Читать книгу Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself - Lewis Grizzard - Страница 9

RADIO PERHAPS WOULD have made Elvis popular, but television made him The King. We could see him, and there never had been anything like him before.

The only music I knew prior to Elvis was the hymns from the Methodist Cokesbury hymnal; “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” and “Good Night, Irene” from my mother’s singing while she ironed; and “Peace in the Valley,” which I had learned watching “The Red Foley Show” on Saturday nights after my aunt bought the first television in the family.

But Elvis. Ducktails. His guitar. Uh-uh, Baby, don’t you step on my blue suede shoes, and don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true.

Elvis thrust a rebellious mood upon us. I was ten or eleven when I decided to grow my own ducktails and refused to get my little-boy flattop renewed. As my hair grew out, I pushed back the sides by greasing them down, and then I brought my hair together at the back of my head, giving it the appearance of the north end of a southbound duck. I wouldn’t wash my hair, either, for fear it might lose what I considered to be a perfect set.

“If you don’t wash your hair, young man,” my mother would warn me, “you’re going to get head lice.”

I didn’t believe her. Nothing, not even head lice, could live in that much greasy gook.

I also pushed my pants down low like Elvis wore his.

“Pull your pants up before they fall off,” my mother would say.

“This is how Elvis wears his pants,” would be my inevitable reply.

“I don’t know what you children see in him,” she would counter.

I wrote her off as completely without musical taste and suggested that Red Foley was an incompetent old geezer who couldn’t carry Elvis’s pick.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with young’uns these days,” was my mother’s subsequent lament.

My stepfather eventually entered the ducktail disagreement and dragged me to the barber to reinstate my shorn looks. I cried and pouted and refused to come to the dinner table. Why were these people so insistent that I maintain the status quo when there was something new out there to behold?

We fought the Elvis battle in my house daily. Sample warfare:

“How can you stand that singing?”

“Elvis is a great singer.”

“Sounds like a lot of hollering and screaming to me.”

“It’s rock ‘n’ roll.”

“It’s garbage.”

“It’s Elvis.”

“It’s garbage.”

“It is not.”

“Don’t you talk back to me, young man!”

“I wasn’t talking back.”

“You’re talking back now.”

“I am not.”

“Turn off that music right now and go to bed. This Elvis is ruining all our children.”

I suppose if it hadn’t been Elvis who ruined us, it would have been something, or somebody, else. But it was Elvis, and it was his music that set us off on a course different from that of our parents.

“That Elvis,” the old men around the stove at Cureton and Cole’s would say, “ain’t nothin’ but a white nigger.”

“Don’t sing nothin’ but nigger music.”

“That little ol’ gal of mine got to watchin’ him on the teevee and he started all that movin’ around like he does — look like a damn dog tryin’ to hump on the back of a bitch in heat—and I made her shet him off. Ought not allow such as that on the teevee.”

“Preacher preached on him last week. Said he was trash and his music was trash.”

“He’s ruinin’ the young’uns.”

The teachers at Moreland School caught one of the Turnipseed boys, I think it was Bobby Gene, shaking and humping like Elvis to the delight of a group of fifth-grade girls on the playground one morning during recess.

They took him to the principal, who paddled him and sent a note home to his parents, explaining his lewd behavior. Bobby Gene’s daddy whipped him again.

“Do your Elvis for us, Bobby Gene,” we said when he came back to school.

“Can’t,” he replied. “I’m too sore.”

Bobby Gene Turnipseed may have done the best Elvis impersonation in Moreland, but each of Elvis’s male followers had his own version. After my stepfather forced me to have my ducktails sheared back into a flattop, my Elvis lost a little something, but I still prided myself on the ability to lift the right side of my lip, a la Elvis’s half-smile, half-snarl that sent the girls into fits of screaming and hand-clutching.

There was a girl in my Sunday School class who was a desirable young thing, and as our Sunday School teacher read our lesson one morning, I decided to do my Elvis half-smile, half-snarl for the latest object of my ardor.

Recall that we were children of church-minded people, and I was quite aware of the wages of sin. I once snitched a grape at Cureton and Cole’s, and my cousin saw me and told me I was going to hell for thievery. I was so disturbed that I went back to the store and confessed my crime to Mr. J.W. Thompson, one of the owners. He was so moved by my admission of guilt that he gave me an entire sack of grapes free and assured me I’d have to steal a car or somebody’s dog to qualify for eternal damnation. When my cousin asked me to share my grapes with her, I told her to go to.... Well, I ate all the grapes myself and spit the seeds at her.

Stealing grapes was one thing, but thinking unspeakable thoughts about girls while in church and curling my lip at my prepubescent Cleopatra while the lesson was being read probably would bring harsh punishment from above. I couldn’t remember which thou-shalt-not such activity fell under — I wasn’t certain what covet meant, but I figured it had something to do with wanting another boy’s bicycle — so I decided to take a chance and do my Elvis lip trick at the girl anyway.

I curled up the right side of my lip perfectly as Cleo looked over at me. I didn’t know what to expect. Would she absolutely melt? Would she want to meet me after church and go over to what was left of the abandoned cotton gin and give me kisses and squeezes?

She didn’t do either. What she did was tell the Sunday School teacher I was making weird faces at her while the lesson was being read. The teacher told my mother about it, and my punishment was to read the entire book of Deuteronomy and present a report on it to the class the next Sunday. I learned a valuable lesson from all that: When you’re in church, keep your mind on baseball or what you’re going to have for lunch, not on something sweet and soft and perfumed wearing a sundress. Church and Evening in Paris simply don’t mix.

Never one to be selfish, I attempted to share my ability to mime Elvis’s facial expressions with others, especially with Little Eddie Estes. Little Eddie was a couple of years younger than me and I served as his self-appointed mentor. I taught him how to bunt, where to look in the Sears Roebuck catalog for the most scintillating pictures of women in their underpants, how to tell if a watermelon is ripe (you cut out a plug and if what you see inside is red, it’s ripe), and I also attempted to instruct him in mimicking Elvis.

“What you do is this,” I said to Little Eddie. “You curl your lip to the right a little bit, like the dog just did something smelly. If you want to add Elvis’s movements to this, you bring one leg around like a wasp has crawled inside your pants leg, and then you move the other and groan like when your mother insists you eat boiled cabbage.”

Little Eddie made a gallant attempt. He got the lip fine and he groaned perfectly, but he couldn’t get the legs to shake in the correct manner.

“I couldn’t shake my legs, either, when I first started doing Elvis,” I told him. “What you need to do is practice in front of a mirror.”

Several days later, Little Eddie’s father found his son curling his lip and groaning and shaking his legs in front of a mirror in his bedroom and thought he was having some sort of seizure. His mother gave him a dose of Castor Oil and put him to bed.

* * *

I don’t suppose that any generation has really understood the next, and every generation has steadfastly insisted that the younger adapt its particular values and views.

My parents’ generation, true to form, sought to bring up its young in its mold, but it also had a firm resolve to do something more for us.

It was much later in my life, perhaps at a time I was feeling terribly sorry for myself and looking for a way out of that constant dilemma, that I decided my parents’ generation may have endured more hardship and offered more sacrifices than any other previous generation of Americans.

So they never had to cross the Rockies in covered wagons and worry about being scalped. But my parents, both of whom were born in 1912, would live through and be directly affected by two World Wars, one Great Depression, and whatever you call Korea. And when they had been through all that, they were ushered into the Cold War and had to decide whether or not to build a fallout shelter.

It is no wonder that the men and women who came from those harried times were patriots, were traditionalists, were believers in the idea that he who worked and practiced thrift prospered, and he who allowed the sun to catch him sleeping and was wasteful perished.

These were hard people, who had lived through hard times. But they endured and the country endured, and they came away from their experiences with a deep belief in a system that had been tested but had emerged with glorious victory.

Looking back on my relationship with my own parents and with others from their generation, I think they also felt a sense of duty to their children to make certain that, at whatever cost, their children would be spared the adversity they had seen.

Have we, the Baby Boomers, not heard our parents say a thousand times, “We want you to have it better than we did”?

They wanted to protect us. They wanted to educate us. They wanted us to be doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers, not farmers and mill hands. They hounded us to study and to strive and avoid winding up in a job that paid an hourly wage. They may have mistrusted individuals their own age who had educations and who went to work wearing ties, but that’s exactly what they wanted for us. And they made us feel terribly guilty if we did not share their desires.

“Have you done your homework?” my mother would ask.

“I’ll do it later.”

“You will do it now, young man. I don’t want you winding up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica.”

Flagg-Utica was a local textile plant.

“I haven’t bought anything new to wear in years so I could save for your education,” my mother would continue on her guilt trip, “and you don’t have the gratitude to do your homework.”

Somehow, I never could figure how failing to read three chapters in my geography book about the various sorts of vegetation to be found in a tropical rain forest had anything to do with facing a life as a mill hand. But with enough guilt as a catalyst, you can read anything, even geography books and Deuteronomy.

I suppose our parents also were trying to protect us when they voiced their displeasure with Elvis. They knew he was something different, too, and they were afraid of where he might lead — thinking evil thoughts about girls in Sunday School, for example.

We want you to have it better than we did, they said, and that covered just about everything. They wanted us to have money and comforts; they wanted us to have knowledge and vision; they wanted a better world for us, one free from war and bitter sacrifice.

They are old now, my parents’ generation, and I suppose they think they got what they wanted. I did my homework and I got the education my mother saved for, and I live in an air-conditioned house with a microwave oven, an automatic ice-maker, and a Jenn-Air grill on the stove. I also have two color television sets with remote control, a pair of Gucci loafers, and a tennis racquet that cost more than the 1947 Chevrolet my mother once bought. I eat steak whenever I want it, I’ve been to Europe a couple of times and nobody shot at me, and I have a nice car.

The car. It’s a perfect manifestation of having achieved the success my parents wanted for me, but such success can be bittersweet. While we’re having it better than our parents did, they now may feel, in some instances, that we’ve actually gone further than they intended. They may suspect, as the phrase went, that we’ve forgotten “where we came from.”

Allow me to explain.

After I got my first job out of college, I bought myself a Pontiac. Later, I bought another Pontiac, bigger and with more features than the previous one. Then I lost my head and bought one of those British roadsters that was approximately the size of a bumper car at the amusement park but not built nearly as solidly.

After the sports car had driven me sufficiently nuts, I decided to go back to a full-sized sedan, something fitting a person who was having it better than his parents did.

I got myself a Cadillac.

Nobody in my family had ever owned a Cadillac, so I figured if I had one, there could be no question that I had fulfilled my mother’s wishes by making something of myself.

I had a former schoolmate who sold Cadillacs, so I went to see him and priced a couple. I couldn’t have paid for the back seat, much less an entire Cadillac.

“Have you thought about leasing?” my friend asked me.

As a matter of fact, I hadn’t. As a matter of fact, I never had even heard of leasing an automobile.

“It’s the latest thing,” said my friend, who explained that I wouldn’t have to fork over any huge down payment, and for a modest (by Arab oil sheik standards) monthly installment, I could be driving around in a brand-new Cadillac.

I bit.

“You want power steering and power brakes, of course,” said my friend.

“Of course.”

“And do you want leather upholstery?”

“Of course.”

“And how about wire wheelcovers and a sun roof?”

“Of course.”

“And eight-track stereo?”

“Of course.”

“Let me see if I have this straight,” my friend summarized. “You want the kind of Cadillac that if you drove it home to Moreland and parked it in your mother’s yard, half the town would want to come by and see it. Right?”

“But, of course,” I said.

I drove my new Cadillac with the power steering and the power brakes and the leather upholstery and the wire wheelcovers and the eight-track stereo off the lot and directly home to Moreland.

“It must have been expensive,” said my mother.

“Not really,” I explained. “I leased it.”

“Couldn’t you have done just as well with a Chevrolet? I always had good luck with Chevrolets.”

“I just thought it was time I got myself a Cadillac,” I explained. “I’ve worked hard.”

“I know that, son,” said my mother, “but I don’t want you just throwing your money away on fancy cars.”

Suddenly, I felt guilty for driving up in my mother’s yard in a Cadillac. I was feeling guilty because I didn’t think a Chevrolet was good enough for me anymore. I could hear the old men sitting around the stove:

“Got yourself a Cadillac, huh? Boy, ain’t you big-time?”

“Hey, look who got hisself a Cadillac, ol’ college-boy here. Boy, where’d you learn high-falootin’ things like drivin’ a Cadillac? Didn’t learn that from your mama, I know that. She never drove nothing but Chevrolets.”

The only person who came by to see my car while I was visiting my mother was Crazy Melvin.

“What kind of car is it?” he asked me.

“Chevrolet,” I said.

“Thought so,” said Crazy Melvin as he walked away.

Guilt was a very big part of my generation’s adult life. If you didn’t do well enough, you were guilty because you’d let your parents down. But if you did too well, and came home driving a Cadillac and wearing sunglasses, you felt guilty because you obviously had forgotten your roots and had turned into a big-city high-roller that you had no business turning into.

The old men at the store: “You drivin’ that Cadillac is like puttin’ a ten dollar saddle on a thousand dollar horse.”

Despite the Cadillac, which now has more than 100,000 miles on it and is five years old (I figure if I drive it long enough, my mother will appreciate the sound common sense I used in not trading for a new car until my old one was completely worn out), despite the education, despite all the gadgetry I own, despite the fact that I didn’t wind up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica, I’m not so certain that I am having it better than my parents’ generation did.

Let me clarify this point: I wouldn’t have wanted to go through World Wars and the Great Depression, and I like my creature comforts and the cruise control on my car, but did my parents ever have to eat a plastic breakfast at McDonald’s while some guy mopped under their table spreading the aroma of ammonia?

Did they ever have to fight five o’clock traffic on a freeway when they were my age? Did they ever have to worry about getting herpes? Couldn’t they eat bacon and all those other foods that are supposed to give me everything from St. Vitus Dance to cancer without worrying?

Did they ever have to put up with calling somebody and getting a recorded message? Did they ever have to make their own salads in restaurants or pump their own gasoline at exorbitant prices in gasoline stations? Didn’t they get free glasses when they bought gas, and didn’t the attendant always wash their windshield and check their oil without being asked?

Did my parents’ generation go to movies and not understand them at all? Did they ever have to deal with women’s liberation, gay rights, the Moral Majority, the anti-nuke movement, a dozen kinds of racism, palimony, sex discrimination suits, and Phil Donahue making you wonder if you really have any business on this planet anymore?

Did they have to endure Valley Girls, punk rock, rock videos, the “moonwalk,” break dancing, ghetto blasters, and “The Catlins”?

So their kids worshipped Elvis. My generation’s children follow Michael Jackson, who wears one glove and his sunglasses at night, and sings songs with names like “Beat It.” It also is rumored that he takes female hormones to nullify his voice change. I cannot verify this, but there are rumors he recently was seen hanging his panty hose on a shower rod. My generation’s children also follow something called “Culture Club,” which features something called Boy George, who dresses like Zasu Pitts.

My parents’ generation had Roosevelt for a president. We had Nixon.

They won their war. We lost ours.

They knew exactly what their roles in family and society were. Most of us don’t have any idea what ours are anymore.

They had corns on their toes. We have identity crises.

They got married first and then lived together. We do it just the opposite today.

They fell in love. We fall, or try to, into meaningful relationships.

Did Lou Gehrig use cocaine? Did Jack Benny freebase? Did Barbara Stanwyck get naked on the silver screen? Did they have to put up with Jane Fonda?

I obviously can’t speak for all of us, but here is one Baby Boomer who liked it better when it was simpler. My parents sent me out into this world to make for myself a better life than they had and maybe I achieved that in some way. But the everlasting dilemma facing me is that although I live in a new world, I was reared to live in the old one.

I remain the patriot they taught me to be. I like music you can whistle to. If ever I marry again, it will have to be to a woman who will cook. She can be a lawyer or work construction in the daytime, and she can have her own bank account and wear a coat and tie for all I care, but I want a home-cooked meal occasionally where absolutely nothing has passed through a microwave.

I don’t understand the gay movement. I don’t care if you make love to Nash Ramblers, as long as you’re discreet about it.

I don’t use drugs, and I don’t understand why anybody else does as long as there’s cold beer around.

I think computers are dangerous, men who wear earrings are weird, the last thing that was any good on television was “The Andy Griffith Show,” and I never thought Phyllis George had any business talking about football with Brent Musberger on television.

In his classic song, “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?”, Merle Haggard says it best:

“Wish Coke was still cola,

A joint, a bad place to be ...

It was back before Nixon lied to us all on TV ...

Before microwave ovens, when a girl could still cook and still would ...

Is the best of the free life behind us now,

Are the good times really over for good?”

My sentiments exactly. If I could have the good times back, I would bring back 1962. At least, most of it. I was sixteen then. I had my driver’s license, a blonde girlfriend, and my mother awakened me in the mornings and fed me at night.

Elvis was still singing, Kennedy was still president, Sandy Koufax was still pitching, John Wayne was still acting, Arnold Palmer was still winning golf tournaments, you could still get hand-cut french fries in restaurants, there was no such thing as acid rain or Three Mile Island, men got their hair cut in barber shops and women got theirs cut at beauty parlors, there was no such person as Calvin Klein, nobody used the word psychedelic, nobody had ever heard of Vietnam, and when nobody bombed anybody during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was convinced that the world was probably safe from nuclear annihilation ... an idea I do not hold to with much force anymore.

1962. It was a beauty.

So what happened to the simple life the boys from Moreland knew? And when did all the change begin?

I think I can answer the second question. It was one morning in November, 1963, and I was changing classes in high school.