In God We Trust (31 page)

With an enormous conscious wrench of will power I struggled to break this ridiculous montage of fantasies that continued to crowd irresistibly in upon me. I could not get my mind off these shifting, kaleidoscopic images. I tried to concentrate on my road map as I finished the Wheaties, and the harder I stared at the
red lines the more they seemed to resemble Pat O’Brien, in the uniform of a Navy Chief, barking out orders to Wallace Beery.

What the hell is this!? I am a grownup, hard-hitting, Hip contemporary man, and I have no time for such transient, imbecilic time wasters.

I swished my plastic spoon around the bottom of the bowl to scoop up the last few spongy flakes, and it was at that instant that I
knew
. It was the bowl
itself
that had caused Rochelle Hudson to make an unscheduled guest appearance!

I stared hard at it. It was unmistakable, a bowl of remarkably aggressive ugliness, made of a distinctive type of dark green glass, embossed with swollen lumps and sworls representing the fruits of the vine and the abundance of Nature. A bowl that had but one meaning. I peered at it long and hard. Yes, there was no mistake. It was genuine—a mint-condition, vintage Movie Dish Night Premium Gift Bowl.

I glanced the length of the lunch counter at the proprietor who lounged listlessly next to the coffee urn, watching the rain fall outside on his gravel driveway. We were alone. I could not resist it.

“Excuse me, but what kind of bowl is this?” I asked.

He looked up.

“What do you mean what kind of bowl? Glass.”

“Yeah. I
know
it’s glass. But where did you get it?”

“Whattaya mean.…are you an Inspector?”

I never knew there were Cereal Bowl Inspectors working the Maine Turnpike.

“No. It’s just that you don’t see bowls like this very often.”

He looked back out at the rain and I knew that our conversation was at an end. I stirred my coffee and examined the green-glass monstrosity lovingly as I faintly heard Myrna Loy’s mocking voice twitting William Powell through the sounds of the radio in the kitchen, which was playing a Beatle record.

Yes, in attics and cellars and kitchen cupboards throughout the length and breadth of America there are still remnants, bits and pieces of Movie Dish Night DeLuxe Dinnerware Sets, some green glass, others blood red, a few a strange, pearlescent
orange, but all united in universal ugliness. Ugliness unfettered, unrestrained by effete taste, as direct and uncluttered as a Johnny Weissmuller scenario. The kind of ugliness so pure and distilled that it shines with the golden, radiant light of the Pure in Heart and the Simple of Mind; ugliness so stark and clean that it becomes beautiful in its clarity. And the sellers of beauty have never had it easy in this, or any other, age. Mr. Doppler was no exception.

Mr. Doppler! My God, I even remembered his name. But then, how could I forget it? I gazed mistily into the cloudy depths of the glass receptacle and the images of that fateful night began to emerge from the milky film that lined the bottom. Mr. Doppler and the Great Gravy Boat Riot! Eerily, faintly, the radio in the kitchen began to play Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine,” and the story slowly all came back to me.

Mr. Doppler operated the Orpheum Theater, a tiny bastion of dreams and fantasies, a fragile light of human aspiration in the howling darkness of the great American Midwest where I festered and grew as a youth. Even now the word “Orpheum” sends tiny shivers of anticipation and excitement up the ventilation pipes of my soul. And Mr. Doppler, like some mythical God, reigned over his magnetic palace of dreams, fighting the good fight alone and uncheered. He was rarely seen in person. His name, however, always stood at the head of the program throwaways that landed on the porch every Monday afternoon, outlining the Orpheum’s schedule of mirages for the following week. In Roman letters surrounded by cherubs blowing trumpets and a kind of Egyptian architectural arch, festooned with grapes and tiny cornucopias and presided over by a pair of blurred Greco-Zanuck Tragedy-Comedy masks, would appear the proclamation:

LEOPOLD DOPPLER PRESENTS

This smudgy, dog-eared schedule was kept next to every icebox in the county, for ready reference and to settle arguments of a Theological nature.

Mr. Doppler was in direct communion with Dennis Morgan, and he, personally, had a hand in Roy Rogers’ affairs. Hollywood
was a mysterious thing in those days, even more so than today, and for good reason. It
was
more mysterious, and it was the time of the Great Depression. People read
Photoplay
and
Screen Romances
and other dream journals as seriously as today they digest the
New Republic, Time
, the
Realist:
contemporary fantasy almanacs. One time my Aunt Clara lapped the entire field at Christmas by giving my grandmother a two-year subscription to
Real Screen Tales
.

So night after night the Faithful would gather, bearing sacks of Butterfinger bars and salami sandwiches, to huddle together in the darkness, cradled in Mr. Doppler’s gum-encrusted seats, staring with eyes wide with longing and lit with the pure light of total belief at the flickering image of Ginger Rogers, dressed in a long, flowing, sequin-covered gown, swirling endlessly atop a piano with wasp-waisted Fred Astaire, flicking an ivory cane carelessly and spinning his tall silk hat as he sang, in a high, squeaky voice, “The Carioca.” In the darkness the sound of girdles creaking in desire and the cracking of Wrigley’s Spearmint in excitement provided a soft but subtle counterpoint to Sam Goldwyn’s hissing sound track.

Outside those sacred doors crouched the pale gray wolf of Reality and the Depression. On the skyline the dark, sullen hulk of the steel mills lay silent and smokeless, like some ancient volcano that had burnt itself out, while the natives roamed the empty streets and told wondrous tales of the time when the skies were lit by the fires of the steel crucibles. And there was something that occupied them all, called Work. Even the word “Work” itself had an almost religious, mythological tone.

On Saturdays the congregation consisted entirely of kids. At least during the daylight hours. The carved Moorish doors of the Orpheum were flung wide from 10
A.M
. on to the moiling rabble who came to spend the entire day, and weekend if possible. Three cowboy pictures, featuring such luminaries as Roy Rogers, Bob Steele, and Ken Maynard galloping endlessly over the back lots of dusty Los Angeles real estate, firing countless rounds of black-smoke blank cartridges, the sound track turned up to deafening volume, the thunder of movie horses, the screams and
grunts of the wounded and dying mingled with the steady uproar of the popcorn machine and the occasional outbreak of a fistfight in the balcony and an incessant two-way traffic up and down the aisles to the plumbing facilities. The muffled curses of the ushers clubbing the more violent into submission provided those of us who were there with a great and accurate foretaste of life to come. More than one kid, caught up in the inchoate intricacies of a Republic picture Cowboy plot, found himself torn between answering an urgent call of Nature or missing the final defeat of the treacherous sheep ranchers, and had to make a bitter and crucial decision. It almost invariably went one way. Many a kid had to skulk damply down back alleys on the way home in total darkness to avoid public humiliation, his corduroy knickers squishing limply as he crept from garage to garage, from chicken house to chicken house, hoping against hope that the spanking breeze from the lake would dehydrate him in time.

Clamped in his seat from 10
A.M
. to well past 7
P.M
., or just before the Greasy Love Stuff came on, a kid swirled in a maelstrom of excitement and convulsive passion that has left a lasting mark on all who sat in attendance. There are countless men today, and not a few women, who have what they euphemistically call “bad knees,” resulting from a malady just recently diagnosed as Triple Feature Paralysis, a knee permanently assuming a lambent L shape with concomitant bruises and contusions resulting from action in the seat ahead, accompanied by a quick, snapping cramp of the upper buttocks. Its symptoms are unmistakable.

Strategically spaced between the Cowboy epics were episodes of Flash Gordon and Superman serials to quell the troops between rounds of gunfire and volleys of guitar-playing. Outright anger rolled in waves from the audience invariably the instant Gene Autry took up his Sears Roebuck melody box to sing “Red River Valley” through his noble Roman nose. It was a distinctly Anti-Sentimental crowd. Luckily Autry worked in the pre-Switchblade era, but there were other means to vent aggression on a beaded screen. As the first notes of the steel guitar rolled
out over the throng, a shower of bottle caps and chocolate-covered raisins arched through the hazy, flickering beam of light that cut the darkness above our heads. The ushers leaped forward at the ready, but by then the gunfire had reasserted itself and blessed Violence stilled the mob. It was early TV, but with far more audience participation.

A colossal high point came along about the third running of
Thunder on the Prairie
starring Johnny Mack Brown. The lights would go up in the house illuminating a scene of carnage and juvenile debauchery unrivaled in the most decadent day of the Roman downfall. Knee-deep in Baby Ruth wrappers, sated with popcorn, jaws aching from a six-hour session of bubble-gum chewing, we sat holding our Ticket Stub, waiting for the fateful drawing. On stage was wheeled a chicken-wire drum, filled with torn tickets, and behind a silver, bullet-shaped microphone appeared the slight but commanding black-clad, balding figure of the great, legendary Mr. Doppler himself. In person. Behind him was piled the Loot for that day: Chicago roller bearing roller skates, Hack Wilson model fielders’ mitts, Benjamin air rifles, and, of course, the Grand Prize—a Columbia bicycle with balloon tires and two-tone iridescent paint job.

Mr. Doppler grabbed his audience hard and fast with his opening line, the instinct of a sure-born Showman blazing through:

“Shut up in the balcony!”

To a kid we scrunched forward in our teetery seats, Hershey bars clasped frozen in midair, dripping between unheeding fingers. Ticket stub held at ready, we waited expectantly for our number to be called.

Two ushers on stage spun the drum and a volunteer, usually a wiry, pimply-faced lout from the first two or three rows, pulled the tickets while Mr. Doppler, milking each drawn number for all it was worth, built the drama of expectancy and chance as surely and skillfully as only a true Dramatist can.

At long last, the Grand Prize. The house lights dimmed and went out. Wheeled center stage in the brilliant blue-white vaudeville spot, it stood alone and coldly inaccessible. A vast hush fell
on the huddled throng, broken only by the soft, muted squishing of Mary Janes being ground to bits by loose milk teeth. All things hung suspended as the drum spun and slowed and finally stopped. Doppler raised his hand imperiously in the way that Mighty Casey must have, quelling the multitude as the crucial moment approached. Absolute silence as the volunteer’s grubby claw fished among the ticket stubs, searching for his own, no doubt, finally drawing from the chicken-wire cage a tiny orange fleck of torn paper. He solemnly handed it to the usher, who ceremoniously presented it to Mr. Doppler. The sun stood still in the firmament.

Mr. Doppler gazed for a moment at the stub and then looked meaningfully out over the audience and back again to the stub.

His voice, ringing with feedback, intoned:

“The winning number is … D.…”

A pregnant pause. We hunched forward as one man, seats creaking in unison.
All
our tickets began with D!

“D
 … Seven.…”

Muffled groans, anguished outcries, seats slammed angrily in isolated spots. Doppler raised his eyes menacingly. Again silence.

“D
 … Seven … Oh.…”

More screams and thumps. My palm itched sweatily. I was still in the running. This could be the week!

Mr. Doppler continued, pretending to have difficulty in reading the number.

“D … Seven … Oh … let’s see. This is D-Seven-Oh-
Three.…”

On a rising inflection, the audience now in a state of frenzy, scattered wails of lament and thuds of bodies falling amid popcorn cartons as Doppler closed with a smashing finish, his voice rising to a crescendo.

“D-Seven-Oh-Three
-EIGHT
!”

I sank back into my seat as a high thin squeak came from somewhere near the
EXIT
sign to the left of the popcorn stand. A great roar arose among the defeated as a tiny, limp figure,
carried down the aisle by jubilant companions, rushed toward the stage, yipping as they came. My God! It was a girl!

Muttered obscenities in the darkness. The mob was now in an angry mood at this unexpected turn of events. A girl! Flick, next to me, half-rose in his cockpit, his meat hook poised to hurl the remains of a taffy apple onstage as a statement of defiance. The sharp bark of an usher in the aisle catching him in midair:

“Siddown!”

The flashlight beam caught him, taffy apple cocked, jaw set He sat, sheepishly.

Onstage it was all anti-climax, and Mr. Doppler knew it. Quickly wrapping up the scene, he hurried the bicycle, kids, and ushers offstage and darkness fell. As we prepared for the first volley of the fourth feature of the afternoon. It was again the beating surf of crackling paper wrappings, the steady crunch crunch crunch of mastication picked up in tempo and blended into the fanfare of bugles superimposed on the opening credits and the great classic line:

REPUBLIC PICTURES PRESENTS

As the Longest Day wore on, time completely obliterated, the Outside World non-existent, no day, no night, just the thunder of the Pursued and the Pursuers and the crunch of fist meeting jaw and the crash of bottle hurled through barroom mirror roared ever onward. Life was complete. Occasionally a menacing form roamed up and down the aisles, searching for a huddled fugitive from supper. A sharp outcry in the darkness and a kid would be dragged, kicking and screaming, protestingly toward the
EXIT
sign and back into life.