The Ballad Of No-Banjo Burnes

No-Banjo Burnes had four possessions.  That is, of course, excepting his tattered woolen trousers, threadbare shirt, disintegrating coat and hole-pocked shoes.  And a hat.  And a few other ratty necessities.  Okay, he had only four beloved possessions.

He had the requisite hobo stick and bindle. 

He had a locket containing a picture of his mama. 

He had a pocketful of priceless lint.

And he had his banjo.

He loved his banjo, and rarely put it down.  A friend tried to tell him once that it was an expensive instrument, and its value could be restored, if only he would let someone clean and restring it.  Of course, hoboes were not a trusting lot, and Burnes refused to put it down long enough for anyone to do a thorough assessment.

The banjo had no strings, and its owner preferred it that way.  "Sounded like a damn banjo when it had strings," he would tell his fellow hoboes.  Since it had come into his possession, it had not been played, and as long as he had any say in the matter, it never would be.

No-Banjo Burnes was raised a child of considerable privilege in New York City, by gifted musician parents.  His mother was a mezzo-soprano who often performed at the Metropolitan Opera House.  His father was a conductor with the New York Symphony.  It was the roaring twenties, and the boy wanted for nothing.  His parents employed one of their peers, the world-class first violinist of the orchestra, to teach their son to play.  

Through six years of lessons, the boy never managed to master the art of plucking.  This was unacceptable to his mother, whose approval was the kid's only motivation.  She would scream at him to get his plucking right.  "It sounds like some kind of dirty old hillbilly banjo!" she would rail.  "I'll not have the sounds of banjo music coming from this penthouse.  No banjo.  NO BANJO!!"

The morning after an evening practice session with a string-plucking passage that had been especially banjo-like, Mr. and Mrs. Burnes were walking along Fifth Avenue, their sixteen-year old son sulking along about ten feet behind them.  Six stories above them, a team of burly movers lost control of a hoist, dropping a baby grand piano and crushing the musical couple to death with the thunderous sound of one massive, terrible A-minor chord.

His parents' holdings evaporated when the market crashed a few months later, and the road from there to No-Banjo Burnes' hobo life was a short one.  From odd jobs to the soup lines to rummaging through dumpsters, to following the tracks to warmer climes - all within about a year's time.

No one knew at what point (or how) he acquired his banjo, but anyone who didn't know that it was used exclusively as a weapon needed only be taught that lesson once.  He used it to protect himself from the worst of his hobo brethren (he even chased off Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, once), to kill small game, and to enforce his "No-Banjo" rule.

Hoboes, especially in the Appalachians and the deep south, loved banjo music, but word made its way through their ranks that it was not to be played in Burnes' presence.  When he heard it, he flew into great violent fits of rage, and his string-less formerly musical instrument would swing like Babe Ruth's bat, sometimes with deadly results, as No-Banjo would scream and spit and sputter, "No banjo!  Mother says no banjo... NO BANJO!!"

He enforced his intolerance for the sounds of banjos until one cold night in December of 1940, when he was beaten to death in his sleep, with his own non-musical instrument.

  

Dear "Valued" Employee . . .

Mack's workaholism had finally caught up with him, and he had very badly needed a vacation.  After months of his wife's begging - and some prodding by his boss - he finally took a break.  In late April, while their two daughters were still away at school, Mack and Katie spent ten days hiking and climbing their way through the mountains of Peru.  No schedule, no computers, and almost no cell phone signal.  It took two days for Mack - a salesman - to adjust to this disconnection, but before long, it was heaven.

Their return flight arrived at its Logan Airport gate at almost midnight on Sunday and as much as it pained him to do so, Mack went straight to bed without checking his voicemail, or taking so much as a peek at his work email.

The next morning, he returned to the office a few minutes late, but energized and ready to sell.  He had been selling ad minutes for the local all-news radio station for almost three-and-a half decades.  He was good at it because he loved it, and he loved it, because he was good at it.

The side door through which he had always entered refused to acknowledge his key-card.  So did the main entrance.  He had to be buzzed in - after a lengthy hesitation - by the receptionist, who regarded him as one might a ghost, or a suit-wearing llama.  Mack thought little of it, as he'd probably only seen her twice in all of her five years at the station.

Then things got weird.  The sales department, a section of eight cubicles, was empty and quiet.  Then, things got bizarre.  Mack's cube, his home away from home since the last year of the Carter Administration, was in disarray.  The PC tower was gone, as was the printer, and there were three boxes on the desk.  They appeared to contain all of his personal belongings.  There was a post-it note stuck to the now-orphaned computer monitor.  Mack leaned in to read it, and things got ugly.

"Dear 'Valued Employee' -- We regret to inform you that you're position has been eliminated.  You will be paid for today, provided you take your personal belonging;s, return your badge to H.R. and leave the premises without incident.  We 'appreciate' you're years of service.  Sincerly [sic], you're 'favorite' boss, Gregg."

Mack sat for the last time in his old chair and lost consciousness for about thirty seconds.  When he managed to refocus, he experienced a near-seizure of gut-punching shock and panic, followed by heartbreaking sadness.  It was too much to process, so his brain did what it always did in times of crisis, and found one thing on which to focus.  

That gutless little prick fired me by sticky note.

He staggered to the little prick's office, but found no little prick.  There was no one around, so Mack zombied back to his cube to gather his belongings.  His peaceful, controlled, pacifist nature was nearly overwhelmed by a tsunami of thoughts of going absolutely postal, but after a few reps of the breathing exercises he had learned in college, he relaxed.  

First, he wrote a note on the back of an old sales pipeline report:

"Dear 'Boss' -- You are the most cowardly piece of shit I have ever met, and you seem to have no idea what quotation marks are 'for.'  I won't bother to ask how you sleep at night, because I already know.  You cry a lot and suck your thumb.  At least, that's what your wife told me, after I 'fucked her' at the sales retreat in Palm Springs in 2010.  Oh, and she at least know's that A) an apostrophe doesn't mean 'Look out - an S is coming,' and B) your name has too many Gs in it.  Anyway, see you in hell.  -- You're (really?  REALLY??) favorite 'valued' employee, 'Mack'"

He held the note before him and admired his work.  Then he breathed a long, heavy sigh of defeat, crumpled the paper and stuffed it into one of his boxes of your-services-are-no-longer-required.  He grabbed a post-it pad, peeled off the top piece and scribbled three words upon it.  He found the mail cart, loaded it with his boxes, and wheeled toward the side door, slapping his note onto Gregg's door on his way past.


So.  What three words did Mack leave for his boss?


This post, inspired by more true stories than I care to recall, was written in response to yet another prompt from my brethren (and sistren) at STUDIO 30 PLUS. 



 
    

On Being The Clouds

There I am.  See me?

Over the six years that have passed since my Warranty Expired, if Prednisone became the controlling, hatefully-loving, less-than-sane Mistress I Never Wanted, then Hydrocodone was my new BFF.  Through almost a dozen adventures together, my chemical buddy and I had some memorable times.  He taught me to sleep again when pain tried to stop me.  He made me chatty and nice.  He even got me to start working out again. 

But mostly what we did... is fly.

I know that the effects of narcotic painkillers can vary widely from patient to patient, so I was relieved that I wasn't one of those people who simply cannot stomach them.  I'm also glad that the experience for me wasn't so perfect as to lead me straight into addiction - not that I've ever taken them long enough for that to be a problem, but still - yay!  In fact, I remember learning early on that Hydrocodone does not numb my intense pains; it mostly just makes me stop caring and fly away.

Taking my first flight with Hydrocodone was a lot like taking off in a real airplane for the first time.  My guts all lurched downward for a moment, as if they had failed to receive the memo.  Then, the nose of the plane went up and the world fell away in an instant.  There was a strong temptation to panic.  "DON'T PANIC" bounced through my brain, and I'm glad it did, because the next urge was the one that felt like WHEEEEEE...

Wheeeeeeeeee...

When I next closed my eyes, I saw Water Island (USVI) morph into a magical green horse and gallop and cavort around me for hours.  Wait - maybe it was a dragon.  I opened my eyes to find that I was not hallucinating; I was in flight, and the island was simply flying with me.  I was weightless.  I knew the pain was still there, but somehow I was free of it.  I was not merely in the clouds.  I was the clouds.

The second time was just as good.  Later, when my lung was out to get me, I was introduced to a cough syrup with my pal Hydrocodone in it, and the effect was somehow even better.  A couple of years later, a pair of root canals reunited me and The Stuff.  A sprained knee brought another prescription, and a big dose.  By then, I had my Hydrocodone Frequent Flyer card, and I really knew what I was doing.  The urge to panic, or to go all "wheeeeeee" all over the place, was replaced by calm, confident climbs into the sky.

Smooth sailing

In 2012, we picked up right where we had left off on the last go 'round.  I know we'll always be best friends, and I love becoming the clouds and flying high above the planet together, but I have to admit, there has been a little falling-out.  In 2013 my buddy, my best pal, my trusted friend... was NO help when faced with the pain of kidney stones.

We're going to have a little chat about that.

This was written in response to yet another writing prompt from my friends at  STUDIO 30 PLUS.  This one was "Frequent Flyer."



 

The Story Of Balloonpopper Chillingsworth, As Told By All-but-Dissertation Tucker Dummychuck

Since I started writing about the men and women on John Hodgman's list of 700 hoboes, I am constantly being asked by no one about my sources.  While I won't divulge all my secrets, I can share one.  

His name was All-but-Dissertation Tucker Dummychuck, and he completed all but his dissertation on the subject of American vagrancy in the 1930's.  In fact, he had signed a deal to write a series of articles for the New Yorker on the inner workings of Hobo Nation, but his subject so enveloped him that he failed to provide anything beyond his first submission, before disappearing forever.  

Here is what the magazine ran in July of 1938:

Balloonpopper Chillingsworth

       Never ask a cruel man his motivation, for you may not like his answer.  I first heard about Balloonpopper Chillingsworth in 1934, and three long years would pass before I would finally track the man down and meet him face to face.  He was the first drifter I had studied who had created a name for himself outside of the world of the dusty vagrant.  [Mr. Dummychuck refused to use the word "hobo" in any of his papers or articles.]

Simply put, the man was known for popping balloons.   

From Boston to Boca Raton to Burbank, he has spent years lurking in the shadows and springing upon unsuspecting passersby - mostly children - to burst their balloons without warning, and with, it seems, no shortage of mal intent. He often takes it a step further, pricking the owners of said balloons with pins, tacks, nails and bits of broken glass.  He bellows at his victims a short, profane speech, the upshot of which is that no one will ever enjoy a balloon again if he has anything to say about it.

I had heard the stories.  By last year, many of them had made it into the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.  Chillingsworth has been described as a menace to society, a creeping night terror, a public health hazard, and a very mean bad man who ruins birthday parties and childhood visits to the city zoo and the circus.  Having lived with the wandering poor for several years already, I was not afraid of him; I was intrigued.

When I finally met him, it was a cold December morning in the CA&E rail yard outside of Elgin, Illinois.  He emerged from behind a cattle pen, his arm across his face, most of which was becloaked 'neath his ratty black cape.  He shot furtive glances this way and that, then fixed me in his steely gaze.

I knew better than to jump straight in and ask the only question to which I truly wanted an answer, so I ran through my customary script of queries.

• He wasn't certain, but he thought his given name had been Reginald Chillingsworth, of the Manhattan Chillingsworths.
• He had been riding and walking the rails since before The Great Crash, although he did not recall the year of his departure from civilized society.
• He had received training in the clown arts from P.T. Barnum's school, but had never performed.
• He could name and create 114 distinct balloon animals and other shapes, but he'd be damned if he ever would - at least, not for "some damn-fool reporter from New Holland."
• He was six foot, six inches and wore a size 9 3/8 hat. [That's a very large hat.]

I quickly grew bored of the same old stories of rail yard living, destitution and scrapes with the law.  I asked him the question.  The Question.  

"Why must you pop everyone's balloons?"  

First, he congratulated me on my restraint.  It seems other reporters, including one from the Trib and one from RKO Radio, had posed the same question, and then promptly fed him answers.  They posited that the balloons were symbols of life's joy, and that if he was to live a life devoid of joy, then so would everyone else.  They said the same of love.  No love for him, they said, no love for anyone else.  One interviewer suggested that his soul had been stolen by the devil and was last seen drifting off in a balloon, and that young Chillingsworth was on a mission to recover it.  

He rolled his eyes, sighed heavily, then told me what it was that compelled him to pop everyone's balloons.   It was heavy in its simplicity, like a child's conception of Love.

"Balloons killed my parents when I was nine, and since that day I have dedicated my life to ensuring that they never kill again."

Indeed.  

My research confirmed the strange circumstances that surrounded the deaths of his parents.  They had owned and operated an extremely lucrative business, supplying balloons and decorations to the most sought-after party planners and event operators in New York City throughout the 1920s.  The senior Chillingsworth was known as "The Balloon Man," and his wife was called "Mrs. Hydrogen."  On the night of September 4th, 1928, they were riding home along Park Avenue when a large and rather unruly costume party released some forty-five hundred of the Chillingsworth's balloons from the balcony of one of the new hi-rise apartment buildings on the upper east side.  The balloons were to have been filled with hydrogen, which would have lifted them playfully to the sky, but the Chillingworths' apprentice had mistakenly used plain oxygen.  The balloons sank en masse to the street below.  The couple's driver, momentarily blinded and terrified by the balloons, veered into a tree.  He and the Chillingsworths were ejected and promptly trampled by a pair of horses who had been spooked by the crash - and by the popping.

That apprentice was Billy "Balloonpopper" Chillingsworth, and he had watched in horror from the 21st floor as his parents died Lat the hands of the family balloons.

I can hardly blame him for his obsession.  As he turned to walk away, his last words to me were,

"Never again shall the death cries of innocents fill these ears.  At least, not at the whim of those wicked bags of air.  Not while I draw breath." 

An Incomplete Principle To Call My Own - Even Though It Is Not - At All

Objects in mirror... are gone.

It probably started as reflex.  Passed with ease through the compulsion phase.  Now, it's a disease.  I cannot stop looking back.

When it began - who can say?  Oh wait - I can.  For most people I know, it started around puberty - maybe sixth or seventh grade.  For once, I was ahead of the curve on this one.  For me, standing, staring backward and second-guessing myself started as early as the fourth grade.  I knew - I knew I should have said something other than what I said to my teacher, but it was too late, and I was duly and justly punished as a result.

A couple of years later, I found myself delivered home by the police, to a disbelieving mother, after failing to heed the advice of the tiny voice inside me that had tried in vain to prevent me from helping my friends break into the school to fetch their skateboards, which had been trapped inside a storage room in a manner so spectacularly stupid as to defy description.  I had only needed to say no, I didn't have any ideas, but instead I became the mastermind of the whole ridiculous enterprise.

It spirals on from there.  Things I said, things I didn't say but should have.  Opportunities missed for what appeared at the time to be No Good Reason.  And girls.  Time wasted on girls who wanted nothing to do with me and never would, and time that could have been better spent with the (admittedly few) girls who did want me around, but whose interest and appeal inexplicably eluded me.  

But there's more to this backwards-looking addiction than things unsaid, arguments lost and girls not kissed.  It extends to major life decisions - threads in the fabric of my personal space-time.  Also, it's not exclusively about the negative results of life's decision points.  Happy nostalgia is just as fraught with futility as is regret.  

I call it my Completion Backwards Principal, and no - it has nothing to do with the 1981 album of the same name by the Tubes.  Just as it can be a waste of time and energy to stare too hard at an uncertain and ever-changing future, looking back is a risky business.  History is the best teacher, they say, but wallowing in one's personal past in the hopes of altering it - of fixing it - is downright destructive.  No matter how long and hard you stand there and stare at the path behind you, it CANNOT be completed.  No closure will come. 

The more a person longs to go backwards and complete that which he or she has left incomplete, the less whole that past will become, until eventually it disintegrates into chaos.

I'm not saying don't do it.  A fondness for days gone by, a healthy historical perspective, an awareness and acceptance of one's past missteps - all perfectly useful things.  Just don't live there.  

I'm also saying, do as I say, not as I do.  I have a lot of work to do, here.  

It should also be noted that any tinkering with the past, were it even possible, would derail our lives.  If I could go back and "fix" one blown job interview in 1994, I would never have worked at that genetics company, met [Maris] and found my way to true completion - and what good would THAT be?  None.  It'd be none good.

Behind us, there are storms which never stop brewing.

This post was written to the prompt "Backwards," from the good and clever folks at STUDIO THIRTY PLUS.



 

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (from 46) - What Have I Done?

"'Cause your mornings will be brighter

Break the line, tear up rules

Make the most of a million times none."

- Bauhaus  

It's been over six years since I Turned Forty, so I think it's time to wrap up my look back at the (non)event.  At the time, I was  disintegrating, attempting to get back into some semblance of shape, questioning many of my career choices and still being grilled about my child-free lifestyle.  But I did have a few moments of reflection.  I can't remember any of them, so here are some I made up...

No, no, no.  I remember.  I thought what most slackers* think, especially at their milestone moments.  

I poured a ridiculous - like "Risky Business" ridiculous - rum and Coke, swallowed a teaspoon of narcotic cough syrup and asked myself "What have I done?"

The answer came entirely too quickly.  Like, Mike Damone in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" quickly (poor Stacy).  But I digress. 

Not very much.  At forty, I had done not very much.

Most of my friends had children, as did two of my three siblings.  I worked for a woman six years my junior who was a CPA, a respected VP in a growing company, a mother of two and squarely on a CFO track.  I had meandered my way to a job which, to be fair, wasn't much more advanced than my first non-retail gig from thirteen years earlier - and which had about the same limited future.  I knew a handful of world travelers and a fistful of published writers.  I knew a man who had been awarded a Bronze Star, had a hospital named for him and who had served as Governor of a US territory. 

My inventory of accomplishments looked bleak, by comparison.

1. Came home in a police car when I was in the sixth grade.  I was only the lookout for the breaking and entering operation, but there you go.  Lesson learned - schools have silent alarms.
2. Went from curtain-puller for the school play one year, to title character the next.  Signing autographs for little kids is great for a young ego.
3. Saw Elvis working on the Chessie System Railroad over a year after his "death."
4. Convinced the guy at Montgomery Donuts to give me a huge trash bag full of 12-hour old donuts, which I inexplicably dumped on the lawn of the head cheerleader at my high school - a girl who did not know my name, and a girl who was out of town at the time.
5. Drove alone through the "Storm of the Century" in 1993 - from Maryland to Key Largo without stopping for more than gas.  Heavy snow until I was well into North Carolina, then the hardest cats-and-dogs-style rain I'd ever seen - hours and hours of it - all the way to Jacksonville.  Next came insane, 18-wheeler-punching wind, flying debris and reports of over 15 tornadoes across Florida.  That was followed by hundreds of miles of gas stations without electricity, downed power lines all over the place and a state of emergency.  When I reached Miami, it was pretty much just me, the power company trucks and the police, on the roads.  It's a longer story than that, but let's just end this with... Worth It.
6. Invented a time machine using yarn, butter and algae.  Can't remember where (when) I left it.
7. Witnessed, in-person, an NFC championship, Cal Ripken's last game, Darrell Green's last game.  Wait.  That's kind of sad.  Saw a Daytona 500 once, but Jeff Gordon won, so that sucked a little, too.
8. Got doused with Heineken at the ORIGINAL 9:30 Club in DC, courtesy of the not-yet-licensed-to-ill Beastie Boys.  Yeah, I'm not young.
9. Was an invited guest at the inauguration of one of my heroes as he became the Governor of the US Virgin Islands.
10. Proved that soul mates exist - by finding mine.  I know!  Weird!
11. Wrote "Zombieland" and "Warm Bodies" and "The Walking Dead."  In my mind.
12. Ran for the US Senate as a founding member of the Egalitarian Party.  Lost, primarily due to the fact that no one knows what egalitarian means.
13. Stepped on a pop top.
14. Survived.  So far.
15. Managed to have a reasonably good time.

Yeah.  I could go on, but why?  I hadn't compiled a rock star's diary of cool stuff, but as I digested my 40th birthday cake, along with some rum, cola and hydrocodone, a warm blanket of contentment wrapped around my aching, not so young body - twice.

I had [Maris].  We had jobs where we were indispensable, well-paid and beloved.  I had good doctors and drugs and the promise of a long-awaited diagnosis and treatment for whatever the hell was wrong with me.  We clung tightly to each other, and to the promise of better days ahead.  We could, indeed, survive.  And more.  We could thrive on this silly - but pretty - little planet.  Good things were still within our reach.  Big things, even.

We would make the most of a million times none.

* Still not really a slacker.  Just ask my boss!    
By the way - this one was inspired by my good friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS, and their weekly writing prompts of "OLD" and "HOPE."                   

Poor, Poor, Poor Charlie Short vs. Texas Emil

When a couple of hoboes met for the first time, there were several different greetings that could be offered.  The most common approach was for both of them to throw fistfuls of dirt at each other without a word and walk on.  If one wanted a fight, he would show the stranger his lint ball.  If the stranger's lint ball was larger, it was up to him to decide whether or not fisticuffs would ensue.  If the challenger held more lint, the fight was on.  Some of the most lint-rich hoboes met their doom in this way.  

On the rare occasion when hoboes enjoyed civil first-encounters, they generally engaged in games of one-upmanship.  Since these tended to focus on how bad each of the two tramps had it, Poor, Poor, Poor Charlie Short usually came out on top.  That is, of course, until one early spring day in 1934, when he met Texas Emil, walking along the L&N mainline outside of Montgomery, Alabama.

Poor, Poor, Poor Charlie Short:  I see that your lint far surpasses mine, stranger.  We fightin' or not?  It's your call.

Texas Emil:  I ain't much for violence, pardner.  My life is hard enough as it is.

Charlie:  You think you got it bad?  I don't know a man who has it worse than me.

Emil:  I doubt that.  I know we're all poor as dirt, out here on the road, but I was born poor, back in Texas.

Charlie:  Ha!  When I was born, I was a twin, but my parents were so poor, they sold my brother to pay the hospital bill and bring me home.

Emil:  Oh yeah?  Well, back in Texas I was a twin, too, but I was the one my parents sold.  I grew up in an orphanage next-door to my parents, forced to watch my sister grow up in the Texas home that should have been mine.

Charlie:  You think that's rough?  My parents worked triple-shifts at the Wrigley factory in Chicago, and we still had to eat stolen cabbage for dinner every night.

Emil:  That's nothing.  When I was a five-year old Texan, my so-called parents at the orphanage died in a fire - along with all of my friends.  I didn't do it, but since I was the only survivor, I got the blame, and they locked me up in a Texas Juvenile Hall, where I stayed until I turned eighteen.  In Texas.

Charlie:  Oh, boo hoo!  My parents were killed, too.  My ma was was accidentally sprayed in the face with pure spearmint extract, which blinded her.  She started screaming, and when my dad came running to see what was wrong, he tripped over a crate and crashed into her, and they both tumbled into a vat of corn syrup.  She lost consciousness and drowned, as did he - trying to save her.

Emil:  Yeah, that's bad, but there ain't nobody in Texas or anywhere else poorer than me.  I left Texas without a nickel in my pocket, and I been wandering and missing Texas ever since.  I loved Texas, but now I can't afford to keep Texas in my life.

Charlie:  You call that poor?  I'm so poor, I can't even afford pockets.  I keep my lint in an old piece of burlap I stole from a dead hobo.  I haven't even seen a nickel in three years - and that one was wooden!

Emil:  If I could afford stolen burlap, I'd still be living in Texas!  I carry my Texas-size ball of lint in my bare hand, and truth be told can't even afford lint.  I'm so Texas that I can't buy a spare Texas for my Texas.

Charlie:  That's nothing.  I'm so poor-- wait.  What?

Emil:  I'm just sayin' - There's no way in Texas that you're poorer than Texas.  You live like a Texas on the throne compared to my Texas.  I haven't Texased a hot Texas in at least three Texases.  Don't try to tell me you're so Texas.

Charlie:  Are you okay?  You're not making any sense.

Emil:  I'm Texas.  They call my Texas Emil.  I'm making perfect Texas.  I think it is you who is not Texasing any Texas.

Charlie:  You know this was supposed to be about whose life is rougher, right?  Not about who is crazier.

Emil:  Texas is the Texas who's Texaser!  You Texas-damned Texas!  I'll Texas your Texas!  Get the Texas away from Texas, you big Texas!

Charlie:  Okay.  I'm gonna just keep walking.  That way.  You know - toward Texas.

Emil:  Texas.  Texas, Texas and Texas.  Texas.