It was April 1976.  Since sunrise on July 5, 1975, the country had been gripped by Bicentennial Madness, a fever so contagious and pervasive I nowadays think of it as COVID-1976.

Everywhere you looked, things were plastered with the faces of dead white guys like George “I’m on the quarter AND the dollar bill” Washington and Ben “FATHER of Our Country if you know what I mean” Franklin. 

The most pervasive image was the US flag, Old Glory, the most complicated flag on Earth.   Betsy Ross, who sewed one star on the original for each of the 13 American colonies, would have thrown in the towel when faced with 50 of the buggers.

Nevertheless, Americans proudly wore the flag on hats, jackets, socks, and jeans; we were star-spangled right down to our tighty-red-whitey-and-blues. 

McClellan High School was not immune to the mania.

It was decided to put on a show for the student body to take place one afternoon at school.  It was to feature great American songs from “Yankee Doodle” to the Beatles’ “Let It Be” (proof that geography was not high on the Arkansas educative curriculum). 

For some reason, “Afternoon Delight,” a then-popular anthem about impromptu sessions of sexual congress, was not included.

I was tasked with providing a piece for the jazz band to play.  Since there was nothing I loved more than the 1940s era music of Glenn Miller (well, nothing that did not involve girls and/or pizza), I chose Miller’s incredible “In the Mood.”

We did not have time to perfect the whole piece, so I created a shorter version with no saxophone solos and no cowbell, which I have always regretted, since, you know, COWBELL!

On Thursday afternoon, April 15, the entire student body gathered in the gym to sit on unyielding wooden bleachers with no air conditioning or refreshments.  It was a recipe for Bicentennial fervor, make no mistake!

The lineup included such crowd-pleasers as “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”  If the students had been octogenarians, I’m sure they would have gobbled it up like lukewarm Cream of Wheat.

The program might have gone down better if folks had tried just a little harder.  Keith, the fellow who sang “Clementine,” repeated only the refrain and the first verse five times!  Fortunately for him, he was the handsome object of every straight girl’s teenage desire.  Otherwise, he might have been hooted from the stage faster than you can recite the preamble to the constitution, which you memorized the day after your eighth grade American History teacher said she would give you an A- if you could recite the damned thing, but you couldn’t and got a B+ instead. 

As the assembly continued, the energy in the gym dwindled.  It was getting muggy in there with over a thousand students in attendance.  Many kids were jonesing for a nap, a nip, or a nicotine hit.  They just weren’t feeling the “Afternoon Delight.”

Performances were running longer than expected, and it looked like we would not be finishing up in time.  I was drowsing with the jazz band, awaiting our turn, when told to skip ahead and go straight to our piece.

I jumped up, counting off “In the Mood” with a lusty “A-Wun Two Three GO!”  The saxophones energetically launched into the swinging arpeggio that starts the piece.  Everyone in the crowd hopped up, yelling and clapping as if they had been offered the rest of the day off! 

Our band director Mr. Washburn later told me he heard the astonishingly loud noise in his somewhat-distant office, wondering if there had been an accident.  You know, such as one owing to a jet liner hitting the cafeteria, or the over-abundance of beans served that day. 

Even though I am probably the only one who remembers that glorious moment, it was a highlight of my time at McClellan High.  Amazing really, since it involved neither girls nor pizza.

January 5, 1973

It was the start of Junior Band Clinic at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.  The previous weekend, hundreds of young musicians had auditioned (“tried out” in band parlance) to earn a place in the two bands representing the best of Pulaski County junior high music programs.

I made First band, second chair tenor saxophone, indicating the judges believed me to be the second best tenor sax player who had tried out.  However, I was a bit annoyed that I was second chair. I felt I was a better player than the boy who made first chair, whom I recall uncharitably as the nerdy kid from The Far Side cartoons.

I had been playing saxophone for only 12 months, so it was cool that I made the first band at all. The only reason I did was because my friends Clark Isaacs and Richard Manson, both far superior musicians in every way, tried out for Senior Clinic instead of Junior Clinic, so there were more openings for tenor sax players of modest ability.

One of the pieces we played was “Cherish,” a saccharine love song with possibly the dullest melody ever written (the first 11 notes are the same!). Music historians remain puzzled about two events from that era; how “Cherish” became a hit, and why anyone thought “The Funky Penguin” was a good idea for a dance song.

The saxophones played the insipid melody at one point in the “Cherish” arrangement. The band director instructed the tenor saxophones to play louder, but not too loud, because when saxophones play too loud, they “honk like ducks.”

As autocorrect would say, this forever ducked me up for playing loudly.

It was an unforgivable thing to say to students seeking instruction and encouragement, especially naturally timid ones like me.  As far as I was concerned, the guy earned eternal torment in Band Director Hell, conducting first day beginner band students sight-reading “I Love You, You Love Me.”

During lunch, I went exploring with a fellow Cloverdale bandie. Throwing caution to the woodwind, we crossed heavily trafficked Asher Avenue to the old Asher Drive-In Theater.  There I found a large, red plastic letter “R” that had fallen off the marquee. Although it was a treasure beyond imagining, it did put a stutter in my strut when stuffed into my bell bottoms.

I planned to display my scarlet letter when I received an “R” rating from the Motion Picture Association (for Sexual Themes, naturally). Sadly, the best I could score was PG-13 for mild profanity and rude humor regarding where someone could stick his baton.

October 18, 1975

The McClellan High School band had trekked east across half of Arkansas and the entire breadth of the Mississippi River to compete in the Memphis State Marching Contest.  This was the performance that really mattered, the culmination of all our efforts since marching camp started up in mid-August.

In no particular order, here follow random memories of that momentous day.  Like unfortunate raccoons, they remain inadvertently captured in the rusty bear trap of my memory.

Starting early, we rode off into the sunrise in unaccustomed luxury, snugly ensconced in buses that were not even the least bit yellow.  These fine buses were equipped with air conditioning, upholstered seats with headrests, and even toilets.  So superior were these toilets to the McClellan High boys’ room, they had toilet paper, doors that closed, and graffiti that was generally spelled correctly.

That evening, after the contest, we attended the Memphis State Football game, where we partied until halftime.  Just as McClellan football games, band folks rarely cared about what happened on the field unless a marching band was out there.   Our disinterest was so pervasive, it was downright inconvenient when our football team scored, forcing us to bang out the fight song yet again, perhaps interrupting a nice chat with a cute clarinet player.

After mesmerizing performances by the two college bands, festivities resumed until we re-boarded the buses after the game.  The long ride home was a delicious 3 hour necking session, although it came with honorary membership in the Blue Balls Hall of Fame.

Earlier that day, the McClellan band performance garnered a II at contest, the superior I rating eluding us again. 

As disappointing as our score was, the day remains indelible in my history; it was the last time I would relish a particular treat that, like stepping in fresh saber-tooth tiger poop, can no longer be experienced.

You see, it was the third and final time I dined at the venerable institution known as Burger Chef.

In 1954, the first Burger Chef introduced their burgers and fries to the hamburger hungry Hoosiers of Indiana.   This Terre haute cuisine caught on quickly and Burger Chef restaurants multiplied. At one point, there were more Burger Chefs across America than any other burger restaurants with the exception of McDonald’s.

Since the Baby Boom began, fast food has been hawked by a King, a Red Haired Girl, a White Haired Colonel, or some other clown.  At Burger Chef, the victuals were peddled by cartoon characters the Burger Chef and his young sous chef, Jeff.  B.C. & J., sporting matching baby blue aprons with white polka dots, were perfect spokesmen because they were precisely as bland and forgettable as the food.

Because of its proximity to the Memphis State campus, or maybe because the place was never overcrowded with eager customers, we dined each year at this famous squat ‘n’ gobble.  

Winning another II at marching contest could not compete with the crushing disappointment of those limp French fries.  They were such a waste of perfectly good ketchup that France insisted they be renamed.

In retrospect, it was a good thing we dined at Burger Chef rather than in a nearby Italian restaurant, however much tastier the chow might have been.  Side-effects on the bus trip could have been disastrous.  Garlic, essential to the Italian palate, would have hampered the coming anticipated-and-marginally-supervised kissing session.

Come to think of it, my testicles might have preferred that.

     The first day of sixth grade, I encountered a brand spanking new set of friends when transplanted from my old cadre into the classroom next door.  That day, I met David Stebbins, Carra Bussa, Susan West, Richard Manson, Julia Goodwin, and my first serious crush, Tahnya Hayes, who conveniently sat immediately in front of me.  I always was the lazy sort when it came to meeting girls.

     One new friend that year was Bill Biniores.  Aside from possessing a last name ever mispronounced at first encounter, Bill could never keep his shirttails tucked in.  He was a bit of a schemer, a slacker when most kids were as taut as guy wires.  There was strong evidence that he only combed his hair on Tuesday afternoons and bank holidays.  Bill was unkempt to a degree rarely achieved without having been raised by wolves.

     We had separate teachers for different subjects.  Like a juvenile chain gang, we would shuffle from room to room at regular intervals throughout the day.  Textbooks remained in each room, shared by each class as we entered, and evicted from our consciousness as we departed.

     One day in Social Studies, we were to turn in work that we started the day before in class.  Bill, sitting just to my right, scrunched up his eyes as if pondering weighty matters or having smelled something unfortunate. Moments later, a smile tellingly slid across his face like chilled molasses on yesterday’s flapjacks. 

     He raised his hand and informed the teacher, old Mrs. Counting-the-days-until-retirement (not her real name), that, lo and behold, he had mislaid the crucial homework over which he had slaved so arduously.  Although she forgave the assignment, her face revealed that she trusted Bill as far as she could throw a hippo at an all-you-can-eat-papaya-and-tribesperson buffet. 

     Amid abundant renderings of Batman and Spider-man in my notebook, I discovered a glaring absence of that particular day’s homework.  I was puzzled, particularly since we had no canine that could have eaten it.  I knew I had finished the work, as I had been granted the Steve Hendricks Medal of Valorous Honor upon completion.   This was the highest commendation I could award myself in peacetime.

     The previous day, I had probably folded my answer sheet and absent-mindedly placed it in the textbook, surrendered at the end of class.  I imagined some kid finding the answers, eager to pass off my work as their own.  I took some solace knowing that doing so would serve them right, considering the dismal grades I earned in Social Studies.

     Raising my hand angelically, I informed the teacher that I, the pure, the diligent, the ever-studious, had also misplaced my homework just as Bill allegedly had.  Her face darkened as if her next smoking break had been subsumed by extra hall duty.  Her gnashing teeth drowned out the air conditioner.  As she reached for her paddle, she gave me a look as icy as Robert Scott’s scrotum after a month in Antarctica.

     Called up before the class, I was instructed to bend over and grasp my ankles.  Mrs. Casey-at-the-bat (also not her real name) stepped up to the figurative plate.  I swear she spit in her hands for a better grip.  Ah yes, there was to be plenty of joy in Mudville that day.

     My face was turned toward the class when the blow landed.  My eyes widened and my jaw dropped in my best Stan-Laurel-inspired reaction.  Had I worn a hat, it would have flown up several feet and landed back on my head with a little toot. To the teacher’s puzzled annoyance, the whole class laughed.

     I was pleased to have turned shameful punishment into a bit of clowning, even if my backside bore the brunt (literally, the “chief impact”) of the jest.

     This was the only spanking I ever received, unjustly prescribed for bad timing in proximity to Bill.  However innocent I was that day, in light of later adventures, the paddling could be reckoned as front-loaded karma, a down payment on shenanigans to come.

     In April 1973, Bill’s father received a patent for a newfangled toilet cutoff valve and the family got a nice financial boost.  Bill dressed snappier after that, and he displayed increased confidence and poise, but his roguish shirt tails remained forever untamed and untucked.

     My friends were depending on me to knot the rope and save us.  Everything hinged on my dusty Boy Scout knot-lore, and things were looking as grim as an 8 am meeting in the principal’s office.

     Years earlier, my parents decided I needed hobbies other than reading comics and watching Gilligan’s Island reruns.  Options were limited in Arkansas circa 1968, so my new adventure entailed joining Cub Scouts and learning to make authentic Native American drums from Folger coffee cans. 

     Each week, Mom dropped me at the home of my Cub Scout Den Mother.  This misguided woman must have loved spatter as a decoration motif, given she routinely hosted ten year old boys armed with paint, glitter, and squirtable bottles of Elmer’s glue.

     After years of defacing coffee cans and not a few items of furniture, I matriculated to the Boy Scouts of America, or BSA for short.  Since I needed a new costume and accoutrements, Mom drove me to the Official Boy Scout Store.  There you could purchase overpriced official scout gear in various shades of khaki, sort of like Louis Vuitton for tragically bland tweens.

     We bought an official scout back pack, shirt and trousers, cap, scout manual, and neckerchief.  We did not spring for the official scout pocket knife, compass, tent, sleeping bag, hiking boots, matches, flashlight, flint and steel fire starter kit, or the (conveniently never needed) snakebite kit.  I urged a splurge, but Mom was reluctant to sell internal organs to pay for it, even though she was hardly using her spleen at the time.

     The Boy Scouts organization was something of a paramilitary wannabe, with rank earned by acquisition of skills.  Emphasis was placed on expertise deemed necessary upon debarking the Mayflower with only a pen knife, a prayer book, and a hat with a buckle on it.

     Like all scouts, I started at the bottom of the pecking order.  The entry level rank was called Tenderfoot, which in my case equated to “Dies when left without potato chips.” 

     After learning something tangentially useful to modern life, you could ascend to Second Class, then to First Class, and maybe another one or two until you got to Eagle Scout.  At that point you were qualified to wrestle grizzly bears in your official Scout loin cloth.

     In those days, to achieve Second Class, you had to endure three ten mile hikes.   There were other feats and oaths involved, but those excursions were my particular bane.  I had a disease in my knees known as Osgood Slaughterer’s Disease, so my knees hurt often, and the pain worsened with exercise. Long hikes settled on my list of preferred pastimes just under listening to Great Uncle Bill enumerate his prostate issues.

     My scout troop Leader was a wiry little guy named Mr. Valez.  He had a curious accent that always put me in mind of German war criminals escaped to Venezuela.  He would clip his words, hammering consonants as if they were wanton gophers frolicking in his flower garden. 

     Mr. Valez plastered his graying wavy hair to his scalp with something resembling bacon grease, and was a stickler for the Boy Scout Way.  He was not the kind of guy who would let you slide by with just two ten mile hikes.  Like a mistranslated Nazi interrogator, he had ways of making you walk.

     Early on, I had ticked off all the accomplishments needed to advance several levels except for that confounded third hike.  Being a Tenderfoot for two years was very disheartening, and I found myself caring less and less about the scouting skills I had mastered.  Before long, I had forgotten how to tie a half-hitch, build a dam from Popsicle sticks, and skin a ferret using only an old sock.

     One weekend, there was a big camp-out on Sardis Road, a semi-rural bit of land being eyed for future housing development.  The construction company had offered use of the land to the scouts in the hope we would chop down trees and wreak extensive havoc, thereby saving them some land clearing costs.

     Mr. Valez informed us we were in for a treat for Friday night supper.  We lit a fire, set up a tripod, and suspended a coffee can (without drum decorations) over the fire.  We filled the can with water, potatoes and carrots and let it hang over the fire while the smoke blew straight in my eyes for what seemed like 7 hours.   During the wait, we did all that scout stuff Mr. Valez lived for, like talk about scouting, play scout games, recite scout pledges, and pee in the woods.

     When the stew was ready, Mr. Valez spooned some into our official Boy Scout mess kits.  I detected subtle but unmistakable undertones of Maxwell House.  Everyone but Mr. Valez gave the stew a pass because it was godawful to the last drop.

     While the Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared,” temperatures unexpectedly dropped that night, and we were caught with our cargo shorts down.   I had not packed for weather less temperate than balmy to middling chilly.  My light windbreaker was woefully insufficient.  My black leather Buster Brown dress shoes were useless against the cold.  In short, I was woefully undersupplied for an expeditionary force in the frigid heart of Southwest Little Rock.

     That night, I discovered that my sleeping bag was little better than an oversized pillow case with a zipper.  I crawled from the bag, assumed the khaki, and took a hike (figuratively only, alas).   A few of my fellow scouts were standing around the fire trying to warm up.  I had lost feeling in my extremities, so I held one foot over the fire hoping to stave off frostbite.  My preferred toe allotment has always been ten. 

    After a couple of minutes pondering how smoke always knows where your eyes are, I was startled from my reverie when my friend Andy McGee pointed out that my shoe was smoldering. In fact, little flames were flickering off the shoe itself.  I stomped out the fire, but the melted rubber underside caught up grass and leaves before it solidified again.  Even with the avant-garde fashions of the early 1970s, I was the only kid sporting a shoe with dead flora embedded in the sole.

     An hour or two before the sunrise, I slipped back into my sleeping bag.  As daylight appeared, Mr. Valez creeped into the tent to awaken us.  I was very groggy, so he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.  My head snapped back and forth on my shoulders like a rubber chicken in an over-caffeinated Rottweiler’s jaws.

     Eyes wide with horror, my tent mates Mark Cook and John Farr jumped from their sleeping bags, as awake as if they had simultaneously experienced a double espresso, a generous snort of cocaine, and an electric shock to the genitals.   

     I was still groggy and now dazed as well, but Mr. Valez decided to apply a little more stimulus.  He snapped my head back and forth a few more times.  Mark and John looked on, laughing nervously, while my noggin made those cartoon punching bag noises, buggeda, buggeda, buggeda, buggeda.

     I begged him to stop while my head was still attached, so he left to torment other kids.  My abused neck put me in mind of Marie Antoinette, but there was not even any cake for consolation.

     Later in the day, it came time to show off our Scouting expertise in competition.  In the center clearing, the older scouts demonstrated the most vital of all survival skills.  Reverently passed down from generation to generation, we called it “cheating.”

     Lessons learned that day include that a wristwatch will help you time a run better than counting, and that flint and steel are hopelessly outclassed by a Zippo lighter, especially one with a topless hula girl etched on the side.

     At the knot tying competition, we lined up and were each presented a short length of rope.  My best friend Mark and I were the last two in line.  The judge came along and gave each of us a knot to tie, such as a bowline, clove hitch, or stopper knot.  When he got to me, he pointed at the rope and declared, “inverted Möbius strip knot”, or some such thing.  Of course, REAL scouts could tie this knot one-handed while extemporaneously composing an ode to small woodland mammals.

     So there I was, stymied by a piece of limp hemp.  I had forgotten every blessed knot except the common Granny knot and her straitlaced cousin, the square knot, neither of which the pitiless bastard had assigned to me.

     Mark quickly and competently tied his knot.  He shrugged sympathetically, knowing there was not a chance in hell that I could tie my knot or help me, best friends or not, with the scoutmaster just feet away.  I distractedly tied a square knot as I watched the judge shuffle along the line toward me and Mark.

     After awarding Mark ten points for correctly tying his assigned knot, the scoutmaster looked at the rope in my hands.  “Square knot?” he asked. 

    “Yes,” I mumbled, eyes downcast with shame because I had been caught out, “it is a square knot.”

     “Great! Ten points!” he said, turning and heading away to tally up the points.  Mark and I turned to each other in shock and relief.  I had gotten the points without deserving them!  The elder scouts later expressed admiration for my innovative use of truth and sincerity to devise a whole new class of cheating.  I was a bona fide hero, the living embodiment of the BS in BSA.

     Soon after, scouting fell from my attention, replaced with Operation Hormone Storm and the attendant rediscovery of girls.  Thus began my miserably shy dating period, when I found talking with girls difficult (fortunately this spell promptly ended when I turned 40).  Even so, frustrated dating was preferable to tying knots, melting shoes, and eating coffee flavored stew. 

     However, I soon found that, in courting as in most endeavors, it is rare to win ten points for guileless ineptitude.

45 years ago today, May 18, 1976.

It was the final days of my senior year at McClellan High School. My stint as humor columnist and cartoonist for the school paper, The Lion-Up, was ending with the last published issue of the year. Good-bye, grueling monthly deadlines forcing me to do something creative for 2 days out of every 30!

My junior year, I was the cartoonist, the first job for which I proved completely inadequate, as well as general gopher. I reported all performing arts related news, including the band and choir, employing a style best described as dull, if not downright soporific.

For the last issue that school year, I provided a full page illustration for the front page. It was a shameless rip-off of a Superman comic book cover, although most lazy hacks prefer the term “homage.”

Twenty years later, when I confessed my misdeed to Neal Adams, the creator of the original cover, he shrugged it off, saying, “That’s okay. It has been ripped off about a thousand times now.”

While this revelation fostered my sense of inept artistic community, my guilt was slightly elevated upon learning that I was unoriginal even in my unoriginality.

I was rewarded for my near-total lack of cartooning skill my senior year, when I became cartoonist *and* columnist. I named my humor column con-fab-u-la-tion because I envisioned it as a sort of informal chat. Each issue, I spewed whatever inanity I wished, foisting my overdeveloped sense of sarcasm upon an unwitting, occasionally unconscious, readership.

My final con-fab-u-la-tion column appeared in that May, 1976, issue, marking the last time for decades that anything I wrote was willingly read by more than 2 people. After that, I relied on the fact that people will peruse almost anything for pizza or booze. I hear 3 crates of gin worked wonders for Fitzgerald and “The Great Gatsby.”

In the ’90s, overcome by a desire to relieve myself in the waters of historic accuracy, I wrote “A Briefe History of the Codpiece.” My first “fact-free treatise” enjoyed meager popularity in various SCA newsletters, then online in the early days of the internet. (“Yeah, we didn’t have it easy like you young whippersnappers! We had to write our own HTML back in those days, which we chiseled into stone tablets.”)

A fitting epitaph for me, here are my last words to the McClellan student body, or at least the literate members thereof.

“In retrospect, I would like to say to those who (sic) I have insulted in one way or another that I am sorry.
“Sorry that I cannot come back and insult you again next year.”

     I recently framed a photo and placed it where I can fondly glance at it between bouts of internet time wastage. It shows the 1973 Cloverdale Stage Band, seventeen young musicians posed on gym bleachers to be immortalized for the school yearbook.   This was about the time teenage hormones commenced steering us onto the path of boneheaded decision making.

     In the year since the COVID-19 pandemic started, when I have seen none but my wife and children, the photo reminds me that I once saw these friends almost every day, taking for granted that they were a part of my life and would always be.  Two of my best friends in the photo, David and Andy, are gone now, and others are just electronic wisps on Facebook.

     David is front and center in the photo, the only person dressed all in white, almost ethereally pale amid a riot of color, shiny instruments, and mildly regrettable 1970s fashion.   

     As soon as I met David in sixth grade, we became great friends.  Our mutual love of comic books inspired us to team up and create comics of our own.  We taught ourselves tennis, having gleaned the rules by watching Billie Jean King thrash Bobby Riggs on TV.  We won medals at Solo and Ensemble Contest playing saxophone together.  We spent hours sitting on the railing at his house, crunching ice, insulting each other for fun, just hanging out.

     About the time of the photo, David informed me that my girlfriend had asked him out.  Thank goodness I did not have her name lovingly tattooed in a heart on my arm, although we had dated a glorious 15 days and 2 hours.

     David told me he was not planning to go out with her, being uninterested in girls.  I told him how lucky he was because I could not stop thinking about them every waking moment.  It was 20 years later before I heard what he was really telling me and understood the incredible level of trust and friendship he placed in me that day.

     Last night, I dreamed of David.  It was the version of David who once appeared every year or so in my dreams, tight-lipped about having returned from a secret mission up the Amazon, or having been kidnapped, anything but having died of AIDS back in 1992.

     In the dream, David’s mother Dolores came home, not greeted by her deliriously happy little dogs as she had been in reality.  We discussed David’s life since I had accidentally encountered him on the UALR campus in spring, 1978.  At that time, he had excitedly told me about meeting a theater teacher who had known his dad, and how wonderful it was to learn more about him.  When I was done recounting this real world event, Dolores was quiet, her eyes were closed and she lay unmoving on her bed.  I left the room, turning out the light as I left.

     In the living room, I turned to David, saying, “Spirit, it is time to go.”  He stood and I embraced him, telling him how much he had meant to me, how much I missed him, that everyone had thought the world of him.  He seemed happy to hear it.

     I awoke with tears on my face, feeling the loss as if it happened moments rather than decades ago. 

     Today, I am thinking of the tiny but vibrant fragments residing within me of all the people I have known and loved.  I am grateful  that they remain a part of me still.