8/16/22
Newsletter74
The Crack of Dawn
It’s the middle of the night.
I awoke an hour ago at 3:00 to the sound of inhuman screaming. My cat Ike had caught a bunny – something new for him – and it was freaking out. The screams of a bunny are disconcerting. I freed the bunny, then watched as Ike strutted around the house like King Shit of Turd Mountain.
In 1991 I worked as a PA on Billy Connolly’s first U.S. appearance on an HBO special. The show was held at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theater, located next door to the now long-gone Ambassador Hotel, where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. The Wilshire Ebell Theater was built in 1927 as a women’s club A few notable performances there were: 13-year-old, Baby Frances Gumm, one of the Gumm Sisters, was discovered there in 1934, then her name was promptly changed to Judy Garland; and in 1937 aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, made her last public appearance there before disappearing forever. Anyway, I arrived at 7:00 AM to find a custodian awaiting me in the parking lot. He handed me a telephone on a mile-long cord running into the theater and left. I spent the next twelve hours sitting on the lawn answering the phone, informing crew members where the theater was located. I read an entire book, Alice Hoffman’s At Risk, which was so sad it made me cry (a rarity for me). So there I was, sitting on the lawn with a telephone and a book, weeping. Billy Connolly, whom nobody in America had ever seen, went on at 8:00 and killed. It was an extraordinary performance. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of jokes pertaining to fucking sheep (apparently a beloved Scottish tradition), but Billy was great. My last job of the day, at about 9:00 PM, was to bring deli trays into the green room. After his star-making performance, Billy and his people came into the green room, then a flood of Hollywood big-shots arrived, including Sidney Poitier and Joan Collins. Other stars showed up, too, but since I was ridiculously tired after having been there for about 16 hours, they thankfully let me go home.
In tribute to my good buddy, John, whom I’ve known since 4th grade, I’ll tell one of his anecdotes. John grew up about a mile from me in Franklin, Michigan, and right next door to Detroit Tigers Star, Al Kaline. When John was six or seven he found a crowd of kids surrounding a tree in the Kaline’s front yard where a big raccoon was perched on a branch. Other than raccoons generally don’t climb trees, it wasn’t a big deal, except that I guess Mrs. Kaline had called the police. A Franklin cop arrived – not the sharpest local cops – and took the situation in hand. He told the kids to step away from the tree, pulled his pistol and shot the raccoon, which fell to the ground dead. He then got in his car and drove away.
When I was about seven, our next-door-neighbors were the Kratons. Dr. Kraton was an unfriendly man who came home from work every night pissed off. To expunge his anxiety, Dr. Kraton would regularly go out into his backyard with a .38 Police Special and shoot crows off the phone lines. He called the crows “Grackles,” which they weren’t, and said, “The Bible hates grackles.” We lived in a rather dense neighborhood and as a kid I could only think, “Where are those bullets coming down?”
I have no doubt the dawn will come, but it hasn’t yet.