She Started The Heat Wave

Only one out of the three Jeopardy contestants got Final Jeopardy correct.  “Susan B. Anthony said that it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

Correct Jeopardy response: “What is a bicycle?”

Santa Claus brought me my first bicycle.  Santa placed the two-wheel bicycle at one end of the living room.  Our Christmas tree sat at the other end of the room.  On Christmas morning, I went to the Christmas tree to find a present to unwrap.

I unwrapped a toy fire engine.  I turned my back on the bicycle and played with the fire engine.  I kept on playing with the fire engine because I knew what having a bicycle meant. 

Once you learn to ride a bicycle, it means you are growing up. 

I was nine years old and I wanted to delay growing up. 

After Christmas, I made no effort to learn to ride the bicycle until my brother John couldn’t stand it any longer.  He put me on the bicycle at the top of a gentle slope, and sent me on my way.  He promised to run alongside me in case I fell, but I think he forgot about his promise.

After I mastered riding it, the bicycle gave me mobility and independence and became a tool for socializing.  My high school friends and I would go on long bike rides because we were too young to drive cars.  Our bike rides took us to some local beaches where we could frolic.

On these rides, I would always sing my favorite Irving Berlin song.  “We’re having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave”.  I always sang it while I was behind a female bike rider, and I was at my loudest when I came to the lyrics:  “She started the heat wave by letting her seat wave”.

For one bike ride, my friends announced that we were not going to a beach --- we were going to bike all the way to Glen Cove, a town on the other side of the harbor.  

Glen Cove?  That puzzled me.  The only thing I knew about Glen Cove is that Nat King Cole lived there, and he would probably not answer the doorbell if a bunch of high school sophomores stopped by his house on bicycles.

I went on the bike ride to Glen Cove and sang my Heat Wave song as usual.  Then I found out, to my surprise, that not only did Nat King Cole live in Glen Cove, so did Mr. Danowski.

 

Mr. Danowski was our high school geometry teacher.  He had a large collection of bow ties.  He was young and he was single.  Every girl in the sophomore class had a crush on him.

We came to his house, and the group nominated me to go ring Mr. Danowski’s doorbell.  I think that may have been the reason that I was invited along on the bike ride.

Our geometry teacher was at home and answered the doorbell.  He was certainly surprised to find a bunch of high school sophomores stopping by his house on bicycles.

We were invited in.  Mr. Danowski was a gracious host, and then he sent us on our way back to our own side of the harbor.

It is 52 years since I graduated from high school, and bike rides are still social events.  However, when I go on a bike ride nowadays, I sometimes wonder if Susan B. Anthony had a crush on her high school geometry teacher.

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On You Tube, Miss Piggy claims that it was she who started the heat wave (4-minute video)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2he3gF5uSM

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

When The Moon Hits Your Eye

There were a lot of kids in my junior high school with names like Salorio, Fasano, Marino, Salerno, Lamberti, and Subbiando.  

So many people had Italian names, that it did not surprise me that our town had a bunch of pizzarias.  Some were in people's homes where they put dining tables out in the backyard.  As a teenager, friends would get together, pool their coins, and share a pizza pie sitting next to a grape arbor.

It did not surprise me that my junior high German teacher had an Italian name.  He was named Mr. Pascucci.  Or, as we called him, Herr Pascucci.

Mr. Pascucci told us many stories, including the story about when he was drafted into the Army and the Army sent him to Italy.  When he arrived in Italy, he was shocked.  Mr. Pascucci wanted to try pizza in Italy. However, he searched but there were no pizzerias to be found.  

I read Sophia Loren's first cookbook, and I remember her comment about pizza.  Sophia said that in Italy, pizza was food for the poverty-stricken.  

About the time that the Army sent Mr. Pascucci to Italy, a movie studio sent Sophia Loren to the United States.  When she arrived in the United States, she was shocked.  She expected to see evidence that America was a rich country; instead she saw lots of pizzerias.  She felt sorry for us poverty-stricken Americans.

I have been to Italy twice.  When I went to Italy in 1967, I did not see a single pizzeria.  My experience matched Mr. Pascucci's experience.

However, when I went back to Italy in 2010, there were pizzerias all over the place.  Something had happened in the forty-three year interim.

So, I combined Herr Pascucci with Sophia Loren and came up with my history of pizza:

The Italians who immigrated to the United States in the late 19th/early 20th centuries were poverty-stricken.  They were used to eating a baked piece of flat dough with some tomato sauce and cheese on top.  They opened up pizzerias when they arrived in the USA.

My guess is that pizzerias survived in Italy until World War Two.  As Italy recovered from the war, the country prospered and people were ashamed of eating pizza because it was a sign of poverty.  So the pizzerias were shuttered.

Then along came Mr. Pascucci the soldier seeking out pizza.  Then jet airplanes were invented and they flooded Italy with American tourists, all of them seeking out pizza.  When the Italians realized that Americans were willing to pay good money for a baked piece of flat dough with some toppings, they started opening up pizzerias to feed the tourists.  

When the Italians realized that Americans were willing to pay a lot of money for a “gourmet” pizza, they opened up more pizza shops.  Pizza no longer had a stigma, and Italians started eating pizza again.

So, I conclude that that pizza died off in Italy in the 1940's and picked up in the 1950's and has snowballed ever since.  Maybe, just maybe, the snowball was started by Mr. Pascucci, my junior high school German teacher, walking around in an army uniform asking Italians where he could find a pizza.   

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On YouTube, Dean Martin sings about the moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie (3 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q22UBqZcB9g

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Schneider For Guardian Of The Flag

I ran for political office when I was thirteen and Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States.

I declared my candidacy for Guardian of the Flag.  This was a position in our junior high school; the guardian stood on stage and led the Pledge of Allegiance before every school assembly.  I was eminently qualified: I knew the Pledge by heart.

My opponent was also eminently qualified.  His name was Roger Pitman and he also knew the Pledge by heart.  However, I had an advantage because Roger’s father was a doctor and my father worked for a printing company.

That meant I could get free campaign tags printed up: SCHNEIDER FOR GUARDIAN OF THE FLAG. The tags had strings so people could attach them to a shirt button.

The other offices up for election were student council president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary.  The school bunched us into two groups of five candidates, forming political parties.  The idea was to make our junior high election more like a national election.

We named ourselves the “Pyramid Party”.  Pyramids are a symbol of wisdom and endurance.

Our opponents were more audacious.  They named themselves the “Rock And Roll Party”.  This was audacious because rock and roll was a new phenomenon.  Only two years had passed since Bill Haley and Elvis Presley had their first hit records.

Members of the Pyramid Party were paraded in front of various social studies classes for question-and-answer sessions.  I was ready for the big question for the guardian of the flag: do you know the Pledge of Allegiance by heart?  However, the social studies classes focused their questions on the big guns: the candidates for president and the vice-president.

Sometimes members of both the Pyramid and the Rock And Roll Parties were in a social studies class at the same time.  Ten people lined up in front of the blackboard.  During one of these sessions, a Pyramid candidate taunted the opposition by calling rock and roll a “baby”.  In response, a Rock And Roll candidate called a pyramid an “antique”.

That candidate was my opponent, Roger, and his comment went viral throughout the school.  He won the election.

However, as runner up, I still got to appear at the junior high assemblies.  My job was to take the flag out of its floor stand and hold it at a respectful angle while Roger led the Pledge of Allegiance.

A new school year began.  Roger and I were ready for our debut.  We stepped out on stage and stood next to the flag. I reached over to take the flag out of the flag stand.  Tug.  Tug.  The flag would not come out.  Tug again, no luck.

Was this some kind of practical joke?  Had someone deliberately tightened the screws holding the flag in place so I could not get it out?  I did some quick thinking and picked up the flag while it was still in the stand and held it at a respectful angle.

My stint as runner-up for Guardian of the Flag taught me that I should always check my equipment in advance --- and taught me that a candidate with a clever comment like “antique” will win an election no matter how many printed campaign tags the other candidate has.

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YouTube video (2 minutes): Eisenhower changes the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itEeWkB3es0

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Knee Deep In Rice

A dear friend from high school was watching a Johnny Cash tribute on television.  When the show featured the song “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town”, my friend started to laugh.

Laughter was uncalled for.  A show about a beloved icon of American music demands reverence.  The song itself is tragic; a young cowboy, ignoring his mother’s plea, takes his guns to town, where he is shot and he repeats his mother’s plea as he lies dying.

My friend was laughing because the song on the television show took her back 50 years --- back to the time when we were in high school, and I wrote a parody of Johnny Cash’s song.

Our sophomore year English teacher was named Barker Herr, and he had a pernicious case of halitosis.  I could not resist:

      A young cowboy named Barker Herr grew restless on the farm
      A boy filled with wanderlust who really meant no harm
      He changed his clothes and shined his boots
      And combed his dark hair down
      And his mother cried as he walked out

      Don’t take your breath to town, Bark
      Leave your breath at home, Herr
      Don’t take your breath to town.

Parody also served me well in the Army.  In Basic Training, you were expected to vocalize: chanting along with the sergeant as he counted cadence: “I want to go to Vietnam; I want to kill a Viet Cong”.

However, when I finished Basic and started Helicopter Mechanics Training, our platoon had no sergeant.  We had to march ourselves from the barracks to the training area and back again.  And we got to choose out own vocalizing.  The blood-thirsty cadence counts we chanted in Basic Training were dropped. 

We first turned to whistling.  You would be amazed at how nicely you can march to the theme song for “The Addams Family”.  The finger snapping helps keep people in step.

When we weren’t whistling, we were singing.  It was a grand time for parodies.  First came The Monkees, who used to think that love was just in fairy tales.

      I used to think that Army was just in fairy tales,
      Meant for someone else but not for me
      But Army was out to get me
      That’s the way it seemed
      The military haunted all my dreams.
      Then I saw my sergeant, now I’m a believer
      Not a trace of doubt in my mind
      I’m in the Army, I’m a believer
      I couldn’t leave it if I tried.

This song did more than make us snicker as we marched.  It encapsulated our mutual experience.  A few months earlier we had all been civilians, surrounded by happiness.  Now we were soldiers, surrounded by a world over which we had little control.

Next up: “Sealed With A Kiss” by Gary Lewis And The Playboys:

      It’s gonna be a long lonely summer
      Over there in Nam
      Hiding from the Cong
      Working on my helicopter
      Knee deep in rice.

This was harder to march to, but it expressed the angst that we had about being deployed to Viet Nam.

Parodies are nice and easy.  You don’t have to invent a tune.  You know the pattern your new words should fit into.

Parodies are powerful.  You can create a parody that encapsulates a mutual experience or a parody that expresses angst.  And, maybe, you can create a parody that will make someone laugh during a Johnny Cash tribute 50 years after you graduated from high school.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com