It is difficult in early life to maintain even a modicum of dignity. The tiny child is dressed in duck pajamas, placed in solitary confinement in a “playpen” and left to fend for himself with a childish assortment of rattles, pacifiers and large, furry, artificial animals. How would you feel? Exactly. But that’s not the worst of it. Eventually, people come to visit, observing you closely even while mother is changing your diaper. I’m not sure what you would call it, but this is obviously some kind of second-tier misdemeanor. Worse yet, there are constant visitations by people like Aunt Bea, who are not satisfied to merely look at you and coo. No, the Aunt Beas of the world find it necessary to pinch your cheeks, fluff your hair and, believe it or not, actually pick you up, all the while spouting foolish baby talk and giggling like lunatics. I remember when this happened to me. “What an asshole!” I thought to myself, assuming Aunt Bea was some kind of weird aberration. Little did I know.
Growing up, you start out properly respectful of authority figures, assuming they earned their jobs by dint of competent performance. Like patrol leaders, for example. If a smart woman like Sister Joseph Ambrose appointed Eddie Mellucci to wear his big white belt and lead the patrol home, Mellucci must be a competent field general, right? Not right. Eddie turned out to be a pathological maniac, prodding kids to walk faster, dumping out book bags and blasting his subjects with snowballs. Poor sad-eyed Paul Brooks looked up at me one day and correctly stated “Eddie Mellucci is a MAJOR asshole.” Paul Brooks was right.
As we got older, we gradually realized that assholeism was not some rarity but an extremely contagious disease. If one family or group member contracted the malady, it was almost certain to spread to the others. And like the common cold, almost nobody could avoid it completely. You had to be Sister Teresa or Batman to never be an asshole. Even Mr. Rodgers was an asshole once or twice, although I wouldn’t want to tell him that. The best that could be aspired to was that one would never become a full-time asshole, like, say, Eddie Haskell or all those people who kept pontificating that rock ‘n’ roll was warping your brain. If you were an asshole for too long, you might be an asshole forever.
Nowadays, of course, the blight is everywhere. It has spread throughout the world and is particularly rampant in U.S. political circles. If you look up “asshole” in the dictionary today, there’s a big picture of Donald Trump staring right back at you. And he’s not the only one. Ted Cruz? Asshole. Marco Rubio? Asshole. Chris Christie? Asshole. Mike Huckabee? Lord High Commisioner of Assholes. And hey, we’re not the only ones who think so. They call each other assholes all the time. It’s only a matter of time until Time Magazine ditches its Man of the Year Award and comes out with, well….you know.
What’s a nice girl like you doin’ in a place like this?
Further Proof Of TYOTA (and no, that’s not Toyota)
Almost broke? Looking for an outlet for a cheap date this weekend? Have we got a venue for you!
Shands Hospital at the University of Florida has erected an enormous inflatable colon right smack in the middle of the facility’s atrium. No kidding. We even got a picture. The 20-foot long, 10-foot high orange tunnel even has bright red lines running down the outside of the construction, a display of blood vessels intended to lend authenticity. You can pretend you’re a colonoscope and probe inside. We should probably advise you that this colon is much nicer than the ones any of you are carrying around so you don’t have to change into your farm clothes. If everything’s up to date in Kansas City, it’s almost futuristic in Colon Country.
When you step inside the inflated walls, you will start your adventure with healthy orange tissue, the kind you have if you take Metamucil all your life. Continue on, however, and you reach the colonic ghetto, a visual graphic reminder of what might happen to a poor neglectful sap who fails to get timely colon cancer screenings. Now, inflatable polyps rear their ugly heads, protruding from the walls like angry red and orange beach balls. There’s also a pattern to mark Crohn’s Disease. At this point, you get an opportunity to collect your winnings and go home OR you can proceed through Door Number Three and risk your entire bankroll.
Have you ever been through the Tunnel of Horrors at an amusement park? It’s no fun. I tried it once with my sister, Alice (the Republican) and a couple of her grandchildren. One of the little girls clung to me like a rabid octopus, screaming bloody murder as the cobwebs and fake skeletons fell almost on top of us. “Are we having fun yet?” Alice asked. Um, not quite yet, Alice.
This Tunnel of Intestinal Horrors is even worse. Swollen, inflamed nylon clusters representing colon cancer jump out at you, then malignant polyps and finally, near the end of the slog, advanced colon cancer. Nobody is singing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” (clap clap). It’s a pretty good plan, though. When you emerge from this nightmare into the happy light of the atrium, a merry crew of doctors is sitting there waiting to sign you up for your next colonoscopy. Dr. Chris Forsmark, chief of the UF division of gastroenterology, said 24 panic-stricken people had signed up in the first half-hour.
We came to discover that the Inflatable Colon—which properly sounds like the name of a rock band—is ON TOUR, just like a rock group, drawing large crowds and a smattering of B-level groupies. It just rode in from Putnam county and is scheduled for Miami next. The visitors are enthusiastic, snapping photos of the critter and also of Jennifer McKathan, an American Cancer Society employee dressed as a walking polyp. Think of the stories she can tell her grandchildren. You know—when they’re a little older.
The final part of the walk involves the terminus of the digestive system, which absorbs water and electrolytes from indigestible food matter, stores food not digested in the small intestine and sends feces to the rectum. Dr. Forsmark says conversation drops off the table at this point although there are always little boys who think it’s hilarious. Nobody is calling his neighbor any kind of asshole at this point. At the end of the Colon Walk, them’s fightin’ words.
The Rise And Fall—And Rise Again—Of Murph The Surf
You remember Murph The Surf. Or maybe you don’t. It’s been a long time, after all, since Jack Roland Murphy, bon vivant, champion surfer and jewel thief extraordinaire rocked the front pages of U.S. tabloids. See, Jack went to jail for 19 years. That’s where grand larceny and murder will put you. The amazing thing is that they ever let him out.
Murphy was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, California, but wasn’t there long. His family moved around a lot, eventually winding up in Pennsylvania. All the relo failed to deter Jack, who became a top student and a concert violinist. Then, at 18 and “tired of the snow,” he decided to hitchhike to Miami. It was 1955. Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack were the lords of South Florida. Murphy was content to be king of the beach, where his surfing prowess and savoir faire earned him an audience. One day during a tropical storm, a local cop saw Jack sweeping in atop a terrifying South Beach wave and told another cop, “Oh, he knows what he’s doing, alright. That’s Murph the Surf!” Jack was a Dade County Hero. If he’d thought of it, he would have handed out silver bullets.
Murph the Surf was always looking for the stage. He was Mr. Cool, a flashy character attached at the nose to his sunglasses. He reminded people of Edd (“Kookie”) Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip. His fake ID got him into the Hotel Fontainbleu’s legendary Poodle Room, where he danced with hookers. He met the Beatles at the Deauville Hotel’s swimming pool when Ed Sullivan brought them to the beach for a TV show. He clowned around for photographers at the 5th Street Gym with a hot young boxer named Cassius Clay. But then The Prince of Tides became The Prince of Thieves.
“I’d drive the boat. I knew the beach like the back of my hand. We’d take the Intracoastal behind the expensive homes. The other guys would climb over the walls and steal the jewels. Then, we’d head across the bay. At some point, I’d be handed the bag of jewels. My job was to swim them to shore and meet the getaway car. That way, the other guys would be okay if the police stopped them. My take the first time was $15,000.”
Soon he was climbing the walls himself. He began smoking dope, continued chasing the ladies, never stopped breaking hearts. One of his girlfriends committed suicide. His erratic lifestyle wiped out two marriages. But so what? He was Murph the Surf, smartest guy on the beach. Everyone else was a sucker.
Eventually, Jack Roland Murphy met a swim instructor named Allen Kuhn. Together, they cased New York’s American Museum of Natural History, home of the world’s most precious gem collection, including the golf-ball sized 563-carat Star of India sapphire. They discovered unlocked windows and a burglar alarm turned off to save money.
They came at night, scaled the walls, crept along window ledges, rappelled down to an unlocked window. Once inside, they spent hours filling a bag with choice gems worth $500,000 in 1964 dollars. Then they returned to Miami Beach to celebrate, probably not the best idea. Nobody knows who squealed, but two days later the FBI broke down their door. Rob all the mansions you want but don’t screw around with the American Museum of Natural History.
Despite the heist being called “the greatest jewel theft of the 20th Century,” Murphy and Kuhn were sentenced to a mere two years at Riker’s Island in New York. Murph got out in 1967, a darker man with a cocaine habit. He and two partners broke into the Miami Beach mansion of socialite Olive Wofford, held a pistol to her head and threatened to pour boiling water over her 8-year-old niece if Olive didn’t open her safe. Unfortunately for the robbers, a silent alarm brought hordes of police to the scene. Murph the Surf smashed through a plate glass door trying to escape and sliced himself to ribbons, requiring extensive bandaging to stop the bleeding. When police finally took him outside to the prowler, he told reporters “I cut myself shaving.” For Murphy, however, his troubles with the law were just beginning.
In 1969, MTS was charged with the 1967 “Whiskey Creek Murders” of two California secretaries. The women had been shot, bludgeoned to death and then dumped in a creek near Hollywood, Florida. Concrete weights had been tied to the necks of the women to sink them. The victims had allegedly been killed in a dispute over nearly half a million dollars worth of securities stolen from a Los Angeles brokerage, with Murphy emerging as the prime suspect. Murph denied his involvement in the murders but was convicted in 1969 of killing one of the women, Terry Rae Frank, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1970, he received another life sentence--plus 20 years—for conspiracy and assault to commit robbery against Olive Wofford. Obviously, some judges tried hard to keep Jack from ever seeing the light of day. But what’s two life sentences plus twenty years among friends?
Jack Murphy, right, with fellow musician Alan Friesen at Honky Tonkin Opry, Shiloh. (Photo by Gainesville Sun.)
“ Praise The Lord….I Saw The Light!”
Florida Division of Corrections Secretary Louie L. Wainright was big on redemption. In the early 1970s, Louie opened Florida’s prisons to rehabilitation programs which included counseling, education and jobs training. He welcomed missionaries into his prisons. And one day a chaplain handed Murphy a religious tract. Murph was grateful. “Well, thanks a lot,” he said, smiling. “I’ll use this to roll me a doobie.” MTS went to the chapel only to escape work and to suck down the coffee and doughnuts. When it came to Jesus talk, Murph was out of there. Then one day, former tough guy thief Frank Constantino visited the prison to advise old pals he’d been saved by Jesus. Murphy was embarrassed for the guy. He watched gangster friends pore over their Bibles and just shook his head. These guys must be pulling a con. He wasn’t buying any of it. Until the day chaplain Max Jones showed up.
“Listen, Murph—you’re a smart, talented guy. You had decent parents. You had it all. You could have done anything with your life, you just made the wrong choices. So here you are. What now? You wake up every morning in a prison cell. Don’t you think it’s time for a new manager?”
“So I got a new manager,” Murphy says. “Listen, I loved the life, loved the insanity, loved stealing jewels. It was like Cary Grant, very exciting, and the people you stole from always had insurance. But I knew I was out of control and I needed a new manager.”
Murphy joined Alcoholics Anonymous, gave up smoking pot and decided to turn his life around. He met an ABC television reporter out of Gainesville named Mary Catherine Collins who was working on a story about prison rehab. When he told her he wanted to take up painting, she sent him her photographs of lighthouses for artistic inspiration. Soon she was visiting every week, sometimes bringing food, sometimes newspaper clippings they could discuss. “It wasn’t an easy time,” Murphy relates. “As you make a breakthrough and begin to grow as a person, immense feelings of remorse start to wash over you, feelings that eat you up inside. You can’t even sleep. The guilt was overwhelming. I felt that I had to turn my guilt over to a higher power. I prayed a lot and read Scripture about redemption and forgiveness.”
Murph the Surf began teaching illiterate prisoners to read. He led Bible studies and offered advice. He mediated disputes between convicts and prison guards. And Louie Wainwright noticed. In 1986, Murphy was invited to attend a parole hearing and Wainwright did something unusual. He testified on a prisoner’s behalf. He believed MTS was a suitable candidate for parole. Upon his release, Murphy told reporters he was going to do “God’s work.” Edna Buchanan, the no-bullshit Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter for the Miami Herald guffawed when she heard Murph had found Jesus in prison. “They usually do,” she wrote sarcastically, reflecting the opinions of many.
Murph the Surf lives in nearby Crystal River now. He is married to that ABC reporter who brought him hope in prison. He calls her “Kitten.” On the third Friday of every month, Jack Roland Murphy makes the hour drive from his home to play fiddle at the Honky Tonkin Opry at the Church at Triple Cross Ranch in Shiloh, just a ten-minute drive from here. Next time he plays, we’re going. We’re not crazy about murderers, but we like the idea of second, even third chances. We think lives can sometimes be salvaged, even from the sorriest cesspools. So we’ll be there, smiling, optimistic, expecting Murph’s best. We’re not bringing our jewelry, that’s all.
That’s all, folks….
