Between Wrecks

by George Singleton

  I would like to thank the Northwestern University Wildcats football team for losing thirty-four games in a row.

  I would like to thank the Prairie View A&M Panthers football team for losing eighty games in a row.

  I would like to thank the California Institute of Technology’s basketball team for losing two hundred seven games in a row.

  I would’ve gone off and killed myself if I’d’ve realized that I’d forgotten all of the players in the Negro Baseball Leagues. I am 100% indebted to the likes of Josh Gibson, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Buck Leonard, Fleetwood Walker, Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster, Mule Suttles, et al. I want to thank the motels that allowed these heroes to spend the night while on the road, and to place a curse on the Jim Crow-hampered motels and restaurants that wouldn’t allow these men through front or back doors.

  It will be hard to believe, perhaps—it’ll sound like this kind of coincidence is downright impossible—but Yolanda Choice told me that her father’s father almost played for the Atlanta Black Crackers in 1922 or thereabouts, but he and his wife (Columbus Choice’s grandmother) had a baby (Columbus Choice’s father), and Mrs. Choice made some ultimatums. (I must remember to thank Arthur Schopenhauer later, especially for his remark about matrimony.) Anyway, Grandpa Choice, then in his early twenties, had to get steady work, which he did. According to his great-granddaughter Yolanda, he either worked in a cotton mill, for the railroad, or as a barber. No matter what his day job, on weekends and nights he moonlighted selling hot dogs at Atlanta Black Crackers home games. His son—Columbus Choice’s father—helped out selling hot dogs from the age of six on up until the last days of the Negro League, according to Yolanda.

  I don’t think it takes a Doctorate in Symbolism and Irony from a non-state-supported institution of higher education to marvel at the connective tissue that goes from grandfather to father to son. In a Rube Goldberg-kind of way, the Negro Baseball League helped kill innocent, unathletic, peace-loving, Buddhist-leaning African-American Columbus Choice.

  The Chicago Cubs, naturally.

  I am fully aware that some of the people I met regularly during my time in the Oak Ridge-Harriman area thought that perhaps I needed the services of the closest mental health facility. I heard the whispers. People laughed at me, and pointed. Sometimes I’d get something like, “You know, Edgar Allen Poe was kind of crazy” in the middle of an exchange.

  So I am fully indebted to Henry Darger, Jr., the great outsider artist and writer who penned the 15,145 single-spaced tome The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, plus the hundreds of illustrations that went with it. I am hopeful that everyone who reads No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee will close the covers and say, “Stet Looper wasn’t deranged—there were no illustrations of little girls with penises, and he’s 14,000 pages shorter than Henry Darger.”

  So I wish to raise my glass to Mr. Darger. His unflinching obsession helped me with mine. His example let me know that it was all right, if not normal, to shuffle onward, relentless, at times blind, never understanding why an artist does what he or she needs to do, like a lucky shrew or vole that the gods decided should be born beneath, and live below, a nightcrawler farm.

  It would be downright rude of me not to express gratitude, also, to the American sculptor Joseph Cornell, who might’ve been somewhat shy, but continued to make those collages-in-a-box.

  I want to thank Ms. Ann-Mary (did your parents have dyslexia?) Mason at the drive-thru window at Atomic City Bank and Trust. I never wanted to admit it—and I’m sure you knew at the time, Ann-Mary—but I didn’t really need all those penny wrappers, at least not most of the time. As you may or may not know, I never really trusted the banking industry. One of the reasons why I shanked so many punts in college may have been because of a gigantic Bank of America sign I could see hovering above the Vanderbilt stadium, as well as just about any Away Game stadium where Vanderbilt played. So I never trusted banks, but you, Ann-Mary, cured my distrust of bank tellers. If my dog Dooley could talk he’d want to say, “Thank you so much for doling out three or four Milk Bone biscuits every time we visited your window.”

  To be honest, if my dog Dooley could talk, he might also say, “My master ate some of those dog biscuits meant for me.”

  On a side note—just as one oftentimes needs a good bone to put in boiling water to make broth, a medium-sized Milk Bone works, too, though the end result tastes more like one of the lesser-known grains of the Midwest—say, barley—than marrow.

  I am grateful to the Board of Directors, Board of Trustees, Benefactors, Friends, Advisors, and Volunteers at the Roane County Historical Museum and Senior Citizens Center, and especially to Mr. Hack Watson, Executive Director; Mrs. Luann Fleming, Director; Mrs. Patty Patterson, Assistant Director; Mr. Hut LaRue, Groundskeeper; Mr. Ronnie Waddell, Director of Maintenance; Mr. Maynard Jolly, Curator; Mrs. Maynard Jolly, Assistant Curator; Ms. Brenda X. (what’s that “X” stand for?—X-citement!) Cureton, Secretary; and Mr. Hugh Gay, Docent. I understand how difficult it probably was for y’all to actually obtain the rope, knife, and pistol used to kill Columbus Choice and get them all on display beneath that Plexiglas hood in the foyer of the Roane County Historical Museum and Senior Citizens Center. I’m not even sure it’s legal. Shouldn’t those objects be secured in an Evidence Room at the Roane County Law Enforcement Center? Not that I’m complaining. Thank you all for letting me hold these weapons. You will never know how much motivation I received from feeling the hemp that once touched good, moral, visionary Mr. Choice’s neck. Also, I want to commend you all for understanding that every historical museum should also double as a senior citizens center. What a great notion! You got those groups coming in on Thursdays for Decoupage Class, and on Fridays to play Balloon Volleyball, and on Wednesdays for Storytelling Hour, et cetera. Later, when the old folks die off, who are they going to bequeath their old high school yearbooks to, or their butter churns, or their single trees and other farm implements, or their arrowhead collections, or their Minie ball stash? Answer: the Roane County Historical Museum. Great job, all.

  On a side note, I took my History 101 class from Tennessee Valley Community College down to the museum one time on a field trip. At the time we studied the American Civil War, and I have to tell you, y’all’s collection of bullet-hole-ridden Confederate uniforms is something else. My students stood there in awe. Except for Juanita Wilkins, who wandered over to the display of nineteenth-century surgical utensils, which I feel certain helped her decide to be the phlebotomist that she is today. And what about those leeches you have floating in formaldehyde! They say that the Clinch River once teemed with leeches, back before the nuclear facility went up over in Oak Ridge. I guess that’s one good thing about contaminated water—it kills off leeches!

  I would like to thank a nurse named Greta at the Roane County Plasma Center for allowing me to sell off my platelets for $18 a pop twice a week, back when I wasn’t selling off found antiques, or finding money beneath the drive-through windows of fast-food restaurants. I’m no Freudian or Jungian expert, but I will admit that I probably wanted only to know more about needles and blood so that I could keep up a conversation with Juanita Wilkins later on, should I run into her and her cohorts at a happy hour festivity somewhere out by Interstate 40. And tell her to quit using the N word in class like the time she said, “[N word]s want to have more children so they can get more food stamp money from the government. We’d be better off if we still had slavery.”

  And then I can say, “Columbus Choice didn’t have any children whatsoever.”

  And then Juanita, there at the Applebee’s, or Chili’s, or TGI Fridays, or Chief’s Wings and Firewater, or O’Charley’s, or Ruby Tuesday’s, or any of those other places where phlebotomists might go for happy hour to wind down from a tense and hectic day of drawing blood, might say to me, �
��You know what, Stet Looper, M.A., you’re right—I apologize for my indiscretion way back then when I was only nineteen years old and still living with my parents and subconsciously allowing my parents’ and grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ beliefs about skin color and economics cloud my vision.” And then she might decide that, yes, it is time for her to settle down with a biographer of my stature, a man well-known for No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee.

  After we drove down to South Carolina, where we could get married without having to wait for a waiting period, perhaps we could honeymoon in Myrtle Beach, eat seafood, walk on the beach, and I could make a point not to drive by any of the “gentlemen’s clubs” down there, where Juanita Wilkins could easily win any of the Amateur Night strip contests and then realize she could make a whole lot more money giving lap dances with her gigantic perfect natural breasts than she could sucking blood from tainted Tennesseans. If we did end up in a “gentlemen’s club,” and if Juanita Wilkins foresaw her future, she’d probably be able to talk me into it, of course, seeing as she’d taken that required Public Speaking course at Tennessee Valley Community College. Then what would a biographer like me do? How many people have been lynched in Myrtle Beach that I could research?

  I am enamored by the work of the people at Rand McNally and wish to thank them for their meticulous folding road maps that one day, I’m afraid, might end up as collector’s items seeing as there’s A) MapQuest, and B) that Global Positioning System. Uh-oh. Goodbye, cast-off fancy antique chairs for resale, and hello, Southeastern United States Regional Map with over 20 states, 23 city insets, state parks, and historical points of interest. Anyway, while doing research, I found myself oftentimes needing to take interstates to highways, highways to secondary roads, secondary roads to state-maintained roads, and so on until I came across, for example, the site where the tree once stood before it got sawed up into furniture. Try to type in “Tree that once had a limb to hold Columbus Choice’s hanging body, that’s now an end table” into one of those GPS machines and see what the computerized woman’s voice says back to you.

  I want to thank Vasco de Gama, Ponce de Leon, Magellan, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Hernando de Soto, and Lewis and Clark.

  How can I ever repay Jimmy Houston, professional fisherman, for all his tips on catching the elusive largemouth bass? Thanks, Jimmy! I hope we meet one cloudy day when you aren’t required to wear your Jimmy Houston Signature Sunglasses so I can tell you how I lured in more than a few dinners that sustained me enough to write No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee. Cast on, motherfucker, cast on!

  And to Roland Martin. And to Bill Dance.

  Although I think that they’re wrong, I would like to thank every philosopher and theologian who has tried to refute David Hume’s refutation in regards to teleology. I understand that this is some high-minded talk from a lowly biographer, but I need to point out how—except for trying to go backwards all the way until proving the existence of a supreme being—there’s some evident and obvious truths in this teleology scam. If there had never been a World War I, then Adolph Hitler would’ve never been a lance corporal runner in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment. If he hadn’t received any military training, he probably wouldn’t have set his goals on being some kind of “führer” and “reichskanzler.” And when he became the head of Germany, America and its allies automatically had cause to believe that he had some kind of nuclear capabilities, which caused our government to begin the “Manhattan Project,” which took place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There, physicists and their minions worked to separate and produce uranium and plutonium, which would be used to develop nuclear warheads. And so on. The Army Corps of engineers built the entire facility, and in doing so had to kick out a number of locals from their homesteads, which understandably pissed off some people vis-à-vis “outsiders” and “interlopers,” which made them wary of anyone new coming into the area shoving new ideas and/or foods down their throats, which is exactly what Columbus Choice had in mind when it came to A) shamanism; and B) Japanese mayo. The heartless notion of “eminent domain” caused nothing less than an entire region’s people to think that murder might be justifiable. So I offer my undying support to teleologists, and to the Army Corp of Engineers, for without their respective works, I would have never been able to complete No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee.

  Because I am not always attuned to the fact that there are always somewhere between two and eighteen ways to undergo a task successfully—i.e., sometimes I will find myself trying to dig a square hole with a round shovel—I want to thank an unknown-named ex-hippie Nature Woman who camped two doors down from me at the Frozen Head State Park Campground back in June, right as I finished the biography. Oh, I tried to woo her, but that’s another story. It’s hard to woo an outdoorswoman skilled at building fires with one stick and a callus. Anyway, she looked like the kind of woman who’d been damaged in a previous relationship by either A) a man; or B) a woman. I could tell by her face and movements, plus her impatience.

  During these couple days when she and I were campground neighbors, I couldn’t quite figure out how to write the epilogue. I’d brought back a number of books to my tent (sorry, Ms. Kno-block, about that one book that Dooley peed on—I think it was the smell of mildew that attracted him) and tried to use the long-dead biographers’ works as a template. It wasn’t working.

  And then I heard the woman apologizing over and over, plus a noise that sounded similar to tiny fingernails on a blackboard, or mice eating through a wall, or someone trying to work out the TMJ in his jaw, or an OCD person applying sandpaper to a poorly painted finial, or termites at work on compromised baseboards, or like the sound a Bendix switch makes when a car’s already started and the driver turns his ignition again, et cetera. I stuck my head out of my tent and held Dooley back. I said nothing.

  There are a variety of ways to exterminate slugs, but the most efficient involves a salt shaker. The hippie woman—obviously a person, much like Columbus Choice, who recognized the value and meaningfulness in all the life forms thriving on this planet—circled her personal space, squeezing the handles of a Chef’n SGB320 Grind Salt Ball. Like some kind of mantra she said, “If it makes it better, this is organic sea salt. If it makes it better, this is organic sea salt.”

  I went back inside my tent and finished the epilogue—as you know—by writing it as if from beyond the grave, as if Columbus Choice told the story. I awoke early the next day to find the woman gone, and her salt ball grinder—thus the reason how I know the manufacturer—left on the ground. I will keep this salt ball grinder on my desk forever, of course, as a reminder.

  I would be remiss not to mention how little moments of unexpected learning provide a biographer more choices—no pun here—than he will ever know.

  I would be a fool not to thank the likes of Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer, J. K. Rowling, and those other ones—some of whom are not women—for toiling away at their bestsellers that involve vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and the like. Call me an optimist, but I am of the firm belief that young readers will finally grow out of these fantastical tomes, and want to delve into something a little more realistic, something like No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee.

  I would be remiss to forget the influence of Rudy Ray Moore, the poet, comedian, and actor who starred in all the Dolemite movies. Who’d’ve thought that a biographer would ever thank a poet in the acknowledgments? Except for Carl Sandburg. I know that Columbus Choice would’ve thanked Rudy Ray Moore, also, even though—and I’m only conjecturing here—Mr. Moore never converted to Judaism, or allowed his kung fu–worthy body to rest enough in order to fully appreciate transcendental meditation.

  With respect and admiration to Bruce Lee.

  I am grateful to Ms. Renee Sands—and I apolo
gize, again, for calling you “Renee Sans” for so long, thinking that you wanted everyone to know you as the “Renaissance woman”—and her string of tables covered in a series of tarps and plastic sheeting more complex than anything a Bedouin can construct out in the African deserts, all filled with museum-quality paraphernalia, ephemera, and collectibles at the Mid-State Jockey Lot up in Wartburg, not far from the old Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. I’m not sure who you know on the inside, Renee, but your BMSP flatware, I should tell you, could go for a little more than a quarter a utensil if you’d break down and try the eBay route. And I’m not sure how you got a hold of the leather tie-downs and head piece for a convicted murderer in the electric chair—I did some research, seeing as that’s what I do, you know, and no one’s been executed through voltage in Tennessee since something like 1960—but it sure is worth the price of admission (free) to the Mid-State Jockey Lot to view and hold such things. I’m particularly awed by your collection of over 1,000 glass telephone pole insulators, and James Earl Ray’s comb. I would never, ever thank James Earl Ray, seeing as he assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, but in a way perhaps James Earl Ray gave some ideas to Jack and Sid Plemmons, who lynched Columbus Choice, which gave me all this data to report in No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee. What a sad, odd world we live in, Renee. Anyway, before I get all maudlin, I want to thank you for selling me that little cook set and mess kit, which I used mightily when I lived at the Frozen Head State Park Campground. And for the MREs. And let me tell you the truth: Now that I have some money coming in presently from the royalties of my biography, maybe I’ll take you up on buying that goat you had on sale a while back.