music – Saigon Joe

My dad was a warehouse-man and mover and it was one of his jobs to clean out discarded and unclaimed storage lockers. This was a cool thing because he would be bringing home, every now and then, old newspapers (which he would sell to a local comic and magazine shop, among other vintage items for the house.

When I was twelve, my father brought home a box of 28 cast metal small statues of John L. Sullivan, bare chested and in trunks, in the traditional bare fist boxing pose. Mom asked him what was he going to do with them and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Something.” Little did I know at the time those statues would lead to my musical career in a high school band.

I was in the Boy Scouts and wanted to be a bugler but I didnt have a bugle. No one did. Then, one afternoon, my cousin and I were roaming the neighborhood and I saw a used trumpet in the window of a resale shop.

We went inside and I asked to see the instrument. I couldn’t play it yet, but the valves worked okay so I asked how much. He wanted thirty dollars for it. I had two. As I was slowly walking out the door, I remembered the statuettes, turned and asked him if he would be interested in 28 statues of John L Sullivan and two dollars.

To my surprise, he told me to bring them in so he could see them. We ran home and I asked my father (it was a Saturday and he was in the basement working on something) if I could trade the statues for a trumpet. He told me if the guy would take them it would be okay.

I cannot remember exactly what they looked like. I do remember they were hollow and the greyish casting was sprayed with a gilt paint. Perhaps they may have been made for an award or presentation but there were no bases for the little guys. My cousin and I placed the box in my wagon and off we went, excited and hoping we could make the trade.

The owner looked through the box, satisfied that they were undamaged, told me they were pretty neat and made the trade. He let me keep my two dollars.

I wonder now and then what happened to those 28 statues. I have never seen one since. As I think about it, they may be worth some money nowadays. My trumpet was in sad shape I soon discovered and, even after a cleaning, didn’t sound that good. It was, however, good enough to take on scout outings and camping trips and I got pretty good at playing it by ear, listening to bugle calls on a record I had gotten.

My father saw my interest in playing bugle and other songs so two years later, when I entered high school and began playing in the band, he bought me a new Silvertone trumpet from Sears for my birthday.

Thinking back, I not only owe my musical career but also my interest in trading and selling collectibles, which I am still doing today, to John L Sullivan. As far as trumpet playing, I gave that up some time ago.

I could never hit the high notes.

I learned about satire and parody from MAD magazine; I learned fear and pain from my father. The two sometimes went hand in hand.

At age ten, I started reading MAD magazine, a comic book my friend Rich discovered. We thought it was neat because it had characters like Superdooperman, the Lone Stranger and Little Annie Fannie…ooops, wait a minute, Annie was in Playboy. Sorry.

The government got involved with the content of MAD, as well as other comics like Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt, as not being appropriate for small fertile minds. They instituted the Comics Code Authority which regulated and approved comic content for kids with impressionable minds. Thus, MAD went from a comic book format to magazine in 1956, escaping the regulators, and we kids continued to purchase it along with Donald Duck and Superman, explaining the magazine was “for my older brother.”

MAD was a magazine of wit, satire, parody and “humor in a jugular vein.” Its creative contributors, Ernie Kovaks, Andy Griffith, Bob and Ray, Sid Caesar and a host of others, along with the regulars like Harvey Kurtzman, filled the pages with a world of cutting edge writing and drawing and played a key role in my wanting to be a writer, honing my developing sense of humor.

My father did not understand MAD. I dont think he ever took the time to really read it, just as he automatically condemned my taste in music (Perez Prado, the Weavers, Dave Brubeck). He never strayed from the regimented path he created for himself; if it wasn’t on Hit Parade ( a weekly top ten TV show), it wasn’t music worth listening to. That fell apart when the show, not by choice, by 1956, had to play the top ten which included Elvis Presley. He watched as the popularity of songs flipped between Patti Page and Mario Lanza to the Rock and Roll genre almost overnight. Within a short time, because of this change, the show went off the air.

The world was changing and my father could not adapt. Things he liked were becoming passe, things he believed in were being challenged and things he hoped for, like a son who would mature into his image of what a son should be, were being attacked. The world was changing and, unlike a reed in the wind, he could not bend. MAD exposed this world of change, poking fun at it, ridiculing it and explaining it in a humorous way. It became my magazine of choice, hidden from my father, throughout the late 1950’s.

If my father caught me reading a MAD magazine after banning it from the house, he would rip it to shreds and then punish me for my disobedience. This was even after a visiting priest to our house was confronted by my father asking for comment of the content within its pages. He fully expected the priest to agree with him as to the magazine being subversive.

The priest was there because I had made inquiry as to attending the seminary after graduation from grade school. The middle aged priest surprised my father and mother (and me too!) when he responded by explaining that even though the magazine touched on sensitive topics at times, it did so with restraint and intelligence and reflected a changing society and was not considered contraband in the seminary where it was read by some to gain insight into American culture. Dad was speechless.

My parents were hoping I would become a priest, and that day in 1959 dashed their concepts of a Bing Crosby, Father O’Malley type character and instead gave them a vision of Father Groucho, the unorthodox vestment wearing smart-mouth, holding a crucifix in one hand and a seltzer bottle in the other.

I was growing up, becoming my own person, and my father didn’t understand. The changing world, for me, did not alter fundamental family values I had been taught, but questioned society and government roles in managing and defining them. My world was expanding. Dad’s world was no longer flat. The Times they were a-changing.