Glorious Noise Going Nowhere

     My broken Toyota pickup truck has been sitting in our yard for over half a year. I see it each day and think, my poor truck. It’s not my truck that’s feeling bad at all through. It’s just a motor vehicle with no feelings. Pathetically sitting there, covered with cobwebs and leaves that shows blatant age and stagnation, it’s going no-where and has no reason to go anywhere anyway. When I think how sad the truck looks, I might be thinking of myself. I feel like I’m just sitting still doing little more than whining.

     I haven’t exactly had a stagnant past 7 months. It’s only lately that I’ve felt burned out, like a car running on vapors sputtering and coasting. It has started to show in my blog. If you read last week’s lame entry, you know.

     And I just think, if only my truck was working… if I could just get out on the road in it, everything would be alright. I’ve been feeling bugged, burned out and bilious for awhile now, not all the time, but more frequently and for no apparent reason. I keep thinking that it’s because I need a sabbatical. That’s when I wish my truck was working. If only…

     I reminds me of a story where the prevailing thought was “If only the car was working” and “I just can’t wait until that car is done and then…”

     Back in 1985 my good friend Eddie had a car in the works. Works, meaning it was having a lot of restoration and body work done. It was supposed to be a stock 1967 Mustang Fastback. But the bored out 302 motor replaced the stock 289. It was rumored to have a limited slip differential too, not stock. Eddie and I dreamed of the day the car would finally be done. What frustrated us was how the shops doing bodywork and paint seemed to be taking their time.

Eddie had a road nemesis named Martin with a blue Dodge Dart. Martin provoked Eddie with his own souped-up hot rod acting like he was king of the road. We knew the Mustang would blow the doors off of anything existing on the road. Whenever I saw Martin in his Dodge all I could do was think, if only that car was working. And the months went by.

The summer of ’85 was young. The whole summer was. I was at the beach with a group of friends one morning. Then one friend’s eyes widened and he pointed. Pulling up in the parking lot was a dark metallic red 1967 Mustang Fastback. The engine sounded like artillery. Eddie was usually as cool as the other side of the pillow. Today was no exception as he casually stepped out.

We all were at the car in moments. The car’s vanity place said: 1Trick. Eddie drove me around the parking lot playing George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone. The inside of the car was clean and white. There were turn signal indicators in the reverse-facing hood scoops. Built in a year before they were the law, it had no seat belts.

Eddie let me out and took two girls for a ride. I followed in my dad’s Mazda sedan. At a shopping center parking lot, Eddie got out and I saw one of the girls bounce into the driver’s seat. They tooled around the parking lot and then headed out toward the avenue.

The universe, time, and space did a magic twitch of the hand at that moment and things came together. Looking right at the stop sign, I saw Martin in his blue Dodge. My first thought came automatically. I wish Eddie had his Mustang… Then like a hard dope-slap to the back of my head, the next thought came. Eddie does have his Mustang.

Eddie saw Martin too. His head was out the passenger window and he was calling Martin’s name in a long noise like a roaring volcano. Martin gunned the Dodge engine, answering the challenge.

No-one got out of Eddie’s car. The girls both tumbled backwards into the rear seat and Eddie dove into the driver’s seat. The One Trick vanished after him in a cloud of tire smoke. I figured they were headed to an empty stretch of highway to officially have it out. I didn’t bother to try to follow.

The center of our universe back then was the Ihop, so we waited there. Eddie pulled up in the Mustang a little later. The girls were quiet and dazed and went to the ladies room. Eddie sat and filled his coffee cup.

“Did you win?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Eddie didn’t sound that thrilled. He wasn’t being his usual cool self either. He looked a little disappointed.

I asked for details. In the cool of the restaurant, Eddie said that he had beat Martin in the race, but probably not in a quarter-mile. He had burned out for too long and the Dodge had gotten ahead. Posi-Track or not, he must have floored it right away and just sat there making smoke. Eddie eventually moved forward and got past the Dodge, but if it had been on a regulation track, it probably wouldn’t have been soon enough.

The excitement leading up the events may have been better than the actual thing. The best part of it all for me was the slap of realization that Eddie did in fact have the Mustang.  And in the years following, it made a great story to tell. I can still hear the sound of Martin revving the Mopar motor being drowned out by Eddie’s battle call. 

The bored 302 with chrome accessories

My lower half posing at the rear of the 1 Trick 

So here I am today, thinking that all could be made right if only this little pickup truck would move. I still don’t know if it’s the differential or a U-joint. One of the tough things about this is that the truck is not an essential in my life. I can’t justify an expensive repair for it if I can take the family van places.

But even broken, the truck has helped me a least this time to recall an awesome story to share and a truth to reflect upon. If I spin my wheels in exhibition and noise, I won’t move forward. Time to quit whining about the truck being broken and move on.

The Diamond Lil' Revue

     “Well,” one of the kids said. “We had been wanting to paint the ceiling black, right?”

     I blinked in surprise at the jokey attitude, but the students of the Baldwin High School drama guild were dealing with it as best they could. Their drama room had burned overnight. An arsonist had set fire to it. The damage was extensive but it wasn’t a total loss. They were in a middle of a show's run, The Second Annual Diamond Lil’ Revue. Baldwin Theatre Guild was able to move the venue to the playhouse of another local community theater. The temporary loss of the drama room was devastating as well as the shock of the assault on each person who held that place dear.

     But as loved as that room seemed, it wasn’t the walls and ceiling and the clutter of props and costumes that provided the magic. It was the kids, the alumnus and the adults who put so much of their lives and souls into the theater program there. I have never seen such talent in my life. For such a little island as Maui, there seemed to be a lot of burgeoning talents. Several have moved on to professional carriers in theater and film and music.

     And there amongst all the drama on and off stage, the teen angst drama, the students in some of the most decisive and confusing times of their lives, were the adults. The drama teacher, Ms. Loudon, was like a mother, lion tamer, mentor and teacher of all things theater.  Now retired, never replaced. Ms. Loudon is the type of person who comes along so rarely and touches so many lives that no amount of gratitude would ever match the love she showed. Other adults at the theater were local theater buffs, school alumnus, even kids from other high schools that didn’t have a good theater program. (That was me.)

     I saw parents dressing in outlandish costumes and yucking it up or acting down the house. But one parent in particular was the one who played Diamond Lil in the Diamond Lil’ Revue. If you only saw her onstage and didn’t know her as a person you would be hard pressed to believe this. But stage presence and talent were completely outshone by a full heart of gold in Rita.  Her energy onstage was only surpassed by her aloha offstage.

I was privileged to get to see the first few Diamond Lil’ Revues. They were formed as a royalty-free type of show full of song and dance strung together with a plotline. Rita hosted the shows as the title character. The first year set the tone for the rest. It was an old western dance hall. There was bar, a jail and of course a big stage with musical numbers, dance and a melodrama. The show was well received and they did it again the next year set on the Mason-Dixon line. That was the year of the fire. But the show went on. And the next year was a riverboat theme.

I got to perform for two of the three weeks for that 1985 show. And that was one of the quirky things about those shows. They would run two or three weekends for maybe 9 or 10 shows. No two were ever quite the same. Some acts were rotated to give more kids a chance to perform. Sometimes new acts were added in. Inevitably there was a lot of improvisation onstage.

The next year was a speakeasy. I only got to watch that one when I came home from college. Actually one night my friend let me take his part and be Elliot Ness at the end.

The next year was a Broadway showcase. I helped develop the plot for that show and then did the first weekend as a janitor and a magician. Then I went back to college for the spring. The cast of the show bought me a plane ticket to come do the last weekend with them. I will never forget that.

I missed the next couple of shows. They had a Christmas theme. When I moved back to Maui after college, Desert Storm was on everyone’s mind. I helped develop the plot for the next Diamond Lil’ which was a USO canteen theme. And for the next three shows I had the thrill of working alongside Rita as Eugene Toro, clipboard wielding assistant to Diamond Lil’. We did two USO shows. In 1994, Diamond Lil’ Revue had a theme that some folks had wanted since the very beginning.  With the blessing of Ms. Loudon, a bunch of guys finally sat down and wrote out the plot and setting for what turned out to be one of my favorites, the science fiction themed Restaurant at the End of the Universe show. We had a blast.

We did one more USO show. Then I did my last Diamond Lil’ in 1996. It was a Nashville/Hillbilly theme, still full of talent and friends. At the close of the show I was waiting word to see if I would be going to Hungary to teach.

I came back to Maui two years later but was not able to participate in Diamond Lil’ that year. I sat in the audience with a severely sprained ankle. (That wasn’t what kept me offstage)and I wished I could be up there. It was the last show I saw on Maui.

And all that was just my experiences. So many others were able to do more. It was a wonderful part of growing up that went on into my adult years. For one USO show Ms. Loudon, (you didn’t call her Sue even when you grew up) asked me to write a letter for a girl to read onstage. The show had her as a movie star reading a letter from parents to their son on the radio. I wrote the letter and was very pleased with it. Then Ms Loudon lost it so I wrote another that I thought was better. She lost that too and I wrote an even better one. Today I wonder if she kept tossing them away, knowing that I could do better. That was what it was all about. We rarely ran the show fully through until opening night. Kids were challenged to do their best and have tremendous faith in themselves and in others. And today the world is a better place. Not just for that room that burned on night in 1985, but for the passion and life that no flame could quench.

    

           

How I've made it This Far

     As well as I can remember, I’ve never told anyone this story before.  Now I’m telling the world.  I was spending 4 weeks working at a Boy Scout camp on Maui.  I was 21 and it seemed a little obvious to the camp director that I was bumming it getting room and board and payment in the summer between college semesters.  I was still working hard and he saw to it that I had little down time working the kitchen, teaching for merit badges and coaching archery.  I even led the protestant vesper service Wednesday nights. 

One lazy Sunday afternoon I was sitting in the office doing nothing and I watched the camp director get out the lawn mower.  He may or may not have started mowing, but it wasn’t just a few minutes before he got in his vehicle and left.  Mowing the grass in the assembly area was barely started.  I saw my chance to be a good boy scout. I would finish the job anonymously.  The camp director would come back and see the job done and think highly of all the workers there that day, not knowing who had finished the job.  It wasn’t just altruistic. I would feel less like a bum too.

I started mowing.  It was pleasant.  I was used to operating a push mower.  I mowed for a little while when the mower sputtered to a stop.  It was out of gas.  I had no idea where any was stored.  The job wasn’t even half done.  I was so disappointed I considered siphoning gasoline from my Mustang.  I didn’t have the tools and someone would have spotted me.  I went back to the staff cabin and didn’t watch for the camp director to come back.  No one knew that I had tried to do that.  As I’ve thought about it years later I think maybe he left for town to get some gasoline.

I usually get anxious and irascible around my birthday.  I have tried to explain it that I begin to regret bad decisions, and wish I had done things different.  I wish that I had not been coasting through college.  That summer was right in the middle of four years of not studying much and never being mindful of a future.  There are a lot of regrets and I listed several last year on my blog.  Sometimes I just wish I could make more of a difference.  I wish I could have completed mowing the lawn and made the camp director pleased. Maybe I really wanted him to suspect that it was me who did it. 

But the grass would have grown back in just a few days.  The work I do now never lasts either.  As usual, one of the last things I did at work on Saturday was vacuum the room where the kids assemble.  The next morning there is my youngest son eating a half a donut spilling sprinkles all over my nice clean floor.  Church hadn’t even started yet and there was my work, tainted.  And that is the way it goes and if I cannot accept that then I have some serious issues and don’t belong practicing the custodial arts.

So I’ve tried to work through the disappointment in myself this February.  It’s easy to see all the blessings I have and know that God took care of me despite my carelessness.  And the impermanence of what I do each day reflects on the big picture, something that I’ve had trouble seeing all my life.  I am seeing that the best of intentions can be thwarted.  The cleanest of floors will be dirtied.  Life cannot go the way I want it to a lot of the time.  But like an unstoppable force it will move on and I can sit and sputter like an empty lawn mower or I can smile at the joy my 8 year-old shows at eating a donut with sprinkles. 

One last thing that is somewhat related to all of this:  I have thought about what to write on the day before my 45^th birthday.  I can do a lot of thinking while I vacuum.  I wanted to write something exceptionally significant.  I thought about listing off all the people who have helped me out all my life with support of all kinds, encouragement and so many other things.  I thought about teachers and friends who spent time listening to me when I needed to talk.  I thought about people who gave me a chance or a second or third chance when it didn’t look like I should be allowed another.  I had friends come and celebrate my birthday with me yesterday.  That meant more to me that I could ever express in words.  

But among all the people who I can try to remember making a difference in my life I don’t know how many there were that I will never know about.  Like me when I tried to mow the grass in secret, how many others have taken care of me without me ever knowing?  How many people have lifted me up in prayer?  I will never know how many people have actually made a difference in my life.  I’m sure the number is considerably more than my weekly readers here.  

So I’ll turn 45 tomorrow.  And as much as I like to crow about how much of a loner I am, I would never have made it this far and in this good of a mental and spiritual state were it not for more people than I will ever know.  Thank you.