When the Berlin Wall fell—generally realized as a good thing—the media began to nose briefly into the fate of its Red citizens. What sticks with me is not the drunken dismantling photo op party and sledgehammers and Pink Floyd. It’s the old man who had the State Run Zoo in East Berlin. He burst into tears during an interview. “What will happen to my animals?”
Intellectually we always understood those huddled masses over there were human. But we maybe didn’t understand that that life was their life; in our zeal to answer their so-certain yearning to be free, we smashed that way of life, patted ourselves on the back, named an airport after Ronald Reagan, and walked on. Quickly.
I do not know what happened to his animals. But George Will would probably remind me that he had called them his animals, which showed he was setting his own self ahead of The State. Yearning to be free.
A few years later I was managing a lot of very unusual adults who delivered large paper routes for Thompson-Scrooge Newspapers. I can tell you, to a person, they had some screws purposely loosened. I’m thinking CIA Mind Control Test Subjects here.
I got a call one day from a particularly obtusely contentious carrier—I love that word carrier, with its Plum Island ambiance—and inwardly groaned. What minutiae would she have found today? An extra paper? Bundle not knotted properly? Another personal feud she was refusing to deliver to?
“I’ve got bad news for you,” she said—and I did not doubt. “I’m quitting my route.”
“Really?”
She was moving to Texas. Ohioans are either always moving to Florida or Texas. I guessed it was Texas so that she could be closer to the Space Brothers.
Then she was complaining about all she had to do, prep wise. “…And I have to put all my animals to sleep…”
“Huh?”
She explained it would be too much trouble to truck them out to Texas.
I was agog with wonder. What kind of a mind…you diabolical…
A few years ago, Sundance asked me to go into a Pet Shop with him while he goggled some young girl. I wandered bored while he beamed on her (unrequitedly). I hate those places: the smell, the claustrophobia…
I walk up to a wall of dogs. The doggy in the window is today in a mind-bending cell of about the size of a television set. Instantly, two three-hundred dollar dogs began capering (as much as they could move around), barking madly, tails wagging, scratching at the windows.
Unlike humans, dogs like me on sight. Mean dogs like me on sight. Indifferent dogs like me on sight.
My eyes filled with tears. I would have carried them both out, if I could have. Instead I feared that they would not soon sell…and then what would happen to those animals?
…Shouldn’t happen to a dog…a phrase that’s been reeling around in my head lately. But it does happen to dogs…and that phrase isn’t really at all about dogs, it’s about us.
Last night I was on YouTube. I looked up some Cleveland television personalities that I had watched as a kid. Channel 43 out of Parma was like a real Sci-Fi Channel; if it wasn’t showing horror and space movies, it was showing Star Trek and Wild Wild West and Thriller. On Saturdays, there was a goofy guy in bad-fitting tights called Super Host, doing what those guys did, in the days when local TV actually showed shows and not infomercials. In the weekday mornings they had an older gent called “Barnaby” that hosted mostly inoffensive cartoons. He dressed like Maurice Chevalier and was like Mister Rogers, only way less creepy.
In 1989, Cannell Broadcasting bought up Gaylord Broadcasting, and thus Channel 43 in Par-ma. Basically they called Super Host and Barnaby up and told them that they were fired. All local programming was scrapped.
I never saw any of that. In 1989, I was struggling out on my own and had no TV time. My days of sitting around in long white socks and drawing ersatz movie posters to submit to Supe’s On to see if one got on the air were over. My days of sheltering against the Blizzard of ’78 and watching bad old monster movies while the snow was up to dick-level were done.
Strangely, both gents were given final on-air farewells on their shows. I first saw these old finales this past night.
It broke my heart.
“It’s not my idea,” said Marty Sullivan, explaining the concept of The Suits to the kids. “But this is my last show.” He’d been on since ’69. You could tell he was heartsick. The close showed him locking up The Mad Theater (he’d never locked it before) and “catching a ride” out to nowhere.
Linn Sheldon (“Barnaby”) walked out to his fake park bench stiffly. “This is the end for me…in television.” He started crying.
Jim Pennybaker used to tease me in seventh grade, “When you play hooky, you watch Barnaby.”
“I don’t fucking watch fucking Barnaby.”
But, of course, we all did.
So that’s it, isn’t it? When you are not needed, you are not needed. No point trucking you out to Texas.
What will happen to my animals? What will happen to my friends?
What will happen to me?
If anybody calls, tell them Barnaby said hello.
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STATHI STATHI
Peter Winkler
lorianne
femme forte aka candace
marnehb
ers.617
Salon.com
Comments
People who abandon or euthanize animals because they move or have a kid are a lower life form.
You currently are at a place in your writing that many of us aspire to be. The ability to write as naturally as one breathes is not to be taken lightly. I don't think I'm alone in that assessment.
Personally I enjoy being the greyhound to your rabbit.
They all worked hard on dismantling the political system, and it came to pass ….
So long free education, welcome free market!
They immediately lost their jobs when half of the workplaces disappeared, factories closed, life savings canceled out by years of double digit inflation.
But now they can watch re-runs of Friends and Doctor Zhivago and James Bond movies on television, and Rob Hubbard's book is everywhere in the bookstores.
"We don't do male dogs, thank you."
"His people were tired of him so I told them I would put him down, but, of course, I will not. He needs a good home and you are it. You WILL take this dog home."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
In the end Trevor was among the best of the best; he gave us three years of love and memories. We really, really miss that dog.
And WTF is wrong with some people.
"He spoke with tears
of fifteen years
of how his dog and him,
had traveled about.
his dog up and died,
he up and died,
after twenty years he still grieves."
- Mr. Bojangles
*typing through the tears*
And my God...we come from the same place! We called Parma "Amrap" . And those WUAB 43 memories you bring back! John Lanigan, Goulardi, Big Chuck and Little John, and Barnaby. Then of course you must add WMMS and Blossom Music Center (I saw Steve Martin do stand up at the Coliseum for fark's sake). The blizzard of 78, we were out of school for almost two weeks if I recall correctly.
But back to you, your writing and the animals. You see it all so clearly. You feel it so deeply that the words both cut and heal with your slight of hand. Effortlessly, you elicit these emotions time and time again. I read from the marrow of your soul I know that what you write comes from a place that sucks the essence out of the smallest molecule and transforms it into a big bang of honesty on paper. I bleed.
Sob.
Wonderful piece.
And then I thought of Year of the Dog while you were describing your wish to rescue all of the doggies in the window (I feel the same way about pet shops, too, BTW).
But that woman you talked about, that carrier—“diabolical is right! And a lot of other words I won’t foul your beautiful post by listing here. Time to book a session in Owl_Says_Who’s Rental Rubber Rooms!
—Melissa
Then she was complaining about all she had to do, prep wise. “…And I have to put all my animals to sleep…”
I can't stand it. I really can't stand it. Anger, sorrow, anger, sorrow. I can't stand it.