Who am I really? Make a guess

“Cellophane, Mister Cellophane shoulda been my name. Mister Cellophane. ‘Cause you can look right through

me, walk right by me and never know I’m here.”

That song from the musical “Chicago” fits me nicely. People didn’t tend to notice or remember me (at least until I started this column). 

Being invisible benefits: I was not bullied as a child. As a reporter, I went unnoticed (until I went in for the kill!). I don’t get into many arguments. I haven’t offended many people with these nonpartisan writings.

But onceit got me into trouble with my boss. “You never have any opinions,” he told me. That is a problem when you are editor of a magazine (Satellite Orbit) with a staff of seven and a circulation of 300,000 readers. (If I had expressed my opinion about him, I’m sure I would have been fired.)

In college, a very drunken senior went into a rant about each classmate there. When he got to me, he said, “Doan, you are a nonentity. We don’t know anything about you!” I looked it up: It means non-existent. Good. I liked it that way.

You could look back on my college career and not know what to think. I started off on the college newspaper with a bunch of student radicals. And this was at UC Berkeleyin the 1960s, the national capital of rebellion, just like Rome is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.

The staff sang revolutionary songs by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger at parties. They demonstrated at the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings in San Francisco. We went on strike when the student government didn’t like us endorsing a leftist candidate. My name even showed up with the others in a state government report on subversive activities.

So as a junior, what did I do for a second act? I went to the dark side. I joined a fraternity.

The radicals considered me a traitor as I cut my hair shorter and began wearing button-down shirts and white socks, the uniform of these reactionary, elitist Patrician snobs.

No more singing “We Shall Overcome” at Saturday night parties. Now, it was sorority dances, paddling at initiations and crooning to guys’ girlfriends…though that was past the era of panty raids.

I even became the fraternity president, a leader in the overlords of oppression, and met regularly with the ultra-establishment fraternity council.

Had I finally seen the light? We’ll, no. I had been lonely.

So, what did all this make me? Well, you’ll never know. Not here anyway, Signed: Mr. Cellophane.

(The song in the video is actually “Waving Through a Window” from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” with the same theme.)

 

The good side of Halifax County

 

Halifax County has gotten a lot of bad media coverage lately. It’s time for a change, to write about what is good about South Boston, Halifax and their surroundings.

1.  We have the a champion kids’ softball team. The Halifax South Boston Dixie softball team won the Dixie Darlings World Series title this year.

2.  One of the best major league pitchers is a local boy…Andrew Abbott, who played in the all-star game this year.

3.  You always come across someone you know when you shop at Food Lion. And you won’t stop talking for at least 15 minutes.

4.  Unlike most small towns, we have some classy restaurants, including Molasses Grill and Paco’s.

5.  Top-notch auto racing tracks include Virginia International Raceway and the South Boston Speedway.

6.  The Factory Street Brewing Company has become a major entertainment center, with rock concerts like the one Labor Day weekend. And the Prizery is envied by nearby communities as a great theater venue.

7.  A new state-of-the-art high school just opened in South Boston.

8.  The Tobacco Heritage Trail is maintained very nicely. It is never crowded for biking, walking and horseback riding.

9.  People of all ethnicities are generally friendly and tolerant of different opinions.

10.                           Kayaking, canoeing and fishing are popular on the Wild Blueway that includes the Bannister River in Halifax.

11.                           We have a historic past, including the Crossing of the Dan during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War skirmish commemorated at Staunton River Battlefield Park.

12.                           One of the darkest and best places in the country for star-gazing is at Staunton River State Park.

13.                           There are no traffic jams—except maybe when the train comes through town.

 

Dogs part 2: Our conversations

You know I am a word person. When I communicate with my dogs, I have to use words. I can even imagine what they are saying in respect. Here is  a typical conversation:

Mike: Why are you staring at me, walking around in circles? Oh, you want to be fed!

India: Come on, meal time was five minutes ago. What’s for dinner tonight? Yum, yum.

Mike: Here you go, bon appetit!  Oh, look at how Ethos is eating up his dry food so fast. He loves it! India, why are you just standing there, sniffing this gourmet meal?

India: Ewww! Yuck! Why did you serve me this crap again? I want something better. How about a filet mignon?

Mike: Beef is getting too expensive Oh, here’s a little wet dog food to make you eat it. Boy are you spoiled!

India: Well, I’m finished. At least I don’t climb up on the counter and eat your dinner like Ethos does! Now, let’s go for a walk.

Mike: Oh, all right. Why can’t you just run loose like your brother, Ethos, does? Why do you need company?

India: It’s my job to get you outside. You could lose a few pounds anyway!

Mike: OK. Hey, why are you harassing Ethos out there?

India: I want him to play, and he won’t do it. He runs off.

Mike: Of course, he will if you keep biting him! Say, while we are out here, why is Ethos howling?

India: Because he is a hound. That’s his job. Don’t you know that?

Mike: Why do you keep barking at squirrels? Do you think you can catch them by shouting at them?

India: I’m frustrated because they won’t come out of those trees. But say, I want to prove to you that I am a good hunting dog. Here is a prized turtle that I have found!

Mike: You finally found something that is slower than you! Why do you keep dropping them on their backs?

India: I like to see them suffer.

Mike: I’m turning it over. Stop looking so proud. Bad dog!

India: To prove I can still hunt, I will go after another fast animal: a gopher. Look! I’m digging a hole in the dirt and sticking my nose in it and will bite my way through the until I find it!

Mike: I’m so glad that you are the dog and not me.

-0-

Comment from my wife after she read this column: I didn’t know about this! You talk to India more than you talk to me!

 

 

 

 

Dogs Part 1: Hating and Loving them

My relationship with dogs started off poorly. I loved my puppy, Skippy, in kindergarten, but he disappeared when our fence was taken down for new construction.

Then I was counseled by a neighbor, wizened by her extra years of experience and seniority, who took me under her wing. “You mistreated him,” she said.“That’s why he ran away.” She was seven years old.

I took this hard and didn’t warm to dogs again,especially after being bitten by one on my paper route. They were noisy, scary and impossible to control.

But when I met Pickett, I noticed that she had a Dalmatian. If you wanted her, the dog was part of the deal, I learned. Pretty though Nina was, she seemed awfully hyperactive. I got along well with the neighbors until Pickett moved in. “Get that dog off our property!” I kept hearing.

Next there was Brandy, whom she borrowed from a friend. Brandy showed no loyalty to us and would run off with strangers on our walks. Then came Tara, who became blind, deaf and incontinent in old age. Then Bonnie, who seemed to provoke dogfights in the local dog park.

Would I ever be free of this? We had Sara, who was utterly fascinated with birds when we went there to adopt her in Honduras. As she grew up, she kept bringing home stray dogs and I kept making her find owners. I warned her future husband, Lance, about this, but he was more tolerant than I was.

I kept telling my family that I didn’t like dogs, but they knew I was an old softie, and they talked me into getting a second.

I was getting accustomed to Niko, a poodle, but he tended to eat inanimate objects like sponges and hearing aids, and he died in old age after eating a sock.

The other poodle, India, used to run the farm with Niko, but she must have been heartbroken when he died. Now she won’t go anywhere without us. And she keeps coaxing me to go for a walk with her. Well, I am starting to enjoy it!

Then Sara took her love of dogs a notch higher and became a professional dog groomer. In the year she lived at Oak Grove with her family, she ran the business in the house next door, with dogs arriving by car every hour.

But just before she and her kids left to join her husband in Blacksburg, she begged me to keep one of her dogs, Ethos, a combination Doberman and coon hound. We agreed.

Ethos was a rescue dog who did not do well in apartments and small houses. He had gotten Sara and Lance into trouble twice by tearing up basements and howling at night when they lived in West Virginia.

At Oak Grove, he runs the 400 acres whenever he wants, he won’t come when he is called, and he eats absolutely anything. He’s my kind of dog!

He loves bed and breakfast guests, and he makes them pet him until they push him away.

After all of these years avoiding dogs, have I changed? I am in love with this dog! He knows the land here better than we do from his daily inspections. He belongs here as much as we do!

(Continued next week)

 

 

 

 

Maybe my biggest mistake?

I have told you before that my family should own much of California by now after opening a hardware store and bank in the heart of the Gold Rush.

The next generation ran them both into the ground, but property remained, probably acquired from indebted miners. My family quarreled over what to do with it for decades. Hmm, centuries, actually!

Once when I was 2 years old, they gathered to make a deal. I got ahold of the papers and promptly tore them up!

My mother was tired of the endless family bickering. She would give her share away to relatives, but when someone died, she would just inherit it back.

With such a background, you can understand why I wanted to get rid of her house in the same area (Placerville),  after she died during the bottom of the 2008 Great Recession. Others told me to hold on to it until the market rose again. But I sold it anyway. I did not want to be a landlord from 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. A California house sold for $200,000? Bet you don’t hear of that anymore!

I had toyed with buying land when I lived in Las Vegas in 1969 and 1970, knowing that it would be valuable some day. But I never got around to it.

Now you know where I am coming from as I tell you about my grandfather, Fred W. Gee, who carefully saved box tops from Fresh cereal in the 1930s.

The deal was: Turn them in to Sunset magazine and you could get a deed for valuable land left by centuries of settlers. My grandfather did that.

Sometime in the 1950s, my father decided to go looking for this land as he packed the family into the car for one of our long Sunday drives.

After a drive of maybe two hours, we found it! It was on the side of a steep hill with no roads, miles from civilization, somewhere north of the Russian River. (I don’t remember how large the parcel was.)

“Worthless,” my father declared, and we went home disappointed.

About 40 years later, after my father died, my mother got a letter asking about this same land. A woman was building something nearby and needed her property.

I agreed to take this project over.

So, like a genius, I told the lady she could have it for free if she would give my mother a subscription to Sunset magazine.

I have always wondered about that property. 

What if . . . ? I still don’t know.

Now I live on a 400-acre plot nowhere near the Gold Rush that has been owned by the same family since 1820. No paperwork, no deals for me!

 

 

 

A shocker at center stage

It was my first spring concert with the Washington Men’s Camerata, at the famous Kennedy Center, no less. I was thrilled walking past signed portraits of famous celebrities who had appeared there over the years.

Two friends from California flew out to see my choral debut there in 2013, Carol Ann Garrick and Nancy Goebner. We posed for a photo at the huge statue of John F. Kennedy. Even our friend, former Sen. Larry Pressler, was there.

Dressed in tuxedos, about 30 to 40 of us enjoyed singing the music from Broadway shows—especially “Maria” from “West Side Story” with great high notes for us first tenors.

Then something even more memorable happened. Another first tenor, Rob Hennings, proposed to his girlfriend, Diana Jean McCord, on stage!

“I did not plan this in advance,” Rob told me last week. “But it was a perfect night. My parents were there, Diana’s parents were there, and I was surrounded by friends.”

The director was Frank Albinder, who could have been a stand-up comic in a second career. An avid Democrat, he would needle some of the Republican Party operatives in the group mercilessly without offending them. It was quite a balancing act.

At intermission, Rob asked the director if he would call Diana up from the audience so he could propose to her. “Frank immediately understood, and I think was excited and happy to call on her,” Rob said.

Diana was reluctant to leave her seat at first but finally yielded. “She is not the kind of person who likes a fuss made over her,” Rob said.

On stage, Rob knelt and took out a ring that he had thought he might use some day. He didn’t ask her directly but inquired if she wanted to start a family. Eventually, she said yes.

Talk about pressure!

The chorus broke into a song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” as the audience got more entertainment than it for.

On Jan. 4, 2014, the chorus, including me, sang at the couple’s wedding in Ridgewood, N.J. The couple has a daughter Evelyn, aged 10.

I thought of this terrific incident as I attended the Camerata’s annual sing-along in Washington last month. I had not talked to Rob in years but got ahold of him for this column.

At my first rehearsal, in 2012, I asked a first tenor standing next to me: “Which line are we supposed to sing?”

“Uh, the first line,” he said. “You’ve never sung in a men’s chorus before?”

No, I hadn’t. I may have been the only guy there who hadn’t been in a men’s college’ glee club.

They still existed, though so many had gone co-ed that they had donated their left-over sheet music to the Camerata library. It boasted of having the largest collection of men’s music in the country.

I loved being a first tenor because you got to sing the melody most of the time, just like sopranos.

When I left Washington for South Boston in 2020, the chorus was one of the things I missed most.

 

Revealing my sordid past

 

It’s time—three years after beginning this column. You may know me as a gentle, proper law-abiding citizen who never offends anyone.

Now, it’s time to uncover my history, with a secret I have held on to for years about my criminal past.

It happened in 1954 in El Cerrito, California, a sleepy suburb of San Francisco. While most officers wasted their time on bank holdups, murders or household beatings, one brave policeman decided to attack the real mortal danger in postwar America: Children on bicycles.

After school, other 12-year-old boys were watching Space Patrol on television or shooting rubber bands at their little sisters. I was industriously earning money delivering newspapers on my paper route.

One afternoon in, the dutiful officer ordered me to stop and get off my bike. I did not have a license plate on my bike! And my noisemaker to warn pedestrians was improper. And my light didn’t work. (Why did I need a light? And what good was a license to identify your bike if it could easily be snipped off if it the bike was stolen?)

He wrote out a citation and ordered me to go to court on Saturday. About 20 other children also showed up. Today, there would be parents and lawyers galore, but I didn’t see any of either. Back then, parents never knew or cared what their kids were doing.

A panel of teenage judges sat behind the big table normally used for murder and robbery cases. Did this whole thing stem from a high school civics class’s term project gone mad?

With her gavel, the head judge sentenced me to ….write an essay about bicycle safety.

Afterward, the 20 of us waited in line with our bikes to get licenses, and I remember one kid threatening a fight as we jockeyed for a place in line. By the way, when was the last time you saw 20 children with bicycles?

I don’t recall my 6-year-old sister being prosecuted for her tricycle.

That wasn’t quite the end of my career of crime. I remember shooting at cars once—with a squirt gun. A Korean War veteran wasn’t amused and lectured me about how he didn’t like to be shot at. Good point.

Well, I will admit I don’t remember forgetting to get a license on my car in future years. I found out that the town ended its requirement for bike registration as late as 2014. But my parents, who kept mum during my predicament, told me later that the citation was ridiculous. I agree.