I can describe the furniture store in one word. Shiny. Shiny purple leather sofas, iridescent mirror pictures of the sphinx and king cod and panthers, chandeliers and ornamental elephants made of glass and mirror. Look at that.
The china, this thing, the sofa that I like. Over here, I'll show you. Kati Perez and I stopped into the store while we were working on the radio story in between interviews. We were in 26th street in her neighborhood, little village, when she paused.
Those big Mexican neighborhoods. This white sofa and there's a little table shaped like a piano. There's glass and the piano table is all mirror and the glass table and glass chairs with glass legs on the glass table. It's beautiful.
Katie's 19. It's in a few stories for a radio show. She's one of those teenagers who's on a perpetual plan for self improvement. Switching from job to job, trying to earn enough, keep paying her way through school, struggling.
She and I walked past the shiny living rooms, through the shiny dining rooms and into a dark and shiny bedroom. But she stopped yet and said, oh my God, oh my God, look at this. This is what I want. This is what I'm going to school for.
We were staring in a bed with mirrored columns that rose on the headboard and lights built in around the baseboard. There was a mirrored chandelier, a matching white and mirror bureau and side table with gold cold handles. All which match each other and match the bed. So which parts of this do you like?
Everything. I like the rug, the Chinese rug, the chest thing in there. This is what I'm going to have. Let me have myself a nice house.
She tells me her family's always rented her dreams to own a house filled with furniture like this. We walk from room to room looking at gaudy lamps and cabinets and chairs. I finally caught you, turned to me and asked, so which do you like best? I looked into my eyes.
Now I grew up in rural suburbs outside of Baltimore. I am no stranger to furniture like this. It filled the bright wine green carpeted living rooms a good number of the people who I grew up with and loved. I personally had as many big moments in my life while sitting around glass top tables with shining mirror blades as anyone who I've ever met.
I've had important conversations. Leno in iridescent silver pillows, my feet on super long white shag carpet. I feel at home in this setting. But and I say this with no disrespect, I have not chosen this for my adult life.
It is not my dream. So when Claudia asked, which do you like best? I paused and I said I like the pointer stuff. And she looked at me, did not say anything.
I think this answer just did not make sense to her. My taste does not make much sense to her. She know we're in that situation. You know the situation that two people find themselves in now and then.
That situation of thinking yeah. Your dream, My Nightmare Welcome WBTZ Chicago's American Life. I'm a glass. Each week on our program bring you a wide variety of different kinds of stories on that theme.
Today's program your dream my nightmare Act 1 noise serious minded music critic gets sent on her nightmare vacation to rock and roll fantasy camp. Act 2 color which an interracial couple traveling through Tennessee cannabis and one tourist destination, an antebellum mansion plantation. Act 3 motion which radio produces JLS insights that all the news stories he ever covers are essentially one story, one story. Who steam is?
Do I even have to tell you? Act four Blood. You know, some of the biggest your dream my nightmare scenarios occur when parents try to impose their dream upon their children. Predictive scariest provides us with a case example on the golf course.
Stay with us. Act 1 noise what here is someone's fantasy. A cocktail party about seven in the evening in an old hotel in Miami beach or by the swimming pool. There's Bruce Springsteen drift beer in hand, making polite smok.
Actually it's not Bruce. It's his old side man, Clarence Simons and Neil Soft brand. Oh, and there's Billy Joel. Well, not really Billy Joel.
It's Billy Joel's drummer, Liberty DeVito. This is rock and roll fantasy camp. It really exists. And this April, 33 campers got their dream to come to Eden Rock Hotel in Florida for five days.
Drink nervously through cocktail parties like this one. Popular Playing nervously in celebrity jam sessions. All in all, for most of them, a dream come true. Wow.
Sarah Fowl has different dreams. Sarah is one of our contributing editors and a music writer for Spin, the Village Voice and Salon. She dropped in on Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. My rock and roll fantasy is this that occasionally, every now and then, a song I like comes on the radio.
It's a simple dream, I know. And every so often, once or twice a year, it actually comes true. I get all I need from pop music song by song. And that's how I like it best.
Two or three minutes of speed or sorrow coming out of speakers with so much something that the world stuck cold. I've rarely daydreamed of befriending my rock idols. Maybe it's because I tend to admire cranks like I really want to toast in the New Year with Jerry Lee Lewis or go shoe shopping with Courtney Love. Revealed Sandcastles with a Peach.
Like Lou Reed, my musical heroes are mostly snotty weirdos who didn't become famous because of their social graces. Just because I have them in my heart doesn't mean I want them in my life. So the very idea of spending five whole days cooped up in Miami, taking guitar workshops from moldy rock big shots and paying upwards of 3,000 bucks to do it at something called rock and Roll fantasy camp isn't my fantasy. Try my worst nightmare.
My rock n roll fantasy is to to get those lessons from Lockfronner and Leslie west and Felix Cavalier. Hopefully you have no idea who these people are and you never did if the years 1970-75 are underrepresented in your record collection. In both the chronological and spiritual senses, Mark Varner is the scary born again lead guitarist of Grand Funk Railroad. You know, Grand Funk Railroad guitarist Leslie west played Woodstock with his band Mountain.
And Felix Cavallaris from the Young Rascals. I actually like this song. Bet you didn't think you'd be hearing these songs when you turned on public radio today, did ya? Anybody who's here is from my 70 dreams.
My fantasy for this camp would be to have Mills Walker teach me a few tricks in open G. I guess I would compare my voice to that of like Lou Graham, a foreigner. There he is right there. And who are these rock and roll fans whose dreams, whose entire conception of rock and roll is so different from my own?
Joe, who markets sound equipment in Detroit. Connie and Maxine, sisters from Minneapolis who left their husbands and kids back home. And Rob, the math teacher from Long island who heard about the camp on Howard Stearns radio show. I love famous.
I like famous people. I love to meet famous people. And this is hanging out with famous people. That's Neil's Loughren's guitar workshop.
Probably the most low key, sensible seminar of the camp. He's a kind, respectful man. And even though he knows what he's doing, he doesn't get all curlicued about it. He pumps out a chugalug rhythm, advising his students to try to stay in the back pocket of the beat and to think like a drummer.
Real rhythmic. Watching them lurch along doesn't look like any fantasy I've ever had. It would almost be boring, except that watching nervous people in any given situation is always at least slightly engaging. And Also, as the only girl in the room, I keep cracking up watching an arrangement of men sitting in a circle stroking their instruments.
Praise comes to mind when I'm not sure I can say on the radio that includes the word jerk you do. What I do is when my answer starts cramping, I'm feeling frustrated and angry. Stop and play something if you learn like major minor scales. When Lockford mentions scales, it seems like everyone can play the do re me ones, but no one knows the blues scale.
He plays the most basic downward spiral imaginable. It seems like something you should be paying Kenny down at the guitar shack 10 bucks to teach you instead of bothering the man who bent shits for Bruce Springsteen. And Neil Loughran informs the class that he's going to take a solo and they should try and keep the rhythm strong. For me, good luck.
What's apparent isn't so much the gaping difference between skill or the lack of it, but rather the chasm between confidence and self doubt. Loughran plays tough, spare riffs and looks so easy does it cool. Meanwhile, all the campers around him are tapping their feet like they're marching off to the front lines and all their eyes are fixed on their fingers, trying not to screw up. This seems like a good moment to pause and talk about what is and isn't rock and roll.
As a believer in the anyone can do it all or nothing at all ethic of punk rock, I think real music's not about technique or virtuosity or knowing your scales. It's about believing in what you have to say and wanting to say it so badly that you'll spring your guts out if that's what it takes to get people to listen. Later on, when I asked Loughran if he met anyone in the camp he thought had real talent or anything to say, his answer was gracious, diplomatic. Well, I heard a love for music and everybody over the course of the camp.
I'll sit through nearly a dozen such seminars and it becomes painfully obvious that rock and roll high school is a lot like real high school. Subject matter doesn't matter as much as the personality of the teacher. Everyone wants to be Loughran's pet, but Rick Derringer leads his guitar session like the nitpick who takes points off for bad penmanship. Marian Green, not your day.
Yes. Geringer is the only instructor who actually took attendance. Attendance. After showing off for a while, he proceeds to spend nearly 10 whole minutes spreading crackpot ideas such as clean.
I find that if you get the grungy and stuff in between the frets dirt on here. All of a sudden your arm starts sticking up here. It just doesn't feel the same. I see people sometimes playing and their guitars are all dirty and the strings are running out of whack and things are real high.
I think the most important thing is making your guitar playable. So clean the thing, clean it real good. I do things like flesh, flex flesh. You know why I can't imagine anyone I admire talking this way.
He is literally holding up a can of furniture polish like he's doing a TV commercial. Keith Richards display a spray bottle of 409 with Neil Young asked to discuss his crap, even use the word cleanliness. And the thing is, while I was gagging at Derringer's doping, as most of the campers found him, hilarious. In fact, these people sat through their workshops and jam sessions and lunch buffets with these serene smiles and watching them, I got jealous.
To me, music has always been an ideological battleground where you hate, hate your enemies and save, save your friends. To them, music seems like this uncomplicated part of their lives that simply makes them happy. So I'm just here for fun and to have some fun and to get some exposure to some of the instruments. And I really just like the music.
So for me, the problem with hanging around the campers was this. They were so gosh darn nice. Sweet. Even My job as a grumpy commentator would have been a lot easier to stomach if they'd been the self satisfied yuppies I'd come to make fun of.
But they kind of ruined my fun by being so likable I couldn't even mutter Peter Frampton Insults under my breath without feeling guilty. And you know you're in some kind of parallel universe when the most punk rock person there is the reporter from Forbes. The campers came all this way, they paid all this money. It's their dream to meet these rock stars.
So when they finally get to hang out with them, what do they talk about? What's at the heart of their dreams? I cornered Joe, a guitarist from Detroit, one night after dinner. So Joe, when I was pulling back up to the hotel, I saw you getting out of a limo.
It's the only way to travel. And whose limo were you traveling in? That was with Rick Derringer and also Lou Graham. You went out to dinner?
Yeah, went out to dinner at Gloria Esteban's restaurant. And so what was that like having dinner with those guys? They were so, so congenial. We had a sing along in the Car.
We were doing some Foreigner songs. And we were doing Hanging On Sloopy. And it was all acapella. And our little kids all joined in too.
I kind of help out. So it was kind of a group thing, you know, the wives, the kids, the. The guys. Hang on Sloopy.
I'll admit I love that song. Which came in handy for my sanity. Since Derringer played on it a million years ago with his old band, the McCoys. It was constant jam session fodder at the camp.
And one night, all the campers gathered on stage to perform it. With Derringer singing lead, sparking one of the rare moments. When the music they made together felt real and sounded exciting to them. And to me, That kind of excitement didn't last.
For every second of participatory, palatable noise. There were three hours of rockstar war stories. While I gave myself headaches from rolling my eyes. The campers ate these anecdotes up.
Egging on people like keyboardist Bobby Mayo to fill their heads with behind the scenes insights into Frampton Comes Alive. An album they had apparently memorized note for yucky note. We had gotten together as a group in January of that year. Fun.
And we started touring their own thing for it. So that was all done as an opening act, pretty much. And if you think listening to these tall tales once was boring, try twice. On the camp's last day, goofball Mike Love of the Beach Boys showed up.
Every time he opened his mouth was a defamation of the Beach Boy's greatness. He insulted his audience by telling the same stories at his afternoon lecture. As he did on stage the very same night. Here's the afternoon I was in India.
The party. The one Bug Boy. We used to have conversations on the roof on the night of the start of those principles. Why you gotta take more care of what your album covers.
Here he was the mastermind of starting covers, right? Here's the evening. They might be taking more care of your album covers. This is the guy you can see.
Afternoon. So sensible, you said. I said, yeah. Well, Dr.
Respect, you always pay more attention to us in the hour. Which is a two shade remark I had today. Evening, anyway. And the sad thing is, some people laughed both times.
Maybe they were just being nice. I mean, they were nice people. And it hit me sitting there watching them drink in all those no doubt enhanced rock star tall tales with such obvious glee. Was like watching new myths being born.
Because anyone with relatives can tell you rehashed souped up stories are not the sole property of washed up rock Stars. I bet Joe from Detroit's going to be telling his Lou Graham limo story for at least as long as my glove's been dissing Paul McCartney. Now I actually found this kind of reassuring. Once the camp ended, I could go back to my beloved punky malcontent.
My nightmare was over the minute I boarded the plane home, but I knew that for the spouses and children and co workers of the campers, the nightmare had just begun. Sarah Powell is the author of the book Radio 1 and a music columnist for the online magazine Salon. She first read about Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp for Request magazine and Sarah Yes, Ira, you said at the beginning of your story that your own rock and roll fantasy is that occasionally, every now and then, a song you like would actually come on the radio. So I did.
Cyra, can you make my dream come true? Indeed I can, Sarah. Val, what song would you like to hear on the radio? Well, there's a song that I played in my hotel room every night during the camp to remind me of my ideal, the thing I was looking for.
It's the sixth song, which I love and Fozle R Kenny. The song's called Words and Guitar. Why the song? Because it's about the two most elemental things of rock and Hogwarts and guitar and the way the band sings and plays the song is like those are the only two things you'll ever need to.
Act two colors with that feeling of your dreaming nightmare having with people you're closest to, not just strangers. For instance, Marvin Tate was traveling with his wife Lucy and their two year old toddler Ivy to visit his sister in Tennessee and they could not agree on what sightseeing they wanted to do. He wanted to go to the Ernie Tub Country Music Store. That is her nightmare.
She wanted to go to the Bell Meade Plantation. That was his nightmare. He's black, she's white and he could just not understand what possible interest she could have in this. But she insisted.
I could tell by the determined look on Lucy's face that there wasn't going to be any turning back. Not now or ever. Lucy thumbed her way through a travel guide looking for directions to the Bell Meet the connotation. I went inside the gas station to ask the guy to sit behind the register, a beef jerk and chewy Snapple jerking Leon Russell type in overalls, a baseball cap and a coffee stained I hate New Yorkers T shirt on.
Well, I thought maybe he'd be too dumb to have ever heard of the Belmead. And then, and then I'D be off the hook and we wouldn't have to go. Uh, excuse me, sir, sir, excuse me, could you please tell me how to get to the Belmead Plantation? How ridiculous I must have sounded.
Plantation. A contemporary brother man asked me for directions on how to get to some plantation charging museum. Back in the car, Lucy drove like a maniac, as if there was a pot of gold at the end of our destination. And then there we were at the old Belmead Plantation.
I looked at my family. It was becoming quite obvious that this trip had taken its toll on me, and the way I talked, I said to them, I'm an old Negro from the Old south and I'm walking here to the Old Belmead. You might recognize me from the old Negro League. My name is Sonny Jackson, and this here, this here is my Teriagma model baby Ivy, and seated next to her is the old master's daughter, Lucy.
I took a deep breath to swallow and climb out the car. Damn it, I thought, here I go again. The only brother at an all white affair. At first no one seemed to notice me, not until Lucy kissed me on the cheek.
Then, out of double and triple takes began. One woman, losing sight of what she was doing, nearly knocked over the torso of a commemoration statue. A baldy man who looked like an employee walked to an old barnyard, quickly stepped back out, took off his glasses and wiped them clean with his shirt towel. It was that brief moment that I knew.
I knew that I had to change history. No more camouflaging and going with the program so that everything could be hokey dokie. Okay, I admitted my mind that where the turret guy was going to be, that I was going to show them that I wasn't just another token black guy who could take an extra shot decaf vanilla latte with no foam, or the brotherhood integrated into the mainstream by marrying someone white. This time I was determined to drop the bomb p functionality by asking questions that the other tourists would be too afraid to ask.
No, going back in time was going to be cool, the way Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman used to do. The only difference would be that I was not going to be stepping in the time machine, and the paths I had to conquer was staring me right in the face. Lucy and I got in line for the tour.
I clutched my ticket and whispered in Lucy's ear, now you listen here, Miss Lucy. Eyes ain't about to go to masses now without this permission. Lucy kissed at you on the head and said, daddy's pretending to be a Slave. From out the front door came Arturo Guy Gussie Wavefish line with a scarlet o' Hara number on.
Welcome to the Bell Meade, gussie said, ringing a tiny bell to gather everybody's attention. As you can notice from the three magnificent rocking chairs that sit behind me on the porch, the Bell Meade's owners had a lavish appetite for space, anything big. These rocking chairs were all carved by local artisans of the day. They were designed to look like thrones.
Thus he acted like she and the rest for Civil War cladded patriots, had the coolest summer job in the world, telling useless historical antidotes to white tourists nostalgic for the days of southern chivalry. She told us stuff about the curtains, china patterns, Civil War patterns, carpet patterns. And for some reason, now maybe there's something wrong with me, but for some reason everyone was eating these trivial tidbits up. I couldn't believe it.
One excited tourist, who looked like he had just stepped up the sandy beaches of Miami, shot his hand up in the air. How did they keep the road inside the house? Why would the straw grow Lots of cats, responded Gussie. Why are the walls painted such pale blues and greens?
While everyone continued with these small, trivial facts, it seemed there was one big important factor right here that everyone was not talking about. I'll spell it for you. S L A V E R Y. And does that sound like a 4ed word to you?
Thank you. I knew now that I was in the past. I'd gone beyond the past. I was in the Old south, and there was no turning back.
My patience with this Twilight Zone episode was ending. I thought that if I could just figure out the perfect question to ask, well, I could turn this whole thing around and history would no longer be from Gus's point of view. Okay. I say, by the way, Gussie, did General Harding ever rape one of his slaves?
Nah, that would sound more like an accusation more so than an intelligent question. Okay, I'd say. I'd say, so, Gussie, are you descendants of slave owners? And if so, if so, how did you benefit from it?
Now that sounded too much like a Farrakhan rip off. I had to go someplace. I had to go someplace where I could concentrate, put it all on paper so it could sound perfect, like it was just another matter of fact question out of curiosity. Couldn't make him think I was some kind of oversensitive black guy who couldn't take the pass for what it was.
An older man with an intellectual face, you know, the beard and glasses, raised his hand and I thought Here's a guy who looks like a professor. He probably sees that there's a black guy here. Maybe we should ask the most important question. He cleared his throat, stroked his beard, and asked his question.
How the dickens did General Harding manage to keep the place so magnificently brilliant with all those horses? I didn't know what to say, so I left the group. I went to the next room to prepare my question, the question that was going to end this tour. I needed to concentrate.
I carried Ivan to the next room, closed my eyes, and I thought, well, Gussie, you never mentioned anything about slaves. Didn't that turnover visit your plantation? Gussie, what do the slaves eat? Where did they sleep?
Gussie, did you ever see the movie Mandingo, the part where Ken Norton sleeps with the master's wife? Ever tried to do a field holler? Or Gussie, who did visit the blues? Suddenly they all entered the room.
How's the baby? Gussie asked. Immediately following her was Lucy, snapping pictures of the beautiful chandelier that hung like a giant earring from the ceiling. Enjoying yourself?
She asked. Isn't this beautiful? Suddenly I realized that Lucy, my dear wife, was one of them. God save us.
I took a deep breath and waited for my moment, my question, my reasons for being. Not even sure what I was going to say, I raised my hand. Gus looked my way. I could hear the voices of my ancestors telling me to keep going.
Go, Marvin. Go Marvin, go. Original black man. All the injustices of the black race were now on my shoulders.
My responsibility was clear. Gussie paused before pointing to me. We locked eyes, and then I laid out the most ferocious scream she had ever made in her short life. Why?
What? I couldn't get it out. Ivy continued to sob and cry out piercing yells. It must have sounded like we were trying to kidnap her.
Let's go, I said. And like a team of emergency paramedics, we were out that door. The sun shined like lemon skins and Ivy returned back to her smiley face innocence. I still don't know what would have been the right thing for me to do with the Bell Meade Vegas.
I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be a militant, arty Afrocentric or a well adjusted, integrated black guy. And one day, when Ivy gets into one of these situations, I'm not quite sure what advice I'd give her. A few hours later, after we visited Belmead, I made Lucy go with me, this time to Earnest Studio. I've always liked country music.
In fact, you could say country music was a part of my life. If you could believe that. So in the earnest tub store, for some reason, I wanted to show the good old boys that I knew a little something about country music, too. So I asked them.
I actually bought an obscure and eccentric fiddle player named Stringbean. Neither one person seemed impressed. And while I talked to one of them, the other one had an idea of a Confederate flag to play with. Maybe he was trying to be friendly, maybe he was trying to be nice.
Sometimes I think I'm a bit too sensitive about all this race stuff. But maybe, maybe he was trying to send me a message. Maybe he knew exactly how I feel about the old Stars and Bars, you know, I don't know about these situations. L headed out the door arm in arm, our baby happily waving Confederate flag.
Marvin Tate is a performer and a poet living here in Chicago. You say neither, I say either. You say neither, and I say neither. Either, either, neither, Neither.
Let's call the whole thing on. Coming up, David Sedaris on the golf course, the news stories and all news stories and more in a minute. Whenever it continues. This is American life and my art glass.
Each week, of course, we choose a theme, invite a wide variety of writers to performers and introduce to take a whack at the theme with radio monologues, original reporting, found tape, anything they can think of. Today's program, your dream, my nightmare. Stories of people simply not agreeing on what is good at some fundamental human level. We've arrived at Act 3 motion.
While walking this show together this week I opened, I realized I picked up one of the local papers and I realized that nearly every story on the front page was a narrative basically along the themes of your dream, my nightmare. I have the paper here. Story is about transit authority here in Chicago facing out subway train conductors, taxpayers dreams, saving $40 million a year, train conductors nightmare. Just below that story piece by Rupert Murochiting, one of his main dreams, I assume, making his own sports cable network.
ESPN's nightmare. To the left of that, with a very odd, I have to say picture of Hillary Clinton kind of holding her fingers together in one of those little sort of church shapes, you know, her fingertips touching, looking both pious and extremely nervous. There's a story about one of Kenneth Star's dreams and her nightmares. She has to turn over notes of her conversations with lawyers to the Whitewater Independent Council, well, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea. Well, Jay Allison is a seasoned newsman, does theories for ABC's Nightline for all sorts of big public radio programs. And a while back he realized that all the stories he was doing basically boiled down to one plot line over and over in various ways with different characters. Someone somewhere had a dream of moving to a new neighborhood.
And that dream was somebody else's nightmare. Richard Feeder took the tape interviews together on a number of stories and concocted this kind of composite story to prove his point. One of the car. I'm on the inside.
Got just a few seconds left. Just a few seconds left. Straight into people. People born just a little different than you and I.
Are you ready? It started up last night. I'd taken the kids to the carnival and we all got back around 9. I wanted to order the lawn before I went to bed, but Artie Davis had borrowed the sprinkler.
So I went across the street to get a backphone and I saw the light was on in his garage. Inside were Artie and his wife June, Sam Lawson and Reverend James. They were talking about the new people in the neighborhood. And they were pretty worked up.
People don't want really want them out. And from the word that's around, you'll do what, anything you get em up. Everyone was upset. They had been since these people moved in two weeks ago.
Sam Lawson said there's no reason we had to put up with this. He said these people are freaks. He called them garbage. They're garbage.
They're just garbage, he said. Just garbage. And there's no reason a garbage like that is going to intimidate decent people because they think they're defenseless. And even Reverend James didn't have a kind word to say about these new people.
Ignorant, repulsive and evil. We just don't want them here. And that's what it's all about. Get them out of here.
We don't belong here. We don't want them here. Well, this afternoon things hadn't calmed down too much. The whole neighborhood was on edge about these new people.
Artie Davis said they didn't scare him, but they scared his wife. They don't frighten me, but they do hurt Marty. Said his wife June had a dream about these freaks last night and he wasn't gonna stand for it. In June's dream, one of these freaks tried to make June look into his eyes, get me to look in his eyes.
And I wouldn't do it because his eyes were real. But June wouldn't do it. The whites. And his eyes were real big and they were shiny like.
And they were shiny like the devils or something. Early this evening, the four of us gathered at my place to decide what to Do. June stayed home because Artie said she was frightened. All day long Artie and Sam had patrolled outside the house the freaks moved into.
And the freaks never came out. They just stayed inside. Which was strange in itself. Reverend James arrived around 8 o'.
Clock. He was still upset about the situation. It's disgusting. But he had an idea.
I would get me a hundred good men, get the major baseball bat and die when these freaks take his head over edge of the sidewalk. Well, that didn't sound too bad. But the rest of us couldn't figure out where we could come up with 100 men. Listen, I know at least 500 men who would be one too happy to serve.
Happen to be all Christians in my church that I hadn't met. Still, we wondered if 500 men were really necessary. Then make it 25. Make it 10 men.
Make it 5. We talked it over and decided that just the four of us could take care of things by ourselves. On our way we stopped by and told June what we were gonna do. I feel like I'm sitting on pins and needles just waiting.
Then we checked to see that we had everything we needed. All we need is some good old fashioned guts and morals. And so at 10 o' clock we marched on over to the freak's house. Just a few seconds left.
Just a few seconds left. Strange people. People born. Into the living room.
We were ready for anything. From our position in the front yard we could see them moving around inside their house. We tried everything we could think of. I think they knew we weren't kidding around this time.
But they wouldn't come outside. Sam thought maybe we should try setting fire to the place or something. But Reverend James pointed out that that would be destruction of property. So we waited.
But by 12 o' clock it started to get cold and we were hungry. So we came on home. But tomorrow night we're going back. June says she'll pack some food for us to take along.
Sam's bringing his portable TV set and some blankets. Reverend James is bringing the baseball bats again. And I'm bringing the beer. J.
Allison's story is part of a series of life stories produced with Tina Egoff. I'm your neighbor. I'm looking out for you. I'll tell you when to know.
You're alone. I'll watch your windows. But I'm not spying. I just want to see what's going on.
I'm a good neighbor. A retired apartment salesman. I lived here for 30 years. I know which people are worth knowing.
And I know which one should disappear. Act 4 Blood Some of the biggest your dream My nightmare situations happen between parents and children. One of the central tensions, I believe, between parents and their adult kids is the adult children not living up their parents dreams for what they should have turned into and who they should have been in this life. I think about it, I realized this about my own family, that when I was a kid my mom had this dream for my old sister.
She wanted my old sister to play the piano. My Lord was actually really wonderful. My mom really wondered if she could be professional. And my mom's dream for me was she had to articulate it, I think she would've said.
She did say sometimes that she wouldn't even be a doctor. Nothing really worked out. My sister went to business school. Here I am.
And as it turned out, as my mom got older, she became a doctor. She's a psychologist now. And just recently, in the last two years, she started playing piano too. But not everybody's lucky to have parents who basically transferred their own dream back into themselves and off the kids.
One of the people is David Sedaris. He has this story of parents and children. My sister Lisa became a woman on the 14th hole of the Pinehurst golf course. That's what she was told by the stranger who led her to the women's lounge.
Relax, sugar, you're a woman now. We had gone unwittingly shanghaied by our father, who had offered to take Lisa and I for a ride in secondhand Porsche, recently bought. His Sherbert. Colored pants should have tipped us off, but seeing as there were no golf clubs in the back seat, we thought we were safe.
There was nothing worse than spending an afternoon on the golf course, especially for Lisa, who was troubled that day by unexplained cramps. Just a short little jaunt, my father said. He folded back the car's canvas roof and crouched in the driver's seat. Hell, maybe we'll just jewel up to the fairgrounds and back.
Maybe we'll go get ourselves some ice cream. Who knows? The map, the nervous glances at his watch. It soon became apparent that this was no joyride.
Our father knew exactly where we were headed and had it planned so that we arrived just in time for the tee off. Well, what do you know, he said, pulling off the road and into the crowded golf course parking lot. I wonder if there's not some kind of a tournament taking place. What do you say we take a quick peek?
Gosh, this is a beautiful place. Where do you get a look at these fairways? Lisa and I groaned, cursing our stupidity. Once again, we've been tricked.
We knew what was in store for us and understood that the next few hours would pass like days, or maybe even weeks. Our watches would yawn, the minute hand pausing to nap before sluggishly completing its rounds. First, our father would push us to the front of a large, gaily dressed crown. But of their choice spots, these spectators would huff and grumble, whispering insults we would pretend not to hear.
They're kids, my father would say. What do you want them to do, stand on my shoulders? Come on now, pal. Have a heart.
The big boys were playing that day, men whose names we recognized from the magazines my father kept stacked beside the toilet and heaped in the backseat of his car. We'd seen these players on television and heard their strengths and weaknesses debated by the maniacs who frequented the pro shop of our country club. Seeing the pros in person was no more interesting than eating an ice cold hamburger, but it meant the world to our father, who hoped their presence might kindle a passion, inciting us to take up our clubs and strive for excellence. This was for him an act of love, a misguided attempt to enrich our lives and bring us closer together as a family.
You kids are so damn lucky, he said, placing his hands on our shoulders. These are the best players in the pga, and here you are with front row seats. What seats, Lisa? Ask where.
We stood on the grassy embankment, watching as the first player teed off. Lisa, my father whispered, go get it. Go get sneeze tea. When Lisa refused, it was up to me to wander onto the green, searching for the spent wooden peg that might have traveled anywhere from 6 to 20ft from its original position.
Our father collected these teas as good luck charms and kept them stored in the goldfish bowl which sat upon his dresser. It was forbidden to wander under the course during a tournament, so our father sent us to do his dirty work, hoping the officials might see us as enthusiastic upstarts who decorate our rooms with posters of the masters working their way out of sand traps or hoisting a trophy after a stunning victory at Pebble Beach. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. No matter how hard he tried to motivate us, the members of my family refused to take even the slightest interest in what was surely the dullest game ever invented.
We despised golf and everything that went with it, from the ridiculous Tam o Shantas right down to the cruel spiked shoes. Oh, Lou, my mother would whine, dressed for a cocktail party in her muted, earth toned caftan, you're not going to wear that, are you? What's wrong with this? He'd ask.
These pants are brand new. New to you, she'd say. Pimps and circus clowns have been dressing that way for years. We never understood how a man who took such pride in his sober tailored suits could spend his weekends in dayglo pants patterned with singing tree frogs or weed kilted Scotsman.
You needed sunglasses in order to open his closet door, what with all the candy colored sweaters, aggressive mattress sports coats, and painfully bright polo shirts all screaming for attention. I don't feel so well, lisa whispered to my father as we march from the sand trap to the putting green of the ape. I really think we need to leave. My father ignored her.
If Truffino bodies this hole, he's screwed. That last bunker shot pinned his ass right to the wall. Did you see his backswing? I'm concerned right now about my back, lisa said.
It's aching and I want to go home and lie down. We'll be just another minute, my father said. He fingered a collection of keys in his pocket. The problem with you kids is that you're not paying enough attention to the game.
First thing tomorrow morning I'm signing you up for some more lessons. Then you'll see what I'm talking about. Jesus, this game is just so exciting. You won't be able to stand it.
We had serious doubts that it was exciting, but he was right when he said he would be able to stand it. The driving range, the putt putt courses. He just didn't get it. We didn't want advice on our swing.
We only wanted to be left alone to practice witchcraft or to face fashion dolls or sit in the privacy of our rooms fantasizing about anything other than golf. 98 degrees on the second hole and we crumpled to the green, listening as children our own age shouted and splashed in the country club pool. The tournament dragged on, and by the time we reached the 14th hole Lisa had begun to bleed, the rust colored spot visible on her white culottes. She was close to tears, sunburnt and frightened, when she whispered something into my father's ear.
We'll just go get one of the gals, he said. They'll take care of you. He turned to a handsome white haired woman wearing a lime green visor in a skirt pattern with grinning pandas. Hey, sweetheart, I wondered if you could help me out with a personal problem.
Like my father, this woman had followed these players and hold a hole, taking note of their every move. She had come out that day to bask in the glow of the Masters. And now a strange man was asking her to accompany his daughter to the clubhouse, an outfitter with a sanitary napkin. The woman nodded her head and, taking my sister's hand, reluctantly led her toward the distant cluster of buildings.
I didn't understand the problem but very much wanted to join them, thinking perhaps we might talk this person into giving us a ride home, away from this grinding tedium and the fierce, relentless son. With Lisa gone, it become my sole responsibility to fetch the splinter golf tees and pestered the contestants for their autographs. Lou, I would say, holding out my father's scorecard. My name is Lou.
The game finally over, we returned to the parking lot to find Lisa stretched out the back seat of the Porsche, her face and lap covered with golf towels. Don't say it, she threatened. Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it. All I was gonna do was ask you to take your lousy feet off the car, my father said.
Yeah? Well, why don't you just go yourself? The moment she said at least, I bolted upright, as if there still might be time to catch the word between her teeth before it reached her father's ears. None of us had ever spoken to him that way, and now he would have no choice but to kill her.
Some unprecedented threshold had been passed, and even the crickets stopped their singing, stunned into silence by the word which hung in the air like a cloud of spent gunpowder. My father sighed and shook his head in disappointment. This was the same way he reacted to my mother, when anger and frustration caused her to forget herself. Lisa was not a daughter now, but just another woman unable to control her wildly shifting emotions.
Don't mind her, he said, wiping a thin coat of pollen off the windshield. She's just having lady problems. Throughout the years, her father has continued his campaign to interest us in this world of golf. When Gretchen, Amy, and Tiffany rejected his advances, he placed his hopes on our brother Paul, who found the sprawling greens an excellent place to enjoy a hit of acid, and overturned the golf carts he stole from the parking lot beside the pro shop.
He bought a widescreen tv, an enormous model the size of an industrial size washing machine, and uses it only to watch and record his beloved tournaments. The top of the set is stacked high with video cassettes marked 94 PGA and 89 US Open. Unbelievable. Before our mother died, she put together a videotape she thought Lisa might enjoy.
The two of them spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, drinking wine and watching old movies on the black and white portable television that sat beside the sink. These were just a few favorites my mother had recorded. No big deal, she'd said. Just a little something to watch one day when you're bored.
A few weeks after the funeral, Lisa searched my parents house for the tape, finding it on the downstairs bar beside my father's chair. She carried the cassette home but found she needed a bit more time before watching it. For Lisa, these movies would recall private times, just her and her mother perched on stools and wheeling off the names of each actor as they appeared on screen. These memories would be a gift that Lisa preferred to savor.
Before opening. She waited until the initial brief had passed, and then, settling onto her sofa with a tray of snacks, she slipped in the tape, delighted to find that it began with Double Indemnity. The opening credits were rolling when suddenly the video skipped and shifted to color. It was a man squatting on his heels and paring down the shaft of his putter as though it were a rifle.
Behind him stood a multitude of spectators shaded by tall pines, their faces tanned and wrapped in concentration. Greg Norman's bogey 03R5s, the announcer whispered, but if he eagles here on the 15th, he's still got a shot at the masters. David Sarah's the story remains open since his new book about autobiographical story is called Naked. His latest play opens as part of the Lincoln Center Festival July 8th.
It's called Incident at Cobbler's Knob. Just a perfect day. Drink sangria in the park and then later when it gets dark we go home. Just a perfect day.
Feed animals in the zoo, Then later a movie too and then home. Oh, it's such a perfect day. I'm glad I spent it with you himself with Lee Spiegel, Julie Snyder, contributing editor Sarah Valjakkit, Margaret and Paul Tough musical huff today from John Connors and Sarah Vall Original musical scoring during Martin Tate story by Leroy Bach and CJ Bonnie pike has said. This program called us at WBEZ here in Chicago, 312-832-3380.
Our email address radioell.com money for this American Life is been provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. And Catherine Tim Gartha foundation, the Illinois Arts Council and the listeners WBE Chicago WBEZ naming never said by tomorrow Altitude have you turned to me after our first time on the air and said, relax, sugar, you're a woman now? I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American Life.
I thought I was someone else, someone good. Oh, it's such a perfect day I'm glad I spent it with you oh, such a perfect day you just keep me hanging on.