 
### OLD SNAPSHOTS

### Volume 1

### Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past

### By JEFF R. LONTO

Copyright 2015 by Jeff R. Lonto. All rights reserved. Published by Studio Z-7 Publishing, Minneapolis, MN, via Smashwords.

International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9660213-0-1

SHOCK ALERT

Stories in this book include casual references to smoking, drinking, garden-variety violence and bad words, but so does real life. Get over it.

### CONTENTS

1. Dr. Tim and the Subliminal Seductress

2. The Saturday Spectator

3. Down at the Junk Yard

4. Going New Wave

5. Kathy and the Kid

6. Harold's Blue Ribbon Monument

7. Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue

8. Love, Crystal

9. A Trip at Granny's

10. YOU CALL ME MISTER FORD!

11. Family Restaurant

12. Um, Could You, Like, Play Some Dance Music?

13. Operation Skywatch: Survival Under Atomic Attack

### All of these stories could have happened...maybe.

### Dr. Tim and the Subliminal Seductress

In 1971 a pirate radio station called WUCK-FM was broadcasting from the top floor of a three-story Victorian-era house located at 2737 Halifax Avenue South that was rented and inhabited by four young men in their early to mid twenties. The radio station was strung together by a long haired, bearded 24-year-old engineering student who called himself "Doctor" Tim Treeman, with a hand-built makeshift transmitter set up in one of the third floor rooms, a studio in an adjacent room that included a hand-built mixing board, microphone, two turntables and a reel-to-reel tape deck all set up on two old wooden desks, all of this wired to a rooftop antenna that could broadcast from a radius of several blocks to a few miles, depending on conditions. The station broadcast on the 107.3 frequency and didn't interfere with any legitimate radio stations, so it stayed under the radar of the Federal Communications Commission.

Programming was mostly progressive album rock. Everything from Mott the Hoople to Frank Zappa to Quicksilver Messenger Service to the Grateful Dead was played. But program director/operations manager/disc jockey Dr. Tim didn't have any real set limits on music, as he also played obscure pop singles and B sides if he liked them, plus a little jazz and blues. Music was supplied by a local store, Karma-Mantra Records, in exchange for frequent mentions on the air. In addition to music, Dr. Tim would do a little psychedelic poetry, much of it jotted down moments before he read it on the air. There was also editorial content about such things as the Vietnam War (against), pot (for), the draft (against), the brotherhood of man (for), the Establishment press (or "pig press") (against), the Underground press (for), plus public service announcements for such services as the free clinic and suicide prevention hotline. All in all, it was a pretty professional-sounding operation.

"This is WUCK-FM, I'm Dr. Tim and I'm here to play phonograph records," he would say in his deep voice, up close to the microphone, before hitting the start button on an already cued-up record on one of the turntables. When that song played through and ended, he'd go straight to another cued-up record on the other turntable, put a different record on the first one and cue it up, and so forth. At least once every half hour came an announcement that would go something like, "Music on WUCK-FM comes courtesy of Karma-Mantra Records, 1605 Roosevelt Avenue. Karma-Mantra is now your eight-track headquarters with the widest selection of eight-track tapes, plus eight-track car stereos. Get an eight-track stereo for your car. It's what's happening, baby!"

Elsewhere in the house on Halifax Avenue, there was usually a party going on. Dr. Tim and his roommates Barry S. Wilson, Kevin Leer and Eric Carlsberg turned it into quite a psychedelic mansion with colorfully mismatched furniture on the hard-wood floors, colored lighting, posters on the walls and a constant supply of beer and booze, and maybe some decent marijuana and other substances to make guests feel at home. And if somebody brought their own stuff and wanted to share it, that was beautiful, man.

There were other voices heard on WUCK-FM besides Dr. Tim. Barry, Kevin or Eric would often go up there and do a show for a couple hours, or a houseguest who was interested in trying it out, or someone who wanted to say something to the community at large. And then there was a mysterious, sultry female voice who would take over the airwaves from time to time, calling herself Renee the Subliminal Seductress. People within listening range of WUCK-FM wondered who she was, and whether she was affecting their subconscious minds broadcasting subliminal messages. Rumors began to spread that she, in fact, was.

The mysterious Subliminal Seductress was actually Renee Torgerson, the 21-year-old youngest daughter of well-known local businessman, Larry Torgerson. Renee was blonde, blue-eyed and gorgeous, and in case you didn't notice she was gorgeous, she'd tell you so. She enjoyed a comfortable upper-middle class upbringing in a lake front home, although she was sent to public school. Growing up, she was close to her father and coddled by him when he was home, which usually wasn't often enough with all the business trips, conventions and long meetings he had to attend. Meanwhile, her mother was more aloof, and was the one who kept her in line.

Renee was going to college with the goal of becoming a school guidance counselor, mostly at the behest of her parents. But upon getting there and being away from home for the first time, she felt the need to rebel, at least a little bit. Her new friends in the women's dorm, mostly from well-off families, introduced her to such things as alcohol, cigarettes and parties. She was much enamored with 1920s-era art deco fashion and so she liked to wear twenties-style dresses and smoke using a cigarette holder, fancying herself more as a modern-day flapper than a contemporary hippie. She had helped her father campaign for Richard Nixon in 1968 and continued to share his Republican leanings.

It so happened she and her college girlfriends went to a party at the house on Halifax Avenue, where she met Tim Treeman, and she immediately found him alluring. He was so completely different from the kind of guy her parents envisioned for her. He had long hair, a beard and wore dark glasses. His background was blue collar, his education was from trade schools, and yet he was a deep, intelligent thinker. She listened intently as he spoke on a wide range of subjects while most everyone else there was babbling nonsense. When she saw the radio station he built, she was all the more impressed. She quickly became infatuated with him and she was coming over to see him as often as she could. Tim's roommates started referring to her as his groupie.

It didn't take long, however, for her to win them over. When she saw how little food they actually had in the house, she started bringing some over and making them dinner, and if she spent the night, she'd make breakfast. Soon, she talked the guys into letting her host a fondue party at the house, making her very popular with the crowd that hung out there. She was also rather artistic, and so she brought paints over and started painting colorful flowers, hearts and other designs on the walls, putting her feminine touch in the bachelor pad, and giving everyone something fun to look at when they were using recreational substances.

The "Subliminal Seductress" thing came about the first evening Dr. Tim had Renee in the studio with him as he did his radio program. They talked together while the records played, and when Tim put on the headphones and started speaking on the air, she continued to talk in the background and it was picked up by the microphone. In an attempt to go with the flow, Tim told his listeners, "Renee the Subliminal Seductress is here, sending good vibes into your subconscious mind."

"I'm so sorry," Renee said afterward, as another record was playing.

"No, that's cool, baby," Tim told her. "It adds to the atmosphere." A bit later, he opened the microphone while a record was playing, and had her say in a soft voice at a distance, "Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex." First at an even pace, then slower, then he told her to pick it up and say it faster and faster with more breath. Then he turned off the microphone and they busted out laughing.

Before long, Renee talked him into letting her do her own radio show. Women disc jockeys were fairly uncommon then, and Dr. Tim thought of it as another "revolutionary" thing for his station to do. He advised her to speak slowly and softly to sound a little less like a bubbly teenybopper, and he let her select the music she wanted to play. Her musical tastes leaned more toward Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins than hard rock. She called herself Renee the Subliminal Seductress on the air but refrained from whispering too many messages during the music because, Tim figured, "it might get us into trouble."

"Subliminal Seductress" was intended as a joke, a social satire on allegations being made at the time that marketers were slyly slipping sex-related subliminal messages into advertising to influence the subconscious minds of unsuspecting consumers. But to some people, just the suggestion of anything subliminal was no joke and from there, things started to snowball.

A few WUCK-FM listeners were claiming the broadcasts were having a strange effect on them, causing everything from weird dreams to desires to do things they wouldn't normally do. A man who was arrested in a home invasion just a few blocks from the house on Halifax Avenue blamed it on subliminal messages being sent over the airwaves by the station. Police, who knew the man, chalked it up to his mental illness and drug use, and being unaware of the existence of WUCK-FM, assumed it was part of his hallucinations as well. But the call-letters did appear in the police report.

Then a letter to the editor appeared in the daily newspaper mentioning the call-letters and expressing outrage that an unlicensed broadcaster somewhere within city limits was corrupting the minds of unsuspecting citizens with "subliminal messaging technique," suggesting it was a communist plot.

As city officials and law enforcement slowly became aware of WUCK-FM, they started monitoring broadcasts. The station did not broadcast on a set schedule, only when Dr. Tim felt like turning on the transmitter, and when it was on, the signal could only be heard in certain parts of town, which somewhat confounded attempts by authorities to investigate. When they were able to pick up the signal, officials listened closely for any potential subliminal messaging, as well as to song lyrics and spoken commentaries on the station for any obscenities or promotion of drug use and other illegal activity, such as draft dodging. Every questionable bit of content was jotted down in a log book, along with the date and time.

A complaint was filed with the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, DC, which promised to investigate. But other priorities for the government agency took precedence over some tiny unlicensed radio station run by a bunch of hippies that wasn't causing interference with other stations. So the police, in conjunction with the city council and mayor's office, decided to take things into their own hands.

On November 16, 1971, under the pretenses of complaints of a noisy party, police raided the house on Halifax Avenue. They arrested everyone they could get their hands on, while many others ran out the back door. They made their way up to the third floor of the house and confiscated the broadcasting equipment, as well as drug paraphernalia and other items found elsewhere in the house as "evidence." TV film crews were there and the raid made the top of the local Action News and Eyewitness News broadcasts.

Tim, Barry, Kevin, Eric and Renee were taken downtown, booked and charged with a number of alleged crimes, including disorderly conduct, conspiracy to provoke unrest, conspiracy to promote unlawful activity, possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, and "broadcasting obscenities in violation of city code, using subliminal messaging technique."

The raid became an even bigger news story when it came out that the daughter of Larry and Lois Torgerson had been among those arrested, and that she was, in fact, "Renee the Subliminal Seductress." People who knew the Torgersons shook their heads in pity. "And she seemed like such a nice girl, too," they said.

The raid stirred a tremendous amount of controversy locally and on a national scale, as the story got picked up by the Associated Press, and thus made it into newspapers across the country, and film footage from the local affiliates appeared on the ABC Evening News, and on the NBC newsmagazine program "First Tuesday."

Ultimately, most of the charges were dropped, at least those pertaining to the radio station. Tim Treeman got his equipment back, but by that time he had received a warning letter from the Federal Communications Commission threatening fines if the station returned to the air, not because of the content of broadcasts, but because the agency's investigation found that it was an illegal operation, operating without a license and at higher power than would be allotted for such a station.

By 1972 the house on Halifax Avenue was vacated and the guys all went their own ways. Renee returned to a more "normal" life, graduated from college and became a school guidance counselor, until she realized she could make a lot more money with far less stress as a commercial voice talent. Her experience as a disc jockey at the underground radio station paid off quite comfortably in the end.

### The Saturday Spectator

Years ago, when I was in my late twenties, before the days of Internet blogs, I wrote for a weekly "alternative" newspaper that was distributed throughout the city called the Saturday Spectator. It covered hard news in a scrappy style with a decidedly blue collar slant, it had entertainment reviews that could be equally as caustic, and it even had an underground comics page. It was a journalistic free-for-all that was disdained by the local mainstream media and more respectable readers, but it had its hard-core fans.

The first editor I worked with was a friend of mine named Dan Rossenberg, and he pretty much gave me free reign to write whatever I wanted. The articles I submitted were almost always used, and published with very little editing. The pay was lousy, but it was a dream job for an up-and-coming writer. I could have my own "voice" in this paper that I would be less likely to have if I worked for a mainstream daily newspaper, or certainly as a magazine free lancer. I even had my own little office space in the Spectator's offices, located in an old brick building downtown.

My specialty topic was media, but I also wrote about goings-on around town, profiled friends of mine, especially if they were involved in media, and I wrote commentaries in a sardonic and sometimes caustic style, complete with casual profanity, and they almost always got published, virtually unedited. We made no claims of unbiased journalism.

Almost every week there would be letters to the editor and phone calls from angry readers who didn't like my scathing critiques and observations. I was called a "yellow journalist," a "muckraker," a "major-league asshole," that sort of thing. I found it all hilarious and would sometimes respond to the complaints in print with as much unapologetic sarcasm, which would really make the complainers mad. "You already had your say with your original article! You have no right to respond," was often the complaint. My response: "Read the fucking First Amendment! I can write whatever I want, and if you don't like it, tough shit." I admit I was pretty cocky and full of myself. And Dan supported me all the way.

Eventually the Spectator ownership decided to make some changes. Surprisingly I was kept on board, but my friend Dan Rossenberg was blown out of there. Replacing him as editor was a relative newbie to the business, a 25-year-old woman of Asian-American heritage named Kris Pang. She came over from a local magazine aimed at high school girls. For the first time ever, at age 29, I would have a boss who was younger than me and female to boot.

She seemed nice enough when she went around and introduced herself to all of us on the staff, and she was very attractive with her almond eyes, long black hair that she usually kept in a ponytail and sultry voice. She was super smart, and she also had a feisty streak, and I'd soon find out she wasn't going to put up with any crap.

From the first article I submitted in her tenure as editor, she was calling me into her office to discuss it, mostly to point out grammatical errors and things of that nature, things that had never been major issues before. I'd just say, "Okay, whatever," and tried to avoid such mistakes (while calling her a bitch under my breath), but every week she'd always find something to nit-pick.

I found it especially annoying when she would raise questions about my facts in a story, questions that were usually based on her own ignorance of the subject more than anything. Still, I'd have to prove to her that yes indeed, I got it right.

Naturally my biting, controversial opinions in my articles were also an issue. One time, when I submitted a scathing editorial about things going on with the city council, she came to me and said in a more assertive voice than normal, "I need to see you in my office. Now." I thought, "Uh-oh."

She grabbed the manuscript I wrote off her desk. "You describe a certain city council staff member as 'a noted stupidfucker.' Excuse me, that's gonna get us sued!"

Incredulous, I said, "What, I use phrases like that all the time and there's never been any problem. Dan Rossenberg thought it was great."

"Yeah, well I'm not Dan whatever his name is, and I'm sure you're aware he's no longer here. My dad is a lawyer. I know the kinds of things that can lead to lawsuits. And anyway, 'stupidfucker' isn't even a word. 'Stupid' and 'fucker' should be separate words, if I were to let you use that term at all."

After some heated discussion I figured I knew what my ultimate fate there was going to be, so I just said, "Look, obviously you don't like my particular style of writing, you nit-pick everything I do, maybe it's time I move on."

She shot back, "No, I _do_ think you're a good writer, I nit-pick your stuff because I know your potential and want to make you a better writer, and I also don't want you getting us sued. You don't need to quit, you need to work with me."

I was a bit incredulous, if for no other reason, I thought she would have gladly let me walk. But instead, she paid me a somewhat of a compliment. After thinking for a moment to let it process, I swallowed my pride and said, "Okay, I will work with you."

She said, "Good. Thank you." And she shook my hand. "I'm holding you to that." Then she added, "By the way, off the record, I just about fell over laughing when I saw that 'noted stupidfucker' comment."

*****

After that, we were getting along pretty well. We had meetings regarding articles and stuff, but all was good. Then one day completely out of the blue, she came up to me and said, "I have a boyfriend so don't take this in the wrong way, but do you want to go out for a bite to eat so we can discuss some work related stuff?"

I had to think about that for a moment, but then said, "Sure."

"Okay, but first I have to stop at the bank, then I have to stop at Walgreens for cigarettes, and yeah, I know I should quit, everybody tells me that, and then we can go eat."

So we climbed into her red Pontiac convertible, she went to the bank and then to Walgreens, put her pack of cigarettes in her purse, and we went to a franchise Mexican restaurant. "I'm Asian, but I love Mexican food," she explained.

Over Margaritas and enchiladas, we sat at the table and talked, actually she did most of the talking, and almost nothing was said about work. She told me about herself, how she was an American-born daughter of Korean parents who came with almost nothing, worked hard and became successful.

She explained how she got the childhood nickname "Crispy." "My first name is Kris. My last name starts with a P. So in first grade, when I got a nametag that said 'Kris P.', some little shit called me 'Crispy.' Then I was 'Crispy Cookie' and 'Crispy Saltine.' I had that nickname all the way through high school and was only able to shed it in college. So don't ever call me 'Crispy.' I hate it."

I had never thought of calling her that, but nonetheless I asked facetiously, "If I do, am I fired?"

"No, I'll just write you up," she replied without missing a beat. "If it happens again, then I'll fire you."

I figured she was joking, but I didn't want to take any chances.

Surprisingly, she liked hard rock. She said her favorite bands were the Scorpions, Led Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult, adding, "I love 'Godzilla.'"

I sang a line from that song. "History shows again and again how nature points out the frolic of man...Godzilla!"

Her almond eyes widened and she grabbed my hand. "Yes! I love that song! You are so awesome!"

She also talked about her boyfriend, but didn't have much good to say about him. "He's fun and the sex is great, but he's pretty worthless," she said. She was well into her second Margarita when this personal tidbit came out. "He's at my apartment fifty percent of the time, and mostly just plays video games or brings his friends over to watch football, and expects me to cater to him. Sometimes I just have to kick him out. He still lives with his parents."

As the conversation rolled on, I couldn't resist pushing the plate of tortilla chips toward her and pointing out, "they're crispy."

She laughed but then zeroed in on me with a smirk on her face. "Do you want to get smacked? I will smack you right here." Then she pretended to slap me across the face.

At the end of the evening the tab came. I took out my billfold but she insisted on paying. Then she drove me home. Before I could exit her car, she grabbed me and gave me a hug, then a peck on the lips.

Before she let me go, she looked me in the eye and said, "I'm your boss and I have a boyfriend. Don't take what I just did to mean anything."

Aah...okay.

*****

Kris Pang surprised her detractors and transformed the Saturday Spectator into something completely different from what it once was. The scrappy blue collar slant was phased out in favor of more upscale appeal, which was what advertisers preferred. Hard news made way for softer features, the underground comics page was dropped, and the paper itself was completely redesigned into what she called a more "reader friendly" format. It's easy to criticize those changes, but she did manage to boost circulation by just over a thousand in her first six months as editor, resulting in a lot more ad revenue.

With the paper's transformation, my own articles weren't quite as sardonic or caustic as they used to be, a point that did not go unnoticed by the Spectator's old hard-core fans. There were fewer reader complaints about the stuff I wrote, but the complaints that were coming in were mostly that my articles were too "tame" or "lame" than they used to be.

"You used to be great. You used to be funny. What happened, man?" was the kind of thing I was starting to hear from my old fans. Kris would tell me, "Don't listen to them. You're writing some of your best stuff ever. Thanks in part to me, I might add."

Then, before long, I got called into her office again. "Don't take this wrong, this is totally not my idea, but I'm going to have to let you go. This is an ownership decision, not mine, and it's not about anything you did. They just want to bring more new blood into the paper. I'm really, really sorry," she told me.

So that was the end of my stint as a staff writer for the old Saturday Spectator, which has long since folded. Oddly enough, Kris and I have stayed in touch over the years since that time. She made the initial contact a few months after she fired me, and at first I wasn't all too crazy about it. But I softened up to her, just as I had when I was working for her, and so we occasionally meet for lunch or she calls me at home, mostly to complain about her relationship problems. She's even offered to help edit my freelance articles and books I have written.

I've hinted to her over the years that I am nothing like any of the jerks and idiots she dates, that I've always been nice to her and treated her decently, we've got a lot of intellectual and creative synergy, I've proven to her over the years that I'm the real deal and perhaps I might be worth considering for a relationship. She always assures me that will never happen.

"I respect you too much as a friend and colleague to ever consider dating you," she says. Then it's off to the next destructive boyfriend.

### Down at the Junk Yard

Around the summer of 1974 there was a vacant lot just off of 59th Street and Halifax Avenue South that was something of an eyesore in an otherwise nice, quiet residential neighborhood. It was referred to as "the junk yard" by local residents, as junk had accumulated in the lot over the years. An old mattress, tires, wooden pallets, pieces of broken down furniture, car parts, tin cans, bottles and lots of other crap. There was even an old steel garbage can there, filled with garbage, naturally.

A wooden fence directly behind the lot was plastered with old advertising posters for local businesses, political candidates from elections past and whatnot. "Enjoy the fabulous Neuman Burger. Exclusively at Neuman's Drive-In," read one prominent billboard. Neuman's Drive-In had gone out of business when McDonald's moved into the neighborhood. "Drink Col. Davenport, the 100 proof whiskey" read another. "Vote No on Proposition 21" urged yet another. No one even remembered what Proposition 21 was. There was even an old, outdated poster of Reddy Kilowatt promoting a local utility, saying "Electricity is penny-cheap." The electric bills people were getting from that same utility by that time indicated otherwise.

A group of neighborhood boys, classmates at the nearby school, most hovering around the age of 12, adopted the junk yard as their "official headquarters." The boys were Darren Armstrong, Don Russell, Todd Edwards, Mark Erickson and his brother Chris, who was a couple years younger. With school out for the summer, these boys were spending a lot of time hanging out "down at the junk yard." It might not have been the most ideal playground, but it was a place they could call their own (or so they thought), with lots of "neat stuff" lying around. Their parents didn't object, as long as they would "be careful" and were home by suppertime.

On a warm, sunny, somewhat humid late morning in June, the five boys were hanging out there, two of them sitting on an old, rotting couch, another on an old chair and the others on a tire and a pallet, all drinking from a six-pack of Seven-Up and eating from bags of candy procured from the nearby corner store as they enjoyed their summer vacation. And what would be more appropriate to consume in a junk yard than junk food?

"I tell you, man, this is the life," Don said. "No school, no rules, and we're drinking pop, eating candy and sitting amongst all this beautiful junk. It doesn't get any better than this."

The other guys agreed. "Yeah! That's right!"

Darren spoke up, holding up his can of Seven-Up. "I have a proclamation to make. I proclaim we are the Junketeers. All for junk and junk for all!"

"Yeah! Right on!" the other boys cheered, raising their fists.

Little did the guys know that some girls they went to school with had their own designs on the junkyard. Mrs. Dorsey, a longtime community activist who lived a few blocks up on Emily Avenue South, was organizing her 12-year-old daughter Lorna and some of her friends into Mrs. Dorsey's Neighborhood Beautification Committee. Their mission was to clean up and beautify the neighborhood, especially the junk yard over on Halifax, which Mrs. Dorsey called "blight on our community."

From the committee's official headquarters in the family dining room, Mrs. Dorsey got the girls fired up in a crusade to clean up and beautify the neighborhood. Over the course of a week, they went out carrying bags and picking up litter in the streets and sidewalks. They drew up leaflets at the dining room table promoting their cause, printed them up on the Mimeograph machine Mrs. Dorsey had in the basement and handed them out all over the neighborhood, chatting with people about their mission. They even took a set of acrylic paints and painted up the old red fire hydrant on the corner of 58th and Emily in pinks and yellows and greens and purples to make it "more pretty." It was illegal, but who was going to stop them?

Then they decided to stroll on over to Halifax Avenue, where the boys were playing a game of "junk baseball" using a wooden stick for a bat, and an old sparkplug for a ball.

"Oh no, here comes Lorna and her friends," Darren said. "So what's up For-lorna?"

"Don't call me that," Lorna responded. "We're in my mom's neighborhood beautification committee, and we're gonna clean this place up and turn it into a community park. It will be a place of beauty for everyone to go."

"The hell you are," Don protested. "This is _our_ junk yard!"

"It's not 'your' junk yard," Lorna retorted. "And anyway, why do you even want to play around all this junk? Somebody could get hurt here. My mom says it's an eyesore and an ugly blemish on the neighborhood."

Jessica chimed in. "After we get rid of all the junk, we have to paint this fence and get rid of these ugly billboards." Pointing to the Reddy Kilowatt character on one of the posters, with his electric bolt body and light bulb nose, she said, "That thing looks creepy!"

Debbie pointed to the Col. Davenport whiskey sign. "Eew! My grandpa drinks that! It makes him talk funny."

"Hey, wouldn't it be nice to have flower gardens along the fence, and maybe a fountain over here as sort of a centerpiece..." Lorna suggested.

"Oh, and maybe a little playground over here," added Nancy.

The boys finally had it. "All right, that's enough. Get out of here," Darren told them. "Go vandalize another fire hydrant. This junk yard is ours!"

"Oh, we'll be back," Lorna giggled. "Tooteloo, boys!" The girls waved to them as they walked off, laughing.

Later that afternoon, the girls had a discussion with Lorna's parents about how to proceed. "You could just bring your pickup truck, Dad, and we could all help clean up the junk and then it could be hauled away," said Lorna.

"Just hold on there," interrupted her father. "It may be a good idea, but you've got to get permission from the property owner before doing anything like this. You can't just walk on his property and haul things away. It's his stuff and his land."

Seeing the disappointment on the faces of his daughter and her friends, he said, "I'll tell you what. I will contact the owner of the property. I will tell him we will volunteer to clean up his property if he gives his permission. He might say no but he could say yes too. It couldn't hurt to ask." The girls became enthusiastic again.

The next day, after coming home from work, Mr. Dorsey announced that he talked to the property owner and he gave them permission to clean up the junk yard if they do it that weekend. The owner told Mr. Dorsey, "I was going to hire a firm to clean it up. But if your neighborhood group is willing to do it for free, have at it."

Lorna jumped around in excitement and immediately called all of her friends to tell them the news.

That Saturday morning the Dorseys and Lorna's friends arrived bright and early at the junk yard. Mr. Dorsey brought his pickup truck, junk was tossed into the back of it and several trips were made to the city dump. Passersby stopped to chat, thanking them for doing it, and people driving by honked their horns in support. When most of the junk was cleared out, they began working on the fence, pulling down or scraping off the old advertising posters, and spreading several gallons of latex paint over it, making it look new.

It wasn't until later in the afternoon that the junk yard boys arrived only to find their beloved junk yard was...gone! They made a lot of noise about it, but there wasn't anything they could do about it.

"We got permission from the property owner to clean it up," Lorna boasted. "We're gonna turn it into a community park. But we'll let you play here too, if you're nice to us."

The boys just grumbled and stormed off. Meanwhile a reporter from the neighborhood newspaper interviewed the girls about their effort and took pictures, and the article appeared on Tuesday when the weekly paper came out and was delivered to every doorstep in the neighborhood.

But the girls' ambitions to build a community park were short-lived, as they returned a few days later only to be met with construction crews in hard hats and bulldozers. As it turned out, the property owner had already intended on building a new office building there, and took advantage of their offer to clean up the property for free.

Before long, the office building was up and the junk yard forgotten about. The junk yard boys and the girls of Mrs. Dorsey's Beautification Committee set aside their differences eventually. Lorna and Darren even dated for a time in high school, and she worked as a clerk in the office building a few years later while she was attending community college.

Decades later the old neighborhood has changed a lot. The office building is still there, expanded over the years, taking out nearby houses. The community is much more diverse now than it used to be, many of the smaller houses have been replaced, and franchise stores and big retailers have come in, replacing the corner stores and service stations that used to make up the business district of the neighborhood.

Darren, Don, Lorna and the others have moved on and most of them have kids of their own. And there is no way they would ever even think of letting their own kids play by themselves as they did as kids, much less in a junk yard.

### Going New Wave

When the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, there was a noticeable change in the culture, the way people talked and the way they acted. There was a new phony optimism and shallowness that I didn't have much use for. I might have been living in the eighties but I didn't have to participate in it. Everyone else might have been going new wave, but I was sticking to my rock 'n' roll. Or so I thought.

I had some friends who were in a local five-piece bar band originally called the Druggists. They had formed in 1979 doing straightforward rock 'n' roll covers of songs by groups such as Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Grand Funk Railroad, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Knack. They were loud and somewhat good, and they mostly played in the small dives around the city. The drunker the audience, the better they sounded.

My good friend Dave Wiedemann was the lead vocalist and bassist for the Druggists, with Mike Rupert on lead guitar and vocals, Bob Martin on rhythm guitar and Ed Williston on drums and percussion.

Dave joined in 1980, replacing a couple other guys, and immediately took the band over with some bold new ideas. He wanted to get the band into better venues, get more publicity, and do some original material, so they wouldn't be strictly a "cover" band. I had some artistic ability, a few media connections and was a budding writer with a whole notebook of potential ideas for original rock songs, so Dave asked me to be the "official" publicist and lyricist for the band. If nothing else I was at least affordable, and Dave knew how to stroke my ego.

"We're gonna be big, and you're gonna help us get there, dude," he told me.

My role as "publicist" consisted mostly of hand-drawing posters and leaflets for the band's upcoming appearances (this was before the era of home computers), mass-photocopying them and riding around town on my bike, stapling them to telephone poles and community bulletin boards. I would get the band's appearances listed in the weekly "alternative" newspapers, and I would write up press releases and send them out with press packets that included the band's bio, upcoming appearances and a photo of the guys in the band standing, arms folded with pissed-off looks on their faces. The posters and publicity materials included the slogan, "WE ARE THE DRUGGISTS, AND WE ROCK!" Occasionally someone would cross out "rock" and write in "suck" on the posters, but I'd just tear that one down and put up a new one when it happened.

Having the opportunity to write songs for the band was especially thrilling. I didn't write music, but I'd jot down lyrics that I thought would make good, hard rock songs with a particular tune in mind. I'd submit the ideas to Dave, he'd work out something with the other guys and come up with something that was dynamite. Dave would belt out my lyrics with gusto, and I took pride in the fact that I did not write love lyrics or anything conventional.

One of the band's favorite songs that I wrote was called "I Just Don't Care No More." They played this at just about every show they did, and Dave cranked it out with aggressive vocals.

Well I'm tired of listening to

Anything that comes from you

From this day there is no way

I'll listen to anything you say

So you say that your life's so bad

I just don't care no more

You tell me that you feel so sad

I just don't care no more

You want someone to tell your troubles to

I just don't care no more

You come to me when you feel blue

Well I JUST DON'T CARE NO MORE!

NO I JUST DON'T CARE NO MORE!

NO I JUST DON'T CARE NO MORE!

I won't be there for you when you cry

I just don't care no more

I'm sure you know the reason why

I just don't care no more

You always depress the shit out of me

I just don't care no more

And from your troubles I want to break free

'Cause I JUST DON'T CARE NO MORE

NO I JUST DON'T CARE NO MORE...

Or there was this classic. Heavy metal lyrics from a parental perspective:

You're not a child, you're a demon from hell

There's not a doctor or cure that could make you well

We've put up with you, now we're drawing the line

You piece of shit, you're no son of mine!

You're ONE SICK BOY!

You're a disgrace to our family name

To your mother and I, you've brought only shame

In our society you'll never advance

We should have aborted you when we had the chance!

You're ONE SICK BOY!

And then there was Dave's personal favorite, the unforgettable, hard rockin' "Beast Man":

There's a creature out there you can't escape

Sometimes he's a man, sometimes he's an ape

BEAST MAN!

Not too many things give him a thrill

But he loves to hunt and he loves to kill

BEAST MAN!

Killing everything is his desire

Looks like evolution has gone haywire

BEAST MAN...

In the first couple of years of the 1980s, hanging out with that band was a blast. The Druggists were getting better gigs, performing as an opening act at the better nightclubs or as a fill-in when a main act couldn't show up, while continuing to perform in bars and at private parties. The audiences were generally receptive. Occasionally there would be some obnoxious drunk causing problems, but there were never any hostile audiences that I saw.

The band was still performing classic rock covers, with my songs thrown in, and it was especially gratifying for me to see people really jamming out to something I had written. Dave was good about crediting me and introducing me to people, but I was quite fine with staying in the background and watching it all from my own comfort zone.

*****

In the spring of 1982, Dave informed me he and the guys were working in a studio and were putting the finishing touches on an album that would have twelve cuts, including six of my songs. He told me I'd be given writer's credit and would receive a share of the royalties. Finally, my work for these guys would actually pay off.

He asked me for suggestions on what to call the new LP. I thought for a moment and suggested the title "Fuck 'em." It was a phrase Dave used a lot, as well as me, and it expressed the attitude of the band.

Dave's immediate response was "Yeah! Cool!" But then after thinking about it he said, "I don't know, man. Stores aren't going to stock anything with 'fuck' in the title." I guess he had a point.

So then I suggested, "Why don't you call the LP "Nuke 'em." On the front cover, show a picture of the band, with a bigass fuckin' nuclear explosion mushroom cloud in the background!" This was, after all, in the midst of Reagan's first term and at the height of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.

Dave loved that idea, had a professional graphic artist work with my sketches to create the album cover, and in June 1982, "THE DRUGGISTS—NUKE 'EM" came out on vinyl and cassette tape, with "I Just Don't Care No More" as the opening track. At least one FM rock station even played that track. It was at least a year before I actually saw a royalty check, and it wasn't much, but I was happy to accept it.

The album also included a new track I wrote, which had only recently been included in the live show, called "Adolescent Therapy Session." It started out with a distorted guitar riff, followed by slamming drums. Then Dave's searing vocals came in.

Well you are only seventeen

But you're the WORST CASE we've ever seen!

You're going out and stealing cars

You're drinking in cross town bars, good god!

You pick up a police woman decoy

You're parents say, "You are such a naughty boy!

" _We tried to raise you right from the start_

" _Now you're breaking our heart!"_

And they SCREAM...WHAT THE HELL'S THE MATTER WITH YOU?!

*****

As the decade progressed, things were changing. Bar audiences and bar owners were looking for something different than simple loud rock 'n' roll performed by five guys in long hair, beards, mustaches and shabby clothes. It was now the era of the music video, where looks mattered more. So-called new wave rock and urban contemporary dance music performed by guys and girls in wildly fashionable hairdos and slick, colorful outfits was becoming the big thing that people were looking for. New bands were popping up and snatching up gigs that could have been had by the Druggists. And what kind of a name was the Druggists anyway? It sounded too much like a throwback to hippie-era drug culture. We were now in the era of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. People still did drugs, it's just that it was now considered wrong to promote it openly.

In March 1983, Dave threw us all for a loop. He called a meeting at the old warehouse where the band practiced, and told me to be there too. He had some big news, and publicity is going to be more important than ever, he said.

With me, Mike, Bob, Ed and a few others there, Dave made his big announcement. "I hired a keyboardist. His name is Howie Horkelson [Note: that actually wasn't his real name] and he's great. We're going new wave, man. We got to get with the eighties. We got to think about making music videos and getting on MTV. We can't go on being some fucking sixties throwbacks."

The guys were all looking at each other, saying, "What the fuck?"

He turned to me and said, "Dude, I want you to make posters and put them up all over town saying we've gone new wave. I want you to write up press releases and send them everywhere. Newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, everywhere. Oh, and the band's not going to be called the Druggists anymore. From now on we're Illegal Smiles. Not _the_ Illegal Smiles, just Illegal Smiles."

The other guys in the band were not so gung-ho on that idea, least of all me. I said, "What the fuck do you want to do that for? The eighties suck!" The other guys were saying "Yeah, no shit."

Dave said, "Look, guys, I'm not saying we can't play rock anymore. But we're living in the eighties, and if we're going to get out of playing the dives and get booked at some of the hotter clubs, we've got to get with what's current, what's trendy. People don't want to hear covers of Led Zeppelin and BTO songs all the time anymore."

"So what about the stuff I'm writing for the band," I asked.

"Keep doing what you're doing," he said. "What you write can easily be adapted to new wave."

Dave had a talent for being persuasive as much as any good salesman and the guys all came over to his side of the issue, however reluctantly. And so the Druggists became Illegal Smiles and I drew up some new posters with the group's new name in an eighties pop art style and emphasis on "new wave." Meanwhile, getting into the spirit, I wrote my first "new wave" song for the band. Dave loved it, and had new keyboardist Howie sing lead on it.

God bless this beautiful day!

God bless the American way!

Well there's a great big smile

On every face I see

Everyone's a-living in harmony

Walkin' down the street you'll havta agree

America is the place to be!

Yes you can tell that America is the place to be

The way the surgeon performs his surgery

The way the drunkard drinks his burgundy

The way the radical speaks subversively...

Howie was actually good at what he did, the band played well with the new sound, and Illegal Smiles did start to draw bigger and more enthusiastic crowds than they did when they were the Druggists. In addition to what I was writing for them, the band was covering tracks from groups such as DEVO, the Clash and the Sex Pistols now.

Then in the fall of 1984, Dave decided to make another big change. He brought in an aspiring singer named Tracy Gerwitz. Tracy was an aerobics instructor who wanted to be the next Madonna, and she tried hard to look just like her idol, with big permed hair, big earrings, heavy makeup, and a crucifix around her neck, even though she was Jewish. "It's just a fashion accessory to me," she'd say.

She had the Eighties Attitude big time. She was there because Dave was dating her, and I'm sure the other guys in the band were banging her as well. Not me, though. We tolerated each other, but that was about it.

She was nice in a phony sort of way. She'd say, "I want you to write songs for me but it's got to be my style." Or "If you're going to make posters for the band be sure to mention me. Please? You know how to spell my name, right?"

She wasn't too crazy about the songs I wrote for the band either. She went through my notebooks with the lyrics I had jotted down and said, "Uh, I can't believe some of this stuff you write! Your words are so cynical, so angry at everything. Can't you write a love song?"

"Fuck that," I said. "I don't write puss songs."

"Love songs are not puss songs," she insisted. "Have you never been in love before? Don't you know what it's like?"

I said, "Hell no."

She rolled her eyes and sighed exaggeratingly. "What-EVER!" Then she complained to Dave about me. "Why do you hang around with negative people? Do you know how it affects your psyche?"

Dave was hot and cold with Tracy. One day he'd be gushing about what a great lady she was, the next day he'd be calling her a "psycho bitch." But she had her clutches in him and in the entire band, and that was that.

*****

Before long a new group photo was taken with Tracy up front and center, with the guys in the background. Then Ed left the group, and then Bob left soon after. A couple of new guys came in to replace them, and finally, in the spring of 1985, when the band started being billed as "Illegal Smiles Featuring Tracy Gerwitz," I knew it was pretty much over. I had hung on out of loyalty to Dave but I now realized there wasn't much point in sticking around, and so I too got out and moved on to other things. And pretty soon there was no more Illegal Smiles, just "singing sensation Tracy Gerwitz" getting booked at all the hot clubs. Dave finally realized he was just a stepping stone for her.

All these years later, Dave is still a friend of mine. He stops by occasionally for a beer and a chat. We talk about the good old days and he still gripes about how Tracy screwed him over. Then he gets to the point of his visit.

"Dude, you got $100 you can borrow me? I'll pay you back tomorrow, I promise."

### Kathy and the Kid

It was March 1986. Kathy Johnson had just moved in to a small but comfortable unit in the Manor Royale apartment complex. At age 22, her marriage to "Mister Wonderful" had fallen apart. When she couldn't take the drinking, verbal abuse, controlling and running around by her husband anymore, she packed as much as she could into her small car and left, getting away as far as she could. They had no children, so it was easy enough to break away.

As she slowly got settled in, she had lots of mixed emotions. She was now completely alone. She didn't miss her estranged husband too much, and she liked being able to finally do things for herself and make her own decisions, but she was also lonely. She didn't really know anybody in the city she moved to, and she wasn't ready to start dating again. She landed a second shift job at a factory doing light assembly and packing boxes, which kept the bills paid, but it was a rather dark, depressing, restrictive work environment where the people weren't particularly friendly. She wasn't Kathy, she was Employee #2281.

She would get home at around 11:30 at night, watch some late night TV for a few hours, go to bed, get up again the next day and if she didn't have to go grocery shopping or run some other errand, she'd sit in her apartment, watch TV, sip black coffee, eat, and smoke cigarettes. Lots of them. Then, later in the day, go back to work at her less than thrilling job.

There were a lot of kids at the Manor Royale apartments where she lived. Some were from in-tact families but a lot of them were from divorced or otherwise single parent households. Like 12-year-old Jacob Petersen, who lived with his mother a couple floors down.

Technically he was living with his mother but in the grand scheme of things he was fending for himself because she wasn't home very often. She got up early for work and came home late, and she had a social life too. But Jacob was pretty mature and responsible for his age and could get up, get dressed and get to school on time, and then come home and heat up his own frozen dinners in the oven. He had a few friends that he sometimes hung out with after school, and for the most part they stayed out of trouble. A big motivation for Jacob to stay out of trouble was to prove to his mother he didn't need a stinkin' babysitter at age 12.

Kathy started to notice Jacob a lot when summer came and school was out. Sometimes he and his friends were coming and going in and out of each other's apartments or roaming up and down the halls or doing something outside, but a lot of times Jacob was by himself, especially during the day on weekdays, because his friends had other activities going on.

Kathy knew nothing about the kid but she wondered about him. She sensed he was neglected and maybe as lonely as she was. Seeing him around stirred some maternal feelings in her, thinking about how nice it would be to have a son or daughter and how she would be a much more loving, nurturing parent to this kid than his own mother apparently was. She found herself thinking about him while engaged in her tedious, redundant tasks at work.

Finally, when she saw him late one morning hitch-hiking on Highway 612 about a half-mile from the apartments, she hit her breaks.

"Get in here! Now!" she ordered.

"Okay," the kid said with a relieved smile as he opened the door and went into the front passenger seat. But Kathy only pulled up a little further to the side of the road while traffic zoomed by.

"Just what do you think you're doing," she demanded.

"I'm just trying to get home. I live at the Manor Royale apartments. They're just over..."

"I know where you live. I see you around there all the time. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to hitch-hike? Any idea?! You could be hit by a car, or, you don't know who's going to pick you up, or where they're going to take you or what they might do to you. You could be kidnapped, you could be slaughtered or who knows what could happen to you!" She pulled a Benson & Hedges cigarette from her purse and lit up.

"Sorry!" the kid said.

Kathy took the cigarette from her mouth and exhaled. "Oh, you're sorry. Is that all you have to say? If you were my kid you'd be getting a spanking from me and I don't care how old you are!"

She shifted the car into drive and got back on the highway. "So, is your mom home right now? Or do you even have a mom?" Kathy's voice dripped with sarcasm as she asked this.

"My mom is working. She won't be home 'til at least six."

"Oh, of course. Why am I not surprised?" After about a minute, Kathy finally started to calm down. "I'm Kathy, by the way. What is your name?"

"Jacob."

"Have you had lunch yet, Jacob?"

"Not really..."

"I'll tell you what. I'll make you lunch. Do you like grilled cheese?"

"Sure."

"Good. So do I."

It was coming up on noon when Kathy brought Jacob up to her apartment. She fixed him and herself a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, and while he wasn't real talkative, she got him to open up a little.

"So are your parents divorced?" she asked him.

"Yeah, for about three years. I was nine, I guess. I don't see my dad much at all anymore, and my mom works and goes out a lot and stuff. But I can take care of myself," he told her.

"Well, I'm sure divorce can be pretty hard on a kid. My parents are still together but I'm in the process of getting a divorce. I'm glad I don't have kids because of the circumstances, but I also wish I had kids, if that makes any sense?"

"So why are you getting divorced?"

"My husband is such a turd," she laughed. "He would tell me he loves me so much, then he would come home drunk and start screaming at me about what a stupid bitch I am, how I don't satisfy his desires as much as I should and I'm just so lucky he married me. Then he'd go sleep with some co-worker or pick up some chicky-babe in a bar. He could be mean, he could be sarcastic, but he could also be charming, and I fell for it. Well I hope he's happy now!"

She finished her glass of milk and lit a cigarette. "He also got me smoking. I never smoked until after I started dating him when I was 19. I was always one of the good girls in high school who didn't smoke."

All Jacob could say was "Wow." She had gone from talking to him like a child when she picked him up, to talking to him as if he were another adult. It was a rather heavy conversation for a 12-year-old boy, but he was smart and mature for his age, and he was really the first friend she had met since she moved, and she wanted someone to confide in besides her parents, family and friends back home, who all had their own biases.

Jacob in turn told her about his life, his friends, and his mother who wasn't around all that much, either working or going out and sometimes coming home drunk. He then said facetiously, "I wonder if my mom has met your husband."

Kathy laughed. "Well she can have him! I would gladly trade him for you. If you were my kid I would put you first in my life, and love you, and take care of you and be there for you."

They continued to talk until Kathy glanced at the clock on the wall. "Oh my God! I'm going to have to get ready for work right now or I'm going to be late. Thank you so much for talking to me, Jacob. I've really enjoyed this."

She walked him to the door. "I work evenings but I'm usually home during the day. So if you want somebody to talk to I'm here for you." She hugged him, and then looked him in the eye. "And don't you dare ever hitch-hike again!"

It would be another week before Jacob took Kathy up in her offer to visit her, but they did say hi to each other when they saw each other in and around the apartment complex. On one occasion, she greeted Jacob while he was hanging with a couple of his friends.

"Stop by and see me some time," Kathy said as she walked off.

"Who was that?" his stunned friend Joel asked. "She's nice!"

"Oh, just the lady in 308," Jacob replied.

The next day, a little after 10:30 in the morning, Jacob came up to 308. Kathy invited him in, and gave him a hug and a kiss on the forehead. They sat in the living room and talked, and then Jacob asked with some trepidation, "Can I sit with you, Kathy?"

Kathy's eyes widened. "Well of course." She patted the spot next to her on the couch. "Come over here."

Jacob found that Kathy was willing to give him something he was lacking in his life and didn't realize he craved, and that was physical affection. His mother was not a particularly affectionate person and tended to push him away when he was younger and tried to get close to her. Kathy was very touchy-feely, and was craving it herself.

As summer rolled on, Kathy and Jacob were spending more time together. She would make him lunch, or at least a snack, and they would spend a few hours together in the air conditioned comfort of her apartment unit during the hot, humid summer. They cuddled together on the couch, sometimes rocking back and forth like a mother and baby, or he would lay his head in her lap while she read a paperback or watched TV or talked on the phone, with her free hand stroking his chest. Sometimes she'd lean over and give him a kiss.

When she would talk on the phone to her mother or friends from the old neighborhood while Jacob was with her, they commented that she sounded more relaxed and contented than she had been for a long time. She would just say that things were getting better and she was meeting new friends, without elaborating.

Then around late August, Kathy casually mentioned to Jacob that her soon-to-be-ex husband got her number and was starting to call her. "He wants to have dinner with me," she said. "I'm not really crazy about it. But I don't know. Maybe I should just meet up with him once to hash things out as the divorce becomes final."

Jacob thought that sounded a little fishy, but as negative as she was about her husband, he assumed that would indeed be the extent of it.

Then, after a while, Kathy didn't seem to be at home as much. Jacob would knock on her door or call her only to get no answer, or if she did answer, she never had much time.

Finally one day, she invited him over. He came to her apartment to find much of her belongings boxed up. It was obvious she was getting ready to move.

"I'm getting back together with my husband," she said enthusiastically. "Isn't that great?"

Jacob was stunned. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Why? I thought you said your husband was a big turd. That he was mean to you and liked to get drunk..."

"He promised he would change for me because he really does love me, and that's all that matters. I have to change for him too, that's the deal, but he said he loves me!"

"Well..." Jacob said, and then paused to collect his thoughts. "Can I have your new number so we can still talk? Or your address so we can write to each other. I love to write letters..."

"No, I don't think that's going to work out," she told him. "I mentioned you to him, and he wasn't too happy about you coming over, even if you are only 12. He says it's another one of my dumb ideas that I need to stop, and I guess he's sort of right."

Jacob felt like he had just been punched in the gut. "I'm a dumb idea?!"

"I didn't say that, Jacob."

"Going back to your husband is a dumb idea, Kathy. A stupid idea! Why are you doing this?"

"Well I'm sorry you feel that way," Kathy responded. She lit a cigarette as she tried to mask her own feelings. "Anyway, I'm going to have to let you go now. I need to finish packing," she said.

She walked him to the door and gave him a brisk hug. "Bye, Jacob. It's been fun." She pushed him out the door and locked it behind him.

A few days later, the unit where Kathy dwelled for six months became available for rent again, even though she had to pay a rather high fee for breaking her lease. Her renewed relationship with her husband only lasted a few months until she moved out again, and moved in with a new boyfriend. A few years later, with a different boyfriend, she became pregnant and nine months later gave birth to a son. She named him Jacob.

### Harold's Blue Ribbon Monument

When Harold Nelson died of a stroke in 1998 at the age of 75, his love of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer died with him.

"I'm just glad to be finally rid of that ugly thing," said his widow Dorothy, not of her late husband, but of the giant Pabst Blue Ribbon "No Opener Needed" replica beer can on her property along a county road in western Wisconsin, as a hired demolition crew smashed it into rubble. Harold built the giant beer can in 1967 and insisted it stay right where it is, a constant bone of contention with his wife for thirty years.

Harold himself built and painted the meticulously-detailed giant can, made of concrete with a steel casing and standing at 16 feet tall and seven feet wide, and it became something of a local landmark. The slogan "No Opener Needed" appeared directly above the Blue Ribbon logo, just as it did on the actual Pabst cans circa 1967 when tab-tops replaced the older style cans that required a can opener.

The structure stood up surprisingly well over three decades of Midwest weather extremes. There were some streaks of rust on its metal casing, especially around the rivets, and a little fading in its spectacular red, white and blue color scheme, but Harold liked to say that's what gave it character. It was sometimes mistaken for a silo, but it wasn't attached to a barn, it never contained silage, and Harold said he didn't have the patience to farm his land anyway.

The can became something of a tourist attraction as people would drive by and sometimes stop to take a look at the thing. Harold was often asked to take a picture of someone who wanted to pose with it, and he always obliged. Sometimes he'd even offer a full can of Pabst Blue Ribbon to a visitor who wanted to stay for a few minutes and chat. He got a small royalty on sales of a postcard of the giant beer can, and even Pabst took notice, publishing a feature about it in a company newsletter. But with all the fame and small fortune, Dorothy still hated the thing.

"The only reason why people are coming to look at it is because they think you're a fool, and that embarrasses me," she always told him. She could not conceive that people actually liked the structure and admired Harold for creating it. The idea of that did not make sense to her.

Harold and Dorothy were married for nearly fifty years but they didn't really like each other. Harold enjoyed the simple pleasures in life, such as hunting, fishing, beer drinking and watching football on TV. Dorothy didn't like any of those things and was basically unhappy. Nothing was ever right for her. Dorothy complained frequently and loudly, and Harold learned to ignore her, doing pretty much whatever he wanted. Still, he was home every night, and every day as well after he retired, and he never strayed on her.

Harold was a fan of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the very start. It was the first beer he tried as a teenager with some friends back in the late 1930s, not all that long after Prohibition was repealed. He saved one of the cans, and when Pabst came out with a new can over the years, he saved one of those.

Dorothy, on the other hand, did not like beer. But she did like white wine, so much so she sometimes drank it by the jug. Then, with Harold and Dorothy both loaded on their favorite drinks, they would get into petty arguments, until one or both of them finally passed out.

*****

Harold Nelson and Dorothy Fishbeck met in 1946 after he returned home from the war and she was working as a waitress at Fleck's Roadside Diner. As a regular customer, Harold asked her out several times, and finally, she agreed to see a movie with him. She went out with him a couple more times and on the third date, she became pregnant. They decided to do the "right thing" and get married quietly in a judge's chambers before the baby was born.

Coming from a nice, churchgoing Lutheran family, Dorothy regretted ever going to bed with Harold, let alone out of wedlock. She also regretted not having the extravagant wedding she had dreamed of since she was a little girl. But she also believed that once you're married that's it, there's no getting out of it except under extreme circumstances. As long as he never abused her and remained faithful, she was committed to him, even if she ultimately resented it.

In 1947 Dorothy gave birth to a daughter, Cynthia, and in subsequent years the couple had three more children, two boys and another girl. Harold found work in the construction business, using skills he learned in the Second World War, to help build the new post-war America. He was a working stiff who wore a hard hat and a white T shirt on the job, but he wasn't necessarily the stereotypical gruff, distant father. He doted over his kids while it was Dorothy who was more of the stern disciplinarian, frequently accusing Harold of spoiling the children.

The Nelsons lived in a small town in Wisconsin near the Minnesota border until 1965 when Harold had the opportunity to buy several acres of cheap land along the county road, where the construction worker by trade could build a house, garage, workshop, storage shed and a giant Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can close enough to the road to be seen.

They would eventually have seven grandchildren, beginning with Cynthia's son Tommy, born in 1968. Dorothy wasn't nearly as stern a disciplinarian to the grandchildren as she was as a mother, but she had her quirks that her grandkids found a little odd. She wouldn't buy Kool-Aid, for instance, because she said, she couldn't stand "that hideous grin" on the packages. She also wouldn't go with when Harold brought the kids to the circus or the fair because she found the clowns too traumatizing.

*****

Of all of the grandchildren, Harold was closest to Tommy. Tommy's father, Cynthia's husband, wasn't around much so Harold became the father figure and best pal to Tommy. Harold taught him about fishing and hunting and football and beer. They had many man-to-man talks about navigating through life and dealing with the problems that come up. Taped to the walls in his workshop, Harold had drawings Tommy made for him over the years, including depictions of him or the two of them together, and of the giant beer can.

As Tommy got older, they remained close. When he was in his late teens and driving, he'd occasionally bring a few of his friends to meet Harold and see the giant beer can, and have a rap session over a couple of beers with Harold in his workshop. Grandma Dorothy wasn't too happy about having "all those hooligans" hanging around, but Harold would tell her, "They're Tommy's friends and they're good, decent kids. Stop being such a killjoy, woman."

Tommy was 30 when Harold passed away. Dorothy had said for years regarding the Pabst Blue Ribbon monument, "When Harold dies, that ugly thing is getting torn down," and indeed, one of the first things she did was contact a business that could do the job. Tommy begged and pleaded with her not to do it, and fans of the giant beer can from around the country wrote letters asking her to preserve it. All of them went straight in the trash. Tommy was able to get Harold's Pabst memorabilia collection and the drawings he made for him as a kid before Dorothy trashed those.

Dorothy finally passed away in 2010 at age 86, twelve years after Harold's death. Beige, hulking condominiums now sit on the old Nelson property, for middle class people wanting to live "in the country," even though it really isn't "the country" anymore.

A recent visitor, who was trying to pinpoint where the giant Pabst can once stood, was told by a security guard to leave immediately or be arrested. The security guard had no clue what the visitor was talking about as he tried explaining why he was there. The security guard just chalked it up to his colleagues as "some loony tune."

### Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue

It was the summer of 1973, a particularly hot, humid day. The Delaney family was having their annual family get-together. While music played from the living room stereo, all the doors and windows were wide open, people filled the house, the front and back yards. Adults were drinking and socializing and kids were playing and chasing one another.

Tom Delaney and his cousin Terry Stone, meanwhile, were up in the attic, sitting on the floor and listening to a David Bowie album on a record player they brought up there. The two teenagers were getting themselves high sniffing model airplane glue. The boys made models together when they were younger and had since enjoyed the pleasant effects of glue.

"Wow. This is good shit," said the long, blond-haired Tom.

Droopy-eyed Terry took another sniff from the tube. "Yeah, it's great. I'm floatin' now!"

With Bowie rockin' and glue fumes penetrating their brains, they found profound things to talk about.

"Man you shoulda seen this chick I saw at the drug store the other day," said Tom. "She had tits like you wouldn't believe. They were mega-tits, man!"

"Shit, I woulda love to see that," replied Terry. "But I did see this chick on TV the other day with tits that practically stuck right out of her fuckin' shirt! I bet she weren't even wearing no bra!"

"No foolin'? Oh wow."

They continued to listen to the David Bowie album, talk about "tits" and sniff more glue when a young visitor came up and caught the two in action.

"Hi guys!" said the chirpy 13-year-old Diane, a cousin of the two boys.

Terry had the tube of glue up to his nose and was just a little stunned by the invasion. "The hell you doin' here?"

"I just heard some music and talking up here and I wanted to see what was going on."

"Well this ain't no place for kids," said 15-year-old Tom. "Just us big guys can be up here."

Diane noticed the lead tube in Terry's hand. "You're sniffing glue?!" she blurted out loudly and began to laugh.

"SHHH! Not so loud!"

Diane continued to laugh. "I can't believe it. You guys are hiding all the way up here just to sniff glue!"

The guys did not appreciate being laughed at by a precocious 13-year-old girl. "Well what do you expect us to be doin'? Smokin' pot?" replied Tom.

"That's a lot better than that shit," Diane retorted.

The boys were at first irritated by their younger cousin but then they began to notice something about her. Her body was beginning to take shape, for one thing, and her clothing did much to emphasize it. She wore a sleeveless shirt with a decal depicting hearts, flowers and clouds, along with very short shorts, revealing her tanned legs and white sandals, showing off her painted toenails. With her soft brown hair framing her maturing face, Diane suddenly didn't seem to be the pesky kid that Tom and Terry had known her to be.

Diane noticed there were several empty Shasta soda-pop cans of various flavors around the boys. "Is that all you guys are drinking is pop?" she asked with mild amusement.

"Well, they won't let us have a beer," Tom replied.

"I could get a whole six-pack up here without anybody noticing," she bragged.

"Yeah, I'd like to see you try!" said Terry.

"Okay, I will!" she said with a smirk as she headed downstairs where the party continued to roll on.

"Man, is that chick for real?" asked Terry. Tom simply shrugged his shoulders and took another whiff of glue.

"She is getting some nice looking tits," he said.

A few minutes later, Diane returned with the promised six-pack.

"How the hell did'ja do that?" asked Tom.

"It was easy. A cinch," she said with a giggle.

The three each grabbed a can and as they were lifting and tearing off the ring tabs, Diane said, "Okay, before we even take a sip, let's have a chug-a-lug contest!"

"Oh my god," blurted Tom. The boys could not believe how wild this girl really was.

"On your mark, get set, GO!" called out Diane as the three downed the contents of the cans. While the two boys had to continuously drink and swallow, with foam sometimes shooting from their mouths, Diane was able to suck down almost half the contents at once, although her brown eyes seemed to pop out of her face as she did this.

"Shit! Where'd you learn to guzzle like that?" asked Terry as they took a rest.

I have experience," replied the 13-year-old with a smile. "I can drink wine or beer without any problem at all. I've even smoked pot before, which is a hell of a lot better than sniffing glue, I can tell you that!"

The truth was she had only tried pot once at age 12, and then it made her hack and cough to the point of tears, although she figured at this point she could try it again since she was beginning to smoke cigarettes without too much problem.

"You wanna try it again?" asked Diane, as the three still had about half a can of beer left. The boys agreed and once again, Diane sucked down the remaining contents of her can before the boys could get in four swallows.

"I guess I win!" exclaimed Diane with a big smile as she set down her empty can. Tom and Terry could hardly stand up, loaded with so much beer and glue vapors.

The David Bowie album on the record player had ended. "Want me to flip it over?" asked Diane.

"Go for it," replied Tom as she walked up, turned the record over and set the needle on the first song. She walked back over and sat right between the two boys, making things rather cozy.

There were three cans of beer left and they each had one, this time drinking them slowly. As the album played, Diane chattered away like the pubescent girl she was, while Tom and Terry sat, almost speechless.

When they finished their beers, Diane said, "Let's go downstairs and join the party." She stood up and the boys followed, now more intoxicated than they had ever been before.

Throughout the house and outside as well, the boys followed Diane as she mingled with the relatives. She had hugs and kisses for all of them and they thought she was just the sweetest little girl. And they didn't even notice the beer on her breath.

The boys, meanwhile, had a terrible case of "the munchies" and before long grabbed a big bag of Frito's corn chips off the large table outside and chomped on them as though their life depended on it. When Diane saw them, she reached into the bag and took a handful.

Among everyone, as usual, was old Uncle Mel and his infamous camera. Every year at the family get-together, Uncle Mel was there snapping pictures wherever he turned and he seemed to have an endless supply of film.

"Hi Uncle Mel!" chirped Diane as she waved.

"Hello, Diane. You sure are looking lovely. Let me take a picture of yuh." As usual, Mel was wearing a loud suit and was wasted.

"I have my favorite cousins, Tom and Terry with me. You can take a picture of all three of us."

"I'd be delighted," said Mel. He set up his camera while Diane stood directly in front of the two boys, who towered over her. She gave a big smile as the two just stood there, mesmerized by Mel's colorful polyester suit.

Mel held the camera to his face. "Ready. . .say cheese. . ."

Just as he snapped the picture, Diane grabbed the two boys in a certain place which gave them a rather shocked look as she continued to smile. The picture was shot above the waist so nobody really saw what happened.

"Thanks a million," said Mel as he staggered off to take a picture of the half-eaten potato salad.

Tom and Terry continued to follow their cousin around as she charmed everyone with her cuteness until her mother finally said "Diane, honey, it's time for us to go."

"Okay, Mom!" she said as she joined her parents and they all left the party.

A few minutes later, Tom and Terry looked at each other.

"What hit us just now?" asked Terry.

"I don't know, man, I don't know."

The next summer there was another family gathering at the Delaney's. Tom and Terry were anxious to see their cousin again, to see how hot she was now. And sure enough she did show up, with her parents and her boyfriend, a soon-to-be high school senior who played on the football team.

"Well fuck this shit," said Tom as the two boys went back upstairs to the attic, played a Led Zeppelin album and yes, sniffed some more glue.

### Love, Crystal

Crystal worked part time at the Kinko's Copy Center. Back in the 1990s, stores with self-service photocopy machines were quite useful to those of us who didn't have such fancy equipment in our home offices as scanners attached to personal computers. So I was a regular customer there, photocopying and enlarging pictures, copying and pasting stuff by hand for various projects and printing it up.

Crystal was always very helpful and friendly. She had an infectious smile and a great laugh, and she seemed to appreciate my sense of humor. She was twenty years old at the time I met her. She had a pretty easy-going personality, she was petite, with green eyes and thick, sandy-blonde hair with bangs, often times either tied back in an elastic ponytail holder that was otherwise worn on her wrist, leaving her hair cascading around her shoulders.

As we were starting to know each other, I found I was starting to like her. When she wasn't too busy with customers I'd wind up hanging around and chatting with her. Soon, I was finding excuses to do something at Kinko's as often as I could, and would occasionally be disappointed if she wasn't there because it was her day off.

As it turned out, she sort of liked me too. Over time we began meeting at a nearby Starbuck's coffee shop after her shift. It so happened she lived right by me, in a house with her brother David and sister-in-law Annie. Before long I found myself going to her house after work, on the evenings that she wasn't working.

When we exchanged phone numbers, we would sometimes wind up talking on the phone for hours. Sometimes it was about the crazy people she would often encounter at her work but often times it was about our life's ideals and dreams.

"My mom and step-dad threw me out of the house when I was eighteen," she told me. "My step-dad is such a prick. He said I was a spoiled little princess who needed to be thrown out on my royal little ass. And my mom isn't much better. She just basically agrees with whatever he says. So they made arrangements to move me in with my brother and his wife, and then they move to Florida! Just to make it hard for me to move back in with them. I mean, it was totally unfair." And my real dad hasn't been in the picture at all since I was, like, eight.

I was a few years older and as I got to know her a little more, she did strike me as immature at times. She complained a lot about her brother David and his wife Annie, who owned the house in which she lived. They were in their thirties, career people, having her as a border. I thought she had a good situation there, her own room, token rent payments, reign of the house and free meals. But she always found something to complain about. "They just want to control me. They expect me to pay them money out of my paycheck. They tell me to do this. They won't let me do that." It went on and on and on.

Overall, though, she just seemed like an all-around nice girl. She didn't smoke, and she hated being around smokers. She'd sip a cocktail or a wine cooler but otherwise wasn't much of a drinker. And she said she never had a serious boyfriend because, "I don't need the drama. I get enough drama from David and Annie, and my parents, and my girlfriends and their boyfriends."

"What I like about you," she told me, "is you're not all about drama. You're more level-headed and intelligent than basically anyone I know."

David and Annie were always cordial when I came over. David would offer me a can of beer and Annie would offer a snack from the kitchen.

"It's good to see Crystal finally has a boyfriend," David remarked to me the first time I came over.

"He's just a friend, not a boyfriend," Crystal retorted.

"No, it's okay. Take her off our hands. We won't mind," David said to me with a laugh, but I sensed he might not have entirely been joking.

I was never really romantically involved with Crystal. I was kind of smitten with her, but we were mostly just pals. I might get a hug or a kiss on the cheek from her but that was as far as it went. I'd go to her house and have a few beers or we'd watch TV together. I'd reluctantly sit through Melrose Place, which took several beers to make that tolerable, but we both liked The Simpsons. There wasn't that much age difference between us but it sometimes seemed we were a generation apart. I liked watching news and intelligent talk shows and she liked watching that prime-time crap. She had no clue who Dick Cavett or Tom Snyder even were. I was also a big Frank Zappa head but she couldn't understand anything beyond top-10 hits. But we connected in a lot of other ways and that was a neat thing.

She knew I was a writer and we often sat in her room, door closed, and she'd show me notebooks of poetry and stories she was working on, asking my opinion. It amused me what a stereotypical "girls' room" she had, complete with a canopy bed and stuffed animals.

After an hour or two of sitting in her room, we'd occasionally walk to a nearby bagel place for something to eat. The closest I came to spending a night with her was when David and Annie were out of town for the weekend and we stayed up, watched late night movies and made omelets and Bloody Marys at one a.m.

In between visits we'd talk on the phone, and every so often she would send me a card in the mail, usually with a floral design on the cover and a quaint, hand-written message on the inside, such as, "Just wanted to let ya know I'm thinking of you!!! Love, Crystal," with a smiley face drawn next to her name. I could even faintly smell her perfume on these cards.

Eventually Crystal's relationship with her brother and sister-in-law hit the skids. She could be a spoiled brat sometimes and they finally got fed up and told her to move out by the end of the month.

She called me, very angry and teary, when that happened. "How can they do this to me," she whined. "I'm family and they're betraying me. I'm going to kill them. I swear I'm going to kill them!"

I told her to "relax, take it easy. There are plenty of places you can move to and you won't have to deal with them anymore."

"I won't have to deal with them if I kill them."

I began to get irritated with her. "Will you quit with that, Crystal. You're being ridiculous."

"Fine!" she snapped.

After an intense few seconds, we moved the conversation to other things.

A couple days later she invited me over. David and Annie were there so I assumed she got things patched up with them. We sat in the living room and talked and things seemed normal when she abruptly said "Hold on, I gotta do something."

Annie was in the kitchen getting something to eat. Crystal came up behind her with this big hammer, the kind used to bust up rocks when BAM! She slammed it against Annie's head. Annie fell forward, she was out cold.

It was so surreal, I felt like I was only watching a movie or something. My first thought was simply "Wow, she's really going through with it."

David heard the commotion and came running downstairs in investigate when BAM! She knocked him down as well.

I was now stunned, not knowing what to do, not sure if I would be next and certainly afraid to touch anything. She just smiled as she looked at me and said, "Well, I suppose I might as well make sure they're really dead." She casually put down the hammer and pulled a couple of rags from the drawer in the kitchen, tying one around her brother's neck tight enough to strangle him. She went to do the same thing to Annie.

"Oh ick! She's bleeding!" She lifted Annie's head to fit the noose around her. "Eeew! She's bleeding through her nose. Gross!" The blood actually bothered her more than her own violent method of murder. It was surreal.

She then went upstairs and came back down with her diary and some notebooks. "I need to burn these things," she said, putting them in the fireplace and lighting them up.

Finally I said, "I better go. This is getting too bizarre for me."

"Okay. Maybe I'll call you this weekend. Bye, Sweetie."

I couldn't believe how normal she was acting, as if nothing major happened. I used my shirt to handle the doorknob on the way out. I wanted my fingerprints on as few things as possible.

I got home and I was in such a daze. I figured the right thing to do would be to call the police but I didn't want to snitch on a friend. She was, after all, always nice to me. But I realized that I was a witness to murder and it was my duty to come forward. I could be considered a suspect and she could even try to pin it on me.

But my friend actually spared me of that. She turned herself in and she eventually pled guilty. She later told me she cared about me enough to not want me involved in the mess. So why in the hell did she commit her crime in front of me then?!

Crystal was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. There is no death penalty here, though there was no shortage of pundits and other blowhards calling for it when this case came to light. I couldn't bear to see her, this pretty, thinking, feeling, warm human being strapped down, stripped of every bit of dignity as she's killed by government officials in an institutionalized setting.

I haven't seen Crystal since she went to prison. They sent her up to this remote maximum security place that is hard to get to, although we do write to each other regularly. She signs her letters with a heart and smile face. How cute for a cold-blooded murderer.

She recently sent me a photo of her in her skirted prison uniform and that great smile. She signed it, "Love, Crystal," with a smiley face.

God, I miss her.

### A Trip at Granny's

The booze sure did flow at Grandma's house. That's where the action was. Her name was Henrietta. We kids just called her Grandma Henry. She was a big woman, a matriarchal type. She wore pointed cat-eye glasses, chain-smoked, owned a couple of street-corner bars and was not afraid to express an opinion - and shout you down if she disagreed with you.

She lived with Grandpa Jake, her second husband but in separate rooms. They had been divorced for years. Jake was a skinny, balding brewery worker who smoked air-tipped cigars and grinned a lot. He knew his place in the household. He was on the company bowling team and had a nice display of his bowling trophies.

Back in the swinging sixties, going to Grandma Henry's and Jake's house was always fun. Lots of laughter and music came out of that house, either from the old piano or from the Dean Martin records. The TV was usually on too, with the sound off when the music was playing. They had a color TV! Big, pumpkin-shaped screen with an attached stereo record player and AM-FM radio.

I remember seeing shows like My Three Sons or Bonanza for the first time in color there, with color commercials for Hunt's Tomato Catsup and L&M cigarettes, often without sound as Dean or Sammy or Frank crooned away. Sometimes Mom would play the piano, Dad would join in with his banjo and they'd sing old songs together.

In the basement was a pool table and sometimes Dad and Jake or Uncle Mitchell or somebody would be down there shooting a few games for fun. I just wondered where those numbered, colored balls went when they disappeared in the hole.

Meanwhile Aunt Pam and her friends would be in one of the upstairs bedrooms, listening to 45s on the little record player. Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Nancy Sinatra, that kind of stuff. There were always strange smells coming out of that room. Lots of giggles too.

On other visits, the card table would be out and Grandma Henry, Grandpa Jake, Mom, Dad, aunts, uncles, all the relatives would sit around it, shuffling, dealing, talking louder the drunker they got. The house would be filled with smoke, making my little eyes water.

There'd be a big platter of cheeses, meats, chips, dip and Ritz crackers to eat from. Lots of Pepsi and 7-Up as well if you were too little for a beer or vodka martini. Then came dinner. Always something good and lots of it. You didn't go hungry at Grandma Henry's house.

Hanging high above the dinner table, a gold and yellow Shell No-Pest Strip to keep the flies away. It looked like a neat toy but Grandma wouldn't let me play with it.

While the family was playing cards, and I happened to be walking by, Grandma Henry would often stop me and say "Jeffrey, would you be so kind as to bring me another beer," handing me her glass. Inevitably somebody else would say, "Oh, as long as you're headed that way..." Soon I'd be bringing everybody's drinks on a metal serving tray. It was fun though.

That's the stuff of childhood memories. My Grandma knew how to have a good time and throw a party. Perhaps she was too good at it.

When my Uncle Mitchell graduated from college, that was cause for celebration. I remember riding to Grandma's in Dad's blue '65 Ford and you could hear the festivities from down the block. Dad, Mom and I walk into the place and everybody's there. All the relatives, Mitchell's college friends, probably half the city council and mayor too. Grandma Henry always had good connections.

My parents grabbed a drink and faded into the crowd. I joined my young cousins in running around the house, up and down the stairs, in and out of the basement and jumping on the beds on second floor. Mitchell had reign of the stereo and the rockin' sounds of Iron Butterfly and Jefferson Airplane filled the house.

Pretty soon I grabbed a cookie and a couple of brownies off the big table. I noticed what looked like little bits of dried leaves in those snacks but they tasted all right so I didn't think much of it.

Before long I began to realize that in my seven short years, this was the best time I've ever had in my life. People would come up and say "How's Jeff doin'?" and I'd say "I'm having more fun than I've ever had!" and they'd say "Good for you!"

Also on the table was a punch bowl. Figuring it was just good old Hawaiian Punch, I helped myself to a glass and nobody bothered stopping me. Yuck! Pooey! There was booze in it. There just might have been something else in it as well.

I remember starting to feel a bit chilly, yet I was sweating up a storm running around the house with my cousins. My fingers and toes started to tingle pleasantly. "C'mon, Jeff! Let's play hide 'n' seek," said my cousin Doug and it sounded as though he was talking through a chamber.

Around the house the laughter got louder and the music got weirder but I only vaguely thought about that. I was just having the greatest time of my life and that was all that mattered.

I looked up and saw hanging from a window these yellow and orange daisy-patterned curtains. They were probably always there but I had never noticed them until now. And what a beautiful and fascinating work of art that I had been neglecting all this time, I thought, at least in the way a seven-year-old would articulate that.

I looked in all directions of the room, observing my surroundings and realizing what a splendidly bright, colorful world I was in. People were coming up, stooping down to talk to me and their faces seemed somehow bigger than the rest of their bodies. Bigger than life, really. Maybe it was just the angle at which I was looking at them.

Again the color TV was on with the sound off. What was on? Some variety show, I think. There was some lavish dance number where everybody was wearing these gaudy, colorful costumes.

The whole idea of color TV was fascinating to me because all we had at home was a black and white portable set with a broken aerial and it tended to make a buzzing sound. Color TV was so neat. I wanted to become better acquainted with it.

I looked closely at the screen. The lavish dancers with the gaudy costumes faded into vast dimensions of red, blue and green dots. Then there were the knobs below the channel changer. What do they do? One made everyone's faces turn bright red or bright yellow. Another made the faces blue or green. I played with the knobs, manipulating the colors in so many different ways. Nobody was telling me no, and in fact some of Uncle Mitchell's college friends seemed as fascinated as me. I heard one of them say "You've invented psychedelivision, man."

When I finally decided to find something else to do, one of the college guys started playing with the knobs. I wandered into the kitchen. The kitchen seemed much more vast than I ever remembered it to be. Grandma Henry was in there fixing more snacks for the partiers. I asked her for a glass of water and when I spoke, I felt as though I was under water.

Furthermore, she didn't seem to understand what I was saying. She kept going "Huh? What?" I pointed to the faucet and she finally got the drift. When Grandma Henry handed me the glass of water she suddenly looked scarier than I had ever seen her before. Those cat-eye glasses and bulging eyes actually frightened me. The wrinkles on her face looked deep and I saw sprouts of hair in them. Her long fingernails looked like claws. I took my glass of water, turned my head and got away from there.

The night continued on as I explored this whole new world at Grandma's house until....the police came. They just walked right in and swept everyone away. At first I thought they wouldn't notice me or that I was too young to get arrested but they took me and the rest of the kids as well.

The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed at home. The sun was shining through my window as it did every morning. But looking around my bedroom, it seemed to be spinning ever so slightly.

I called for my mom. I asked her, what happened at Grandma Henry's last night.

"It was just a dream. Forget about it," she said.

"But I remember...."

"I said forget about it!"

Later on, if I said "Mom, remember when I had that dream about...." she'd always say "Forget about it, Jeff. Just forget about it."

### YOU CALL ME MISTER FORD!

Back when they started wiring all our homes for cable TV, there were suddenly so many more channels to watch. My friends, for the most part, were infatuated with all-day music videos on MTV or uncut R-rated slasher and bikini movies, but for me it was the oddball low-budget programs on the public access channel that turned my crank, especially when that surly old man named Leonard Rodney Ford was on.

He hosted a program called Community Forum, which was probably the most violent public affairs show ever. The show's title seemed innocuous enough, but the host was a lunatic. He was a thin, frail-looking man probably in his seventies. He had greased hair, a pencil-thin mustache, a leathery, wrinkled face, and he always wore what appeared to be a circa 1935 tuxedo, complete with a bow tie. Almost like the stereotypical movie villain. He began each show standing at a Hammond organ, playing this strange theme song as the title and opening credits rolled across the screen.

"How do you do", he'd say in a snarly, graveled, rather nasal voice. "This is your Community Forum, and I am your host, Mister Ford." He'd continue playing the organ as he talked about that edition's guest.

His guests were so-called community activists looking for a place to promote their cause. But Mr. Ford hated just about everybody who had a cause and with no studio audience and no warm-up, just about anything happened.

One show that sticks out in mind was when an environmental activist named Michael M. Shepherd was on. As they argued over the merits of clean air and water legislation, Shepherd's first mistake was calling the host by his first name.

"You have to understand, Leonard, that the earth is a fragile place..."

"You call me Mister Ford!" he snapped, his face close enough to Shepherd's that they almost touched noses. When Shepherd apologized and put his hand on Mr. Ford's shoulder in a friendly gesture, the host pushed him away, yelling "You get your filthy, communist hands OFF me!"

Shepherd pointed out that the word "communist" actually comes from the word "community" but Mr. Ford abruptly got up and started playing the organ, drowning out anything Shepherd had to say.

Mr. Ford was indeed touchy about his name. When asked why, he snarled, "I am the host of this Community Forum, and as the host, I demand respect! If you have a problem with that, then I suggest that you get out of here and don't come back. And I will see to it that you will never appear on another television or radio program again!"

Another show had feminist Deb Zworkin, who was on to talk about sexism and the plight of women in the workplace.

"A woman's workplace is the kitchen and the bedroom," Mr. Ford told her, in no uncertain terms.

"Ford, you are the number one leading oppressor of women," replied Zworkin.

"That's Mister Ford and if you were a man or my wife, I'd belt you!"

"Go ahead," she taunted.

"Okay."

BAM! He hauled off and cracked her across the jaw.

When Asian-American rights activist Steven Wu called Mr. Ford "an example of the typical Caucasian-American racist", the host eloquently responded, "Listen here, slant-eyes, I slaughtered gooks like you in the Korean War and I'll do the same to you right now if you don't watch it!"

"I don't need this," said Wu as he got up to leave.

"That's right," Mr. Ford told him. "Get your little yellow ass the hell out of here. And don't ever come back!" He then forcefully shoved Wu from behind, knocking him to the floor. Mr. Ford then kicked him and yelled, "I said get out of here!"

When gay activist Bruce McKenzie showed up, the host wore an asbestos suit and gas mask because "You probably have AIDS." The interview lasted a whole ten minutes when the guest, smirking, said "Oh, you're such a homophobe, Lenny-poo." Mr. Ford wasn't going to stand for that kind of disrespect.

"Homophobe? I'll homophobe you!" He punched McKenzie in the face, knocking him backward in his chair. "And the name is Mister Ford!"

I would have friends over to watch this thing and we'd be drinking beer and doubling over with laughter. "You call me Mister Ford" became a running gag among us as we'd mimic his voice. The girlfriend of one of my buddies, however, couldn't stand it when I had Mr. Ford on when they were over. She'd sigh loudly and say, "Could you, like, change the channel," not as a request, but as a demand.

I'd say, "No, I like this guy. He's cool."

"No he's NOT. He's not cool and he's not funny. This show makes me very uncomfortable."

"Too bad," I'd say. She'd let out loud sighs and roll her eyes, but I tend to not take demands from someone else's girlfriend too seriously.

I don't ever remember seeing a guest lasting an entire show, except for the AARP representative who called for more government benefits for seniors. That was one guy Mr. Ford agreed with. Otherwise, if guests didn't leave on their own in anger or in tears, they were usually punched, kicked, shoved into cameras, hit with a cane, you name it. If somebody dripped blood on the studio floor after being beaten and forcefully ejected, Mr. Ford would point to it and yell to a custodian, "Clean this up!"

One guy who seemed to follow protocol by saying "Yes Sir, Mr. Ford" was punched for "being a smart ass." To fill the balance of the program upon someone's abrupt departure, Mr. Ford would entertain his viewers by playing his organ.

Then there was my favorite show, the one when Syd Vomit, a punker dude with spiked green hair who represented some anarchy group, was on to argue with Mr. Ford. When Syd called the host "dude" a few too many times, he was warned, "Don't ever call me that disrespectful word, you funny-looking freak of nature. You call me Mister Ford or you call me Sir!"

Syd put his hand up to his ear pretending he couldn't hear and said sarcastically, "What was that? Sister Ford?"

Mr. Ford picked Syd up by his leather jacket, got in his face and shouted, "It's Mister Ford, PUNK!" He threw him back down in his chair.

"Yeah, whatever, Rodney," Syd taunted.

Mr. Ford punched the young anarchist in the face with full force. The punker got up and tried to fight back, but Mr. Ford quickly knocked him off the stage and brought him down, grabbing a spike of his green hair and slamming his head into the cement studio floor with several loud thumps. When Syd managed to pull away and run for the exit, Mr. Ford grabbed an unplugged microphone and threw it at him, yelling, "Get out of here, you rotten kid!"

Now that's my kind of public affairs.

### Family Restaurant

Hartman's Family Restaurant used to be the hot spot down Highway 53 back in the late seventies, before the big fast food chains made their way out there. The food wasn't all that good, mostly greasy and overcooked. It was a good place to get indigestion. But it attracted families from all over the area, as well as travelers driving through because it was the only place in the area for dining out at the time.

The building stood out on the highway with its colorful façade, brightly-lit signage and large tinted windows. Inside there was plywood paneling, booths and seating padded and covered in orange, yellow and brown colored vinyl, glass ashtrays, silverware, paper placemats and bottles of ketchup on all the tables, a jukebox, a few arcade games to entertain the kids, and a pay phone and cigarette vending machine near the front entrance.

The waitresses were young, attractive and outwardly pleasant. A lot of them were students at, or recent graduates from the local high school. They wore brown polyester skirts with beige blouses. A little heart logo replacing the apostrophe in the word "Hartman's" on the main sign, menu covers and waitresses' nametags gave it the look of a family-friendly place.

In 1978, Melanie was one of the waitresses there, and probably the most popular. She had light brown hair and brown eyes, which went well with the brown and beige waitress dress she had to wear. She had a melodic, almost angelic voice, a pleasant demeanor, a constant smile, and she always made direct eye contact with her customers, including the children. When she brought the guest check, she would sign her first name in her loopy, girlish handwriting and draw a smile face.

People liked her, and she got pretty good and sometimes excellent tips, making some of her fellow waitresses, many of whom she went to school with and considered friends, a bit envious. She had her share of rude and inconsiderate customers too, but she didn't let that break her spirit.

When the waitresses went on break, they would sit at one of the tables, smoke cigarettes, talk, gossip, giggle and generally denigrate the customers. They had nicknames for some of the regulars; Geezer, Mister Perv, Bitch Queen, Retarded Boy, Dirty Sally. There were a lot of little kids running around and young teens hanging out just to play the arcade games, and the waitresses talked about various methods of discipline they wished they could administer when the parents wouldn't.

Melanie liked to smoke, giggle and gossip as much as any 18-year-old girl, but she drew the line when it came to cutting down the customers behind their backs. "Hey, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," she would say. "They're our customers. They're the reason why we have jobs."

"Yeah but the pay is shit and a lot of these assholes don't even bother tipping," responded Gina, one of the other waitresses.

"God, Melanie, you're such a goodie-goodie," Tracy added.

Melanie just laughed it off. She had heard that before and didn't let it bother her. "So what's wrong with being a goodie-goodie," she'd retort. "At least I get good tips occasionally. There's nothing wrong with being nice."

At the time she was waitressing at Hartman's, Melanie was still living at home, the youngest of four siblings. She was working hard and saving money to go to community college and to get a place of her own.

She had a boyfriend of sorts, a neighborhood kid she befriended named Brian. At age 15 he was a bit young for her, but he was bright, sensitive and rather shy. He had had a secret crush on her since the days when she used to babysit a couple of his friends, and in recent months they had started getting to know each other. The more vivacious Melanie took a liking to him, started doing things with him, brought him out of his shell and even rang in 1978 by giving him his first kiss at a New Year's party, while under the bubbly influence of champagne. She treated him as a peer, but in actuality he still had some maturing to do.

By springtime, she was working more, and consequently she didn't have as much time to talk to and hang out with Brian, or for any other recreational activity for that matter. Feeling like he was being blown off by her, the teenager decided to bring a couple of friends to Hartman's and pay her a visit.

Melanie was pleasantly surprised to see them, at least at first. After greeting them she told them which area they could sit in if they wanted to have her as their waitress. "So good to see you guys," she said.

"Good to see you, too," Brian said. "It's been what, 25 years?" He laughed as he said it, but Melanie kind of knew at that point where it was going.

"I'm sorry I've been so busy Brian. I promise I'll get together with you soon. Please be patient." She gave them menus. "Can I get you guys something to drink?

"I'll have a Mountain Dew," Brian said.

"We don't have Mountain Dew. We have Coke, Sprite, Tab..."

"I'll have a Seven-Up."

"We have Sprite."

"Do you have Squirt?"

"I can get you water, Brian."

"Fine. I'll have a Coke."

So it went, and when it came time to order off the menu, Brian told Melanie, "I'll have the Chihuahua on rye, with a side order of Kentucky Fried Colonel heads. They're chicken lickin' good!" He busted out laughing and his friends laughed with him. Melanie wasn't so amused.

"Can you please be serious, Brian. I have lots of other customers to wait on."

After the boys put in their food orders, they talked loudly to one another, swore casually, blew wrappers off of drinking straws and made noises resembling bodily functions. Brian was the biggest culprit, as he kept looking over at Melanie as she worked, to see if he was getting her attention with his antics. When Melanie walked in to the kitchen, Jim the manager asked, "What's going on at table 5?"

Melanie covered her face for a moment and shook her head. "I'm sorry. I know those guys. One of them is trying to get my attention. If you let me have a five minute break, I'll take care of it."

"Okay, five minutes."

Melanie asked one of the other waitresses there to take over her other tables for a few minutes. She got a cigarette from her purse in the back office (a routine for her breaks), struck a match, punched out on the time clock, then with lit cigarette in hand, went back to table 5 and grabbed Brian by the strings of his gray hooded sweat jacket.

"Come on Brian. Let's go take care of this," she said in a calm voice. Brian and his friends were all stunned. She took him through the restaurant and out the back door.

She looked him straight in the eye. "I know what you're trying to do, Brian."

"Look, Melanie, I'm not..."

She put her arms around him and kissed him in mid-sentence. "I have a five minute break," she told him. "Let's make the most of it." She kissed him affectionately for almost a minute, until she got his lower lip into her mouth. Then she bit down hard.

"OW!"

"That's for being annoying to your waitress. Do you have any idea how hard we work and how little respect we often get? Are you aware that you were annoying the other customers and that my boss just asked me what was going on? You could have gotten me fired!"

"Sorry."

"I have to get back to work. We can talk later. But be nice to me, okay. The past couple of weeks have been really stressful."

"I'm SORRY!"

Melanie went back in and told Jim with a smile, "All taken care of." She finished her cigarette, punched back in on the time clock and got back to work. The other waitresses were stunned and completely amazed. They suddenly had a newfound respect for Melanie. "Way to go, Melanie," Tracy said, patting her on the back. Gina and Wendy joined in congratulating her.

Meanwhile Brian was checking his lip in the rest room mirror, making sure he wasn't bleeding.

The next day Melanie had mixed feelings about the whole thing. She didn't entirely regret doing what she did, the kid was being an immature jerk, he deserved it, and she had the honor of being the waitress who finally got to tell off a rude customer. But she also considered him a friend, and she felt bad that she had to do that to him. She had a feeling the friendship might be over now and he won't want to talk to her again.

But two days later she got a letter in the mail from Brian. In his own writing on two sheets of folded up notebook paper, he apologized profusely to her. He told her he was sorry for being an immature jerk, for being mean to her, for being selfish. He told her he appreciated her friendship and all she had done for him, the good times they've had, and begged her, "Please don't hate me."

Melanie still had a busy schedule ahead of her, but she took the time to go over to Brian's house. She hugged him tightly for quite a while, and kissed him without biting him.

"I don't hate you, Brian," she assured him. "I wouldn't have done that to you if I hated you."

### Um, Could You, Like, Play Some Dance Music?

In the summer of 1986 my friend Jason Bergstrom was running a pretty successful bar and nightclub called Koogle's Pub. I used to like to hang out there, and Jason would even occasionally buy me a drink. In his nightclub he had a staff of four guys around my age playing records in the big DJ booth, and it was something I really wanted to try out. I wanted to be the guy who got to play rock 'n' roll and be the life of the party that everyone would look up to.

I had been asking him for the longest time to let me spin records at his club. He kept telling me, "well, maybe someday, but we really prefer someone with experience," yada, yada. But the opportunity did finally come up one Sunday night. The phone rang when I was watching 60 Minutes on TV.

"Jeff! Jason here. You wanna be a disc jockey? Then be here by eight o'clock. The guy who's supposed to be here called in sick and I can't get anyone else to do it."

I said "Great. I'll be there."

"Later, Dude." He hung up.

I knew that they had plenty records and compact discs there but I nevertheless grabbed a few of my own records and some other goodies and headed over. I got over there before eight. The place wasn't crowded but it was gradually filling up. I saw a lot of stereotypical suburban preppies. Boys with hair cut just right, the obligatory stud in the left ear, girls with perfect hair, perfect make-up, Calvin Klein jeans and sweatshirts promoting colleges they would never be admitted to.

With my long, scraggly hair, scruffy beard and well-worn T-shirt and regular old jeans, I walked up to the DJ booth. A god-awful techno dance CD was playing, loud enough to hurt my ears. The techno beat grated through me like a jackhammer. I felt like I had died and gone to hell, suffering eternal damnation.

I dug through the vertical stack of albums in the booth. When the dance track was over, I threw on "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest. From there I cued up "Too Hot to Handle" by UFO, following that with tracks from AC/DC, Metallica, Blue Oyster Cult, Van Halen, and I threw on some Grand Funk Railroad and Tom Petty for good measure.

By this time it was almost nine and the bar was filling up, mostly with people under the age of 30. One dude with kind of long hair came up to the booth, high fived me and said "Great fucking tunes, Man!" But everyone else seemed pretty indifferent.

When I was playing "Cold Ethyl" by Alice Cooper, one of the best songs about necrophilia ever written, a cute chick with blond hair tied back in a big white thing came by. She had wide, blue eyes, a blue V-neck shirt and a perfume-y scent that hovered around her.

"Um, could you, like, play some dance music," she said.

"Sure, Babe, coming right up," I said. She walked back to the table where her group was sitting, kissed her boyfriend, took a sip off her cocktail and lit a cigarette. She and her friends talked and laughed.

When the Alice Cooper tune ended, I said into the microphone, "I got a request for some dance music. You want it, you got it." The young people at that particular table cheered.

Instead of playing what they undoubtedly had in mind, I threw on a 45 I brought from home - "Do The Freddie" by Freddie and the Dreamers on Mercury Records, circa 1965. "Kick your feet up/Swing your arms up, too/Move your head both ways/Like you see me do/Then jump three feet to the swinging beat/Do the Freddie (Freddie)..."

Every eye in that place was staring at me, mouths open, stunned. Then they kind of looked at each other with smirks. There were a couple of geezers there who did dance to it but otherwise no one else knew what to think.

I followed that up with "Purple Haze." I wasn't even touching the vast CD collection. Everything was vinyl.

Another young woman from the same table I had been observing before came up to my booth. She had long brown hair and brown eyes, wearing an Esprit sweatshirt, with a cigarette in her left hand.

"Um, what is your name?"

"Jeff."

She put out her right hand. "Hi, Jeff. I'm Tiffany." We shook. She had a very light grip. Do you have any, um, like black artists?" She and her friends were very much WASPs, for the record.

"This guy is black," I said, referring to the record playing.

"I don't mean Jimi Hendrix."

"Well let's see...." I pulled out an album. "I got Wilson Pickett...."

"No, no, um, Jeff, um we'd like to hear something we can, like dance to, but not, like, sixties music. Something from like, today."

She knew very well I was totally unhip to contemporary music. Funny to think I really wasn't that much older than any of them were, yet it was like we were a generation apart. But she was charming enough, so I relented and opened the booth, and invited her to pick out what she wanted. I had the pleasure of being in close quarters (although out in the open) with her as she meticulously went through the records and compact discs, pulled out the ones she liked and pointed out which tracks I should play. Prince and the Revolution, Madonna, the Jets, Stacey Q, Billy Ocean, that sort of thing. She also looked through the records I brought in, wrinkled her face in cute repulsion and stuck out her tongue.

However reluctant I was to do it, she sweet talked me into playing the crap she and her friends wanted. When she was done and I cued up her first selection, she smiled and said "Thanks, Jeff," taking my hand and lightly stroking it with her index finger, and then rejoined her friends.

The dance floor filled up and all those young, drinking, smoking goodie-goodies were in ecstasy. And then this drunken frat boy came up to the booth.

"Are you hitting up on my girlfriend?"

"What?!" I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

"Tiffany. She was up here. You were with her. You better tell me what happened!" He poked my chest with his fat finger.

Tiffany came up behind him, putting her arms around his waist. "Bradley, he didn't do anything. Just leave him alone."

"You better not have! I'll kick your ass, boy," he warned as they walked back to their table. Bradley kept his arm around her and his eye on me the rest of the night. It was pretty creepy. Gee, guys like that attract women and I can't. Hmmmmm....

At one a.m. it was closing time. After last call, the floodlights came on. Jason the manager ordered up a screwdriver for me at the bar, on the house.

"Thanks a lot, Dude, I really appreciate this," he said as he handed me a check for five hours work.

"Hey man, I had a lot of fun tonight. Can I do this again sometime," I asked.

"Oh shit yeah! I'll call you when I need you."

In spite of his apparent enthusiasm, he never did invite me back.

### Operation Skywatch: Survival Under Atomic Attack

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present Jack Stryker, Civil Defense Director.

America is a nation of peace and tranquility. We are a peaceful, family-oriented people. We do what's right, we worship God and we make an honest living. Wherever Old Glory flies, we have assured freedom and security.

You may not think you have to worry about atomic attack against your family, but you're wrong. Dead wrong. Every American city and town -- your neighborhood -- may be a target of enemy bombing raids. The filthy Communist menace is everywhere.

The American family could be attacked by ruthless enemies from around the world for the simple fact that we are good, decent God-fearing Americans, which is exactly what the Communists hate. We are a threat to the Red Menace because we are a free people. We cannot allow ourselves to be ripe for the taking. Every would-be aggressor knows that he can't get by unless he defeats us first. And he certainly will try.

In this age of the atomic weapon, any potential enemy has the power to make sudden, devastating attacks on this blessed land. Our great cities could be reduced to rubble in seconds. A single plane carrying an atomic bomb can wipe out an entire city. The broad and vast seas which have protected us from hostile nations have been canceled out by fast, long-range planes.

A surprise attack could happen any hour, any minute in any city or many cities at once. It could take just a few seconds. KABOOOOM! A flash of light, a mushroom cloud 40,000 feet in stature, leaving behind only rubble, dust and fallout. The end of the American way of life.

It is only common sense to be prepared. That is what Civil Defense is for. To help us protect ourselves. Join your local Civil Defense organization and Ground Observer Corps.

The Observer Corps Air Defense Command needs you, the individual, to give lookout for enemy planes. Even though our potential enemies are far away, an aggressor in any part of the world can and will destroy us if we are not prepared for defense. The aid of just one person can play a vital role. Your eyes may see the light of enemy bombers and your voice would set the defense of our country into action. You and thousands like you are needed to provide the voices of our survival.

When the bombs do come, protect yourself by building a bomb shelter adjacent to your home. Your bomb shelter should be at least three feet underground and should have a steel reinforced door that will stand up to atomic blast and keep nuclear fallout from seeping in.

This will be your home away from home for days, even weeks so be sure it is large enough to serve as living quarters for your entire family and perhaps your neighbor's as well. It should be stocked with essential items including canned and non-perishable food items, barrels of uncontaminated drinking water, whiskey and cigarettes. Make sure you have a lantern and kerosene as you will most likely lose electrical power in an atomic attack. Have plenty of board games, playing cards and reading material to pass the time.

The enemy is also among us, posing a dangerous threat right here at home. Enemy agents that may reside in your community will give away our government secrets and information about us citizens to hostile nations.

Make sure your workplace administers a loyalty oath to all employees to root out the enemy among us. Take the oath yourself with pride, so help you God. Anyone who refuses is suspect. Be cautious of people with un-American sounding accents. They could be enemy spies.

Show your patriotism by erecting a flagpole in your front yard and fly the Stars and Stripes proudly. For nighttime flying, be sure to install spotlights around the flagpole.

Finally, tell bleeding-heart liberals and other subversives to go to hell. This is America, damnit!

Atomic attack against your community could happen. You must be prepared. And rest assured that if it does happen, America, with all her pride and glory, will strike back with her own deadly bombs!

*****

Jeff R. Lonto is a writer and historian living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the author of four non-fiction print books, dozens of articles about various aspects of pop culture history and of the Chronicles from the Analog Age Blog on Blogspot.com. He founded Studio Z-7 Publishing in 1997 and published his first two books in 1998.

Website: http://www.studioz7.com

Blog: theanalogage.blogspot.com

