Category Archives: Junesboy

Acting School in Your Own Back Yard

Books, Junesboy, , , , , , , , ,

Actors are silly people.

Wait!

I’m not qualified to make such a sweeping generalization. Yes, I have acted on stage, but as painfully pointed out to me by attendees and reviewers of my efforts as Dracula, and the butler in Feydeau’s “A Flea in Her Ear”……sigh.

However, having had a gaggle of theater folks in the house this weekend (my friend Eric Johnson would modify that to “theater-ish folks”) for Halloween deco, chili-pots, and charades, I can vouch with confidence of the silliness of those actors.

Actors are sensitive…to everything. I know I am. If someone walks by me with a limp, I will pass them by with a pronounced and sometimes accurate lurch to my gait. If you sneeze around me, chances are I will reach for two tissues; one for you and one for me. If you drawl around me I will vocally lurch southwards, again, sometimes accurately. I just watched an interview with the Prime Minister of Jamaica bemoaning the category-five hurricane about to assault his island. I then strolled to back door of our house in Central Kentucky, picked up the remote, and closed our garage door.

Sensitive.

Whence cometh this?

Today it arrived in the mailbox in the form of a battered and tattered 65-year-old book of no immense value, but a treasure none the less.

Elizabeth K. Cooper’s 1958 Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club edition of SCIENCE IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD was an eye-opener to me at the age of nine.

I’ve written before about my mom’s complete devotion to the usefulness of reading. We weren’t rich, but the public library, the bookmobile, Mr. Dennis’s bookstore on North Lime, and the Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club filled a yawning abyss of hunger.

Every month, I devoured every part of every selection; text, introductions, forewords, table of contents, dust wrapper notes… I was saddened by any lack of indices.

The first line of the dust wrapper note for SCIENCE IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD was a question; “Would you like to be an explorer—without leaving your own neighborhood?”

Yes!

Yes!!!

The roster of the first astronauts had just been announced.

I did not see my name on the list.

My neighborhood was all I had.

The title of the first chapter was “Exploring the Yard on Your Stomach.” I did just that. I flopped myself down and asked the questions prompted by Ms. Cooper;

What do you see?

What do you hear?

What do you feel?

What do you smell?

What do you taste?

I filled up my senses.

Chapter Two; Exploring the Yard on Your Back.

What do you see?

What do you hear?

What do you feel?

What do you smell?

What do you taste?

I filled up my senses.

I “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” in daylight, before midnight when the TV stations signed off for the evening. I named clouds. I reached sub-orbital in my mind before Alan Shepard.

I learned to act.

I still run through those questions when rehearsing for a stage production;

What do you see?

What do you hear?

What do you feel?

What do you smell?

What do you taste?

Those ingredients enhanced by the memories they trigger make me as human as I can be in the crucible of pretend.

So yeah…

…the book is of no immense value………except to me.

And by the way, should you wander into the wild kingdom that is our back yard and you see me flopped on the ground;

  1. Check for a pulse.
  2. If I’m on my stomach, it’s OK, I’m still exploring.
  3. If I’m on my back, it’s real OK, I’m still looking at the stars.
  4. Or, I might just be acting.

The power of books, that’s why they want to control them.

One Day in 1988

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, , , , , ,

Today was an off-and-on gray day in Lexington. It was very warm. We’ve had flashes of heavy rains this summer. Thus, everything is lush green. The angel flower we were given last year survived the winter, but started the spring as a desolate flat spot. Today, it is an exuberant member of our landscape jungle family covering about sixty square feet and putting out six to ten huge blooms per night. The fern explosion at rear corner of our garage is still ebullient this second week in August.

It wasn’t always so.

35 years ago today, we had had no rain for two months. The grass was crunchy and brown. It was 94 degrees in the blistering sun…but the house we had been living in for about eight weeks was full and happy.

Janie and Roger were getting married.

Chuck and Julieanne Pogue had come in from Hollywood to vacuum the new house for the occasion. Fred Foster was cooking for the crowd. Dick and Cel Pardy were holding court and flinging bird seed. Steve Caller was scanning and critiquing the bookshelves. Janie’s mom offered salient advice on the inherited landscaping. Jim Rodgers pronounced the pairing perfect. Laughter and love reigned

Jim, as usual, was right.

Janie and I had been pointed towards each other two years before by our guardian matchmaker, Robin Dickerson.

She, as usual, was right.

35 years have only been the best.

How can they possibly get better?

I can’t wait to see.

On the Road + 70 years

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, Lexington-Today, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I think I first read Jack Kerouac’s road-trip opus about 1968. The wheels that inspired Kerouac’s chronicle had rolled a few years before I was born, but I was now in my teens and had been driving for about 20 months. It was not unusual to find me cruising the intoxicating two-lane rural asphalt through northern Fayette County for hours after my school day at Bryan Station. My folks had moved to Omaha, I was alone, gas cost about 33¢ a gallon, Dad had left me a 1959 sky-blue Cadillac he had restored to viability for the spring…and, of course, I was gonna live forever…and maybe…just maybe…I might catch a gander at that Golden Gate Bridge on the old Athens-Boonesboro Road.

20+ years later, I finally did make it to San Francisco, not on a spiritual journey by thumb, but on a business trip by plane and by rental car…not wine spodee-odee, but Napa cabernet…not crashing at someone’s pad, but snoozing at a Holiday Inn on the Wharf. I’m not complaining. It was fine enough. But my zooming and dreaming though the tree tunnels of the Bluegrass and Jack’s crooning about jazz-inspired freedom and the end-of-the-western-world light had promised a bit more.

I had an afternoon free on that trip. I went moseying. I walked the worn wooden floors of Ferlinghetti’s book store. I smiled to see Wendell Berry so proudly displayed there. I saw an old poster for Job Rolling Papers. I smiled at that too. I’d always thought those graphics were cool without knowing anything about Alphonse Mucha at the time, and also without knowing anything about rolling my own. My own what? I was a 40-something hippie-type liquor and wine retailer who had never smoked tobacco much less anything more exotic (euphemism for illegal). That’s got to be a miniscule demographic.

I also saw a poster for the current exhibition at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. They were showing something called Bay Area Figurative Art 1950-1965.

Whoa.

I went.

For three hours I lost myself in the GI-Bill-fueled creative images of Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Clyfford Still, and Paul Wonner – the same images in which Kerouac, Carl Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady would have swum after their highway hajj. I imagined myself into a 50’s garage/art studio, listening to Ginsberg chanting “Howl” while Kerouac passed the hat for wine. I know my comfort-loving geezer would not have lasted 20 minutes in that room, but once…once…I drove a ’59 big-finned sky-blue caddy on green-infused country roads…

One week, Joe, Eric and Junesboy, three mature bohemians climbed into Joe’s car and headed towards the Speed Museum in Louisville to see their current exhibition of the works of Alphonse Mucha.

What goes around…

We were on the road, yass, yass, on the road.

We lunched first at the corner drug store. It was Weeny Wednesday. Thus we were nutritionally fortified with hot dogs and milk shakes for the journey. Joe drove, it being his car, Eric navigated, I kibitzed from the back seat, geezer-splaining the ins and outs of Kentucky legislative schemes with my deep, eight-year outdated wisdom. Could there be a more potent recipe for random bewildered tedium?

But the sun was shining. The horse farms were still faintly green in January. The company was fine. We were in no hurry. Hell, we’re retired!

It’s unwise for us to be hurried. None of us are the skilled (<< snort >>) drivers we once imagined ourselves to be; Joe’s reaction time is borderline glacial, Eric likes to look directly and immediately at whomever he’s speaking to (left, right, or upwards when Joe decides the lane markers are mere suggestions), and I read mystery novels at long red lights until the guy behind me honks. We are three creative types who really should hire a limo.

Today, Joe extolled driving 100mph in Montana as a teen (as the trucks roared by us on I-64 today), Eric thrilled us with descriptions of his 30mph jaunts around Woodford County on his now-defunct Vespa (as two Harleys zipped by us on the right), and I offered a succinct assessment of the Reds’ chances in the upcoming baseball season; “I fear they’re gonna suck” (as a thoroughbred cantered past us with ease and grace and curious patience).

Against all Las Vegas predictions, we reached our destination and it was a good day. It was my first visit to the Speed since its renovation. It’s a treasure. I wish it was in Lexington, but I’m glad it’s as close as Louisville.

The Mucha exhibit was mesmerizing. It had me reliving pre-internet University of Kentucky Guignol Theatre days spent pestering local businesses to put up our production posters to attract an audience. Of course we didn’t have Sarah Bernhardt as a selling point, but we did have Betty Waren urging us on.

A special treat was crossing paths with one of my dozen or so ex-stage-wives who I had not seen for thirty years. At that distant time she wished me safe travels to the Antarctic to freeze to death in Ted Nally’s fine play; “Terra Nova,” in the basement of Angel Levas’s fine restaurant in downtown Lexington. Angel actually participated in our production by NOT turning the heat on in the basement. The Shivering Verismo School of Theatre – who knew such a thing existed?

Despite that frigid parting decades past, it was a warm reunion last week.

We three drifted through the beautiful exhibit. I concocted stories behind the images, Joe envisioned staging the plays and operas, and Eric attracted his usual entourage of other museum attendees who wanted a docent to describe and explain. He is remarkably suited for this role: he is intelligent, verbal, charming, and just happens to be a nationally recognized painter himself…and he can juggle anything.

Eventually, our trio reassembled in the museum gift shop where I made my greatest contribution of the day by finding and purchasing a killer tee-shirt for Janie’s sleep-ware collection. Priorities, gentlemen!

Back to the car and back on the road.

Three bohemians.

Three aging beatniks.

No open windows.

No open bottles.

Just cruise control and conversation.

We wended our way home.

Wended…

Le mot juste.

We missed our exit and had to wend our way through much of Woodford County.

Who cares?

It was a sunny day.

The horses (field ornaments all) were sprinkled in their paddocks.

I briefly flashed back to those après school days…

…on the road.

My Guerilla Theatre Career

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, Lexington-70's

“I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.” – Bob Dylan.

“Come ON Roger! Dammit!

MOVE!

We’ve got to GO!”

These delicately emphasized instructions landed like thunder on 1970 Southern-Baptist-raised freshman ears that were still trying to accommodate Rhett Butler’s curtain line.

The assault continued; “Get in the car! Sit on Dixie’s lap! She’ll explain. Have you got your sign?”

The sheer number of questions generated thus far was daunting, but offered a promising seating arrangement for the adventure (though he would have preferred to be providing the lap).

Rodge doubted the diplomatic wisdom of quizzing the leader of this expedition (an upper-classman of the Theatre Department named Baker). He decided instead to pursue Dixie’s expertise — seeking to understand the intentions of this adventure and perhaps, eventually, pursuing the attentions of Dixie herself.

In the car for the next three blocks…

Dixie draped a shirt card with strings attached around my neck. It read; “Broad Form Deed.”

She explained; “That’s who you’re playing; Broad Form Deed. We’re protesting against the Peabody Coal Company recruiting today on campus. Baker’s playing the Appalachian farm owner – you’ll see his sign –. When he asks you; ‘What do I get if I sign?’ you smile real big, maybe wiggle some jazz hands behind ears and say; ‘One hundred dollars!’”

“Wait. I’m playing an inanimate object?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a broad form deed, anyway?”

“A slimy legal thing.”

“What’s my motivation?”

“To not get arrested. If you see anyone in a uniform, lose the sign and disappear into the crowd…if there is one. Oh, and if Baker likes you and remembers, he may be the student director of next fall’s show. Could help in auditions. Oh, here we are.”

“Here” was in front of Kennedy’s Book Store at the corner of Limestone and Avenue of Champions. We tumbled out and stumbled about in front of 10-12 mildly befuddled students. I shouted; “One hundred dollars!” We reloaded the car and proceeded to a restaurant named Alfalfa’s, three other campus sites, and a witness-less finale at the courthouse in downtown Lexington (several miles from campus and half a state from the Peabody Coal Company).

From there we dissolved into the night.

I had long lost my sign.

I hoofed it back to my campus apartment.

I now had a performance experience that never appeared on my resumé.

I never saw Dixie again.

My arrest record remained pristine.

A couple years later, John Prine’s Muhlenburg County. Resonated immediately with me by his mention of the Peabody Coal Company.

All-in-all……I suppose I was made better by the afternoon. But…………Dixie was pretty cute.

Funeralville III

Junesboy, ,

The Queen of England died recently.

Perhaps you heard.

She was an admirable lady of 96, an inspirational, if mostly symbolic ruler of an empire who could open a flower show or diagnose a faulty carburetor and fix that blighter.

She became Queen the year I finally achieved successfully sleeping quietly through the night, to my parents’ relief. Thus, she’s the only Queen of England I’ve known, though, frankly speaking, I’ve had no urgent need for a “Mum” at all. I had my Mom.

My Mom died last week.

I doubt you heard…and that’s as she probably wished it.

At the end of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, Willie Loman’s wife posits at Willie’s graveside; “Attention must be paid.” The first time I saw the play, I remember smirking silently at that line; “My Mom would beg to differ.”

In John Steinbeck’s CANNERY ROW, Flora points out; “Some people don’t want to put themselves forward.” That……that…………

I don’t know why.

She was an admirable lady of 94, a suddenly widowed (at 44) mother of three schoolgirls and a hippie actor/son. She fixed those blighters too.

I remember…

…We would sit in the kitchen around that yellow-topped table and listen to the UK basketball games on the radio (televised games had yet to be invented). Mom would have her pad and pencil. She would keep meticulous score. She would know precisely how many points Cotton Nash and Dan Issel, and Mike Pratt and Scotty Baesler had scored. It was important. School spirit was a fine thing, but hard facts ruled the day.

…The day she mildly explained to my Little League coach who had failed to put me in that day’s game, that he was sequestering a future Hall-of-Fame first-baseman on his bench to his team’s detriment. I started the next game, though I still await that Hall-of-Fame invite. That day I learned the power of advocacy and persuasion. Don’t confront…form a discussion group.

…Before I started first grade, we would hike every Tuesday five blocks to the bookmobile, check-out our maximum ten books and hike back. We would haunt bookstores and thrift shops with book piles. Before I could read, I would “read” these picture books and make up stories to fit the pictures. I had been promised by my Mom that when I started school they would teach me to read. I returned home angry from my first day of school because I still couldn’t read.

No.

My Mom didn’t have a parade of black Range Rovers through the streets of Edinburgh, or guns, or cannons, or horses, or military uniforms of centuries of history, or choirs…and that’s as she probably wished it.

I fear her memorial will be in the rider’s seat of my car when I’m driving alone. There’s always a book there, in case I get stuck at a slow drive-through, or a train crossing, or simply a longish red traffic light.

I think she would have wished that too.

What! A!! Show!!!

Junesboy, Lexington-Today,

Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of Janie and Roger gettin’ hitched for the first time.

Of course we’ve been married over a dozen times…to each other! Every time we are honored to attend our friends’ weddings, it becomes our wedding. During each ceremony, hands are held (shyly…can you believe it?), and vows are rediscovered with sideways glances (slyly…you can’t make this up).

34 instant years…

How shall we mark the occasion?

Well, many might think it’s a paltry plan. We have shared head colds (negative test) the last week and both of us are just a mite puny. We’ll probably stay in, order in, and reflect a bit on how fortunate we’ve been to find each other and how perspicacious we’ve been in knowing quickly that we had found each other.

After 30 years, retirement and the pandemic have driven us indoors, reduced our social interactions, and focused our attentions inward and toward each other. The connection was strong and is now even stronger. LeGuin and Kazantzakis would not be surprised.

But I always am.

Always.

Darlin’, after 34 years it feels like this is where we came in.

Can we stay and watch this show again?

I wanna be sure I don’t miss a thing.

The Gadget Queen & the Dangling Conversation

Junesboy, Lexington-Today, , ,

I think it was about ten years ago.

Janie, the Gadget Queen, came home with a new ornament for the Christmas tree and began to install it. Three days and two outside independent contractors later, it was hung, swingin’ on an artificial pre-lit branch, hard-wired, synced, registered to vote, and fully protected by warranty from all annoying phone calls. It was a porcelain mouse with a porcelain top hat and porcelain conductor’s baton sitting in rabid anticipation on an open porcelain songbook. The sucker must weigh five pounds. When it dangles on its branch, the whole tree leans into a non-existent wind.

A protocol was soon established.

  1. I enter the living room and say in the most natural and un-sheepish voice I can muster; “Hello, Mr. Christmas.”
  2. The ornament answers with an enthusiasm I cannot fathom; “Well, hello to you! If you’d like to see what I can do, just say; ‘Play a carol’ or ‘Lights on.’”
  3. I quickly and meekly say; “Lights on.” Mr. Christmas’s renditions of traditional Christmas carols are harsh betrayals of the spirit of the season that rival those of Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the 101 Mantovani Strings. They are to be avoided.
  4. The tree instantly blazes with pre-lit illumination and Mr. Christmas chirps; “Ta Da-a-a-h! If you’d like me to do anything else, simply say; ‘Hello, Mr. Christmas.’”
  5. Then I slide under my electrically heated throw (a Janie gadget), with my synced morning paper (an electronic facsimile of the Lexington Herald-Leader downloaded on my Kindle…another Janie discovery), with my cuppa coffee Janie programmed the night before on yet another whiz-bang contraption she found. I ponder the subtle differences from memories of my first thirty years on the planet…and ponder a few choice suggestions for Mr. Christmas as to what else he might do.

But…

…to be honest…

…I kinda like the guy…

…mostly because of the amusing soliloquies he inspires from Janie.

If, perchance, Janie arrives in Mr. Christmas’s sphere of influence before I, she sings out; “Hello, Mr. Christmas!” to no effect. She then repeats the magic phrase into a silence Paul Simon could never imagine. She then croons seductively; “Hello-o-o, Mr. Christmas…” Nothing. She barks it, shouts it, drawls it, accents it (British, Irish, Scottish), translates it (French, Spanish, Greek, Urdu, Latin-Classic and Pig). Nothing works. It is entertaining at first and then becomes triumphant when I call from the next room; “Hello, Mr. Christmas”, and the arboreal firmament shimmers and Janie simmers.

To quote that great motivator of men, Strother Martin; “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

This surreal reality show has unfolded now for ten years.

I hope it continues as long as he doesn’t play carols.

The Urge for Going

Junesboy, Lexington-Today,

With apologies and thanks to Joni Mitchell and Michel LeGrand…

“I’d like to call back summertime and have her stay for just another month or so,

But she’s got the urge to going so I guess she’ll have to go…”  –Joni Mitchell.

I walked through our small back yard yesterday and I felt the urge for going. The day lilies are of course long gone. The knock-out roses are finally bowing to the inevitable. My playpen of cleome, bronze fennel, autumn sedum, shiso, and spiderwort has hunkered down, hoping to be overlooked by the random angry gods of Winter.

“…summertime was falling down and Winter was closing in

Now the warriors of Winter…they gave a cold triumphant shout,

And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out.” –Mitchell.

I’ve bitterly raked the leaves from the birches next door. I’ve chopped the spent estival splendors. I’ve shut down the pond’s fountain/birdbath. The bewildered frogs have retreated to the sleepy, frigid depths. The myriad tadpoles are struggling to fathom their first frost and consider the question of mortality for the first time. They’ve got the urge for going, but don’t know where to go. I have no assurances to offer them: it’s my first winter with pollywogs myself.

The hummingbirds have fled like the fickle, mesmerizing, gypsy, bouncing dots that they are. They’ve got the urge for going and they’re gone.

The trumpet-vine hedge is embarrassed by its nakedness; bare vines overreaching the sky annexed to become a Casbah-like warren for tiny wintering birds. The arrogant trumpet has got the urge for going but has roots…and responsibilities. Where would those tiny birds find their hygge?

“When the sun turns traitor cold

And all trees are shivering in a naked row,

I get the urge for going, but I never seem to go.” – Mitchell.

Why? I suppose I could.

Michel LeGrand offers an answer;

“Beneath the deepest snows the secret of the rose

Is merely that it knows you must believe in Spring.

So in a world of snow, of things that come and go,

Where what you think you know you can’t be certain of,

You must believe in Spring…

And love.”

Last night, actually this morning, I awoke at 3:45. I crept out to the cold-compromised backyard, by the amphibian-befuddled pond. The sky was brilliant and clear. I shuffled back to bed and awakened Janie. She rolled out of bed and rolled into a blanket. We and our devoted star-gazing pup Chloe stood, huddled in the cold to see the lunar eclipse.

It was fine.

I suspect I will always have the urge to flee the dark and the cold, but I will never go.

I have a standing appointment with Spring…

…and love.

Feel So Near

Junesboy, Lexington-Today

Mr. MacLean

Dougie MacLean tells of an island in Scotland; small, barren, isolated to the lack-o-mercies of the winds.

<<< You’ll find me sitting at this table with my friend Finn and my friend John…we may take a glass together. The whisky makes it all so clear. I feel so near to the howling of the wind – feel so near to the crashing of the waves – feel so near to the flowers in the field – feel so near. >>>

Janie and I live in a green bubble, mostly sheltered from crashings and howlings, yet the song resonates.

I farm a lot these days.

That’s a joke that only Janie and I know.

Sorry.

I dead-head and seasonally prune roses. I think it helps.

I whack and wreak violence on the trumpet vine. I think it helps.

I water the petunias, begonias, bougainvillea, impatiens, and coleus. I know that helps.

I kneel and crawl and claw at pyramid-scheme grasses that try to drain the resource bank accounts of Janie’s day-lilies.

I croon encouragement to the robust efforts of the cleome, sedum, shiso, and bronze fennel gifted to me by Becky Johnson. I keenly feel that responsibility.

I harvest and return the errant game balls of various sizes that have evaded the best efforts of the six-year-old that lives behind us. Sometimes I launch a sphere towards the youngster’s goal. Calipari has not yet called.

Yes, I farm, but far from diligently.

What I do diligently is take plentiful breaks. My recently departed kitten (a sworn but un-diligent killer of critters that stumbled into her maw) and I sat, still and attentive.

Cardinals scold. Frogs croak, bark, and squeak. Sirens wail. Cicadas ratchet. Hummers whir-r-r. Copters whirl.

We felt so near…

<<< The old man looks out to the island. He says this place is endless here. There’s no real distance here to mention… There’s no distance to the spirits of the living – no distance to spirits of the dead.

I feel so near to the howling of the wind – feel so near to the crashing of the waves – feel so near to the flowers in the field – feel so near. >>>

I feel so near.

Sh-h-h-h-h.

Wanted: Tree Planters

Junesboy, Lexington-Today

It doesn’t take long to plant a tree, but after you’ve done it, you’ll have a goodly wait till you get the full benefit of what you’ve planted. When I was in my twenties and thirties I planted trees and shrubs. Then I sat back and waited.

I had time.

Planting trees was a selfish act. It was for me.

I had time.

Now…maybe not so much time.

I planted trees where I could see the result.

I had time.

Planting trees was a selfish act.

I had time.

Now…maybe…

I’ve visited places that people gush about; Arizona, Alaska, Mexico… I liked ‘em, but there were few trees and of few varieties. I missed my trees.

Planting trees was a selfish act.

Hollies, tupelos, dogwoods, chincopin oaks, ginkgos, maples, magnolias, spruce, birches…

I cherish them all.

Planting trees was a selfish act.

Now, at this certain age, I know planting trees is for the pleasure of others. I will still plant them. They still fill me with hope for what will come. It is still a selfish act.

A couple of years ago, I saw hooligans and terrorists rampaging in our nation’s capitol.

I didn’t see any tree planters.

Tree planters have hope.

Hope planters…that’s what I really meant to say.