a peppermint in my pocket

Mr. Peppermint is my father. I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re my friends and I want you to know. It’s a secret. You can’t tell anyone. That’s why he never comes to parent teacher night. See, he plays Mr. Peppermint on TV and it is hard for him. If he goes out in regular clothes people bug him and say, “Where’s the Peppermint suit and the candy cane and the flat top straw hat?” and if he goes out dressed as Mr. Peppermint, then kids run up to him and say, “May I please have a peppermint?” or “Gimme a peppermint!” or “Who are these kids?” “Where are their peppermint suits?” and he just can’t be a regular Dad…

I told this story in the din of the Reinhardt Elementary School lunchroom. Although related in strict confidence, a teacher seated at the same long lunch table a couple of kids down and across from me clearly heard with her Super-Sonic-Teacher-Ears. Her stare became a glare of disbelief – not that I would lie, everyone knew I was in my “own little world” and prone to “stories”– but that I would dare to tell such a preposterous story. She continued to look at me as though I had just lost my mind, as she loudly scooted her chair back, stood and carried her tray away.  Later, I saw her laughing in the hall with another teacher and they both turned and gave me a look as I passed. I felt bad about continuing to tell this lie over the next several months, mostly because I knew Mr. Peppermint would be disappointed in me.

Mr. Peppermint was, of course, a fictional character played by the great Jerry Haynes, an announcer with WFAA Channel 8, when, in 1961, he started a live hour of morning TV for kids. I was there from the very beginning. Mr. Peppermint was a soft spoken, sweet natured, patient fellow, who had a lot of puppet friends, went on adventures, had a magic candy cane and played folk songs on his guitar and sang. What more could a boy want in an ideal fantasy dad? When he did personal appearances, like at Sandy’s Red Goose Shoes in Casa View Shopping Center, a hundred kids showed up. Yet, he had a peppermint in his pocket for every kid, even though the peppermint pocket never bulged. It was magic the way a sad or shy child would brighten at the sight of a lanky red and white man passing out red and white candy. Mr. Peppermint was the kind of guy who made you want to remember to say Please and Thank You and No, Sir and Yes Ma’am. In a world where the father that I loved could turn highly irrational and violent in a moment, Mr. Peppermint was a tangible example of kindness and respect.

I retrospect, the proximity of personal and societal stress points in the early 60’s, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, touring model bomb shelters and storing food in closets, my parents divorce, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in my hometown just a few miles from my home, could possibly have had something to do with the creation of Mr. Peppermint as a fantasy father figure. At school, they had our parents fill out cards with questions like: “In case of a nuclear attack by the Ruskies and your family is completely wiped out, list three chums that your child can go live with.” Then they taught us duck and cover and started taking us to the darkened film room where they combed our hair with a purple light. Someone said they were looking for Russian spy’s. Later we found out the real enemy was head lice.  First, second and third grade were terrifying in their strict construct of absolute normalcy. It was really quite noble but clearly all adults had taken the vow, “DO NOT, under any circumstances, frighten the children.” Twilight Zone, the early TV show, is far stranger now, as the show’s tone of strained awkwardness and foreboding of weirdness, is exactly how adults acted in those tense days.

My relationship with Mr. Peppermint changed though on Nov. 22, 1963. I had been at school for about an hour when I suddenly imagined that I didn’t feel well. The teachers had pretty much given up on me at this point and so I was sent to the clinic. When Mrs. Herrick, the school nurse, stepped out of the clinic, I would rub the thermometer on my pants leg for a few seconds and pop it back in my mouth. After consulting my mom who was a teacher several miles away, I was on my way home. My big brother, 6 years older, was home sick also and they reasoned he could watch me. So, the school secretary, a woman who purported hid the Principal’s “Electric Paddle” from authorites, escorted me to the back door of the school and observed as I walked three houses down the street to where we lived. I felt like a man released from prison. They let me just walk out. I wanted to run and dance and scream but I walked in as sickly a manner as possible, barely controlling my glee.

My brother’s first words were “You’re a faker – you’re not sick. Leave me alone.” I settled in front of the TV with a blanket. There were cartoons on a local channel and I watched those while drifting in and out of a nap. I awoke to one of my favorite old cartoons, the 1936 Max Fleischer classic, “Christmas Comes but Once a Year” (see youtube). Half way through, the TV screen went blank and silent for a moment and the words, “News Bulletin” appeared on the screen. I don’t remember the exact words but I understood from the voice speaking, “News Bulletin” just remained on the screen, that the Governor or the President or his wife had been shot, Gangsters in a  motorcade had come wheeling around a corner firing bullets. Everyone had heard it and there was panic and the first lady tried to run away, too. Then they roared away and the police were chasing them. I ran for my brother.

“I told you to leave me alone.” “But Jay, they just came on the TV, the President, somebody shot him,  there was a motorcade of gangsters with sniper tommy guns, Downtown…” I was blathering word phrases that I had never known, but his face grew serious and sweet and he said, “you’re confused, it’s okay, lets see what’s going on.” He joined me in front of the TV. He switched the TV to Channel 8. Within seconds, there was Mr. Peppermint – only he was Jerry Haynes- not dressed in Peppermint but flustered and out of breath and confused. It was the first time I had ever seen Mr. Peppermint dressed as the regular guy that I had pretended he wasn’t. It was more fun to just pretend he was living in my fantasy world. But now, that would never be possible again. Mr Peppermint was the guy who would play children’s games and teach you to draw funny pictures but Jerry Haynes had to tell you the truth.  Jerry had been there and heard the shots and interviewed people and they said it was horrible, the President had been shot and then he ran 3 blocks and came right on the air. Jerry was not a newsman but all of the news staff was out covering the President and no one was in the studio but him and he apologized for being so out of breath and he cautioned all to hope that the early reports were mistaken and WFAA would bring us more facts as they became available. Well, the rest is just too terrible and too familiar. We all know how it ended.

Years passed, I grew up in a city that struggled mightily to throw off the terrible reputation of being a city of hate. It was a hard sell. Dallas was a city with a big wide streak of mean. The year before JFK, Adlai Stevenson spoke in Dallas and John Birch Society members, unable to shout Stevenson down, had stormed the podium, swinging placards and trying to incite violence. The rest of the country blamed Dallas for the assassination so the mean streak suddenly had a chip on its shoulder. The headlines of the Cleveland Plain Dealer Sports Section on the Sunday after the assassination, read Browns 24 Assassins 17.  Dallas was, of course, a racially divided city. A Dallas Cowboy had to file a federal lawsuit to stop red lining and Dallas schools were forced to desegregate in 1972, long after Little Rock and most of the South. But, Dallas mellowed and changed as time passed, eventually named an All American City, won a Super Bowl and Mr. Peppermint got syndicated nationally with a show called “

Peppermint Place

”. While I was long past watching, I took great pleasure that others recognized Mr. Peppermint’s value in the lives of children and wanted to see that continued.

Though I never intended to, it worked out that my wife and our young family did settle back in Dallas, very much in the same old neighborhood where I grew up on the eastern side of White Rock Lake. By then, Dallas had “America’s Team” and was known as a “Can Do” kind of city. There was even a very interesting museum in the old School Book Depository and another nearby devoted to the conspiracy theories of the assassination. I still could not pass certain buildings or places without thinking about the assassination but by and large, Dallas had placed November 22, 1963 into an appropriate perspective. I occasionally practiced law in the old Police Headquarters which had the jail where Lee Harvey Oswald was first jailed and the basement where Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby, as Oswald was being transferred to the County Jail. I couldn’t resist the urge to slip down to the basement and look at the spot where Oswald fell.

 One day, as I crossed the Mockingbird Bridge coming home from the office, I saw a man walking and I knew him instantly. It was Jerry Haynes. I wanted to stop and say something but, well, you know, that was the 7 year old in me. Now, I was a lawyer and it was getting late and my wife and kids were at home waiting. I would occasionally see Mr. Peppermint in movies or articles about him would appear in magazines. I always felt like I was catching up with one of the happy memories of my mostly bruised childhood. Now deep into my Dad role, I was fascinated to read that Mr. Peppermint’s son had flourished under Mr. and Mrs. Peppermint’s parenting, becoming a music icon as the driving force behind the band, the Butthole Surfers. 

A few years later, I was at the grocery store and I spotted Mr. Peppermint looking at canned tuna. I had to think if I dared to approach him, so I kept moving and weighed my opportunity. As I rounded an aisle, a young mother with a long braided pony tail and wearing Birkenstocks was struggling with a toddler trying to run off and create chaos and another fussy young one in the basket. As she wrestled with her runaway she raised her hand to swat and then thought better but I could see her about to boil over. It was sort of awkward and as I looked away, I realized I was right in front of the bulk candy and my eyes fell on the bin of peppermints. I had a plan.

 I dropped a quarter  in the sample box and took four peppermints out. I turned back to the mom and said, “Excuse me ma’am. I saw you were having trouble, whew, I’m a parent too and I know how hard it is. I thought maybe the kids would like a Peppermint…if you want...just distract them for a minute…” I was ready for the “How dare you…” but instead she said “Oh thank you. Hey look kids…” The kids instantly brightened. “And here’s one for you”, I said. “Oh, well…” she hesitated, suspicious just for an instant of my forwardness, but she saw I was being nice and accepted “That’s very kind, Thank You!”  I smiled at the kids, made a little small talk and then asked her, “Listen, I know this sounds crazy but Mr. Peppermint is about 2 aisles over…” “Mr. Peppermint is here?” she interrupted. “I love Mr. Peppermint.”  I took a breath and said, “Well, would you mind, you know if run into him, giving him this peppermint and just tell him some old guy said “Thanks.” She did a short nervous laugh and said, “Sure!” I  thanked her and turned on my heels and headed for the check out.

Finally, there was another incident in a different grocery store. It was about 11:15 p.m. and we suddenly realized we didn’t have lunches for the boys the next day. So off I went to buy healthful and energizing junk for kid lunches trying to balance goodness with what they are likely to throw away or give to the kid who forgot lunch. As I approached the check out line I was aware of a customer coming from a different direction but about the same distance from the register. Normally, I might have stepped up my pace just slightly to win the race but this time I slowed and looked up and there carrying a gallon of whole milk and a package of cookies was Mr. Peppermint. He had stopped at exactly the same time and we looked at each other. He knew from the surprise on my face that I knew who he was. I immediately said, “Please go right ahead, Mr. P.” He smiled and nodded slightly and said “Thank you kindly.” My mind was racing - say something but just enough, not too much, don’t be a stalker crazy man. He’s probably sick of people like me trying to make a peppermint connection…

All of the while I was unloading my basket on the conveyer belt and Mr. P was checking out. Then for a moment we were just standing there side by side. We were sort of dressed alike in sweater and scarf and hat against the winter wind and the young checker, said, “You know, you two look like you could be related.” Mr. Peppermint and I looked at each other. “Well”, I said, “He was like a father to me.”  “That’s so kind, thank you.” he said genuinely, “That makes my night.”  I wanted to take his hand in mine. Just standing there really did make me feel like I was standing next to the Dad I had longed for. After all these years, I had been able to express gratitude to Mr. Peppermint.  He took his milk and cookies and was gone.  There really was nothing else to say. Later, it dawned on me that Jerry Haynes probably still carries a peppermint in his pocket.  

On Libertarianism: Who are those guys?

I had promised to regale the vast audience here with more stories of my imaginary life but this one could not wait. I promise the Mr. Pepermint story before Christmas!

 On Libertarianism:

In 1974, I became a libertarian. For about 15 minutes.  I had heard a presentation, done some reading, and searching for an answer beyond an unpopular war, Lyndon Johnson - Richard Nixon, and three assassinations in five years, libertarianism made a lot of sense. Reliance on self and the enslavement of a government to the benefit of a people, whose needs were negligible, had an awesome feeling of independence and revolution to it.  I could feel my beard growing long and my calloused hands around the handle of an axe, while Neil Young tended his garden next door. This is what Canned Heat meant when they sang “I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go?”

   

Shortly after finding this bliss, I had two conversations with people I respected, my community college, government instructor and my high school girlfriend’s father, a banker. My government instructor was a progressive, liberal, democrat and he grew very grave when I naively said to him one day after class, “I think I figured it out! I’m a libertarian!” Socratically, he thoughtfully guided me through a number of values that he knew that I held and pointed out places where there might be some inconsistency with libertarianism. He suggested a couple of more readings and continuing the discussion.

Later that night, I spoke to Al, a principled, humble, Christian conservative, who also was later revealed as a philandering alcoholic, and asked if he had ever heard of libertarianism? He grew very grave and his brow furrowed as he spoke of Nazi’s and Japs and the necessity of the military industrial complex to protect the economic complex, which had to be big so we could all get rich enough, we wouldn’t need libertarianism. As Al had season tickets behind home plate and a ski boat, which I was welcome to use at any time, his objections struck a nerve. Without government, there would have been no ball park or lake. Right then I knew, I was not a libertarian.

If, as our fore-creatures crawled up out of the muck, or dropped down from the vegetation, or were spontaneously generated in a couple of days by a benevolent, if passive, creator, IF, the first twitch of a desire for social order, the first word spoken, had been LIBERTARIANISM, then, perhaps, we would be wired in such a way as to be able to achieve Utopious "You can leave this long haired country boy alone" Nirvana. However, one cannot undo the history of civilization, nor have we achieved much in understanding basic human meanness. Both of these would be required to approach Libertarianism.

There are a couple of things you never hear Libertarians talk about but the main one is, How does Libertarianism cope with human meanness? I'll grant that the status quo doesn't do much to prevent ass-holiness but it does give  some of the victims of it a work around. Another thing you never hear Libertarians talk about is why they are so doggedly determined to change the system from within. Why do they want to get elected to the giant government? Why are they not just writing a new constitution and using the ballot initiative to change it from the outside? Do any elected Libertarians turn down the benefits offered by the big government?

 In the Libertarian world “the market forces” prevent discrimination, collusion of power, monopolies, and other economic unfairness. Yet, their philosophy fails to grasp the historic truths that where there is diversity there has often been conflict of values and cultures. People mostly seek out their own kind for cultural, social, and economic relationships to the exclusion of “the others” and if the “other” happens to be historically disadvantaged due to, oh, say, slavery?, there really is not a way to imbue every being with the same opportunity.  This is why Rand Paul is a fool – rather, Sen.-Elect Fool. Paul recently made noise about civil rights legislation being unnecessary and used the market forces argument to assert that because black people have money, a restaurateur would an idiot for not serving them because all of the other restaurants, who did serve black people, would make more money. Apparently, Sen. Paul was too pre-occupied with fraternity pranks to have learned about the ancient times when governments in foreign and far away places like Mississippi, failed to “interfere with market forces” in civil rights, which resulted in lynching, civil rights workers murdered, and precious few, and almost always segregated, services and accommodations. If Sen.-Elect Rand could explain to me how libertarianism could have stopped Jim Crow and the KKK, I might have to reconsider my out of hand rejection of Libertarianism. Oh yeah, and he would have to explain how market forces would have desegregated schools.

Libertarians are the only perfect people. Their only flaw is expecting perfection from the rest of us. Despite my unwillingness to convert to a well-intentioned philosophy that has the unintended effect of harboring and fostering the terminally mean-spirited, I know that if Aliens came down and invaded earth they would kill everyone except the Libertarians. Then after they got to know them, they would kill them twice.

True Libertarians would like to roll back civilization and start over. The Neo-Libertarians, who are so dangerous today, hide their meanness, fear, or greed behind the veil of the misplaced idealism of this unattainable social and economic order and a very poor understanding of the Constitution. There, they wait like Sith lords though there will never be enough of them to do more than flesh wound the progress of a somewhat feeble, forward teetering government fueled by the well-intentioned electorate.

to blog me is to love me

It’s all about me. It always has been. A blog is the natural outlet for the self-deluded. Where else can one passionately pontificate under the impression that anyone gives a crap. Even my family, sick of my constant entries on the Facebook, urged me to get a blog so no one would actually have to read my rants. But a blog, that's like a commitment, right?

If you are going to blog, I guess blank pages just won’t do. This is not modern art, where substance can be merely implied. There is nothing quite as pointless as a blog with nothing posted. So, before I start the political and social commentary, I will take a few posts to reveal a little of your grateful scrivener's life, as he imagines it, and at least as far as the statute of limitations will allow. Though no one is reading, and fewer still actually care, this will initially be a bio-blog, buttered with enough fiction to make the story tasty. Context is everything. It is of the utmost importance to me that you not waste time reading my blog, only to discover at some point, so far down the road that you are filled with regret and revulsion, that I am clinically insane, terminally shallow, and, of a soft intellect, which I have no compunction to harden. Still, my life has been the sort of mess that has some poignancy without being pitiful, much like if one was to re-make “It’s a Wonderful Life” and set it in East Texas, starring Jerry Springer as George Bailey, and let his producers cast it from there.

To trust a writer enough to invest time reading their blog is a reckless and dangerous act. Phony writers abound and I am loath to even claim the craft for fear that I become known as another soul-less scribe. That, I could not bear. One (I always thought the impersonal “one” sounded phony) can easily hide their phoniness as long as they don’t go publishing everywhere pretending to know something and just making everyone throw up.  Real writers embrace experience – both real and imagined - with a glance over their shoulder as they leap from the fire escape and race down the alley.  In this blog, I will strive humbly to offer, through my experiences - what I have learned as I looked back over my shoulder - the universal shared pain, passion, exasperation, silence, dreams, love, incredulity, beauty, joy and contradiction of the ordinary life, and how it has sharpened and distorted my perception of culture, politics, art, technology, ethics, and the BIGGER STORY, which, after all, really is not about me. It never has been.

Thus it begins:

The child is standing in a baby bed holding the top rail for balance. The room is black dark, except the thin rectangular ribbon of light that traces the door across the room. As a man he recalls this as his earliest memory though the line between truth and grudge, mirage and memory is not definable. Beyond the door, there is an unceasing roar of laughter which never rises or falls. The child is screaming at the top of his lungs to the point of choking and gasping - the screaming intensifies. At first, the screaming is to  make someone hear and help. Convinced of the futility of that, the blood cry grows to guttural roar, drowning out the laughter and bellowing to naught. This lasts for what seems like hours. The child cry’s so hard he breaks blood vessels under his eyes with rubbing and gouging to wipe away the tears. His rage grows so that for the first time he climbs the top rail of the baby bed, intent on throwing himself onto the floor and escaping the terror of the darkness and killing the laughter beyond the door.

The door bursts open and the shadows of three women block the light. They pause for an instant and then rush in. Rasping out one final terrified scream of defiance, the child vaults and launches toward the floor. The mother lunges forward,  a cigarette deftly between her fingers and grabs the child out of the air. The alcohol and smoke laced breath and lips of the party priestesses press against the child’s sweaty cheeks, neck, and back. Cooing, and speaking sweet reassurances, the child’s rage is almost immediately bent to pleasure. Before he has endured nearly enough of this, he is whisked into the light, into the PARTY- where he is hoisted, exalted, toasted, and mocked. All of the faces are grotesque and unfamiliar. The room is heavy with smoke and perfumes and colognes and brightly colored clothes. As they honor and adore the young prince, the laughter never ceases.

Interestingly, I found this earliest vivid memory to be an absolute hoot when it was written in the first person. However, the veracity of the story above, never denied by my mother or father, emanates from such a dark and primal place in my consciousness, it requires the third person narrative. Like a Fellini movie running deep in my sub-conscious, there is really no reason to try to decide what is real – it isn’t going away.

The next few years must have had some joy but I can barely remember – though the proof is right there in 1000’s of feet of 8mm color film taken by Boop, my maternal grandfather, capturing birthday parties, snowstorms and joyous visits with relatives. Also captured is me jumping into a deep gravel pit filled with water when someone let go of my hand for an instant, me waving goodbye and having my hand slammed in the car door and me jumping off the deep side of a pier in the Florida Keys, while people scrambled out of the shallow side to come save me. While it is clear that the love in our family was strong, I more vividly recall leaving the yard without permission and winding up blocks away in a creek until dark. The hardest whippings I ever got, including one with a coat hanger for the creek infraction. Worse, was the building of a huge Christmas tree fort and then, while inside, lighting the match that resulted in an inferno that terrified the neighborhood and caused limited and strictly supervised play dates.  I learned early on, if people who love you think you are dead, or going to die, and then it turns out you are alive and were just being stupid, they are going to whip the hell out of you. At least that’s the way they saw it in the late 50’s and early 60’s.  

I was 6 when they found the collection of three years of nasal effluence, carefully extracted by index finger - encrusted on the underside of the box springs of my bed. We were moving due to the impending divorce. I don’t remember much about the divorce except waking up to a huge fight, violent yelling, a gun on the bed side table… but that’s not interesting, half of us have have lived in an emotional ghetto for some period of our life. The boogers they found under my bed when we had to move to sub-standard housing because of the divorce, are the real story! A divorce and dried boogers under the Box Springs – the family was exploding. We were dysfunctional before people used the word dysfunctional. Properly embarrassed and deterred by the family indignation at this unspeakable disgust, I vowed to never wipe my boogers where they could ever be found again. I had to find new, undiscoverable places – under the refrigerator, under the water tank of the toilet - to wipe my boogers. After all, I had stopped eating them, but I couldn't just let go of them. Kleenex was too fragile and handkerchiefs seemed to result in snot everywhere, so picking had become my preferred method of nasal hygiene. I had been exposed as a “nose-picking-booger-wiper”, according to my older brother, who as it later turned out was a nail-biter and a belly button fuzz collector. (He kept it in an empty match box!)  The moment of my disgrace began, when they tipped the box springs up on its side to take it to the moving truck and my mother said, “What the hell is that?” As everyone peered closer and the horror dawned on their faces my brother began to laugh with hysterical glee. I had been the cute, just darling, little boy, now transformed into the hideous “booger-boy” that no one wanted to be touched by. “Hi Sweet boy”, became “Have you washed THOSE HANDS?” and “Don’t touch me with your booger-hands!”

So, that’s a beginning of sorts. Who we are and what we become is so influenced by how we were loved and the incidents that find a place in our memories. When people tell me a story about their life they often express doubt about the importance or meaning of that experience. I don’t understand that because I find that these incidents tell me so much about a person’s humor, judgment and character. One person’s history is a part of the collective that makes up our common humanity. I look forward to hearing your stories and sharing more of mine.

Coming soon! :
Mr. Peppermint is really my dad. 
How the Kennedy Assassination messed with my head.
Benny the Ball - outlasting the Bully
I Take Naked Pictures of Women to School!

Thanks for reading!