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“Thanksgiving is a time to remember those people and events which helped create the fabric of our lives, brought laughter to our time here and gave us stories we can tell for the rest of our days. These are a few of them.”---WTK
Not long ago, I paid a visit to rambling sculptor/painter William Schaaf at his charming studio barn in McIntosh. Fellow artist Ron Chesser came by with a fistful of old Charlatans for me to sign. Among the three of us, we probably know everybody who’s spent some time in Greater Gainesville in the past 60 years and we can tell a million stories about them. And, as usual, we did. You have to put an hourglass on these affairs or they will turn into five-hour recollections of fun and foolishness since many of the characters we have known over the years are jesters, villains and/or crazy fools. And that’s just the male side of the silver dollar.
Take a strange visitor from another planet named Bill Partin, for instance. Mr. P. bounced up the three steps into the Subterranean Circus one fine day hoping to find new companions. He was about 6-3, bald, a tad heavy and wearing a fashionable grey suit. He might have been the only customer who ever wore a formal ensemble into the Circus. Full of piss and vinegar, Partin told us lively tales of his recent past in Texas, where he alleged to have been the first person busted in the state for possession of marijuana, brightening his tales with the repetitive phrase “hips, lips and fingertips,” to indicate his depth of commitment to those things he was into.
“Narc,” said the wily and worldly Dick North, turning his head away from the discussion. After all, who else would dress up like this to visit a headshop and discuss marijuana misdemeanors? But Partin never asked to buy, dropping in occasionally as he traveled hither and yon over the landscape merely for conversation and companionship. After awhile, he became just another lunatic on the other side of the counter, of which there were untold hundreds, and was accepted into the hippie maelstrom. Then one night he arrived with an unusually wide smile. “Anybody wanna do some acid?” he grinned.
Midnight At The Bambi Motel
“The motor cooled down, the heat went down and that’s when I heard that highway sound.”---Chuck Berry & Bill Killeen
LSD ingested, Rick Nihlen, Partin, myself and a couple of companions motored over to the Royal Park Cinema to take in a show while the acid percolated. Emerging from the movie, the rest of us were one mental toke over the line but Bill Partin grumped, “I got nuthin’.” A bit surprised, we assured him gloryland was on its way and we headed to the UF Rathskeller to hear Goose Creek Symphony. An hour in, big Bill came ambling up with a silly look on his face, yelled “Hips, lips and fingertips!…and danced off by himself. Rick and I intended to stay there until the acid wore off, or if that was slow to happen, just walk the nine blocks home and pick up the car in the morning.
Another hour went by and Partin was back, ready to call it a night. Whoa, we told him, driving under the influence was unwise, not healthy for children and other living things. Bill haw-hawed and stumbled off into the distance. I looked at Rick. Rick looked at me. “He’s going to kill himself, we have to go pick up the pieces,” said he. Nihlen assured me that he couldn’t drive so it was up to me. I was not bursting with confidence.
It took a couple of minutes but I gradually nudged the two steering wheels into one and crawled off campus to bustling Route 441, aiming to avoid trouble by staying in the serene right lane. This seemed to be working superbly when Rick asked for a mild adjustment. “You’re only going 30 miles an hour,” he said. “You have to go faster or the cops will stop us.” Damned if I wasn’t, even though it felt like I was piloting a jet plane. Somehow, we made it to the legendary Bambi Motel. Bill Partin’s flashy car was neatly parked outside one of the front rooms. We didn’t need to knock on the door because the curtains were open. He had crashed fully dressed and was sleeping like a baby. “What the hell?” wondered Rick, scratching his head. The light began to dawn for me. Six-foot-three. 320 pounds. Dancing like a fool for two hours. “He’s a fast assimilator,” I guessed. “Never took acid with anyone that big. He owes us one, we’ll collect next visit.”
But for some reason, there was no next visit. Bill Partin took his hips, lips and fingertips back on the road and never showed up at the Circus again, one of the great mysteries of the era. Six months later, I arrived at the store one morning to find a note taped to the front door. “Sorry to leave in such a hurry, but I’ve been evading law enforcement,” it read. “If we never run across one another in the future, at least you got a good story to tell.” We never saw Bill Partin again. Hips, lips or fingertips.
Silver City Shenanigans
Sheila Johnson was the ultimate hippie. She had the look, the attitude, the wardrobe and the demeanor, a pretty girl always arrayed in head scarves, ancient blouses and long skirts discovered at weekly trips to antique emporiums and Goodwill stores. Sheila was charming, the owner of a constant crooked smile with eyes that could melt an iceberg, a disarming salesgirl always ready with a wink and a nod.
Sheila had a husband named Kenny, a good-humored straight arrow without a hippie bone in his body. He had the look of a guy who stood helplessly in the road while Sheila ran him over, then dragged him back to her well-decorated blacklight cave. He didn’t know what hit him, but he was glad it did. Kenny would arrive at the store nightly at closing time, poke his head in the door, smile and wait for his wife to finish her merry recap of the day for the rest of us who worked in the Circus next door. Sheila delighted in reviewing the moments large and small which made up her shift and her unique slant on events was always appreciated.
One evening, however, she regaled her audience with a bawdy tale of personal hijinks which had occurred at home the previous evening. Sheila described a lustful and hilarious Kenny chasing her through the house nipping at her rear end and calling himself The Heinie Monster, while she screamed in mock terror. She had the crowd in an uproar, when who else but Kenny stuck his head in the door. Seeing the vile culprit, the store disintegrated into laughter, whooping and pointing at the confused husband.
“What? WHAT?” he exclaimed, stunned and at sea. Finally laughed out, the crowd gave him a standing ovation as he waved and left the stage with a confused look at Sheila. Not long after, my then-wife Harolyn got a message from the storyteller: “I think I’m in the soup,” it read, “and there’s only one way out. I’m going to have to let The Heinie Monster catch me.”
Harolyn returned the note with an inquiry; “Photos to follow?” Alas, no such luck. Physical evidence of the mythical creature has not been established to this day, but Ms. Johnson’s thong bathing suit revealed what looked suspiciously like teeth marks on her left posterior. She’s not talking, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
The Customer Is Always Right On
Not to be unappreciative, but the Subterranean Circus customer base was perhaps the oddest assortment of humans ever to pass through the portals of a business establishment. One of them, Shelley Browning, whose husband Bert was a straight-arrow honcho in the Santa Fe Community College History Department, was in almost daily to buy nitrous oxide canisters called Whippets, which she’d share with her evening guests at Partyland, her charming home just off 13th Street. Shelley’s place looked a lot like Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, but with more people, all in some state of bliss or agitation. It was open nightly until everyone left, which rarely happened because the guests were in no condition to operate motor vehicles or be seen in public. If you’ve ever been to Mexico, you’ve seen the shopkeepers sweeping out and hosing down their spaces in the early a.m. prior to the start of a new day’s business. That’s how it was at the Browning estate in the dawning hours of a new day.
Shelley, herself, considered it all in a day’s work. Once the grounds were made ready for another onslaught, she’d be off to the Circus looking for action or more Whippets. A lusty young woman, S. Browning took her pleasure where she found it. One day, that was in the back of Daniel Levine’s fine Volkswagen van, where she caught the owner sleeping in back. Opening the rear door, she said “Howdy stranger, come here often?” before inserting herself in the vehicle and having her way with Danny. “I was powerless to resist her fatal charms,” he admitted. “It was like being inundated by a force of nature.” Fortunately, Mr. Levine made a quick recovery and did not need to be taken to a hospital.
And now The Rest of The Story. A multi-talented woman, Shelley Browning was an expert on the thoroughbred horse and she talked us into going into the racing business. She accompanied Harolyn and me to the Ocala Breeders sale where we bought our first mares and advised on the pedigrees. Shelley followed our horses as if they were her own and never was short of advice to offer. Unlike many people, she never had a problem celebrating the success of others. “We’re all in this thing together!” was a favorite quote. Hard living and an assortment of medical liabilities limited her time on the planet but most who knew her would agree on two things---Shelley Browning was never bored and she never regretted one minute of her stay on the playing fields of Earth.
The Dancing Queen & Fish Stories
Shelley Browning had a half-sister named Christy Oenbrink, a big blonde with a sly smile and a great mane of hair. Christy was a ballet dancer, tall and graceful, possessed of a great wit and a spectacular sense of humor, including a special talent for laughing at her own foibles. Shelley brought her by, said she needed a job and we hired her the next day. Christy could sell igloos to Iraqis, trousers to legless men. She quickly cleared one small counter of ugly pipes which had been there since the War of Jenkins’ Ear, and asked for more. Lovesick customers brought little gifts and hung on her every word. One local musician fell in love with her, brought flowers and camped out in the parking lot until she agreed to go out with him. Another suitor abandoned his partner of eight long years and immediately proffered marriage. Christy took it all in stride.
One day, my stepson Danny came home from grade school and said his kiddie football coach told him he was too clumsy, needed better footwork. I recruited Christy, the smooth dancer, to help. “No way, Bill!” he protested. “The other kids will laugh at me, I ain’t doing it.”
I brought Christy by. He almost fell over, quickly agreeing to the dance lessons. “She could be in the movies,” he told me. Not wanting to disappoint Cleopatra, he learned his lessons well and amazed the football coach. “What happened to Danny?” the coach asked me. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” I assured.
Christy eventually moved away, got married and disappeared into the ethers. She returned several years later, came by the store and reminded me of a night long ago when several of us went out to a dance bar after work. I ended up going home with a young kid named Dani Hughes, the beginning of a year-long relationship. “Fate!” she said. “It could have been me. I didn’t know you were looking.” And I didn’t know she was. C’est la vie.
Dani, 19, was an athletic young girl from Chepachet, Rhode Island. I was 45. Over the course of a year, I learned a lot about what her generation was into and she learned some ancient history. She got me back into playing racquetball. We went to the races in Miami, to the beach a few times, once getting busted for indecent exposure at Washington Oaks State park near Marineland ($400 fine, don’t do it). It scared her to death but she was a trouper, a fact further demonstrated by her unlikely fish story.
Dani had a repetitive dream about catching a very large fish. “I’ve got to put this dream away,” she complained one day. “Let’s go fishing.” So we did, renting a sizeable boat and crew near Daytona and heading out to sea on a bright, bright, sunshiny Summer day. “What are you looking to catch?” asked the jolly captain. “Anything big,” she said, and we headed out to shark country.
Before long, they had one on the line, and it was definitely big. Miss Hughes sat in her sturdy chair, strapped in and working hard. A sympathetic crew member came over to me and said, “You know your girl is going to need a little help here,” I wished him luck getting Dani out of her chair. The battle went on for a very long time but she finally got the thing up to the back of the boat, a very large golden dusky shark who flopped all over the deck showing his ample rack of teeth before being subdued.
The crew proudly put their shark flag up and we headed back. Dani was so thrilled she paid $400 to have her catch mounted and warehoused until she could find a proper place for it. She never had the fish dream again.
Twelve months into the relationship, Dani Hughes came up to me and said her brother in Palm Desert wanted her to visit for a while. All her short life, she had wanted to see California. I told her to go. All of nineteen years old, she protested, “I never left a relationship that was going well before.”
I told her about my mother and father, also 25 years apart in age. A great relationship while it lasted. Then my father died at age 63, leaving my 38-year-old mother with three kids to support. She got the drift, went to Palm Desert and had a great time. Dani visited around Thanksgiving of the next year and brought by her new boyfriend, similar in age. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, smiling. “Probably a bunch of fish stories,” I said.
That’s all, folks…
Eat hearty, for tomorrow we…well, you know.
