Alchemizing One of John Berryman’s Hangovers
with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles
from John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14”
In my dyspeptic little world,
birds don’t sing in the trees overhead,
but perched aloft on limbs,
they shit on pedestrians,
trudging to jobs that they despise
on a neverending
Sisyphean
Monday morning.
La la, la la la.
There once was a MAGA from Dallas
that had Trump tattooed on his phallus.
Whenever he pumped,
he’d choke Donald Trump
who eventually became quite callous.
Warren Moise and I experienced similar childhoods in that we grew up as White males in relatively small South Carolina towns in the Fifties and Sixties, both graduating from high schools that were integrated in the 1970-1971 school year.
Here’s a quote from the back cover of Warren’s excellent historical memoir The Class of ’71.[1]
When the Class of ’71 began first grade as young children in 1959, they lived in a totally segregated society. Except for some few prior student transfers and with limited other exceptions, the Black and White members of the Class of ’71 had never met, played music together, gone to church with one another, eaten food at the same lunch counters, or swum together in the same pools. All of that would change on the first day of their senior year.
In Summerville, South Carolina, where I lived, even physicians’ waiting rooms were segregated into White and Black sections. In fact, Bryan’s, the Black owned barbershop that I patronized, only cut White people’s hair. John F. Kennedy, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were assassinated within five years of one another when we were students. A cultural revolution was underway.
Again, to quote Warren:
Soul music, oxford shirts, and oxblood Wejuns penny loafers were disappearing from the streets of Gamecock City[2]every day, It was as if the 1960s were burning rubber in a Chevelle V-8 Super Sport on Highway 15 South leaving town toward Paxville. At the same moment, the 1970s were rollin’ into town on Highway 15 North inside a Volkswagen van painted with slogans of peace, love, and daisies.
Warren and I met our freshman year in Thornwell dorm the fall of 1971 at the University of South Carolina and became fast friends, deciding to room together in Tenement Nine on the Horseshoe the next year, which we did until Warren left college to pursue a musical career.[3]
Warren and I circa 1972
We also shared houses when Warren returned to USC to earn his undergraduate degree in history in 1974 -1976. Unfortunately, we more or less lost contact after school. Oddly enough, fortyish years later we both ended up writing books about being in high school the same year. My novel Today, Oh Boy takes place during the course of one day, October 12, 1970, a month or two after Warren began his senior year at Edmunds high school.[4]
So, The Class of ’71 and Today, Oh Boy cover some of the same terrain, small towns transitioning from the Old to New South, the tumultuous raging of hormones, adolescent crushes, physical violence engendered by culture clashes.
In my not-all-that-humble opinion, they offer interesting perspectives from non-fictive and fictive landscapes in that pivotal school year that ended the Sixties and ushered in the Seventies.
We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?
from “For What It’s Worth,” lyrics by Stephen Stills
[1] I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a historical memoir. The Class of ’71 contains multitudes – it’s a history of Sumter County, a coming-of-age story, a judicial and political chronicle of desegregation, a sociological review of the cultural changes of the late Sixties, a profile of serial killer Pee Wee Gaskins. In short, it’s difficult to succinctly classify. Here’s some more expansive. You can purchase the book HERE. It’s a great read propelled by well-crafted prose.
[2] I.e., Sumter, South Carolina.
[3] You can read the horror story of the roommate who replaced him HERE BTW, Warren’s musical career was successful. He’s a member of the Beach Music Hall of Fame, though he abandoned life on the road for a career in law.
[4] Actually, I decided to delay Summerville’s integration until the next year, which we novelists have the freedom to do. You can purchase Today, Oh Boy HERE.
The I Ain’t Got No Health Insurance Blues
Too bad I ain’t got no
self-help-guru instincts
as far as
copping a livable income
is concerned.
I should be able to come up with
seven
or nine
or
ten
or so
steps
that lead to Psychological Salvation!
Potential titles of bestsellers:
How to Dismantle Your Ego
Slow Down, You’re Thinking Too Fast
We Are They and They Are We
The problem is that I don’t follow
them steps myself.
I think to write a book like that
that you need credentials of super-duper success.
Why buy a book from someone
who claims to know the wayful path
but who lives in a tiny two-bedroom duplex house
on the border of a bad neighborhood?
So I live on a tree-lined street where doors slam,
car alarms blare
children squeal
leaf blowers roar
keyboards quietly click.
A Little Madness in the Spring
I recently ran across a balding fellow, probably in his early forties, wearing a grey too-snug tee-shirt that read “Every Day Is a Good Day.” Of course, I get the subtext: life is miraculous on the cosmic impersonal plane – the nighttime sky, as Hamlet put it, a “brave o’erhanging firmament, [a] majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” not to mention down below “the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.” We should be thankful for the chain of events that gave rise to a consciousness that allows us to appreciate and contemplate these wonders around us. The subtext of the subtext is that this wonderfulness is the handiwork of a benevolent deity. Every day is a good day because it’s a colorful shard in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of a creator god’s abracadabra.
But, as we all know, a day’s goodness or badness depends on an individual’s experience during that 24-hour period. For example, at Chico Feo I just heard a horrific account of a traffic fatality that happened on Folly Beach last night. A car crammed with six drunks doing 65 in a 25-zone barreled into a golf cart driven, as the story was told to me, by a woman who had just gotten married that very day on the island.[1]
So, I might suggest, that the tee shirt’s message be edited: “For me, every day is a good day” instead.
And print this on the back.
A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!
Emily Dickinson
[1] The fellow who related the story said she was in her bridal gown.
Me in 1973 (all photos by James Huff)
Lost Youth, or “I Had Pretty Plumage Once”
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
WB Yeats, “Among School Children”
Poverty is not all that terrible if you’re in college. After all, most students live in dormitories, and for my first two years of undergraduate school, the dorms I lived in were officially known as “The Tenements,” the oldest dorms on campus, picturesque but Spartan. And when I say Spartan, I mean tres austère – no air-conditioning in the summer; hand-searing radiators in the winter; merely two telephones in the hall, one for on campus communication, the other a pay phone you had to feed quarters during long distance calls. And perhaps the worst indignity of all, there were no stalls around the three toilets lined up in the flashback-inducing black-and-white diamond-tiled bathroom. Whenever nature called, the residents of Tenement 9 shielded themselves with open newspapers to create a modicum of privacy. No one, conversed, i.e., no one shot the shit while shitting.
OMG! TMI!
Even though I couldn’t afford it, I moved off-campus my junior year, and after a couple of nightmare rentals in the fall and winter of my senior year, my housemate Warren Moise, along with a host of other impoverished students, moved into the once genteel abode of 1830 Greene Street conveniently located on campus.[1] I’m fairly certain than none of us owned an automobile. SLED paid a visit our first week, and half the residents were carted off to jail for simple possession. Luckily, Warren, Jim, and I were off when police came a calling.
1830 Greene Street
Interestingly enough – and least for me – I had lunch with my Greene-Street housemate Warren Thursday and then encountered another Greene-Street housemate that afternoon when I was signing copies of my novel Today, Oh Boy in Summerville.[2] I hadn’t seen Jim Huff or his wife Jane in this century – in fact, not since the late 80s or early 90s. Jim had been lease-signer of 1830 Greene and therefore collected our $20 rent each month (there were eight of us) and utility money and money to buy kerosine for the enormous furnace that consumed fuel as rapidly as RJ McCarthy downed his 24-ounce cans of “the Bull,” aka Schlitz Malt Liquor. Every room except for the kitchen and the two bathrooms was utilized as a bedroom, including the living room and the conservatory where I slept, only assessable through Mr. McCarthy’s room.
Hail, affordable housing; farewell, privacy.
Jim Huff circa 1975
Here’s a list Jim compiled of the house’s residents, including girlfriends who spent multiple nights.
At the signing in Summerville, Jim gave me some photographs he had taken back in the day, which I so much appreciate. They demonstrate quite eloquently that whatever I may have gained in monetary wealth, I have equaled in girth, but lost in hair.
Anyway, it was great seeing Warren, Jim, and Jane, though I must admit that the photos have engendered a wee bit of melancholy.
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.[3]
[1] If you’re in the mood for some Night of the Hunter noir, click HERE and read about a couple of harrowing experiences we suffered before moving to Greene Street.
Heeding Andrew Marvell
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Andrew Marvell – from “To His Coy Mistress”
One of the entries in the epic catalog of my character flaws is a lotus-eater-grade tendency towards lassitude, which I’ve written about HERE.
However, in the last two weeks I’ve been on the go-go-go, on a tear – touring Mexico City, hosting family and friends, signing books, reading from Today, Oh Boy at its book launch, attending the reading of an original play in a private home, and dancing to the music of the Krushtones.[1]
Mexico City
Caroline had booked the trip before we discovered that T,OB‘s publication date was to be 31 March, the day before our departure. Buxton Books scheduled the launch for 11 April, so the trip didn’t interfere with promotion.[2] On the other hand, ex-pat son Ned booked a flight to Charleston that arrived on 4 April, three days before my scheduled return, so I came back a day early while Caroline and Brooks stayed on in Mexico City, which is 2000 miles higher than Denver, the Mile High City. Hey, but none of us suffered any altitude sickness, so praise Huitzilopochtli!
We traveled with Celeste Joye and her husband Tom Foster and their daughter Juliette. The short-term rental they had booked was a falsely promoted malodorous, sofa-stained apartment without hot water. The rental is located the floor below at kick-boxing studio where a cousin of Cujo barked ferociously.
Not succumbing to the languor that would have me holding my nose (literally) and staying there all week, Celeste and Caroline scouted out new digs, called and cancelled, and we ended up staying at the swank Camino Real, which boasts a 007 early-60s vibe.
When I travel, my above-mentioned lassitude demands that I engage in only two tourist activities a day, one mid-morning and one after lunch; however, Celeste, Tom, and Caroline were go-getters, and the days and nights were filled with sight-seeing which featured a guided tour of Aztec ruins and a guided tour of Museo Nacional Antropologia.[3]
We also ate a various top tier restaurants, had drinks at Tenampa, a mariachi bar, and saw the Ballet Folklórico perform in a beautiful performing arts center.
But, as Andrew Marvell was wont to point out, all good things must end.[4]
Hosting my Family
Last week was the first time that my two sons had been home at the same time since 2018 – Harrison, his wife Taryn, her mother Susan, and grand-toddler Julian rented a house on Folly, and Ned and his love Ina came all the way from Nuremberg and stayed with his at 516 East Huron.
Also, I had the pleasure of having lunch with a childhood friend John Walton whose mother and my mother were best friends growing up and always.
But dammit, but that too had to end with Harrison and crew flying out Wednesday and Ned and Ina Friday.
The Book Launch[5]
I’ve already gone on enough about the launch. The curious can access the reading HERE if they have “world enough and time.”
Seeing Is Believing
The indefatigable Eugene Platt and his wife Judith hosted a soiree of sorts in which a cast of seven or so readers performed his play-in-progress Seeing Is Believing. Based on the account in the Gospel of John, the play is set post-resurrection and consists largely of Andrew and Thomas walking to a “safe house’ where Jesus appears and puts a screeching halt to Thomas’s skepticism.
If I were Eugene, I’d produce it as a film instead of trying to get it produced as a play. Staging a fifteen-minute walk would be challenging, but you could really do some interesting things on film.
I bet some religious-minded film student at SCAD would find it interesting.
The Krushtones
What can I but enumerate old themes? I love me some Krushtones, who play at the Sand Dollar around 15 April every year. I couldn’t believe how fresh and practiced they sounded.
If you’re interested in learning more about this killer cover band and the Sand Dollar Social Club, click HERE.
THE END
Sometimes, Mr. Marvell, endings aren’t all bad. For example, I’ve finished writing the first draft of this blog post, and my dear readers have finished reading it and can get going on something more productive, because, as you have pointed out so eloquently:
[. . .] all before us lie/ Deserts of vast eternity.
So, carpe diem, y’all. Hubba-hubba-hubba, swish-boom-ba-ba-ba-ba-Barbara Ann.
[1] Not to mention doing our taxes.
[2] After zooming to number 570 on Amazon’s Young Adult and Teen Historical Fiction category, it’s now dropped into the 900s. C’mon people. I’m a senior citizen on a fixed income!
[3] I’ve been told my Spanish accent isn’t terrific. BTW, I’ve never been much for guided tours, but I must admit you learn a helluva lot more.
[4] E.g., “The grave’s a fine and private place/ But none, I think, do there embrace.”
[5] Thank you, Polly and Julian Buxton!
Fourteen months after its acceptance, my novel Today, Oh Boy is out and available at
Buxton Books
Barnes and Noble: LINK
Amazon paperback: LINK*
Amazon ebook: LINK
Coming soon to Guerin’s Pharmacy in Summerville and Bert’s Market on Folly Beach
Upcoming Events:
Book Launch at Buxton Books
Reading and signing from 6:30-7:30 p.m. near Hutchinson Square during Third Thursday on Apr. 20 (featuring music by Fleming Moore).
Reading and signing at Porter-Gaud School April 29th from 5:00 – 6:00 PM
Media
Story in the Charleston City Paper by Bill Thompson LINK
Interview with Eugene Platt in The Post and Courier LINK
Interview with Mary Reagan in the Summerville Journal Scene LINK
Television interview with Leyla Gulen. Click Below
Get ’em while they’re hot!
*Note, the back cover is displayed on Amazon’s paperback link:
I’ve written on Hoodoo previously that I don’t blame young people for holding golden-agers, i.e., senior-citizens, i.e., their elders, i.e., old farts in contempt as we shuffle along taking tiny steps, fumbling for our checkbooks while striking up conversations with grocery store clerks, or poke along doing 45 in passing lanes, oblivious to the hustle and bustle of Late Empire capitalism.
Even I-and-I, a forgetful 70-year-old, have been known to disparage my fellow geriatrics when their egocentricity (or declining faculties) don’t take in account the needs of others. No doubt I get on young people’s nerves myself, an overly dressed gadfly Oscar Wilde wannabe nodding my head and droning on about myself on barstools and in dentist offices.
Yet here I am in my twilight the author of a little ol’ bagatelle of a YA novel written on a 12th-grade-plus reading level, and I’m shamelessly promoting it as if it’s the great American novel. Three newspaper articles have appeared that focus on my late life productivity[1], and I’ve also appeared on midday local television program talking about me, me, me, not exactly a fascinating subject.
Ultimately, it’s much ado about not much.
Yet it does give me something to do and to dread.
My sons and their significant others are coming to the book launch[2] (Harrison and Taryn from Chevy Chase, Ned and Ina from Nuremburg), Old and new friends will be there. Eugene Platt, who has recently published his collected poems Weaned on War will introduce me, an honor for sure. I see the launch as a sort of funeral I get to enjoy before I die.
However, I do want to set it down here that I’m a little ashamed of myself for all this hullabaloo. There’s something a little tawdry about it, a little needy.
Rather, I should
like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult
or better yet, as the young people say STFU.
Cheers!
[1] I’m also, to use a polite term, a digital collagist.
[2]Buxton Books, 120 King Street, 11 April 2023 6 PM rsvp@buxtonbooks.com
You Do Hoodoo 