by Mike Morris
About halfway around the 4th lap I became aware of someone right behind me. I pressed on, but the stabbing pain continued, removing all the fun I had been having. Then the guy passed me – the guy I was supposed to wear out. I figured he had to be as tired as I was. He had to be feeling the same pain I was feeling. I thought that if I could pull enough strength up, I could pass him. Surely, that would break his spirit. I would be a hero! In pain, I courageously dug deep and extracted everything I had left. I ran past him.
Well, things didn’t work out like I had hoped. Passing him must have angered him, because a moment later he flew by me like I was standing still. I looked over at him as he went by, I am sure my face contorted in pain. On the other hand, he looked angelic – his face gently smiling – his countenance that of someone taking a leisurely stroll in the park.
I was destroyed! I slowed to the point of almost stopping. The rest of the field soon passed me. Then it got worse. The guy, my nemesis I was supposed to wear out, passed me again – eventually followed by the rest of the field. I had been lapped by the entire field!
When the race was over and my angelic nemesis had set a new high school state record – apparently with my help – I still had a lap-and-a-half to run. My coach told me several times to get off the track so the next event could start, but somehow I felt too humiliated. So, I pulled “a Mo Mickus.” I began to casually lope around the track waving at the crowd as they laughed and sarcastically applauded. Just to seal the deal that I was making a joke of the whole thing, and having gotten my second wind, I sprinted the last 100 yards or so. And I think I actually ran really fast!
The school yearbook contained a beautiful action picture from the race. In the photo, I am running slightly ahead of the captain of the long distance team. The underneath caption states: “Mo Mickus leads Sonny Boyster in the two mile.” Of course in my copy, Yakov wrote underneath the picture, “He is lapping you!”
Growing up in a major rush, or at least doing what growing up looked like in my mind’s eye, was mandatory. Being a bad little boy in school was no longer cool. It didn’t impress grown-up women, so I straightened up. There was no more war with the teachers. I had to save my energy or just rest up from the night before. I couldn’t concentrate on sports; I was bushed ... drained ... drowsy. I was talking on the phone, and writing poems, and hitchhiking miles to a summit ... a rendezvous ... a tryst. I was spellbound, immersed in the current of the present; the future was hopelessly confined ... enchanted ... ensnared by upcoming events only hours or at the most only a day away.
She enjoyed things as much as me, I am sure. Snowball fights, riding two on a bicycle; listening to music, dancing, eating turkey sandwiches, telling jokes, laughing, flirting, meeting secretly ... all of these shrouded in starry-eyed notions.
And while for her, our time together was a temporary condition that plugged an abyss of waiting for real life to return, I muddled deep in romantic mess. Our relationship must have had to end ... because it did, and that caused me much pain, leaving a huge void in my youthful existence. It also launched me on a quest not only to move away from unhappiness, but to find happiness. In other words, based on my limited view of life, to find the perfect woman to replace my perfect older woman – my first real love.
Uh ... well, everybody with any sense knows that happiness doesn’t come from outside, but I didn’t know that. In fact, I had no doubts that happiness was out there someplace in the far-off reaches of the universe, past all known boundaries, and I kept my eyes constantly peeled for a doorway into the wide open spaces of some unknown joy.
46
Fractured
Shortly after turning sixteen, my life fractured into bits. Not only had my great love affair ended, I received the perplexing news that Arcadia was getting married and moving to the land of the Air Force, Leo was leaving to attend Duke University, my parents were divorcing, and I would be heading south for a long winter – a long, lonely winter – a winter that would last years – something I will cathartically communicate later.
As upside down as my life was becoming, I heard news about Roger that made my problems seem minor. Roger’s future was shattered on the football practice field – the victim of a roll-block to the side of his knee. Word was that he might not walk again. Apparently, Bubba Bloyer was clowning around, trying to break into the “cool crowd” by recklessly horse-playing. Roger was ill prepared to withstand the 200-plus pounds Bubba bulldozed into the side of his knee as he stood with his legs locked, his cleats firmly planted in the turf, and listening intently to the coach give directions. Witnesses compared the sound of his knee bursting to a gunshot.
Shortly after the calamity, I traveled up from my new home in the deep, dark South to see my older sister Arcadia who was living near Hellincrest. Visiting Roger in the hospital, I found a room full of people. Each one was aware what the doctors were saying. Roger might not walk again, much less play football or run track. The somber mood of those in the room contrasted sharply with Roger’s attitude. He was laughing and telling me it wouldn’t be long before he was back on the football field. No one seemed to be able to look him in the eye, and I could detect looks of resentment directed at me – because I had been the catalyst for his boasts of a comeback. At least that was my impression.
Close to a year later, my next visit found Roger enjoying himself at a party. I marveled at the way he glided through the room with no trace of a limp. So struck was I, that I scrutinized his every move. I was electrified that Roger appeared to have made a complete recovery. He appeared to be genuinely happy. Then I noticed the bottom of a steel brace on one of his shoes. An especially thick sole lifted the shoe with the brace. I felt a sudden sadness but was also again impressed. “Wow,” I thought. “He has worked so hard not to have even the slightest trace of a limp.”
I didn’t see Roger for many years after that and did not know what had become of him. Eventually, I returned to the Washington, DC area and took a job as a research analyst on K Street. One day during lunch at a fast food place, I heard a voice I recognized. At first I couldn’t place it, but then realized it was the voice of Roger Strayler. I looked back to the voice and saw a painter standing in line. I had dabbled in painting houses and felt strongly that painting wasn’t anywhere close to being the best job in the world. I approached Roger and we began talking. He had his usual self-confidence and began enthusiastically telling me about his job. He said he was working with these German guys and they were teaching him all these great techniques of painting. I was wondering what great techniques of painting could possibly exist and make anyone so excited, but I didn’t say anything about it. Feeling a little rueful for my hero I said goodbye and returned to work.
Ironically, when a serious foray into the music business went errant, I started painting and hanging wallpaper for a living. For many years I worked with a good friend, Stu Cappell. When we weren’t eating donuts, or spilling paint, or actually painting, he and I used to swap stories. Since Stu and I spent an infinite number of hours together, I conveyed to him an endless sea of details about Hellincrest and the people I grew up with, which included yarns about Roger. For example, I told Stu that Roger possessed other attributes besides his courage and athletic ability. Roger was an exceptional artist and had once taken a few moments to teach me how to draw a horse’s head and a human profile.
Eventually, as I talked about Roger, Stu began to talk about this guy who lived across the street from him named Roger. Stu boasted that this guy was the best faux finisher in the Washington, D.C. area. This artisan had studied his craft with Germans and was getting paid big bucks working at museums and monuments. He could take any surface, and using paint, glaze, and various secret tricks, transform it into a completely different surface. Stu’s neighbor could masterfully remake a wooden column to look exactly like the marble building or monument to which it was attached. He could turn tile into wood. At his skilled hands, drywall would be metamorphosed into brick.
Well, aft
er talking about these two Rogers for months, Stu and I began to suspect they might be the same guy. We arranged a meeting. It turned out that Stu’s Roger was indeed Roger from Hellincrest. When we approached his house, Roger was leaving to play tennis. Since he was wearing shorts, his knee injury was clearly apparent. Although his leg muscles were very well developed, a huge scar rested next to a deep crater where a large chunk of muscle used to be. I think I may have flinched upon seeing it. We talked for a while about the past although Roger expressed little interest. Oddly, Roger claimed to remember little of the exploits I mentioned.
As we parted, I stated that I played a little tennis. He immediately challenged me. But as Roger said, “Yeah, come on, I’m really good. I’ll kick your butt,” a tetherball game flashed in my brain and I decided not to go there again. This is the guy from Hellincrest who never sees defeat I thought. Then I had a gentler idea. “Hey, Roger, we’re going on a fishing trip next weekend. Why don’t you come? Yakov Mordicai ben Gabriel will be there.”
Roger accepted my offer and joined a bunch of my fishing buddies on one of our semi-annual fishing trips. I guess it wasn’t Roger’s kind of sport. It’s hard to be courageous with a fish and I don’t believe I have ever seen anyone so bored.
I think reconnecting with Roger inspired me to visit the old neighborhood. I went by Barbie’s parents’ home. Barbie was there and we began talking. I don’t recall what was said, but in a few moments her husband showed up and threatened to beat me up. I left and never saw her again. By the way, that was also the only time Roger’s old sidekick, Bobby Hicupio and I ever spoke. Barbie married Bobby Hicupio!
47
Jacksonville
Besides the annihilation of my initial bona fide love affiliation, everything else in my life looked to be ending as well. When I left Hellincrest in 1967, the only place I had lived longer than a year-and-a-half, I alighted in a very unlike locality – a place teeming with southern small town minute-minded men and women of majestic, mock moral fiber – a place existing 10 to 100 years in the past – a place where all the boys wore yellow socks to match their yellow shirts, or red socks to match their red shirts, and either blue jeans or white Levis, penny loafers without any pennies, and hair that swooped down over their foreheads like a falling flood of dried-out, tethered twine.
Three of my nearest and dearest steered clear of the relocation. My elder sister Arcadia got hitched and left home in a brand new ’68 Mustang. Leo, “The Bright,” evaded repositioning in the deepest of the south by taking the long way around, and stopped off at Duke University. Unable to agree on too many things – like what to do about a troublemaker like me – my parents divorced, and my father headed north. My younger sister Melody, younger brother Ripley and I joined my mother and left Hellincrest, moving into the dog-filching town of Jacksonville, Alabama. The second day we were there, some plundering puppy pirates pilfered my dog, Pixie. According to one of the neighbors, “People ‘round ‘ere steal a small dog.” We never saw her again.
My positions on the football, baseball, basketball, and track teams were filled by some other Maryland kid. My misadventures with friends were over and done with. Performing, teaching, and traveling with the Boulevard Drum Corps were no more. Playing rhythm and blues with my best friends in the Immortals dolefully, alas, desisted.
In small towns, it is essential to fit in, and fitting in means not stepping out of bounds in any way. I was clearly way out of bounds – I didn’t own a pair of blue jeans, white Levis, penny loafers, or matching shirt-sock combinations, and my hair didn’t swoop in a flow forward; in fact, it was greased in a ducktail backwards. I carried a huge chip on my shoulder, talked funny – Prince Georges County, Maryland/Southeast D.C. accent – wore a black leather jacket in the Alabama summer heat, and didn’t understand, or even know the many puzzling small town rules like smiling, looking clean-cut, talking behind people’s backs, and being friendly. My efforts making friends, particularly girlfriends, was ineffectual, and since I didn’t really see anyone with whom I wanted to be friends anyway, my insincere efforts made the process prickly and tricky.
I had started driving legally shortly before our move to Alabama. The thing about driving a car is that you can get more lost quicker. Natives of this small town so rarely encountered a person who had not spent his or her whole life there that a failure to communicate was likely. The first time I asked a local for directions, he slowly drawled, “Well, ya’ll go on down ere fer a ways … till ya’ll git ta whar that ole oak tree yusta be … then hed on out tord the ole Johnson place … jus’ down a piece … yule see it … ya’ll caint miss it.” Well, we missed it.
Strangely, although I had attended nine different schools in the states of California, Virginia, Florida, and Maryland, I had attended school with only two or three African Americans. Now, in the Deep South, where racism had prospered and was presumed to be at its most appalling, I was in a school that was fully integrated – recently integrated – so there were a few other people in the school besides me who didn’t quite blend in. Ronnie Overton was one of them – an African American from Philadelphia. He didn’t dress as cool, or should I say dress as alien – out of the usual run of things – as me, but it was close – closer by far than anyone else there, and Ronnie didn’t fit in any better than I did. We became two oddball friends who dwelled outside society’s recognized borders. We talked and laughed, swapping stories, and being oblivious to everything else around us.
Choosing Ronnie, an African American, to be my closest consort undoubtedly wasn’t the wisest choice in helping me to assimilate in a small town in the Deep South, although, another choice I made eventually carried more bearing on my life in Jacksonville. Jacksonville wasn’t a physically violent place – not like Hellincrest. But, it could be abusive in a different way. If you weren’t careful, you could be excluded from the idyllic southern small town life, even becoming the foil for the whole thing.
48
Jock Versus Geek
Before the school year started, I figured I would play football. The choice seemed logical. If we hadn’t left Maryland, I had intended to join some of my friends and play for Potomac High School.
Our guide those first few weeks in Jacksonville was our realtor. He seemed to carry a secret handbook on living in Jacksonville and confidently conveyed the ease with which we would assimilate into the town’s friendly culture. I asked him how I would go about joining the football team. He assured me that it would be simple and trouble-free. The team had already begun practicing at the high school, and all I had to do was go down to the school, and they would be waiting – happy to see me.
So, I brought the chip on my shoulder, my black leather jacket, and my Yankee accent and went to check it out. When I got to the site, I saw a bunch of abysmally grimy guys wallowing in dirt – dust coating the whole scene. Two assistant coach-looking chaps were sitting on a bench over a puddle of tobacco juice, rubbing their jaws, chewing and spitting, and in general boding evil. I walked up, standing a little to their side, waiting to be acknowledged. Finally, they stopped spewing and turned slowly and glared at me, then turned back and spit. Their precision routine appeared to be over, so I spoke up.
“How do I try out for the football team?”
After some time, a few seconds I guess, although it seemed much longer, they spit again, and then turned their heads toward me; disdain seeped from surly mugs. With brown juice oozing from the corner of a messy mouth, the one closest to me growled, “Wha’d yo say?”
“How do you try out for the football team?”
Both stared at me for a moment, twisted back and gazed lovingly at each other, started sniggering, and then acted as if I wasn’t even there.
After a few moments, I spoke again. “I just moved here. I want to know how to try out for the football team?”
After a few chaws and a spit and without looking at me or his partner, one appeared to translate slowly for the other, “I think he whoansta try out fer the fudbal
l team.”
“Yeah, dat’s wad it sounded lack ta me.”
I continued, “How do I get equipment?”
Slowly, the one closest turned his head the smallest amount in my direction but without even the slightest glimpse at me snarled, “Whar’s yo’ equibmen?”
“I don’t have any equipment. I just moved down here. How do I get some? I guess that’s what I’m asking.“
Whoa horse!
The first redneck clarified for the second one, “He don have no equibmen. He whoansta know how da gidsum.”
Chuckling, the second redneck confirmed, “Yeah, he don have no equibmen; he whoansta know how da gidsum.”
Then they both returned to their chuckling, chewing, and spewing. I remained there for a few moments, watching the team practicing and wondering what was up with Chewey and Spewey. The team didn’t look too good to me, and I wasn’t inspired to deal with dumb and dumber in order to play on it, so after expressing my displeasure with Chewey and Spewey with a bit of the foulest prose I could fume, I left.
Now I had to consider an offer that was made earlier – one that I had blown off. A few days before my encounter with Chewey and Spewey, the high school band director, Mr. Carruth, and the drum major for the high school band, Cavin Dunningham, had shown up at my door. I was amazed when they told me they had heard I was a professional drummer. The truth was although I had performed with the Immortals on “Tony Grant’s Stars of Tomorrow” on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, and I had done some USO shows and teen club dances with the Immortals, the only paying gig I ever had was at a girlfriend’s party for 35 cents – 35 cents for the whole band. My cut was a nickel. But how did they know that? They wanted to invite me to join the band. I figured I was too cool for that. After all, the only high school bands I had seen in Maryland sucked. I wanted no part of a high school band.