“What this country needs is a really good five cent cigar.”---Thomas Riley Marshall
Or maybe a Queen. They seem to be having an awful lot of fun with theirs over in England, even after she bought the farm. All we’ve got is Joe.
Think about it. Everybody behaves over in London because nobody wants to disappoint the Queen. The woman is like everyone’s sainted grandmother and the slightest anti-Queen offense is treated as a capital crime by a doting public. Noone contradicts the Queen, nobody argues with her, they just curtsy and say, “Yes’m.” Can you imagine what would happen if, say, someone farted in the presence of the Queen? He would instantly be set upon by an outraged mob, torn limb from limb and sent off to live the rest of his days in the Outer Hebrides.
This works for the Brits because the Queen is a figurehead leader and will not be raising your taxes, seizing your lands or sending your sons off to fight in Bangladesh. The Queen is above all that. She is there to remind us to mind our manners, wear our mittens and always maintain our decorum. You can engage in fisticuffs if you want, but please observe the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. The Queen is there to remind you that you are a human being and required to act civilized even under duress.
We like the Queen because she does not raise her voice but nonetheless calls us to account, reminds us we can do better. The Queen has walked the walk and thus can talk the talk. The Queen has no petty ambitions. Once you are the Queen, what else is there to aspire to other than extraordinary performance? Well, perhaps one thing. When she was young, some wiseacre asked Elizabeth what she’d like to be when she grew up. The future monarch thought a moment, smiled and said, “I should like to be a horse.” And who knows---maybe she is one. God Save the Chestnut Mare.
Superman
The Disunited States is falling apart. One of its political parties has given up on democracy, the Supreme Court is full of drunks and louts and the Red Sox are in last place in the American League. Meanwhile, Fox News has transmogrified into the new Pravda. Before long, Nazis will be marching through the streets carrying mammoth photos of a mustachioed Ted Cruz whipping Whoopi Goldberg. We need help, and fast. Joe DiMaggio is gone so we need to call in Superman.
Oh sure, we know there’s a new crop of Marvel superheroes rockin’ the universe, but most of them are full of angst, have troubling psychological problems or keep breaking out of their pants. Superman is reliable and has few vulnerabilities. Stop, don’t even mention Kryptonite. When’s the last time you saw any of that? The comic-book writers just made it up to give the big guy a challenge. The real Kryptonite is a sad-looking white, harmless substance with the chemical formula sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. It doesn’t glow and Superman could eat it with his oatmeal and never notice.
We already know that the Man of Steel is in favor of Truth, Justice and the American Way (the old one). We just give him an office in the West Wing and let him parade around like Clark Kent until the trouble starts. Think there’ll be any Capitol invasions? A giant urn of boiling oil will put a stop to that. Republican filibusters blocking beneficial legislation? Try blabbing away after Superman sucks all the air from the room. Miscarriages of justice at the Supreme Court? It’s tough to render an opinion from your new villa on the Moon. And don’t even think about messing around with Lois Lane, things could get really ugly. There are ex-troublemakers now residing on the sand dunes of the Huacachina Lagoon. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Let’s call The Man now before he makes plans for Winter. Relief is just a phone booth away.
The Ice(cream)man Cometh
“Hey, Mister popsicle peddler, play a song for me…”
When we were kids, no matter how bad your day was you kept your head up. Even Paul Brooks, the last kid chosen in sandlot baseball games, never wavered. Brooks could fall over his feet in right field, drop the ball and collapse into an asthmatic fit while the winning run came charging around the bases but he knew the sun had not set on his day. Your girlfriend could stick out her tongue and leave you for a fey falsetto choir boy, your dog could contract mange and oh yeah, there was that note from Sister Joseph Ambrose to your parents about those nekkid women on the playing cards she found in your pocket….not quite enough to wipe that smile from your face. Why? Because everyone knew that at four o’clock or thereabouts they’d hear the jingle jangle jingle of the Ice Cream Man.
If you were a kid growing up in the mid-twentieth century and happened to look up “ubiquitous” in your Webster’s New International Dictionary, sure enough, a picture of a smiling ice-cream man would pop up. They were everywhere, these Creamsicle vendors, their little bells ding-donging away while hordes of kids ran from their residences, nickels in hand.
They were not one-trick ponies, these purveyors of sugary treats---you could get a Popsicle, a Fudgesicle, a sticky ice-cream sandwich, a waffle cone or a long list of selected short subjects. The Good Humor Man was there to please….no pushing, kids, and stay in line. Across town, in neighborhood after nabe, the little bells were ringing as the unmistakable white trucks cruised the block, trolling for business.
The Ice Cream Man was a critical part of the day and the subject of serious discussion. It was big news at school the day after the two-toned popsicle made its first appearance and even bigger news when the manufacturers started wrapping the things in polka-dot packaging which could be collected and redeemed for decoder rings with secret compartments. “Billy---how did all these ants get in your room?” Well, gee Ma, you don’t expect me to leave the wrappers outside where someone could steal them?
Imagine if there was an ice cream truck outside the stock market when the gavel came down on a grueling day. Nobody would care about the lousy Dow Jones Average. What about sending a couple of Ice Cream Men over to the Senate and the House of Representatives? Even Mopey Mitch McConnell might slip up and offer a little smile. The tiny white trucks should be an absolute requirement at all football games, where the losing team’s teetotalers are unable to cry in their beer, or at churches after a fire-and-brimstone sermon has convinced the poor flock they’re going directly to Hell.
Editorials lament man’s inhumanity to man. Citizens bemoan the polarization of the red states and the blue states. News commentators wail over the latest lunatic to spray bullets into the crowd at the Costco. Militias form in fear of secret federal repo squads coming for their guns. We have all lost faith in our fellow man, a stranger now in a gated neighborhood where nobody talks to anyone else and there is no vehicular music in the afternoon. All of this due to the demise of the dependable Ice Cream Men who seeped into every neighborhood in the country to bring joy and frosted treats and avid conversation and a celebration of the day, but alas, roll no more. We are the poorer for their passing. Where have you gone, Mister Tasty-Freeze, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you?
The Days Of Nuns And Roses
In an era when public schools are fraying at the edges as home-schooled goober children (English translation—“future morons”) bail out and underpaid teachers hustle jobs at the car-wash, those Catholic institutions of learning are looking better than ever. Tuitions are salty, but separate the wheat from the chaff, leaving better-paid teachers with students who are there for the book-learnin’ rather than the foolishness. If you’ve looked closely at the Catholic schools lately, however, you have one glaring concern. Where are those reliable nuns who staffed the classrooms, clapped the erasers and gathered up the milk money? What happened to those scary hooded women who drew that line in the sands of first-grade and made you realize it was wiser to heed the rules than to argue?
They say Italian tyrant Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time. Well, the nuns made the schools run on time. They were meticulous about schedules and taught us the unpleasant results of being late. Catholic schools of our generation separated the sexes for class, and if you don’t think that was a good idea, you haven’t been exposed to little Dottie Miskell batting her eyes at you during Geometry. The nuns could spot inherent strengths and weaknesses in students; they pushed the former and fussed over the latter. They made little Billy realize he had a unique talent for putting words on paper and they coddled it. One of them made sure he got a scholarship to a high-school he could not otherwise have afforded.
The nuns had weapons. First and foremost, there was the dreaded ruler. The ruler taught us there was a price to pay for excessive levity, defiance or generally unruly behavior. If the teacher returned to the room and the spitwads were flying, the ruler came out. It mattered little whether you were the toughest kid in the room or the meekest, the sting of the ruler brought tears to the edges of your eyes and a thoughtful consideration of whether your hilarious offense was worth it. We learned you gotta pay if you want to play.
Then, of course, there was the Ultimate Weapon---a note to your parents, which had to be signed and returned. The NTYP was to be avoided at all costs because it usually required one or both parents to report to school for a revealing conference with the nun. For mom and dad, this was like having to wear a scarlet letter through the neighborhood. The NTYP often led to unpleasant punishments, the chief of which was the paternal strap. From such adventures we learned the benefits of caution, measured resistance and losing the notes.
Since no time was wasted screwing around, however, we also learned our lessons, which is why I now know Pierre is the capital of South Dakota and an adverb can modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb. True, a half hour a day was wasted on Religion but those catechisms had the best pictures of Heaven you ever saw (we would have been good without the Hell parts, though).
When we finally graduated from grade school, we found ourselves fully two years ahead of our sisters and brothers who took the barbarian (public) alternative. We knew about serious homework, the rewards of reading and reasonable discipline. During our years of servitude, we made fun of the nuns, their convent activities and restricted lifestyles. We wondered why anyone would ever get themselves to a nunnery. When my sister Alice’s prettiest friend, Mary Ward, opted for sisterhood, all the boys were appalled. When she returned two years later for a home visit, however, she told us she couldn’t imagine anything that would make her happier.
The Catholic schools now have lay teachers for the most part. The Nun Life holds less appeal to the freewheeling generations of the present. I’m sure the current crop of instructors is first-rate, but do they still tell you stories in the first grade? Do they stride briskly over to bullies and take them by the ear until they cry? Do they take you aside, tell you that you have a special talent and advise you to cultivate it? Do they promote you from second to third grade when you have missed all but two months of the school year? Not really.
The nuns are gone and they won’t be back. Some applaud the fact, remember untoward incidents, have no regrets. I’m not one of them.
That’s all, folks….
