“I guess this one’s gonna end up like Chico, the Monkey,” I
said to my pal, Jerry Manley, as we looked at a giant ape battle authority on
television while we talked about old times as journalists and News Brothers and
half-century friends.
At least I talked. He mostly opened his eyes briefly, turned
to me, and mostly agreed.
Memories grow dimmer with each sunset. But even Jerry won’t forget the night we came
up with the headline “Deputies Go Bananas: Monkey At Large!”
I won’t let him.
Fortunately, the memory of that story, even the night of the primate pursuit,
remains like yesterday in my mind.
Actually, I remember
plenty, too much in fact, as terrors from past “lives” revisit me most nights.
Seldom are my night monsters carrying joy. I do sometimes
relive past adventures with Jerry, as well as good and sometimes bloody times
with Rob Dollar – we wrote a book about our newsroom lives 12 years ago. Other
visitors in my “dreams” include Tony Durr, long-dead, empty pill bottle by his
side; Scott "Badger" Shelton, radio-voiced great friend and Yellowest Dog Democrat who fought to laugh, even as we saw cancer consume him; Peter Cooper, a historian and musician who lost his battle with an evil illness; Harold “The Stranger” Lynch, a dear friend who died of cigarettes; Jocko,
my best college pal, who continues chemo for myeloma while also recovering from
a hip replacement.
Jocko, Carpy, Nardholm and Titzy – with occasional
accompaniment by a Bible-thumper who has turned both cheeks and cussed and
proselytized away his friends; a Wizard asshole and Dog Shit and the Hanson gang
– lived studiously and hard back in our Iowa State days. Unlike the characters in recent news stories,
we always had a “no man left behind” philosophy that made sure we got back to
the dorm safely as a team. If one of us
was going to drown in a river, we all would be there, holding hands. Sometimes
one of us needed to be bailed out of jail, but the Ames Police Department is
filled with good guys who didn’t mind letting an inmate bum a smoke until his
pals got by to bail him out.
Anyway, my memories remain, and I can recall not just in my
nightmares but daydreams as well, a life of great post-college journalism
adventures with Jerry, my longest-tenured newspaperman friend. For half a
century now, we’ve been pals. For at least half the time, we chased the dawn.
Night time may have been the right time, but there were
exceptions. There was a Saturday morning we went together to our old friend,
Louis Buckley’s, funeral in Guthrie, Kentucky. We’d ridden together, so
afterward, we killed a bottle of Cutty Sark in Jerry’s house in St. Bethlehem
before he went to 1100 Broadway in Nashville and me to 200 Commerce Street in
Clarksville. Real newspapers used to live in those buildings. Not now. District
attorney is on Commerce. Big damn hole at 1100 Broad. There
were far too many ‘holes when I worked there.
Our most-remarkable friendship was built around our love of
being newspapermen, of covering murders, a “Full Moon Rapist” (I nicknamed the
monster for headline-writing purposes) and kidnappings of teenagers, found dead
in forests and streambeds. Skull dragged out of the woods by dogs, as humans
looking on thinking it was an empty gallon milk jug. Rob wrote most of those
stories, though I did plenty and especially paid attention to the human cost of
brutality. I edited Rob’s stuff – Jerry edited mine – and I’d send it to Jerry
for the final edit, layout and headline.
“Wallet Found: It’s Rodney’s.” “Long’s
life cut short.”
Jerry, who is in a Memory Care Ward -- at what used to be
called an “old-peoples’ home” --five miles from me, can’t remember much at all.
And it’s getting worse.
“What was your favorite news story we did back then?” I ask
him on most of my weekly visits. And on
this matter, he does have a flickering memory: “Deputies Go Bananas: Monkey At
Large!” he’ll say. Or something close to
it.
The Chico the Monkey story makes him happy and reminds him
of the heights of both of our journalism careers.
Perhaps because I’ve been bringing it up weekly during the
last four months he’s been in the old-people’s home’s Memory Care Ward, he has
latched onto the Chico, the Monkey, story as the best in our half-century (both
of us were fucked by Korporate Amerika, but that’s a long story. Too many
people’s lives were forever charred and scarred by the bean-counters and age-discriminators). Not just in newsrooms, where upper management
“people” graduate from “Be a shithead to your employees school,” where they learn
about acceptable age-discrimination forms and appropriate back-stabbing
techniques.
Jerry learned his career was over – after more than 30 years
at a large Nashville newspaper – when his supervisor called him while he was on
vacation at the annual Manley family reunion down in Petersburg. He almost choked on his watermelon.
Jerry recalls it pretty well, but is too sleepy to be resentful.
But he clearly recalls the night Chico got uneasy and made a
fatal jailbreak. The pet monkey escaped
someplace out near St. Bethlehem, at Clarksville’s edge, and the Sheriff’s
Department was called out.
Since there were no teenage rapes, red-neck knife murders,
Klan rallies nor ax fights going on that night, the Montgomery County deputies
went out in full force, and the entire evening of monkey business was dominating
the newsroom police scanner. You could hear them chew on donuts from Don’s in
between “10-4,” and “10-7” as they
jabbered their primate excitement. Rob, who had secured the police report, was
writing the story, while we all smoked and listened to the deputies as they
went ape over the fact this was not your normal night in Montgomery County,
Tennessee. Me, Jerry and Rob loaded the story with as many monkey cliches as
possible. I did get in a bit of a jam with the publisher over that, but I had
grown accustomed to the punitive chair in front of his desk.
Chico the Monkey never was captured, enjoying swinging
freedom until he was eaten by dogs a couple of months later. I wrote a
column-length obituary about the death of the county’s only well-known monkey.
Got a bit of a tongue-lashing from management, but Chico deserved it.
Whenever we talk about Chico the Monkey, Jerry’s always
surprised when I get to that gruesome ending. Jerry was no longer at
Clarksville paper when the monkey was eaten. I think Rob may have been gone,
too, fired because he applied to be police chief in order to gain entry to the closed
hearings to replace Ira Nunally – a great man and pal, who retired to be a
crossing guard over on Crossland Avenue. The hearings were closed to the media and to
the public, so Rob figured he’d cover them by being interviewed for the
position, since his master’s degree was in law enforcement administration. The brass did not support him, when the mayor
and other officials called to complain. W. Wendell Wilson, who had cleared the
assignment from his city editor’s spot, kept his death-skull-face down and did
not defend Rob as the figurative dogs ate him, as well.
But back to my monkey tale. This retelling of the Chico
story is relevant because when I went got into Jerry’s room, he was glued to the
giant ape movie on TV.
I had a bit of difficulty getting into the room. When I got
halfway down the hall to Jerry’s less-than-memorable residence, Mr. Brown, his
roommate, was standing outside the door, motioning as wildly as a 90-year-old
monkey. “Jerry. Jerry. Door. Jerry.
Door,” Mr. Brown said, pointing to the door handle.
Indeed, it was locked, so I summoned a nurse who came down
to unlock it. Jerry barely looked away from the screen, where a giant ape was
being shot by enough automatic weapons to arm a militia’s attack on innocent
women and schoolchildren.
“Hey, man, sit down,” Jerry said, motioning to Mr. Brown’s
recliner. I asked Mr. Brown if it was OK for me to use it. Jerry answered
first: “He won’t care.” Mr. Brown tried to smile and nodded. Then he crawled up
in the bed next to the reclining chair.
I gave Jerry two packs of eight Keebler cheese-sandwich-crackers
and a Diet Sprite that I had smuggled into the old-people’s home in the lining
of my Iowa State jacket, the black one that my old college friend, Captain Kirk,
gave me before the Bible ripped away his formerly loving and loved demeanor.
“For God so loved the world, but he doesn’t love you, Champo,” is pretty much a
direct quote from our final conversation five years ago. Another story, but if
you believe the Captain, I’m going to Hell. I hope I don’t have to go to a
Memory Care Ward first. Rather be eaten
by dogs.
So, while Jerry enjoyed his snacks – I got him what he
requested the week before – we both watched the movie, “Rampage.”
The Rock, as good an actor as Pat Boone and Tab Hunter ever
were, was trying to save this giant, genetically altered ape for an hour or so,
as he helped fight off evil government forces bent on eliminating this
not-necessarily-so-gentle giant from the face of the Earth.
“Damn, this is going to end up like Chico, the Monkey,” I
said, as cops and government thugs kept emptying AR’s into the ape.
“No, I think George lives,” Jerry said, as we watched a big
cargo plane carrying the giant ape burn and head earthward.
The Rock and an equally talented actor named Naomie Harris
and some other random official parachuted from the cargo bay of the crashing
plane.
George, the name of the ape, is trapped in the plane that is
on fire and subsequently crashes into the jungle or weeds or a soundstage in
Century City.
As the plane explodes on impact in the weeds, there is
concern on The Rock’s face – he has a couple of weapons in his rich acting
arsenal, and concern is among them.
“Dead like Chico,” I said again.
Jerry looked kind of angered by my insistence on the dead
primate scenario.
I’d never seen the movie before, and I was hoping the fiery
crash and explosion was the end of this 2019 film that blends elements of “Old Frankenstein”
with “King Kong” with “ET,” all tied together by the best acting since “Kojak.”
I’ve watched “Kojak” a couple of times lately on one of those oldies channels. I
remembered it from my youth as being a good show. It’s stodgy crap. Who loves
you, baby?
Certainly not me. Although I’m a sucker for “The Rockford
Files.” I identify with Jim.
Anyway, between nodding off, Jerry is watching this film
attentively. He’d seen it before. And, he assures me again that George doesn’t
die.
Jerry, who I love, is in the Memory Care Ward for a four-month stretch now. “I don’t remember how or when I got here,” he’ll say. “I guess I’m not getting out anytime soon.”
Never is not soon, and he knows it. He is not happy about
it, but he’s making an effort at living the best life possible.
And that means he’s spending his nights across a dorm room
from a guy I have surmised is perhaps John Brown. Or Tom Brown. Or Joe Brown.
I know he’s “Mr. Brown” – as in the husband of the woman who
had a lovely daughter in the old Herman’s Hermits song. I never cared much for
the pretenders to The Beatles’ throne from Merseyside or anywhere. But I have spent time with “Herman” – Peter
Noone—and found him to be a kind and humble man. A one-trick pony? Sure, but he
cashed in on the State Fair circuit. The
only time I’ll cash in is when I cash in my chips before incineration or when I’m
eaten by dogs.
Jerry took another bite from one of the cheese crackers
from my contraband hauled out of my coat lining. One eight-pack was
cheese-and-cheese, the other cheese-and-peanut butter.
He spilled the Sprite. “Fuck, now I’m going to have to
change before dinner,’’ he said. Around these parts, wet trousers are common,
but it’s not usually because a fella spills his Sprite.
“I’ll bring you two next time,” I said to Jerry, who stopped
worrying about his trousers and focused on the ape movie.
I’m still not sure of the protocol of sneaking food in from
the outside. The Memory Care Ward dieticians make sure that their charges in
the special, double-locked and guarded section of the nursing home have three
balanced meals as well as snacks.
Problem is the snacks are things like bananas and sugar-free
pudding if you are diabetic, which Jerry is and for a long time had a sore on
his foot to prove it. It’s healed up now, he tells me..
“They don’t give us any junk food,” Jerry noted a few weeks
ago. “I’d like it if you could get some in here next time.”
His first choice was potato chips. He wanted as many as he
could eat, and the dietician told me they only serve chips – perhaps a handful
– when sandwiches are on the lunch menu.
“I really want chips,” he offered again before I left the
nursing home that day after I helped cajole the nurses and such into giving him
at least another banana and a drink.
They had the banana. He wanted a soda, but those are out. Crannapple juice, water and some types of
milk are the refreshments.
The chips he wanted in his room so he could dig into them
while watching “Gunsmoke,’’ the famous true-to-life docuseries about a tall
marshal who enjoys gunning down folks, good and bad, if they so much as cast a
glance at his favorite whore, Miss Kitty.
Actually, most of the folks deserve it, if, for no other
reason, they know there’s a 100 percent chance they’ll be bleeding out in the
dust as Marshal Dillon laughs and fixes himself a hand-rolled. Better than being eaten by dogs, like poor
Chico.
The dietician came into the room just after Jerry finished
his crackers.
“It’s lunchtime, Mr. Jerry. It’s lunchtime, Mr. Brown.”
Jerry reached into his dresser for a dry pair of trousers
and Mr. Brown rolled out of the fetal position on his bed and smiled. Clearly
he was hungry. I felt badly I didn’t bring him crackers, too.
But then I’ve found I like all these people and I’m too poor
to be their junk food Super Fly.
So, The Rock still in pursuit of George, the ape, I got up
from Mr. Brown’s recliner, and I thanked him for letting me use it.
Walking slowly down the hall, using my cane, the nurse who
had let me into Jerry’s room looked, with nothing bordering lust, at my very
slow stride.
“I thought you were going to stay here with Mr. Jerry.”
I picked up my cane and swung it at her. Nah, I picked it up
and forcefully added some pep to my step. I don’t like to be viewed as a
soon-to-be client at an old-people’s home.
She let me out through the locked security door just as I
heard one of the residents holler “He’s a knucklehead.” I didn’t think she was talking about me.
Maybe Mr. Brown, who was right behind me.
On the other side of the locked security door, the regular
residents were playing cornhole and listening to a Willie Nelson record.
