Dick Summer Connection

What are friends for, if not to break each other’s crystal balls. I took a baseball bat to my buddy Eric’s today. Eric’s had some tough breaks recently. I mean tough. Not just stuff like it’s pouring rain, and your dog won’t do anything but sniff around, or after an evening of passion you notice that the empty condom packet in the wastebasket is labeled, “Made in China”…or the milk you just poured on your Cheerios smells funny. Eric’s had his head handed to him. Lady stuff. The kind of thing that has you staying awake all night watching ESPN’s six hour special called “Legends Of Miniature Golf.” He told me he woke up this morning and found his clothes scattered all over the floor…and he was still wearing them. He’s really down, and has been for a while. It’s called a depression. Most Louie-Louie Generation folks have had a few of them. They can make you feel like an exchange student from the Twilight Zone.

As you probably know, depressions are the result of burnout. And you probably also know that burnout isn’t necessarily caused by being over-worked. Burnout usually comes from being under-appreciated…and out of control. Too many times getting passed over for a promotion at work. Getting a notice from your credit card company that it has been so long since you paid them that they have now given you a two digit credit rating…and for the last two months, it sounds like the guy in the apartment upstairs has installed a bowling alley in his bedroom…for two damn months. Maybe even worse…you’ve spent too many New Years Eves just clinking your Champaign glass against your bathroom mirror…or too many winters just wearing wool socks to keep your feet warm…and you realize you can’t even remember the last time you felt something go bump in the night.

So you start beating yourself up. You start thinking things like, “Well, I buttered my own bread, so now I’ve got to go lie down in it.”  Then next, you get so mad you start with the attitude stuff…”Well, I guess I can’t please everybody…but I sure as hell can give everybody the finger.” Not a help. That’s about where my buddy Eric was beginning to wander when he kind of looked down at his crystal ball, and said something that freaked me out. He said, “I am in a never ending depression.” It was time to break his crystal ball.

Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast. 

1-      What’s the pickiness that portends powerful poopy pain ?

2-      What do the rabbits around here do behind the scientists backs ?

3-      What is the sound of an exploding sheep?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

Some things just don’t make sense. You play hookey, and they suspend you from school. The state takes away your driver’s license, and then they arrest you for driving without a license. And we keep trying to figure out what we should do next, by endlessly thinking about what we did before. There’s a story about that in the Bedtime Stories Personal Audio CD. It’s called “On The Prowl.”

Her eyes, the way she walked, and the sound of her voice…no way a guy can forget things like that. You try…sometimes for weeks, or months or even years. Sometimes for the rest of your life. But you keep remembering… especially her eyes…always looking back…remembering her eyes. And eventually you get smash everything…and everyone…mad. Because it never seems to end…the looking back…seeing her eyes. Been there…done that.

“On The Prowl” is from the Bedtime Stories Personal Audio CD. If you like it you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the Bedtime Stories icon on the home page.

My buddy Eric looked down into his crystal ball and said “I’m in a never ending depression.” Being a good Louie-Louie Generation buddy, it was time for me to smash every one of his nasty crystal balls. They were all looking in the wrong direction. Backward. So I smacked him with an honest thought. I told him he had no idea he was going to be in a depression over this lost romance back when his hormones started humming the puberty polka. It was a total surprise. And he has no real proof right now that his depression is going to last forever. It might. Or there might be another total surprise in store for him. Big Louie, his own bad self always says, “You never know when something fantastic is going to happen to you.”

Let me tell you a little story…or actually, I’ll let Proud Podcast Participant Gerry C. tell it to you. First a little background. When I was on the air at night, I used to like to do a little quickie fun thing I called a Light Hello. The idea was that I’d count to three, and everybody listening would flick their lights, and if they were driving honk their horns. The idea was that you might notice that the somebody very interesting who lives next door was also listening, which gives you something to talk about next time you see her. Or him. You understand. So now let Gerry fill you in with the story he told me in an email:

“If you remember the old Neponset Drive-In in Dorchester, you’ll get a kick out of this anecdote–I went there one nameless evening in 1964 with a date and when we exited just after midnight, the first thing we did was turn on your show on the car radio. Before we could get to the expressway, we had to get through the massive car-jam created by the few hundred cars that were piled up navigating the drive-in egress. As you said “If you’re listening on your car radio, honk your horn and flash your lights!” Within a split second, the whole mass of exiting cars was a maelstrom of honking horns and flashing lights, and everyone there was laughing to each other, rolling down windows and saying” isn’t that a riot!” It was a howlingly funny moment shared by hundreds of people who had never before known each other, an instant community of your fans. Thank you for that moment and a thousand others. We wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

One kind of silly moment out of a long time ago. More than forty years to be exact. It could have been road rage time. In fact that’s what seemed to be cooking. But it ended up in laughs and maybe even a few instant friendships and who knows, maybe even a romance or two. So…I had to smash my buddy Eric’s crystal balls today. They were all pointed in the wrong direction. Backwards.

Big Louie’s right. No matter what your crystal balls tell you, hang in there. You just never know when something fantastic is going to happen to you.

You all should see the closet my Louie-Louie Lad is talking about.  Actually it’s two closets and a pile of “stuff” … most of which he hasn’t touched since we moved into this house a hundred years ago.

 Don’t get me wrong; I also have a pile, called a stash.  Books enough to start a library and so much cross stitch sewing pieces it’ll take me a hundred years to do it all.  But at least my stash is useable by anyone who comes along.

 HIS stash … closet … pile … ‘things’ … is just about unusable ‘cause it is mostly made up of equipment that stopped being current about ten (fifteen?) years ago.  He has resisted, as most Louie-Louie Lads do, any attempt to get him to … “ye gads, throw it all away?” … which was okay until he decided we had better downsize in case we decide to move to a smaller place.  Hence, the closet …

 HA!

 And the bigger problem isn’t getting rid of equipment that no longer works, but trying to get him to hold onto tapes that are a record of his years on the radio and his writing and all the small bits and pieces that make up his life.  I know, I know, we can’t even play the tapes.  But someday our great granddaughter just might be able to and if we haven’t kept those tapes and papers, what’s she gonna do?   They’re not just memories, they are pieces of who and what he is.  And Cecelia is the kind of girl who will most definitely appreciate that. 

 So okay, throw the damned dual deck tape recorder out.  But save Odetta and Tom Rush and Shrewsburies and dimes for Nightlighters Against Gutlessness and oh, please, Mouth vs. Ear.

That’s not stuff – that is you, my Louie-Louie Lad

I just came out of the closet, and I found a long lost treasure in there. Let me be very clear what I mean by coming out of my closet. I’ve been looking at the bulge in the door of my office closet, where I keep my stuff. You know…my stuff. My reel to reel tape recorder, my back issues of time magazine, my living room lava lamps…you’ve probably got a closet full of stuff like that too. And I figured that since I can’t finish the job I was planning on doing…cutting the grass…I might as well take on the battle of the bulge…the bulge in the door.

The grass situation is a little out of control. Actually it’s mostly weeds according to my Lady Wonder Wench and other botanical experts…but it’s green, it grows, it looks ok if you keep it cut, and I’m from Brooklyn so it’s grass to me. But I’ve been busy working on my new book, so I have kept it somewhat un-cut. And my Lady Wonder Wench has been suggesting that the onrushing weeds are so high that they’re beginning to cut off the view of our driveway from our living room window. My perfectly reasoned response that I don’t particularly miss seeing our driveway doesn’t seem to have been completely satisfactory to her. And it is true that I certainly don’t want any of the large, hairy beasts that she claims may have moved into the lawn under cover of darkness last night to carry her off to some grassy cave so they can have their way with her. And I hate it when our mail guy Bill, whines about having to reach through the weeds to open our mail box.

So, it was past time for me to put on my Lawn Tractor man Tee shirt, and go on the attack. But I can’t lawn tractor around some of the lawn. It’s not that I’m afraid of getting swallowed up by the taller weeds, or being attacked by big, sneaky, hairy creatures. There are just some very rocky, and very hilly places where I’ve just got to resort to weed whacking and push mower-ing. So I did. And right in the middle of my push mower-ing, my Louie-Louie Generation left leg attacked me.

As Big Louie, his own bad self, the chief mustard cutter of the Louie-Louie Generation has often explained, there are terrific benefits to being a Louie-Louie Generation guy. For example, we tend to be the bed mates of choice for Porn stars, high powered lady executives, and sexy Lady Wonder Wenches. But there are also some problems. And I immediately knew it was problem time when I heard a distinct “sprong” from under my left knee cap, the muscle on my left hip jumped up and hid in my left armpit, and for a moment I saw and heard the New York Fourth of July fireworks display going off in my head. Somehow…in an instant…I became a quivering bunch of powerless, Louie-Louie Generation heavy breathing molecules.

I don’t like that. Being powerless sucks. I have very seldom felt powerless in my lifetime. I felt that way those two weeks I spent in the hospital. Think about it. Lois Lane loved Superman. And she didn’t even see Clark Kent. He was a nice guy…smart, vulnerable, honest…but powerless. She didn’t want a powerless nice guy. Even when he’s smart, vulnerable and honest. And I don’t blame her. I believe that the difference between living and just existing is in your power. Your power can be physical, emotional, spiritual, financial…or whatever kind of power that works for you. And maybe most of all, I believe in the awesome power of your personal beliefs.

I believe in a lot of things. I believe it’s a terrible waste to let ourselves turn into warm chunks of meat just because we don’t look like the people in the beer commercials any more. I believe in honesty, truth, baseball, and highway safety. I believe justice should be enforced with compassion. In fact, I believe in the American Dream…whatever that is…uniquely and individually…for each and every one of us. My God think of the power in that. I believe in Santa Claus, and in loving the same woman for a lot of years…and for as many years as we may be lucky enough to have left… I believe real men don’t care if people see them cry…I believe men and women are supposed to be different…I believe in magic…and wooden baseball bats…I love the way they feel, and the sound they make smacking the ball…and I believe in the healing power of chicken soup and peanut butter- the chunky kind…and keeping the hormones humming with an occasional little silky sleaze…and laughing at yourself……and the worthlessness of guilt, excuses, and gangsta rap…and the tingle inside when you take a deep breath of very fresh air…and letting go of your kids when it’s time…that’s hard…and the importance of learning the difference between treasure and crap…and taking care of your mom when your dad dies…and working your ass off…and maybe most of all I believe in being grateful for what you’ve got…really grateful. What do you believe ?

Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1-     What do Barney the Dinosaur and the Ku Klux Klan have in common?

2-     What does the singles bar sign say about ugly people and sex ?

3-     What’s Maria doing on Lexington Avenue between 48^th and 49^th ?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

Every living creature has a right to power of some kind. Life itself is a huge power source. If you’ve ever been with someone at the moment of death, you’ve felt the instant when that life power leaves…to do whatever it’s supposed to do next. Power isn’t good and it isn’t bad. The good or bad is up to the people who use it. There’s a story about that in the Night Connections 2 Personal Audio CD. It’s called Painting, Poetry, and Passion.

I finally figured out why she purposely exposed her husband to that other woman’s powerful passion. She loved her husband. She loves him. It was a desperate risk. In fact I think it was crazy. But I guess somewhere deep down inside, she knew that her love wasn’t ever going to make sense again, until her body came to its senses. I sometimes wonder what happened to her friend…and their friendship.

If you like “Painting, Poetry, and Passion” you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the Night Connections 2 icon on the home page.

As I said a few minutes ago, I came out of my closet today, and I found a long lost treasure in there…one little bit of magic that made the sprong in the kneecap, the hip muscle hiding under my arm pit and the fireworks in the head all go away…like magic

Sometimes the biggest treasure gets packed into the littlest packages. It’s magic. Powerful magic. And so it is with this small, yellowed, clipping from a 1982 Cleveland newspaper. It says, Quote, “Eleven year old Amy Burnett of Burton placed first in the recent Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital art contest. She received a $5 gift certificate for ice cream. Her design was picked from among 60 received, and was printed on 74,000 greeting cards to be used to raise money for the hospital. ‘Hasn’t this been an exciting day’ Amy murmered to her mother after the choice was announced. She died an hour later of cystic fibrosis, which she had suffered since she was three.”

I don’t know how a loving power in charge of the universe could let an innocent little kid suffer and die like that. I believe in love. And I couldn’t find any there. But as I was looking …I found that long lost treasure. “Hasn’t this been an exciting day,” she said. The master of the universe cut her life cruelly short. But in her last hour, he let her win. It’s an awesome lesson…a priceless treasure…and he shared it with her…and with me.

The mighty power of even just one moment of compassion.

Click here, Big Louie says.  I did.  Hmmmmmmm …The problem with “click here” is you don’t always know what you’re going to get.  Now, in my case it worked out fine.  Very fine.  Wonderfully fine …

I could go on forever, but you sure don’t want to hear all that stuff.  But what if you click and get … Dracula or a little wizened up old man who just wants to sleep (not that I blame him, he’s just tired after all that clicking!) … or worse, a marvelously handsome, intelligent, successful guy who struts around waiting for you to admire him …

No, thanks, Big Louie, I’ll click … and make my own choice.  The clicker works both ways, remember.  Life really is a succession of choices.  In spite of Big Louie and the song of the ages, a girl’s gotta use her head (and her eyes and her … um, desires) before she runs off with a guy with no visible future but all the dreams and ideas imaginable.  Then she can take that stupid clicker and throw it in the trash.

No, I didn’t …

Big Louie, his own bad self, always says, “This is a hit and miss life. There’s nothing in between.” And as almost always, he’s right. Brian Williams, on the other hand, keeps reporting on TV, that there are near misses all over the place…in the air and in politics…everywhere. And he’s wrong. There are no near misses. Think about it. A near miss is a hit. If I look out the windscreen of my little four seat airplane, and it is completely full of the business end of a 747’s right inboard jet engine intake…I hope we have a complete miss…not a near miss. If we have a near miss, the airline captain and I are going to very quickly become much more intimate than either one of us want to think about. And the same principle applies to women.

Because I am a Louie-Louie Generation Gentleman, I still call a very young woman…”Miss.” I think miss is an appropriate and descriptive term for a young woman who has probably been hit on by plenty of Pimple People guys…but so far they have all missed. I think that’s where we got the term “miss.” And if that’s where we got the word, “miss,” it’s obvious that we got the word “mister” from some frustrated guy who hit on a woman and missed her. And “Mrs.” means everybody who hits on a “Mrs.”…misses. 

When a woman wears the kind of stuff Victoria’s Secret sells, she is covering just enough woman to suggest that if I stick around there might be a genuine near miss. Remember, a near miss is a hit. And put a Louie-Louie Generation guy into a situation like that, and there is very high likelihood that she will be absolutely right. Vicki made a very big business out of very tiny little bits of cloth.

Big things are almost always built from a lot of little things. Little clicks that change the whole tv channel that we live in. The Chrysler building is one of New York’s biggest sky scrapers. And it’s built of bricks. A bunch of guys put one brick on top of another, till they got quite a view. Shaq O’Neil is the result of a microscopic egg sharing kind of a hot tub experience with a heavy breathing little sperm who managed to wriggle out of his Speedo for the occasion. And it was a long parade of tiny clicks a long time ago that changed my channel to the one that features my Lady Wonder Wench .

Here’s what happened: Santa brought me a portable radio when I was about seven. (Click) I immediately became a disc jockey in training. I listened to William B. Williams on WNEW, and Big Wilson on WNBC in New York, and I loved it. WNEW and WNBC are big league stations. The radio business is like Baseball. You start in the minors and work your way up. I worked my way up to WIBC in Indianapolis, which is a top level triple A kind of station. (Click) And then, for some reason, Al Heacock, the Program Director at WBZ in Boston fished around in a big box of audition tapes, and came up with mine. And he liked it. (Click) I was in the majors. And I was just a few clicks away from meeting my Lady Wonder Wench.

She wanted to be a veterinarian when she was seven. But her family didn’t have the money to send her to school for that. (Click) So she became a secretary. A very good one. (Click) She got a good job after high school. She was a secretary in a law office. A good job, but no tingle. (Click) Her mother listened to WBZ all the time. (Click) They had a job opening commercial on the air one morning. (Click) Her mom heard it, and challenged my Lady to try for it. (Click) She did. And she won.

But that’s not the end of the parade of tiny clicks that changed my channel. WBZ was a big station. She worked during regular business hours. I worked over nights. We never saw each other. There were two more tiny clicks that had to happen to make it work. And I’ll tell you about them in a minute.

Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1-     Why should men use licorice scented after shave.

2-     How do we know that basketball is really important in Natoma Kansas?

3-     What do politicians and hookers have in common ?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

There’s no such thing as a near miss. You either hit or you miss. The click happens or it doesn’t. I was thinking about that at a Willie Nelson concert a few months ago. He was singing “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before.” And I was thinking, what would happen if I called all the girls I’ve loved on the phone…I mean right now. What would happen. I’m willing to bet you’d hear a lot of, “Dick Who ?” And clicks of the telephone receiver kind.

Sometimes the clicks in your life work a little like the left clicker in your computer. You click on something that says click here, and you have to click it a couple of extra times…and you sometimes say some words the firewall won’t let you print. Then if you get lucky, one more click and the page you want pops up.

There’s a story in the Bedtime Stories personal audio CD about a woman who had that kind of thing going on in her life. It’s called The Second Chance. It’s about the fact that it really is a hit or miss life. But the good thing is that sometimes, just when you think you’ve missed so often that you’ve struck out, something amazing goes click. I don’t know for sure how her second chance worked out. But I know she was beginning to feel … just that…she was beginning to feel again. I only saw that instant…not the rest of her lifetime. But there was obviously a click. A quick spark of pride…a flash of passion…an electric moment that I want to think re-lit all the rest of her life. Because she is a very good person.

If you like The Second Chance, you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you’d like a fresh copy just go back to www.dicksummer.com and download it from the Bedtime Stories icon on the home page.

It’s a hit or miss life. There are no near misses. So there she was…a daytime secretary at WBZ Radio in Boston. And I was the all night disc jockey. The all night disc jockey is usually the new guy on the staff. Nobody pays much attention to him. But one evening, the WBZ deejays played a charity basketball game, and the station’s secretaries went to be our cheer leaders. They all cheered for the daytime guys. But on the few occasions that I did anything right, I heard one lovely, lusty cheer coming from a beautiful blue eyed secretary with…such a smile. (Click)

I’ve worked at some even bigger stations…WNEW and WNBC in New York…the stations I listened to on my little transistor radio when I was a kid. But WBZ is one of the most powerful stations in the country. I was getting mail sacks full of mail every day. And I wanted to try to answer it. So I asked the head secretary if any of her staff would like to earn a few extra bucks helping me out with the mail.

Guess who showed up for the gig. (Click)

Yup, my Louie-Louie Lad smells the grass he planted – all four feet of it.  The fact that the rest of the yard has – wait for it – not grass but wild strawberries and something that looks awfully like “weeds” … well, what the hell, he did plant that grass and it did grow and he does enjoy admiring it.  And it really doesn’t matter about the wild stuff … he likes sitting in our nifty yard and admiring his handiwork.  I do too.

And like Louie-Louie Lad Dennis, I too talk to flowers.  Sometimes they even whisper back …

But if any of you lasses can come up with a way for me to keep the lad from mowing too often, I would appreciate it.  Y’see, Randy next door goes out almost every day and sits on his tractor and sort of pretends to mow, all the while he is thinking heavily about his job and his teenaged daughter and small stuff like that.  Perfectly understandable.  Unfortunately, my Louie-Louie Generation lad feels he has to emulate Randy and go out to mow at the same time.

Now, what did I say we have in our yard?  Wild strawberries.  You really can’t mow them very often or you will dig holes in the grass … er, yard.  Even, if you tip over on the lawn tractor if you get too close to the steep edge.  Yes, he has …

So while I really admire that lovely grass, I would prefer the lad in one piece …

Take a moment, please, to feel sorry for the Louie-Louie lass who can’t make up her mind.  Originally, I was going to write a diatribe against the state of M………. and the women who live there and allowed mismanagement, misogyny, and a million other m’s to actively destroy their rights and their control over their own bodies … but … It’s the Fourth of July and I just can’t do it.  So don’t feel sorry for me, but for those poor ladies in M……….

And instead, clap hands for Sister Cassidy and for all those who have managed to outlive the prognosis … and LIVED!  Me included.

No, Angel Angela, this does not mean you can bring your magic fingernails and slide them down my Lad’s back again (she’s the one who started this whole thing) but for old time’s sake, I will take MY longer fingernails and do a number on the Lad’s back so he’ll stop sighing …

… but does this mean I can have a Porsche?  Huh, pretty please?