Part the First

Monday, January 2, 1978.  The Arkansas Marching Razorback Band was in Miami, Florida.  The occasion was the Balaba Bowl, a charming sobriquet euphemistically named for women’s breasts.  We eschewed the customary “Orange Bowl” in favor of “Balaba Bowl,” which had a cultured insouciance and a delicate piquancy, and fell trippingly off the tongue in a way that “Booby Bowl” never could.

Just before winter break at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the heavens had bestowed upon us a frivolous layer of snow.  Heedless of the climate, we lined up several marching rehearsals. Our intent was to honor Balabas everywhere by keeping our show in tit-top form.  We planned to knocker it out of the park.

At the last rehearsal, brass instrument valves and slides were freezing up and the sound grew weak as fewer could be played.  I constantly blew through my Sousaphone to keep the valves warm and moving under my fingers.  My friend Boyce Lovett asked if my instrument was ok.  When I said yes, the valves froze in the time it took me to answer.  I don’t know about brass monkeys, but it was almost cold enough to freeze the bell off a brass baritone.

Owning no legitimate footwear for snow, I inserted my Converse hightops in plastic shopping bags to keep them dry.  I tied the long drawstrings to my belt to prevent the bags from falling around my ankles.  It looked exactly as absurd as it sounds. 

The smooth plastic bags provided scant traction on the snow.  After executing a slippery 135 degree turn, I had to doubletime my steps as I struggled to regain my position in the formation.  Abruptly, my feet slid from under me, and I landed square on both knees. 

There is major pain involved in falling to your knees in snow, especially if augmented with 40 pounds of brass, although the discomfort is minor compared to impalement or burning at the stake.  Not that I could appreciate the difference when the tears in my eyes were freezing them open. 

Our director Mr. Janzen soon called off the rehearsal as a tragically nonproductive endeavor.  We were relying on sunny Miami to polish up the halftime show properly.  It was unlikely to snow in Florida except in the event of a new ice age, and if that happened, there would be plenty of fucked to go around.

We had arrived in Miami on New Year’s Day via chartered flight from Little Rock.  Flying had the added benefits of a) nobody got sick at the rear of the band bus from diesel fumes, and b) unlimited bags of free peanuts occupied the drummers and prevented them from brachiating in the aisle.

After checking into the Sans Souci Hotel in Miami Beach, we discovered that the legal drinking age in Florida was 18.   Without fanfare, the trumpet section disappeared with their suitcases into the hotel bar, resolved to abide there so long as there was booze in Florida and a Mason jar to drink it from.

That season, when the band entered a stadium, the twirlers, percussionists, and flag team led the way.  Next came the band with your humble narrator at the fore.  I was followed by the rest of the low brass section.  After that the low brass support team (trumpets and French horns and clarinets et cetera) followed, hoping to bask in reflected glory.

Halftime at the bowl, we played “Swingin’ on a Star,” “White Christmas” – a surreal choice for January in Florida – and a medley of “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Love Me Tender,” and “Hound Dog.”   

We concluded our presentation with the rousing Arkansas Fight Song as we formed the large letters ARK.  As it had poured buckets, barrels and buttloads of rain before the game, this might be construed as a musical tribute to Noah, but it is widely known he favored water polo over football.

In the third quarter, band members were dismissed to seek refreshments or bladder relief.  Strolling aimlessly past the concession area, I spied a souvenir pennant on the ground inches away from a puddle of rainwater.  What a stroke of luck!  A free memento of my last bittersweet performance with the Razorback band.

I squatted down to pick up the pennant, avoiding the puddle, mindful of my loose white woolen slacks with the spiffy red stripes down the side.  I was surprised to hear a suspicious tearing sound.  Had I unconsciously “let one rip”?  I soon discerned that the answer was yes, but not in the manner of a gaseous eruption.

A quick investigation behind the refreshment stand revealed a crucial seam had disintegrated.  My pants yawned open from the bottom of the zipper in front to the belt loop in the back.  This was no humble inch long rip.  This was the Grand Canyon, the Marianas Trench, Dolly Parton’s cleavage.

I was in a trouser crisis, a pants-centric pickle.  A chill hand clutched at my heart just as a chill breeze wafted in and clutched at my … ummm, my heart.

I had to fix this before I led the band marching triumphantly from the stadium.  Over the course of my two seasons with the band, TV cameras had occasionally broadcast images of me out to an unsuspecting world.  It could happen again, thereby exposing my white Fruits of the Loom with the convenient Y front.   It could only be worse had I worn my undies with little red Razorbacks plastered across my ass.

Displaying either a shocking lack of forethought or complete and unconditional indifference, nobody had packed needle and thread to a bowl game.  I was desperate for any stop-gap solution.  My kingdom for a stapler.  I would have been ecstatic with superglue, although I shudder to think what a horror show that could have turned out to be with the slightest slip of the wrist.

Boyce, when confronted with my dilemma, quickly deduced the seat of the problem as well as the solution.  With the considered air of Sherlock Holmes, he succinctly stated, “Dude, you need new pants.”

I sought out fellow Sousaphone player Tom Spicer, who was a work crew member.  He wore coveralls and set things up instead of marching in and out with the band.  Tom agreed to loan me his pants and nobody would be the wiser.

The only complication was that Tom’s legs stretched about 5 inches farther than mine.  I reconciled this disparity by folding up cuffs that would impress a 1940s gigolo.

One obstacle with large cuffs on a pair of heavy woolen pants is that when marching briskly out of a stadium, they gradually slide down.  No sooner had I begun my act of egression than said cuffs shed all cufflike qualities, reverting to simple overlong pant legs.  My appendages now resembled flippers on some strange aquatic bird, escaped from SeaWorld and cruising concession stands for overpriced fish nachos.

I was in danger of stumbling over pants legs now out to my toes.  The memory of my recent fall fresh in my mind, I steadied my Sousaphone with my left hand.  With my right hand, I grabbed both pants legs at the knee and pulled them up as high as I could, which was about crotch level.  It was an absolutely dignity-free moment. 

Nobody pointed a TV camera at the band once the game was over, so there was no mortifying photographic evidence transmitted out into the universe.  Intergalactic aliens will never spray beer out of their noses at the sight of me clutching my Balzac.

After a swift change, everyone gathered around the uniform van in a disorderly cluster to fork over our uniforms.  I handed in my distressed regalia, all bagged tight, damages hidden from view.  I neglected to mention that the britches, normally so very warm, now employed cutting edge air cooled technology.

I sometimes imagine that the torn trousers are on display in the Marching Band Hall of Fame over a plaque reading “Steve Hendricks did this and therein lies a Ripping Tale.”  

It was Saturday night after the band’s holiday concert. Since I was a groovy band kid, I was invited to a post-concert party at the home of band sisters Carol and Cheryl Mathis.  Carol played baritone sax, and I played tenor sax, so we often sat together in band.  Carol could chew gum and play sax at the same time.  Such faculty was a source of wonder and admiration for me.

The Mathis house was situated on Baseline Road, one of the major thoroughfares of Southwest Little Rock.  It was just around the corner from Billy Pearrow, a good friend and future perpetrator of teaching me to play trombone.

The house was filled with interesting things, unlike mine which was sparsely decorated with a trio of sailing ships that Dad painted-by-number and a couple of paintings that came free with the purchase of a couch.  

The Mathis family owned a real, genuine, honest-to-goodness player piano.  It was perhaps the coolest contraption I had ever seen.  You could almost imagine the ghostly fingers of Irving Berlin banging away at the keyboard, if only he had been dead by then.

My trumpet playing friend Gary Graves and I were lurking in a corner of the living room trying to appear suave.  I had dressed to impress, smartly clad in a turtleneck sweater, plaid bell bottoms, and a belt with a massive peace symbol buckle that, in an emergency, could be used to kill someone.

At one point, Gary stopped responding to my impromptu dissertation on the meaning of life (girls), the secret of happiness (girls), and my favorite thing in the whole world (pork chops.  Ha.  Only kidding.  You guessed it was girls, didn’t you?).

I followed his gaze across the room to a particularly cute young lady with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.   Her name was Roseanne, and I had seen her around the band room.  She had the kind of aura that causes level-headed men to absent mindedly walk into walls, unbalanced men to cut off an ear, or in my case, to fall head over heels.   I’m getting ahead of my story, but I want to reassure you that no body parts will be detached in this remembrance.

Gary and I were stealing glances her way, ever so cool and disinterested-like, while our hormones conspired to devolve us several rungs down the evolutionary ladder.   Our communication skills stabilized around early Neanderthal.  It was only with effort that we did not start finger painting woolly mammoths on the walls.

To our amazement, Roseanne deliberately stationed herself under some mistletoe hanging near the front door.  She then looked around the room as if to say, “Well, what are you waiting for?” Astonished at such a grand and magnanimous gesture in the spirit of the season, Gary and I felt obliged to express our appreciation.

An encounter under the mistletoe was far more thrilling than anything Kris Kringle ever deposited under the Christmas tree.  What luck that I was invited to this splendid party.  Joining band was the smartest thing I ever did.  This was shaping up to be the best Christmas ever!

When I arrived at the front of the line, Roseanne’s bright and inviting eyes turned to me.  For reasons unfathomable by my conscious mind and completely at odds with my endocrine system, I shyly demurred from the proffered kiss.  In the fiery crucible of teen-age lust, my bravery was transmuted to cranberry sauce. 

Meekly casting my eyes downward, I started to make room for the next eager participant.  Before I could move, Roseanne threw her arms around me and situated her lips decisively on mine.  Recovering enough to wrap my arms around her, I proceeded to lose my balance in the most literal fashion.  Together we toppled over the short bookcase behind me, still kissing. 

We received a round of applause when we climbed back to our feet.

When Roseanne left the party, she allowed me to escort her to her parents’ waiting car.  Strolling down the driveway, I learned that she was dating Dave Daugherty.  Dave played French horn in band.  He drummed in the rock band Brave New World with my excellent friends Richard and Clark.  Just to rub it in, he was a year older than me, the fiend.  This advantageous combination made him unassailable boyfriend material. 

Perhaps to indicate that I had zero chance of ever tumbling over another bookcase with her, Roseanne casually informed me that “French horn players are the best kissers.” Before that night, I had never been envious of any musician who shoved their hand up their bell.

Even though the kiss was not so much a kiss as a lark, I was eager for more!  I was cognizant that only some rare alignment of the cosmos had granted the evening’s opportunity; I happened to be the right shy dork at the right time, namely when Roseanne was feeling flirtatious.  That party was the only time being mild-mannered got me anything but neglected. Not that I was complaining, mind you.  As Sam sang in Casablanca, a kiss is still a kiss.

On the list of 22 women I have kissed in my life (Division 1A, Romantic, discounting spin-the-bottle frolics), Roseanne is a happy footnote.  Beside her name it says, “try dating a French horn player soon.”

It was a warm Saturday at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in late Summer, 1974.  The McClellan High School Marching Lion band was lined up side-by-side just a few steps off the sideline of the AstroTurf field awaiting an afternoon performance.  

We were bedecked in our hot, black woolen uniforms in the blazing Arkansas sun, wearing white cotton gloves that made holding instruments securely trickier than you might think, with ridiculous Busby hats of fake bear fur towering over our heads. 

Elaine McGee, my new French horn playing girlfriend, was on my left.  We were still in the early, flirty days of our relationship and my attention was at least divided, if not outright diverted. 

Richard Manson, fellow tenor sax player, longtime bud and co-conspirator in the Cloverdale Communist Underground Railroad (a story for another day), was on my right. 

We awaited a whistle from the drum major, when we would all march the few steps to the actual sideline before the show would start.  We marched “ankle-knee,” an energetic, high stepping style where your foot went up to the level of your knee and your thigh was almost parallel to the ground. 

After the whistle blew, we enthusiastically started forward.  Richard’s left knee forcefully hit my saxophone, sending it flying out of my hands up into the air.  Fortunately I caught it about face level. 

I was surprised, so I furtively – we were supposed to be at attention – reached into the sax to check it out. I found there was a circular dent in the curve at the bottom of the instrument exactly the shape of Richard’s kneecap (I am glad to report that Richard’s knee sustained no damage). 

I no longer own the sax, but I would often think of Richard when I took the instrument out of its case and saw that concave reminder of happy days.

     During the resurgence of classic horror movies in the seventies, I discovered the Universal horror monsters. Frankenstein and his Bride, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera.  Resplendent in black and white, I loved them all.  But my favorite was Dracula, the King of the Undead, the Devil with a Drinking Problem, the Vein Attraction.

     Dracula was the most popular, if not the original, cinematic vampire, as well as the hands down best dressed villain of all time. A true Lady’s Monster, he was charming, sleek, powerful and sexy.   Compared to the Count and his superior facility for entrancing damsels, I was the Invisible Man with my transparently pathetic endeavors.  I was “a nice boy,” which was the final nail in the dirt lined coffin.

     I wanted to become like, if not actually be, Dracula.  I mimicked the Count’s eerie facial expressions and claw-like hand gestures as I practiced my semi-viscous Romano-Hungarian accent.  Inexplicably, it was not working as I had hoped.  It appears that “I VHANT to DREENK your BLUD” is the worst pick-up line of all time, narrowly beating out “I want to eat your BRAINS” and “Hi, my name is Steve.”

     While I prayed selected follicles would fall out so my hairline would more closely mirror Lugosi’s, I scoffed at the exaggerated widow’s peak worn by Eddie Munster, another pretentious young Dracula wannabe.  I was undoubtedly the only teenager in the seventies who wanted less hair.

     When I suggested painting my room black and illuminating it with hundreds of candles, Mom nixed the idea.  Citing prohibitive insurance costs, she claimed “fire bad!”

     Instead of candles, I tacked up a poster of the 1931 Dracula film.  It depicted Bela Lugosi as Dracula regarding a lady’s neck the way a good Southern boy looks at a big platter of spare ribs. 

     I obsessed over a coffin to sleep in, even though they looked uncomfortable.  That did not deter me, as I had never heard anyone complain that they lost sleep in one.  In fact, the common consensus was that they were to die for.

     After Mam-maw stitched an ominous black cape with a red lining for my sixteenth birthday, I began adding pieces to my costume.  When I perfected it down to my spats, I could dress vampiric for any occasion.  It was only with great self-control that I refrained from indulging myself on other holidays, thereby predating Jack Skellington’s ghoulish Yule antics by a generation.

     According to Hollywood, Transylvania was home to a slew of supernatural monsters.  The real Dracula, inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Victorian era vampire, lived and died there in the fifteenth century.  A merciless leader in war, he was brutal and figuratively bloodthirsty.  According to statues and portraits, he sported the original porn ‘stache long before it was cool.

     In 2001, my friend Jose’s sister Valeria was a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania.  Central Romania is a heavily forested area known as Transylvania.  Each October, the Romanian Peace Corps threw a party that the Lonely Planet Guide deemed “The best Halloween party on the planet.”  Jose, who had gone the year before, proclaimed it worth the trip, guaranteed.  It doesn’t suck, he said.  Not “bleh, bleh, bleh” at all!

     Transylvania for Halloween sounded like a dream come true.  The siren call of destiny suggested that I would finally make beautiful music with the children of the night, no saxophone necessary. 

     Our flight on SwissAir was so empty, it was like having a personal jet.  Randy and I folded down all the seats in 2 rows and stretched out for the best nap I’ve ever had on a flight.  Upon landing, we were surprised with a complete passenger complement of Swiss chocolate courtesy of our bored but generous airline crew.

     We caught up with Jose in downtown Bucharest, a capitol city renowned for stunning Soviet style architecture.  For “stunning”, read “miserable, colorless edifices of soul-crushing death.”

     We exchanged cash for Romanian lei using a crazy exchange rate guaranteeing a calculator was necessary to confidently buy anything (“Wait, does this t-shirt cost 40 cents or 267 dollars?”).

     On the train to Brasov, we passed through rustic countryside that looked untouched for a hundred years, complete with horse-drawn carts reminiscent of high school hay rides.  Ah, those chilly, moonlit rides! Where my tender bits were poked by pointy bits of agriculture while I contemplated just how bored you had to be to take a freakin’ hay ride in the first place.

     The Saturday evening before Halloween, we caught a taxi to the hostel where the costume party was about to begin.  People in Romania did not celebrate Halloween, and although they knew nothing of the whole candy-fueled madness, they took any chance to paint the town blood red.  

     Jose and his sister and her friends dressed as characters from the Powerpuff Girls TV show.  As HIM, an appropriately carmine colored devil, Jose’s face was slathered with crimson makeup.  Soon there were red splotches and splatters on walls, glasses, other party-goers and nearly every surface.  The place looked like Jack the Ripper had stopped by for a quick aperitif and some prostitute kidney tidbits (the original whore d’oeuvres).  

     Randy was a medieval knight straight out of Camelot as envisioned by Monty Python.  Of course, I was decked out as Count Dracula, complete with plastic glow-in-the-dark fangs.

     Never much of a party person, I mostly spent the night at a massive round table where the manager of the hostel, one “Asian Elvis” held court.  Signs around the hostel offered free breast massages courtesy of Asian Elvis, but I deemed it unlikely that he was actually board certified.

     In Romania, social events traditionally begin with a shot of Hungarian pálinka, which is indistinguishable from liquid rocket propellant.  With an impressive alcohol content of 52%, pálinka can be used in a pinch to dissolve stubborn tar stains or inconvenient murder witnesses.

     After our pálinka-fueled primary stage ignition, Elvis shared bottle after bottle of unfamiliar and intriguing beverages.  Pretty soon, I lost track of

    a) Randy, Jose, and Valeria,

    b) the prodigious quantities of exotic booze I was guzzling, and,

    c) all brain functionality above lizard level.  

     Having upgraded my camera for the trip, I discovered that digital cameras were rare in Eastern Europe.  Everyone wanted their picture taken.  Many requested a stint behind the lens and borrowed the camera while I sat cheerfully anesthetized.  A lot of photos were taken by people I did not know of people I also did not know.  Reviewing photos the day after the party, I found a close-up of male genitalia that, judging by size, I am sorry to say were not my own.

     Since I was and am still married, it was good and proper that I was the only person at the party who did not “get lucky” that night.   Looking back now, I believe a few young ladies did make passes at me.  It is hard to be certain; perhaps in Romania, nipple rings are a topic for casual conversation.  Also, there is always a short latency period before I realize I have been the object of an attempted seduction, usually around 20 years.

     I recall urging a young woman to patch things up with her recently discarded boyfriend.   Said boyfriend, besotted in both senses of the word, leaned against a conveniently stationary wall, head bobbing like a toy bulldog on a dashboard.  I pointed out that they were just like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, and as such, belonged together forever. 

     This soiree marked the second time I got drunk wholly without intention.  It was not a demanding accomplishment; indeed it was as easy as falling off a wagon.  I felt there should be obvious, unmistakable warnings of impending intoxication, such as vertigo, slurred speech, or a sudden inclination to argue which is funnier, “cumquat” or “weasel.”

     At daybreak, the rising sun revealed unconscious revelers strewn about like devalued beanie babies.  The hostel floor resembled nothing so much as Gettysburg after the battle, albeit with fewer amputations but a comparable amount of groaning.

     We cautiously picked our way across the floor, down the stairs, and out the door. When we arrived back at Valeria’s place, I was still thoroughly sloshed, perhaps called that because of the appalling sounds your guts emit as you stagger along. 

     As expected after such bacchanalian excess, I did not feel like a million bucks.  I did not even feel like a million Romanian lei, which were worth about three bucks or something – who could convert currency when the world kept spinning like that? 

     I relinquished my party favors around noon while kneeling in a flower bed outside Valeria’s front window.  Nestled among the little red flowers, I considered expiring right there with a funeral bouquet so conveniently close at hand.

     After recovering in Brasov that day and the next, Jose, Valeria, Randy and I boarded the train to the well preserved medieval town of Sighișoara.  Pronounced Siggy Shwara, it was the birthplace in 1431 of Wallachian prince Vlad III, also known as Vlad Țepeș, also known as Dracula.  Vlad the Impaler to his friends.

     On Halloween, we attended another party at our hostel in Sighișoara.  Still a bit green around the gills à la the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I resolved to put the “I can’t” in intoxicant. 

     Lack of costumes did not keep Transylvanian locals from schooling us regarding Halloween revelry.  There were amazing feats of drunken dexterity.  One fellow painted a colorful, Picasso-esque mural while gripping the brush with his naked bottom, surely a technique that Michelangelo soberly avoided.

     Just before midnight, a small group of us wandered up to the medieval Church of the Dominican Monastery above the city.  After admiring the impressively mustachioed statue of Vlad III, we stepped over the low wall separating the church and the ancient cemetery.  Fog was thick, wet and heavy in the graveyard, with an honest-to-goodness full moon and a few distant lights shining faintly through the mists.  The church bell struck midnight, prompting a graveyard dog to begin howling.   A shiver tingled along my spine as if the sinister eyes of Lugosi himself were watching from the shadows.

     Afterwards, we made our way by moonlight back down the hill to the hostel.  In the days to come, Randy and I visited Budapest, Vienna and London, while Jose decided to save money by staying in Romania with his sister.  Ours was a soggy adventure as it poured cold rain virtually the whole trip after we left Romania.  Perhaps Jose had the right idea, or at least the drier one.

     For me, no Halloween has ever equaled foggy graveyard, full moon, dog howling, birthplace of Dracula, midnight clock ringing, Transylvania Halloween.  I would give my sharpened plastic eye teeth to do it all again.

Ninety-nine McClellan band kids had been dropped off that August afternoon with their instruments at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.  About equally divided between sophomores, juniors and seniors (McClellan was a three year high school), we were there to learn our new halftime show for the fall.   As it turned out, I was going to learn a little extra.

We were facing a week with five hours per day of marching in the broiling Arkansas humidity.  Only the very stupidest could stand at the very gates of Hell, nostril hairs singeing with every breath, and imagine it would be exciting and fun.  Of course, I’m speaking of me.

The previous year, the first evening of marching camp unexpectedly devolved into aerobic exercise.  Like the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, the freshman boys fled before the seniors, who were determined to welcome us in that ancient and time-honored way; purely sadistic torture. 

The preferred technique was to hold a sophomore flat on his back, pull up his shirt, and slap his stomach with manic glee until it glowed rosy red.   Arkansas was then, as now, the tastefully oversized silver buckle in America’s Bible Belt.   Had we thought to suggest that such hazing seemed slightly homoerotic, we might have remained unmolested by all those good Southern Baptist seniors.  I can imagine their reactions had someone under their careful ministrations rolled their eyes and moaned, “Oh, baby, keep it up!  Just like that!  Oh, yay-yes!”

My friend John Robinson sported an astonishing profusion of curly blond hair.  He could grow a moustache at an age before most boys’ testicles dropped.  His wooly chest, which John cavalierly displayed with several extra undone buttons on his shirt, put one in mind of a baritone-playing Norse gorilla in Levis.

The seniors had made special plans for proud, hirsute John.  While pinning him down, they mercilessly slathered his chest with Nair, an odorous and mildly toxic foam used to dissolve unwanted body hair.   John struggled and protested for the full five minutes required for the depilatory to work its magic, but when he was released, his hair remained completely intact.  At least for that evening, John was our hero simply because the Nair could not deforest his manly pectoral thatch!

That earlier year, I had spent the evening in hiding, perched in a barn-sized air conditioning unit.  The enormous machinery’s droning hum offered two benefits; it was calming in a Zen-like way, and it drowned out the pitiable screams of my fellow prey. 

Happily for me, this year I was neither sophomore nor senior, and the primal hunt proceeded without me.

I had a lot of friends in the band, many of whom fell into three distinct categories.  I spent the most time with the “science kids,” Mark Cook, Tim Teague, Carra Bussa and Mark Griffin. We threw all night chess parties, where we drank Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola from brandy snifters.  We loved science fiction almost as much as pizza, don’t forget the extra cheese, thank you very much.  To top it off, we formed our own German band consisting of trumpet, tenor saxophone and three trombones, and we played such crowd pleasers as “Ach du lieber Augustine.”  We were real, you know, chick magnets.

My second gang was the “cool kids,” Susan West, Holly Anderson, David Stebbins and Kenny Trantham.  They were the brainy bunch, sharper and far more dedicated than me, and were justifiably acknowledged as teachers’ favorites.   I’m not sure how I got included in this group, since most teachers regarded me on par with gum stuck in their bangs.

The third classification of my colleagues was the most beguiling, the most tempting, the most excitingly dangerous to a naturally nebbish lad like me.  This cohort, the “crazy kids,” was really a loose conglomeration of fellows with a common joie de vivre.  Among them I counted Andy McGee and Richard Manson, Billy “Wild Bill” Pearrow, Randy Motley and Buddy Presley.  A certain fire in their blood elevated them to a slightly risky level, and I, self-restrained to the point of dormancy, relied on them to drag me out of my somnambulant safe zone.

Randy, Billy and Buddy snagged me after dinner that first night at band camp and ushered me into their room.  Before my astonished gaze, like magicians releasing doves from under a handkerchief, they unveiled hefty bottles of rum and whiskey.  These jugs were large enough to pickle the entire brass section with plenty left over to get the flute section pleasantly cross-eyed as well.

Years later, Buddy informed me that my memory was somewhat muddled by subsequent events, and that it was vodka and bourbon rather than rum and whisky.  That is likely true as I did not know the difference or even care because it all tasted like Esso High Octane to me.  Either combination would have ensured that the evening’s undertaking followed in the footsteps of Wile E. Coyote, with unintended and slightly disastrous results.

Unfamiliar with my burning intellectual curiosity about the effects of alcohol on human consciousness, they naïvely invited me to have a little tipple.  Before they knew it, I was upending a bottle, the amber liquid bubbling down my gullet.  With a few startled expletives, they wrestled the bottle from my hands, but too late!  Stage one of the great experiment was underway.  Inspired by Neil Armstrong, I was one giant leap on my way to a lunar rendezvous.

Several periods of time sneakily passed without my knowledge or consent, and soon I was striding up and down the hallway, Groucho Marx style.  Heedlessly mixing pop culture references, I was laughing like a mad scientist after too many hits of nitrous oxide.   

Before long, I threw up.  A truly spectacular multimedia event according to those unlucky enough to witness it, my non-Olympic hurling lasted about four days, subjectively speaking.  I’m told the judges were suitably impressed with both my form and endurance.

At some point, I was standing in the shower, held up by unknown hands, marveling stupidly at the steam billowing around me.  From somewhere outside my unfocused vision, Andy invoked his nickname for me with doleful empathy, exclaiming “oh, shit, Shirley!” 

While my innards were twisting the night away, Billy and Buddy got locked out of their room.  They had left the room guarded by Randy, now rendered incapable of mastering any mechanism as devilishly complicated as a door knob by virtue of having passed out on the bed.

Limply standing in line for breakfast the next morning, I entered the final phase of my scientific research, the hangover.  My head throbbed like the dying heart of the last mastodon, run through by a Neolithic javelin and awaiting a swift coup de grâce (mastodons love ze pretentious French metaphors, bien sûr)!

I struggled to not sink to my knees as we inched closer to the cafeteria serving area.  Rather than just propping me up, my inconsiderate friends kept speaking to me.  I did not know where they found the strength to talk so loudly, as even my vocal chords ached.  Surely during the night I had been thrown from the roof and lay awaiting an ambulance, only to be run over like  saxophone-wielding road kill?

If I live a thousand years, I will never forget the sheer horror, the utterly tactile revulsion I felt encountering row upon row of greasy breakfast sausages staring up at me.  I swear I could hear the little swine laughing contemptuously at my nauseated discomfort!  Or perhaps that was just the drummers doing monkey imitations for the flag line.

The rest of that first day of marching camp was spent learning and reviewing basic march steps.  Our marching style, called “ankle-knee”, was as unnatural as broccoli flavored ice cream.  To master it, we had to lift one foot and balance on the other while our stance was checked for perfection, again and again and again.  Forget differential equations!  Prolonged balancing on one foot with an epic hangover is really hard!

We also learned left and right faces, and, most horrific of all, the about face.  Spin, rest, spin, rest, spin.  Had he witnessed this diabolical torment, Satan himself would have felt so sorry for me that he would have sent flowers and a nice box of chocolate.

Thinking it odd how hangovers seemed funny on TV, I realized it was only funny to the other, non-hungover characters, but that realization came too late to save me.  I regretted my inadvertent masochism, and I concluded that it was most sincerely not the thing for me.

Throughout the day I wondered, is it possible to die just from wishing?  On one hand, I felt as ready for death as I might ever be, but I had hoped to make it to first base with a real, live girl before shucking off my mortal coil.  I credit anticipation of exposure to an actual three dimensional female breast or, even better, two of them, with keeping me alive that day.

Other questions I pondered as minutes passed like a procession of giant tortoises on quaaludes:

Discounting any possibility of moderation, who in their right mind would drink booze realizing such misery was a consequence?   Did people not grasp the cause and effect nature?

Why, oh why, would one undergo such tribulations to briefly metamorphose into a witless, albeit happy, ninny?   Did they relish a fling with insensibility?

As a chronically starchy white guy, was I doomed to projectile barfing and a throbbing cranium every time I wanted to unselfconsciously dance with girls?

And to think, people went to college for this.

In February, 1972, Mom and Dad brought home a little fuzzball to join our family.  She was off-white (a color the AKC called “champagne”), a little bigger than a softball, with bright, intelligent eyes.  She was a poodle, half miniature and half toy, and she was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

Rather than walking, she fairly pranced around the house, so we called her “Prissy.”  She was born on Christmas day, so her middle name became “Nicole” in honor of Saint Nicholas.  Her solemn and full name was “Priscilla Nicole Hendricks,” but we never called her that no matter how much trouble she got into.

A couple of days after we got her, we brought Prissy along on a day trip to the Mountain View Folk Festival.  We all took turns carrying her, and she was the darling of the day, winning the hearts of everyone who saw her.  In the afternoon, the weather turned, and we were caught in a downpour without umbrellas.  Dad stuffed Prissy in his jacket where she rode happily with just her tiny, wet head peering out.

We called Prissy the best doorbell on four legs because anyone at the door would set off her canine alarm system, and she would race to the kitchen barking.  When the door opened to reveal a human rather than a monster, she would dance around, wiggling her whole body with ecstasy.   My friend David Stebbins always wore sandals when he came to visit. Prissy would lick his toes, causing him to jump about like a cowboy when a movie villain fired hot lead at his boots.  “It tickles!” David would exclaim as he danced across the kitchen floor.

Prissy was extremely fast for such a small dog.  I have a single picture of her streaking along in the back yard, but she is just a white blur.  She loved to run all-out, especially after a narrow escape from death in two inches of warm bath water.

One time Mom was having a snack while talking with Prissy in her lap.  Using her long, skinny tongue, the dog adroitly scooped out a morsel from Mom’s mouth between syllables.  Mom was both amazed and disgusted.  The moral of the story: don’t talk with your mouth full, not with a fast dog nearby.

A couple of years earlier we had planted a pecan tree in the back yard.  Little did we know that we were aiding and abetting Prissy’s future arch-nemesis.   Prissy despised the squirrel that stole all the pecans from the tree.  She would bark at the critter from the sliding glass door that looked out onto the back yard.  The squirrel would happily ignore her until we opened the door, and then the race was on.  Prissy would zoom out just as the squirrel made a spectacular jump to the fence and raced away.  Although she never gave up trying, she was definitely not the best squirrel deterrent, because we never got a single pecan from that damned tree.

While still a puppy, Prissy started sleeping in my bedroom.  She would cuddle up in my arms at night, where she slept like a favorite teddy bear.  If the weather was hot, she would sleep on my pillow, her back against the crown of my head.

Home floorplans of early seventies commonly included a serving bar connected to a pass-through from the kitchen to the living room.  We had four avocado colored stools at the bar where we enjoyed all meals except those on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

One morning, Mom awoke to find Prissy nose-deep in a jar of peanut butter on the kitchen counter.  She had jumped on the couch in the living room, stepped over onto a side table, hopped onto a bar stool, climbed onto the bar, and walked over to the kitchen counter where her favorite snack awaited, lid conveniently unscrewed.

As well as JIF, Prissy loved every food she ever tried with only a few exceptions.  She did not like pickles or olives and would carry them from room to room before finally abandoning them.  She liked M&Ms, but not the kind with peanuts.  If given a peanut M&M, she would lick the chocolate off the outside and leave the peanut.  She loved peanut butter, so I have no idea why she disliked peanuts.

One Saturday, Mom’s brother Anthony stopped in to say hi.  Prissy had been working on some peanut M&Ms.  Anthony was sitting on a bar stool while Mom picked up leftover peanuts from the floor and dropped them in a bowl, awaiting transfer to the trash can.  After a few minutes, Anthony absent-mindedly reached into the bowl and tossed a handful of the peanuts into his mouth.  Mom’s jaw dropped as she watched Anthony realize what he had done.  His eyes opened wide and he muttered, “Oh, God.  Those are dog peanuts, aren’t they?”

At that time, Mom drove a new two-tone Electra 225, which was Buick’s answer to the aircraft carrier.  It was 19 feet long with a shelf under the rear window big enough for emergency napping.  Prissy claimed this area as her own whenever we took a drive.  She would jump from the front seat to the back seat to the shelf, check the vicinity out the back window, then reverse the trip to catch the action out front.  Watching her hop back and forth was like having primo courtside seats at Wimbledon.

We never figured out how she knew what day it was, but every Christmas morning (which was also her birthday), she would run excitedly from room to room and wake us up.   We joked that she was the best darned alarm clock, although for only one day a year.

After being awakened, Randy, Mom, Dad and I would follow her to the living room and sit around the tree.  There Prissy would receive the first gift, which had been loosely wrapped and placed on a tree branch.  She would tear open and then parade her gift, usually a squeaky toy, around the room for all to admire.

Her favorite toy was a little rubber alligator she got one Christmas.  Whenever she felt bad, she would sit at the end of the coffee table and slowly squeeze him, making sorrowful little squeaks until she felt better.

Prissy greeted me at the door and slept at my side whenever I came home from college or was visiting from California.  By the time I went to grad school, she was slower to meet me in the kitchen and she no longer wiggled her body with uncontrolled joy.  I had to lift her up on the bed at night because she could no longer run down the hall and fly from the door to my side.   She was almost completely blind, and so she no longer took offense at squirrels raiding the pecan tree.

I knew that our time with Prissy was growing short, and I was ready when I answered the phone call from Mom one evening.

When I next visited Mom and Dad, I looked out the sliding glass door.  There was a little dirt mound there near the pecan tree.  I opened the door and walked over.  Standing there remembering all those sweet moments, I was all hollowed out with emotion.  As is often the case with loss, I was wrong in thinking myself truly ready.

While I stood there, Mom came up from the house to stand with me.  She put her arm around me and said simply, “She was a good dog.”

“Yes,” I whispered, “she was the best.”

In August, 1968, after a year of apartment dwelling, our family moved to a newly built home in the growing suburb known as Southwest Little Rock.

There were no parks near us and relatively few kids in the neighborhood.  There was never even enough breeze to fly kites.  I sometimes tried tying a kite to the back of my bike and pulling it behind, but results usually involved a destroyed kite, a bike crash, or both.  I never understood how Charlie Brown could get his stupid kite high enough to get stuck in a tree.

Without sufficient kiddy TV, convenient parks or nearby friends, and given the finite number of comic books that I had not read to tatters, it was inevitable that some days involved searching for something interesting to pass the time.

My younger brother Randy and I owned a large chunk of unremarkable modeling clay.  It was dark blue and it never hardened, so it was no good for making toys like batarangs or useful household items like ashtrays. 

Now, Carlyle Drive was one of only a couple of access roads into the Windamere subdivision, and people would drive down the street at astonishing speeds.  The straight and nearly treeless street could be a dangerous place to play if not for the fact that you could see cars coming long before you were in mortal peril. 

One day, Randy and I realized these two seemingly unrelated circumstances of clay and street could be combined to produce novel and potentially interesting mischief.

We fashioned a dozen blue clay 8 inch spikes, striking in their similarity to hardened steel implements of death.  With an attention to detail rarely seen outside of the military, Randy and I placed our spits all across the road in front of our house.  As we had planned, no car could possibly avoid them by driving in between.  We then stood in our yard, quite plainly the architects of this road hazard, waiting for unsuspecting motorists.

As the first car turned off the main road of Geyer Springs, Randy and I steeled ourselves for imminent chaos.  The road offered no encumbrance to unsafe driving, and the car roared towards us gaining speed.  To our disappointment, the driver either never noticed the spikes or just decided that maybe it was a good day to die in a fiery crash; he drove over them without slowing.

Disheartened by our first victim’s nonchalance, we reformed the nails and waited for another car.  It was not long.  The next driver was barreling down the road even faster than the first when he saw the spikes.  With admirable reflexes, he slammed the brakes, leaving black rubber marks and screeching to a halt mere feet away.  The car sat there idling long seconds.  The driver looked down at the spikes, then at the two young troublemakers waiting to see what he would do next.  Cautiously, he inched his car over the spikes, gently flattening them to blue smears on the pavement.  I have no idea why he thought puncturing his tires slowly would be better than just getting out and moving the nails, but then people were always in a hurry on our street.

Randy and I were thrilled by our experiment.  Before another car could venture into our neighborhood, we ran into the street and quickly reformed the skewers. 

The next driver was doing the usual bat-of-out-hell routine when he spotted the spikes and two idiot kids lurking nearby, supervising the action.  Without touching the brakes or even letting up on the gas, he drove up into the lawn across the street from us, fishtailing around the potentially life-threatening road hazard, and on down the street.  As he rounded the corner, he never even looked back.  His car had left impressive 30 foot long ruts in the recently planted yards across from our house.  Randy and I cackled with delight, totally satisfied with our mildly evil handiwork.  Now THIS was entertainment!

Subsequent cars produced variations on these outcomes until there was not enough clay to remake barbs, having been ground into the asphalt or carted away wedged in tire treads.

That evening, we did not tell anyone about our adventure, realizing we were lucky that nobody yelled at us or just drove over us for payback.  Thereafter, whenever we were gifted more modeling clay, Randy and I would grin at each other, silently making plans for our next adventure.

Nobody in my family was what you would call a serious drinker.  Dad had a can or two of Old Milwaukee or Pabst Blue Ribbon at the company picnic every summer.  In the cabinet sat a couple of souvenir Hurricane glasses from New Orleans, about the only evidence that Mom ever imbibed. According to her, a Hurricane was the H-bomb of inebriation; it only took one to get the job done.

While hunting for some mislaid pan at Mom’s behest, I discovered a bottle of whiskey hiding out under the stove.  It was so far back that I had to crawl partially into the cabinet to reach it.  I suppose it was there for emergencies, such as if Dean Martin dropped by unexpectedly, or anesthesia was needed for a quick home appendectomy.

I had never encountered a drunken person in real life, but they looked like a lot of fun on TV.  There the gently plastered did amusing things like put their hat on upside down or accidentally goose Sonny instead of Cher.  You never saw them kneeling at the toilet beseeching Jesus to please, please just end it all.

One Saturday Mom and Dad were off surrendering some cash at the horse races.  Unsupervised, I determined it was the perfect time to experience a new state of altered consciousness.  

I dug out the whiskey bottle and poured myself 20 ounces in a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor glass.  Not wishing to water it down and thereby risk continued sobriety, I skipped the ice.

I took a large swig, a mouthful to make Dionysus proud.  My tongue pulled back in my mouth like a surprised possum and then rolled over and played dead.  The whiskey tasted like kerosene with a dash of paint thinner to liven it up a little.  Evidently the stuff had gone bad!  Nobody would drink this on purpose!  I poured the rest down the sink praying it would not eat the gaskets out of the plumbing.

A year later, my good friends Andy McGee and Richard Manson lit on a plan to make some homemade wine.  I had never so much as tasted the fruit of the vine, but I knew it came in several lovely colors.  Surely it tasted much, much better than dreary brown whiskey, right?   In any case, I was always up for any diversion Richard and Andy’s fevered brains concocted. 

For reasons now lost to time, we decided to acquire the ingredients in downtown Little Rock.  Too young to drive ourselves, and adding to the sense of adventure, we caught a municipal bus there in southwest Little Rock.

It was blustery and cool when we stepped off the bus a couple of blocks from the central library.  Downtown Little Rock was slightly seedy and lent the barest whiff of danger to our excursion, or maybe that was just residual smell from that one old guy on the bus.

Only moments after our debarkation, a few scraps of paper blew past on the sidewalk.   A fleeting glimpse of Colonel Harlan Sanders caused us to chase down the papers.  To our delight, each was a coupon for a free meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is what they called KFC before “fried” became synonymous with “greasy death food.”

At the restaurant, the manager asked us to write our names and phone numbers on the forms.  Andy and I obliged without a thought, but Richard was worried and so filled out a fake name.   He later told us that he had given the name “Dick Richards”, which cracked Andy and me up.   We decided that we would henceforth be “Andy Andrews” and “Steve Stevens.”

Richard, Andy and I wandered into the Mount Holly Cemetery, where we saw the graves of great and famous Arkansans, glorious namesakes of parks, elementary schools, and sewage plants.  Among the angels and crosses, we fired up cheap cigars to enhance the sheer joy of being young, alive, and most especially, naughty.

I remembered that slug of whiskey had tasted bad, alright, but my cigar was running neck and neck for the sweepstakes.  Dirt off old shoes might have been more palatable, but bravado dictated that I enjoy my cheroot to save face, no matter how green it became.

“You boys shouldn’t oughta be here!” I jumped so hard my cigar went flying.  A previously unseen groundskeeper in dusty overalls stepped out from behind a nearby monument.  His eyes suggested origins in a dangerously inbred Ozark society, the kind that might eat 14 year-old boys for a mid-afternoon snack.  I was pretty sure I heard the twang of distant banjos.  We skedaddled the hell out of there without a second thought for my mislaid stogie.

After a bit more meandering, we took the bus back home and bought the grape juice at Safeway.

We mixed up the juice with water and yeast, and poured it into gallon size jugs.  We capped the bottles with condoms, thereby allowing the fermentation gases to expand without breaking the containers. 

We proudly lined up the jugs on a shelf in Richard’s room.  There the wine simmered gently, awaiting recorking in bottles more appropriately sized to hide in a certain hollow log near school.

As the wine fermented, the condoms swelled until they were comically huge.  They resembled nothing so much as beige balloons at an uncommonly dull circus.  Just before the wine was ready, one of the condoms exploded, spewing yeasty purple gunk everywhere.

Richard’s mom, a wonderful lady with a great sense of humor, wagged a cautious finger at him and said, “Now Richard, let that be a lesson to you!”