I don’t like soap operas, because it’s too hard to remember who is pregnant and by whom, and I always had a sneaking suspicion that Laverne and Shirley were gay. But then again, I don’t remember ever seeing them on “Donahue.”
* * *
The movies. They can get a little crazy, too. I’m all for realism, but the language they use in today’s movies is atrocious. Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn even used dirty words in On Golden Pond. And if they ever made Gone With the Wind over again, I can’t even imagine how Rhett would tell Scarlett to take a hike this time — “Frankly, my dear, I don’t....”
When it comes to sex, movies are like everything else today — overloaded. I enjoyed sex in movies more when you thought they were going to do it, but you were never quite sure.
In those days, when it became apparent that a couple had more on their minds than playing a few hands of canasta, the leading man and lady would embrace while doing-it music (violins and harps) played in the background. Then before they removed the first stitch of clothes, the camera faded off.
As a matter of fact, whenever you heard doing-it music in a movie, you knew it was safe to leave your seat and go buy a package of Milk Duds, because absolutely nothing was going to happen that you hadn’t seen before. Today if you leave your seat for even a couple of minutes, you’re liable to miss three gang rapes, two oral sex scenes, and enough skin to re-upholster an entire Greyhound bus.
It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. Great movies still can be made without having a nudist colony as the setting. Take Tender Mercies, for example; Robert Duvall won an Academy Award for his performance and never took off more than his shirt.
What we need is more movies like The Natural and Patton, my all-time favorite movie. George C. Scott was even better than his cousin Randolph. I also enjoy action movies where the villains gets theirs in the end — movies like Walking Tall, where Joe Don Baker took a stick and destroyed an entire Tennessee roadhouse and everybody inside it.
Unfortunately, I doubt that movies ever will be the same as they used to be. Back then we went for diversion and relaxation and Milk Duds, not for some deep, sensitive message; not to see people butchered with chain saws; not to see things you used to see only in the magazines your older brother brought home from the Navy.
I give credit to the brilliant Chicago columnist Mike Royko for putting today’s movies in their proper perspective. Royko sensed that when John Wayne died, the movie industry changed forevermore.
In his tribute to the Duke, Royko cited the way he handled Dirty Ned Pepper in True Grit, and he wondered how John Travolta would have dealt with Dirty Ned in the same situation.
“He probably would have asked him to dance,” wrote Royko.
11
Who Does My Butt Belong to Now?
SIN, LIKE PRACTICALLY every other element of life, isn’t as simple as it used to be. And retribution, which always seemed to involve my rear end in one way or another, isn’t as firm or as fast as it once was.
Of course, there are many more opportunities to sin today than there were twenty years ago. Combine that with the obvious erosion of discipline and respect for authority, and what you have is a lot of young people running around having loads of fun doing things it never occurred to the youth of twenty years ago to do.
We’ve already discussed sex. With the pill for safety and the Penthouse Forum for directions, who knows what’s going on in the back seats of Toyotas these days? Whatever it is, I’m certain that the participants are much more cramped than they would have been had the 1957 Chevy lived on into the eighties.
Peeping Tomism, which was popular with my generation, also has lost its way in the modern world. We used to slip around and snoop in windows to see if we could catch girls in their underclothing. Kids today get their equivalent kicks by using computers to invade the privacy of large corporations. I suppose they see enough skin on television and in the newspaper ads for movies; they don’t have to waste their time crouching outside of windows. But if I had to pick, I still would rather watch Kathy Sue Loudermilk do her famous eight-o’clock-every-Wednesday-evening striptease from the tree outside her bedroom than to gaze at the financial records of AT&T in my computer.
The sin of gluttony has even changed since I was growing up. We used to steal watermelons and then gorge ourselves. I was even known to gnaw on the rinds when I was feeling especially gluttonous. Kids today pig-out on Slurpies and Twinkies and Little Debbie Snack Cakes, and they can get pizza delivered to their doorsteps. And not long ago I was at Baskin-Robbins behind a kid who was having trouble deciding which of the thirty-one flavors he wanted, so he finally said, “I’ll just have a scoop of each.” When I left, he had eaten down through the Almond Toffee and was working on the Fudge Swirl and washing it all down with Tab.
Frankly, I’m glad that I’m not twenty years younger and confronted with all the temptations that the nation’s youth face today. I’m glad, for example, that I never had to deal with the issue of drugs.
There certainly were no drugs in my high school, and a real druggie when I was in college was someone who took No-Doz. We knew from seeing Sal Mineo in The Gene Krupa Story that a thing called marijuana existed, but we had never seen any. We figured that only kids in New York City smoked it, and that was why they all looked so greasy and undernourished.
The only thing we took to alter our mental state was beer or maybe bourbon mixed with Coke. Even that was only an occasional indulgence, because beginning drinkers (as most of us were) spent a lot of time embracing the stone pony. That means we spent a lot of time throwing up into a commode, and that definitely wasn’t cool.
Had drugs been available in my school days, there would have been some to try them, no doubt. Norris Brantley, for instance. He would try anything.
Norris had a big date one evening, but his parents had made him spend the afternoon painting the garage. When Norris finished, he was covered in paint and had only an hour to make himself presentable for his date. He showered and scrubbed, but he couldn’t get the paint off his arms and legs.
Norris had heard that gasoline was a marvelous paint remover, so he siphoned several buckets full out of his mother’s car and filled the tub. Then he sat soaking in the gasoline, waiting for it to remove the paint.
Meanwhile, Norris’s mother was busy hostessing a bridge party.
“Do you smell gas fumes, Marjorie?” one of the ladies said to Mrs. Brantley.
Soon all the ladies smelled the fumes, and Mrs. Brantley began searching through the house to find the source. The closer she got to Norris’s bathroom, the stronger the scent became.
She finally looked in the bathroom and found Norris sprawled out in the tub. He had passed out from breathing the gasoline fumes. Moving quickly, Mrs. Brantley pulled Norris out of the tub and, using a fireman’s carry, hauled him out of the bathroom, through the den where the bridge ladies were, and out into the yard. After a few minutes, Norris revived.
Mrs. Brantley then went back inside and attempted to revive two of the bridge ladies, who had fainted at the sight of Mrs. Brantley carrying ol’ naked Norris through the den.
That was the last time Norris ever tried to take a gasoline bath, but later on he tried something even more daring. He actually ate the “mystery meat” they served us in the high school cafeteria on Wednesdays, which was worse than the Friday meatloaf that had been forced upon us back at Moreland elementary.
Previously, no student had been brave enough to attempt the Wednesday mystery meat. It defied description and categorization. It was a dark, hideous-looking substance which the cooks tried to hide by covering it with gravy. Whenever a student would ask, “What is this?”, the cooks would simply look at each other and smile knowingly. They would never answer the question.
Norris, who had eaten an entire package of crayons in third-grade art class on a dare, became so intrigued by the mystery meat that he actually cut a piece with his knife and fork, which required a considerable s
truggle, and ate it.
“What does it taste like?” somebody asked Norris.
“Sort of like a blue crayon,” he answered.
We never did learn the identity of the mystery meat, but Norris later reported that he took a piece home and tried to feed it to his dog. The dog ran and hid under the bed and wouldn’t come out until Norris buried the substance in the yard.
Norris would drink anything, too. We were on a camping trip when one of the kids from out in the country produced a pint of his father’s white liquor, known to some as “moonshine.”
“Let me have a chug of that,” Norris said to the kid with the pint.
“You need to strain it first,” said the kid. “It’s got some leaves and dead bugs in it.”
That was no problem for Norris. He took off his T-shirt and strained the pint through it. Then he took a deep pull out of the jar.
When Norris got his breath back, he said, “It ain’t much to taste, but next time I got to paint the garage, I sure could use a couple of gallons.”
* * *
Most of us were quite satisfied with drinking beer. The only problem was obtaining it. Unless your parents went out of town and left some in the refrigerator, or you had an older brother who would buy it for you, or you had an understanding uncle who would bring you out a case from the Moose Club, you normally had to resort to bribing curb boys.
I drank my first beer when I was six. I found a half-full can on the coffee table one morning after my parents had entertained the evening before. They were still in bed, so I picked up the can and drank what was left in it. Having never tasted cold beer, I wasn’t bothered in the least that this was warm. As a matter of fact, I quite enjoyed it, and afterwards I began singing “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” my favorite song when I was six. Then I took myself a long nap.
I didn’t try another beer until I was fourteen. Nathanial, one of the curb waiters at Steve Smith’s truckstop, brought Danny Thompson and me three tall-boy Carling Black Labels out to the back of the truckstop for the price of the beer plus a dollar for his risk and trouble.
I drank my Carling Black Labels faster than Danny did, so I threw up first. We walked home — both of us quite ill.
It was a warm night. We had no air conditioning at my house, but I was still sober enough to remember how cool the inside of a refrigerator feels on a hot summer night in Georgia. So I sat down next to the refrigerator, opened the door, and stuck my head inside on one of the racks.
Then, just as I had done eight years earlier, I took a little nap. It was in that position, sleeping with my head stuck between lettuce and banana pudding in the refrigerator, that my mother found me a couple of hours later.
“Why are you sleeping in the refrigerator?” she asked.
“I was going to get myself some leftover banana pudding,” I answered, “but it was so nice and cool in here that I decided to take a nap.”
I always underestimated my mother’s ability to tell when I was lying.
“Let me smell your breath,” she said. “I think you’ve been drinking.”
I was dead. I let her smell my breath.
“How much did you have?” she asked.
“Two cans of beer that I remember,” I answered. “I’m a little hazy on the third one.”
“Did it make you sick?”
“As a dog.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Curb waiter at Steve’s.”
My mother put me to bed, and the next morning, as I lay hovering between life and death, she brought me aspirin. I expected her to give me a long lecture about drinking, but instead all she said was, “I hope you’ve learned a lesson.”
And I had. I learned never to drink Carling Black Label beer on a warm evening and never to stick my head in a refrigerator unless I’m wide awake.
* * *
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that most of us wouldn’t have gotten involved with drugs even if they had been available. Our parents certainly did not condone drinking, but at least there had been beer when they were young, and most of them knew the appeal it held for adolescents.
But not drugs. They would have been outraged, and they would have cracked down hard on us. And I don’t think we would have rebelled against them, either, because their disciplinary measures were fast and firm in those days.
These were not people to be trifled with. They had learned from the harsh parenting they had received, and they would stop at nothing to be sure that we understood they were in complete control.
My own dear mother had a strict rule that I was not allowed, under any circumstances, to ride on any mechanized vehicle that had less than four wheels. What she had in mind specifically was Dudley Stamps’s motor scooter.
When Dudley was fourteen, his parents bought him a motor scooter. My mode of transportation at the time still required a great deal of pedaling. Dudley would ride into my yard on his scooter and invite me to go for a spin.
“You aren’t going to get on any motor scooter,” my mother would insist. “You could fall off and break your neck.”
I knew I wasn’t going to fall off and break my neck, but I couldn’t convince my mother of that. When I was younger, she had been the same way about my running with a sharp stick in my hand.
“Put that stick down, young man!” she would scream at me. “You might fall and put out your eye.”
For years, I have been following the papers trying to find just one instance of a child running with a sharp stick in his hand and falling and putting out an eye. I have yet to come across one, but I suppose that’s the result of the constant vigil of mothers guarding against running and carrying sharp sticks simultaneously.
I rarely disobeyed my mother, but one day Dudley came by on his scooter and my mother wasn’t home.
“We’ll just be gone a few minutes,” Dudley said. “She’ll never know you went for a ride.”
The thrill of riding on the scooter caused me to lose all track of time. When I returned home three hours later, my mother went into hysterics. She sentenced me to no television for a month, forbade me ever to be in the company of Dudley Stamps again until I had children of my own, and fed me liver twice a week for three months. I considered myself lucky that parents didn’t have the right to give the death penalty in cases of such extreme disobedience.
I get the impression that parents of children today, in most instances, do not rule their disobedient young with the strong hand of discipline and authority that once was used.
Some parents think nothing today of allowing their fourteen-year-olds to hang out at rock concerts. Even if it weren’t for all the known evils (see earlier reference to Elton John concert), attendance at such events obviously is having a detrimental effect on the hearing of today’s youth. Nobody can listen to that much sound without suffering some degree of hearing impairment. Perhaps many of our children already have suffered severe hearing loss, which is why they think the music at rock concerts is appealing.
The schools aren’t nearly as strict as they once were, either. If a teacher spanks a child today, she may have a lawsuit on her hands. But that’s another reason I don’t think many members of my generation would have gotten involved with drugs and dyed their hair orange and exhibited all the rebellious, independent behavior of seventies and eighties youth. If our parents hadn’t stopped us from such, the folks at school would have had a field day with our hindparts.
Not long ago I ran into one of my former teachers.
“It was never the same after your class (Class of ’64),” he said. “You were the last class that took it as we dished it out. I’ve missed you.”
Certainly the children changed, but I wonder if the teachers didn’t, too. I wonder if their growing fears of lawsuits and even their fears of some of the students didn’t cause them to lose their grip.
My old high school principal, O.P. Evans, is dead now. Maybe what killed him was living long enough to see discipline erode in th
e public school system.
Mr. Evans always began each student assembly by reading from his worn Bible, which was held together by a few rubberbands and the grace of the book’s main character I can hear him now, booming out from the Word:
“‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child ... but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’“
That was Mr. Evans’s way of saying that any student caught chewing gum in study hall would be beaten within an inch of his or her life. O.P had rules and enforced them.
—No gum chewing anytime or anywhere.
—A student caught smoking faced certain suspension. This included smoking on weekends and before and after school. O.P. Evans held that when a student entered his high school, the student belonged to him until graduation.
—No fooling around between male and female students. When walking down the halls with a member of the opposite sex, for instance, a student was to maintain at least twelve inches of space between himself and herself. Those who violated this rule were taken to Mr. Harris’s health class, where he lectured about pregnancy, venereal disease, and saving yourself for your life’s partner.
—Any student missing time from school must bring a detailed excuse written and signed by his parents. Norris Brantley once was out of school for several days at the same time his parents were conveniently out of town. Norris attempted to write his own excuse. It said, “Please excuse Norris from class. He was real sick Oct. 29, 30, 31, and 32.” As punishment, they made him eat two helpings of mystery meat for every day he was out of school.
Mr. Evans’s wife, Mrs. Evans to us, was head librarian. She had rules, too:
—No reading a library book before you washed your hands. Any library book turned in with a smudge on any page would bring punishment for the smudger. I always read library books wearing the rubber gloves my mother used for washing dishes.
—No sound whatsoever in the library. This included throat-clearing, sneezing, coughing, and the sound a chair makes when it’s pulled out from under a table for the purpose of sitting.
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