Monthly Archives: December 2018

Foxy’s and the Flaming Embers

Junesboy, Lexington-70's, , ,

I’ve written about how I got into the alcohol business (see “My Last Job Interview” in the blog archives), but I haven’t described that gem of a first retail job.

It was a tiny liquor store on North New Circle Road across the road from the Flaming Embers Inn and next to Foxy’s Diner. It was a choice location…for something…but not for a liquor store. The store had been purchased by the owners of the new chain Shoppers Village Liquors to acquire the liquor license. They were building a large and fancy new wine shop on Reynolds Road and needed a license. At that time, buying an existing business was the accepted procedure for obtaining a liquor license. Obviously, if an existing business was willing to sell, it probably was not doing much existing business…at least not enough to continue existing.

But there’s the rub. In 1972, you couldn’t just buy the store, close the store, and idle the license until your new location was ready to go. The license had to be in use. Thus, a tiny shop with lousy access to a busy highway offered an employment opportunity to a theatre hippie who needed a summer job (aka; 40+ year career).

My first day on the job consisted of intense and grueling training; learning how to operate the cash register and the price gun (22 minutes), learning how to break down a cardboard box (30 passionate seconds), learning how to lock up and set the alarm (5 minutes), and learning how to pronounce “Spañada” (a heinous, cheap, and versatile jug wine concoction from Gallo – it was amazing, you could boil it like a toddy, freeze it into ice cubes, spike it with fruit and/or grain alcohol, wax your car, and pick up thirteen TV channels, three in color). After my onerous 30 minutes of apprenticeship, I was left on my own for that 4pm-12m shift and every other weekday night shift for the next seven months until the store closed in November.

The first night I finished my duties by 5:30 and the customer flow dwindled to practically none after 6:30. I was left with nothing to do until midnight except watch the small TV (three channels, none in color — coulda used some Spañada). I didn’t own a TV myself at that time so it was a novelty…for about an hour. At midnight I closed the store and vowed to not spend another night watching TV. It was another two years before I owned a TV of my own.

Instead, I brought books to work.

Until college, I read two or three books a week for curiosity and entertainment. In college, my reading was hijacked by the required reading. Now free from academic regimen, I reverted instantly to my pre-university habits. That summer, I averaged reading a book a night, and still sold my share of Spañada. If I finished my book early, I was left to contemplate the neon sign across the street and meditate on what kind of business plan would lead one to name their hotel “The Flaming Embers Inn.” It smacked of prophesying an insurance claim. Or perhaps there were too many tawdry crime novels in my literary buffet.

My typical day that summer consisted of an evening of voracious if indiscriminate reading, closing the shop at midnight, slipping next door to Foxy’s for an exquisite Foxy burger, and then home to work until about 3am on the musical extravaganza Chuck and I were writing . It was an immersive routine of consuming and producing art, consuming dubious but affordable food, and paying the rent.

Our apartment or La Boheme…I forget which

Thanks to that summer, I don’t believe there’s anyone but me that understands and admires the opening scene of “La Boheme” as I do.

But even as I write that, my head tells me only about a million current and past theatre hippies have had the same experience. That fact represents a hope for the world.

My heart interrupts my head to shout; “You lie!”

My head and my heart; those two have never gotten along for any length of time, and with any luck they never will. To brutally paraphrase Nikos Kazantzakis; they are both made stronger by the tussle.

I’m thinkin’ neither was made stronger by Foxy’s burgers, nor Spañada.

Welcome to the 60’s

Lexington-70's, Movies, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have a friend who recently turned 60, or as he ruefully admitted to me; “I’m entering the 60’s.”

My reply to him was that he’s a little late. I entered the 60’s almost 60 years ago and enjoyed the hell out ‘em.

Oh, certainly there were unfortunate things in the 1960’s; things like assassinations, Viet Nam, George Wallace, Nehru jackets, Manos Hand of Fate, Tiny Tim, the Association’s Cherish, Richard Harris’ MacArthur Park……and tie dye.

But these travesties we more than offset by Woodstock, the Kennedy’s, bell-bottoms, the Beatles, the Stones, the Animals, and the whole British Invasion, Bob Dylan, Sean Connery’s James Bond, Psycho, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, La Dolce Vita, Cool Hand Luke, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, Bonnie and Clyde, Joni Mitchell, going to the moon……and tie dye.

And as I think about my impossibly young friend, he was born to enjoy the 60’s. He’s smart, well-read, and sometimes wears a beret. He questions all authority, thinks the moon is pretty cool, and knows all it is worth to know about popular music.

And he even likes Manos Hand of Fate.

He’d have loved the 60’s and I’m sure he’ll enjoy the hell out of his 60’s.

But, enough about him – what about me? Would I like to go back to the 1960’s?

Not on your life.

As Mr. Dylan said; “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

Besides, if I went back, at some point I’d probably have to hear the Ohio Express informing me; “Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy.”

Talk about TMI.

Cowboy Bob and Peyton Place

Junesboy, Lexington-70's, , , , ,

My grandfather, Papaw, moved in with us when I was in junior high. Later, when my dad was transferred to Omaha during my high school years, Papaw went along with the rest of the family. I stayed behind to finish high school.

Papaw was a taciturn man of occasional wit and wisdom…and slightly more than occasional whimsy. One day in Omaha, he returned from his afternoon walk (he could cover miles) with a four-foot high marijuana plant he had recognized growing on a railroad easement. He added it carefully to dad’s tomato patch. He’d heard the controversy about the plant and was curious. When my dad got home from work that evening, he felt that curiosity was gonna get the whole family tossed in the hoosegow and destroyed the evidence tout suite.

Papaw accumulated 78rpm records whenever he ran across them and would play them on his ancient turntable for hours. His hearing was no longer sharp. Thus, he cranked the turntable to life and cranked the volume up to eleven and leaned in. It was a sight to see. I couldn’t help but think of RCA Victor’s logo and caption; “Listening for his master’s voice.” I can’t truly say that Frankie Carle and his Orchestra writ scratchy and large made me a better man, but my Papaw seemed to find great value in the ensemble.

One day we were at a flea market and he noticed my interest in a cardboard box of about 20 “Tom Swift” books. When we returned to the car, the books were in the back seat, courtesy of Papaw. I can’t say TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR-BIKE made me a better man, but I cherished the books then and still have them…he said bookishly (that’s a joke that only Tom Swift cognoscenti will get…and wince at…sorry).

Papaw believed what he saw on TV.

He believed it was real.

He was an uneducated, unsophisticated man, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew movies were stories and not real.
But TV…

Here was a window through which you could see things that were really happening somewhere and not get arrested for peeping. You could look in on other people’s doin’s and mis-doin’s.

Don’t laugh too quickly. The plausibility of Hitchcock’s wonderful Rear Window depends on just that premise.

Remember, this was decades before “reality TV.” But Huntley and Brinkley were real, weren’t they? Ed Sullivan was live. Lawrence Welk was live (I’m not quite sure about Myron Florenz, but Bobby and Cissy were certainly a lively and charming young couple). All those game shows were live – maybe crooked, but live. The baseball game of the week was live.

The possibility of confusion was real and live on TV.

Papaw seriously proffered that Dorothy Malone and other members of the cast of Peyton Place had better mend their ways before disaster came a’knockin’ at the door. He would not miss an episode and wondered if Brother Bob from our church should go see those folks.

He believed professional wrestling was real.

Fervently.

I spent the summer of 1968, between school years, in Omaha. The professional wrestling scene in Omaha was thriving. Every Saturday night at the arena, there were hours of “championship” matches, blood matches, barbed wire challenges, and tag team mayhem, all accessorized with glitter, capes, masks, top hats, canes, and keffiyehs. Three or four thousand fans would pile in to scream and throw things.

It was a real good time.

During the week, to promote the Saturday events, portable rings were set up at the local malls and the lesser stars of Omaha’s wrestling world would go a few rounds to whet the appetite for Saturday night.

On Wednesday evenings, one of the local TV stations would set up the portable ring in their studio and surround it with 70-80 rickety chairs on rickety-er platforms. For an hour, the stars of Omaha’s grappling firmament would prance, sneer, yell, leap, kick, bite, slug, strut, threaten, and make imaginative use of those rickety chairs.

The invited audience would scream insults and jeers at the villains (no expletives had to be deleted – the crowd understood it was live TV, and it was a different time) and then line up to get autographs after the bouts.

Wednesday evenings in our living room would find my Papaw in the chair closest to the TV. This is not because he was being pushy. The rest of us wanted sit behind him and watch him watching wrestling. It was quite a show. He flinched with every punch. He rose from his chair with every leap from the turnbuckles. He kicked with every drop kick.

We laughed and had a whee of a time pointing out sheer fakery of the presentation. He was oblivious to our questions;

– How can a fighter smack another fighter on the head with a metal folding chair and a) not send him to the hospital, and b) not send the chair swinger to jail?

– How come every bout ended exactly in time for the commercial break?

– How can a fighter hide a mysterious debilitating substance in those skin-tight outfits?

– Why can the masks never be completely removed no matter how comatose the masked scoundrel is?

– Since this is in a TV studio and all the wrestlers are using the same dressing room, wouldn’t they just destroy themselves there?

– Isn’t it convenient that Cowboy Bob, wrestling good guy and horse owner/trainer, would return to Omaha every summer when the local race track opened, defeat Iron Mike for the regional championship, fight wrestlers and race horses all summer, and then lose the championship back to Iron Mike a week after the track closed for the year? It seemed positively migratory.

Papaw was undeterred in his faith.

One Wednesday night, he got so caught up in the TV action, he flung himself backward, overturned his chair, and dumped himself on the floor.

We didn’t laugh at that.

Dad decided this had gone beyond amusing and into the realm of; “Oh yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt or a perfectly good chair gets busted.” He obtained three tickets to the next Wednesday’s TV wrestling broadcast to cure Papaw of his grappling delusions.

There we were: three generations; Will Senior, William Junior, and June’s Boy, watching the participants laughing and joking with each other as they assembled the ring and warmed up. And there we were a half an hour later when the bouts began. It was all I had ever imagined; shouts and grunts and growls and screams – 250-pound men in tights leaping from the top ropes of the ring – dead men, face down on the mat – same dead men miraculously resurrected for a jaw-dropping thirty seconds of inexplicable victory – chairs flung, tables smashed, mysterious substances deployed – loud vows of vengeance to be inflicted; “Just wait till Saturday night at the arena! You won’t want miss it!!”

I was pretty sure I wanted to miss it.

We skipped the autograph session and headed home.

Papaw was pretty sure we had witnessed some clear illegalities that evening and that perhaps we should notify the police. His faith in the veracity of wrestling remained unshaken.

My grandfather lived to be 99 years old.

I love him and still miss him. He was a good guy and a real good time.
But I suspect…
…he would fallen hard for reality shows…
…he would have voted for Trump.

Sigh.

Kill the Lights – Eat the Cannoli!

Lexington Theatre, Lexington-70's, ,

In the prehistoric days of Lexington theater, spring of 1970, to be precise, a new theater entity was born; The Third Floor Theatre.

The Home of the Golden Arches currently on South Limestone was then the site of a Jerry’s Restaurant and in the back corner of the Jerry’s parking lot (just about where the McDonald’s drive-thru speakers are today) was a three-story brick building that housed Pasquale’s Italian Restaurant. Pizza had just been invented. Pizza delivery had not. Thus, “Italian Restaurant” meant lots of spaghetti and meatballs and cannoli and lousy brownish Chianti in straw-covered bottles.

<< Side note from the wine guy in the house >>
Those straw-covered bottles actually have a name. They are “fiaschi.” One bottle is a “fiasco.” Cool, huh? Don’t be fooled. The wine inside is far from cool, but the bottle looks great with candle stuck in it.
<< End of side note >>

Pasquale’s used the first two floors for the restaurant, leaving the third floor an empty space.

Empty space!

Nature has nothing on theatre practitioners when it comes to abhorring a vacuum.
According to the visionary British stage director Peter Brook, an empty space is a major ingredient for theatre. He’ll get no argument from me. I’ve performed on sidewalks (I played the Peabody Coal Company in a guerrilla theatre assault), a frigid restaurant basement (the play was set in Antarctica – it was no stretch), two libraries, in front of a movie screen, two big stairways, under a large tree, a church sanctuary, several school cafeterias and gyms, two chapels, a crumbling abandoned night club, and in a park with trains.

Thus, it was no surprise when a couple of UK theatre alumni approached the owner of Pasquale’s about using the vacant third floor as a theatre. I can imagine the sales pitch.
“Think of the theatre crowds…the lasagna you’ll sell!”

The room was tiny. It probably sat 20 folks at most. The stage was a 6-inch-high 4X8 platform. The lighting system consisted of four light bulbs in coffee cans and an on/off switch. It was briefly considered to light the arena (insert <<snort!>> here) with candle-festooned fiaschi, but it was decided that the fire marshal gods had been challenged enough by our mere existence.

Obviously, the roster of possible plays that could be mounted in that empty space was also tiny. “Oklahoma” and “Ben Hur” were scrapped from consideration fairly early. The Third Floor Theatre was pretty well capped at 2-3 performers, no orchestra, and certainly no horses.

It was decided to do a play by Strindberg. The title has faded from my jaded memory through the years, but I recall it was a laugh-a-minute romp (not) featuring two female performers who didn’t like each other (neither the characters nor the performers themselves), of which only one actor actually spoke. What could be more enthralling…a haircut perhaps?

I ran the lights for the show. I bray this fact to refute the calumny I’ve endured for decades about my legendary lack of skill or will on the technical side of theatre. Though it’s true that all the tools in our home belong to Janie and the only hammer I own is engraved “This side down,” I’m trainable and perfectly willing to perform simple tasks.

<< Another side note >>
There are indeed dissenters to that last statement. For extra credit, you might read “I Killed Peter Pan” in the archives of this blog site.
<< End of another side note >>

Where were we?
…willing to perform simple tasks.
Yes.

And running the lights for this Strindberg faux pas de deux was as simple as it gets. When the actors took their places at the beginning of the show, I flipped the light switch “UP.” When the last line was spoken to end the ordeal, I flipped the light switch “DOWN.”

UP.

DOWN.

Hold my fiasco.

Well, the show ran pretty well the first weekend. Of course, there was that Saturday night when Pasquale’s was rockin’, and the owner (our landlord, remember) made the unilateral decision to seat his overflow in our chairs in our theatre. But since our chairs were his cast-offs and our theatre was his real estate and our rent was zero, we acquiesced and waited until the last chicken marsala left with the last patron. It delayed our curtain for an hour and left a distinct garlic “je ne sais quoi” hovering over our Swedish play.

But it was OK.
I was on top of my game.

UP.

DOWN.

Hålla min söl och titta på detta.

The second weekend, however, didn’t fare so well.

I suspect word had leaked that Strindberg was not the Swedish Neil Simon and we were offering no laughs, orchestras, or horses. Our audiences dwindled. By curtain time one night, our audience consisted of one gentleman in coat and tie (No, his name was not Guffman).

We assembled an impromptu discussion group of the evening’s principals; the actors, the audience, and the lighting guy. We identified two options;

1. We could cancel the performance, refund the gentleman’s money, and invite him to return another evening for free, or
2. We could do the show for an audience of one.

The gentleman explained he was from out of town and only in Lexington for this one night and he’d really like to see the show (No, his name was really not Guffman).

I surmised the gentleman from out of town was more than a little smitten by one of our actors and was hoping to see bit more of her. I longed to explain to him this was Scandinavian drawing room material from the 19th century. The ladies would be wearing dresses that, if they had a headpiece, would be considered a burqa today, and they would retain every stitch until long after the final lighting cue and the gentleman had left the building.

I remained silent.
We did the show.

UP.

DOWN.

It occurred to me later, we had twice as many light cues as audience members that evening.

The Third Floor Theatre soldiered on for few more months until they lost the space. Pasquale’s got optimistic after that overflow evening and envisioned vertical expansion leading to riches. Alas, I believe they went out of business within a year. I’ve always blamed their failure on losing the theatre crowd.

The Third Floor Theatre moved to St. Augustine’s Chapel on Rose Street, directly across the street from the Guignol Theatre. The name was changed to The Canterbury Pilgrim Players and new legends were launched……sans garlic.

Funeralville II

Lexington-Today

I watched parts of various stages of President Bush’s funeral.

I wept a bit for a man and a family I did not particularly admire.

I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

Maybe I was moved by the fact that he was my President. He was the President of my United States, duly and fairly elected by my US countrymen. He was not inserted in the White House by gangsters from another country. That’s a good reason, but not a particularly high standard.

Maybe I was moved by his family life and his faithful devotion to the singular partner of his life. That’s another good reason, but not a historically high standard.

Maybe I was moved by President Bush’s volunteering for military duty at the age of eighteen in defiance of his parents’ college plans for him, at a moment in history when the rightness of our country’s military activities seemed clear and the success of those activities were far from clear. It was no time for bone spurs.

Maybe I was moved by President Bush’s advocacy for the rights of, and his lack of mockery of the disabled. I mean, who would do that?

Maybe it was simply the passing of a man more competent, more dutiful, more loyal, and perhaps kinder than I will ever be…
…but then…
I’m not President.

<< snort! >>

Can you imagine?

Electing someone President who’s not more competent, more dutiful, more loyal, and kinder than you are yourself? What would be the point of that?

That would be enough to make you cry…
…or resist.