Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, as my friend (he really is) Kris Kristofferson wrote and sang 50-some years ago, back when my brother, Eric, and pal, Jerry and I enjoyed life's fireworks.
Our nation celebrated freedom a few days ago, with
fireworks, DUIs, domestic gunplay, mass murders, deadly vehicle crashes and musical
presentations on television that attempted to make me stand up and sing “it’s a
grand old flag.”
Rather than shooting bottle rockets at my rivals while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and getting drunk, I was focused on my longest-tenured newspaper friend, Jerry Dale Manley, and also my brother, Eric Anthony Ghianni, who loved the holiday more than any other person I’ve known, celebrating his passions for cold beer, hot dogs and warm place to watch colorful explosions. All the while, Old Glory standing watch, 24 hours a day, on his front porch.
As Kris would say, both men have nothin’ left to lose. Eric
died at the end of March, something that I’ve not gotten over. Instead, my
mental state is not getting better all the time. Can’t get much worse.
I’ll get to more on Eric soon, because he’s always on my
mind, and the Fourth was an M-80 dud without him.
But on the Fourth, my thoughts also were on Jerry, aka
“Chuckles News Brother,” with whom I celebrated most holidays, usually working
together or at least in the same skewed field, newspapering, where we worked
all night until almost-closing time, or came in at 4:30 a.m. and worked until
mid-to-late afternoon. Holidays were just like any other day, though on
Christmas, we did enjoy a bit of my brandy in our coffee or pay a visit to
composing room foreman Glover Williams’ top desk drawer.
If it was the Fourth, it meant crawling through the ceiling
trapdoor in The Leaf-Chronicle composing room and climbing out on the
roof, three giant stories above the intersection of Second and Commerce to
watch the displays from the whites-only (unless you are O.J. Simpson, the
whitest black man I’ve ever befriended and a vicious killer to boot) Clarksville
Country Club or from Fort Campbell.
Later, when I worked at 1100 Broadway, for the excellent old
Nashville Banner and later when I toiled on the bottom level of the corporate
caste system at the morning newspartner, I would take the stairway to a door
that opened up on the roof of the building.
Later in my 20 years in that building, a string that ended in directed humiliation
that could not kill my pride, they closed the access to the roof.
But, back in 1988 or 1989 or so, a guy could climb over the
fence that was supposed to keep you contained to a roof patio smoking area and
walk out to the roof edge. Looking around the ugliest building downtown, where
the Baptists got their scripture-skewed marching orders, you could see the
fireworks at Riverfront Park. That was decades ago, of course. That view long has been completely
obliterated by skyscrapers as Nashville has deteriorated into a wannabe Los
Angeles, without the palms and as much body art. And the newspaper building, a
historic structure representing (at least under the late John Seigenthaler)
First Amendment freedoms and racial/social equity, has been blown up to make
room for condos and a Gen Z-oriented grocery store.
I wanted to talk about those old fireworks days, the
glorious Fourths we spent together and our days of beer-soaked laughter when I dropped in on Jerry in his Memory Care
Ward room he shares with Milford/Bob – “I’ve never talked to him,” Jerry says,
expressing surprise that Bob and I had many good conversations until the last
couple of months, when he has turned into a foot-dragging, emaciated bag of
bones who scarcely acknowledges anyone. His day consists of putting on his
flannel shirt and jeans, his Tennessee Vols baseball cap, and wandering the
ward, looking for someplace to eat or sleep or use the toilet.
“No telling where he’ll end up,” says Jerry, who often has
come back from mealtime to find Bob sleeping in his bed. “He’ll sleep anywhere.”
When I entered the Memory Care Ward, in fact, I noticed that
Bob was sleeping in a reclining chair near the large lunchroom television,
where on most days – including the day after the Fourth of July – the nauseous
escapades of Lucy Ricardo, her philandering husband Ricky, fat old Fred Mertz
and his machine-gun cussing dirtbag of a wife, Ethel, are engaged in pure
nonsense.
I guess the low-brow scheming and sleazy escapades are just
right for the folks in the Memory Care Ward.
I think they should step it up a notch, intellectually, and find a
station that plays “Green Acres” or “The Beverly Hillbillies” so the inmates
could be cognitively challenged.
Regardless, I’m losing track of what brought me this far.
Jerry Manley has, as Kris sang, perfect freedom. He’s got nothin’ left to lose.
A pal for more than a half-century or less, Jerry is
snoozing noisily when I slip into his room. The television is off. The thermostat is set to 86 degrees, which is
comfortable for Jerry on what will be weekly shower day. He freezes when he gets out of the shower, so
the nurses crank up his thermostat for a few hours before bath time. Since it is 100-plus outside and I’m sitting
in a room that is almost as hot and filled with farts, I’m uncomfortable.
“Saturday, cutting farts, sounded like the Fourth of July,”
I sing in my head an old version of one of the band Chicago’s early and few
great songs. My college pal, Jim Mraz and I would sing -- at any bar, any
party, any social gathering or by ourselves -- our skewed versions of popular
songs. For example, we did The Doors’ “Touch Me” ( “Touch me babe, can’t you
see that I am not afraid….”) as “Fuck me, babe, can’t you see that I have not
been laid….” We were very popular, legendary indeed on a campus of 30,000
scholars that we’d have to pass through en route to Tork’s Pub.
But this story is not about Jim – who did text me our old
version of “Saturday in the Park” early on Independence Day. I’ll write about
Jim in other places, perhaps taming down our youthful hijinks a bit. We both have grandchildren.
This blog is first about my holiday-themed visit to Jerry,
whose mouth gaped open while he snoozed in the recliner in the steamy room. I
hit him gently with my walking cane, fashioned by my brother just a few weeks
before he died.
For the first time in the last seven months -- I have
visited him at least once a week since he was dropped off here by his family just
after Thanksgiving -- I had decided not to stash the weekly junk food contraband
in my clothing when I entered the nursing home.
It is my normal supply of Ritz peanut butter crackers –
Jerry has requested them – and a pint bottle of Diet SunDrop – his favorite
beverage.
As usual, I had bought them at the Shell station at the edge
of Brentwood, Tennessee, where I always top off my tank at Pump No. 8 and then
buy my treats for Jerry, who is mostly living on pre-digested turkey livers and
snot, or whatever it is they feed the inmates. With carrot cake for dessert if blood-sugar
allows it.
On this morning, my favorite gas station manager, Quincy
(his nametag used to say Quinccy, but the spelling has been corrected in the
last week), is back from a vacation in Puerto Rico.
“I really liked it down there. A lot of pickpockets, worse
than I’ve ever seen, but most of the people are nice, the food is good, and we
loved the beach at San Juan.”
He tells me to go visit the 51st state if I can
find a good deal. The buxom Black woman who aways worries about me toting my
bag of snacks out to the car is off this day – perhaps in Puerto Rico? Or, more
likely, the Virgin Islands. Or North Nashville.
But I’ve known Quincy for years, and he has had a weekly, at
least, view of my physical deterioration.
“If you need help, let me know, old friend (he doesn’t call
me ‘Pops’),” leaving that term of endearment to his kind, absent, sidekick.
“But you should be able to get this bag to your friend.” He knows my weekly
journey is to visit Jerry in the Memory Care Ward, and he endorses this mission,
telling me that where Jerry lives is “worse than prison.” But the bars, in
Jerry’s case, are dementia, and the guards don’t carry machine guns. Though,
they sometimes bring sugar-free pudding or Goldfish to the walking dead in the
cellblock.
I’ve grown tired of sticking crackers and soda in my cargo
shorts or – during cooler months – in the lining of my jacket. So, since this
was an Independence Day weekend visit, I decided to be free of the burden. I just carried the plastic sack filled with
contraband into the front of the nursing home, figuring that if they
confiscated it, the Shell is two minutes away and I’d simply turn around and go
get my pants refilled before coming back.
Instead, they didn’t even question me, so I discreetly
carried the sack with me through the “normal people” section of the home –
where I listened to two old (even by my standards) women use profanity-laced
language to discuss their lifetimes as teachers. Perhaps the profanity was in my head. It
often is.
No one inside the secure, double-locked doors into the
Memory Care Ward even looked at my sack of contraband. The pretty woman with the dreadlocks – Aliya
– greeted me with a smile and told me “Jerry’s down in his room.” I have told Jerry that all of the nurses and
most of the residents know his name and really like him, but he shakes his
head. “I don’t try to learn their names, wouldn’t remember ‘em.”
I’m only sure about
half of the time that he remembers my name. I know he recognizes me as his
longtime friend – “We used to make movies together and drive around and roll on
the ground,” he’ll say, when I ask his favorite memories in his generally good
life. But I’ve only heard him use my
name once in seven months, and that was when he feared I was going to leave him
while the nurse gave him a pair of insulin shots in the gut, a sight that gives
me chills.
Jerry is sound asleep, even after I give him a damn good
whacking with my cane. It takes a while for him to stir.
On this day, he has no words to spare. I cover my normal topics – the murders we
covered, Big Jim at Trice’s Landing, and the great movie we made, his fabulous
vegetable gardens, the highlights of many summers, and our surprise at where we
find ourselves now. Not regret in my case. In Jerry’s, considering where he
finds himself if at all, regrets may abound.
“I’d sure like to see that again,” he says, after I tell him I need to get the DVD player hooked up to his TV and play “Flapjacks: The Motion Picture,” a great and crude social satire starring me as Flapjacks, Jerry as Chuckles (even though he hates the name, he’s stuck with it), Rob Dollar as Death and Jim Lindgren as Flash. Others in the film had nicknames like The Mayor of Clarksville, The First American to Orbit the Earth, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Lindbergh, The Stranger, Dumbo, Street, Skipper, StrawBilly Fields, The Photographer, Danny Beaste, Porkloin and Dicksnot. (Scott Shelton became one of the most loyal of News Brothers after he was invited to join. He actually covered the world premiere of our movie as a nationally respected broadcast journalist. As Badger News Brother, he participated in all of our follow-up films and adventures, including being on-hand when The Lone Ranger pledged his friendship and allegiance. Like so many I've loved, Badger is dead. And so is The Lone Ranger.)
“I’ll try to do that
next time,” I say, getting up to check the inputs on the large television to see if I can play "Flapjacks" in this steamy room.
Then I direct the conversation to the time – my final days
in newspapering back in 2007 – when the assholes tried to get me to quit by
assigning me to become night cops reporter, all but abandoning my cherished
time with my wife and kids. They figured my goal for domestic comfort would
force me to resign rather than work nights and weekends.
That is generally a rookie position, but I didn’t quit. I
embraced it. Jerry was my boss, since he was night editor.
“I wrote so many cop stories every night, I got you in
trouble,” I remind him.
He was told to “call off the dogs,” aka ME, and not have me
turn out so much breaking cops news, because it “isn’t what our demographic
wants.”
I never did let off the gas. In fact, I remind Jerry, I broke some national news when the cops caught a truck driver/serial killer, who took truck stop prostitutes, used them and then killed them. It was a Nightly News story the next day.
Jerry remembered none of this. In fact, even when I was
trying to get him to respond, he kept dozing off in his recliner.
He was snoring long and hard when it became noon, and I knew it was time for him to get to the
cafeteria for his cucumber sandwiches and tea, or whatever the menu called for
(with carrot cake, as noted earlier).
He didn’t wake up. I gave him another damn good whacking
with my cane. He still didn’t stir. I touched his chest to make sure he was
breathing, and he was.
So I rubbed his arm and quietly left his room thinking that
this could be the lasting image I’d have of him. After a half-century of fun,
newspapering and roughhousing in bars and on dancefloors, chasing legs and distributing exploding cigarettes, my lasting memories could be
this image: Jerry Manley, legs pushing the arms of his recliner, sound asleep, a tiny bit left in the Diet SunDrop
bottle propped against his left thigh, empty cracker wrappers in his lap.
I ducked my head into the lunchroom, where the folks were claiming
their chairs, awaiting what the dietician described as “today’s surprise” for
lunch.
“Make sure somebody goes down to Jerry’s room and gets him
for lunch,” I remind one of the nurses. “He’s sound asleep, but I know he’ll be
hungry.”
They promise to do so, and I escape into the normal part of
the nursing home, stopping on the porch for a cup of icy cucumber water.
My July 5 visit and the empty feeling it left came on top of
my daydream memories of the day before, as I watched fireworks on TV and washed
it down with sparkling Italian mineral water, the kind Tony Soprano drank.
My brother, Eric, along with Gene Chapman or maybe Jimmy
Hart threw Black Cats at each other and laughed.
Hell, we weren’t even drunk. Too young, I think. Though we
weren’t above buying cooking sherry in the grocery store. Tasted horrible. We
also occasionally would trek up to Highwood, Illinois, where soldiers stationed
at Fort Sheridan would – for a couple bucks profit – secure us whiskey, wine,
beer, whatever.
Such adventures were not without potential pitfalls, like
the night the cop stopped us at the entrance to the beach. He wanted to know
what we were doing in Highland Park at such a late hour. My answer had me spewing whatever we drank
out the window of the passenger side of the old Falcon.
Rather than nab us for underage drinking, the cop told us
where – down by the bathroom at the beach parking lot – we could locate a water
hose to rinse off the car. I thanked him. The last good cop, perhaps.
Just thinking of glorious and inglorious Fourth of July
memories, the first such explosive holiday I’ve experienced since my brother
died in March. He was only 74, but apparently his body was older. He went into the hospital suffering from
dehydration and came out dead a month later.
I have a doctor who wants to do back surgery on me at the
same hospital. I’m hesitant, as I do not wish to join Eric. If there is such a
thing as a heaven, well, he was a good man and he’s obviously made the grade.
I’m not so sure about Old Flap.
I’ll withhold judgment for I hope 20 more years. For a guy
who spent his whole life among the cynics of the newspaper trade, such a thing
as heaven would be a wonderful surprise, showing that something indeed does
happen to you after the undertaker puts pennies on your eyes or throws you
gleefully into the blast furnace, guts exploding.
One Fourth of July, almost 50 years ago, found me and Eric
and Gene (and maybe Jimmy) tossing the basically harmless firecrackers at each
other or throwing them at cars whose drivers were foolish enough to ride down
Ellendale Drive in Deerfield, Illinois.
It was “our street,” where we played stickball and football
– sometimes the full-tackle version. In the wintertime, we’d pummel cars with
snowballs. Autumn time, when the dads were done with their leaf-raking for the
day, leaving piles of them smoldering in the street gutters, we’d wait until
dark and kick the burning piles in the paths of oncoming traffic.
Probably illegal, but then so is filling a small, brown
paper lunch sack with dog poop, lighting it on fire and leaving it on the front
porch of the neighborhood grump.
Ring the bell and run like hell.
Pretty harmless stuff.
To get fireworks, then one of the few things illegal in the
Chicago area, you had to go to Wisconsin, maybe an hour away.
The bonus to that trip was that Wisconsin was an 18-and-over
drinking state for watered down beer, so by the time I turned 15, I was of age.
One Fourth almost got us in jail. The three (or four) of us
were done shooting bottle rockets at each other and into traffic when we set
off through the neighborhood, a bag bulging with Black Cats, or Lady Fingers,
whatever the brand of those little, basically harmless explosives.
Eric particularly enjoyed lighting them and throwing them at
our feet. He just loved fireworks and
firecrackers all of his life, indulging in explosive escapades even in his
usually quiet street off Harding Place back when he was still 73.
Anyway, this is making me sad, so I’ll try to wrap it up.
We made it down to the local elementary school, which had a
tunnel-like entryway leading to the front door.
Seemed like a great place to light our strings of hundreds of small
firecrackers.
Nothing was damaged, but the blasts echoed all the way
across the nearby Briarwood Country Club – the actor Bruce Dern, a friend, once
told me he played golf there as a youngster growing up north of Chicago, but
that’s another story.
It also was late at night, and the lights began blinking on
in the densely populated neighborhood, where I’m sure phones were dialing for
friendly coppers to come out and get the lousy little bastards.
We did run like hell, but slowed down when we saw cop cars,
with blue lights and sirens, coming off Lake-Cook Road and barreling down on
us.
We knew it was going to be one of those classic hoosegow
holidays, but we suddenly heard Mom, hollering “Boys, come here.”
She had my dog, Misty, on a leash and was just posing as a
neighborhood woman taking her dog out for a late-night stroll. In reality, she
knew we were the culprits, and she got out there to rescue us from the long arm
of the law.
“Boys, just get down here, on the sidewalk, and pet Misty.
They’ll think you are with me.”
We did that, and watched the cops look quickly at us and
wave at this great All-American tableau.
“Now, follow me back to the house,” she said.
We stayed in and snuck cans of Meister Brau for the rest of
the night.
I actually was going to spend more time reflecting on Eric
and his passion for fireworks and the memories he left behind as an
explosives-loving patriot.
But I really can’t go on. Too soon to reflect ….
As I write this, just after the Fourth of July, neighborhood
firecrackers and fireworks are going off.
I have long thoughts about my dead brother and how gleeful
those sounds were to him, particularly if he was doing the lighting.
I think of Jerry Manley, living in a void, not even knowing
the Fourth that we so drunkenly celebrated decades ago, is past.
I asked him if there was any patriotic activity, perhaps
with the mindless populace marching up and down the hallway, beating on cooking
pans and singing “Yankee Doodle.”
Nope. Nothing like that. Not even hot dogs on the “menu”
that day, he said, between his snoozes.
I let him sleep until I knew it was time to go. That’s when
I gave him the damn good whacking with the cane my brother made for me and
which I depend on now, at least until I allow the doctors the chance to gash me
open and “fix” my back or kill me. I may just stick with the cane, since it can
be used to club people to death or whack them to life.
I stood outside the nursing home. Police sirens were signaling the arrival soon
of friendly coppers along Granny White Pike.
I dosed myself with the cucumber water they put out there for residents sitting on the porch playing the license plate game.
It’s not my favorite drink. “Better than nothin’,” I laughed
to myself.
Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.
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