the number of bars per capita and taking us to the coolest record shop in town. We drove by his old high school which was atop a great hill. "When the weather is clear you can see the World Trade Center from here," mused Derek The Great. I thought I saw their lights, but it was a hazy night and it might have just been my dreams of visiting the city the next day were interfering with my eyes. He took us to a local market where I played some pinball and then tried to chat up the girl behind the counter showing the typical boldness I had when traveling that would never happen back home. We watched Letterman since he was still funny back then and I eventually fell to a fitful sleep.
I awoke to the sounds of breakfast. I don't know if I had ever had bagel before that day, but they were delicious. We got ready and soon we were in a brown train station that looked like it stepped out of the pages of On The Road waiting for the train that would take us into Manhattan. It clacked and swayed while the industrial wasteland section of New Jersey went by like some jerky anti-pollution classroom film from the 70's. I strained to try and see glimpses of the fabled isle, but soon we were in a tunnel with our next stop Grand Central Station.
DD had been to NYC before and obviously Derek The Great spent lots of time here since he was a 30 to 40 minute trip away, but the biggest city I had visited had been Atlanta. I had been absorbing scenes of New York from television starting with Sesame Street and I was excited about being there in the flesh. Grand Central didn't disappoint with its vast square footage with all of it occupied by commuters bustling as if they were all on roller skates. A fast pace might not be what most like, but as a punk rock junkie I liked breakneck speed in my music and my life. Our time here would be limited so we joined the horde.
First we had to go meet Derek The Great's lady friend. I know we were properly introduced, but I've forgotten her name. I do remember having to be buzzed into her lobby which was something new for me. Our first destination was the Metropolitan Museum so we could get us a whole heaping bowl of high culture and art. Plus I had always wanted to visit the place after reading From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler as a child. It did not disappoint me. We saw a Tiffany's exhibit. We saw lots of Egyptian stuff and the Jackson Pollack paintings amazed with their size.
Next up was a visit to the comic book mecca, Forbidden Planet, where Spiderman himself was making an in-store visit. It was conveniently located by Tower Records which is where Derek's lady informed DD and I about this awesome record store in Princeton, New Jersey called the Record Exchange. DD's Spock ears went up since he was planning on us cutting through Jersey. We went to a pizza slice place for lunch where we got “soup nazi” type service. Some Southerners might have found it rude, but I thought it was very efficient. I've never been a fan of people that like to talk to clerks when there's a line behind them. I made the mistake of giving some spare change to a bum. I felt sorry for him because he was wearing a Knicks shirt, but as soon as I handed him my change a line formed behind him of beggars materializing as if from thin air.
We made a pilgrimage to the Bowery and C.B.G.B.'s naturally. Since we had done pretty much what we wanted; we let Derek's lady pick the last spot of the day. She took us down to the old seaport. It was cool to be able to see the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue Of Liberty from it, but it was ultimately just a mall in a throwback uniform. Since nightfall was upon us we took a taxi to Penn Station. The driver was Middle Eastern, the ride was super fast through chaotic streets, and I loved it.
We went by the Empire State Building and Derek's lady made a remark about our wonderful Southern accents. DD and I laughed. When we're home in Tennessee everybody thought we were Yankees. So we started laying on what accent we had super thick. It was a fun game. “Wow is that Madison Squaredance Garden?”
We got on the train for Jersey and headed back to Derek's for one more night before our trip took us towards Allentown, Pennsylvania. We crossed through the middle of Jersey making sure to stop in Princeton. We toured the university and then the most important part: the Record Exchange. We went there with subdued hopes, but were bowled over by the riches inside. If only we'd had several days and lots more money to shop there. Soon we had to press on.
My ultimate destination had been Manhattan, but DD's actual mission was to attend a wedding in Allentown. It was an afterthought to me. Heck, I figured I'd stay in the hotel while the wedding was happening. I didn't know any of DD's friends except for the few I'd met during the trip. When I found out I'd have to attend the wedding I got just a little ticked off. I refused to eat the buffet at the hotel which got DD mad. When he found out I didn't have a suit jacket packed or a tie I knew I was really getting under his skin. I hadn't expected to go to a wedding I told him as I munched my Dominos pizza I had ordered. DD had packed an extra jacket and tie and being similar in size it would do. I dreaded the next day.
Allentown was a dump. I was in a foul mood. There was no way the day would turn out well. Often when I focus on the purely negative it has a way of turning around into a positive. This was the case at the wedding of DD's pal Dan Berry. It began with a joke by the pastor about there not being so many Southerners in the area since Lee was at Gettysburg and got better as the ceremony went on. I'd never been to an Episcopal wedding and I thought all the standing up and sitting down and reciting was interesting. So I had a good time until DD informed me that next we were heading to the Pocono's for the reception.
My negative vibes started spinning around again. Then I got served chicken cordon bleu. There was a band. Even better was the wet bar. Free liquor meant one happy Wally; especially since I wasn't driving. We still wished we had drank more when the afternoon was over. We had a long slow speed limit slog down the Pennsylvania Turnpike ahead of us. You damn sure couldn't miss the hex signs on the barns or the huge signs warning of the huge fine you’d receive if you drove just 1 mile over the limit. We had been warned that the traffic cops meant business so we toed the line. It was ridiculous and it seemed like forever.
We eventually made it out, cruising through West Virginia and Maryland, before heading for the Shenandoah Valley where we were convinced it was the place where oldies format radio went to die. There are also no gas stations around. We almost ran out of gas before filling up not far from UVA. Then it was Lynchburg late at night and the welcome basement of DD's grandmother.
One more day on the road and we were home. It was the longest trip of my life at the time. Other things I remember: The amount of Kiss stuff in the Jersey record stores. Kiss was many years removed from their initial fame or their eventual comeback, but they never went away there. Meeting DD's friend Dorian at William & Mary. Buying a Secret Affair album in Richmond and then listening to at Randy's pad. Just shooting the shit with Derek The Great. Looking for Lehigh University and never really knowing if we had found it our not. But the thing I remember most is the World Trade Center.
The obvious reason why was 9-11-2001. I think back to 1990 and that day in Manhattan. The two towers were always popping into sight as we went through the city. I've got snapshots of them I took from blocks away. My pop culture obsessed mind saw them as the place that King Kong had climbed and the place where the cast of Godspell sang their final song. They were abstract even as I saw them in person.
Until that beautiful September day when they disappeared in a burst of crumbling dust and they have stood concrete and resolute in my mind ever since. Even though it’s something I don't want to summon, wishing those scumbags had never been to flight school, the anger I felt that day is quick to come. The images of people leaping from the windows and the smoke and turmoil aren't pleasant, but they'll be with me forever. I had only known NYC from television and the movies until I visited it in 1990 and how strange it was to hear people describe the events of 9-11 as being like a movie. But there were no stunt people used. The loss of innocent life is what should be remembered and lamented. The 2,996 project is devoted to remembering those that lost their life in the terrorist attacks.
I didn't know anyone that lost their life that day but Derek The Great's words haunted me that day as they still do today, "When the weather is clear you can see the World Trade Center from here," spoken at his high school atop a hill in North Brunswick. It was such a normal thing to say for a Jersey boy filled with pride entertaining a couple of good ole boys from Tennessee. It just reminds me of how normal it was for those people going about their business on 9-11. Everything since feels askew.
Appomattox was next on our list to visit. We stopped in the early morning haze to indulge in history. I was Civil War mad as a youth and I would visit Stones River Battlefield outside of Murfreesboro often. Appomattox was such an unassuming place to have witnessed such a momentous event. Somehow it was totally fitting. We didn't stay long since we needed to get to Richmond where one of DD's college friends, Randy, had offered us a night's lodging. We also wanted to devote some quality time to record store hopping.
We hit the Fan section of Richmond including a visit to Plan 9 Records. I wondered about how GWAR could have come from the VCU environs with all of the brightly painted pretty houses. We ran into a weird record store owner in some small shop in downtown Richmond who tried to peddle us some Ramones bootlegs. He detailed how gruesome the Jersey Turnpike was when we told him where we were headed later on our trip. What makes tourists want to open up before complete strangers; especially nutty record store proprietors.
I was the Bundini Brown to DD's Ali, the Kerouac to his Neal Cassaday until it came time to play softball that night with Randy. Randy and his fiancee Karen played for her accountants' team and they were shorthanded. DD refused to play since his hand eye coordination just wasn't suited for the slow paced world of softball, but I jumped at the chance to join their team. I hadn't played in years so I figured they would stick me in right field, but instead I was placed at first. I promptly committed a boneheaded error when I let a lazy blooper fall between me and Karen.
My first at bat was almost a disaster as I hit a slow roller into the infield, but I couldn't take another blow to my fragile ball playing ego that early in the contest so I made like Ricky Henderson and beat the throw to first for an infield hit. The rest of the evening went smooth as butter flavored popcorn as I made defensive stops at first and bashed out hit after hit to help lead the accountants to a victory. Their ultra-competitive third basemen that had been angry at me earlier had changed his tune asking me if I would join the team for good. It was tempting to remain in Richmond for the summer, but DD and I had to stick to our plan. We checked out Monument Avenue and then wished goodbye to Randy and Karen. We had a big day of driving ahead.
Baltimore, Delaware, and then North Brunswick, New Jersey were on tap. We caught a big break when the backup in the harbor tunnel at Baltimore was headed south. The bridge over the Delaware River loomed massively before disappearing briefly and then we on it excited at what lay in wait on the deadly Jersey Turnpike, which turned out to be just as dull as most highway systems are with none of the carnage or crazy drivers promised to us by the wacky record store owner in Richmond. We made better time than expected and ended up with time to kill in North Brunswick waiting for DD's bud Derek The Great to get off work.
DD and I made like good dumb Southern rubes when we decided to turn into a mall to waste time. The street system there was not like it is in Nashville and while we waited to make a left hand turn irate motorists behind honked their horns and screamed epithets at us. We just thought it was typical Yankee rudeness until we later figured out how the highways worked. We'd have yelled and honked at us too.
The mall was your typical suburban wasteland of junk filled to the brim that season with Simpson's merchandising. We killed time by killing our souls and then made it to Derek The Great's home where we were shown great courtesy by his gracious parents. Derek The Great showed us around North and South Brunswick that evening bragging about the number of bars per capita and taking us to the coolest record shop in town. We drove by his old high school which was atop a great hill. "When the weather is clear you can see the World Trade Center from here," mused Derek The Great. I thought I saw their lights, but it was a hazy night and it might have just been my dreams of visiting the city the next day were interfering with my eyes. He took us to a local market where I played some pinball and then tried to chat up the girl behind the counter showing the typical boldness I had when traveling that would never happen back home. We watched Letterman since he was still funny back then and I eventually fell to a fitful sleep.
I awoke to the sounds of breakfast. I don't know if I had ever had bagel before that day, but they were delicious. We got ready and soon we were in a brown train station that looked like it stepped out of the pages of On The Road waiting for the train that would take us into Manhattan. It clacked and swayed while the industrial wasteland section of New Jersey went by like some jerky anti-pollution classroom film from the 70's. I strained to try and see glimpses of the fabled isle, but soon we were in a tunnel with our next stop Grand Central Station.
DD had been to NYC before and obviously Derek The Great spent lots of time here since he was a 30 to 40 minute trip away, but the biggest city I had visited had been Atlanta. I had been absorbing scenes of New York from television starting with Sesame Street and I was excited about being there in the flesh. Grand Central didn't disappoint with its vast square footage with all of it occupied by commuters bustling as if they were all on roller skates. A fast pace might not be what most like, but as a punk rock junkie I liked breakneck speed in my music and my life. Our time here would be limited so we joined the horde.
First we had to go meet Derek The Great's lady friend. I know we were properly introduced, but I've forgotten her name. I do remember having to be buzzed into her lobby which was something new for me. Our first destination was the Metropolitan Museum so we could get us a whole heaping bowl of high culture and art. Plus I had always wanted to visit the place after reading From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler as a child. It did not disappoint me. We saw a Tiffany's exhibit. We saw lots of Egyptian stuff and the Jackson Pollack paintings amazed with their size.
Next up was a visit to the comic book mecca, Forbidden Planet, where Spiderman himself was making an in-store visit. It was conveniently located by Tower Records which is where Derek's lady informed DD and I about this awesome record store in Princeton, New Jersey called the Record Exchange. DD's Spock ears went up since he was planning on us cutting through Jersey. We went to a pizza slice place for lunch where we got “soup nazi” type service. Some Southerners might have found it rude, but I thought it was very efficient. I've never been a fan of people that like to talk to clerks when there's a line behind them. I made the mistake of giving some spare change to a bum. I felt sorry for him because he was wearing a Knicks shirt, but as soon as I handed him my change a line formed behind him of beggars materializing as if from thin air.
We made a pilgrimage to the Bowery and C.B.G.B.'s naturally. Since we had done pretty much what we wanted; we let Derek's lady pick the last spot of the day. She took us down to the old seaport. It was cool to be able to see the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue Of Liberty from it, but it was ultimately just a mall in a throwback uniform. Since nightfall was upon us we took a taxi to Penn Station. The driver was Middle Eastern, the ride was super fast through chaotic streets, and I loved it.
We went by the Empire State Building and Derek's lady made a remark about our wonderful Southern accents. DD and I laughed. When we're home in Tennessee everybody thought we were Yankees. So we started laying on what accent we had super thick. It was a fun game. “Wow is that Madison Squaredance Garden?”
We got on the train for Jersey and headed back to Derek's for one more night before our trip took us towards Allentown, Pennsylvania. We crossed through the middle of Jersey making sure to stop in Princeton. We toured the university and then the most important part: the Record Exchange. We went there with subdued hopes, but were bowled over by the riches inside. If only we'd had several days and lots more money to shop there. Soon we had to press on.
My ultimate destination had been Manhattan, but DD's actual mission was to attend a wedding in Allentown. It was an afterthought to me. Heck, I figured I'd stay in the hotel while the wedding was happening. I didn't know any of DD's friends except for the few I'd met during the trip. When I found out I'd have to attend the wedding I got just a little ticked off. I refused to eat the buffet at the hotel which got DD mad. When he found out I didn't have a suit jacket packed or a tie I knew I was really getting under his skin. I hadn't expected to go to a wedding I told him as I munched my Dominos pizza I had ordered. DD had packed an extra jacket and tie and being similar in size it would do. I dreaded the next day.
Allentown was a dump. I was in a foul mood. There was no way the day would turn out well. Often when I focus on the purely negative it has a way of turning around into a positive. This was the case at the wedding of DD's pal Dan Berry. It began with a joke by the pastor about there not being so many Southerners in the area since Lee was at Gettysburg and got better as the ceremony went on. I'd never been to an Episcopal wedding and I thought all the standing up and sitting down and reciting was interesting. So I had a good time until DD informed me that next we were heading to the Pocono's for the reception.
My negative vibes started spinning around again. Then I got served chicken cordon bleu. There was a band. Even better was the wet bar. Free liquor meant one happy Wally; especially since I wasn't driving. We still wished we had drank more when the afternoon was over. We had a long slow speed limit slog down the Pennsylvania Turnpike ahead of us. You damn sure couldn't miss the hex signs on the barns or the huge signs warning of the huge fine you’d receive if you drove just 1 mile over the limit. We had been warned that the traffic cops meant business so we toed the line. It was ridiculous and it seemed like forever.
We eventually made it out, cruising through West Virginia and Maryland, before heading for the Shenandoah Valley where we were convinced it was the place where oldies format radio went to die. There are also no gas stations around. We almost ran out of gas before filling up not far from UVA. Then it was Lynchburg late at night and the welcome basement of DD's grandmother.
One more day on the road and we were home. It was the longest trip of my life at the time. Other things I remember: The amount of Kiss stuff in the Jersey record stores. Kiss was many years removed from their initial fame or their eventual comeback, but they never went away there. Meeting DD's friend Dorian at William & Mary. Buying a Secret Affair album in Richmond and then listening to at Randy's pad. Just shooting the shit with Derek The Great. Looking for Lehigh University and never really knowing if we had found it our not. But the thing I remember most is the World Trade Center.
The obvious reason why was 9-11-2001. I think back to 1990 and that day in Manhattan. The two towers were always popping into sight as we went through the city. I've got snapshots of them I took from blocks away. My pop culture obsessed mind saw them as the place that King Kong had climbed and the place where the cast of Godspell sang their final song. They were abstract even as I saw them in person.
Until that beautiful September day when they disappeared in a burst of crumbling dust and they have stood concrete and resolute in my mind ever since. Even though it’s something I don't want to summon, wishing those scumbags had never been to flight school, the anger I felt that day is quick to come. The images of people leaping from the windows and the smoke and turmoil aren't pleasant, but they'll be with me forever. I had only known NYC from television and the movies until I visited it in 1990 and how strange it was to hear people describe the events of 9-11 as being like a movie. But there were no stunt people used. The loss of innocent life is what should be remembered and lamented. The 2,996 project is devoted to remembering those that lost their life in the terrorist attacks.
I didn't know anyone that lost their life that day but Derek The Great's words haunted me that day as they still do today, "When the weather is clear you can see the World Trade Center from here," spoken at his high school atop a hill in North Brunswick. It was such a normal thing to say for a Jersey boy filled with pride entertaining a couple of good ole boys from Tennessee. It just reminds me of how normal it was for those people going about their business on 9-11. Everything since feels askew.
Wally's World Of Work part 2
Part 2
Okay so I lied. Just a little bit. There will be no short story with this post because the story was not as short as I remembered, I've been super busy, and it's ultimately just not all that good. I will post some excerpts from it and you can let me know if you want it all. Circle Of Light, for that is the title, concerned one party in the summer of 1985 and the month or so I spent at the Smyrna McDonalds. This Mickey D's short tenure is what this post is about.
To refresh your memory of where we left off: I was bound for Memphis State in September. At least that was the plan. I had even toured the dormitory I would be living in earlier that summer. So I put in my two weeks notice. I worked those last two weeks in a bit of daze. I spent the last day doing much of nothing. It was a tradition of sorts. Then right on the eve of moving to Memphis I learned my parents either didn't have enough money for it or just didn't want me to move away. I had covered my living expenses. They were supposed to have come up with tuition. So I ended up at M.T.S.U. that fall which is quite the novella of disillusionment and pseudo artistic angst that I'll post here soon.
I should have gone back to work at the McDonalds in Murfreesboro. But I didn't. I viewed such a move as a failure. So I decided to try the Smyrna Mickey D's instead. It was closer to where I lived. That was my justification. The story of that job is short and almost violent. Why you ask? Well it was because of Why. That's why.
The store manager was some dude named Mark Why - real names be proof as The Minutemen put it so nicely. He seemed cool at first, but he soon turned out to be my own personal Satan of the deep fryers. The job wasn't too bad at first. The only real difference from the Murfreesboro McDonalds was that the cooks had to wrap the food (I was terrible at it - origami is just not my thing) and they had a compulsion about parking lot cleanliness yet didn't appreciate when I took thirty minutes to do it one night. Most of the crew was still in high school though a few were college age. I even knew a couple of dudes from back when I used to live in Smyrna during 8th grade. They wanted to celebrate my return to Smyrna by going to the old Rock School site to smoke some kill. It was that kind of work environment.
It would have been complete misery except for the girl there who taught me how to sweep. Her name was Melissa Shelby. I developed a mad crush for her; the irrational youthful sort that is doomed from the start.
From Circle Of Light: McDonalds = repetitious tasks, evil customers, and a uniform of lovely brown polyester. Yep...you just can't look any more suave when decked out in a McD's uniform. Flip the burgers, sear the burgers, wrap the burgers, clean the parking lot and don't let one cigarette butt escape your attention, mop the blood off the tile floor. What an exciting place to be until 1am in the morning then coming in the next day at 5am. I'd drag ass into the place in the morning in an anti-social stupor trying not to f***k up the egg mcmuffins. I avoided my fellow employees as if they were live mines.
I would recite Zen koans under my breath to help fight the deadness I felt and everybody would laugh at me and the deadness would inch closer. My co-workers were all faceless masks, dope fiends, or orphans of intelligence. Until I met Melissa Shelby.
She was mysterious and new. My job was suddenly worth going to in the afternoons. Polyester never looked better. She wore her light brown hair cut in a bob and her large eyes which she claimed gave her x-ray vision. I tried to act groovy but she saw right through me. I wasn't about to fool her with my sensitive bohemian act. I needed to prove I wasn’t just a pseudo-intellectual. So I went to the M.T.S.U. library and checked out some Nietzsche. Listened to my Richard Hell albums and wished she would murder my heart.
All of this from the story is true. Perhaps the romantic vision is idealized, but the misery wasn't. The place was a prison. When Jason And The Scorchers played the Last Chance Dance that fall I couldn't go even though I asked off for the show weeks earlier. I was the low man in a highly stratified system so I never got time off. The best I got to do was listening to a few minutes of it broadcast over the radio in the break room that day. The job sucked, but when they started in with me closing every Friday night and coming in at daybreak on Saturday repeatedly I quickly got sick of the crap.
I had a talk with Mark Why. Why? Because I was pissed. He assured me that the scheduling anomaly would be addressed and I wouldn't have to work such shifts back to back again. The schedule comes out for the next week and damn if it's the same as ever including a Friday night closing and Saturday morning opening. Mr. Why and I had some words. Mine were loud and laced with what I thought was punk rock venom, but probably would sound more like whining if I could hear a replay now, but the gist of it was that Smyrna High School was having a big dance that Friday night which is why I was on the schedule. Why threw around words like teamwork, cooperation, and promise, but I had heard those same words just a week before. I had probably made up my mind to quit during that meeting. Not only to quit, but to work my schedule through that coming Thursday and then just not come in on Friday. To hell with them. To hell with all dances but slam dances. Cats Records in the 'Boro was having a free concert and that's where I needed to be.
I jazzed all of this up in the short story: The world that had once seemed so big kept getting smaller all the time. The job bore down upon with hydraulic certainty and the grease spattered me to my bones. But I kept coming in to work as a curious blankness of feeling came over me. I detached my thoughts to focus only upon Melissa. I might have been just a fragment, but she was complete.
Late at night I would sit up writing her into myth. She was my Zelda Fitzgerald and Carolyn Cassady. I would come in for the breakfast shift and she was there biting her lip like she would do and somehow this made me think of Salinger's Franny reciting prayers under her breath. Just when it seemed like I'd make some deeper connection with her the chaotic work environment would pull her away. Our voices would be drowned out by timers and orders, but there was the one grand evening after close where she taught me the proper way to sweep. I should have told her that she had already swept me off my feet.
I started writing poems for her; each one a mess of sticky Hallmark sweet homilies. I ripped them out of notebooks and scattered them through my room in the hope they would rewrite themselves. They were my fetishes of failure. I spent hours in the college library imagining I was Kerouac after his football injury at Columbia.
One night out of the blue Bruno called me up to go out drinking. He had quit the Army reserve in a fit of madness. On The Road was our favorite book and he had decided to become Dean Moriarty. He had fallen out with his girlfriend and decided to embark on a 3 day binge of drinking & purification. If life seemed slow in arriving the least one could do while waiting was get drunk. We sat behind his house talking about the ruin of our youth seeing who could out do the other when it came to horrible predictions. Everything was tragic and sentimental and stupid including us. I went on about Melissa and the mental agony of the golden arches.
Bruno's simple advice, "Quit."
I swallowed down some more Heaven Hill whiskey and it seemed right. I would work my shift tomorrow on Thursday and that would be it. I would tell Melissa how I felt about her and see what would happen. It gave me an adrenaline rush to think about it all. I drove home that night filled with a beatific joy and it wasn't just the whiskey. I bumped into my bedroom and adjusted my eyes to the dim light. The LED from my clock/radio cast a ghostly light upon the scattered poems I had written for Melissa. A car would drive past every now and then and the room would be awash with momentary brightness until the car made the corner and the light and sound would fade until I finally fell asleep. When I awoke I wondered if the previous day had been just a dream.
Bruno called me up later to remind me that I had agreed to quit and confess my love to Melissa. Quitting would be the best thing to do because if Melissa turned me down there would be no point in ever showing up again.
I tried to look cool in my uniform that night. I sat in the break room with a cigarette dangling from my lips like Marlon Brando and James Dean forgetting that the icon of the moment was the machine gun toting Sly Stone in Rambo II. Melissa came into the break room smiling sweetly. I dreamed about kissing her, but instead I just asked her what's up. We did the chit and did the chat thing and then I told her I was quitting. She told me she hated quitters and went back to work. I felt like I was just 2 inches tall. I didn't inhabit reality. I was just a pseudo-intellectual over analyzing every moment of my life checking out books from the library and then barely glancing through them I was so wrapped up in what was going on in my head. Cigarette ash drifted to the floor. I'd have to mop it up later.
The night passed by in a shadow form. I wanted to tell the girl I loved her, but I was just a quitter. It wasn't that she really hated me; she just didn't understand why I was leaving. A thousand times that night I thought I should talk to her, but the right moment was hanging out in some other town talking to some other girl. I had finally worked up the courage as we walked out the door. The closing crew gathered in the empty parking lot for some 2am loitering. I turned my head for a second and lost track of Melissa. How can you lose track of somebody in a group of 6 people in a deserted shopping center parking lot.
I stepped out from the shadow of a lamp post and I saw her. She was walking halfway across the shopping center lot singing faintly to herself. She reached one of the lamp posts and stood beneath it in a perfect circle of light. Somebody behind me yelled and I looked back for just a second. When I turned around Melissa had vanished again. I started across the lot to where she had been. The parking lot lamps started to go out one by one; they would flare for a moment and then with an angry buzz softly fade to black until finally the only light left came from the post Melissa had stood under.
That's the end of the story. And that was the way my last night at that McDonalds went. The part about her hating quitters, the cigarette, and the parking lot is all true. I did find her at her car not too long after I had walked across the lot, but I just said goodbye to her with the intention of seeing her again. I never did. It was just a string of workplace related infatuations for me that never went anywhere. I'll probably write about some more of them in passing as we cycle through all of the places I've worked, but don't worry; I won't go into much detail and I promise no more excerpts from short stories written when I was 19. As for the Smyrna McDonalds - I hope Mark Why had fun working that Friday night of the big dance without me around to flip the burgers. I know I had a blast watching Riff Rath and Burning Hearts in the Cats Records parking lot (Bruno would get threatened by the Burning Hearts manager after he wrote a bad review about them for Sidelines in which he made lots of disparaging references to their effeminate glam metal look).
Next on the list: After a month of idleness and drinking with Bruno I end up at a brand new pizza establishment in Murfreesboro.
Okay so I lied. Just a little bit. There will be no short story with this post because the story was not as short as I remembered, I've been super busy, and it's ultimately just not all that good. I will post some excerpts from it and you can let me know if you want it all. Circle Of Light, for that is the title, concerned one party in the summer of 1985 and the month or so I spent at the Smyrna McDonalds. This Mickey D's short tenure is what this post is about.
To refresh your memory of where we left off: I was bound for Memphis State in September. At least that was the plan. I had even toured the dormitory I would be living in earlier that summer. So I put in my two weeks notice. I worked those last two weeks in a bit of daze. I spent the last day doing much of nothing. It was a tradition of sorts. Then right on the eve of moving to Memphis I learned my parents either didn't have enough money for it or just didn't want me to move away. I had covered my living expenses. They were supposed to have come up with tuition. So I ended up at M.T.S.U. that fall which is quite the novella of disillusionment and pseudo artistic angst that I'll post here soon.
I should have gone back to work at the McDonalds in Murfreesboro. But I didn't. I viewed such a move as a failure. So I decided to try the Smyrna Mickey D's instead. It was closer to where I lived. That was my justification. The story of that job is short and almost violent. Why you ask? Well it was because of Why. That's why.
The store manager was some dude named Mark Why - real names be proof as The Minutemen put it so nicely. He seemed cool at first, but he soon turned out to be my own personal Satan of the deep fryers. The job wasn't too bad at first. The only real difference from the Murfreesboro McDonalds was that the cooks had to wrap the food (I was terrible at it - origami is just not my thing) and they had a compulsion about parking lot cleanliness yet didn't appreciate when I took thirty minutes to do it one night. Most of the crew was still in high school though a few were college age. I even knew a couple of dudes from back when I used to live in Smyrna during 8th grade. They wanted to celebrate my return to Smyrna by going to the old Rock School site to smoke some kill. It was that kind of work environment.
It would have been complete misery except for the girl there who taught me how to sweep. Her name was Melissa Shelby. I developed a mad crush for her; the irrational youthful sort that is doomed from the start.
From Circle Of Light: McDonalds = repetitious tasks, evil customers, and a uniform of lovely brown polyester. Yep...you just can't look any more suave when decked out in a McD's uniform. Flip the burgers, sear the burgers, wrap the burgers, clean the parking lot and don't let one cigarette butt escape your attention, mop the blood off the tile floor. What an exciting place to be until 1am in the morning then coming in the next day at 5am. I'd drag ass into the place in the morning in an anti-social stupor trying not to f***k up the egg mcmuffins. I avoided my fellow employees as if they were live mines.
I would recite Zen koans under my breath to help fight the deadness I felt and everybody would laugh at me and the deadness would inch closer. My co-workers were all faceless masks, dope fiends, or orphans of intelligence. Until I met Melissa Shelby.
She was mysterious and new. My job was suddenly worth going to in the afternoons. Polyester never looked better. She wore her light brown hair cut in a bob and her large eyes which she claimed gave her x-ray vision. I tried to act groovy but she saw right through me. I wasn't about to fool her with my sensitive bohemian act. I needed to prove I wasn’t just a pseudo-intellectual. So I went to the M.T.S.U. library and checked out some Nietzsche. Listened to my Richard Hell albums and wished she would murder my heart.
All of this from the story is true. Perhaps the romantic vision is idealized, but the misery wasn't. The place was a prison. When Jason And The Scorchers played the Last Chance Dance that fall I couldn't go even though I asked off for the show weeks earlier. I was the low man in a highly stratified system so I never got time off. The best I got to do was listening to a few minutes of it broadcast over the radio in the break room that day. The job sucked, but when they started in with me closing every Friday night and coming in at daybreak on Saturday repeatedly I quickly got sick of the crap.
I had a talk with Mark Why. Why? Because I was pissed. He assured me that the scheduling anomaly would be addressed and I wouldn't have to work such shifts back to back again. The schedule comes out for the next week and damn if it's the same as ever including a Friday night closing and Saturday morning opening. Mr. Why and I had some words. Mine were loud and laced with what I thought was punk rock venom, but probably would sound more like whining if I could hear a replay now, but the gist of it was that Smyrna High School was having a big dance that Friday night which is why I was on the schedule. Why threw around words like teamwork, cooperation, and promise, but I had heard those same words just a week before. I had probably made up my mind to quit during that meeting. Not only to quit, but to work my schedule through that coming Thursday and then just not come in on Friday. To hell with them. To hell with all dances but slam dances. Cats Records in the 'Boro was having a free concert and that's where I needed to be.
I jazzed all of this up in the short story: The world that had once seemed so big kept getting smaller all the time. The job bore down upon with hydraulic certainty and the grease spattered me to my bones. But I kept coming in to work as a curious blankness of feeling came over me. I detached my thoughts to focus only upon Melissa. I might have been just a fragment, but she was complete.
Late at night I would sit up writing her into myth. She was my Zelda Fitzgerald and Carolyn Cassady. I would come in for the breakfast shift and she was there biting her lip like she would do and somehow this made me think of Salinger's Franny reciting prayers under her breath. Just when it seemed like I'd make some deeper connection with her the chaotic work environment would pull her away. Our voices would be drowned out by timers and orders, but there was the one grand evening after close where she taught me the proper way to sweep. I should have told her that she had already swept me off my feet.
I started writing poems for her; each one a mess of sticky Hallmark sweet homilies. I ripped them out of notebooks and scattered them through my room in the hope they would rewrite themselves. They were my fetishes of failure. I spent hours in the college library imagining I was Kerouac after his football injury at Columbia.
One night out of the blue Bruno called me up to go out drinking. He had quit the Army reserve in a fit of madness. On The Road was our favorite book and he had decided to become Dean Moriarty. He had fallen out with his girlfriend and decided to embark on a 3 day binge of drinking & purification. If life seemed slow in arriving the least one could do while waiting was get drunk. We sat behind his house talking about the ruin of our youth seeing who could out do the other when it came to horrible predictions. Everything was tragic and sentimental and stupid including us. I went on about Melissa and the mental agony of the golden arches.
Bruno's simple advice, "Quit."
I swallowed down some more Heaven Hill whiskey and it seemed right. I would work my shift tomorrow on Thursday and that would be it. I would tell Melissa how I felt about her and see what would happen. It gave me an adrenaline rush to think about it all. I drove home that night filled with a beatific joy and it wasn't just the whiskey. I bumped into my bedroom and adjusted my eyes to the dim light. The LED from my clock/radio cast a ghostly light upon the scattered poems I had written for Melissa. A car would drive past every now and then and the room would be awash with momentary brightness until the car made the corner and the light and sound would fade until I finally fell asleep. When I awoke I wondered if the previous day had been just a dream.
Bruno called me up later to remind me that I had agreed to quit and confess my love to Melissa. Quitting would be the best thing to do because if Melissa turned me down there would be no point in ever showing up again.
I tried to look cool in my uniform that night. I sat in the break room with a cigarette dangling from my lips like Marlon Brando and James Dean forgetting that the icon of the moment was the machine gun toting Sly Stone in Rambo II. Melissa came into the break room smiling sweetly. I dreamed about kissing her, but instead I just asked her what's up. We did the chit and did the chat thing and then I told her I was quitting. She told me she hated quitters and went back to work. I felt like I was just 2 inches tall. I didn't inhabit reality. I was just a pseudo-intellectual over analyzing every moment of my life checking out books from the library and then barely glancing through them I was so wrapped up in what was going on in my head. Cigarette ash drifted to the floor. I'd have to mop it up later.
The night passed by in a shadow form. I wanted to tell the girl I loved her, but I was just a quitter. It wasn't that she really hated me; she just didn't understand why I was leaving. A thousand times that night I thought I should talk to her, but the right moment was hanging out in some other town talking to some other girl. I had finally worked up the courage as we walked out the door. The closing crew gathered in the empty parking lot for some 2am loitering. I turned my head for a second and lost track of Melissa. How can you lose track of somebody in a group of 6 people in a deserted shopping center parking lot.
I stepped out from the shadow of a lamp post and I saw her. She was walking halfway across the shopping center lot singing faintly to herself. She reached one of the lamp posts and stood beneath it in a perfect circle of light. Somebody behind me yelled and I looked back for just a second. When I turned around Melissa had vanished again. I started across the lot to where she had been. The parking lot lamps started to go out one by one; they would flare for a moment and then with an angry buzz softly fade to black until finally the only light left came from the post Melissa had stood under.
That's the end of the story. And that was the way my last night at that McDonalds went. The part about her hating quitters, the cigarette, and the parking lot is all true. I did find her at her car not too long after I had walked across the lot, but I just said goodbye to her with the intention of seeing her again. I never did. It was just a string of workplace related infatuations for me that never went anywhere. I'll probably write about some more of them in passing as we cycle through all of the places I've worked, but don't worry; I won't go into much detail and I promise no more excerpts from short stories written when I was 19. As for the Smyrna McDonalds - I hope Mark Why had fun working that Friday night of the big dance without me around to flip the burgers. I know I had a blast watching Riff Rath and Burning Hearts in the Cats Records parking lot (Bruno would get threatened by the Burning Hearts manager after he wrote a bad review about them for Sidelines in which he made lots of disparaging references to their effeminate glam metal look).
Next on the list: After a month of idleness and drinking with Bruno I end up at a brand new pizza establishment in Murfreesboro.
Who's Your Dadddy Old Mill Hill!
I did it. I rode my bicycle up Old Mill Hill without stopping to walk up a portion yesterday afternoon. I feel like I can finally say I'm a real bike rider now. Next for me to conquer: Hurricane Ridge.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Holiday Learning
Things I learned over the holiday weekend:
I'm still not a good enough climber on my bicycle to get up Old Mill Hill without stopping halfway up to catch my breath. Maybe later this week.
It should be a good year for deer hunters as I've seen lots of bucks running around in the fields.
A stingray's barbed tail can be fatal which ultimately means a world without a crocodile hunter is a little less fun.
The Jeffersons is still almost funny.
When tent caterpillars take on a cherry tree the cherry tree loses.
Our cat has developed blood lust for mice which is good since that is why we got her.
Lake Wobegon Days is surprisingly good. The backstory: I saw Keillor on Letterman way back in the day and thought he was cool in a goofy sort of way. Mainly I really liked his red socks. I was going to rush out and buy the book, but I kept putting it off until I recently snagged a copy for 50 cents at the McKays in Chattanooga. I finally started it yesterday.
Liam is really good at flipping over stuff. That's why he's now restrained at church and our couch is up against the wall.
I'm still not a good enough climber on my bicycle to get up Old Mill Hill without stopping halfway up to catch my breath. Maybe later this week.
It should be a good year for deer hunters as I've seen lots of bucks running around in the fields.
A stingray's barbed tail can be fatal which ultimately means a world without a crocodile hunter is a little less fun.
The Jeffersons is still almost funny.
When tent caterpillars take on a cherry tree the cherry tree loses.
Our cat has developed blood lust for mice which is good since that is why we got her.
Lake Wobegon Days is surprisingly good. The backstory: I saw Keillor on Letterman way back in the day and thought he was cool in a goofy sort of way. Mainly I really liked his red socks. I was going to rush out and buy the book, but I kept putting it off until I recently snagged a copy for 50 cents at the McKays in Chattanooga. I finally started it yesterday.
Liam is really good at flipping over stuff. That's why he's now restrained at church and our couch is up against the wall.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Arrival Of The Bike
The bike arrived at my LBS yesterday. I got the 2007 model hence the different paint job. I took it out for a 12 mile ride yesterday averaging 20 MPH. I rode it to work today and plan to do some meandering afterwards. Lots of riding to do; so blogging may disappear again for a short while. Stoked beyond words, yes.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Wally's World Of Work!?!!!
Maynard G. Krebs Cringed When He Heard The Word WORK!?!!
Join me on a journey through the wonderful world of work as I revisit those places I once toiled at - Wally's World Of Work!?!!!
My first real job was at the Murfreesboro McDonald's located at 106 SE Broad Street. I started sometime in the spring of 1985. I still remember the first night with vivid cold clarity. I was paired with another first nighter and our only job was to clean out the indoor walk in cooler. I spent 4 hours scrubbing the stainless steel walls while trying to strike up a conversation with the other dude. He was beyond spaced out and could barely be bothered to nod or grunt. I returned home that night with sore muscles and a weak mind. Still I returned for my next scheduled shift.
Soon I was learning all of the grease splattered truths I would need to survive as a Mickey D's grill man. This was before the advent of the clamshell grills and I had to sear and flip the burgers. Sometimes it was slow and there wasn't much art to baking the buns, grilling, and dressing the burgers, but usually we were on a 12 and turn routine. You'd put 12 more burgers on the grill after flipping the first 12. One person could manage this handily even allowing for some spins of the bread shovel after scooting the tops of the buns off in one fluid motion. This rotation typically involved a subset of Big Macs like 12-6 and 6.
During the serious slammed times (like every Sunday lunch when a particular church would descend like locusts at our door) emergency measures were enacted. It would be 24 and turn with the assistant manager pitching in on buns and a wandering back person dressing the burgers between fish sandwich and Nugget deep frier runs hoping like hell they didn't run out of apple pies. During hamburger or cheesburger specials they might even spill into Quarter Pounder territory. Then there were the other kinds of specials: special orders.
They never bothered me since I've always preferred my burgers plain or just with cheese, but some of my cohorts would go crazy when requests for ketchup only or extra pickles made there way back to us. I never witnessed anybody doing anything super horrible to somebody's food while there, but there was this tradition of putting extra salt on a burger that got extra pickles. The usual way of dealing with a special order was just to take one's sweet little time. I did drop burgers on the floor as did others and they always went promptly in the trash. The grill men I worked with took their jobs seriously. It wasn't too much unlike All-American Burger from Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
If there any ladies reading this that might have stopped by that particular McDonald's back then and heard a loud "grill check" yelled from the back take it as a compliment. It was the standard way to let everybody know that a pretty woman was ordering at the front counter. A sudden need for napkins would arise if you heard the phrase while in the breakroom. You could be up to your neck in dirty trays with soap bubbles stuck to your polyester pocket less pants and you'd just have to go peek over the grill because not only do fast food utensils need a good cleansing, but so does one's tired spirit.
I worked the grill, front counter, and some drive thru during what would not be my last stint at a McDonald's. We only had one drive thru window back in those primitive times and the best job was to be a runner during lunch or dinner. There was always a pretty girl taking orders and the money and between rushing around packing bags full of food I'd do what every guy did when they got the rare chance to run - I flirted with the drive thru girl. Sometimes I'd even look forward to working especially if I knew I was going to be runner on a Sunday afternoon after working the truck in the morning.
Working the truck was the best. Two of us would be assigned to the job and you would not have to do anything but wait until the truck came. Once it arrived the work was fast and rough grabbing boxes from a conveyor and then stacking and storing them, but it beat grilling burgers. The best part was stocking the freezer which was outside the restaurant. Boxes and boxes of cardboard entombed cow meat went into the frozen vortex - a prize treat to go fetch during a hot summer days work. The extra payoff for working truck happened toward the end of the freezer stocking. A McDonald's birthday cake would get damaged in transit and we would take one for Ronald as we scarfed down the offending pastry.
Folding Happy Meal boxes, using carbonated water to clean the grill, making pancakes on the breakfast shift, chowing down on my standard break meal of plain double cheeseburger and fries, sweeping the parking lot, or cleaning the dining area will always be a part of my life. As will the quiet of a closed restaurant save for the complaints of those chosen to clean the restrooms and my pruned up hands after a few hours diving at the end of a shift. It's the place where I first heard the saying, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" and thought that the person saying it was an idiot.
It's the place I was at while Live Aid was happening. I'd peek into the breakroom every chance I got to see who was on stage. It was the summer that "Walking On Sunshine" was a smash hit and I can still see the assistant manager Linda come in one afternoon practically dancing as she sang the song. She invited me to a party that summer where I promptly ruined the festive mood by putting Rubber Soul on her record player. The late and great Smooth worked there too on his way to becoming a manager himself while attending college at the same time.
I was bound for Memphis State in September. At least that was the plan. I had even toured the dormitory I would be living in earlier that summer. So I put in my two weeks notice. I worked those last two weeks in a bit of daze. I spent the last day doing much of nothing. It was a tradition of sorts. Then right on the eve of moving to Memphis I learned my parents either didn't have enough money for it or just didn't want me to move away. I had covered my living expenses. They were supposed to have come up with tuition. So I ended up at M.T.S.U. that fall which is quite the novella of disillusionment and pseudo artistic angst that I'll post here soon.
I should have gone back to work at the McDonald's in Murfreesboro. But I didn't. I viewed such a move as a failure. So I decided to try the Smyrna Mickey D's instead. It was closer to where I lived. That was my justification. The story of that job is short and almost violent, but it can wait until another time along with a short story I wrote during that era featuring a cast of fast food miscreants and other friends and enemies. Remember; don't work too hard.
Do The Arches!
Join me on a journey through the wonderful world of work as I revisit those places I once toiled at - Wally's World Of Work!?!!!
My first real job was at the Murfreesboro McDonald's located at 106 SE Broad Street. I started sometime in the spring of 1985. I still remember the first night with vivid cold clarity. I was paired with another first nighter and our only job was to clean out the indoor walk in cooler. I spent 4 hours scrubbing the stainless steel walls while trying to strike up a conversation with the other dude. He was beyond spaced out and could barely be bothered to nod or grunt. I returned home that night with sore muscles and a weak mind. Still I returned for my next scheduled shift.
Soon I was learning all of the grease splattered truths I would need to survive as a Mickey D's grill man. This was before the advent of the clamshell grills and I had to sear and flip the burgers. Sometimes it was slow and there wasn't much art to baking the buns, grilling, and dressing the burgers, but usually we were on a 12 and turn routine. You'd put 12 more burgers on the grill after flipping the first 12. One person could manage this handily even allowing for some spins of the bread shovel after scooting the tops of the buns off in one fluid motion. This rotation typically involved a subset of Big Macs like 12-6 and 6.
During the serious slammed times (like every Sunday lunch when a particular church would descend like locusts at our door) emergency measures were enacted. It would be 24 and turn with the assistant manager pitching in on buns and a wandering back person dressing the burgers between fish sandwich and Nugget deep frier runs hoping like hell they didn't run out of apple pies. During hamburger or cheesburger specials they might even spill into Quarter Pounder territory. Then there were the other kinds of specials: special orders.
They never bothered me since I've always preferred my burgers plain or just with cheese, but some of my cohorts would go crazy when requests for ketchup only or extra pickles made there way back to us. I never witnessed anybody doing anything super horrible to somebody's food while there, but there was this tradition of putting extra salt on a burger that got extra pickles. The usual way of dealing with a special order was just to take one's sweet little time. I did drop burgers on the floor as did others and they always went promptly in the trash. The grill men I worked with took their jobs seriously. It wasn't too much unlike All-American Burger from Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
If there any ladies reading this that might have stopped by that particular McDonald's back then and heard a loud "grill check" yelled from the back take it as a compliment. It was the standard way to let everybody know that a pretty woman was ordering at the front counter. A sudden need for napkins would arise if you heard the phrase while in the breakroom. You could be up to your neck in dirty trays with soap bubbles stuck to your polyester pocket less pants and you'd just have to go peek over the grill because not only do fast food utensils need a good cleansing, but so does one's tired spirit.
I worked the grill, front counter, and some drive thru during what would not be my last stint at a McDonald's. We only had one drive thru window back in those primitive times and the best job was to be a runner during lunch or dinner. There was always a pretty girl taking orders and the money and between rushing around packing bags full of food I'd do what every guy did when they got the rare chance to run - I flirted with the drive thru girl. Sometimes I'd even look forward to working especially if I knew I was going to be runner on a Sunday afternoon after working the truck in the morning.
Working the truck was the best. Two of us would be assigned to the job and you would not have to do anything but wait until the truck came. Once it arrived the work was fast and rough grabbing boxes from a conveyor and then stacking and storing them, but it beat grilling burgers. The best part was stocking the freezer which was outside the restaurant. Boxes and boxes of cardboard entombed cow meat went into the frozen vortex - a prize treat to go fetch during a hot summer days work. The extra payoff for working truck happened toward the end of the freezer stocking. A McDonald's birthday cake would get damaged in transit and we would take one for Ronald as we scarfed down the offending pastry.
Folding Happy Meal boxes, using carbonated water to clean the grill, making pancakes on the breakfast shift, chowing down on my standard break meal of plain double cheeseburger and fries, sweeping the parking lot, or cleaning the dining area will always be a part of my life. As will the quiet of a closed restaurant save for the complaints of those chosen to clean the restrooms and my pruned up hands after a few hours diving at the end of a shift. It's the place where I first heard the saying, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" and thought that the person saying it was an idiot.
It's the place I was at while Live Aid was happening. I'd peek into the breakroom every chance I got to see who was on stage. It was the summer that "Walking On Sunshine" was a smash hit and I can still see the assistant manager Linda come in one afternoon practically dancing as she sang the song. She invited me to a party that summer where I promptly ruined the festive mood by putting Rubber Soul on her record player. The late and great Smooth worked there too on his way to becoming a manager himself while attending college at the same time.
I was bound for Memphis State in September. At least that was the plan. I had even toured the dormitory I would be living in earlier that summer. So I put in my two weeks notice. I worked those last two weeks in a bit of daze. I spent the last day doing much of nothing. It was a tradition of sorts. Then right on the eve of moving to Memphis I learned my parents either didn't have enough money for it or just didn't want me to move away. I had covered my living expenses. They were supposed to have come up with tuition. So I ended up at M.T.S.U. that fall which is quite the novella of disillusionment and pseudo artistic angst that I'll post here soon.
I should have gone back to work at the McDonald's in Murfreesboro. But I didn't. I viewed such a move as a failure. So I decided to try the Smyrna Mickey D's instead. It was closer to where I lived. That was my justification. The story of that job is short and almost violent, but it can wait until another time along with a short story I wrote during that era featuring a cast of fast food miscreants and other friends and enemies. Remember; don't work too hard.
Do The Arches!
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Nemesis Boy
The blog I most need to add to the sidebar: Nemesis Boy. Great stuff to be found there about the Nashville music scene.
Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs
Bob Dylan said this about ....the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free,...."Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."
Monday, August 21, 2006
Original Sexy Back
What's Justin Timberlake doing trying to steal my mojo? I thought I brought "sexy back" last year when I started rocking Bruce Lee t-shirts while shopping for Tiffany lamps. My espadrilles made me look like a straight up gangster too. How dare that couldn't make the cast of a Liberty Land singing troupe try to steal my Thor-normous thunder.
And while I'm temporarily insane and lolling around in the pop music watering trough, where one is lucky if they only contract a spiritual dysentery, doesn't Fergie realize that the bridge in her video for "London Bridge" is actually the Tower Bridge? Yet another victim of a British scam that once took in an entire Arizona city. Natural grifters those Brits.
In the mailchute this morning - a missive from Trent Harmon who used to drum for Luck London back in the mid-80's. He stumbled into this hot bowl of Soulfish Stew after reading Tracy Moore's Never In Nashville article. He got in touch with me because he was hoping I'd know where he could get his hands on video footage of any of the Blind Farmers From Hell's summer parties held at the Blind Farm in Lascassas. I couldn't help the brother out, but maybe some of my twenty or so loyal readers can since Trent is more than just a drummer to me. He was my manager during my brief sojourn as a delivery driver at Ace's Pizza where I spent more time playing paper football in the front window than delivering pies.
It's been awhile since we had a Toby Holmes shout out. So here we go once again in our quest to find out what ever happened to this Goombah chicken eating dude. If you have seen this dude let Soulfish know. We're sure we owe him a good kick in the ass for something.
Have you seen this man?
Last rumoured to be hanging around near Lynchburg, Tennessee.
And while I'm temporarily insane and lolling around in the pop music watering trough, where one is lucky if they only contract a spiritual dysentery, doesn't Fergie realize that the bridge in her video for "London Bridge" is actually the Tower Bridge? Yet another victim of a British scam that once took in an entire Arizona city. Natural grifters those Brits.
In the mailchute this morning - a missive from Trent Harmon who used to drum for Luck London back in the mid-80's. He stumbled into this hot bowl of Soulfish Stew after reading Tracy Moore's Never In Nashville article. He got in touch with me because he was hoping I'd know where he could get his hands on video footage of any of the Blind Farmers From Hell's summer parties held at the Blind Farm in Lascassas. I couldn't help the brother out, but maybe some of my twenty or so loyal readers can since Trent is more than just a drummer to me. He was my manager during my brief sojourn as a delivery driver at Ace's Pizza where I spent more time playing paper football in the front window than delivering pies.
It's been awhile since we had a Toby Holmes shout out. So here we go once again in our quest to find out what ever happened to this Goombah chicken eating dude. If you have seen this dude let Soulfish know. We're sure we owe him a good kick in the ass for something.
Have you seen this man?
Last rumoured to be hanging around near Lynchburg, Tennessee.
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