Fear & Loathing in May

Fear & Loathing in May

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
-- Tom, as Narrator, in Scene One
“The Glass Menagerie”
Tennessee Williams


Getting the story started is the hardest part. I know what I want to tell you, but how to start it?
I could tell you about that hour-long drive almost 10 years ago when I went to watch a former co-worker portray the Tom character in “The Glass Menagerie” – it was a summer-stock production, or at least what passes for summer stock in western Pennsylvania. Our group was one of a handful who came to the show. It felt like we had the theater to ourselves.
I felt bad then for Schyler, that’s his last name, his full name is Radcliffe Schyler. No one calls him “Rad” or “Radcliffe” but as is the habit among boys at certain preparatory schools and over-priced liberal arts colleges, he’s called “Schyler.”
It’s an odd spelling of a last name, it seems to me. It’s as if there’s a vowel missing before the “y” and Schyler’s like that himself: He’s missing that vowel.
Schyler was performing the Williams play to less than 50 people (25 is a better estimate, but it was tough to get an accurate head count with the house lights dimmed.).
“Menagerie” isn’t the kind of play that plays well in western Pennsylvania. People like to laugh here and they like the jokes to be clean.
Not to sully anything about “The Glass Menagerie” – it’s just that is the kind of thing better appreciated by city folks or people in high school or college.
I hadn’t talked to Schyler for about 10 years after that, when he found me on one of those social networking Web sites that I used to despise, but now am unhappily almost addicted to: if I don’t log in each day, what am I missing?
It spins around in my mind until I have no choice but to get up and wait for the computer to boot up. Most of the time, I’m disappointed. The interesting stuff only seems to happen when I’m too busy to care and then I find out about it days later, when my life has slowed down and I waste the time looking at what my “friends” are up to. By then, they’re back to tedium.
As it turns out, Schyler has nothing to do with this story, he was just a digression. This story’s about two kids I saw swimming Sunday afternoon in an un-heated above-ground pool that had clean-enough, albeit cold, water.
The boys, ages 16 and 14 were splashing about and fooling around on a humid, but mild, early May afternoon. Not swimming weather by a long shot. But they made the most of the day and are probably sitting indoors by now, teeth chattering, lips blue, fingertips shriveled like prunes: I know the feeling, I’ve been there.
I’m listening to Johnny Cash sing Steve Goodman’s folk song about the “City of New Orleans” – the train, not the city – as I think about the kids splashing each other in a pool that I swam in when I was there age.
Back then, the corner store that’s almost caddy-corner from the house sold penny candy and even cigarettes to kids. I remember being sent to the store with a couple singles to buy my dad a soft-pack of Kent kings, a newspaper, and some candy with the change.
Swedish fish and fire balls were favorites, but there were so many choices: Laffy Taffy, Jaw Breakers, Boston Baked Beans, string licorice. Older kids would come in and buy 40s of malt liquor; I don’t think the clerks cared if they were 21.
Much as I reminisce about the “good-old days” I can’t help but think about how we were making the best during trying times. Looking at the facts, the Shenango Valley lost its prosperity in the 1980s: the mills were closing and unemployment was rampant. Still, I remember them as glorious days.
Much like 85-year-old Kate Yasgur, who attended a recent tea party. The Greenville resident longed for the days of her girlhood – the late 1930s. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression and was about to enter World War II, but to Mrs. Yasgur, they were a time full of wonder and delight.
She liked her government then and told me she supported FDR’s New Deal whole-heartedly. Others didn’t, equating the laws that were passed expanding the government and creating an American welfare state were un-American.
More than half-a-century later we’re still debating the issue. Some still, like Archie Bunker, maintain, “we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.”
Myself, I relish the intense debate we’re having. There is no right answer in politics and that we’re allowed to freely speak our minds is something I cherish as an American.
While right now some of us are fretting about the direction our country is headed, the kids I saw swimming in the pool will look back on this time as their “glory days.”
That’s America for you.