Baby Huey is giving another one of his birthday parties. We're all invited. But you know what? Last time I went Baby Huey decided he wanted all the cake, all the gifts, all the food because he didn't think he got enough last time. And we all just sat there wondering what kind of a party it was.
Well we're invited again. The party. There'll be cake, I guess. It's Baby Huey's big day. Some people are just stupid enough to show up thinking maybe THEY will be the ones to get all the cake. Why share? It's a kind of Tea Party this time. But it's really the same old scam. I am not going. You live, you learn, you know what that party is all about. Huey will say anything to get us to come. Have we learned from the last time? I have. I'm not going and to hell with his birthday.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
A Little History From A Dumpster Down the Block
During the course of my daily walks I out of habit nose around the things put out for the trash folks. The other day I noticed a dumpster outside a house that has been abandoned after foreclosure two years ago. I took a superficial look on the surface level and what was there? An Arthur Godfrey 78, not playable, a totally destroyed version of Ideal's toy called Jimmy Jet, which I got for a holiday present in I think 1958. It was damaged beyond salvaging, not that I would. That was a Cold War toy. You sited Russian planes on the screen and shot them both electronically and via four darts at the top of the simulated jet cockpit, onto a target silhouette of the plane. I think it was several weeks before I more or less destroyed my own Jimmy Jet.
Back to the walks and the dumpster. A few days later I noticed somebody had liberated the Jimmy Jet anyway, in spite of its terrible condition. I noticed one other thing that day, which I grabbed. It was a pretty elaborate, tiny Japanese finger bowl. I took it home for my wife. After we washed it and such, I looked at the back of it, on the bottom. It had printed on it "Product of Occupied Japan!" Wow. So I'll bet whoever lived in the house was stationed in Japan at the close of WWII. That dumpster was evidence of a life, of history. Two centuries from now a museum would probably be proud to display a significant part of that trash, as examples of 20th Century America.
Another weird thing in the dumpster. . . anybody remember those solid steel toy trucks the boomer generation had as kids? (OK they were boy toys...) Well, there was one of those, a dump truck, but its color was solid rust.
It was eerie. Like all the stuff in the house you grew up in had been left in that house, abandoned for the past 40 years, and finally somebody went in there and it was just like the whole family had disappeared into thin air some time in 1960. The stuff had sat there undisturbed except by the processes of time and only now somebody realized it was a good moment to throw it all out. There were reel-to-reel tapes, Bobsie Twins books, the guts of a 1950's TV set, a tube clock radio from like 1957...
This economic disaster we all are dealing with has as a by-product a kind of archaeological unearthing of cultural history. Every time someone loses their home, dumpsters of historical artifacts appear on the corner. This is not the way I would like to recall the history of my region. Dig we must, I suppose. No other choice. But I hope the foreclosures stop. Now.
Back to the walks and the dumpster. A few days later I noticed somebody had liberated the Jimmy Jet anyway, in spite of its terrible condition. I noticed one other thing that day, which I grabbed. It was a pretty elaborate, tiny Japanese finger bowl. I took it home for my wife. After we washed it and such, I looked at the back of it, on the bottom. It had printed on it "Product of Occupied Japan!" Wow. So I'll bet whoever lived in the house was stationed in Japan at the close of WWII. That dumpster was evidence of a life, of history. Two centuries from now a museum would probably be proud to display a significant part of that trash, as examples of 20th Century America.
Another weird thing in the dumpster. . . anybody remember those solid steel toy trucks the boomer generation had as kids? (OK they were boy toys...) Well, there was one of those, a dump truck, but its color was solid rust.
It was eerie. Like all the stuff in the house you grew up in had been left in that house, abandoned for the past 40 years, and finally somebody went in there and it was just like the whole family had disappeared into thin air some time in 1960. The stuff had sat there undisturbed except by the processes of time and only now somebody realized it was a good moment to throw it all out. There were reel-to-reel tapes, Bobsie Twins books, the guts of a 1950's TV set, a tube clock radio from like 1957...
This economic disaster we all are dealing with has as a by-product a kind of archaeological unearthing of cultural history. Every time someone loses their home, dumpsters of historical artifacts appear on the corner. This is not the way I would like to recall the history of my region. Dig we must, I suppose. No other choice. But I hope the foreclosures stop. Now.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
On the Miniaturization of the World
Small is better. We seem to think that. Why? In my experience the transistor radio of the early sixties was the first big commodity that capitalized on smallness. That the quality of the sound was akin to pre-wax-cylinder audio didn't seem to phase kids like me. I loved mine with a passion. I suppose the first wrist watches or before that, pocket watches, were a big deal when they first came out. And in the world of travel, small things were long a part of the package. Small bars of soap at the hotel. Little shampoo containers. The airlines in the fifties would serve beer in half-sized bottles. My father would bring unopened samples home from business trips and, man, I really dug them.
The New York World's Fair in 1965. . . I remember the Japan Pavilion. They had an electronics section where little TVs were on display. They worked, even. Wow.
Well we've come quite a ways since then. Now EVERYTHING seems to be small. Yeah, the phones with the little screens and the "apps." You can watch a movie the size of a commemorative postage stamp. And graphic arts: our television screens, stuff on the internet, CD booklet type, all so small I personally have a hard time reading it. My wife and I tune in to the middle of a Mets game, for example, and she asks, "what inning does it say it is?" I can't make it out from where we are sitting. "Either six. . .or nine. Can't tell," I reply. Now there are plenty of graphics designers, I assume, that are 20 years old, getting paid peanuts, and they have 20/20 vision. Maybe if the Art Director was over 35 he or she would make them up the point sizes? But no, anybody over 35 would have to be properly paid, so there isn't anybody left. They are gone. Home squinting at their TVs, or gazing at their phone, trying to figure out what show it is they are watching. "Must be Lucy. I can tell by her voice."
And even the logos for products. . . tiny, so the message seems to be lost. But no, it's in fashion.
Watch a video of an old baseball game. Mickey Mantle comes up. . . on the screen flashes MICKEY MANTLE .322 AVE in a huge typeface. It looks so. . . old fashioned. But you don't have to squint to read it.
It's a small world. Maybe it's getting too small. Are we that cramped for space?
I like to go to the seashore because you can look out at the ocean where the horizon line of sky and sea meet. It's so open, so big. I wonder if there are any plans to shrink it down in the future? It's so passe, isn't it? And the universe. Much too big for modern times. Must do something about that.
The New York World's Fair in 1965. . . I remember the Japan Pavilion. They had an electronics section where little TVs were on display. They worked, even. Wow.
Well we've come quite a ways since then. Now EVERYTHING seems to be small. Yeah, the phones with the little screens and the "apps." You can watch a movie the size of a commemorative postage stamp. And graphic arts: our television screens, stuff on the internet, CD booklet type, all so small I personally have a hard time reading it. My wife and I tune in to the middle of a Mets game, for example, and she asks, "what inning does it say it is?" I can't make it out from where we are sitting. "Either six. . .or nine. Can't tell," I reply. Now there are plenty of graphics designers, I assume, that are 20 years old, getting paid peanuts, and they have 20/20 vision. Maybe if the Art Director was over 35 he or she would make them up the point sizes? But no, anybody over 35 would have to be properly paid, so there isn't anybody left. They are gone. Home squinting at their TVs, or gazing at their phone, trying to figure out what show it is they are watching. "Must be Lucy. I can tell by her voice."
And even the logos for products. . . tiny, so the message seems to be lost. But no, it's in fashion.
Watch a video of an old baseball game. Mickey Mantle comes up. . . on the screen flashes MICKEY MANTLE .322 AVE in a huge typeface. It looks so. . . old fashioned. But you don't have to squint to read it.
It's a small world. Maybe it's getting too small. Are we that cramped for space?
I like to go to the seashore because you can look out at the ocean where the horizon line of sky and sea meet. It's so open, so big. I wonder if there are any plans to shrink it down in the future? It's so passe, isn't it? And the universe. Much too big for modern times. Must do something about that.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
On Reading and Writing
Is anybody out there?
I know there are some people who read these posts, but right now I don't know how many. I just trust that they are there, and will be there. But today I am thinking of the larger picture.
When I was a kid one of my favorite movies (and later, books) was The Time Machine. When "Million Dollar Movie" aired the adaptation of the book on Channel Nine you could watch it every night for a week and twice on Saturday. And at least at one point I nearly did that. There was a scene far in the future where Rod Taylor asked the refined-to-degeneracy flower children living on the earth's surface whether they had any books. They did. One of them took him to a building filled with them. Rod went to pick one up and it disintegrated into dust. People had forgotten how to read.
That scene seemed unbelievable to me. "That will never happen," I thought to myself. Now I am not sure. Then, my parents read books regularly, though neither went to college. They encouraged us to read. We went to school. We read the books. And we read books for fun too.
I look around the world I am in today and wonder. Many of my friends seem to have stopped reading, books anyway. Sometimes you visit people and see books lined up on a shelf, perhaps unread, and it brings to mind that scene from the movie. If I pick one up will it turn to dust?
The concept of the public library lives on. Imagine, a government pays for a building, a bunch of books, and they allow anyone to read them, for free. Shouldn't that be illegal? Isn't that somehow communist? You perhaps laugh (or not), but the idea that somebody might argue that some day in the near future doesn't seem as impossible as it might have seemed when I was five years old. Benjamin Franklin and his ilk had the right idea. Reading is good. It is a cornerstone of civilization and needs to be encouraged. Yes, and the government at whatever level needs to subsidize it.
That's not in line with the ULTRA-CAPITALIZATION-OF-EVERYTHING the Far Right has been pushing for, the deregulate-and-destroy policy. The lean, mean, and socially suicidal policy. So guess what? We now see where it leads. Ultimately untrammeled Capital, in the escalating extremism of profit at all costs, destroys itself and everything around it, destroys its own ability to exist and do whatever with those profits. So, in the very least, some group of people have to be literate enough to communicate with one another with more than GET BANANA AND EAT icons for the whole game to continue. I do believe, as is obvious, that greed must be regulated and channeled to the public good, though that might mean that profits in the short term are lesser.
So what to do? It seems that people think that the new generation must be "computer literate" if we are to survive. We need to develop more scientists and technological workers so we can innovate, solve the energy crises, revive the economy and all of that. Fine. But reading and writing, literacy, is the basis for it all. And not texting. Not cell phones with lots of "apps" that take the place of literacy. See picture of dog. Click on it. Click on the send arrow. Friend gets picture of dog. Anybody can do it. (And actually, I believe apes probably already know how and are out there sending each other pictures of dogs even as I write this.)
Our survival depends upon our literacy. Sounds simple and obvious, but are we forgetting it anyway, little by little? We cannot afford that.
I know there are some people who read these posts, but right now I don't know how many. I just trust that they are there, and will be there. But today I am thinking of the larger picture.
When I was a kid one of my favorite movies (and later, books) was The Time Machine. When "Million Dollar Movie" aired the adaptation of the book on Channel Nine you could watch it every night for a week and twice on Saturday. And at least at one point I nearly did that. There was a scene far in the future where Rod Taylor asked the refined-to-degeneracy flower children living on the earth's surface whether they had any books. They did. One of them took him to a building filled with them. Rod went to pick one up and it disintegrated into dust. People had forgotten how to read.
That scene seemed unbelievable to me. "That will never happen," I thought to myself. Now I am not sure. Then, my parents read books regularly, though neither went to college. They encouraged us to read. We went to school. We read the books. And we read books for fun too.
I look around the world I am in today and wonder. Many of my friends seem to have stopped reading, books anyway. Sometimes you visit people and see books lined up on a shelf, perhaps unread, and it brings to mind that scene from the movie. If I pick one up will it turn to dust?
The concept of the public library lives on. Imagine, a government pays for a building, a bunch of books, and they allow anyone to read them, for free. Shouldn't that be illegal? Isn't that somehow communist? You perhaps laugh (or not), but the idea that somebody might argue that some day in the near future doesn't seem as impossible as it might have seemed when I was five years old. Benjamin Franklin and his ilk had the right idea. Reading is good. It is a cornerstone of civilization and needs to be encouraged. Yes, and the government at whatever level needs to subsidize it.
That's not in line with the ULTRA-CAPITALIZATION-OF-EVERYTHING the Far Right has been pushing for, the deregulate-and-destroy policy. The lean, mean, and socially suicidal policy. So guess what? We now see where it leads. Ultimately untrammeled Capital, in the escalating extremism of profit at all costs, destroys itself and everything around it, destroys its own ability to exist and do whatever with those profits. So, in the very least, some group of people have to be literate enough to communicate with one another with more than GET BANANA AND EAT icons for the whole game to continue. I do believe, as is obvious, that greed must be regulated and channeled to the public good, though that might mean that profits in the short term are lesser.
So what to do? It seems that people think that the new generation must be "computer literate" if we are to survive. We need to develop more scientists and technological workers so we can innovate, solve the energy crises, revive the economy and all of that. Fine. But reading and writing, literacy, is the basis for it all. And not texting. Not cell phones with lots of "apps" that take the place of literacy. See picture of dog. Click on it. Click on the send arrow. Friend gets picture of dog. Anybody can do it. (And actually, I believe apes probably already know how and are out there sending each other pictures of dogs even as I write this.)
Our survival depends upon our literacy. Sounds simple and obvious, but are we forgetting it anyway, little by little? We cannot afford that.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Some Big Apple Moments
At the beginning of the many years I worked in Manhattan (or went to school there) it took me a little effort to get in synch with the anarchy of the rhythm of events. Everything has always happening, nothing was happening too. There was no telling.
The first time I went into the city alone with my friends, it was right about the time the Fugs were starting to hit it "big" in the area. Now Tuli Kupferberg is ill, I hear. I am sorry. At the same time Manhattan was at the height of its influence on the hyper-normal American music scene. Brill Building Jingle-Pop ruled the airwaves, though the British Invasion was cutting great swatches into their piece of the action.
Anyway we were tooling around the streets, not exactly knowing what we were after, when we came upon a fellow with a wild look in his eyes. He was gesticulating animatedly at a garbage truck and saying "I understand this machine. . . " Being naive kids we just started laughing at him. He didn't like it. He ran across the street to us and shouted, "Have you ever heard of HELL???" We had. "Well you *&@$s are IN it."
He was right about hell and the garbage truck. But we didn't really get it.
I used to thumb through the Manhattan Yellow Pages when I had a spare moment where I worked. It was a thick bugger. I am sure it still is, even though i phones and the net have made it less indispensable. I remember under "Auto Towing Services" there was a group of listings that started with the A's. There was A1 Auto Towing, AAAA1 Auto Towing and, not to be outdone, there was something like an AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA1 Auto Towing company listed. That's NYC for you. Everybody is scrambling to get on top, one way or another.
When I was about to graduate from New York University I went out to the University of Chicago to see about their graduate program. I met with the professor who was to become my main mentor. We were talking and I asked about other professors in the department who might be good to study with as well. She hesitated. Then I asked, "well, who do you speak to?" "That's very New York," she replied.
I didn't think it was at the time. In retrospect, she was right. It was.
The first time I went into the city alone with my friends, it was right about the time the Fugs were starting to hit it "big" in the area. Now Tuli Kupferberg is ill, I hear. I am sorry. At the same time Manhattan was at the height of its influence on the hyper-normal American music scene. Brill Building Jingle-Pop ruled the airwaves, though the British Invasion was cutting great swatches into their piece of the action.
Anyway we were tooling around the streets, not exactly knowing what we were after, when we came upon a fellow with a wild look in his eyes. He was gesticulating animatedly at a garbage truck and saying "I understand this machine. . . " Being naive kids we just started laughing at him. He didn't like it. He ran across the street to us and shouted, "Have you ever heard of HELL???" We had. "Well you *&@$s are IN it."
He was right about hell and the garbage truck. But we didn't really get it.
I used to thumb through the Manhattan Yellow Pages when I had a spare moment where I worked. It was a thick bugger. I am sure it still is, even though i phones and the net have made it less indispensable. I remember under "Auto Towing Services" there was a group of listings that started with the A's. There was A1 Auto Towing, AAAA1 Auto Towing and, not to be outdone, there was something like an AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA1 Auto Towing company listed. That's NYC for you. Everybody is scrambling to get on top, one way or another.
When I was about to graduate from New York University I went out to the University of Chicago to see about their graduate program. I met with the professor who was to become my main mentor. We were talking and I asked about other professors in the department who might be good to study with as well. She hesitated. Then I asked, "well, who do you speak to?" "That's very New York," she replied.
I didn't think it was at the time. In retrospect, she was right. It was.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Writing and Memory
When I recollect my early writing experiments and what went with them, I realize it was a product of mutually influential creative interactions with people close to me, starting in seventh grade. I've carried what I gained beginning then through my life without thinking about it much. It hit me around 30 years ago when I first started writing as a livelihood.
I never thought my memory was anything unusual. When I started telling my brothers and sister about things which happened when I was two that they didn’t remember, I took some notice. There are things I remember all the time without trying; not all of them great memories either, of course. If there is something I want to call up, I usually start with the objects and the faces of those involved. Once you dig out the object world and the visuals of people, the incidents follow. It’s visual and it’s also aural—the sound of a friend's voice in telephone conversations we had in 1966, for example. I can conjure it up right now. Not that that makes me different. But it is an important part of what makes me a writer.
It relates to music. Musical-memory and writing-memory are related. It has to do with the sound of life, your life.
Like sometimes I’d be talking a mile a minute on the phone about something and I’d stop and ask the other person something and that person would blurt out the answer in a low-high, two toned answer. That, like music, stays in my memory and always will. And when I write I hear my past, like that two-toned phrase, and it's part of what prefigures my excursion into words.
I can remember just about everything outside of the classroom from 7th grade on—activity wise—what movies, what plays, and you name it. That is true of my interactions with all my friends, and every Christmas. I remember and can conjure up in my head every record I ever had and what it sounded like. It’s the visual and aural memories that are especially vivid. I’ll remember distinctly conversations with certain college girlfriends but wont always recall their names straight off, sometimes.
That is not to say I remember everything about everything, just those things that somehow were important experientially in my life. I think it really became more active when I started writing the first novel 15 years ago. I needed to create a fictional world out of pieces of my life and so started conjuring up in contemplation all sorts of pieces of my memory life from which I picked and chose in constructing my scene and plot.
The main house involved in the first novel (Pineapple Still-Life) is a cross between the house I grew up in Pompton Plains until 1956, parts of the Kinnelon house, a few apartments (Boston, Chicago) and very strangely enough (I am not kidding) the house my wife and I live in now that we bought only after I finished the novel and had not seen before in my life!! The main characters in the novel are pieces of people—the two female leads are part my mother, my sister, old girlfriends, my wife, some friends I knew at the time, my cat of childhood, etc. In constructing these situations and people I started really being able to conjure up near totalities and then play with the combinations of them in imagining this world of 1955 Butler and an artist couple who lived there.
So writing is memory transfigured. It also is crafting. The first two chapters for example I rewrote about 10 or 11 times, at least. There is the additive way to go about things and that's one way—you string something together and add on; then of course subtractive, what you end up erasing.
Just a few thoughts. . .
All sort of in the light of Shakespeare:
“Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:
This wish I have; ten times happy me!”
I never thought my memory was anything unusual. When I started telling my brothers and sister about things which happened when I was two that they didn’t remember, I took some notice. There are things I remember all the time without trying; not all of them great memories either, of course. If there is something I want to call up, I usually start with the objects and the faces of those involved. Once you dig out the object world and the visuals of people, the incidents follow. It’s visual and it’s also aural—the sound of a friend's voice in telephone conversations we had in 1966, for example. I can conjure it up right now. Not that that makes me different. But it is an important part of what makes me a writer.
It relates to music. Musical-memory and writing-memory are related. It has to do with the sound of life, your life.
Like sometimes I’d be talking a mile a minute on the phone about something and I’d stop and ask the other person something and that person would blurt out the answer in a low-high, two toned answer. That, like music, stays in my memory and always will. And when I write I hear my past, like that two-toned phrase, and it's part of what prefigures my excursion into words.
I can remember just about everything outside of the classroom from 7th grade on—activity wise—what movies, what plays, and you name it. That is true of my interactions with all my friends, and every Christmas. I remember and can conjure up in my head every record I ever had and what it sounded like. It’s the visual and aural memories that are especially vivid. I’ll remember distinctly conversations with certain college girlfriends but wont always recall their names straight off, sometimes.
That is not to say I remember everything about everything, just those things that somehow were important experientially in my life. I think it really became more active when I started writing the first novel 15 years ago. I needed to create a fictional world out of pieces of my life and so started conjuring up in contemplation all sorts of pieces of my memory life from which I picked and chose in constructing my scene and plot.
The main house involved in the first novel (Pineapple Still-Life) is a cross between the house I grew up in Pompton Plains until 1956, parts of the Kinnelon house, a few apartments (Boston, Chicago) and very strangely enough (I am not kidding) the house my wife and I live in now that we bought only after I finished the novel and had not seen before in my life!! The main characters in the novel are pieces of people—the two female leads are part my mother, my sister, old girlfriends, my wife, some friends I knew at the time, my cat of childhood, etc. In constructing these situations and people I started really being able to conjure up near totalities and then play with the combinations of them in imagining this world of 1955 Butler and an artist couple who lived there.
So writing is memory transfigured. It also is crafting. The first two chapters for example I rewrote about 10 or 11 times, at least. There is the additive way to go about things and that's one way—you string something together and add on; then of course subtractive, what you end up erasing.
Just a few thoughts. . .
All sort of in the light of Shakespeare:
“Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:
This wish I have; ten times happy me!”
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Excerpt from Unpublished, Still-In-Progress Novel "Cows"
Tommy is a bowling ball salesman who's not meeting his sales quotas. It's the late '50s. He's alone in the office one night when he gets a visit from some people out of another book.
The Salesman with A Dream in His. . .
Oh, Tommy's seen some tough days. And he's seen her. And she's just over the horizon, in the same field, walking towards the cows. She's the dream of a bowling ball salesman. And she has a dream, too. Any relation between the dreams? Oh, there's always some relation, one supposes. Futures loom widely, wildly, at any age, if it is springtime. His dreams fix on objects, human objects mostly, in various guises and life situations. One object, really. He thinks of her as "her." Out there with the cows, like when he knew of her.
He's at work again. And he's been going at the job like mad, trying to reach his quota. So far, not so good. Never mind how hard he tries. He's been putting in long hours--mostly pondering, strategizing, practicing different sales pitches. He's worn himself to a frazzle such that he goes limp on the phone when it comes time to produce a coherently persuasive argument for a batch of A. King balls.
What more can be done?
Go get drunk. It's 8:10 and no one is left in the office but me. I 've got my strategy for tomorrow. Humor. It used to work. Why not now? It will.
The front door creaks open. Who's coming in at this hour?
"Doggone it!" Chet Morton exclaims. "No more sleuthing until we eat."
The fat, happy-old boy stands halfway between Frank and Joe Hardy as they walk through the door.
Dark-haired, eighteen-year-old Frank Hardy takes the lead in the purposeful walk through the reception area of A. King Holes.
Meanwhile, his blond-haired younger brother Joe says, "There used to be some reason for our existence. See this place? It's a sign we no longer matter."
He points to the bowling balls and photos of happy families chucking them down alleys.
Chet Morton opens an eye as they move past a rack of balls. Then a few photos. “What are they?” he asks.
“Bowlers,” Joe tells him. “Supposed to be having fun. Makes this company some money.”
"Bowlers!” The plump boy straightens up, looking worried. “Today?”
"Sure,” Joe Hardy goes on teasingly. "If a bowler puts a spell on your cow, she won't give milk. These pictures keep off the curse.”
Nervously Chet looks at the next two photos, and the balls over to the left, and then once all around him.
"Aw, nobody believes in that kind of stuff anymore. This is the twentieth century. Stop kidding me, will you, fellows? This is a novel. All I'm going to do is sleep and eat. Let's not have any mysteries!”
While their friend settles down and closes his eyes once more, Frank and Joe exchange knowing grins. As sons of the internationally famous detective, Fenton Hardy, they have many times been drawn into baffling and dangerous mysteries, where their brilliant sleuthing has earned them fine reputations of their own. Easygoing Chet Morton, the Hardy's best friend, always seems to become involved.
"Hey, who the hell, is there?” calls out Tommy.
“It’s us, the Hardy Boys, and we're working on The Mystery of the Atomic Toilet.”
“Hey!” Chet yells, “I thought we were looking for food.”
"Not in this novel, you're not!" Tommy warns. "Not food, not toilets. I'm about to be shitcanned and there's no space for your adolescent authority fantasies.”
"Uh, OK. I guess we've got the wrong book." Frank says, puzzled. "Comon you guys. We've got a mystery to solve."
They go out the front door.
The Salesman with A Dream in His. . .
Oh, Tommy's seen some tough days. And he's seen her. And she's just over the horizon, in the same field, walking towards the cows. She's the dream of a bowling ball salesman. And she has a dream, too. Any relation between the dreams? Oh, there's always some relation, one supposes. Futures loom widely, wildly, at any age, if it is springtime. His dreams fix on objects, human objects mostly, in various guises and life situations. One object, really. He thinks of her as "her." Out there with the cows, like when he knew of her.
He's at work again. And he's been going at the job like mad, trying to reach his quota. So far, not so good. Never mind how hard he tries. He's been putting in long hours--mostly pondering, strategizing, practicing different sales pitches. He's worn himself to a frazzle such that he goes limp on the phone when it comes time to produce a coherently persuasive argument for a batch of A. King balls.
What more can be done?
Go get drunk. It's 8:10 and no one is left in the office but me. I 've got my strategy for tomorrow. Humor. It used to work. Why not now? It will.
The front door creaks open. Who's coming in at this hour?
"Doggone it!" Chet Morton exclaims. "No more sleuthing until we eat."
The fat, happy-old boy stands halfway between Frank and Joe Hardy as they walk through the door.
Dark-haired, eighteen-year-old Frank Hardy takes the lead in the purposeful walk through the reception area of A. King Holes.
Meanwhile, his blond-haired younger brother Joe says, "There used to be some reason for our existence. See this place? It's a sign we no longer matter."
He points to the bowling balls and photos of happy families chucking them down alleys.
Chet Morton opens an eye as they move past a rack of balls. Then a few photos. “What are they?” he asks.
“Bowlers,” Joe tells him. “Supposed to be having fun. Makes this company some money.”
"Bowlers!” The plump boy straightens up, looking worried. “Today?”
"Sure,” Joe Hardy goes on teasingly. "If a bowler puts a spell on your cow, she won't give milk. These pictures keep off the curse.”
Nervously Chet looks at the next two photos, and the balls over to the left, and then once all around him.
"Aw, nobody believes in that kind of stuff anymore. This is the twentieth century. Stop kidding me, will you, fellows? This is a novel. All I'm going to do is sleep and eat. Let's not have any mysteries!”
While their friend settles down and closes his eyes once more, Frank and Joe exchange knowing grins. As sons of the internationally famous detective, Fenton Hardy, they have many times been drawn into baffling and dangerous mysteries, where their brilliant sleuthing has earned them fine reputations of their own. Easygoing Chet Morton, the Hardy's best friend, always seems to become involved.
"Hey, who the hell, is there?” calls out Tommy.
“It’s us, the Hardy Boys, and we're working on The Mystery of the Atomic Toilet.”
“Hey!” Chet yells, “I thought we were looking for food.”
"Not in this novel, you're not!" Tommy warns. "Not food, not toilets. I'm about to be shitcanned and there's no space for your adolescent authority fantasies.”
"Uh, OK. I guess we've got the wrong book." Frank says, puzzled. "Comon you guys. We've got a mystery to solve."
They go out the front door.
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