"I'd be burned out too. Disneyland Is awesome but it's tiring." I guess I'd hoped Despite myself the Cal student slouching Down Shattuck gassing on cell with his Girlfriend (?) would be addressing the world Going on, which they'll have to live in After Tuesday. But maybe they're Young Republicans; I never have a clue Any more. I was down with the New Frontier. Senior year wore my hair Like Kennedy's. Had never imitated Ike's hairdo, skinheads weren't in, then. Crusade in Europe however made My Top 5 Books Read in the Forties List, tied for fifth with Blood, Sweat and Tears. One through four: Navy Blue and Gold, Seventeenth Summer, The Kid from Left Field, The Seven Wonders of the World. I too dug Ghost Riders In the Sky, though to my priest-trained ears it rang With vivid personal Apocalypse Associations. At that time the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame were still famous In my Chicago Irish neighborhood and In my mind; I could tell you their names today And would, were there not a world going on. Indeed I had an envied grade school chum, Ed Collins, whose dad had been one of The Seven Mules; that, to me, was buzzworthy. Have you ever seen that film, The Rapture? She goes Out in the wilderness to receive the light. But it doesn't come. Just cops. Later arrive The Apocalypse horses, however, and Bust down the jailhouse walls. You'll recall Joshua's chart-topping ditty at Jericho--down tumble the bricks. We've fit This battle before, to what end? But then, it's All good, you feel me? End times can resemble Starts (We've only just begun, as Karen C., Starving to death amid the fat of the land, Once warbled in that bank commercial) To fools like us. It's like in The Master And Margarita, in the Russian TV Movie version, where Pontius Pilate And Jesus walk off into the stars: He walks With me, He talks with me, He calls me his own As the long day closes. Now it's deep night, rain, I'm scribbling this with a borrowed pen, huddling Beneath an arcade for shelter In a public place, as occasional grey Incurious strangers--lost souls like me?-- Drift past. One nation, indivisible Or was it invisible? mere hours before The polls open. Annette Funicello I liked in seventh grade, but mouse ears I never wore, O Friend! My top three Songs of the pre-Korean War epoch Were Rum and Coca-Cola, Perfidia, Hernando's Hideaway; honorable Mention goes to that one about standing On a corner by a pawnshop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, watching all the girls Go by. So, Where were the girls? They were going By that corner. I remember that song Swamping my pre-adolescent psyche Through an entire Cub Scout den meeting At Billy Beaver's house. Billy had a weight Problem; was good at tying knots, but on Our frontiering expedition to the wild Scrub margins of the West Side--this before The suburbs extended all the way west To Iowa--managed to fall off a branch-bridge Over the world's puniest creek. Wet buns For Billy's campfire hot dogs, that sad day. And where were the girls then, were they camping Happily by their own fireside along The Allegheny, the Monongahela Or the Ohio, laughing at us? Before Men are evil, one fears, boys are silly. Is That All There Is? Peggy Lee sounded Justifiably disappointed. Fever Kindled in me such heats that, after hearing It in the back of a convertible en Route to a softball game in La Grange, or some Such western outpost, my suppressed and Unacknowledged passion for unsuspecting Fourteen-year-old Jan D. so distracted Me that, playing first base, I lost a popup In the lights, dropped it, and still wince almost As painfully at the memory as when The event happened. But where was I? | Somewhere around 1954? From the subsequent Early-adolescent period, Ebb Tide, Stranger in Paradise, Volare Probably topped my private charts. This was Mid-America, remember; little Freedom to choose, definitely no Alan Freed to guide one. But to get back to your Question, burning like a plutonium Ingot in the pants of an action hero, Where were the girls? Dipping Volare In my cut-price Proustian teacup, I get Faint echoes of that then popular tune Being played by the Chicago Cubs' Ballpark organist. I had an ushering job As well as a crush on a girl from Wheaton I'd met there at Wrigley, dusting off her box Seat before a game. She spilled popcorn On the lap of her madras bermudas; Trained by the book to be heroic In my blue-and-gold uniform, I stepped Into the breach and offered to help her Clean things up down there. Immense surprise! She declined, and not even all that Gratefully. Girls see things another way, There was no choice but to then conclude. I rued my foolish move all the way home On the Chicago & Northwestern. What did I know of girls' tragic magic, then? Or of my own motives, for that matter? Then There came a quickening of the tempo: Sh'Boom, Shake, Rattle & Roll. Something like Apprehension began to dawn: Earth Angel, Heard on a transistor in the basketball Team bus, signalled an upheaval of sorts. Next Occurred The Awakening: Kathy's Clown--where were the girls I imagined Clustering around Don and Phil? Gone, If one was to believe the song. And then in time, Peggy Sue--I loved that stutter of Buddy's, Signature, as I thought, of an existential Urgency I understood; few songs could have Gladdened me more than it did when, wind blowing In our hair through the windows of my Olds, I drove the girls to beaches by the Great Lakes of my first real adventures In biology with the opposite sex. And in the dark western woods beyond The city lights, there was that parking spot Called Tail Light, because cops, stopping in on Their rounds to peep into steamed-up car Windows o'winter nights, never interfered As long as you kept your tail-lights on. Red Evidence of a rich interior life Wasted on impressionable children Of the benighted prairie, as seen from The eyes of voyeurs with badges. O Friend! Did you ever hear Zappa's song Catholic Girls? The phenomena Frank attested Were less local-regional than ethnic- Cultural, one suspects, as prevalent In Chicago as in New York or Rome. Catholic girls were like Disneyland, Awesome. Had I had strength to brave that Daunting conflagration--think, if you will, O Friend, of the lava storms of Mt. St. Helens; Or better still, of Vesuvius, youthful me Stranded in Pompeii, my toga wrapped Ineffectually about my feeble Loins to protect me from the fires To come--I'd be burned out too, by now. But though that boiling crater's long since Banked its flames and cooled for good, still it's true: There's a world going on, and I'm stuck in it; The girls are old too; now we're all in it-- Whatever it is, this weird world--together.
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